{"id":3515,"date":"2013-07-13T01:49:04","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3515"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:49:04","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:49:04","slug":"05-the-coming-of-the-subjective-age-vol-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-human-cycle\/05-the-coming-of-the-subjective-age-vol-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-05_The coming of the Subjective Age.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

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

\n
\nTHE COMING OF THE SUBJECTIVE AGE <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nT<\/font>HE<\/b> inherent aim and effort and justification, the psychological seed-cause, the whole tendency of development of an
\nindividualistic age of mankind, all go back to the one dominant
\nneed of rediscovering the substantial truths of life, thought and
\naction which have been overlaid by the falsehood of conventional standards no longer alive to the truth of the ideas from
\nwhich their conventions started. It would seem at first that the
\nshortest way would be to return to the original ideas themselves for light, to
\nrescue the kernel of their truth from the shell of convention in which it has become encrusted. But to this course
\nthere is a great practical obstacle; and there is another which
\nreaches beyond the surface of things, nearer to the deeper principles of the development of the soul in human society. The
\nrecovery of the old original ideas now travestied by convention
\nis open to the practical disadvantage that it tends after a time
\nto restore force to the conventions which the Time-Spirit is seeking to outgrow
\nand, if or when the deeper truth-seeking tendency slackens in its impulse, the conventions tend to re-establish their sway. They revive, modified, no doubt, but still powerful; a new encrustation sets in, the truth of things is overlaid
\nby a more complex falsity. And even if it were otherwise, the
\nneed of a developing humanity is <\/b>not to return always to its old
\nideas. Its need is to progress to a larger fulfilment in which, if
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 27<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe old is at all taken up, it must be transformed and exceeded.
\nFor the underlying truth of things is constant and eternal, but
\nits mental figures, its life forms, its physical embodiments call
\nconstantly for growth and change. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIt is this principle and necessity of things that justify an age
\nof individualism and rationalism and make it, however short it
\nmay be, an inevitable period in the cycle. A temporary reign
\nof the critical reason largely destructive in its action is an imperative need for human progress. In India, since the great Buddhistic upheaval of the national thought and life, there has been a
\nseries of recurrent attempts to rediscover the truth of the soul
\nand life and get behind the veil of stifling conventions; but these
\nhave been conducted by a wide and tolerant spiritual reason, a
\nplastic soul-intuition and deep subjective seeking, insufficiently
\nmilitant and destructive. Although productive of great internal
\nand considerable external changes, they have never succeeded
\nin getting rid of the predominant conventional order. The work
\nof a dissolvent and destructive intellectual criticism, though not
\nentirely absent from some of these movements, has never gone
\nfar enough; the constructive force, insufficiently aided by the
\ndestructive, has not been able to make a wide and free space for
\nits new formation. It is only with the period of European influence and impact that circumstances and tendencies powerful
\nenough to enforce the beginnings of a new age of radical and effective
\nrevaluation of ideas and things have come into existence. The characteristic power of these influences has been
\nthroughout\u2014or at any rate till quite recently\u2014rationalistic, utilitarian and individualistic. It has compelled the national mind
\nto view everything from a new, searching and critical standpoint,
\nand even those who seek to preserve the present or restore the
\npast are obliged unconsciously or halt-consciously to justify their
\nendeavour from the novel point of view and by its appropriate
\nstandards of reasoning. Throughout the East, the subjective
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 28<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nAsiatic mind is being driven to adapt itself to the need for
\nchanged values of life and thought. It has been forced to turn
\nupon itself both by the pressure of western knowledge and by the compulsion of a
\nquite changed life-need and life-environment. What it did not do from within, has come on it as a necessity from without and this externality has carried with it an
\nimmense advantage as well as great dangers. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe individualistic age is, then, a radical attempt of mankind to discover die truth and law both of the individual being
\nand of the world to which the individual belongs. It may begin,
\nas it began in Europe, with the endeavour to get back, more especially in the
\nsphere of religion, to the original truth which convention has overlaid, defaced or distorted; but from that first step
\nit must proceed to others and in the end to a general questioning
\nof the foundations of thought and practice in all the spheres of
\nhuman life and action. A revolutionary reconstruction of religion, philosophy, science, art and society is the last inevitable
\noutcome. It proceeds at first by the light of the individual mind
\nand reason, by its demand on life and its experience of life; but
\nit must go from the individual to the universal. For the effort of
\nthe individual soon shows him that he cannot securely discover
\nthe truth and law of his own being without discovering some
\nuniversal law and truth to which he can relate it. Of the universe he is a part; in all but his deepest spirit he is its subject, a
\nsmall cell in that tremendous organic mass: his substance is
\ndrawn from its substance and by the law of its life the law
\nof his life is determined and governed. From a new view and
\nknowledge of the world must proceed his new view and knowledge of himself, of his power and capacity and limitations, of his
\nclaim on existence and the high road and the distant or immediate goal of his individual and social destiny. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nIn Europe and in modem times this has taken the form
\nof a clear and potent physical Science: it has proceeded by the <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 29<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\ndiscovery of the laws of the physical universe and the economic
\nand sociological conditions of human life as determined by the
\nphysical being of man, his environment, his evolutionary history,
\nhis physical and vital, his individual and collective need. But
\nafter a time it must become apparent that the knowledge of the
\nphysical world is not the whole of knowledge; it must appear
\nthat man is a mental as well as a physical and vital being and
\neven much more essentially mental than physical or vital. Even
\nthough his psychology is strongly affected and limited by his
\nphysical being and environment, it is not at its roots determined
\nby them, but constantly reacts, subtly determines their action,
\neffects even their new-shaping by the force of his psychological
\ndemand on life. His economic state and social institutions are
\nthemselves governed by his psychological demand on the possibilities,
\ncircumstances, tendencies created by the relation between the mind and soul of humanity and its life and body.
\nTherefore to find the truth of things and the law of his being in relation to
\nthat truth he must go deeper and fathom the subjective secret of himself and things as well as their objective
\nforms and surroundings. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThis he may attempt to do for a time by the power of the
\ncritical and analytic reason which has already carried him so far; but not for
\nvery long. For in his study of himself and the world he cannot but come face to
\nface with the soul in himself and the soul in the world and find it to be an
\nentity so profound, so complex, so full of hidden secrets and powers that his
\nintellectual reason betrays itself as an insufficient light and a fumbling
\nseeker: it is successfully analytical only of superficialities and of what lies
\njust behind the superficies. The need of a deeper knowledge must then turn him
\nto the discovery of new powers and means within himself. He finds that he can
\nonly know himself entirely by becoming actively self-conscious and not merely,
\nself-critical, by more and more living in his soul and acting out  <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 30<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof it rather than floundering on surfaces, by putting himself into
\nconscious harmony with that which lies behind his superficial
\nmentality and psychology and by enlightening his reason and
\nmaking dynamic his action through this deeper light and power
\nto which he thus opens. In this process the rationalistic ideal
\nbegins to subject itself to the ideal of intuitional knowledge and
\na deeper self-awareness; the utilitarian standard gives way to
\nthe aspiration towards self-consciousness and self-realisation; the
\nrule of living according to the manifest laws of physical Nature
\nis replaced by the effort towards living according to the veiled
\nLaw and Will and Power active in the life of the world and in
\nthe inner and outer life of humanity. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAll these tendencies, though in a crude, initial and ill-developed form, are manifest now in the world and are growing from
\nday to day with a significant rapidity. And their emergence and
\ngreater dominance means the transition from the rationalistic
\nand utilitarian period of human development which individualism has created to a greater subjective age of society. The change
\nbegan by a rapid turning of the current of thought into large and profound
\nmovements contradictory of the old intellectual standards, a swift breaking of the old tables. The materialism of the
\nnineteenth century gave place first to a novel and profound
\nvitalism which has taken various forms from Nietzsche’s theory
\nof the Will to be and Will to Power as the root and law of life to the new
\npluralistic and pragmatic philosophy which is pluralistic because it has its eye fixed on life rather than on the soul
\nand pragmatic because it seeks to interpret being in the terms
\nof force and action rather than of light and knowledge. These
\ntendencies of thought, which had until yesterday a profound
\ninfluence on the life and thought of Europe prior to the outbreak of the great War, especially in France and Germany, were
\n"not a mere superficial recoil from intellectualism to life and
\naction,\u2014although in their application by lesser minds they often <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 31<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nassumed that aspect; they were an attempt to read profoundly
\nand live by the Life-Soul of the universe and tended to be deeply
\npsychological and subjective in their method. From behind them, arising in the
\nvoid created by the discrediting of the old rationalistic intellectualism, there had begun to arise a new Intuitionalism, not yet clearly aware of its own drive and nature, which
\nseeks through the forms and powers of Life for that which is
\nbehind Life and sometimes even lays as yet uncertain hands
\non the sealed doors of the Spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nThe art, music and literature of the world, always a sure
\nindex of the vital tendencies of the age, have also undergone a profound
\nrevolution in the direction of an ever-deepening subjectivism. The great objective art and literature of the past no
\nlonger commands the mind of the new age. The first tendency
\nwas, as in thought so in literature, an increasing psychological,
\nvitalism which sought to represent penetratingly the most subtle
\npsychological impulses and tendencies of man as they started to
\nthe surface in his emotional, aesthetic and vitalistic cravings and
\nactivities. Composed with great skill and subtlety but without
\nany real insight into the law of man’s being, these creations seldom got behind the reverse side of our surface emotions, sensations and actions which they minutely analysed in their details
\nbut without any wide or profound light of knowledge; they were
\nperhaps more immediately interesting but ordinarily inferior as
\nart to the old literature which at least seized firmly and with a
\nlarge and powerful mastery on its province. Often they described the malady of Life rather than its health and power, or
\nthe riot and revolt of its cravings, vehement and therefore really
\nimpotent and unsatisfied, rather than its dynamis of self-expression and self-possession. But to this movement which reached
\nits highest creative power in Russia, there succeeded a turn
\ntowards a more truly psychological art, music and literature,
\nmental, intuitional, psychic rather than vitalistic, departing in  <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 32<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nfact from a superficial vitalism as much as its
\npredecessors departed from the objective mind of the past. This new movement
\nlargely aimed like the new philosophic Intuitionalism at a real
\nrending of the veil, the seizure by the human mind of that which
\ndoes not overtly express itself, the touch and penetration into
\nthe hidden soul of things. Much of it was still infirm, unsubstantial in its grasp on what it pursued, rudimentary in its forms, but
\nit initiated a decisive departure of the human mind from its old
\nmoorings and pointed the direction in which it is being piloted
\non a momentous voyage of discovery, the discovery of a new
\nworld within which must eventually bring about the creation
\nof a new world without in life and society. Art and literature
\nseem definitely to have taken a turn towards a subjective search
\ninto what may be called the hidden inside of things and away
\nfrom the rational and objective canon or nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nAlready in the practical dealing with life there are advanced
\nprogressive tendencies which take their inspiration from this
\nprofounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet been firmly
\naccomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first feeling
\nout towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant
\nactivities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of nations in Europe and the stirrings and changes
\nwithin the nations which preceded and followed it, were rather
\nthe result of a confused half struggle, half effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and the new
\nstill superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West.
\nThe latter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were
\nnecessarily impelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand upon life; the world was moving
\ntowards a monstrously perfect organisation of the Will-to-live
\nand the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out upon
\nthe world in the clash of War and has now found or is finding
\nDew forms of life for itself which show better its governing idea <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 33<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand motive. The Asuric or even Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision was due to this formidable combination of
\na falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force
\nof servile intelligence and reasoning contrivance subjected to it
\nas instrument and the genius of an accomplished materialistic
\nScience as its Djinn, its giant worker of huge, gross and soulless
\nmiracles. The War was the bursting of the explosive force so
\ncreated and, even though it strewed the world with ruins, its
\nafter results may well have prepared the collapse, as they have
\ncertainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant
\ndisorder, of the monstrous combination which produced it and
\nby that salutary ruin are emptying the field of human life of the
\nprincipal obstacles to a truer development towards a higher goal. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nBehind it all the hope of the race lies in those infant and as
\nyet subordinate tendencies which carry in them the seed of a new
\nsubjective and psychic dealing of man with his own being, with
\nhis fellow-men and with the ordering of his individual and social
\nlife. The characteristic note of these tendencies may be seen in
\nthe new ideas about the education and upbringing of the child
\nthat became strongly current in the pre-war era. Formerly, education was merely a mechanical forcing of the child’s nature into
\narbitrary grooves of training and knowledge in which his individual subjectivity was the last thing considered, and his family
\nupbringing was a constant repression and compulsory shaping
\nof his habits, his thoughts, his character into the mould fixed for
\nthem by the conventional ideas or individual interests and ideals
\nof the teachers and parents. The discovery that education must be a bringing out
\nof the child’s own intellectual and moral capacities to their highest possible value and must be based on the
\npsychology of the child-nature was a step forward towards a more
\nhealthy because a more subjective system; but it still fell short
\nbecause it still regarded him as an object to be handled and
\nmoulded by the teacher, to be educated. But at last there was a <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 34<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nglimmering of the realisation that each human being is a
\nself- developing soul and that the business of both parent and teacher
\nis to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop
\nhis own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow
\nfreely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised
\nwhat this soul is or that the true secret, whether with child or
\nman, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real psychic entity
\nwithin. That, if we ever give it a chance to come forward, and
\nstill more if we call it into the foreground as "the leader of the
\nmarch set in our front," will itself take up most of the business
\nof education out of our hands and develop the capacity of the
\npsychological being towards a realisation of its potentialities of
\nwhich our present mechanical view of life and man and external
\nroutine methods of dealing with them prevent us from having
\nany experience or forming any conception. These new educational methods are on the straight way to this truer dealing. The
\ncloser touch attempted with the psychical being behind the vital
\nand physical mentality and an increasing reliance on its possibilities must lead to the ultimate discovery that man is inwardly a
\nsoul and a conscious power of the Divine and that the evocation
\nof this real man within is the right object of education and indeed.
\nof all human life if it would find and live according to the hidden
\nTruth and deepest law of its own being. That was the knowledge
\nwhich the ancients sought to express through religious and social
\nsymbolism, and subjectivism is a road of return to the lost knowledge. First deepening man’s inner experience, restoring perhaps
\non an unprecedented scale insight and self-knowledge to the race,
\nit must end by revolutionising his social and collective self-expression. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nMeanwhile, the nascent subjectivism preparative of the
\nnew age has shown itself not so much in the relations of individuals or in the
\ndominant ideas and tendencies of social development,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 35<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n which are still largely rationalistic and materialistic and
\nonly vaguely touched by the deeper subjective tendency, but in
\nthe new collective self-consciousness of man in that organic mass
\nof his life which he has most firmly developed in the past, the
\nnation. It is here that it has already begun to produce powerful
\nresults whether as a vitalistic or as a psychical subjectivism, and it is here
\nthat we shall see most clearly what is its actual drift, its deficiencies, its
\ndangers as well as the true purpose and conditions of a subjective age of humanity and the goal towards
\nwhich the social cycle, entering this phase, is intended to arrive
\nin its wide revolution. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage – 36<\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER III THE COMING OF THE SUBJECTIVE AGE   THE inherent aim and effort and justification, the psychological seed-cause, the whole tendency of development of…<\/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-3515","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\/3515","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=3515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}