... sort of triangular disposition of the higher or more subtle mentality which we have already had occasion to indicate. There is in our mentality a side of will, conduct, character which creates the ethical man; there is another side of sensibility to the beautiful,—understanding beauty in no narrow or hyper-artistic sense,—which creates the artistic and aesthetic man. Therefore there can be such a thing... satisfaction, repose or poetic ideality and aspiration,—we might almost say, by the hedonistic aspects of religion. Even when fully accepted, it is not for their own sake that he accepts them. The ethical man repays this natural repulsion with interest. He tends to distrust art and the aesthetic sense as something lax and emollient, something in its nature undisciplined and by its attractive appeals to... poetry, literature, the larger mental life, all the amenity and pleasure of human existence; their art of life excluded or discouraged the delight of living. They were distrustful, as the exclusively ethical man is always distrustful, of free and flexible thought and the aesthetic impulse. The earlier spirit of republican Rome held at arm's length as long as possible the Greek influences that invaded her ...
... not any balance of the greatest good of the greatest number, but simply the good of others and most widely the good of all is one ideal aim of our outgoing ethical practice; it is that which the ethical man would like to effect, if he could only find the way and be always sure what is the real good of all. But this does not help to regulate our ethical practice, nor does it supply us with its inner... no set of large governing principles such as it is sought to supply to our conduct by a true ethics. Nor can ethics at all or ever be a matter of calculation. There is only one safe rule for the ethical man, to stick to his principle of good, his instinct for good, his vision of good, his intuition of good and to govern by that his conduct. He may err, but he will be on his right road in spite of all... is felt by the secret spirit in us, is not usually or not at first conscious in the conscient normal part of our being which is the field of the struggle. The action Page 150 of the ethical man is not motived by even an inner pleasure, but by a call of his being, the necessity of an ideal, the figure of an absolute standard, a law of the Divine. In the outward history of our ascent this ...
... spiritual being. Thus we may observe that there was created a Yoga of knowledge for the self-exceeding of the thinking intellectual man, a Yoga of works for the self-exceeding of the active, dynamic and ethical man, a Yoga of love and bhakti for the self-exceeding of the emotional, aesthetic, hedonistic man, by which each arrived to perfection through a self-ward, spiritual, God-ward direction of his own special ...
... Consciousness either from birth or during life. Even Rama, whatever he may have inwardly known himself to be, never quite showed the Divine Consciousness; he was there to establish the dharma of the ethical man and acted out a moral ideal in a manner that suggested to everyone the superhuman. He never asked people to transcend the human consciousness and unite with the Divine. The Divine Consciousness as ...
... which have been established in the human consciousness and in the world atmosphere as dynamic ideals, if not as common concrete facts of the material Page 234 world. The first is the ethical man, who seeks to govern his life according to some principles of light and purity, such, for example, as unselfishness, altruism, chivalry, self-abnegation, rectitude, truthfulness etc. He is the Sattwic ...
... The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the elan of the ethical man,—the spiritual element, as a consciousness of supreme unity in the Absolute (Brahman) or of love and delight in God, serving Page 36 only as an atmosphere for the mortal activity ...
... because ethics is only a temporary stage in the growth of man toward a condition which can be called supra-ethical. The world has three layers as we see it : Infra-ethical, ethical, supra-ethical. Man has to outgrow the infra-ethical by organizing the ethical. What is infra-ethical in man is a lower harmony which puts him on a par with animals, with the inconscient world and with impulses, ...
... forms and motives. But whatever the actual practice of men,—and in this respect the normal human being is a singular mixture of the sincere but quite ineffective, the just respectable, would-be ethical man and the self-deceiving or semi-hypocritical Pharisee,—one can always appeal with force to a moralistic prejudice. All religions raise high the flag of morality and, whether religious or secular-minded ...
... any more than after an entirely ethical life. A more complete effort in any one of these directions it leaves to the individual, to the few, and to individuals of a special type, the saint, the ethical man, the artist, the thinker, the man of religion; it gives them a place, does some homage to them, assigns some room to the things they represent, but for itself it is content to follow mainly after ...
... greatest number, admits neither the hedonistic nor the utilitarian measure, but does simply the act as the thing to be done because it is right and virtue and therefore the very law of being of the ethical man, the categorical imperative of his nature. This kind of high absoluteness in the ethical demand is appalling to the flesh and the ego, for it admits of no comfortable indulgence and compromise ...
... The bias of the vital urge and of the moral imperative is apparent enough in the modernist conception of a dynamic spirituality. Fundamentally the dynamism is made to reside in the élan of the ethical man, – the spiritual element, as a consciousness of Page 21 supreme unity in the Absolute (Brahman) or of love and delight in God, serving only as an atmosphere for the mortal activity ...
... against God; it is an offence against morality, you can say. Virtue and vice are moral conceptions. MULSHANKAR: What type of Yogi is Gandhi, Sir? SRI AUROBINDO: Yogi? He is not a Yogi; he is an ethical man. MULSHANKAR: He is guided by voices. SRI AUROBINDO: Then everybody who is guided by voices would be a Yogi. Then all Quakers are Yogis. Those who are possessed by strong vital forces, good ...
... vital needs, utility, and desires of the body that a society lives. Society lives for desire, neither for religion nor for beauty. Only special individuals follow these high things - the saint, the ethical man, the artist, the thinker. Life seems to devote itself to efficiency in satisfying its vital desires. Life is a power of Being and its impulse is not merely to last but to assert, increase, ...
... Thus we may observe that there was created a Yoga of knowledge for the self-exceeding of the thinking intellectual man, a Yoga of works for the self-exceeding of the active, dynamic and ethical man, a Yoga of love and Bhakti for the self-exceeding of the emotional, aesthetic, hedonistic man, by which each arrived to perfection through a self-ward, spiritual. God-ward direction of his own special ...
... 19 For true culture, however, we have to go beyond sensationalism and philistinism and even civilisation. Culture is the cultivation of the inner countries of the mind and sensibility. But the ethical man and the aesthetic man - who flower in an age of culture - themselves need a sovereign third power to sustain and greaten them. This couldn't be Reason and the intelligent Will, although it has its ...
... and economic force; but it is only in a slight and undeveloped degree, if at all, an intellectual and ethical being. And unfortunately the chief use it makes of its undeveloped intellect is to blunt by fictions, catchwords and recently by State philosophies, its ill-developed ethical conscience. Man within the community is now at least a half-civilised creature, but his international existence is still... upon the vision and the conscience of mankind. The individual has usually something at least like a soul, and at any rate he makes up for the deficiencies of the soul by a system of morality and an ethical sense, and for the deficiencies of these again by the fear of social opinion or, failing that, a fear of the communal law which he has ordinarily either to obey or at least to circumvent; and even... blundering and evil with a certain amount of good which makes for real progress, because Nature moves forward always in the midst of all stumblings and secures her aims in the end more often in spite of man's imperfect mentality than by its means. But even if the governing instrument were better constituted and of a higher mental and moral character, even if some way could be found to do what ancient ...
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