{"id":3496,"date":"2013-07-13T01:48:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3496"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:48:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:57","slug":"23-the-spiritual-aim-and-life-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\/23-the-spiritual-aim-and-life-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-23_The Spiritual Aim and Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\nTHE SPIRITUAL AIM AND LIFE<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nA<\/font><\/b> SOCIETY founded upon spirituality will differ in two
\nessential points from the normal human society which begins from and ends with
\nthe lower nature. The normal human society starts from the gregarious instinct modified by a diversity
\nand possible antagonism of interests, from an association and clash of egos,
\nfrom a meeting, combination, conflict of ideas, tendencies and principles; it tries first to patch up an accommodation
\nof converging interests and a treaty of peace between discords, founded on a
\nseries of implied contracts, natural or necessary adjustments which become customs of the aggregate life, and to
\nthese contracts as they develop it gives the name of social law.
\nBy establishing, as against the interests which lead to conflict,
\nthe interests which call for association and mutual assistance, it
\ncreates or stimulates sympathies and habits of helpfulness that
\ngive a psychological support and sanction to its mechanism of
\nlaw, custom and contract. It justifies the mass of social institutions and habitual ways of being which it thus creates by the
\ngreater satisfaction and efficiency of the physical, the vital and the
\nmental life of man, in a word, by the growth and advantages of
\ncivilisation. A good many losses have indeed to be written off as
\nagainst these gains, but those are to be accepted as the price we must pay for civilisation. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe normal society treats man essentially as a physical, vital <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 248<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand mental being. For the life, the mind, the body are the three
\nterms of existence with which it has some competence to deal.
\nIt develops a system of mental growth and efficiency, an intellectual, aesthetic and moral culture. It evolves the vital side of
\nhuman life and creates an ever-growing system of economic efficiency and vital enjoyment, and this system becomes more and
\nmore rich, cumbrous and complex as civilisation develops. Depressing by its mental and vital overgrowth the natural vigour of
\nthe physical and animal man, it tries to set the balance right by
\nsystems of physical culture, a cumbrous science of habits and
\nremedies intended to cure the ills it has created and as much
\namelioration as it can manage of the artificial forms of living that are
\nnecessary to its social system. In the end, however, experience shows that society tends to die by its own development,
\na sure sign that there is some radical defect in its system, a certain proof that its idea of man and its method of development do
\nnot correspond to all the reality of the human being and to the
\naim of life which that reality imposes. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThere is then a radical defect somewhere in the process of
\nhuman civilisation; but where is its seat and by what issue shall
\nwe come out of the perpetual cycle of failure? Our civilised development of life ends in an exhaustion of vitality and a refusal
\nof Nature to lend her support any farther to a continued advance
\nupon these lines; our civilised mentality, after disturbing the
\nbalance of the human system to its own greater profit, finally
\ndiscovers that it has exhausted and destroyed that which fed it
\nand loses its power of healthy action and productiveness. It is
\nfound that civilisation has created many more problems than it
\ncan solve, has multiplied excessive needs and desires the satisfaction of which
\nit has not sufficient vital force to sustain, has developed a jungle of claims and artificial instincts in the midst of
\nwhich life loses its way and has no longer any sight of its aim.
\nThe more advanced minds begin to declare civilisation a failure <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 249<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand society begins to feel that they are right. But the remedy
\nproposes is either a halt or even a retrogression, which means
\nin the end more confusion, stagnation and decay, or a reversion
\nto "Nature" which is impossible or can only come about by a
\ncataclysm and disintegration of society; or even a cure is aimed
\nat by carrying artificial remedies to their acme, say by more and
\nmore Science, more and more mechanical devices, a more scientific organisation of life, which means that the engine shall replace
\nlife, the arbitrary logical reason substitute itself for complex Nature and man be saved by machinery. As well say that to
\ncarry a disease to its height is the best way to its cure. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt may be suggested on the contrary and with some chance of knocking at the right door that the radical defect of all our
\nsystems is their deficient development of just that which society has most neglected, the spiritual element, the soul in man
\nwhich is his true being. Even to have a healthy body, a strong vitality and an
\nactive and clarified mind and a field for their action and enjoyment, carries man no more than a certain distance; afterwards he flags and tires for want of a real self-finding, a satisfying aim for his action and progress. These three things do not
\nmake the sum of a complete manhood; they are means to an ulterior end and cannot be made for ever an aim in themselves.
\nAdd a rich emotional life governed by a well-ordered ethical
\nstandard, and still there is the savour of something left out, some
\nsupreme good which these things mean, but do not in themselves
\narrive at, do not discover till they go beyond themselves. Add a
\nreligious system and a wide-spread spirit of belief and piety, and
\nstill you have not found the means of social salvation. All these
\nthings human society has developed, but none of them has saved
\nit from disillusionment, weariness and decay. The ancient intellectual cultures of Europe ended in disruptive doubt and sceptical impotence, the pieties of Asia in stagnation and decline.
\nModem society has discovered a new principle of survival, progress, <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 250<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nbut the aim of that progress it has never discovered,\u2014unless
\nthe aim is always more knowledge, more equipment, convenience
\nand comfort, more enjoyment, a greater and still greater complexity of the social economy, a more and more cumbrously opulent life. But these things must lead in the end where the old
\nled, for they are only the same thing on a larger scale; they lead
\nin a circle, that is to say, nowhere: they do not escape from the
\ncycle of birth, growth, decay and death, they do not really find the
\nsecret of self-prolongation by constant self-renewal which is
\nthe principle of immortality, but only seem for a moment to find
\nit by the illusion of a series of experiments each of which ends in
\ndisappointment. That so far has been the nature of modern progress. Only in its new turn inwards, towards a greater subjectivity
\nnow only beginning, is there a better hope; for by that turning it
\nmay discover that the real truth of man is to be found in his soul.
\nIt is not indeed certain that a subjective age will lead us there, but
\nit gives us the possibility, can turn in that direction, if used
\nrightly, the more inward movement. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt will be said that this is an old discovery and that it governed the old societies under the name of religion. But that was
\nonly an appearance. The discovery was there, but it was made
\nfor the life of the individual only, and even for him it looked
\nbeyond the earth for its fulfilment and at earth only as the place
\nof his preparation for a solitary salvation or release from the burden of life. Human society itself never seized on the discovery
\nof the soul as a means for the discovery of the law of its own being or on a knowledge of the soul’s true nature and need and its
\nfulfilment as the right way of terrestrial perfection. If we look at
\nthe old religions in their social as apart from their individual
\naspect, we see that the use society made of them was only of their
\nmost unspiritual or at any rate of their less spiritual parts. It
\nmade use of them to give an august, awful and would-be eternal
\nsanction <\/b> to its mass of customs and institutions; it made of them <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 251<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\na veil of mystery against human questioning and a shield of
\ndarkness against the innovator. So far as it saw in religion a means
\nof human salvation and perfection, it laid hands upon it at once
\nto mechanise it, to catch the human soul and bind it on the
\nwheels of a socio-religious machinery, to impose on it in the place
\nof spiritual freedom an imperious yoke and an iron prison. It
\nsaddled upon the religious life of man a Church, a priesthood
\nand a mass of ceremonies and set over it a pack of watchdogs
\nunder the name of creeds and dogmas, dogmas which one had to
\naccept and obey under pain of condemnation to eternal hell by
\nan eternal judge beyond, just as one had to accept and to obey
\nthe laws of society on pain of condemnation to temporal imprisonment or death by a mortal judge below. This false socialisation of religion has been always the chief cause of its failure to regenerate mankind. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFor nothing can be more fatal to religion than for its spiritual element to be crushed or formalised out of existence by its
\noutward aids and forms and machinery. The falsehood of the old
\nsocial use of religion is shown by its effects. History has exhibited
\nmore than once the coincidence of the greatest religious fervour
\nand piety with darkest ignorance, with an obscure squalor and
\nlong vegetative stagnancy of the mass of human life, with the
\nunquestioned reign of cruelty, injustice and oppression, or with
\nan organisation of the most ordinary unaspiring and unraised
\nexistence hardly relieved by some touches of intellectual or half-spiritual light on the surface, the end of all this a widespread
\nrevolt that turned first of all against the established religion\u2014and as the key-stone of a regnant falsehood, evil and ignorance.
\nIt is another sign when the too scrupulously exact observation of
\na socio-religious system and its rites and forms, which by the very
\nfact of this misplaced importance begin to lose their sense and
\ntrue religious value, becomes the law and most prominent aim of
\nreligion rather than any spiritual growth of the individual and <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 252<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe race. And a great sign too of this failure is when the individual is obliged to flee from society in order to find room for his
\nspiritual growth; when, finding human life given over to the un-regenerated mind,
\nlife and body and the place of spiritual freedom occupied by the bonds of torn, by church and Shastra by
\nsome law of the ignorance, he is obliged to break away from all
\nthese to seek for growth into the spirit in the monastery, on the
\nmountain-top, in the cavern, in the desert and the forest. When there is that
\ndivision between life and the spirit, sentence of condemnation is passed upon human life. Hither it is left to circle in
\nits routine or it is decried as worthless and unreal, a vanity of
\nvanities, and loses that confidence in itself and inner faith in the
\nvalue of its terrestrial aims, sraddha,<\/i> without which it cannot
\ncome to anything. For the spirit of man must strain towards the
\nheights, when it loses its tension of endeavour, the race must
\nbecome immobile and stagnant or even sink towards darkness and the dust. Even
\nwhere life rejects the spirit or the spirit rejects life, there may be a self-affirmation of the inner being; there
\nmay even be a glorious crop of saints and hermits in a forcing-soil of spirituality, but unless the race, the society, the nation is
\nmoved towards the spiritualisation of life or move forward led by the light of an ideal, the end must be littleness, weakness and
\nstagnation. Or the race has to turn to the intellect for rescue, or"
\nsome hope or new ideal, and arrive by a circle through an age
\nof rationalism at a fresh effort towards the restatement of spiritual truth and a new attempt to spiritualise human life. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe true and full spiritual aim in society will regard man
\nnot as a mind, a life and a body, but as a soul incarnated for a
\ndivine fulfilment upon earth, not only in heavens beyond, which
\nafter all it need not have left if it had no divine business here
\nin the world of physical, vital and mental nature. It will therefore
\nregard the life, mind and body neither as ends in themselves,
\nsufficient for their own satisfaction, nor as mortal members <\/b>full <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 253<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof disease which have only to be dropped off for the rescued
\nspirit to flee away into its own pure regions, but as first instruments of the soul, the yet imperfect instruments of an unseized
\ndiviner purpose. It will believe in their destiny and help them to
\nbelieve in themselves, but for that very reason in their highest
\nand not only in their lowest or lower possibilities. Their destiny
\nwill be, in its view, to spiritualise themselves so as to grow into
\nvisible members of the spirit, lucid means of its manifestation,
\nthemselves spiritual, illumined, more and more conscious and
\nperfect. For, accepting the truth of man’s soul as a thing entirely
\ndivine in its essence, it will accept also the possibility of his
\nwhole being becoming divine in spite of Nature’s first patent
\ncontradictions of this possibility, her darkened denials of this
\nultimate certitude, and even with these as a necessary earthly
\nstarting-point. And as it will regard man the individual, it will
\nregard too man the collectivity as a soul-form of the Infinite, a
\ncollective soul myriadly embodied upon earth for a divine fulfilment in its manifold relations and its multitudinous activities.
\nTherefore it will hold sacred all the different parts of man’s life
\nwhich correspond to the parts of his being, all his physical ,vital,
\ndynamic, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, intellectual, psychic evolution, and see in them instruments for a growth towards a
\ndiviner living. It will regard every human society, nation, people
\nor other organic aggregate from the same standpoint, subsouls, as
\nit were, means of a complex manifestation and self-fulfilment
\nof the Spirit, the divine Reality, the conscious Infinite in man
\nupon earth. The possible godhead of man because he is inwardly
\nof one being with God will be its one solitary creed and dogma. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut it will not seek to enforce even this one uplifting dogma
\nby an external compulsion upon the lower members of man’s
\nnatural being; for that is nigraha,<\/i> a repressive contraction of the
\nnature which may lead to an apparent suppression of the evil,
\nbut not to a real and healthy growth of the good; it will rather <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 254<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhold up this creed and ideal as a light and inspiration to all his
\nmembers to grow into the godhead from within themselves, to
\nbecome freely divine. Neither in the individual nor in the society will it seek to imprison, wall in, repress, impoverish, but to
\nlet in the widest air and the highest light. A large liberty will be
\nthe law of a spiritual society and the increase of freedom a sign
\nof the growth of human society towards the possibility of true
\nspiritualisation. To spiritualise in this sense a society of slaves,
\nslaves of power, slaves of authority, slaves of custom, slaves of
\ndogma, slaves of all sorts of imposed laws which they live under
\nrather than live by them, slaves internally of their own weakness,
\nignorance and passions from whose worst effect they seek or need
\nto be protected by another and external slavery, can never be a
\nsuccessful endeavour. They must shake off their fetters first in
\norder to be fit for a higher freedom. Not that man has not to wear
\nmany a yoke in his progress upward; but only the yoke which he
\naccepts because it represents, the more perfectly the better, the highest inner
\nlaw of his nature and its aspiration, will be entirely helpful to him. The rest buy their good results at a heavy
\ncost and may retard as much as or even more than they accelerate
\nhis progress. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe spiritual aim will recognise that man as he grows in his
\nbeing must have as much free space as possible for all its members
\nto grow in their own strength, to find out themselves and their
\npotentialities. In their freedom they will err, because experience
\ncomes through many errors, but each has in itself a divine principle and they will find it out, disengage its presence, significance
\nand law as their experience of themselves deepens and increases.
\nThus true spirituality will not lay a yoke upon science and philosophy or compel them to square their conclusions with any
\nstatement of dogmatic religious or even of assured spiritual truth,
\nas some of the old religions attempted, vainly, ignorantly, with
\nunspiritual obstinacy and arrogance. Each part of man’s being <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 255<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nhas its own dharma<\/i> which it must follow and will follow in the
\nend, put on it what fetters you please. The dharma<\/i> of science,
\nthought and philosophy is to seek for truth by the intellect
\ndispassionately, without prepossession and prejudgment, with
\nno other first propositions than the law of thought and observation itself imposes. Science and philosophy are not bound to
\nsquare their observations and conclusions with any current ideas
\nof religious dogma or ethical rule or aesthetic prejudice. In the
\nend, if left free in their action, they will find the unity of Truth
\nwith Good and Beauty and God and give these a greater meaning
\nthan any dogmatic religion or any formal ethics or any narrower
\naesthetic idea can give us. But meanwhile they must be left free
\neven to deny God and good and beauty if they will, if their sincere
\nobservation of things so points them. For all these rejections
\nmust come round in the end of their circling and return to a
\nlarger truth of the things they refuse. Often we find atheism
\nboth in individual and society a necessary passage to deeper religious and spiritual truth: one has sometimes to deny God in
\norder to find him; the finding is inevitable at the end of
\n<\/b>all
\n<\/b>earnest scepticism and denial. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe same law holds good in Art; the aesthetic being of man
\nrises similarly on its own curve towards its diviner possibilities.
\nThe highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine
\nthrough beauty; the highest Art is that which by an inspired
\nuse of significant and interpretative form unseals the doors of the
\nspirit. But in order that it may come to do this greatest thing
\nlargely and sincerely, it must first endeavour to see and depict
\nman and Nature and life for their own sake, in their own characteristic truth and beauty; for behind these first characters lies
\nalways the beauty of the Divine in life and man and Nature and
\nit is through their just transformation that what was at first veiled
\nby them has to be revealed. The dogma that Art must be religious
\nor not be at all, is a false dogma, just as is the claim that it must <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 256<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nbe subservient to ethics or utility or scientific truth or philosophic ideas; Art may make use of these things as elements, but
\nit has its own swadharma,<\/i> essential law, and it will rise to the
\nwidest spirituality by following out its own natural lines with no
\nother yoke than the intimate law of its own being. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nEven with the lower nature of man, though here we are naturally led to suppose that compulsion is the only remedy, the
\nspiritual aim will seek for a free self-rule and development from
\nwithin rather than a repression of his dynamic and vital being
\nfrom without. All experience shows that man must be given a
\ncertain freedom to stumble in action as well as to err in knowledge so long as he does not get from within himself his freedom
\nfrom wrong movement and error; otherwise he cannot grow. Society for its own sake has to coerce the dynamic and vital man,
\nbut coercion only chains up the devil and alters at best his form
\nof action into more mitigated and civilised movements; it does not
\nand cannot eliminate him. The real virtue of the dynamic and
\nvital being, the Life Purusha, can only come by his finding a
\nhigher law and spirit for his activity within himself; to give him
\nthat, to illuminate and transform and not to destroy his impulse
\nis the true spiritual means of regeneration. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThus spirituality will respect the freedom of the lower
\nmembers, but it will not leave them to themselves; it will present
\nto them the truth of the spirit in themselves, translated into their
\nown fields of action, presented in a light which illumines all their
\nactivities and shows them the highest law of their own freedom.
\nIt will not for instance escape from scientific materialism by a
\nbarren contempt for physical life or a denial of Matter, but pursue rather the sceptical mind into its own affirmations and denials
\nand show it there the Divine. If it cannot do that, it is proved
\nthat it is itself unenlightened or deficient, because one-sided, in
\nits light. It will not try to slay the vitality in man by denying
\nlife, but will rather reveal to life the divine in itself as the principle<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 257<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n of its own transformation. If it cannot do that, it is because
\nit has itself not yet wholly fathomed the meaning of the creation
\nand the secret of the Avatar. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe spiritual aim will seek to fulfil itself therefore in a
\nfullness of life and man’s being in the individual and the race
\nwhich will be the base or the heights of the spirit\u2014the base becoming in the end of one substance with the peaks. It will not
\nproceed by a scornful neglect of the body, nor by an ascetic starving of the vital being and an utmost bareness or even squalor as
\nthe rule of spiritual living, nor by a puritanic denial of art and
\nbeauty and the aesthetic joy of life, nor by a neglect of science
\nand philosophy as poor, negligible or misleading intellectual
\npursuits,\u2014though the temporary utility even of these exaggerations as against the opposite excesses need not be denied; it will
\nbe all things to all, but in all it will be at once their highest aim
\nand meaning and the most all-embracing expression of themselves in which all they are and seek for will be fulfilled. It will
\naim at establishing in society the true inner theocracy, not the
\nfalse theocracy of a dominant Church or priesthood, but that of
\nthe inner Priest, Prophet and King. It will reveal to man the
\ndivinity in himself as the Light, Strength, Beauty, Good, Delight,
\nImmortality that dwells within and build up in his outer life
\nalso the kingdom of God which is first discovered within us. It will
\nshow man the way to seek for the Divine in every way of his
\nbeing, sarvabhāvena,*<\/i> and so find it and live in it, that however-even in all kinds of ways\u2014he lives and acts, he shall live and act
\nin that,\u2020 in the Divine, in the Spirit, in the eternal Reality of his
\nbeing. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n*Gita. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n \u2020 Gita. Sarvathā vartamāno ‘pi sa<\/i> yogi
\nmayi vartate.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 258<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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