{"id":3495,"date":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3495"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:56","slug":"25-the-condition-for-the-coming-of-a-spiritual-age-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\/25-the-condition-for-the-coming-of-a-spiritual-age-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-25_The condition for the coming of a Spiritual Age.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\nCHAPTER XXIII<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nTHE CONDITIONS FOR THE COMING
\nOF A SPIRITUAL AGE<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nA<\/font> <\/b> CHANGE of this kind, the change from the mental and
\nvital to the spiritual order of life, must necessarily be accomplished in the individual and in a great number of individuals
\nbefore it can lay any effective hold upon the community. The
\nSpirit in humanity discovers, develops, builds into form in the
\nindividual man; it is through the progressive and formative individual that it offers the discovery and the chance of a new
\nself- creation to the mind of the race. For the communal mind holds
\nthings sub-consciently at first or, if consciously, then in a confused chaotic manner: it is only through the individual mind
\nthat the mass can arrive at a clear knowledge and creation of the
\nthing it held in its sub-conscient self. Thinkers, historians, sociologists who belittle the individual and would like to lose him in
\nthe mass or think of him chiefly as a cell, an atom, have got hold
\nonly of the obscurer side of the truth of Nature’s workings in
\nhumanity. It is because man is not like the material formations of
\nNature or like the animal, because she intends in him a more
\nand more conscious evolution, that individuality is so much developed in him and so absolutely important and indispensable.
\nNo doubt what comes out in the individual and afterwards
\nmoves the mass, must have been there already in the universal
\nMind and the individual is only an instrument for its manifestation,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 274<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ndiscovery, development: but he is an indispensable instrument and an instrument not merely of sub-conscient Nature,
\nnot merely of an instinctive urge that moves the mass, but more
\ndirectly of the Spirit of whom that Nature is itself the instrument
\nand the matrix of his creations. All great changes therefore find
\ntheir first clear and effective power and their direct shaping force
\nin the mind and spirit of an individual or of a limited number of
\nindividuals. The mass follows, but unfortunately in a very imperfect and confused fashion which often or even usually ends
\nin the failure or distortion of the thing created. If it were not so,
\nmankind could have advanced on its way with a victorious rapidity instead of with the lumbering hesitations and soon exhausted
\nrushes that seem to be all of which it has yet been capable. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nTherefore if the spiritual change of which we have been
\nspeaking is to be effected, it must unite two conditions which
\nhave to be simultaneously satisfied but are most difficult to bring
\ntogether. There must be the individual and the individuals who
\nare able to see, to develop, to recreate themselves in the image of
\nthe Spirit and to communicate both their idea and its power
\nto the mass. And there must be at the same time a mass, a society,
\na communal mind or at the least the constituents of a group
\nbody, the possibility of a group-soul which is capable of receiving
\nand effectively assimilating, ready to follow and effectively arrive,
\nnot compelled by its own inherent deficiencies, its defect of preparation to stop on the way or fall back before the decisive change
\nis made. Such a simultaneity has never yet happened, although
\nthe appearance of it has sometimes been created by the ardour
\nof a moment. That the combination must happen some day is a
\ncertainty, but none can tell how many attempts will have to be
\nmade and how many sediments of spiritual experience will have
\nto be accumulated in the sub-conscient mentality of the communal human being before the soil is ready. For the chances of
\nsuccess are always less powerful in a difficult upward effort affecting <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 275<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n the very roots of our nature than the numerous possibilities
\nof failure. The initiator himself may be imperfect, may not have
\nwaited to become entirely the thing that he has seen. Even the
\nfew who have the apostolate in their charge may not have perfectly assimilated and shaped it in themselves and may hand on
\nthe power of the Spirit still farther diminished to the many who
\nwill come after them. The society may be intellectually, vitally,
\nethically, temperamentally unready, with the result that the final
\nacceptance of the spiritual idea by the society may be also the
\nbeginning of its debasement and distortion and of the consequent
\ndeparture or diminution of the Spirit. Any or all of these things
\nmay happen, and the result will be, as has so often happened
\nin the past, that even though some progress is made and an important change effected, it will not be the decisive change which
\ncan alone recreate humanity in a diviner image. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWhat then will be that state of society, what that readiness
\nof the common mind of man which will be most favourable to
\nthis change, so that even if it cannot at once effectuate itself,
\nit may at least make for its ways a more decisive preparation than
\nhas been hitherto possible? For that seems the most important
\nelement, since it is that, it is the un-preparedness, the unfitness
\nof the society or of the common mind of man which is always the
\nchief stumbling block. It is the readiness of this common mind
\nwhich is of the first importance; for even if the condition of society and the principle and rule that govern society are opposed to
\nthe spiritual change, even if these belong almost wholly to the
\nvital, to the external, the economic, the mechanical order, as is
\ncertainly the way at present with human masses, yet if the common human mind has begun to admit the ideas proper to the
\nhigher order that is in the end to be and the heart of man has
\nbegun to be stirred by aspirations born of these ideas, then there
\nis a hope of some advance in the not distant future. And here
\nthe first essential sign must be the growth of the subjective idea
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 276<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof life,\u2014the idea of the soul, the inner being, its powers, its possibilities, its growth, its expression and the creation of a true, beautiful and helpful environment for it as the one thing of first and
\nlast importance. The signals must be there that are precursors
\nof a subjective age in humanity’s thought and social endeavour. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThese ideas are likely first to declare their trend in philosophy, in psychological thinking, in the arts, poetry, painting,
\nsculpture, music, in the main idea of ethics, in the application of
\nsubjective principles by thinkers to social questions even perhaps, though this is a perilous effort, to politics and economics,
\nthat hard refractory earth matter which most resists all but a
\ngross utilitarian treatment. There will be new unexpected departures of science or at least of research,\u2014since to such a turn in its
\nmost fruitful seekings the orthodox still deny the name of science. Discoveries will be made that thin the walls between soul
\nand matter; attempts there will be to extend exact knowledge
\ninto the psychological and psychic realms with a realisation of
\nthe truth that these have laws of their own which are other than
\nphysical, but not the less laws because they escape the external
\nsenses and are infinitely plastic and subtle. There will be a labour
\nof religion to reject its past heavy weight of dead matter and revivify its strength in the fountains of the spirit. These are sure
\nsigns, if not of the thing to be, at least of a great possibility of it,
\nof an effort that will surely be made, another endeavour perhaps
\nwith a larger sweep and a better equipped intelligence capable not only of
\nfeeling but of understanding the Truth that is demanding to be heard. Some such signs we can see at the present
\ntime although they are only incipient and sporadic and have not
\nyet gone far enough to warrant a confident certitude. It is only
\nwhen these groping beginnings have found that for which they
\nare seeking, that it can be successfully applied to the remoulding
\nof the life of man. Till then nothing better is likely to be achieved
\nthan an inner preparation and, for the rest, radical or revolutionary<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 277<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n experiments of a doubtful kind with the details of the vast
\nand cumbrous machinery under which life now groans and labours. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nA subjective age may stop very far short of spirituality; for the subjective turn is only a first condition, not the thing itself,
\nnot the end of the matter. The search for the Reality, the true
\nself of man, may very easily follow out the natural order described by the Upanishad in the profound apologue of the seekings of Bhrigu, son of Varuna. For first the seeker found the
\nultimate reality to be Matter and the physical, the material being,
\nthe external man our only self and spirit. Next he fixed on life
\nas the Reality and the vital being as the self and spirit; in the
\nthird essay on Mind and the mental being; only afterwards could
\nhe get beyond the superficial subjective through the supramental
\nTruth consciousness to the eternal, the blissful, the ever creative
\nReality of which these are the sheaths. But humanity may not
\nbe as persistent or as plastic as the son of Varuna, the search
\nmay stop short anywhere. Only if it is intended that he shall
\nnow at last arrive and discover, will the Spirit break each insufficient formula as soon as it has shaped itself and compel the
\nthought of man to press forward to a larger discovery and in
\nthe end to the largest and most luminous of all. Something of the
\nkind has been happening but only in a very external way and
\non the surface. After the material formula which governed the
\ngreater part of the nineteenth century had burdened man with
\nthe heaviest servitude to the machinery of the outer material life
\nthat he has ever yet been called upon to bear, the first attempt to
\nbreak through, to get to the living reality in things and away from
\nthe mechanical idea of life and living and society landed us in
\nthat surface vitalism which had already begun to govern thought
\nbefore the two formulas inextricably locked together lit up and
\nHung themselves on the lurid pyre of the world-war. The vital
\n\u00e9lan brought us no deliverance, but only used the machinery<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 278<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nalready created with a more feverish insistence, a vehement attempt to live more rapidly, more intensely, an inordinate will
\nto act and to succeed, to enlarge the mere force of living, to pile
\nup a gigantic efficiency of life. It could not have been otherwise
\neven if this vitalism had been less superficial and external, more
\ntruly subjective. To live, to act, to grow, to increase the vital
\nforce, to understand, utilise and fulfil the intuitive impulse of
\nlife are not things evil in themselves: rather they are excellent
\nthings, if rightly followed and rightly used, that is to say, if they
\nare directed to something beyond the mere vitalistic impulse and
\nare governed by that within which is higher than Life. The Life power is an instrument, not an aim; it is in the upward scale the
\nfirst great subjective supraphysical instrument of the Spirit and
\nthe base of all action and endeavour. But a Life-power that sees
\nnothing beyond itself, nothing to be served except its own organised demands and impulses, will be very soon like the force of
\nsteam driving an engine without the driver or an engine in which
\nthe locomotive force has made the driver its servant and not its
\ncontroller. It can only add the uncontrollable impetus of a high -crested or broad-based Titanism,
\nor it may be even a nether flaming demonism, to the Nature forces of the material world with
\nthe intellect as its servant, an impetus of measureless unresting
\ncreation, appropriation, expansion which will end in something
\nviolent, huge and "colossal," foredoomed in its very nature to
\nexcess and ruin, because light is not in it nor the soul’s truth nor
\nthe sanction of the gods and their calm eternal will and knowledge. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut beyond the subjectivism of the vital self there is the
\npossibility of a mental and even a psychic subjectivism which
\nwould at first perhaps, leaning upon the already realised idea of
\nthe soul as Life in action but correcting it, appear as a highly
\nmentalised pragmatism, but might afterwards rise to the higher
\nidea of man as a soul that develops itself individually and collectively <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 279<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nin the life and body through the play of an ever-expanding
\nmental existence. This greater idea would realise that the elevation of the human existence will come not through material efficiency alone or the complex play of his vital and dynamic powers
\nmastering through the aid of the intellect the energies of physical
\nNature for the satisfaction of the life-instincts, which can only
\nbe an intensification of his present mode of existence, but
\nthrough the greatness of his mental and psychic being and a discovery, bringing forward an organisation of his vast subliminal
\nnature and its forces. It would see in life an opportunity for the
\njoy and power of knowledge, for the joy and power of beauty,
\nfor the joy and power of the human will mastering not only physical Nature, but vital and mental Nature. It might discover her
\nsecret yet undreamed of mind powers and life powers and use
\nthem for a freer liberation of man from the limitations of his
\nshackled bodily life. It might arrive at new psychic relations, a
\nmore sovereign power of the idea to realise itself in the act, inner
\nmeans of overcoming obstacles of distance and division which
\nwould cast into insignificance even the last miraculous achievements of material Science. A development of this kind is far
\nenough away from the dreams of the mass of men, but there are
\ncertain pale hints and presages of such a possibility and ideas
\nwhich lead to it are already held by a great number who are perhaps in this respect the yet unrecognised vanguard of humanity. It is not impossible that behind the confused morning voices of
\nthe hour a light of this kind, still below the horizon, may be waiting to ascend with its splendours. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nSuch a turn of human thought, effort, ideas of life, if it took
\nhold of the communal mind, would evidently lead to a profound
\nrevolution throughout the whole range of human existence. It
\nwould give it from the first a new tone and atmosphere, a loftier
\nspirit, wider horizons, a greater aim. It might easily develop a
\nscience which would bring the powers of the physical world into
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 280<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\na real and not only a contingent and mechanical subjection and
\nopen perhaps the doors of other worlds. It might develop an
\nachievement of Art and Beauty which would make the greatness
\nof the past a comparatively little thing and would save the world
\nfrom the astonishingly callous reign of utilitarian ugliness that
\neven now afflicts it. It would open up a closer and freer interchange between human minds and, it may well be hoped, a kindlier interchange between human hearts and lives. Nor need its
\nachievements stop here, but might proceed to greater things of
\nwhich these would be only the beginnings. This mental and psychic subjectivism would have its dangers, greater dangers even
\nthan those that attend a vitalistic subjectivism, because its powers of action also would be greater, but it would have what vitalistic subjectivism has not and cannot easily have, the chance of a
\ndetecting discernment, strong safeguards and a powerful liberating light. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nMoving with difficulty upward from matter to spirit, this is
\nperhaps a necessary stage of man’s development. This was one
\nprincipal reason of the failure of past attempts to spiritualise
\nmankind, that they endeavoured to spiritualise at once the material man by a sort of rapid miracle, and though that can be done,
\nthe miracle is not likely to be of an enduring character if it overleaps the stages of his ascent and leaves the intervening levels
\nuntrodden and therefore unmastered. The endeavour may succeed with individuals,\u2014Indian thought would say with those
\nwho have made themselves ready in a past existence,\u2014but it must
\nfail with the mass. When it passes beyond the few, the forceful
\nmiracle of the spirit flags; unable to transform by inner force, the
\nnew religion tries to save by machinery, is entangled in the mechanical turning of its own instruments, loses the spirit and
\nperishes quickly or decays slowly. That is the fate which overtakes all attempts of the vitalistic, the intellectual and mental,
\nthe spiritual endeavour to deal with material man through his
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 
\n<\/font>Page – 281<\/font>  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nphysical mind chiefly or alone; the endeavour is overpowered
\nby the machinery it creates and becomes the slave and victim of
\nthe machine. That is the revenge which our material Nature,
\nherself mechanical, takes upon all such violent endeavours; she
\nwaits to master them by their concessions to her own law. If mankind is to be spiritualised, it must first in the mass cease to be the
\nmaterial or the vital man and become the psychic and the true
\nmental being. It may be questioned whether such a mass progress
\nor conversion is possible; but if it is not, then the spiritualisation
\nof mankind as a whole is a chimera. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFrom this point of view it is an excellent thing, a sign of
\ngreat promise, that the wheel of civilisation has been following
\nits past and present curve upward from a solid physical knowledge through a successive sounding of higher and higher powers
\nthat mediate between Matter and Spirit. The human intellect
\nin modern times has been first drawn to exhaust the possibilities
\nof materialism by an immense dealing with life and the world
\nupon the basis of Matter as the sole reality, Matter as the Eternal, Matter as the Brahman, annam
\nbrahma.<\/i> Afterwards it had
\nbegun to turn towards the conception of existence as the large
\npulsation of a great evolving Life, the creator of Matter, which
\nwould have enabled it to deal with our existence on the basis of
\nLife as the original reality, Life as the great Eternal, pr\u00e2nam brahma.<\/i> And already it has in germ, in preparation a third conception, the discovery of a great self-expressing and self-finding
\ninner Mind other than our surface mentality as a master-power
\nof existence, that should lead towards a rich attempt to deal with
\nour possibilities and our ways of living on the basis of Mind as
\nthe original reality, the great Eternal, mano brahma.<\/i> It will also
\nbe a sign of promise if these conceptions succeeded each other
\nwith rapidity, with a large but swift evocation of the possibilities
\nof each level; for that would show that there is a readiness in our
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 282<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nsubconscient Nature and that we need not linger in each stage
\nfor centuries. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut still a subjective age of mankind must be an adventure
\nfull of perils and uncertainties as are all great adventures of the
\nrace. It may wander long before it finds itself or may not find
\nitself at all and swing back to a new repetition of the cycle. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe true secret can only be discovered if in the third stage,
\nin an age of mental subjectivism, the idea becomes strong of the
\nmind itself as no more than a secondary power of the Spirit’s
\nworking and of the Spirit as the great Eternal, the original and,
\nin spite of the many terms in which it is both expressed and hidden, the sole reality, ayam atma
\nbrahma.<\/i> Then only will the real,
\nthe decisive endeavour begin and life and the world be studied,
\nknown, dealt with in all directions as the self-finding and self-expression of the Spirit. Then only will a spiritual age of mankind be possible. To attempt any adequate discussion of what
\nthat would mean, and in an inadequate discussion there is no
\nfruit, would need another volume or two of essays; for we should
\nhave to examine a knowledge which is rare and nowhere more
\nthan initial. It is enough to say that spiritual human society
\nwould start from and try to realise three essential truths of existence which all Nature seems to be an attempt to hide by their
\nopposites and which therefore are as yet for the mass of mankind
\nonly words and dreams, God, freedom, unity. Three things which
\nare one, for you cannot realise freedom and unity unless you
\nrealise God, you cannot possess freedom and unity unless you
\npossess God, possess at once your highest self and the self of all
\ncreatures. The freedom and unity which otherwise go by that
\nname, are simply attempts of our subjection and our division to
\nget away from themselves by shutting their eyes while they turn
\nsomersaults around their own centre. When man is able to see
\nGod and to possess him, then he will know real freedom and
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 283<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\narrive at real unity, never otherwise. And God is only waiting to
\nbe known, while man seeks for him everywhere and creates
\nimages of the Divine, but all the while truly finds, effectively
\nerects and worships images only of his own mind-ego and life-ego.
\nWhen this ego pivot is abandoned and this ego-hunt ceases, then
\nman gets his first real chance of achieving spirituality in his inner
\nand outer life. It will not be enough, but it will be a commencement, a true gate and not a blind entrance. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nA spiritualised society would live like its spiritual individuals, not in the ego, but in the spirit, not as the collective ego,
\nbut as the collective soul. This freedom from the egoistic standpoint would be its first and most prominent characteristic. But
\nthe elimination of egoism would not be brought about, as it is
\nnow proposed to bring it about, by persuading or forcing the
\nindividual to immolate his personal will and aspirations and his
\nprecious and hard-won individuality to the collective will, aims
\nand egoism of the society, driving him like a victim of ancient
\nsacrifice to slay his soul on the altar of that huge and shapeless
\nidol. For that would be only the sacrifice of the smaller to the
\nlarger egoism, larger only in bulk, not necessarily greater in quality or wider or nobler, since a collective egoism, result of the
\nunited egoisms of all, is as little a god to be worshipped as flawed
\nand often an uglier and more barbarous fetish than the egoism
\nof the individual. What the spiritual man seeks is to find by the
\nloss of the ego the self which is one in all and perfect and complete in each and by living in that to grow into the image of its
\nperfection,\u2014individually, be it noted, though with an all-embracing universality of his nature and its conscious circumference. It
\nis said in the old Indian writings that while in the second age,
\nthe age of Power, Vishnu descends in the King, and in the third,
\nthe age of balance, as the legislator or codifier, in the age of the
\nTruth he descends as Yajna, that is to say, as the Master of works
\nmanifest in the heart of his creatures. It is this kingdom of God
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 284<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwithin, the result of the finding of God not in a distant heaven
\nbut within ourselves, of which the state of society in an age of
\nthe Truth, spiritual age, would be the result and the external
\nfigure. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nTherefore a society which was even initially spiritualised,
\nwould make the revealing and finding of the divine Self in man
\nthe whole first aim of all its activities, its education, its knowledge, its science, its ethics, its art, its economical and political
\nstructure. As it was to some extent in the ancient Vedic times
\nwith the cultural education of the higher classes, so it would be
\nthen with all education. It would embrace all knowledge in its
\nscope, but would make the whole trend and aim and the permeating spirit not mere worldly efficiency, but this self-developing
\nand self-finding. It would pursue physical and psychical science
\nnot in order merely to know the world and Nature in her processes and to use them for material human ends, but to know
\nthrough and in and under and over all things the Divine in the
\nworld and the ways of the Spirit in its masks and behind them.
\nIt would make it the aim of ethics not to establish a rule of action
\nwhether supplementary to the social law or partically corrective
\nof it, the social law that is after all only the rule, often clumsy
\nand ignorant, of the biped pack, the human herd, but to develop
\nthe divine nature in the human being. It would make it the aim
\nof Art not merely to present images of the subjective and objective world, but to see them with the significant and creative
\nvision that goes behind their appearances and to reveal the Truth
\nand Beauty of which things visible to us and invisible are the
\nforms, the mask or the symbols and significant figures. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nA spiritualised society would treat in its sociology the individual, from the saint to the criminal, not as units of a social
\nproblem to be passed through some skilfully devised machinery
\nand either flattened into the social mould or crushed out of it, but
\nas souls suffering and entangled in a net and to be rescued, souls
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 285<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ngrowing and to be encouraged to grow, souls grown and from
\nwhom help and power can be drawn by the lesser spirits who are
\nnot yet adult. The aim of its economics would be not to create a
\nhuge engine of production, whether of the competitive or the
\ncooperative kind, but to give to men\u2014not only to some but to all
\nmen each in his highest possible measure\u2014the joy of work according to their own nature and free leisure to grow inwardly, as well
\nas a simply rich and beautiful life for all. In its politics it would
\nnot regard the nations within the scope of their own internal life
\nas enormous State machines regulated and armoured with man
\nliving for the sake of the machine and worshipping it as his God
\nand his larger self, content at the first call to kill others upon its
\naltar and to bleed there himself so that the machine may remain
\nintact and powerful and be made ever larger, more complex, more
\ncumbrous, more mechanically efficient and entire. Neither would
\nit be content to maintain these nations or states in their mutual
\nrelations as noxious engines meant to discharge poisonous gas
\nupon each other in peace and to rush in times of clash upon each
\nother’s armed hosts and unarmed millions, full of belching shot
\nand men missioned to murder like hostile tanks in a modem
\nbattle-field. It would regard the peoples as group souls, the Divinity concealed and to be self-discovered in its human collectivities,
\ngroup souls meant like the individual to grow according to their
\nown nature and by that growth to help each other, to help the
\nwhole race in the one common work of humanity. And that work
\nwould be to find the divine Self in the individual and collectivity
\nand to realise spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially its greatest,
\nlargest, richest and deepest possibilities in the inner life of
\n<\/b>all
\n<\/b>and their outer action and nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFor it is into the Divine within each man and each people
\nthat the man and nation have to grow; it is not an external idea
\nor rule that has to be imposed on them from without. Therefore
\nthe law of a growing inner freedom is that which will be most
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 286<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhonoured in the spiritual age of mankind. True it is that so long
\nas man has not come within measurable distance of self-knowledge and has not set his face towards it, he cannot escape from
\nthe law of external compulsion and all his efforts to do so must
\nbe vain. He is and always must be, so long as that lasts, the slave
\nof others, the slave of his family, his caste, his clan, his church,
\nhis society, his nation; and he cannot but be that and they too
\ncannot help throwing their crude and mechanical compulsion
\non him, because he and they are the slaves of their own ego, of
\ntheir own lower nature. We must feel and obey the compulsion
\nof the Spirit if we would establish our inner right to escape other
\ncompulsion: we must make our lower nature the willing slave,
\nthe conscious and illumined instrument or the ennobled but still
\nself-subjected portion, consort or partner of the divine Being
\nwithin us, for it is that subjection which is the condition of our
\nfreedom, since spiritual freedom is not the egoistic assertion of
\nour separate mind and life, but obedience to the Divine Truth
\nin our-self and our members and in all around us. But we have,
\neven so, to remark that God respects the freedom of the natural
\nmembers of our being and that he gives them room to grow in
\ntheir own nature so that by natural growth and not by self-extinction they may find the Divine in themselves. The subjection
\nwhich they finally accept, complete and absolute, must be a willing subjection of recognition and aspiration to their own source
\nof light and power and their highest being. Therefore even in
\nthe un-regenerated state we find that the healthiest, the truest,
\nthe most living growth and action is that which arises in the largest possible freedom and that all excess of compulsion is either
\nthe law of a gradual atrophy or a tyranny varied or cured by outbreaks of rabid disorder. And as soon as man comes to know
\nhis spiritual self, he does by that discovery, often even by the very
\nseeking for it, as ancient thought and religion saw, escape from
\nthe outer law and enter into the law of freedom.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 287<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nA spiritual age of mankind will perceive this truth. It will
\nnot try to make man perfect by machinery or keep him straight
\nby tying up all his limbs. It will not present to the member of
\nthe society his higher self in the person of the policeman, the
\nofficial and the corporal, nor, let us say, in the form of a socialistic
\nbureaucracy or a Labour Soviet. Its aim will be to diminish as
\nsoon and as far as possible the element of external compulsion
\nin human life by awakening the inner divine compulsion of the
\nspirit within and all the preliminary means it will use will have
\nthat for its aim. In the end it will employ chiefly if not solely the
\nspiritual compulsion which even the spiritual individual can
\nexercise on those around him,\u2014and how much more should
\na spiritual society be able to do it,\u2014that which awakens within
\nus in spite of all inner resistance and outer denial the compulsions of the Light, the desire and the power to grow through one’s
\nown nature into the Divine. For the perfectly spiritualised society will be one in which, as is dreamed by the spiritual anarchist,
\nall men will be deeply free, and it will be so because the preliminary condition will have been satisfied. In that state each man
\nwill be not a law to himself, but the<\/i> law, the divine Law, because
\nhe will be a soul living in the Divine and not an ego living mainly
\nif not entirely for its own interest and purpose. His life will be
\nled by the law of his own divine nature liberated from the ego. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nNor will that mean a breaking up of all human society into
\nthe isolated action of individuals; for the third word of the Spirit
\nis unity. The spiritual life is the flower not of a featureless but a
\nconscious and diversified oneness. Each man has to grow into
\nthe Divine within himself through his own individual being,
\ntherefore is a certain growing measure of freedom a necessity of
\nthe being as it develops and perfect freedom the sign and the condition of the perfect life. But also, the Divine whom he thus
\nsees in himself, he sees equally in all others and as the same
\nSpirit in all. Therefore too is a growing inner unity with others
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 288<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\na necessity of his being and perfect unity the sign and condition
\nof the perfect life. Not only to see and find the Divine in oneself,
\nbut to see and find the Divine in all, not only to seek one’s own
\nindividual liberation or perfection, but to seek the liberation
\nand perfection of others is the complete law of the spiritual
\nbeing. If the divinity sought were a separate godhead within oneself and not the one Divine, or if one sought God for oneself
\nalone, then indeed the result might be a grandiose egoism, the
\nOlympian egoism of a Goethe or the Titanic egoism imagined by
\nNietzsche, or it might be the isolated self-knowledge or asceticism
\nof the ivory tower or the Stylites pillar. But he who sees God in
\nall, will serve freely God in all with the service of love. He will,
\nthat is to say, seek not only his own freedom, but the freedom of
\nall, not only his own perfection, but the perfection of all. He will
\nnot feel his individuality perfect except in the largest universality, nor his own life to be full life except as it is one with the universal life. He will not live either for himself or for the State and
\nsociety, for the individual ego or the collective ego, but for something much greater, for God in himself and for the Divine in the
\nuniverse. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe spiritual age will be ready to set in when the common
\nmind of man begins to be alive to these truths and to be moved
\nor desire to be moved by this triple or triune Spirit. That will
\nmean the turning of the cycle of social development which we
\nhave been considering out of its incomplete repetitions on a new
\nupward line towards its goal. For having set out, according to
\nour supposition, with a symbolic age, an age in which man felt
\na great Reality behind all life which he sought through symbols,
\nit will reach an age in which it will begin to live in that Reality,
\nnot through the symbol, not by the power of the type or of the
\nconvention or of the individual reason and intellectual will, but
\nin our own highest nature which will be the nature of that Reality fulfilled in the conditions\u2014not necessarily the same as now\u2014
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 289<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof terrestrial existence. This is what the religions have seen with
\na more or less adequate intuition, but most often as in a glass
\ndarkly, that which they called the kingdom of God on earth,\u2014
\nhis kingdom within in men’s spirit and therefore, for the one is
\nthe material result of the effectivity of the other, his kingdom
\nwithout in the life of the peoples. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 290<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XXIII THE CONDITIONS FOR THE COMING OF A SPIRITUAL AGE   A CHANGE of this kind, the change from the mental and vital to…<\/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-3495","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\/3495","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=3495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}