{"id":3077,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3077"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:47","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:47","slug":"06-the-discovery-of-the-nation-soul-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\/06-the-discovery-of-the-nation-soul-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-06_The Discovery of the Nation-Soul.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Discovery of the Nation-Soul <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE PRIMAL<\/b> law and purpose of the individual life is to seek its own self-development. Consciously or half
\n consciously or with an obscure unconscious groping it
\nstrives always and rightly strives at self-formulation, \u2014 to find itself, to discover within itself the law and power of its own being
\nand to fulfil it. This aim in it is fundamental, right, inevitable because, even after all qualifications have been made and caveats
\nentered, the individual is not merely the ephemeral physical creature, a form of mind and body that aggregates and dissolves, but
\na being, a living power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifesting spirit. In the same way the primal law and purpose of a society,
\ncommunity or nation is to seek its own self-fulfilment; it strives rightly to find itself, to become aware within itself of the law and
\npower of its own being and to fulfil it as perfectly as possible, to realise all its potentialities, to live its own self-revealing life. The
\nreason is the same; for this too is a being, a living power of the eternal Truth, a self-manifestation of the cosmic Spirit, and it is
\nthere to express and fulfil in its own way and to the degree of its capacities the special truth and power and meaning of the cosmic
\nSpirit that is within it. The nation or society, like the individual, has a body, an organic life, a moral and aesthetic temperament,
\na developing mind and a soul behind all these signs and powers for the sake of which they exist. One may say even that, like
\nthe individual, it essentially is a soul rather than has one; it is a group-soul that, once having attained to a separate distinctness,
\nmust become more and more self-conscious and find itself more and more fully as it develops its corporate action and mentality
\nand its organic self-expressive life. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe parallel is just at every turn because it is more than a
\n\t\t\tparallel; it is a real identity of nature. There is only this
\n\t\t\tdifference that the group-soul is much more complex because it has a
\n\t\t\tgreat number of partly self-conscious mental individuals for the
\n\t\t\tconstituents of its physical being instead of an association of
\n\t\t\tmerely vital subconscious cells. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 35<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nAt first, for this very reason, it seems more crude, primitive and artificial in the forms it takes;
\nfor it has a more difficult task before it, it needs a longer time to find itself, it is more fluid and less easily organic. When it does
\nsucceed in getting out of the stage of vaguely conscious selfformation, its first definite self-consciousness is objective much
\nmore than subjective. And so far as it is subjective, it is apt to be superficial or loose and vague. This objectiveness comes
\nout very strongly in the ordinary emotional conception of the nation which centres round its geographical, its most outward
\nand material aspect, the passion for the land in which we dwell, the land of our fathers, the land of our birth,
\ncountry<\/i>, patria<\/i>,
\n\u00af<\/i> vaterland<\/i>, janma-bhumi<\/i>. When we realise that the land is only
\nthe shell of the body, though a very living shell indeed and potent in its influences on the nation, when we begin to feel that its more
\nreal body is the men and women who compose the nation-unit, a body ever changing, yet always the same like that of the indi
\nvidual man, we are on the way to a truly subjective communal consciousness. For then we have some chance of realising that
\neven the physical being of the society is a subjective power, not a mere objective existence. Much more is it in its inner self a
\ngreat corporate soul with all the possibilities and dangers of the soul-life. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe objective view of society has reigned throughout the historical period of humanity in the West; it has been sufficiently
\nstrong though not absolutely engrossing in the East. Rulers, people and thinkers alike have understood by their national
\nexistence a political status, the extent of their borders, their economic well-being and expansion, their laws, institutions and
\nthe working of these things. For this reason political and economic motives have everywhere predominated on the surface
\nand history has been a record of their operations and influence. The one subjective and psychological force consciously admitted
\nand with difficulty deniable has been that of the individual. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 36<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThis predominance is so great that most modern historians and some political thinkers have concluded that objective necessities are
\nby law of Nature the only really determining forces, all else is result or superficial accidents of these forces. Scientific history
\nhas been conceived as if it must be a record and appreciation of the environmental motives of political action, of the play of economic forces and developments and the course of institutional evolution. The few who still valued the psychological element
\nhave kept their eye fixed on individuals and are not far from conceiving of history as a mass of biographies. The truer and
\nmore comprehensive science of the future will see that these conditions only apply to the imperfectly self-conscious period
\nof national development. Even then there was always a greater subjective force working behind individuals, policies, economic
\nmovements and the change of institutions; but it worked for the most part subconsciously, more as a subliminal self than
\nas a conscious mind. It is when this subconscious power of the group-soul comes to the surface that nations begin to enter
\ninto possession of their subjective selves; they set about getting, however vaguely or imperfectly, at their souls.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCertainly, there is always a vague sense of this subjective existence at work even on the surface of the communal mentality. But so far as this vague sense becomes at all definite, it concerns itself mostly with details and unessentials, national
\nidiosyncrasies, habits, prejudices, marked mental tendencies. It is, so to speak, an objective sense of subjectivity. As man has been
\naccustomed to look on himself as a body and a life, the physical animal with a certain moral or immoral temperament, and the
\nthings of the mind have been regarded as a fine flower and attainment of the physical life rather than themselves anything
\nessential or the sign of something essential, so and much more has the community regarded that small part of its subjective
\nself of which it becomes aware. It clings indeed always to its idiosyncrasies, habits, prejudices, but in a blind objective fashion, insisting on their most external aspect and not at all going behind them to that for which they stand, that which they try
\nblindly to express. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis has been the rule not only with the nation, but with all
\n\t\t\tcommunities. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>37<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nA Church is an organised religious community and religion, if anything in the world, ought to be subjective;
\nfor its very reason for existence \u2014 where it is not merely an ethical creed with a supernatural authority
\n\t\t\t\u2014 is to find and realise
\nthe soul. Yet religious history has been almost entirely, except in the time of the founders and their immediate successors,
\nan insistence on things objective, rites, ceremonies, authority, church governments, dogmas, forms of belief. Witness the whole
\nexternal religious history of Europe, that strange sacrilegious tragi-comedy of discords, sanguinary disputations, “religious”
\nwars, persecutions, State churches and all else that is the very negation of the spiritual life. It is only recently that men have
\nbegun seriously to consider what Christianity, Catholicism, Islam really mean and are in their soul, that is to say, in their very
\nreality and essence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut now we have, very remarkably, very swiftly coming to
\nthe surface this new psychological tendency of the communal consciousness. Now first we hear of the soul of a nation and,
\nwhat is more to the purpose, actually see nations feeling for their souls, trying to find them, seriously endeavouring to act from
\nthe new sense and make it consciously operative in the common life and action. It is only natural that this tendency should have
\nbeen, for the most part, most powerful in new nations or in those struggling to realise themselves in spite of political subjection
\nor defeat. For these need more to feel the difference between themselves and others so that they may assert and justify their
\nindividuality as against the powerful superlife which tends to absorb or efface it. And precisely because their objective life is
\nfeeble and it is difficult to affirm it by its own strength in the adverse circumstances, there is more chance of their seeking for
\ntheir individuality and its force of self-assertion in that which is subjective and psychological or at least in that which has a
\nsubjective or a psychological significance. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore in nations so circumstanced this tendency of selffinding has been most powerful and has even created in some of them a new type of national movement, as in Ireland and
\nIndia. This and no other was the root-meaning of Swadeshism in Bengal and of the
\n\t\t\tIrish movement in its earlier less purely political stages.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>38<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThe emergence of Bengal as a sub-nation in India
\nwas throughout a strongly subjective movement and in its later development it became very consciously that. The movement of
\n1905 in Bengal pursued a quite new conception of the nation not merely as a country, but a soul, a psychological, almost
\na spiritual being and, even when acting from economical and political motives, it sought to dynamise them by this subjective
\nconception and to make them instruments of self-expression rather than objects in themselves. We must not forget, however,
\nthat in the first stages these movements followed in their superficial thought the old motives of an objective and mostly political
\nself-consciousness. The East indeed is always more subjective than the West and we can see the subjective tinge even in its
\npolitical movements whether in Persia, India or China, and even in the very imitative movement of the Japanese resurgence. But it
\nis only recently that this subjectivism has become self-conscious. We may therefore conclude that the conscious and deliberate
\nsubjectivism of certain nations was only the sign and precursor of a general change in humanity and has been helped forward
\nby local circumstances, but was not really dependent upon them or in any sense their product. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis general change is incontestable; it is one of the capital phenomena of the tendencies of national and communal life at
\nthe present hour. The conception to which Ireland and India have been the first to give a definite formula, “to be ourselves”,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 so different from the impulse and ambition of dependent or unfortunate nations in the past which was rather to become like
\nothers, \u2014 is now more and more a generally accepted motive of national life. It opens the way to great dangers and errors,
\nbut it is the essential condition for that which has now become the demand of the Time-Spirit on the human race, that it shall
\nfind subjectively, not only in the individual, but in the nation and in the unity of the human race itself, its deeper being, its
\ninner law, its real self and live according to that and no longer by artificial standards. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>39<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThis tendency was preparing itself everywhere and partly coming to
\n\t\t\tthe surface before the War, but most  prominently, as we have said, in new nations like Germany or in dependent nations like Ireland and India. The shock of the war
\nbrought about from its earliest moments an immediate \u2014 and for the time being a militant
\n\t\t\t\u2014 emergence of the same deeper
\nself-consciousness everywhere. Crude enough were most of its first manifestations, often of a really barbarous and reactionary
\ncrudeness. Especially, it tended to repeat the Teutonic lapse, preparing not only “to be oneself”, which is entirely right, but
\nto live solely for and to oneself, which, if pushed beyond a certain point, becomes a disastrous error. For it is necessary, if
\nthe subjective age of humanity is to produce its best fruits, that the nations should become conscious not only of their own but
\nof each other’s souls and learn to respect, to help and to profit, not only economically and intellectually but subjectively and
\nspiritually, by each other. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe great determining force has been the example and the
\naggression of Germany; the example, because no other nation has so self-consciously, so methodically, so intelligently, and
\nfrom the external point of view so successfully sought to find, to dynamise, to live itself and make the most of its own power
\nof being; its aggression, because the very nature and declared watchwords of the attack have tended to arouse a defensive
\nself-consciousness in the assailed and forced them to perceive what was the source of this tremendous strength and to perceive
\ntoo that they themselves must seek consciously an answering strength in the same deeper sources. Germany was for the time
\nthe most remarkable present instance of a nation preparing for the subjective stage because it had, in the first place, a certain
\nkind of vision \u2014 unfortunately intellectual rather than illuminated \u2014 and the courage to follow it
\n\t\t\t\u2014 unfortunately again a
\nvital and intellectual rather than a spiritual hardihood, \u2014 and, secondly, being master of its destinies, was able to order its
\nown life so as to express its self-vision. We must not be misled by appearances into thinking that the strength of Germany was
\ncreated by Bismarck or directed by the Kaiser Wilhelm II.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>40<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n Rather the appearance of Bismarck was in many respects a misfortune for
\nthe growing nation because his rude and powerful hand
\nprecipitated its subjectivity into form and action at too early a stage; a longer period of incubation might have produced results
\nless disastrous to itself, if less violently stimulative to humanity. The real source of this great subjective force which has been so
\nmuch disfigured in its objective action, was not in Germany’s statesmen and soldiers
\n\t\t\t\u2014 for the most part poor enough types
\nof men \u2014 but came from her great philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, from her great thinker and poet Goethe, from
\nher great musicians, Beethoven and Wagner, and from all in the German soul and temperament which they represented. A nation
\nwhose master achievement has lain almost entirely in the two spheres of philosophy and music, is clearly predestined to lead
\nin the turn to subjectivism and to produce a profound result for good or evil on the beginnings of a subjective age. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis was one side of the predestination of Germany; the other is to be found in her scholars, educationists, scientists,
\norganisers. It was the industry, the conscientious diligence, the fidelity to ideas, the honest and painstaking spirit of work for
\nwhich the nation has been long famous. A people may be highly gifted in the subjective capacities, and yet if it neglects to cultivate this lower side of our complex nature, it will fail to build that bridge between the idea and imagination and the world of
\nfacts, between the vision and the force, which makes realisation possible; its higher powers may become a joy and inspiration to
\nthe world, but it will never take possession of its own world until it has learned the humbler lesson. In Germany the bridge was
\nthere, though it ran mostly through a dark tunnel with a gulf underneath; for there was no pure transmission from the subjective mind of the thinkers and singers to the objective mind of the scholars and organisers. The misapplication by Treitschke
\n\t\t\tof the teaching of Nietzsche to national and international uses
\n\t\t\twhich would have profoundly disgusted the philosopher himself, is an
\n\t\t\texample of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there
\n\t\t\twas. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>41<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nFor more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective
\nintrospection on herself and things and ideas in search of the truth of her own
\nbeing and of the world, and for another half-century a patient eye of scientific
\nresearch on the
\nobjective means for organising what she had or thought she had gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful
\nand enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were
\nprecisely the very central lines on which to go wrong is to miss the goal. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt may be said, indeed, that the last result of the something done
\n\t\t\t\u2014 the war, the collapse, the fierce reaction towards the
\nrigid, armoured, aggressive, formidable Nazi State, \u2014 is not only discouraging enough, but a clear warning to abandon that path
\nand go back to older and safer ways. But the misuse of great powers is no argument against their right use. To go back is
\nimpossible; the attempt is always, indeed, an illusion; we have all to do the same thing which Germany has attempted, but to take
\ncare not to do it likewise. Therefore we must look beyond the red mist of blood of the War and the dark fuliginous confusion
\nand chaos which now oppress the world to see why and where was the failure. For her failure which became evident by the turn
\nher action took and was converted for the time being into total collapse, was clear even then to the dispassionate thinker who
\nseeks only the truth. That befell her which sometimes befalls the seeker on the path of Yoga, the art of conscious self-finding,
\n\t\t\t\u2014
\na path exposed to far profounder perils than beset ordinarily the average man, \u2014 when he follows a false light to his spiritual
\nruin. She had mistaken her vital ego for herself; she had sought for her soul and found only her force. For she had said, like the
\nAsura, “I am my body, my life, my mind, my temperament,” and become attached with a Titanic force to these; especially
\nshe had said, “I am my life and body,” and than that there can be no greater mistake for man or nation. The soul of man or
\nnation is something more and diviner than that; it is greater than its instruments and cannot be shut up in a physical, a vital,
\na mental or a temperamental formula. So to confine it, even though the false formation be embodied in the armour-plated
\nsocial body of a huge collective human dinosaurus, can only stifle the growth of the inner Reality and end in decay or the
\nextinction that overtakes all that is unplastic and unadaptable.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>42<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nIt is evident that there is a false as well as a true subjectivism and the errors to which the subjective trend may be liable are as
\ngreat as its possibilities and may well lead to capital disasters. This distinction must be clearly grasped if the road of this stage
\nof social evolution is to be made safe for the human race.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>43<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Chapter IV   The Discovery of the Nation-Soul   THE PRIMAL law and purpose of the individual life is to seek its own self-development. Consciously…<\/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-3077","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\/3077","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=3077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}