PDF-file (The same edition. Another cover. 2.2 Mb)

230 The Human Cyclebut it has its own svadharma, essential law, and it will rise to thewidest spirituality by following out its own natural lines withno other yoke than the intimate law of its own being.Even with the lower nature of man, though here we arenaturally led to suppose that compulsion is the only remedy,the spiritual aim will seek for a free self-rule and developmentfrom within rather than a repression of his dynamic and vitalbeing from without. All experience shows that man must begiven a certain freedom to stumble in action as well as to err inknowledge so long as he does not get from within himself hisfreedom from wrong movement and error; otherwise he cannotgrow. Society for its own sake has to coerce the dynamic andvital man, but coercion only chains up the devil and alters at besthis form of action into more mitigated and civilised movements;it does not and cannot eliminate him. The real virtue of thedynamic and vital being, the Life Purusha, can only come by hisfinding a higher law and spirit for his activity within himself; togive him that, to illuminate and transform and not to destroyhis impulse is the true spiritual means of regeneration.Thus spirituality will respect the freedom of the lower members,but it will not leave them to themselves; it will present tothem the truth of the spirit in themselves, translated into theirown fields of action, presented in a light which illumines all theiractivities and shows them the highest law of their own freedom.It will not, for instance, escape from scientific materialism bya barren contempt for physical life or a denial of Matter, butpursue rather the sceptical mind into its own affirmations anddenials and show it there the Divine. If it cannot do that, it isproved that it is itself unenlightened or deficient, because onesided,in its light. It will not try to slay the vitality in man bydenying life, but will rather reveal to life the divine in itself asthe principle of its own transformation. If it cannot do that, it isbecause it has itself not yet wholly fathomed the meaning of thecreation and the secret of the Avatar.The spiritual aim will seek to fulfil itself therefore in a fullnessof life and man’s being in the individual and the race whichwill be the base for the heights of the spirit, — the base becoming