Page 22 - NAMAH-Apr-2022

Namah Vol. 30, Issue 1, 24th April 2022

and shapeless idol. For that would be only the biped pack, the human herd, but to develop the
sacrifice of the smaller to the larger egoism, divine nature in thehuman being. It would make
larger only in bulk, not necessarily greater in it the aim of art not merely to present images of
quality or wider or nobler, since a collective the subjective and objective world, but to see
egoism, result of the united egoisms of all, them with the significant and creative vision
is as little a god to be worshipped, as flawed that goes behind their appearances and to reveal
and often an uglier and more barbarous fetish the Truth and Beauty of which things visible
than the egoism of the individual. What the to us and invisible are the forms, the masks or
spiritual man seeks is to find by the loss of the symbols and significant figures.
the ego the self which is one in all and perfect
and complete in each and by living in that A spiritualised society would treat in its
to grow into the image of its perfection, — sociology the individual, from the saint to
individually, be it noted, though with an all- the criminal, not as units of a social problem
embracing universality of his nature and its to be passed through some skilfully devised
conscious circumference…. machinery and either flattened into the social
mould or crushed out of it, but as souls suffering
Therefore a society which was even initially and entangled in a net and to be rescued, souls
spiritualised would make the revealing and growing and to be encouraged to grow, souls
finding of the divine Self in man the supreme, grown and from whom help and power can
even the guiding aim of all its activities, its be drawn by the lesser spirits who are not yet
education, its knowledge, its science, its ethics, adult. The aim of its economics would be not to
its art, its economical and political structure. As create a huge engine of production, whether of
it was to some imperfect extent in the ancient the competitive or the cooperative kind, but to
Vedic times with the cultural education of the give to men — not only to some but to all men
higher classes, so it would be then with all each in his highest possible measure — the joyof
education. It would embrace all knowledge work according to their own nature and free
in its scope, but would make the whole trend leisure to grow inwardly, as well as a simply
and aim and the permeating spirit not mere rich and beautiful life for all…..
worldly efficiency, though that efficiency would
not be neglected, but this self-developing and It would regard the peoples as group-souls, the
self-finding and all else as its powers. It would Divinity concealed and to be self-discovered
pursue the physical and psychic sciences not in its human collectivities, group-souls
in order merely to know the world and Nature meant like the individual to grow according
in her processes and to use them for material to their own nature and by that growth to
human ends, but still more to know through and help each other, to help the whole race in
in and under and over all things the Divine in the one common work of humanity. And
the world and the ways of the Spirit in its masks that work would be to find the divine Self
and behind them. It would make it the aim of in the individual and the collectivity and to
ethics not to establish a rule of action whether realise spiritually, mentally, vitally, materially
supplementary to the social law or partially its greatest, largest, richest and deepest
corrective of it, the social law that is after all possibilities in the inner life of all and their
only the rule, often clumsy and ignorant, of the outer action and nature (4).”

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