{"id":3499,"date":"2013-07-13T01:48:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3499"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:48:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:48:57","slug":"20-the-infrarational-age-of-the-cycle-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\/20-the-infrarational-age-of-the-cycle-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-20_The Infrarational age of the Cycle.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\nTHE INFRARATIONAL AGE OF THE CYCLE<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI<\/font>N <\/b>SPIRITUALITY <\/b>then would lie our ultimate, our only
\nhope for the perfection whether of the individual or of the communal man; not the spirit which for its separate satisfaction
\nturns away from the earth and her works, but that greater spirit
\nwhich surpasses and yet accepts and fulfils them. A spirituality
\nthat would take up into itself man’s rationalism, aestheticism, ethicism, vitalism, corporeality, his aspiration towards knowledge, his attraction towards beauty, his need of love, his urge
\ntowards perfection, his demand for power and fullness of life
\nand being, a spirituality that would reveal to these ill-accorded
\nforces their divine sense and the conditions of their godhead,
\nreconcile them all to each other, illumine to the vision of each
\nthe way which they now tread in half-lights and shadows, in
\nblindness or with a deflected sight, is a power which even man’s
\ntoo self-sufficient reason can accept or may at least be brought
\none day to accept as sovereign and to see in it its own supreme
\nlight, its own infinite source. For that reveals itself surely in the
\nend as the logical ultimate process, the inevitable development
\nand consummation of all for which man is individually and
\nsocially striving. A satisfying evolution of the nascent spirituality
\nstill raw and inchoate in the race is the possibility to which an
\nage of subjectivism is a first glimmer of awakening or towards
\nwhich it shows a first profound potentiality of return. A deeper,
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 203<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwider, greater, more spiritualised subjective understanding
\n<\/b>of
\n<\/b>the individual and communal self and its life and a growing
\nreliance on the spiritual light and the spiritual means for the
\nfinal solution of its problems are the only way to a true social
\nperfection. The free rule, that is to say, the predominant lead,
\ncontrol and influence of the developed spiritual man\u2014not the
\nhalf-spiritualised priest, saint or prophet or the raw religionist\u2014
\nis our hope for a divine guidance of the race. A spiritualised
\nsociety can alone bring about a reign of individual harmony and
\ncommunal happiness; or, in words which, though liable to abuse
\nby the reason and the passions, are still the most expressive we
\ncan find, a new kind of theocracy, the kingdom of God upon
\nearth, a theocracy which shall be the government of mankind
\nby the Divine in the hearts and minds of men. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nCertainly, this will not come about easily, or, as men have
\nalways vainly hoped from each great new turn and revolution of
\npolitics and society, by a sudden and at once entirely satisfying
\nchange and magical transformation. The advance, however it
\ncomes about, will be indeed of the nature of a miracle, as are all
\nsuch profound changes and immense developments; for they
\nhave the appearance of a kind of realised impossibility. But God
\nworks all his miracles by an evolution of secret possibilities
\nwhich have been long prepared, at least in their elements, and
\nin the end by a rapid bringing of all to a head, a throwing together
\nof the elements so that in their fusion they produce a new form
\nand name of things and reveal a new spirit. Often the decisive
\nturn is preceded by an apparent emphasising and raising to their
\nextreme of things which seem the very denial, the most uncompromising opposite of the new principle and the new creation.
\nSuch an evolution of the elements of a spiritualised society is
\nthat which a subjective age makes at least possible, and if at the
\nsame time it raises to the last height of active power things which
\nseem the very denial of such a potentiality, that need be no index <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 204<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof a practical impossibility of the new birth, but on the contrary may be the sign of its approach or at the lowest a strong
\nattempt at achievement. Certainly, the whole effort of a subjective age may go wrong; but this happens oftenest when by
\nthe insufficiency of its materials, a great crudeness of its starting point and a hasty shallowness or narrow intensity of its
\nin look
\ninto itself and things it is foredoomed to a fundamental error
\nof self-knowledge. It becomes less likely when the spirit of the age is full of
\nfreedom, variety and a many-sided seeking, a persistent effort after knowledge and perfection in all the domains of
\nhuman activity; that can well convert itself into an intense and
\nyet flexible straining after the infinite and the divine on many
\nsides and in many aspects. In such circumstances, though a full
\nadvance may possibly not be made, a great step forward can be
\npredicted. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWe have seen that there are necessarily three stages of the
\nsocial evolution or, generally, of the human evolution in both
\nindividual and society. Our evolution starts with an infrarational stage in which men have not yet learned to refer their
\nlife and action in its principles and its forms to the judgment of
\nthe clarified intelligence; for they still act principally out of their
\ninstincts, impulses, spontaneous ideas, vital intuitions or else
\nobey a customary response to desire, need and circumstance, it
\nis these things that are canalised or crystallised in their social institutions.
\nMan proceeds by various stages out of these beginnings towards a rational age in which his intelligent will more or
\nless developed becomes the judge, arbiter and presiding motive
\nof his thought, feeling and action, the moulder, destroyer and
\nrecreator of his leading ideas, aims and intuitions. Finally, if
\nour analysis and forecast are correct, the human evolution must
\nmove through a subjective towards a suprarational or spiritual
\nage in which he will develop progressively a greater spiritual,
\nsupra-intellectual and intuitive, perhaps in the end a more than
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 205<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nintuitive, a gnostic consciousness. He will be able to perceive
\na higher divine end, a divine sanction, a divine light of guidance
\nfor all he seeks to be, think, feel and do and able too more and
\nmore to obey and live in this larger light and power. That will
\nnot be done by any rule of infra-rational religious impulse and
\necstasy, such as characterised or rather darkly illumined the
\nobscure confusion and brute violence of the Middle Ages, but
\nby a higher spiritual living for which the clarities of the reason
\nare a necessary preparation and into which they too will be taken
\nup, transformed, brought to their invisible source. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThese stages or periods are much more inevitable in the psychological evolution of mankind than the Stone and other Ages
\nmarked out by Science in his instrumental culture, for they depend not on outward means or accidents, but on the very nature
\nof his being. But we must not suppose that they are naturally
\nexclusive and absolute in their nature, or complete in their
\ntendency or fulfilment when they come, or rigidly marked off
\nfrom each other in their action or their time. For they not only
\narise out of each other, but may be partially developed in each
\nother and they may come to coexist in different parts of the earth
\nat the same time. But, especially, since man as a whole is always
\na complex being, even man savage or degenerate, he cannot be
\nany of these things exclusively or absolutely,\u2014so long as he has
\nnot exceeded himself, has not developed into the superman,
\nhas not, that is to say, spiritualised and divinised his whole being. At his
\nanimal worst he is still some kind of thinking or reflecting animal: even the infra-rational man cannot be utterly infrarational, but must have or tend to have some kind of play more
\nor less evolved or involved of the reason and a more or less
\ncrude supra-rational element, a more or less disguised working
\nof the spirit. At his lucid mental best, he is still not a pure mental
\nbeing, a pure intelligence; even the most perfect intellectual is
\nnot and cannot be wholly or merely rational,\u2014there are vital
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 206<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nurges that he cannot exclude, visits or touches of a light from
\nabove that are not less supra-rational because he does not recognise their source. No god, but at his highest a human being
\ntouched with a ray of the divine influence, man’s very spirituality, however dominant, must have, while he is still this imperfectly evolved human, its rational and infra-rational tendencies
\nand elements. And as with the psychological life of individuals,
\nso must it be with the ages of his communal existence; these may
\nbe marked off from each other by the predominant play of one
\nelement, its force may overpower the others or take them into
\nitself or make some compromise, but an exclusive play seems
\nto be neither intended nor possible. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThus an infra-rational period of human and social development need not be without its elements, its strong elements of
\nreason and of spirituality. Even the savage, whether he be primitive or degenerate man, has some coherent idea of this world and
\nthe beyond, a theory of life and a religion. To us with our more
\nadvanced rationality his theory of life may seem incoherent, because we have lost its point of view and its principle of mental
\nassociations. But it is still an act of reason, and within its limits
\nhe is capable of a sufficient play of thought both ideative and
\npractical, as well as a clear ethical idea and motive, some aesthetic
\nnotions and an understood order of society poor and barbarous
\nto our view, but well enough contrived and put together to
\nserve the simplicity of its objects. Or again we may not realise
\nthe element of reason in a primitive theory of life or of spirituality in a barbaric religion, because it appears to us to be made
\nup of symbols and forms to which a superstitious value is attached by these undeveloped minds. But this is because the reason at this stage has an imperfect and limited action and the
\nelement of spirituality is crude or undeveloped and not vet self-conscious; in order to hold firmly their workings and make them
\nreal and concrete to his mind and spirit primitive man has to give
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 207<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthem shape in symbols and forms to which he clings with a
\nbarbaric awe and reverence, because they alone can embody
\nfor him his method of self-guidance in life. For the dominant
\nthing in him is his infrarational life of instinct, vital intuition
\nand impulse, mechanical custom and tradition and it is that to
\nwhich the rest of him has to give some kind of primary order
\nand first glimmerings of light. The unrefined reason and unenlightened spirit in him cannot work for their own ends; they are
\nbond-slaves of his infrarational nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAt a higher stage of development or of a return towards a
\nfuller evolution,\u2014for the actual savage in humanity is perhaps
\nnot the original primitive man, but a relapse and reversion towards
\nprimitiveness\u2014the infrarational stage of society may arrive at a very lofty order of civilisation. It may have great intuitions of the meaning or general intention of life, admirable ideas
\nof the arrangement of life, a harmonious, well-adapted, durable
\nand serviceable social system, an imposing religion which will
\nnot be without its profundities, but in which symbol and ceremonial will form the largest portion and for the mass of men
\nwill be almost the whole of religion. In this stage pure reason
\nand pure spirituality will not govern the society or move large
\nbodies of men, but will be represented, if at all, by individuals
\nat first few, but growing in number as these two powers increase in their purity and vigour and attract more and more votaries. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis may well lead to an age, if the development of reason
\nis strongest, of great individual thinkers who seize on some idea
\nof life and its origins and laws and erect that into a philosophy,
\nof critical minds standing isolated above the mass who judge
\nlife, not yet with a luminous largeness, a minute flexibility of
\nunderstanding or a clear and comprehensive profundity, but still
\nwith power of intelligence, insight, acuteness, perhaps even a
\npre-eminent social thinker here and there who, taking advantage
\nof some crisis or disturbance, is able to get the society to modify
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 208<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nor reconstruct itself on the basis of some clearly rational and intelligent principle. Such an age seems to be represented by the
\ntraditions of the beginnings of Greek civilisation, or rather the
\nbeginnings of its mobile and progressive period. Or if spirituality
\npredominates, there will be great mystics capable of delving into
\nthe profound and still occult psychological possibilities of our
\nnature who will divine and realise the truth of the self and spirit
\nin man and, even though they keep these things secret and imparted only to a small number of initiates, may yet succeed in
\ndeepening with them the crude forms of the popular life. Even
\nsuch a development is obscurely indicated in the old traditions
\nof the mysteries. In prehistoric India we see it take a peculiar
\nand unique turn which determined the whole future trend of
\nthe society and made Indian civilisation a thing apart and of
\nits own kind in the history of the human race. But these things
\nare only a first beginning of light in the midst of a humanity
\nwhich is still infra-rational as well as infra-spiritual and, even
\nwhen it undergoes the influence of these precursors, responds only obscurely to
\ntheir inspirations and without any clearly intelligent or awakened spiritual reception of what they impart or
\nimpose. It still turns everything into infrarational form and disfiguring tradition and lives spiritually by ill-understood ceremonial and disguising symbol. It feels obscurely the higher
\nthings, tries to live them in its own stumbling way, but it does
\nnot yet understand; it cannot lay hold either on the intellectual
\nform or the spiritual heart of their significance. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAs reason and spirituality develop, they begin to become a
\nlarger and more diffused force, less intense perhaps, but wider
\nand more effective on the mass. The mystics become the sowers
\nof the seed of an immense spiritual development in which whole
\nclasses of society and even men from all classes seek the light,
\nas happened in India in the age of the Upanishads. The solitary
\nindividual thinkers are replaced by a great number of writers,
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 209<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\npoets, thinkers, rhetoricians, sophists, scientific inquirers, who
\npour out a profuse flood of acute speculation and inquiry stimulating the
\nthought-habit and creating even in the mass a generalised activity of the intelligence,\u2014as happened in Greece in the
\nage of the sophists. The spiritual development, arising uncurbed
\nby reason in an infra-rational society, has often a tendency to
\noutrun at first the rational and intellectual movement. For the
\ngreatest illuminating force of the infra-rational man, as he develops, is an inferior intuition, an instinctively intuitional sight
\narising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from
\nthis to an intensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper
\nspiritual intuition which out leaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the individual man. But for
\nhumanity at large this movement cannot last; the mind and intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of
\nthe race may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the
\ndeveloped lower nature in man the intelligent mental being.
\nTherefore we see that the reason in its growth either does away
\nwith the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient
\nGreece, or accepts it but spins out around its first data and activities a vast web of the workings of the intelligence, so that, as in
\nIndia, the early mystic seer is replaced by the philosopher-mystic,
\nthe religious thinker and even the philosopher pure and simple. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFor a time the new growth and impulse may seem to take
\npossession of a whole community as in Athens or in old Aryan
\nIndia. But these early dawns cannot endure in their purity, so
\nlong as the race is not ready. There is a crystallisation, a lessening of the first impetus, a new growth of infrarational forms in
\nwhich the thought or the spirituality is overgrown with inferior
\naccretions or it is imbedded in the form and may even die in it,
\nwhile the tradition of the living knowledge, the loftier life and
\nactivity remains the property of the higher classes, or a highest
\nclass. The multitude remains infrarational in its habit of mind, <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 210<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthough perhaps it may still keep in capacity an enlivened intelligence or a profound or subtle spiritual receptiveness as its gain
\nfrom the past. So long as the hour of the rational age has not
\narrived, the irrational period of society cannot be left behind; and that arrival can only be when not a class or a few, but the
\nmultitude has learned to think, to exercise its intelligence actively\u2014it matters not at first however imperfectly\u2014upon their
\nlife, their needs, their rights, their duties, their aspirations as human
\nbeings. Until then we have as the highest possible development a mixed society, infrarational in the mass, but saved
\nfor civilisation by a higher class whose business it is to seek after
\nthe reason and the spirit, to keep the gains of mankind in these
\nfields, to add to them, to enlighten and raise with them as much
\nas possible the life of the whole. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAt this point we see that Nature in her human mass tends
\nto move forward slowly on her various lines of active mind and
\nlife towards a greater application of reason and spirituality which
\nshall at last bring near the possibility of a rational and, eventually
\na spiritual age of mankind. Her difficulties proceed from two
\nsides. First, while she originally developed thought and reason
\nand spirituality by exceptional individuals, now she develops
\nthem in the mass by exceptional communities or nations,\u2014at
\nleast in the relative sense of a nation governed, led and progressively formed and educated by its intellectually or spiritually
\ncultured class or classes. But the exceptional nation touched on
\nits higher levels by a developed reason or spirituality or both, as
\nwere Greece and later Rome in ancient Europe, India, China and
\nPersia in ancient Asia, is surrounded or neighboured by enormous masses of the old infrarational humanity and endangered
\nby this menacing proximity; for until a developed science comes
\nin to redress the balance, the barbarian has always a greater
\nphysical force and unexhausted native power of aggression
\nthan the cultured peoples. At this stage the light and power of <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 211<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ncivilisation always collapses in the end before the attack of the
\nouter darkness. Then ascending Nature has to train the conquerors more or less slowly, with long difficulty and much loss
\nand delay to develop among themselves what their incursion has
\ntemporarily destroyed or impaired. In the end humanity gains
\nby the process; a greater mass of the nations is brought in, a
\nlarger and more living force of progress is applied, a starting point is reached from which it can move to richer and more
\nvaried gains. But a certain loss is always the price of this advance. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut even within the communities themselves reason and
\nspirituality at this stage are always hampered and endangered by
\nexisting in a milieu and atmosphere not their own. The elite,
\nthe classes in charge of these powers are obliged to throw them
\ninto forms which the mass of human ignorance they lead and
\nrule will accept, and both reason and spirituality tend to be
\nstifled by these forms, to get stereotyped, fossilised, void of life,
\nbound up from their natural play. Secondly, since they are after
\nall part of the mass, these higher enlightened elements are themselves much under the influence of their infrarational parts and
\ndo not, except in individuals, arrive at the entirely free play of
\nthe reason or the free light of the spirit. Thirdly, there is always
\nthe danger of these elements gravitating downward to the ignorance below or even collapsing into it. Nature guards herself by
\nvarious devices for maintaining the tradition of intellectual and
\nspiritual activity in the favoured classes; here she makes it a
\npoint of honour for them to preserve and promote the national
\nculture, there she establishes a preservative system of education
\nand discipline. And in order that these things may not degenerate into mere traditionalism, she brings in a series of intellectual
\nor spiritual movements which by their shock revivify the failing
\nlife and help to bring about a broadening and an enlarging and
\nto drive the dominant reason or spirituality deeper down into
\nthe infrarational mass. Each movement indeed tends to petrify <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 212<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nafter a shorter or longer activity, but a fresh shock, a new wave
\narrives in time to save and regenerate. Finally, she reaches the
\npoint when, all immediate danger of relapse overcome, she can
\n<\/i>proceed to her next decisive advance in the cycle of social evolution. This must take the form of an attempt to universalise first
\nof all the habit of reason and the application of the intelligence
\nand intelligent will to life. Thus is instituted the rational age
\nof human society, the great endeavour to bring the power of the
\nreason and intelligence to bear on all that we are and do and
\norganise in their light and by their guiding force the entire existence of the race. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 213<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XVIII THE INFRARATIONAL AGE OF THE CYCLE   IN SPIRITUALITY then would lie our ultimate, our only hope for the perfection whether of 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-3499","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\/3499","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=3499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}