{"id":428,"date":"2013-07-13T01:27:58","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=428"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:27:58","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:27:58","slug":"49-god-the-invisible-king-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17\/49-god-the-invisible-king-vol-17-the-hour-of-god-volume-17","title":{"rendered":"-49_God, the Invisible King.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nGod, the Invisible King<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n          A REMARKABLE<\/font><\/b> book with this title by
\nthe well-known writer -and thinker, Mr. H. G. Wells, has recently appeared, of
\nwhich only a few extracts are before us, but these are sufficient to reveal its
\ncharacter and thought. It is on the part of the writer, speaking not for
\nhimself personally alone but as scribe to the spirit of his generation, a
\ndefinite renunciation of the gospel of an all-sufficient rationalism, a
\ndiscovery of God, a profession of faith in spirituality as the one lever by
\nwhich mankind can rise out of the darkness and confusion of its present state
\ninto a more perfect living. He professes his faith in the God within, the
\ninvisible King, who is the immortal part of us, in a coming kingdom of God upon
\nearth which shall not only be a spiritual state in the individual, but the open
\nbrotherhood of a divine rule among men, and in self-identification with God,
\nservice of him, absolute surrender to him as the whole rule of life for the
\nenlightened modern man. This is, indeed, a remarkable change of spirit and
\nchange of mental outlook and, if Mr. Wells’ claim is just that he is writing as
\na scribe to the spirit of his generation, it means a revolution in Europe far
\nmore important than the Russian with all its idealism and its hopes for a new
\nand beneficent change in politics and society. It means the union of Eastern
\nspiritual knowledge and religious faith with Western pragmatic idealism and
\ntheir fusion into the basis of a new culture and, we will not say a new
\nuniversal religion, – for religion must vary with the variations of human
\nnature,- but a new practical spirituality in which all mankind can become one.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>There is much in Mr. Wells’
\nstatement of his new-born belief that is imperfect, limited and a little crude,
\nmuch that is grasped with an overhasty zeal, as was inevitable in the first
\nlight of an unripe awakening. Some of the old limitations of the rationalistic
\nWestern mind with its too external outlook upon things still cling about his new
\nspiritual discovery. He tells us<\/p>\n

\nPage-324<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

that the kingdom of God on earth is "not a metaphor, not a mere spiritual
\nstate, not a dream, not an uncertain project, ..it is the close and inevitable
\ndestiny of mankind". This classing of the inner spiritual state, the
\nkingdom of God within us, with a metaphor, a dream, an uncertain project
\nreveals the lingering taint of an excessive pragmatism. The spiritual state is
\nthe one thing indispensable; until the mass of mankind can awaken into it, the
\ndream of a perfect society, an open brotherhood of God’s rule, must end in
\nfailure and disappointment. The kingdom of God within is the sole possible
\nfoundation for the kingdom of God without; for it is the spirit by which man
\nlives that conditions the outer forms of his life.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Misled by this external view of
\nthings Mr. Wells, evidently, still believes that a political and social action
\nis sufficient to bring about the millennium. He has discovered that this action
\nmust be driven by a spiritual motive, pursued in the passion of a true
\nreligious fervour, consecrated to the indwelling God, effective only by an
\nabsolute self-surrender to the Divine. But he has a limited vision of his God
\nand brings to it all the aggressiveness and something of the fanaticism of all
\nsuch limited religious conceptions. "The new conceptions," he writes,
\n"do not tolerate either kings or aristocracies or democracies. Its
\nimplicit command to all its adherents is to make plain the way to the world
\ntheocracy. Its rule of life is the discovery and service of the will of God
\nwhich dwells in the hearts of men and the performance of that will" in the
\nlife of the believer, the individual, and of the nation of which he is a part.
\n"I give myself to God not only because I am so and so, but because I am
\nmankind…I become a knight in God’s service\u2026 I become a responsible minister
\nof my king. I take sides against injustice, disorder, and against all those temporal
\nkings, emperors, princes, landlords and owners. who set themselves against
\nGod’s rule and worship. Kings, owners and all who claim rule and decision in
\nthe world’s affairs, must either show themselves clearly the fellow-servants of
\nthe believer or become the object of his steadfast antagonism." <\/p>\n

    All this is very forcibly said,
\nbut it shows that the writer has not grasped the whole spiritual truth; he has
\nnot gone deep enough inward. As once he dreamed of a class of scientific and<\/p>\n

\nPage -325<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

rational superman establishing a perfect social rule upon earth, so now he
\nthinks that by the action of his banded servants of the invisible King
\ndeclaring political and social war upon godless Czars, Kaisers, rulers and
\ncapitalists the same end can be achieved. With them is God; in them God dwells,
\nin the others, presumably, he does not dwell; those who have surrendered
\nabsolutely to him are the citizens of the kingdom and on them shall be peace;
\nthose who do not surrender or even fall short in their surrender, are
\ninterlopers, against them the sword. A very old kind of militant religionism in
\na very modem form. It ignores two ancient, two eternal spiritual truths; first,
\nthat God dwells in all and, secondly, that only by becoming conscious of the
\nGod within from within can humanity be saved. God dwells in all and not only in
\nthe believer who is conscious of him;- dwells disguised and veiled, and it is
\nby helping others to awaken to the veiled Divine within them that we go to the
\nstraight way to the founding of his kingdom on earth. True, an outward battle
\nalso has to be fought, but against institutions which stand in the way of the
\nspreading of the light and the reign of brotherhood, not against men as
\nunbelievers, – in a spirit of understanding, of knowledge, of firm will, but
\nalso of charity for ignorance and of love for the misled. God, says Mr. Wells,
\nis boundless love, but this boundless love, it seems, is not infinite enough to
\nembrace those who do not believe with you; it rejects them with a steadfast
\nantagonism, it banishes them as "interlopers". God’s work least of
\nall should be pursued in a spirit of partisan and sectarian antagonism, but
\nrather with a remembrance that the battle is only a way to peace and the peace
\nmust come by the inner submission of the opponent through his recognition of
\nthe Divine, through his awakening. It is not enough that the believer should
\nperform God’s will and fight for the performance of that will "in the acts
\nand order of the state and nation of which he is a part". The nation also
\nmust be brought not only to believe, but to know, to see, to live in God,
\notherwise the national performance of God’s will, even if momentarily secured,
\nwill soon degenerate into a form. It is possible that what the old religions
\ncalled "the rule of the saints" may be a preliminary step to the
\nestablishment of the full kingdom of God, but that rule<\/p>\n

\nPage -326<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

can only become secure by the
\nlight and fire which is in them kindling itself in the hearts of all mankind.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>These defects of
\noutlook come from a defect in the conception of the Divine. It consists of
\n"complete Agnosticism in the matter of God the Creator and entire faith in
\nthe matter of God the Redeemer". A distinction is made between the Veiled
\nBeing behind the universe and the living reality in our lives; the latter alone
\nis the true God. He is a personal and intimate God. He is finite. He is a
\nspirit, a single spirit and a single person. He has come, we know not whence,
\ninto the conflict of life. He bas begun and will never end. And yet he is the
\nimmortal part and leader of mankind, our friend and brother and light of the
\nworld. And from these first principles is drawn a description of God as certain
\nqualities, boundless love, boundless courage, boundless generosity, thought and
\nsteadfast will, and as having motives, characteristics, an aim. "This is the
\nbelief of the modem mind", read, the modern Western mind, "with
\nregard to God". –
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We can see .whence the
\ncrudities of this belief arise. The Western mind is still burdened with its
\nscientific vision of the universe as a play of brute force, of life as a
\nstruggle, the world a material entity, and therefore of the Spirit of the
\nworld, if any there be, conceived agnostically or with a sort of materialistic
\nPantheism standing for these things only, the Breath of a physical universe, a
\nsort of mechanical, inconscient Soul of things. Out of this pure materiality
\nmind and soul inexplicably evolve. God appears only in man and his aspiration,
\nhis longings for a higher order of things, for love, universal sympathy,
\nimmortality. This God and the mechanical inconscient Spirit of the World the
\nWestern mind finds it difficult – and no. wonder – to bring under the same
\nterm. The simple harmonious truth that God is veiled in the material universe
\nwhich is only the lowest term, the first appearance of the cosmic Reality, that
\nhe unveils himself partially and progressively in man and to man, and that man
\nby growth into self-knowledge and God-knowledge can grow into the whole truth
\nof God and existence, which is one truth, – this seems still to be hidden from
\nthese wise men of the West. His partial unveiling in man seems to them a birth
\nof the once non- existent Divine, a coming of God into the world, one knows not<\/p>\n

\nPage-327<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

whence; and because man appears to
\nbe finite, God whom they conceive of as the sum of human aspiration to good,
\ntruth, beauty, immortality, is also conceived of as finite. But how is that
\nwhich has begun in Time secure against ending in Time? and how can a finite God
\nbe infinite love, courage, strength? Only that which was from ever, can be for
\never, and only that which is infinite in being, can be infinite in force and
\nquality. We have here an echo of the inconsequent Christian paradox of a soul
\nborn by the birth of the body, yet immortal to all eternity, combined with the
\nmetaphysical dogma of a God existent, not in being, but in becoming. There is
\nan element of truth and value in this’ belief, but it brings disabling
\nlimitations into our inner realisation of God and the practice of a divine life
\nto which it gives a foundation.<\/p>\n

\nPage -328<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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