{"id":3494,"date":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3494"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","slug":"24-the-necessity-of-the-spiritual-transformation-vol-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-human-cycle\/24-the-necessity-of-the-spiritual-transformation-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-24_The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nCHAPTER XXII <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\nTHE NECESSITY OF THE SPIRITUAL
\nTRANSFORMATION<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nO<\/font>UR<\/b> normal conduct of life, whether the individual or
\nthe social, is actually governed by the balance between two complementary powers,\u2014first, an implicit will central to the life and
\ninherent in the main power of its action and, secondly, whatever
\nmodifying will can come in from the Idea in mind\u2014for man is
\na mental being\u2014and operate through our as yet imperfect mental
\ninstruments to give this life\u2014force a conscious orientation and a
\nconscious method. Life normally finds its own centre in our
\nvital and physical being, in its cravings and its needs, in its demand for
\npersistence, growth, expansion, enjoyment, in its reachings after all kinds of power and possession and activity and
\nsplendour and largeness. The first self-direction of this Life-Force,
\nits first orderings of method are instinctive and either entirely or
\nvery largely sub-conscient and magnificently automatic: the ease,
\nspontaneity, fine normality, beauty, self-satisfaction, abundant
\nvital energy and power of the subhuman life of Nature up to
\nthe animal is due to its entire obedience to this instinctive and
\nautomatic urge. It is a vague sense of this truth and of the very
\ndifferent and in this respect inferior character of human life that makes the
\nthinker, when dissatisfied with our present conditions, speak of a life according to Nature as the remedy for all
\nour ills. An attempt to find such a rule in the essential nature of <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 259<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nman has inspired many revolutionary conceptions of ethics and
\nsociety and individual self-development down to the latest of
\nthe kind, such as the strangely inspired vitalistic philosophy of
\nNietzsche. The common defect of these conceptions is to miss
\nthe true character of man and the true law of his being, his
\nDharma. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nNietzsche’s idea that to develop the superman out of our
\npresent very unsatisfactory manhood is our real business, is in itself an absolutely sound teaching. His formulation of our aim,
\n"to become ourselves," "to exceed ourselves," implying, as it
\ndoes, that man has not yet found all his true self, his true nature
\nby which he can successfully and spontaneously live, could not
\nbe bettered. But then the question of questions is there, what
\nis our self, and what is our real nature? What is that which is
\ngrowing in us, but into which we have not yet grown? It is something divine, is the answer, a divinity Olympian, Apollinian,
\nDionysiac, which the reasoning and consciously willing animal,
\nman, is labouring more or less obscurely to become. Certainly, it
\nis all that; but in what shall we find the seed of that divinity and
\nwhat is the poise in which the superman, once self-found, can
\nabide and be secure from lapse into this lower and imperfect
\nmanhood? Is it the intellect and will, the double-aspected buddhi
\n<\/i>of the Indian psychological system? But this is at present a thing
\nso perplexed, so divided against itself, so uncertain of everything
\nit gains, up to a certain point indeed magically creative and efficient but, when all has been said and done, in the end so splendidly futile, so at war with and yet so dependent upon and
\nsubservient to our lower nature, that even if in it there lies
\nconcealed some seed of the entire divinity, it can hardly itself be
\nthe seed and at any rate gives us no such secure and divine poise
\nas we are seeking. Therefore we say, not the intellect and will,
\nbut that supreme thing in us yet higher than the Reason, the
\nspirit, here concealed behind the coatings of our lower nature is <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 260<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe secret seed of the divinity and will be, when discovered and
\ndelivered, luminous above the mind, the wide ground upon
\nwhich a divine life of the human being can be with security
\nfounded. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWhen we speak of the superman, we speak evidently of
\nsomething abnormal or supernormal to our present nature, so
\nmuch so that the very idea of it becomes easily alarming and repugnant to our normal humanity. The normal human does not
\ndesire to be called out from its constant mechanical round to
\nscale what may seem to it impossible heights and it loves still less
\nthe prospect of being exceeded, left behind and dominated,\u2014although the object of a true supermanhood is not exceeding and
\ndomination for its own sake but precisely the opening of our normal humanity to something now beyond itself that is yet its own
\ndestined 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
\nvain to discover; it is a rapid freak, a sudden miracle. Abnormality
\nin Nature is no objection, no necessary sign of imperfection, but
\nmay well be an effort at a much greater perfection. But this perfection is not found until the abnormal can find its own secure
\nnormality, the right organisation of its life in its own kind and
\npower and on its own level. Man is an abnormal who has not
\nfound his own normality,\u2014he may imagine he has, he may appear
\nto be normal in his own kind, but that normality is only a sort
\nof provisional order; therefore though man is infinitely greater
\nthan the plant or the animal, he is not perfect in his own nature
\nlike the plant and the animal. This imperfection is not a thing
\nto be at all deplored, but rather a privilege and a promise; for it
\nopens out to us an immense vista of self-development and self- exceeding. Man at his highest is a half-god who has risen up out
\nof the animal Nature and is splendidly abnormal in it, but the
\nthing which he has started out to be, the whole god, is something <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 261<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nso much greater than what he is that it seems to him as abnormal
\nto 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
\nrace 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. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWhat precisely is the defect from which all his imperfection springs? We have already indicated it,\u2014that has indeed been
\nthe general aim of the preceding chapters,\u2014but it is necessary to
\nstate it now more succinctly and precisely. We see that at first
\nsight man seems to be a double nature, an animal nature of the
\nvital and physical being which lives according to its instincts,
\nimpulses, desires, its automatic orientation and method, and with
\nthat a half-divine nature of the self-conscious intellectual, ethical,
\naesthetic, intelligently emotional, intelligently dynamic being
\nwho is capable of finding and understanding the law of his own
\naction and consciously using and bettering it, a reflecting mind that
\nunderstands 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,
\nethically, by the powers of the mind much more than by the
\npowers of the life and body, and, secondly, to possess and enjoy,
\nnot so much the vital and physical except in so far as that is necessary as a foundation and starting-point, a preliminary necessity
\nor condition, a standing-ground and basis, but things intellectual,
\nethical and aesthetic, and to grow not so much in the outward
\nlife, 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
\nthe beautiful. This is the manhood of man, his unique distinction and abnormality in the norm of this inconscient material
\nNature. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 262<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nThis means that man has developed a new power of being,\u2014let us call it a new soul-power, with the premiss that we
\nregard the life and the body also as a soul-power,\u2014and the
\nbeing who has done that is under an inherent obligation not only
\nto look at the world and revalue all in it from this new elevation,
\nbut to compel his whole nature to obey this power and in a way
\nreshape itself in its mould, and even to reshape, so far as he can,
\nhis environmental life into some image of this greater truth and
\nlaw. In doing this lies his swadharma,<\/i> his true rule and way of
\nbeing, the way of his perfection and his real happiness. Failing
\nin this, he fails in the aim of his nature and his being, and has to
\nbegin again until he finds the right path and arrives at a successful
\nturning-point, a decisive crisis of transformation. Now this is
\nprecisely what man has failed to do. He has effected something,
\nhe has passed a certain stage of his journey. He has laid some
\nyoke of the intellectual, ethical, aesthetic rule on his vital and
\nphysical parts and made it impossible for himself to be content
\nwith or really to be the mere human animal. But more he has
\nnot been able to do successfully. The transformation of his life
\ninto the image of the true, the good and the beautiful seems as
\nfar off as ever; if ever he comes near to some imperfect form of
\nit,\u2014and 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,\u2014he
\nslides 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
\nwith new gains indeed but also with serious losses. He has
\nnever arrived at any great turning-point, any decisive crisis of
\ntransformation. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe main failure, the root of the whole failure indeed, is
\nthat he has not been able to shift upward what we have called
\nthe implicit will central to his life, the force and assured faith
\ninherent in its main power of action. His central will of life is
\nstill situated in his vital and physical being, its drift is towards <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 263<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nvital and physical enjoyment, enlightened indeed and checked
\nto a certain extent in its impulses by the higher powers, hut
\nenlightened only and very partially, not transformed,\u2014checked,
\nnot dominated and uplifted to a higher plane. The higher life is
\nstill only a thing superimposed on the lower, a permanent intruder upon our normal existence. The intruder interferes constantly with the normal life, scolds, encourages, discourages, lectures, manipulates, readjusts, lifts up only to let fall, hut has no
\npower to transform, alchemise, recreate. Indeed it does not seem
\nitself quite to know where all this effort and uneasy struggle is
\nmeant to lead us,\u2014sometimes it thinks, to a quite tolerable human life on earth, the norm of which it can never successfully
\nfix, and sometimes it imagines our journey is to another world
\nwhither by a religious life or else an edifying death it will escape
\nout of all this pother and trouble of mortal being. Therefore these
\ntwo elements live together in a continual, a mutual perplexity,
\nmade perpetually uneasy, uncomfortable and ineffectual by
\neach other, somewhat like an ill-assorted wife and husband, always at odds and yet half in love with or at least necessary to
\neach other, unable to beat out a harmony, yet condemned to be
\njoined in an unhappy leash until death separates them. All the
\nuneasiness, dissatisfaction, disillusionment, weariness, melancholy, pessimism of the human mind comes from man’s practical
\nfailure to solve the riddle and the difficulty of his double nature, <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe have said that this failure is due to the fact
\nthat this higher power is only a mediator, and that thoroughly to transform the
\nvital and physical life in its image is perhaps not possible, but at any rate
\nnot the intention of Nature in us. It may be urged perhaps that after all
\nindividuals have succeeded in effecting some figure of transformation, have led
\nentirely ethical or artistic or intellectual lives, even shaped their life by
\nsome ideal of the true, the good and the beautiful, and whatever the individual
\nhas done, the race too may and should eventually succeed in doing;<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 264<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nfor the exceptional individual is the future type, the forerunner. But to how much did their success really amount? Either
\nthey impoverished the vital and physical life in them in order to
\ngive play to one element of their being, lived a one-sided and
\nlimited existence, or else they arrived at a compromise by which,
\nwhile the higher life was given great prominence, the lower was
\nstill allowed to graze in its own field under the eye more or less
\nstrict or the curb more or less indulgent of the higher power or
\npowers: in itself, in its own instincts and demands it remained
\nunchanged. There was a dominance, but not a transformation. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nLife cannot be entirely rational, cannot conform entirely
\nto the ethical or the aesthetic or the scientific and philosophic
\nmentality; mind is not the destined archangel of the transformation. All appearances to the contrary are always a
\ntrompe I\u2019oeil,
\n<\/i>an intellectual, aesthetic or ethical illusion. Dominated, repressed
\nlife may be, but it reserves its right; and though individuals or a
\nclass may establish this domination for a time and impose some
\nsimulacrum of it upon the society, Life in the end circumvents
\nthe intelligence; it gets strong elements in it\u2014for always there are
\ntraitor elements at work\u2014to come over to its side and re-establishes its instincts, recovers its field; or if it fails in this, it has
\nits revenge in its own decay which brings about the decay of the
\nsociety, the disappointment of the perennial hope. So much so, that there are
\ntimes 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
\nfield instead of enslaving it to a higher but chimerical ideal. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nSuch a period was the recent materialistic age, when the
\nintellect 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 to a
\ntremendous expansion of the vital and physical life, its practicality, its efficiency, its comfort and the splendid ordering of its instincts<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 265<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof production, possession and enjoyment. That was the
\ncharacter of the materialistic, commercial, economic age of mankind, a period in which the ethical mind persisted painfully, but
\nwith decreasing self-confidence, an increasing self-questioning
\nand a tendency to yield up the fortress of the moral law to the
\nlife-instinct, the aesthetic instinct and intelligence flourished as
\na rather glaring exotic ornament, a sort of rare orchid in the
\nbuttonhole of the vital man, and reason became the magnificent
\nservant of Life and Matter. The titanic development of the vital
\nLife which followed is ending as the Titans always end; it lit
\nits own funeral pyre in the conflagration of a world-war, its natural upshot, a struggle between the most "efficient" and "civilised" nations for the possession and enjoyment of the world, of
\nits wealth, its markets, its available spaces, an inflated and plethoric commercial expansion, largeness of imperial size and
\nrule. For that is what the great war signified and was in its real
\norigin, because that was the secret or the open intention of all
\nprewar diplomacy and international politics; and if a nobler idea
\nwas awakened at least for a time, it was only under the scourge
\nof Death and before the terrifying spectre of a gigantic mutual
\ndestruction. Even so the awakening was by no means complete,
\nnor everywhere quite sincere, but it was there and it was struggling towards birth even in Germany, once the great protagonist
\nof the vitalistic philosophy of life. In that awakening lay some
\nhope of better things. But for the moment at least the vitalistic
\naim has once more raised its head in a new form and the hope has
\ndimmed in a darkness and welter in which only the eye of faith
\ncan see chaos preparing a new cosmos. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe first result of this imperfect awakening seemed likely to
\nbe a return to an older ideal, with a will to use the reason and the
\nethical mind better and more largely in the ordering of individual,
\nof national and of international life. But such an attempt, though
\nwell enough as a first step, cannot be the real and final solution; <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 266<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nif our effort ends there, we shall not arrive. The solution lies, we
\nhave said, in an awakening to our real, because our highest self
\nand nature,\u2014that hidden self which we are not yet, but have to
\nbecome and which is not the strong and enlightened vital Will
\nhymned by Nietzsche, but a spiritual self and spiritual nature
\nthat will use the mental being which we already are, but the
\nmental being spiritualised, and transform by a spiritual ideality
\nthe aim and action of our vital and physical nature. For this
\nis the formula of man in his highest potentiality, and safety lies
\nin tending towards our highest and not in resting content with an
\ninferior potentiality. To follow after the highest in us may seem
\nto be to live dangerously, to use again one of Nietzsche’s inspired expressions, but by that danger comes victory and security.
\nTo rest in or follow after an inferior potentiality may seem safe,
\nrational, comfortable, easy, but it ends badly, in some futility
\nor in a mere circling, down the abyss or in a stagnant morass. Our right and natural road is towards the summits. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe have then to return to the pursuit of an ancient secret
\nwhich man, as a race, has seen only obscurely and followed
\nafter lamely, has indeed understood only with his surface mind
\nand not in its heart of meaning,\u2014and yet in following it lies his
\nsocial no less than his individual salvation,\u2014the ideal of the
\nkingdom of God, the secret of the reign of the Spirit over mind
\nand life and body. It is because they have never quite lost hold
\nof this secret, never disowned it in impatience for a lesser victory, that the older Asiatic nations have survived so persistently
\nand can now, as if immortal, raise their faces towards a new
\ndawn; for they have fallen asleep, but they have not perished. It
\nis true that they have for a time failed in life, where the European nations who trusted to the flesh and the intellect have succeeded; but that success, speciously complete but only for a time,
\nhas always turned into a catastrophe. Still Asia had failed in life,
\nshe had fallen in the dust, and even if the dust in which she<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 267<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwas lying was sacred, as the modem poet of Asia has declared,\u2014
\nthough the sacredness may be doubted,\u2014still the dust is not the
\nproper place for man, nor is to lie prostrate in it his right human
\nattitude. Asia temporarily failed not because she followed after
\nthings spiritual, as some console themselves by saying,\u2014as if the
\nspirit could be at all a thing of weakness or a cause of weakness,\u2014
\nbut because she did not follow after the spirit sufficiently, did not
\nlearn how entirely to make it the master of life. Her mind either
\nmade a gulf and a division between life and the Spirit or else
\nrested in a compromise between them and accepted as final socio-religious systems founded upon that compromise. So to rest is
\nperilous; for the call of the Spirit more than any other demands
\nthat we shall follow it always to the end, and the end is neither a
\ndivorce and departure nor a compromise, but a conquest of all
\nby the spirit and that reign of the seekers after perfection which,
\nin the Hindu religious symbol, the last Avatar comes to accomplish. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis truth it is important to note, for mistakes made
\n<\/b>on
\n<\/b>the path are often even more instructive than the mistakes made
\nby a turning aside from the path. As it is possible to superimpose
\nthe intellectual, ethical or aesthetic life or the sum of their motives upon the vital and physical nature, to be satisfied with a
\npartial domination or a compromise, so it is possible to superimpose the spiritual life or some figure of strength or ascendency of
\nspiritual ideas and motives on the mental, vital and physical
\nnature and either to impoverish the latter, to impoverish the vital
\nand physical existence and even to depress the mental as well in
\norder to give the spiritual an easier domination, or else to make a
\ncompromise and leave the lower being to its pasture on condition of its doing
\nfrequent homage to the spiritual existence, admitting to a certain extent, greater or less, its influence and
\nformally acknowledging it as the last state and the finality of the
\nhuman being. This is the most that human society has ever done<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 268<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nin the past, and though necessarily that must be a stage of the
\njourney, to rest there is to miss the heart of the matter, the one
\nthing needful. Not a humanity leading its ordinary life, what is
\nnow its normal round, touched by spiritual influences, but a
\nhumanity aspiring wholeheartedly to a law that is now abnormal
\nto it until its whole life has been elevated into spirituality, is the
\nsteep way that lies before man towards his perfection and the
\ntransformation that it has to achieve. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe secret of the transformation lies in the transference of
\nour centre of living to a higher consciousness and in a change of
\nour main power of living. This will be a leap or an ascent even
\nmore momentous than that which Nature must have at one
\ntime made from the vital mind of the animal to the thinking
\nmind still imperfect in our human intelligence. The central will
\nimplicit 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
\ndim intimations and glimpses. For now it comes to us hardly disclosed, weakened, disguised in the mental Idea; but it is in its
\nown nature supramental and it is its supramental power and
\ntruth that we have somehow to discover. The main power of our
\nliving must be no longer the inferior vital urge of Nature which
\nis already accomplished in us and can only whirl upon its rounds
\nabout the ego-centre, but that spiritual force of which we sometimes hear and speak but have not yet its inmost secret. For
\nthat 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
\ncentral 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
\nhighest endeavour and labour has been to become the mental being <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 269<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand to live in the strength of the idea. But the mental idea in
\nus is always intermediary and instrumental; always it depends
\non something other than it for its ground of action and therefore
\nalthough it can follow for a time after its own separate satisfaction, it cannot rest for ever satisfied with that alone. It must
\neither gravitate downwards and outwards towards the vital and
\nphysical life or it must elevate itself inwards and upwards towards the spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAnd that must be why in thought, in art, in conduct, in
\nlife we are always divided between two tendencies, one idealistic,
\nthe other realistic. The latter very easily seems to us more real,
\nmore solidly founded, more in touch with actualities because it
\nrelies upon a reality which is patent, sensible and already accomplished; the idealistic easily seems to us something unreal,
\nfantastic, unsubstantial, nebulous, a thing more of thoughts and
\nwords than of live actualities, because it is trying to embody a
\nreality 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
\nhas found the greater and purer reality for which it is seeking and
\nimposed it on our outer activities; till then it hangs between two
\nworlds and has conquered neither the upper light nor the nether
\ndarkness. Submission to the actual by a compromise is easy; discovery of the spiritual truth and the transformation of our actual
\nway of living is difficult: but it is precisely this difficult thing
\nthat has to be done, if man is to find and fulfil his true nature. Our
\nidealism is always the most rightly human thing in us, but as a
\nmental idealism it is a thing ineffective. To be effective it has to
\nconvert itself into a spiritual realism which shall lay its hands
\non the higher reality of the spirit and take up for it this lower
\nreality of our sensational, vital and physical nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis upward transference of our will to be and our power
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 270<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof life we have, then, to make the very principle of our perfection. That will, that power must choose between the domination
\nof 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
\nperfection, but that is the perfection of an arrested development
\nsatisfied with its own limits. This she can manage in the plant
\nand the animal, because the life and the body are there at once
\nthe instrument and the aim; they do not look beyond themselves.
\nShe cannot do it in man because here she has shot up beyond her
\nphysical and vital basis; she has developed in him the mind
\nwhich is an out flowering of the life towards the light of the
\nSpirit, and the life and the body are now instrumental and no
\nlonger their own aim. Therefore the perfection of man cannot
\nconsist in pursuing the unillumined round of the physical life.
\nNeither can it be found in the wider rounds of the mental being; for that also is instrumental and tends towards something else
\nbeyond it, something whose power indeed works in it, but whose
\nlarger truth is superconscient to its present intelligence, supramental. The perfection of man lies in die unfolding of the
\never perfect Spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe lower perfection of Nature in the plant and the animal comes from an instinctive, an automatic, a subconscient
\nobedience in each to the vital truth of its own being. The higher
\nperfection 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
\nreal nature. For this spontaneity will not be instinctive and subconscient, it will be intuitive and fully, integrally conscious. It
\nwill be a glad obedience to a spontaneous principle of spiritual
\nlight, to the force of a unified and integralised highest truth,
\nlargest beauty, good, power, joy, love, oneness. The object of
\nthis force acting in life will and must be as in all life growth,
\npossession, enjoyment, but a growth which is a divine manifestation,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 271<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\na possession and enjoyment spiritual and of the spirit in
\nthings,\u2014an enjoyment that will use, but will not depend on the
\nmental, vital and physical symbols of our living. Therefore this
\nwill not be a limited perfection of arrested development dependent on the repetition of the same forms and the same round
\nof actions, any departure from which becomes a peril and a disturbance. It will be an illimitable perfection capable of endless
\nvariation in its forms,\u2014for the ways of the Spirit are countless
\nand endless,\u2014but securely the same in all variations, one but
\nmultitudinously infinite. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nTherefore too this perfection cannot come by the mental
\nidea dealing with the Spirit as it deals with life. The idea in mind
\nseizing upon the central will in Spirit and trying to give this
\nhigher force a conscious orientation and method in accordance
\nwith 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
\nchain the spirit to some fixed mental idea or system of religious
\ncult, intellectual truth, aesthetic norm, ethical rule, practical
\naction, way of vital and physical life, to a particular arrangement of forms and actions and declare all departure from that a
\nperil and a disturbance or a deviation from spiritual living. That
\nwas the mistake made in Asia and the cause of its arrested development and decline; for this is to subject the higher to the
\nlower principle and to bind down the self-disclosing Spirit to a
\nprovisional and imperfect compromise with mind and the vital
\nnature. Man’s true freedom and perfection will come when the
\nspirit within bursts through the forms of mind and life and,
\nwinging above to its own gnostic fiery height of ether, turns
\nupon them from that light and Same to seize them and transform into its own image. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn fact, as we have seen, the mind and the intellect are not
\nthe key-power of our existence. For they can only trace out a
\nround of half-truths and uncertainties and revolve in that unsatisfying <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 272<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ncircle. But concealed in the mind and life, in all the
\naction of the intellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, the dynamic
\nand practical, the emotional, sensational, vital and physical being, there is a power that sees by identity and intuition and gives
\nto all these things such truth and such certainty and stability as
\nthey are able to compass. Obscurely we are now beginning to see
\nsomething of this behind all our science and philosophy and all
\nour other activities. But so long as this power has to work for the
\nmind and life and not for itself, to work in their forms and not by
\nits own spontaneous light, we cannot make any great use of this
\ndiscovery, cannot get the native benefit of this inner Daemon.
\nMan’s road to spiritual supermanhood will be open when he
\ndeclares boldly that all he has yet developed, including the intellect of which he is so rightly and yet so vainly proud, are now no
\nlonger sufficient for him, and that to uncase, discover, set free
\nthis greater Light within shall be henceforward his pervading
\npreoccupation. Then will his philosophy, art, science, ethics,
\nsocial existence, vital pursuits be no longer an exercise of mind
\nand life, done for themselves, carried in a circle, but a means for
\nthe discovery of a greater Truth behind mind and life and for the
\nbringing of its power into our human existence. We shall be on
\nthe right road to become ourselves, to find our true law of perfection, to live our true, satisfied existence in our real being and
\ndivine nature.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 273<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/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 the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-human-cycle","wpcat-81-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494","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=3494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}