Wisdom of today (part 2)

"Only by the Light and power of the highest can the lower be perfectly guided, uplifted and accomplished. (...) The spirital man who can guide human life towards its perfection is typified in the ancient Indian idea of the Rishi, one who has lived the life of man and found the world of the supra-intellectual, supramental, spiritual truth. He has risen above these lower limitations and can view all things from above, but also he is in sympathy with their effort and can view them from within, he has the complete inner knowledge and the higher surpassing knowledge. Therefore he can guide the world humanly as God guides it divinely, because like the Divine he is in the life of the world and yet above it. (...)

Spirituality respects the freedom of the human soul, because it is itself fulfilled by freedom; and the deepest meaning of freedom is the power to expand and grow towards perfection by the law of one's own nature, dharma. This liberty it will give to all the fundamental parts of our being. It will give that freedom to philosophy and science which ancient Indian religion gave, - freedom even to deny the spirit if they will, - as a result of which philosophy and science never felt in ancient India any necessity to divorce themselves from religion, but grew rather into it and under its light. It will give the same freedom to man's seeking for political and social perfection and to all his other powers and aspirations. Only it will be vigilant to illuminate them so that they may grow into the light and law of the spirit, self-controlled expansion and a many-sided finding of their greatest, highest and deepest potentialities. For all these are potentialities of the spirit."

Source: Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Ideal Of Human Unity, War and Self-determination, Religion as the Law of Life.