{"id":3506,"date":"2013-07-13T01:49:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3506"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:49:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:00","slug":"18-the-suprarational-ultimate-of-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\/18-the-suprarational-ultimate-of-life-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-18_The Suprarational Ultimate of Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n

\nCHAPTER<\/b> XV<\/b>I <\/font><\/p>\n

\nTHE SUPRARATIONAL ULTIMATE OF LIFE<\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nI<\/font>N <\/b> ALL the higher powers of his life man may be said to
\nbe seeking, blindly enough, for God. To get at the Divine and
\neternal in himself and the world and to harmonise them, to put
\nhis being and his life in tune with the Infinite reveals itself
\nin these parts of his nature as his concealed aim and his destiny.
\nHe sets out to arrive at his highest and largest and most perfect
\nself, and the moment he at all touches upon it, this self in him
\nappears to be one with some great Soul and Self of Truth and
\nGood and Beauty in the world to which we give the name of God.
\nTo get at this as a spiritual presence is the aim of religion, to grow
\ninto harmony with its eternal nature of light, love, strength and
\npurity is the aim of ethics, to enjoy and mould ourselves into
\nthe harmony of its eternal beauty and delight is the aim and consummation of our aesthetic need and nature, to know and to be
\naccording to its eternal principles of truth is the end of science
\nand philosophy and of all our insistent drive towards knowledge. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut all this seems to be something above our normal and
\nusual being; it is something into which we strive to grow, but it
\ndoes not seem to be the normal stuff, the natural being or atmosphere of the
\nindividual and the society in their ordinary consciousness and their daily life. That life is practical and not
\nidealistic; it is concerned not with good, beauty, spiritual experience, the higher truth, but with interests, physical needs, desires,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 172<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nvital necessities. This is real to it, all the rest is a little
\nshadowy; this belongs to its ordinary labour, all the rest to its
\nleisure; this to the stuff of which it is made, all the rest to its
\nparts of ornament and dispensable improvement. To all that
\nrest society gives a place, but its heart is not there. It accepts
\nethics as a bond and an influence, but it does not live for ethical
\ngood; its real gods are vital need and utility and the desires of the
\nbody. If it governs its life partly by ethical laws because otherwise vital need, desire, utility in seeking their own satisfaction
\nthrough many egoistic individuals would clash among themselves
\nand destroy their own aims, it does not feel called upon to make
\nits life entirely ethical. It concerns itself still less with beauty; even if it admits things beautiful as an embellishment and an
\namusement, a satisfaction and pastime of the eye and ear and
\nmind, nothing moves it imperatively to make its life a thing of
\nbeauty. It allows religion a fixed place and portion, on holy days,
\nin the church or temple, at the end of life when age and the approach of death call the attention forcibly away from this life
\nto other life, at fixed times in the week or the day when it thinks
\nit right for a moment to pause in the affairs of the world and
\nremember God: but to make the whole of life a religion, a remembering of God and a seeking after him, is a thing that is not really
\ndone even in societies which like the Indian erect spirituality as
\ntheir aim and principle. It admits philosophy in a still more remote fashion; and if nowadays it eagerly seeks after science, that
\nis because science helps prodigiously the satisfaction of its vital
\ndesires, needs and interests: but it does not turn to seek after an
\nentirely scientific life any more than after an entirely ethical
\nlife. A more complete effort in any one of these directions it
\nleaves to the individual, to the few, and to individuals of a
\nspecial type, the saint, the ethical man, the artist, the thinker,
\nthe man of religion; it gives them a place, does some homage to
\nthem, assigns some room to the things they represent, but for <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 173<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nitself it is content to follow mainly after its own inherent principle of vital satisfaction, vital necessity and utility, vital efficiency. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe reason is that here we get to another power of our
\nbeing which is different from the ethical, aesthetic, rational and
\nreligious,\u2014one which, even if we recognise it as lower in the
\nscale, still insists on its own reality and has not only the right
\nto exist but the right to satisfy itself and be fulfilled. It is indeed
\nthe primary power, it is the base of our existence upon earth, it
\nis that which the others take as their starting-point and their
\nfoundation. This is the life-power in us, the vitalistic, the dynamic nature. Its whole principle and aim is to be, to assert its
\nexistence, to increase, to expand, to possess and to enjoy: its
\nnative terms are growth of being, pleasure and power. Life itself
\nhere is Being at labour in Matter to express itself in terms of conscious force; human life is the human being at labour to impress
\nhimself on the material world with the greatest possible force
\nand intensity and extension. His primary insistent aim must be
\nto live and make for himself a place in the world, for himself
\nand his species, secondly, having made it to possess, produce and
\nenjoy with an ever-widening scope, and finally to spread himself
\nover all the earth-life and dominate it; this is and must be his
\nfirst practical business. That is what the Darwinians have tried
\nto express by their notion of the struggle for life. But the struggle
\nis not merely to last and live, but to increase, enjoy and possess: its method includes and uses not only a principle and instinct
\nof egoism, but a concomitant principle and instinct of association. Human life is moved by two equally powerful impulses,
\none of individualistic self-assertion, the other of collective self-assertion; it works by strife, but also by mutual assistance and
\nunited effort: it uses two diverse convergent forms of action,
\ntwo motives which seem to be contradictory but are in fact
\nalways coexistent, competitive endeavour and cooperative endeavour. It is from this character of the dynamism of life that <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 174<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe whole structure of human society has come into being, and
\nit is upon the sustained and vigorous action of this dynamism
\nthat the continuance, energy and growth of all human societies
\ndepends. If this life-force in them fails and these motive powers
\nlose in vigour, then all begins to languish, stagnate and finally
\nmove towards disintegration. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe modern European idea of society is founded upon the
\nprimary, and predominant part played by this vital dynamism in
\nthe formation and maintenance of society; for the European,
\never since the Teutonic mind and temperament took possession
\nof western Europe, has been fundamentally the practical, dynamic and kinetic man, vitalistic in the very marrow of his
\nthought and being. All else has been the fine flower of his life
\nand culture, this has been its root and stalk, and in modem times
\nthis truth of his temperament, always there, has come aggressively to the
\nsurface and triumphed over the traditions of Christian piety and Latinistic culture. This triumphant emergence
\nand lead of the vital man and his motives has been the whole
\nsignificance of the great economic and political civilisation of
\nthe nineteenth century. Life in society consists, for the practical
\nhuman instincts, in three activities, the domestic and social life
\nof man,\u2014social in the sense of his customary relations with
\nothers in the community both as an individual and as a member of one family
\namong many,\u2014his economic activities as a producer, wealth-getter and consumer and his political status and
\naction. Society is the organisation of these three things and,
\nfundamentally, it is for the practical human being nothing more.
\nLearning and science, culture, ethics, aesthetics, religion are assigned their
\nplace as aids to life, for its guidance and betterment, for its embellishment, for the consolation of its labours,
\ndifficulties and sorrows, but they are no part of its very substance,
\ndo not figure among its essential objects. Life itself is the only
\nobject of living. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 175<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nThe ancients held a different, indeed a diametrically opposite view. Although they recognised the immense importance of
\nthe primary activities, in Asia the social most, in Europe the
\npolitical,\u2014as every society must which at all means to live and
\nflourish,\u2014yet these were not to them primary in the higher sense
\nof the word; they were man’s first business, but not his chief
\nbusiness. The ancients regarded this life as an occasion for the
\ndevelopment of the rational, the ethical, the aesthetic, the spiritual being. Greece and Rome laid stress on the three first alone,
\nAsia went farther, made these also subordinate and looked upon
\nthem as stepping-stones to a spiritual consummation. Greece and
\nRome were proudest of their art, poetry and philosophy and
\ncherished these things as much as or even more than their political liberty or greatness. Asia too exalted these three powers and
\nvalued inordinately her social organisation, but valued much
\nmore highly, exalted with a much greater intensity of worship
\nher saints, her religious founders and thinkers, her spiritual
\nheroes. The modern world has been proudest of its economic
\norganisation, its political liberty, order and progress, the mechanism, comfort and ease of its social and domestic life, its science,
\nbut science most in its application to practical life, most for its
\ninstruments and conveniences, its railways, telegraphs, steamships and its other thousand and one discoveries, countless inventions and engines which help man to master the physical world.
\nThat marks the whole difference in the attitude. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nOn this a great deal hangs; for if the practical and vitalistic
\nview of life and society is the right one, if society merely or principally exists for the maintenance, comfort, vital happiness and
\npolitical and economic efficiency of the species, then our idea
\nthat life is a seeking for God and for the highest self and that
\nsociety too must one day make that its principle cannot stand.
\nModem society, at any rate in its self-conscious aim, is far
\nenough from any such endeavour; whatever may be the splendour<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 176<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof its achievement, it acknowledges only two gods, life and
\npractical reason organised under the name of science. Therefore
\non this great primary thing, this life-power and its manifestations,
\nwe must look with special care to see what it is in its reality as
\nwell as what it is in its appearance. Its appearance is familiar
\nenough; for of that is made the very stuff and present form of our
\neveryday life. Its main ideals are the physical good and vitalistic
\nwell-being of the individual and the community, the entire satisfaction of the desire for bodily health, long life, comfort, luxury,
\nwealth, amusement, recreation, a constant and tireless expenditure of the mind and the dynamic life-force in remunerative
\nwork and production and, as the higher flame-spires of this restless and devouring energy, creations and conquests of various
\nkinds, wars, invasions, colonisation, discovery, commercial victory, travel, adventure, the full possession and utilisation of the
\nearth. All this life still takes as its cadre the old existing forms, the
\nfamily, the society, the nation; and it has two impulses individualistic and collective. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe primary impulse of life is individualistic and makes
\nfamily, social and national life a means for the greater satisfaction
\nof the vital individual. In the family the individual seeks for the
\nsatisfaction of his vital instinct of possession, as well as for the
\njoy of companionship, and for the fulfilment of his other vital
\ninstinct of self-reproduction. His gains are the possession of wife,
\nservants, house, wealth, estates, the reproduction of much of
\nhimself in the body and mind of his progeny and the prolongation of his activities, gains and possessions in the life of his children; incidentally he enjoys the vital and physical pleasures and
\nthe more mental pleasures of emotion and affection to which
\nthe domestic life gives scope. In society he finds a less intimate
\nbut a larger expansion of himself and his instincts. A wider field
\nof companionship, interchange, associated effort and production,
\nerrant or gregarious pleasure, satisfied emotion, stirred sensation
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 177<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand regular amusement are the advantages which attach him to
\nsocial existence. In the nation and its constituent parts he finds
\na means for the play of a remoter but still larger sense of power
\nand expansion. If he has the force, he finds there fame, preeminence, leadership or at a lower pitch the sense of an effective
\naction on a small or a large scale, in a reduced or a magnified field
\nof public action; if he cannot have this, still he can feel a share
\nof some kind, a true portion or fictitious image of participation,
\nin the pride, power and splendour of a great collective activity
\nand vital expansion. In all this there is primarily at work the
\nindividualist principle of the vital instinct in which the competitive side of that movement of our nature associates with the cooperative but predominates over it. Carried to an excess this
\npredominance creates the ideal of the arrivist, to whom family,
\nsociety and nation are not so much a sympathetic field as a ladder
\nto be climbed, a prey to be devoured, a thing to be conquered and
\ndominated. In extreme cases the individualist turn isolates itself
\nfrom the companion motive, reverts to a primitive anti-social
\nfeeling and creates the nomad, the adventurer, the ranger of
\nwilds, or the pure solitary,\u2014solitary not from any intellectual or
\nspiritual impulse, but because society, once an instrument, has
\nbecome a prison and a burden, an oppressive cramping of his
\nexpansion, a denial of breathing-space and elbow-room. But
\nthese cases grow rarer, now that the ubiquitous tentacles of
\nmodem society take hold everywhere; soon there will be no place
\nof refuge left for either the nomad or the solitary, not even perhaps Saharan deserts or the secure remoteness of the Himalayas.
\nEven, it may be, the refuge of an inner seclusion may be taken
\nfrom us by a collectivist society intent to make its pragmatic, economic,
\ndynamic most of every individual "cell" of the organism. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nFor this growing collectivist or cooperative tendency embodies the second instinct of the vital or practical being in man.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 178<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nIt shows itself first in the family ideal by which the individual
\nsubordinates himself and finds his vital satisfaction and practical
\naccount, not in his own predominant individuality, but in the
\nlife of a larger vital ego. This ideal played a great part in the old
\naristocratic views of life; it was there in the ancient Indian idea
\nof the kula<\/i> and the kuladharma,<\/i> and in later India it was at the
\nroot of the joint-family system which made the strong economic
\nbase of mediaeval Hinduism. It has taken its grossest Vaishya
\nform in the ideal of the British domestic Philistine, the idea of
\nthe human individual born here to follow a trade or profession,
\nto marry and procreate a family, to earn his living, to succeed
\nreasonably if not to amass an efficient or ostentatious wealth, to
\nenjoy for a space and then die, thus having done the whole business for which he came into the body and performed all his
\nessential duty in life,\u2014for this apparently was the end unto
\nwhich man with all his divine possibilities was born! But in
\nwhatever form it may take, however this grossness may be refined
\nor toned down, whatever ethical or religious conceptions may be superadded,
\nalways the family is an essentially practical, vitalistic and economic creation. It is simply a larger vital ego, a more
\ncomplex vital organism that takes up the individual and englobes
\nhim in a more effective competitive and cooperative life unit.
\nThe family like the individual accepts and uses society for its
\nfield and means of continuance, of vital satisfaction and wellbeing, of aggrandisement and enjoyment. But this life unit also,
\nthis multiple ego can be induced by the cooperative instinct in
\nlife to subordinate its egoism to the claims of the society and
\ntrained even to sacrifice itself at need on the communal altar.
\nFor the society is only a still larger vital competitive and cooperative ego that takes up both the individual and the family into a
\nmore complex organism and uses them for the collective satisfaction of its vital needs, claims, interests, aggrandisement, well-being, enjoyment. The individual and family consent to this
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 179<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nexploitation for the same reason that induced the individual to
\ntake on himself the yoke of the family, because they find their
\naccount in this wider vital life and have the instinct in it of their
\nown larger growth, security and satisfaction. The society, still
\nmore than the family, is essentially economic in its aims and in
\nits very nature. That accounts for the predominantly economic
\nand materialistic character of modern ideas of Socialism; for
\nthese ideas are the full rationalistic flowering of this instinct of
\ncollective life. But since the society is one competitive unit
\namong many of its kind, and since its first relations with the
\nothers are always potentially hostile, even at the best competitive
\nand not cooperative, and have to be organised in that view, a
\npolitical character is necessarily added to the social life, even
\npredominates for a time over the economic and we have the
\nnation or State. If we give their due value to these fundamental
\ncharacteristics and motives of collective existence, it will seem
\nnatural enough that the development of the collective and co-operative idea of society should have culminated in a huge, often
\na monstrous overgrowth of the vitalistic, economic and political
\nideal of life, society and civilisation. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nWhat account are the higher parts of man’s being, those
\nfiner powers in him that more openly tend to the growth of his
\ndivine nature, to make with this vital instinct or with its gigantic
\nmodern developments? Obviously, their first impulse must be
\nto take hold of them and dominate and transform all this crude
\nlife into their own image; but when they discover that here is a
\npower apart, as persistent as themselves, that it seeks a satisfaction per se<\/i> and accepts their impress to a certain extent, but not
\naltogether and, as it were, unwillingly, partially, unsatisfactorily,
\n\u2014what then? We often find that ethics and religion especially,
\nwhen they find themselves in a constant conflict with the vital
\ninstincts, the dynamic life-power in man, proceed to an attitude
\nof almost complete hostility and seek to damn them in idea and
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 180<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nrepress them in fact. To the vital instinct for wealth and well-
\nbeing they oppose the ideal of a chill and austere poverty; to the
\nvital instinct for pleasure the ideal not only of self-denial, but
\nof absolute mortification; to the vital instinct for health and ease
\nthe ascetic’s contempt, disgust and neglect of the body; to the
\nvital instinct for incessant action and creation the ideal of calm
\nand inaction, passivity, contemplation; to the vital instinct for
\npower, expansion, domination, rule, conquest the ideal of humility, self-abasement, submission, meek harmlessness, docility in
\nsuffering; to the vital instinct of sex on which depends the continuance of the species, the ideal of an unreproductive chastity
\nand celibacy; to the social and family instinct the anti-social ideal
\nof the ascetic, the monk, the solitary, the world-shunning saint.
\nCommencing with discipline and subordination they proceed
\nto complete mortification, which means when translated the putting to death of the vital instincts, and declare that life itself is an
\nillusion to be shed from the soul or a kingdom of the flesh, the
\nworld and the devil,\u2014accepting thus the claim of the unenlightened and undisciplined life itself that it is not, was never meant
\nto be, can never become the kingdom of God, a high manifestation
\nof the Spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nUp to a certain point this recoil has its uses and may easily
\neven, by tapasyā,<\/i> by the law of energy increasing through compression, develop for a time a new vigour in the life of the
\nsociety, as happened in India in the early Buddhist centuries.
\nBut beyond a certain point it tends, not really to kill, for that is
\nimpossible, but to discourage along with the vital instincts the
\nindispensable life-energy of which they are the play and renders
\nthem in the end inert, feeble, narrow, unelastic, incapable of
\nenergetic reaction to force and circumstance. That was the final
\nresult in India of the age-long pressure of Buddhism and its supplanter and successor, Illusionism. No society wholly or too persistently and pervadingly dominated by this denial of the life
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 181<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ndynamism can flourish and put forth its possibilities of growth
\nand perfection. For from dynamic it becomes static and from
\nthe static position it proceeds to stagnation and degeneration.
\nEven the higher being of man, which finds its account in a vigorous life dynamism, both as a fund of force to be transmuted into
\nits own loftier energies and as a potent channel of connection
\nwith the outer life, suffers in the end by this failure and contradiction. The ancient Indian ideal recognised this truth and divided life into four essential and indispensable divisions, artha,
\nkāma, dharma, moksha,<\/i> vital interests, satisfaction of desires of
\nall kinds, ethics and religion, and liberation or spirituality, and
\nit insisted on the practice and development of all. Still it tended
\nnot only to put the last forward as the goal of all the rest, which
\nit is, but to put it at the end of life and its habitat in another
\nworld of our being, rather than here in life, as the supreme status
\nand formative power on the physical plane. But this rules out
\nthe idea of the kingdom of God on earth, the perfectibility of
\nsociety and of man in society, the evolution of a new and diviner
\nrace, and without one or other of these no universal ideal can be
\ncomplete. It provides a temporary and occasional, but not an
\ninherent justification for life; it holds out no illumining fulfilment either for its individual or its collective impulse. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nLet us then look at this vital instinct and life dynamism
\n<\/b>in
\n<\/b>its own being and not merely as an occasion for ethical or religious development and see whether it is really rebellious in its
\nvery nature to the Divine. We can see at once that what we have
\ndescribed is the first stage of the vital being, the infra-rational,
\nthe instinctive; this is the crude character of its first native development and persists even when it is trained by the growing application to it of the enlightening reason. Evidently it is in this
\nnatural form a thing of the earth, gross, earthy, full even of
\nhideous uglinesses and brute blunders and jarring discords; but
\nso also is the infra-rational stage in ethics, in aesthetics, in religion.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 182<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n It is true too that it presents a much more enormous difficulty than these others, more fundamentally and obstinately
\nresists elevation, because it is the very province of the infra-rational, a first formulation of consciousness out of the inconscient nearest to it in the scale .of being. But still it has too,
\nproperly looked at, its rich elements of power, beauty, nobility,
\ngood, sacrifice, worship, divinity; here too are high-reaching gods,
\nmasked but still resplendent. Until recently, and even now,
\nreason in the garb no longer of philosophy, but of science, has
\nincreasingly proposed to take up all this physical and vital life
\nand perfect it by the sole power of rationalism, by a knowledge
\nof the laws of Nature, of sociology and physiology and biology
\nand health, by collectivism, by State education, by a new psycho-
\nlogical education and a number of other kindred means. All this
\nis well in its own way and in its limits, but it is not enough and
\ncan never come to a truly satisfying success. The ancient attempt
\nof reason in the form of a high idealistic, rational, aesthetic, ethical and religious culture achieved only an imperfect discipline
\nof the vital man and his instincts, sometimes only a polishing,
\na gloss, a clothing and mannerising of the original uncouth savage. The modern attempt of reason in the form of a broad and
\nthorough rational, utilitarian and efficient instruction and organisation of man and his life is not succeeding any better for all its
\ninsistent but always illusory promise of more perfect results in
\nthe future. These endeavours cannot indeed be truly successful
\nif our theory of life is right and if this great mass of vital energism
\ncontains in itself the imprisoned supra-rational, if it has, as it
\nthen must have, the instinctive reaching out for something divine, absolute and infinite which is concealed in its blind strivings. Here too reason must be overpassed or surpass itself and
\nbecome a passage to the Divine. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe first mark of the supra-rational, when it intervenes to
\ntake up any portion of our being, is the growth of absolute ideals; <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 183<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand since life is Being and Force and the divine state of being
\nis unity and the Divine in force is God as Power taking possession,
\nthe absolute vital ideals must be of that nature. Nowhere are
\nthey wanting. If we take the domestic and social life of man, we
\nfind hints of them there in several forms; but we need only note,
\nhowever imperfect and dim the present shapes, the strivings or
\nlove at its own self-finding, its reachings towards its absolute\u2014
\nthe absolute love of man and woman, the absolute maternal or
\npaternal, filial or fraternal love, the love of friends, the love of
\ncomrades, love of country, love of humanity. These ideals of
\nwhich the poets have sung so persistently, are not a mere glamour
\nand illusion, however the egoisms and discords of our instinctive, infra-rational way of living may seem to contradict them.
\nAlways crossed by imperfection or opposite vital movements,
\nthey are still divine possibilities and can be made a first means
\nof our growth into a spiritual unity of being with being. Certain
\nreligious disciplines have understood this truth, have taken up
\nthese relations boldly and applied them to our soul’s communion
\nwith God; and by a converse process they can, lifted out of their
\npresent social and physical formulas, become for us, not the poor earthly things
\nthey are now, but deep and beautiful and wonderful movements of God in man fulfilling himself in life. All the
\neconomic development of life itself takes on at its end the appearance of an attempt to get rid of the animal squalor and bareness which is what obligatory poverty really means, and to give
\nto man the divine ease and leisure of the gods. It is pursued in a
\nwrong way, no doubt, and with many ugly circumstances, but
\nstill the ideal is darkly there. Politics itself, that apparent game
\nof strife and deceit and charlatanism, can be a large field of absolute idealisms. What of patriotism,\u2014never mind the often ugly
\ninstincts from which it starts and which it still obstinately preserves,\u2014but in its aspects of worship, self-giving, discipline, self-
\nsacrifice? The great political ideals of man, monarchy, aristocracy,
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 184<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ndemocracy, apart from the selfishnesses they serve and the rational and practical justifications with which they arm themselves, have had for their soul an ideal, some half-seen truth
\nof the absolute and have carried with them a worship, a loyalty,
\na loss of self in the idea which have made men ready to suffer
\nand die for them. War and strife themselves have been schools
\nof heroism; they have preserved the heroic in man, they have
\ncreated the kshatriyāh tyaktajīvitāh<\/i> of the Sanskrit epic phrase,
\nthe men of power and courage who have abandoned their bodily
\nlife for a cause; for without heroism man cannot grow into the
\nGodhead; courage, energy and strength are among the very first
\nprinciples of the divine nature in action. All this great vital,
\npolitical, economic life of man with its two powers of competition and cooperation is stumbling blindly forward towards some
\nrealisation of power and unity,\u2014in two divine directions, therefore. For the Divine in life is Power possessed of self-mastery,
\nbut also of mastery of His world, and man and mankind too
\nmove towards conquest of their world, their environment. And
\nagain in the Divine fulfilment here is and must be oneness, and
\nthe ideal of human unity however dim and far-off is coming
\nslowly into sight. The competitive nation-units are feeling, at
\ntimes, however feebly as yet, the call to cast themselves into a
\ngreater unified cooperative life of the human race. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nNo doubt all is still moving, however touched by dim lights
\nfrom above, on a lower half rational half infra-rational level,
\nclumsily, coarsely, in ignorance of itself and as yet with little
\nnobility of motive. All is being worked out very crudely by the
\nconfused clash of life-forces and the guidance of ideas that are
\nhalf-lights of the intellect, and the means proposed are too mechanical and the aims too material; they miss the truth that the
\nouter life result can only endure if it is founded on inner realities. But so life in the past has moved always and must at first
\nmove. For life organises itself at first round the ego motive and
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 185<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe instinct of ego-expansion is the earliest means by which men
\nhave come into contact with each other; the struggle for possession has been the first crude means towards union, the aggressive
\nassertion of the smaller self the first step towards a growth into
\nthe larger self. All has been therefore a half-ordered confusion
\nof the struggle for life corrected by the need and instinct of association, a struggle of individuals, clans, tribes, parties, nations,
\nideas, civilisations, cultures, ideals, religions, each affirming itself,
\neach compelled into contact, association, struggle with the others.
\nFor while Nature imposes the ego as a veil behind which she
\nlabours out the individual manifestation of the spirit, she also puts a
\ncompulsion on it to grow in being until it can at last expand or merge into the larger self in which it meets, harmonises
\nwith itself, comprehends in its own consciousness, becomes one
\nwith the rest of existence. To assist in this growth Life-Nature throws up in
\nitself ego-enlarging, ego-exceeding, even ego-destroying instincts and movements which combat and correct the
\nsmaller self-affirming instincts and movements,\u2014she enforces on
\nher human instrument impulses of love, sympathy, self-denial,
\nself-effacement, self-sacrifice, altruism, the drive towards universality in mind and heart and life, glimmerings of an obscure
\nunanimism that has not yet found thoroughly its own true light
\nand motive-power. Because of this obscurity these powers, unable to affirm their own absolute, to take the lead or dominate,
\nobliged to compromise with the demands of the ego, even to
\nbecome themselves a form of egoism, are impotent also to bring
\nharmony and transformation to life. Instead of peace they seem
\nto bring rather a sword; for they increase the number and tension
\nof conflict of the unreconciled forces, ideas, impulses of which
\nthe individual human consciousness and the life of the collectivity are the arena. The ideal and practical reason of man labours
\nto find amidst all this the right law of life and action; it strives
\nby a rule of moderation and accommodation or selection and
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 186<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nrejection or by the dominance of some chosen ideas or powers
\nto reduce things to harmony, to do consciously what Nature
\nthrough natural selection and instinct has achieved in her animal
\nkinds, an automatically ordered and settled form and norm of
\ntheir existence. But the order, the structure arrived at by the
\nreason is always partial, precarious and temporary. It is disturbed
\nby a pull from below and a pull from above. For these powers
\nthat life throws up to help towards the growth into a larger self,
\na wider being, are already reflections of something that is beyond
\nreason, seeds of the spiritual, the absolute. There is the pressure
\non human life of an Infinite which will not allow it to rest too
\nlong in any formulation,\u2014not at least until it has delivered out of
\nitself that which shall be its own self-exceeding and self-fulfilment. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis process of life through a first obscure and confused
\neffort of self-finding is the inevitable result of its beginnings; for
\nlife began from an involution of the spiritual truth of things
\nin what seems to be its opposite. Spiritual experience tells us
\nthat there is a Reality which supports and pervades all things
\nas the Cosmic Self and Spirit, can be discovered by the individual even here in the terrestrial embodiment as his own self and
\nspirit, and is at its summits and in its essence an infinite and
\neternal Being Consciousness and Bliss of existence. But what
\nwe seem to see as the source and beginning of the material universe is just the contrary\u2014it wears to us the aspect of a Void, an
\ninfinite of Non-Existence, an indeterminate Inconscient, an
\ninsensitive blissless Zero out of which everything has yet to
\ncome. When it begins to move, evolve, create, it puts on the appearance of an inconscient Energy which delivers existence out
\nof the Void in the form of an infinitesimal fragmentation, the
\nelectron,\u2014or perhaps some still more impalpable minute unit, a
\nnot yet discovered, hardly discoverable infinitesimal,\u2014then the
\natom, the molecule, and out of this fragmentation builds up a
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 187<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nformed and concrete universe in the void of its infinite. Yet we
\nsee that this unconscious Energy does at every step the works
\nof a vast and minute Intelligence fixing and combining every possible device to prepare, manage and work out the paradox and
\nmiracle of Matter and the awakening of a life and a spirit in
\nMatter; existence grows out of the Void, consciousness emerges
\nand increases out of the Inconscient, an ascending urge towards
\npleasure, happiness, delight, divine bliss and ecstasy is inexplicably born out of an insensitive Nihil. These phenomena already betray the truth, which we discover when we grow aware
\nin our depths, that the Inconscient is only a mask and within it
\nis the Upanishad’s "Conscient in unconscious things." In the
\nbeginning, says the Veda, was the ocean of inconscience and out
\nof it That One arose into birth by his greatness,\u2014by the might
\nof his self-manifesting Energy. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBut the Inconscient, if a mask, is an effective mask of the
\nSpirit; it imposes on the evolving life and soul the law of a difficult emergence. Life and consciousness, no less than Matter,
\nobey in their first appearance the law of fragmentation. Life
\norganises itself physically round the plasm, the cell, psychologically round the small separative fragmentary ego. Consciousness
\nitself has to concentrate its small beginnings in a poor surface formation and
\nhide behind the veil of this limited surface existence the depths and infinities of its own being. It has to grow
\nslowly in an external formulation till it is ready to break the crust
\nbetween this petty outer figure of ourselves, which we think to be the whole,
\nand the concealed self within us. Even the spiritual being seems to obey this law of fragmentation and manifests
\nas a unit in the whole a spark of itself that evolves into an individual psyche. It is this little ego, this fragmented consciousness, this concealed soul-spark on which is imposed the task of
\nmeeting and striving with the forces of the universe, entering
\ninto contact with all that seems to it not itself, increasing under
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 188<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe pressure of inner and outer Nature till it can become one
\nwith all existence. It has to grow into self-knowledge and world knowledge, to get within itself and discover that it is a spiritual
\nbeing, to get outside of itself and discover its larger truth as the
\ncosmic Individual, to get beyond itself and know and live in some
\nsupreme Being, Consciousness and Bliss of existence. For this
\nimmense task it is equipped only with the instruments of its
\noriginal Ignorance. Its limited being is the cause of all the difficulty, discord, struggle, division that mars life. The limitation of
\nits consciousness, unable to dominate or assimilate the contacts
\nof the universal Energy, is the cause of all its suffering, pain and
\nsorrow. Its limited power of consciousness formulated in an ignorant will unable to grasp or follow the right law of its life and
\naction is the cause of all its error, wrongdoing and evil. There is no other
\ntrue cause; for all apparent causes are themselves circumstance and result of this original sin of the being. Only when
\nit rises and widens out of this limited separative consciousness
\ninto the oneness of the liberated spirit can it escape from these
\nresults of its growth out of the Inconscience. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIf we see this as the truth behind life, we can understand
\nat once why it has had to follow its present curve of ignorant
\nself-formulation. But also we see what through it all it is obscurely seeking, trying to grasp and form, feeling out for in its
\nown higher impulses and deepest motives, and why these are in
\nit,\u2014useless, perturbing and chimerical if it were only an animal
\nproduct of inconscient Nature,\u2014these urgings towards self-discovery, mastery, unity, freedom from its lower self, spiritual release. Evolving out of its first involved condition in Matter and
\nin plant life, effecting a first imperfect organised consciousness
\nin the animal, it arrives in man, the mental being, at the possibility of a new, a conscious evolution which will bring it to its goal
\nand at a certain stage of his development it wakes in him the
\novermastering impulse to pass on from mental to spiritual being.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 189<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nLife cannot arrive at its secret ultimates by following its first
\ninfrarational motive forces of instinct and desire: for all here is
\na groping and seeking without finding, a field of brief satisfactions, stamped with the Inconscient’s seal of insufficiency and
\nimpermanence. But neither can human reason give it what it
\nsearches after; for reason can only establish half lights and a
\nprovisional order. Therefore with man as he is the upward urge
\nin life cannot rest satisfied always; its evolutionary impulse cannot stop short at this transitional term, this half achievement
\nIt has to aim at a higher reach of consciousness, deliver out of
\nlife and mind something that is still latent and inchoate. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe ultimates of life are spiritual and only in the full light
\nof the liberated self and spirit can it achieve them. That full
\nlight is not intellect or reason, but a knowledge by inner unity
\nand identity which is the native self-light of the fully developed
\nspiritual consciousness\u2014and, preparing that, on the way to it, a
\nknowledge by intimate inner contact with the truth of things
\nand beings which is intuitive and born of a secret oneness. Life
\nseeks for self-knowledge; it is only by the light of the spirit that
\nit can find it. It seeks for a luminous guidance and mastery of its
\nown movements; it is only when it finds within itself this inner
\nself and spirit and by it or in obedience to it governs its own steps
\nthat it can have the illumined will it needs and the unerring
\nleadership. For it is so only that the blind certitudes of the instincts and the
\nspeculative hypotheses and theories and the experimental and inferential certitudes of reason can be replaced
\nby the seeing spiritual certitudes. Life seeks the fulfilment of its
\ninstincts of love and sympathy, its yearnings after accord and
\nunion, but these are crossed by opposing instincts and it is only
\nthe spiritual consciousness with its realised abiding oneness that
\ncan abolish these oppositions. Life seeks for full growth of being,
\nbut can attain to it only when the limited being has found in
\nitself its own inmost soul of existence and around it its own
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 190<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nwider self of cosmic consciousness which can feel the world and
\nall being in itself and as itself. Life seeks for power; it is only the
\npower of the spirit and the power of this conscious oneness that
\ncan give it mastery of itself and its world. It seeks for pleasure,
\nhappiness, bliss; but the infra-rational forms of these things are
\nstricken with imperfection, fragmentariness, impermanence and
\nthe impact of their opposites. Moreover, infrarational life still
\nbears some stamp of the Inconscient in an underlying insensitiveness, a dullness of fibre, a weakness of vibratory response,\u2014
\nit cannot attain to true happiness or bliss and what it can obtain
\nof pleasure it cannot support for long or bear or keep any extreme
\nintensity of these things. Only the spirit has the secret of an
\nunmixed and abiding happiness or ecstasy, is capable of a firm tenseness of
\nvibrant response to it, can attain and justify a spiritual pleasure or joy of life as one form of the infinite and universal delight of being. Life seeks a harmonious fulfilment of all its
\npowers, now divided and in conflict, all its possibilities, parts,
\nmembers; it is only in the consciousness of the one Self and
\nSpirit that that is found, for there they arrive at their full truth
\nand their perfect agreement in the light of the integral self-existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThere is then a supra-rational ultimate of Life no less than
\na supra-rational Truth, Good and Beauty. The endeavour to reach it is the spiritual meaning of this seeking and striving Life-nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 191<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XVI THE SUPRARATIONAL ULTIMATE OF LIFE   IN ALL the higher powers of his life man may be said to be seeking, blindly enough,…<\/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-3506","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\/3506","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=3506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}