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		<b><font face="Times New Roman"><i>The Intuition of the Age</i> </font>
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		<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0" align="center">&nbsp;</p>

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<font face="Times New Roman">ALL movements—whether of thought or of life, whether in the
individual or in the mass—proceed from a fundamental intuition which lies in the background as the logical presupposition,
the psychological motive and the spiritual force. A certain
attitude of the soul, a certain angle of vision is what is posited
first; all other things—all thoughts and feelings and activities
are but necessary attempts to express, to demonstrate, to realise
on the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer world, the
truth which has thus already been seized in some secret core
of our being. The intuition may not, of course, be present to
the conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought for, one
may even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and
proceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is
this hidden bias that judges, this secret consciousness that
formulates, this unknown power that fashions. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, what is the intuition that lies behind the movements of
the new age ? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying
viewpoint which is guiding and modelling all our efforts and
achievements—our science and art, our poetry and philosophy,
our religion and society? For, there is such a common and
fundamental note which is being voiced forth by the human
spirit through all the multitude of its present day activities. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A new impulse is there, no one can deny, and it has vast
possibilities before it, that also one need not hesitate to accept.
But in order that we may best fructuate what has been spontaneously sown, we must first recognise it, be luminously
conscious of it and develop it along its proper line of .growth.
For, also certain it is that this new impulse or intuition, however true and strong in itself, is still groping and erring and&nbsp;
miscarrying; it is still wasting much of its energy in tentative </font>

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Page 69<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">things, in mere experiments, in even clear failures. The fact
is that the intuition has not yet become an enlightened one,
it is still moving, as we shall presently explain, in the dark vital
regions of man. And vitalism is naturally and closely affianced
to pragmatism, that is to say, the mere vital impulse seeks immediately to execute itself, it looks for external effects, for
changes in the form, in the machinery only. Thus it is that we
see in art and literature discussions centred upon the scheme of
composition, as whether the new poetry should be lyrical or
dramatic, popular or aristocratic, metrical or free of metre,
and in practical life we talk of remodelling the state by new
methods of representation and governance, of purging society
by bills and legislation, of reforming humanity by a business
pact. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All this may be good and 
necessary, but there is the danger of leaving altogether out of account the one 
thing needful. We must then pause and turn back, look behind the apparent 
impulsion that effectuates to the Will that drives, behind the ideas and ideals 
of the mind to the soul that informs and inspires; we must carry ourselves up 
the stream and concentrate upon the original source, the creative intuition that
lies hidden somewhere. And then only all the new stirrings
.that we feel in our heart—our urges and ideals and visions
will attain an effective clarity, an unshaken purpose and an
inevitable achievement. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That is to say, the change has been in the &quot;soul of man himself, the being has veered round and taken a new orientation. It is this which one must envisage, recognise and consciously
possess, in order that one may best fulfil the call of the age. But
what we are doing instead is to observe the mere external
signs and symbols and symptoms, to fix upon the distant
quiverings, the echoes on the outermost rim, which are not
always faithful representations, but very often distorted images
of the truth and life at the centre and source and matrix. We
must know that if there has been going on a redistribution and
new marshalling of forces, it is because the fiat has come from
the Etat Major. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit
of the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed<b> </b> to </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 70</font><hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transform. We
know that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason.
Its great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if
you mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and
the humanists. Its motto was first, &quot;The proper study of mankind is man&quot; and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of
knowledge, the highest deity in man—<i>la Deesse Raison.</i> And
it is precisely against these two basic principles that the new,
age has entered its protest. In face of Humanism, Nietzsche
has posited the Superman and in face of Reason; Bergson has
posited Intuition. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The worship of man as something essentially and exclusively
human necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, <i>viz.</i> the
deification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism
go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that
is passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche
says, &quot;All our modern world is captured in the net of the
Alexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical man,
armed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original
ancestor is Socrates.&quot; Indeed, it may be generally asserted that
the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought
down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among
men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and
logical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality
and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far
wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been
moulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been
the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in
man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France
means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world
and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic
genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has 
been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented
mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected
that which transcends the mind—the spirit, the Gods and the
Beyonds. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; However, we are concerned more with the immediate past, </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 71</font><hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">the mentality that laid its supreme stress upon the human
rationality. What that epoch did not understand was that
Reason could be overstepped, that there was something higher,
something greater than Reason; Reason being the sovereign
faculty, it was thought there could be nothing beyond, unless
it were <i>deraison.</i> The human attribute par excellence is Reason.
Exactly so. But the fact is that man is not bound by his
humanity and that reason can be transformed and sublimated
into other more powerful faculties.&nbsp; </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Now, the question is, what is the insufficiency of Reason?
How does it limit man ? And what is the Superman into which
man is asked or is being impelled to grow ? </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Reason is insufficient and unsatisfactory because, as Bergson
explains, it does not and cannot embrace life as a whole, seize
man and the world in an integral realisation/The greater part
of the vast mystery of existence escapes its <i>envergure.</i> Reason is
that faculty which is for analysing, defining, classifying and
fixing things. It is a power that has grown in man in order that
he may best manipulate the things of the world. It is utilitarian,
practical in its nature and outlook. And as practical dealing
requires that things should be stable and separate entities,
therefore Reason cannot but see things in solid and in the fragments of a solid. It cuts up existence into distinct parts and
diverse elements; and these again it seeks to relate and aggregate, in accordance with what it calls &quot;laws&quot;. Such a process
has been necessary for man in conducting life and action
successfully. Originally a bye-product of active life. Reason
gradually separated itself and came finally to have an independent status and function, became or sought to become the
instrument of knowledge, of Truth. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But although Reason has been and is useful for the practical,
we may say almost, the manual aspect of life, life itself it leaves
unexplained and uncomprehended. For life is mobility, a
continuous flow that has nowhere any gap or stop and things
have in reality no isolated or separate existence, they merge
and mingle into one another and form an indissoluble whole.
Therefore the forms and categories that Reason imposes upon
existence are more or less arbitrary; they are shackles that seek
to bind up and limit life, but are often rent asunder in the very
effort. So the civilisation that has its origin in Reason and </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 72</font><hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">progresses with discoveries and inventions—devices for artfully
manipulating nature—has been essentially and preeminently
mechanical in its structure and outlook. It has become more
and more efficient perhaps, but less and less soul-inspired, less
and less endowed with the free-flowing sap of organic growth
and vitality. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the
principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason
is not the only, nor the best instrument. For animals have
properly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the
animal is Instinct—the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so
marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say 
that man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but 
certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self
conscious—illumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as
Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the Superman&nbsp;
has also a similar orientation and significance; for, according
to him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason,
who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The Superman is one
who has gone beyond &quot;good and evil,&quot; who has shaken off from
his nature and character elements that are &quot;human, all too
human&quot;—who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute
purity and strength and freedom. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This then is the <i>mantra</i> of the new age—Life 
with Intuition
as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not
Man but Superman. The right <i>mantra</i> has been found, the
principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the
application, does not seem to have been always happy. For,
Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious
lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man,
Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man.
According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme
sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who <i>lives dangerously.</i> 
All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over 
his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify 
them—but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean 
annihilation but it does mean sublimation and trans </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 73</font><hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">formation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to
transcend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very
characteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism
you do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your
humanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the
will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there
is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these
three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they
do it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and
in a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be
the man &quot;who has surmounted himself&quot;, must embody a poise
of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmony—a
perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but
it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal
opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the
forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to
fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord,
for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord
is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the
world. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to
create. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he
achieves—<i>&quot;God said 'let there be light' and there was light.''</i> </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As a matter of fact, the superman is not, as Nietzsche thinks
him to be, the highest embodiment of the biological force of
Nature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and
aristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of humanity
seem capable. For that is after all humanity only accentuated
in certain other fundamentally human modes of existence. It
does not carry far enough the process of surmounting. In reality
it is not a surmounting but a new channelling. Instead of the
ethical and intellectual man, we get the vital and aesthetic
man. It may be a change but not a transfiguration. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the faculty of Intuition said to be the characteristic of
the New Man does not mean all that it should, if we confine
ourselves to Bergson's definition of it. Bergson says that Intuition is a sort of <i>sympathy,</i> a community of feeling or sensibility
with the urge of the life-reality. The difference between the
sympathy of Instinct and the sympathy of Intuition being
that while the former is an unconscious or semiconscious
power, the latter is illumined and self-conscious. Now this view </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 7 4&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
</font>
<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman"><b>&nbsp;</b>emphasises only the feeling-tone of Intuition, the vital sensibility 
that attends the direct communion with the life movement. But Intuition is not only purified feeling and sensibility,
it is also purified vision and knowledge. It unites us not only
with the movement of life, but also opens out to our sight the
Truths, the fundamental realities behind that movement. Bergson does not, of course, point to any existence behind the
continuous flux of life-power—the elan vital. He seems to deny&nbsp;
any static truth or truths to be seen and seized in any scheme
of knowledge. To him the dynamic flow—the Heraclitian <i>panta reei</i> is the ultimate reality. It is precisely to this view of
things that Bergson owes his conception of Intuition. Since
existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know
it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its
current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting
of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the
question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth ? </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan
vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit.
And the Spirit is a static substance and at the same a dynamic
creative power. It is Being (<i>Sat</i>) that realises or expresses itself
through certain typal nuclei or nodi of consciousness <i>(chit)
</i>in a continuous becoming, in a flow of creative activity (<i>ananda).
</i>The dynamism of the vital energy is only a refraction or precipitation of the dynamism of the spirit; and so also static
matter is only the substance of the spirit concretised and
solidified. It is in an uplift both of matter and vital force to their
prototypes—<i>swarupa</i> and <i>swabhava—</i>in the Spirit that lies the
real transformation and transfiguration of the humanity of man. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age.
Not matter but that which forms the substance of matter, not
intellect but a vaster consciousness that informs the intellect,
not man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he
may and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that order—
this is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged,
nevertheless secretly inspires all the human activities of today.
Only, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms<br>
of vital life. The intellectual and physical man gave us one
aspect of the reality, but neither is the vital and psychical man </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 75</font><hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">the complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the
viewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural
and deeper movement of humanity and not as before merely
with its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of
humanity, in Nietzsche's phrase, was a sort of divagation from
nature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of
natural evolution. And the new Renaissance of today has
precisely corrected this aberration of humanity and brought<br>
it again in a line with the natural cosmic order. </font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the
change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism
which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means
the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the
physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence
of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its
levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different<br>
status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that
status—not a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus
but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the
Spirit—the incarnation of a godhead.&nbsp; </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">Page 76</font><hr>

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