SRI AUROBINDO'S
LIFE DIVINE
Lectures delivered in the U.S.A.
A. B. PURANI
First Edition: 1966
Second Impression: 1989
Third Impression: 1997
ISBN 81-7058-142-7
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1966
Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department
Printed at Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry
PRINTED IN INDIA
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
During his American tour in 1962, Sri A. B. Purani delivered eighty-two lectures on the Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo at the Crescent Moon Center, Sedona. Part of these, were on The Life Divine, the magnum opus of Sri Aurobindo. These lectures (July 2-August 9)were followed by Questions and Answers in the study-group. Thanks to the keen interest taken by the hosts, Mrs. Lois and Mr. Nicholas G. Duncan, all the proceedings were tape- ecorded. The contents of this volume are compiled from those records.
A talk on the Origin of Ignorance by the author has been appended to this collection though it was not part' of this programme, as it is very relevant to the subject-matter covered in these pages.
Lecture I
Chap. 1. The Human Aspiration
Chap. 2. The Two Negations : The Materialist Denial
When I first read the Life Divine it came as a great intellectual architecture and I thought it was so, perhaps, because I was so much impressed by it. But later on I met Dr. S. K. Maitra who first came to pay his respects to Sri Aurobindo in Pondi-cherry, and he did not come as a disciple. He came as a devotee and an admirer. I asked him how it was that a philosopher like him was so taken up with The Life Divine and how was it that he got the conviction from The Life Divine. He said : "As a young man in college I was faced with the alternative of choosing a voluntary subject; I wanted to know the Reality, the ultimate Truth. But I wanted to know it only by my intellect, by my mind. I did not want to give up my mind and accept anything. So, with that object I chose philosophy as my voluntary subject; I believed that in philosophy all human minds have tried to know the Reality, know the Truth, know whatever is the Ultimate and have tried to formulate it in terms of mind. And I went through all of them." In fact he was a very sincere student of philosophy, one of the rare type. Philosophy now has become a profession, and also a career. There are philosophers and philosophers. There are philosophers who are careerists, there are philosophers who are interested in ideas and philosophers who seek promotion through their work and philosophers who form coteries. But to seek the Truth through philosophy is now a very rare phenomenon and I found Dr. Maitra an exception among philosophers. Because he told me that when he was studying the philosophers, he read them in the original language so as not to miss anything that they had to say. He said he found
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some truth in all the great philosophies. The philosophers had perceived a Truth, a Reality and given it a logical form and system. There were differences among them but he could see that they had felt a Reality, a Truth but the nature of that Reality was not clear to him across their differences.
"When The Life Divine The Life Divine was published in the book form in 1939, I went through it like a student preparing for this examination. I read it at a stretch, I could not leave it. When I had finished reading I said to myself: it was good that I took philosophy. Here is somebody who allows full freedom to my intellect, answers all my questions and builds up a picture of Reality which no other philosopher has ever done. I could stand on my intellect and look at the Reality he points out and know its functions, its relation to man, to mind, to life, to the universe. It is an intellectual architecture like an ivory tower, solid and beautiful, having the golden coping of the Supermind which satisfied me. I know, intellectually, now why the world exists, why man is here, why matter is and what man has to attain in life. That is why I have come to pay my respects to the great teacher who satisfied my fife-long seeking."
This aspect of The Life Divine that Dr. S. K. Maitra described struck me as something great. And since then, whenever I have thought about this problem I have looked upon The Life Divine as the harbinger of a new age. I have spoken already of the nature of this New Age in one of my talks at Sedona, but I again say that The Life Divine is the declaration which ushers in a new age for humanity. It is the dawn of a new age, an age in which man will consciously go beyond the attained formula of his nature, an age in which man will establish in himself, by constant effort of individual and groups, a new faculty which has not yet become constantly active in humanity, a faculty which is greater than Mind, which is self-existent knowledge, in which knowledge and will are not
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divided and where Truth is not a stranger. That faculty will be established in mankind when the Dawn of the new age has actually worked out what it signifies, what it means. But this work has already established the necessity of the new age and gives the rationale of it. It is like a vast architecture in which you walk from room to room and forget the room which you left and even may lose your way. It is like the labyrinth through which you are led to a solution of the labyrinth. And you walk down and you ask : where was it that I was lost ? And what did he prove ? And what did he disprove ? It is a very complex structure,—very rich, very detailed and the arguments and the logic with which it deals are so subtle, so wide and so radical that one is required to readjust, sometimes, one's mind in order to catch fully all that The Life Divine
The first thing that strikes you is that it does not speak of divine life but of "Life Divine". So the insistence at the dawn of that new age is on "Life",—and the possibility of its transformation. Life human is there, the book establishes the possibility of the transformation of life-human into The Life-divine. The insistence is on life which is a term of expression of the Divine. That is how we look at this great book. It wants to take hold of life, consider life as the main element to deal with. And it tries to show how life can be turned into divine life. Now the fact that he points out is that this life as manifested in man has an aspiration. Life as manifested on earth and in the human being, in humanity—as a group and individuals-has an aspiration for perfection. And this aspiration for perfection is contradicted by the actual experience. Man feels the need of perfection; necessarily, he aspires for perfection, but in actual life he does not attain perfection. The actual life contradicts his aspiration and therefore there are people who say : one should not try to
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the theory and not quite complete in its scope or composed on a preconceived and well-ordered plan it was not published in book-form and is therefore not yet available to the reading public. It was accompanied by a number of renderings of the hymns of the Rig Veda which were rather interpretations than translations and to these there was an introduction explanatory of the "Doctrine of the Mystics". Subsequently there was planned a complete translation of all the hymns to Agni in the ten Mandalas which kept close to the text; the renderings of those hymns in the second and sixth Mandalas are now published in this book for the first time as well as a few from the first Mandala. But to establish on a scholastic basis the conclusions of the hypothesis it would have been necessary to prepare an edition of the Rig Veda or of a large part of it with a word by word construing in Sanskrit and English, notes explanatory of important points in the text and justifying the interpretation both of separate words and of whole verses and also elaborate appendices to fix firmly the rendering of key-words like ṛtaṁ, śravas, kratu, ketu,
This is a literary and not a strictly literal translation,
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But a fidelity to the meaning, the sense of the word? and the structure of the thought, has been preserved : in fact the method has been to start with a bare and scrupulously exact rendering of the actual language and adhere to that as the basis of the interpretation; for it is only so that we can find out the actual thoughts of these ancient mystics. But any rendering of such great poetry as the hymns of the Rig Veda, magnificent in their colouring and images, noble and beautiful in rhythm, perfect in their diction, must, if it is not to be a merely dead scholastic work, bring at least a faint echo of their poetic force—more cannot be done in a prose translation and in so different a language. The turn of phrase and the syntax of English and Vedic Sanskrit are poles asunder; to achieve some sense of style and natural writing one has constantly to turn the concentrated speech of the Veda into a looser, more diluted English form. Another stambling-block for the translator is the ubiquitous double entendre marking in one word the symbol and the thing symbolised, Ray and Cow, clear light of the mind and clarified butter, horses and spiritual power; one has to invent phrases like the "herds of the light" or "the shining herds" or to use devices such as writing the word horse with a capital H to indicate that it is a symbolic horse that is meant and not the common physical animal; but very often the symbol has to be dropped, or else the symbol has to be kept and the inner meaning left to be understood;1 I have not always used the same phrase though always keeping the same sense, but varied the translation according to the needs of the passage. Often I have been unable to find an adequate English word which will convey the full connotation or colour of the original text; I have used two words instead of one or a phrase or resorted to some other device to give the exact and complete meaning. Besides, there is often a use of antique words or turns of
1 The Rishis sometimes seem to combine two different meanings in the same word; I have occasionally tried to render this double sense.
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become perfect, because it will always be impossible. The perfection of the ideal will be there and man's imperfection will always be here. Therefore this aspiration for perfection is unattainable. It is there to make you restless, to make you feel that you have to do something but you never arrive at what you think you must do. Perfection will never be attained. This is one of the difficulties. And they say that the present constitution of man is such that he cannot become perfect. His mind, his senses, his body—all that is given to him, the knowledge that he has is so limited that you cannot expect with his present instrumentation that man could become perfect. How can man become perfect with his body, his sense, his mind, his emotions, his impulses, his desires, his ego—all these, how can they lead him to perfection ?
Sri Aurobindo by way of answering asks us to look at Nature. There you find that when you find something contradictory, an idea which is perfect and an actuality which is imperfect, that is itself Nature's method of working out an ultimate harmony. You cannot say that because it is contradicted now by actual experience therefore it is impossible. Man has progressed by trying to create harmony between that perfection and the actuality. He has always moved like that. When nature presents man with a contradiction it means that he has to solve it, and has not to be satisfied with it. If man is satisfied with contradiction as he finds it, he does not progress. The present contradiction cannot therefore be taken to be final. At one time the mastery over Nature was inconceivable but now man has actually established it. It was impossible to cross the sea. It has now become possible to cross the sea. It was impossible to fly in the air. It has now become possible to fly in the air. It was impossible to drive a vehicle without a horse or a bullock. It has become possible to do so now. So, it only means that man has to evoke faculties, powers, capacities in him, in order to attain
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the perfection which he envisages. It is not that he is condemned to remain confined to his present constitution. He has to evoke powers, faculties, capacities of mind, of life, of search, of discovery, of reason and try to find out. He cannot rest at his present level. Movement toward perfection is possible.
Now, that brings the question as to how life has come into being. Is life the result of Matter, of the Inconscient Energy ? Life seems to arise from the inconscient energy, and this life again gives rise to Mind. Why should the Inconscient give rise to something that is conscious, unless, as he says, you accept that when life comes out of matter, or the inconscient, it was involved already there in some form of potentiality, in some form of itself. Life must have been there in the inconscient matter. It is then that it can come into being. Mind, when it comes out of Life, must have been in matter already involved before evolution from matter to life, from life to mind could take place. Then he says, the question what is life matter is not settled. People believed at one time that the scientists could explain what is matter. It was I think fifty years back in the last century that the scientists actually said and claimed that they would reveal what matter is because matter is something which they can know, they would know and they did know. Spirit, they did not accept, consciousness they did not believe in. Soul they had no proof of, God was far from their acceptance. They said : these things we do not know, man imagines these things; these are subjective. But the world is objective, Matter is something objective and we can know matter because we can touch it, see it, weigh it, subject it to experiment, and to change and then note the processes and the results. We can deal with matter as it is under our control. Matter we accept because our senses bear evidence of the existence of matter. We can find out its constitution and reveal what is matter. Now at the end of one
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hundred and fifty years of research and discovery the scientists are as far from telling us what matter is as they were at the beginning of the century. They have told us how matter behaves or what we can do with the processes of matter. It is true they have revealed many processes. They have given us hypotheses, one after another, but they have not told us what matter is.
It might be, as Sri Aurobindo puts it, that matter is a form of veiled life. And what again is life ? Life perhaps, as he says in The Life Divine,
So the aspiration then gains a certain validity. Aspiration becomes justifiable. Matter is veiled life, life veiled action or form of consciousness and mind is veiled form of something beyond mind feeling the need of perfection, immortality, God or Light, freedom. Now you can say, if you look at the process of growth that seems to have taken place, that man has evolved from the animal consciousness. In fact, he says in The Life Divine, that "animal is the laboratory in which Nature has worked out man. Then man himself can be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation, Nature wills to work out God or to manifest God".
Man, and his reason or intelligence cannot order or beg Nature to stop at a certain stage. He cannot say to Nature : you cannot go beyond. At a given stage of evolution we cannot
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condemn her as perverse, or call it a disease or a hallucination when we find that Nature through man is trying to give evidence of her intention to go beyond, or makes an actual effort to go beyond the present formula which is man. If the materialists find a phenomena which they cannot explain at the time scientifically they say it is a mistake, or a hallucination, or a superstition, or humbug. Even the best and most advanced scientists have become wedded to their own way of thinking like the pandits or the superstitious people or the religious bigots.
Actually this happened to Sir William Crooks, a great scientist in England in the last century. Sir William Crooks wanted to demonstrate certain phenomena of supra-rational causation to the Royal Society of Scientists in England. And the Society unanimously refused to look at the phenomena because science cannot encourage or understand or accept phenomena which are not subject to their way of looking at things. Sir William Crooks argued and tried to persuade the Society that he was not explaining anything. He told them that he had no explanation for the phenomena but the phenomena took place on the material plane and as they were dealing with the material plane and physical phenomena, it was within their right to take cognizance of what was happening. They refused. It was then that he was compelled to start the Psychic Research Society of London. There were eminent intellectuals and scientists who joined that body. The medium of the phenomena was a lady who used to be possessed by a vital being, and that vital being was capable of handling material things in such a way as to defy all the laws of physical science. The lady was lifted out of her chair to the ceiling directly without any intervening medium. There are so many facts which he recounts in his first report of the Psychic Research Society of London. It only shows that man cannot stop Nature at a
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certain stage and condemn everything that defies the tenants of physical science.
Now, to some extent the scientists have begun to learn about these phenomena in the realm of what they call parapsychology. They have been admitting the necessity of going beyond strictly material evidence by positing the possibility of things which happen beyond the range of senses by calling it para-psychology. It is a good admission and the first opening of a gate, perhaps, which will flood all their so-called limited knowledge and carry away the limitations in which they want to confine the knowledge of man only to Matter and to processes evolved by scientists.
There are standpoints that insist on utility and practicability as the most important elements of life. Such questions as perfection, God, consciousness are regarded as impractical. But we know that Nature in the inconscient world tries to bring about changes haphazardly and with lot of waste. So, we should not say: we shall not seek anything more. We should be prepared for change in our own nature. Sri Aurobindo says that the way out is to accept what Nature is trying to do haphazardly in the human being and organise the knowledge of the process of self-exceeding and help Nature in her work by conscious cooperation. One can begin by accepting the possibility in case one finds it rational. The Life Divine gives the rationale.
Now in the second chapter the opposition between Spirit and Matter is dealt with. There is an opposition between Spirit and Matter; and there is belief that the Spirit inhabits this bodily mansion. It is the Spirit that is really the living entity in the cosmos. And then the question is what is Matter. If we look at the problem as a whole then we have to admit that Matter is a fit and noble material which the Spirit weaves constantly as his own garb. He says in The Life Divine
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ending series of his own mansions". Matter is therefore in one sense a noble and fit material for the Spirit to make a garb for himself, to build his own multiple unending series of mansions. In fact the Upanishads declared long ago : "Matter itself is Brahman. Matter is the infinite." Matter is not Inconscient. When man speaks of them—Matter and Spirit—as though they were in opposition they forget that they are the two ends of the one indivisible Reality. At one end the human mind senses the Spirit, at the other end it senses Matter. There is an ascending series by which one seems to the human mind and sense to pass over into the other. But there is no contradiction, Matter itself is the spirit involved, or with a mask, so to say; and Spirit is holding all the potentialities of Matter within itself. There is a complete indivisible series from Matter to Spirit: Matter to Life, to Mind, to Supermind, to the Spirit is a graded scale or a hierarchy.
Some say the pure Spirit is real but Matter is mechanical, inert, unconscious, therefore unreal. Not knowing the hierarchy which connects one with the other and ignorant of the truth that God is immanent already in Nature, they put God and Nature in opposition to each other; God, Supremely Conscious Nature, absolutely inconscient. Now Sri Aurobindo says that if you accept this opposition of God versus Nature; then if you turn to God, you turn away from Nature. Accept Nature then you deny God. Thus you arrive at the exclusion so to say, not to the harmony and the reconciliation.
There are spiritual people, who believe the Spirit as the only Reality. To them the Absolute is the Real. The materialist, on the contrary, denies the Spirit and to him Matter alone is real. He denies the reality of the Spirit and affirms the reality of Matter only. To deny the spirit, to deny consciousness is easy, for the materialist the task is comparatively easy because matter is overpoweringly evident to the senses.
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For a thorough materialist to prove the reality of Matter is a simple process. He can say Matter is real and Force is real. But if you ask him what is Matter or what is Force then he will be compelled to say it is unknowable; it is something which he does not yet know but which he believes is real. Sri Aurobindo shows in this chapter that a reconciliation and a synthesis is possible. They are not two opposites in contradiction at work; the contradictions are only in the mind. Spirit and Matter being the extreme ends of the Reality carry a sense of concreteness to the human being. But the intermediate terms of the series cannot satisfy ultimately the sense of Reality in man. There are systems of thought that want man to rest with some working of Life-force, others propound some mental ultimate. But they can hardly inspire for long the human Spirit because it longs for something concrete. The systems of thought that posit an Unknowable or advocate an agnostic attitude would not satisfy man's seeking. Such philosophies take as final man's present nature.
They do not admit that man can develop in himself, evolve into himself, other instruments of knowledge and consciousness. If you take man as fixed in his present psychological constitution then naturally many things are impossible for him. But as in trying to find the potentiality of Matter man did not limit the field of experiment and experience, the same holds good for his mental and vital consciousness. One should not arbitrarily say that certain things cannot happen. One must leave the field open for experiment and experience. What is this whole universal energy ? One would say it is unknowable, something that you cannot know. A boundless movement is at work on various planes, a complex movement,—on the plane of mind, on the plane of matter, on the plane of life—millions and millions of forces are at work. Now what is this Unknowable which cannot be
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The Author
known ? Sri Aurobindo says it escapes description and that is at present unknowable but it may be attainable. You may know it not by mind but by attaining it. It is possible therefore to take up an attitude in which the denial of the materialist and the refusal of the ascetic are both reconciled. The denial of the materialist exists powerfully in European culture. The refusal of the ascetic was powerful in cultures like the Indian where the Spirit was accepted as Reality and life was dubbed at one time an illusion.
If one sees from the intellectual the rational standpoint, then both Matter as well as Spirit are unknowable. Mind does not know Matter; mind cannot know Spirit. And if the materialist proceeds on the premise that the present constitution is the only possible constitution of man, that the sole means available are physical senses and the reason, and if one confines himself to that, then of course there is no solution. If you are tempted to go beyond your sense and your reason then you are told that it is not possible. What to do with those faculties and powers which are more powerful than the senses, more powerful than reason ? How can we, all the time, negate the possibility of developing faculties and powers which are more powerful than our senses and more effective than our reason ? That is the question. And therefore the evoking of faculties and powers potential but dormant now in man, is a necessary condition to man's solving his own problems. The latent faculties which are in all human beings are not the special privilege of only a particular class or of individuals. They are possible and potential in all mankind.
To prove the existence and working of those new faculties there is a vast field of evidence. It is not as if you are called upon to accept superstition or mere imagination. Facts are there which hit one on the head, which one cannot refuse to accept. I mean the phenomenon of hypnotism or telepathy
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or thought-communications or cure by will or transference of will from one point to another or knowing somebody's thought; these phenomena occur. Even what you call reading the future, the phenomenon of prophecy, takes place, or a correct apprehension of things before they happen, either by a subtle vital perception or dream. Dream communication has actually preceded the actual occurrence on the physical plane. So that there are a number of facts which are there to show that there are dormant faculties in man. These are not spiritually the highest faculties but these definitely prove that the present sense-apparatus and reason are not the only instruments available to man. And there are facts and things that happen actually on the physical plane which prove the existence and action of these faculties.
Sri Aurobindo is so synthetic in his outlook that he admits that even this rationalistic attitude or rational materialism has rendered a great service to spirituality itself in the sense that it has tried to make the path clear, to organise the whole effort and refuse to accept superstition and imagination and wishful thinking. He admits that a clear, pure and disciplined intellect is necessary even for spiritual life. And this is a great admission by Sri Aurobindo and he kept to it most faithfully throughout his life. How a pure and disciplined intellect, a great balance in the mind is necessary even for true spiritual life is examplified in Sri Aurobindo's own life. In 1920, when I met him for the second time I asked him: "What are you waiting for ?"—for, the Divine Consciousness was already there in him. He never wanted to declare his divinity. The answer he gave was characteristic of his impersonality and wonderful balance of mind. He said: "The divine is there, but the divine consciousness has yet to descend into and transform the whole of nature and until the physical is transformed the work of the Divine is not done." Anyone else, less capable than he, would have run away with the certitude,
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'the Divine is there, everything is done'. But the pure disciplined intellect can perceive how much more is yet to be done.
The same balance and impersonality marked his silent spiritual help during the Second World War. To me he appeared the living example of how the Divine silently helps the world. Nobody in the world knew anything about it. We know something about it because we were near him. But it was some years afterwards (when the War was over)—that he made a mention of it in order to bring home to the human mind the possibility of using other powers and forces than the physical and the material. He never claimed any personal credit for it, and he had clarity of vision to note that it was not the Supramental that was working but the Divine Consciousness through the Overmind instrument. If the supreme Supermind intervened the result would be immediate success of the Divine Will without any chance for intervening possibilities. Even the Overmind is a powerful force and when it acts in a complex of forces it is strong enough to mould events, it can drive the course of events to the divinely intended direction and bring the success of the Divine Will near in time.1
The Overmind can do it because it is a cosmic power and more than a cosmic power. The Upanishad admitted not only the Brahman but also the earth as the basis of manifestation. The Upanishad says : Earth is the foothold of the Spirit; it is that on which it stands. What is this universe ? If you
1 A professor in a letter expresses surprise that some disciples worship Sri Aurobindo. The question is: Should one accept the Divine when one finds him ? Why should one refuse the Divine when one finds him ? It is often egoism and vanity that refuses to accept the Divine when he is found. He never wanted worship—if anything, he was the most reticent person one could find. There is, nothing wrong in sincere worship offered to the Divine in whatever form,—on the contrary, it is a great spiritual help.
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look at this universe you will find that it is a symbol of an unknowable Reality, an appearance of some unknowable Reality. And when that unknowable Reality becomes real to you, you cannot put it in terms of mind. You cannot express it in language. The first necessity is you must have a universal outlook and you must not have a narrow vision. If you look at each tree, you miss the forest. So, you look at the whole thing then you see it as some unknowable Reality.
But when that unknowable becomes Real, you cannot express it, you cannot put in thought or terms of speech. What does one mean when one says the thing is unknowable ? Does it mean absolutely unknowable ? No. It only means : not knowable by thought, not knowable by reason, not knowable by speech. You cannot put it within the field of thought. It is outside the field of thought and perhaps covers thought but you cannot bring it in and include it in thought, reason, and speech. If the consciousness makes an effort, it can attain that which is unknowable to thought, unknowable to mind, unknowable to senses, unknowable to speech. It is consciousness that must make the effort, because consciousness is not only mind, consciousness is not only body, consciousness is not only senses. Consciousness is that which uses the mind, the life, the nervous system, it uses the body. Now, if that consciousness makes an effort then that which to the mind, to the senses and to the speech is unattainable, can be attained. There is no reason why it should not be attained by an effort of consciousness, But suppose consciousness acts and attains the Reality, what is the sign ? What is the sign it has attained ? What is the positive proof that consciousness by making a great effort,—by concentration, development, enlargement, expansion, widening, etc.,— attains that unknowable Reality, how does one know it ? The proof of the pudding is in the taste, in the eating of it. When one has attained the Reality there is complete
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revaluation of life. For instance, before he attains it man is ignorant, when he attains it he knows. Ramakrishna Parama-hansa, an unlettered villager who could not sign his name even in Bengali language, when he attains That he has a knowledge which is far more than any university scholar. So that which is attainable is proved by instances where one who attains undergoes a radical transformation and there is a revaluation of his whole individual life. The way in which he looked at the world before and the way in which he perceives it after are not the same. That is what makes the difficulty of spiritual persons. For instance, somebody says, "This man is bad". The spiritual man says, "There is a bad tendency in Nature; there is no bad man. Universal nature has some tendency which is low. That's all." And there are so many things like that. There is revaluation, the way of looking from the spiritual point of view is absolutely different because once you contact that Reality the individual constitution undergoes a change and there is a revaluation of the whole apparatus of man's cognizance of things. He acts and perceives differently. Even there Sri Aurobindo says he must keep his intellect clear. He must have a clear, pure and disciplined intellect even when there has been a revaluation. Sri Aurobindo never looked at the world as people do but when anybody met him he found him a perfect gentleman, very nice, very polite. They never could know that they had met a person who lived in the Divine, in the supreme Reality. Some might find it, in fact, many felt, who had never believed in God. Yes, but he never said anything. And the most surprising part of it is that in 1918 when I was in Pondicherry, a lady, junior, to him in age, Saraladevi Choudhurani, came to see him. I was sitting there at one corner and when she came Sri Aurobindo got up from his chair as a sign of respect for her. I was surprised. She was a very good public worker. But he was senior in age and entitled to respect.
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When you attain that consciousness, you should also keep a perfect balance. You don't lose anything of ordinary values of life and you know what is proper and what is improper.
The divine manifestation is a harmony, not a dazzling and inexplicable miracle. It is not something extraordinary and queer. It is an ordered rhythm of divine life that has to be brought into life. An ordered rhythm which is irresistible; you can create that only by living that life inside and by disciplining the whole instrumentation to manifest the Divine only. That is the necessity. A revolution of the inner and perhaps that of the outer life. Sri Aurobindo says : the unknowable is not the unattainable. To the Unknowable there are always faculties in man that correspond by which it can be known. When we say something is unknowable that means we have to bring into existence capacities by which it can be known. There is a subtle universe as there is the gross. He says in his epic 'Savitri' that "this world is a fragment and a residue." It is a fragment of the whole and the residue of the process. Man who is the epitome of the world contains within him elements of the whole, therefore all the contours and curvatures of the whole are in him. He is the residue and in the residue all the elements of the whole process are present. There are powers in the fragment and the residue that make it possible to attain the unknowable. Only man is not compelled to develop all these faculties. He has voluntarily to choose to develop them or not. You are quite free. Nobody compels. That's what I told the boys at Lake Tahoe. One of the questions the boys had put was :— What is God ? So I told them : I give you one definition of God : God is the greatest democrat I have ever known because he never interferes into anybody's affair. He leaves you alone. He interferes only when you vote for him, when you choose him. In the same way one is free to awaken and develop the faculties or not. If you awaken them then there is a discipline, there is a work to be done, a hard work to be done, but the reward is great.
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Questions and Answers
Q : Isn't it only the will (grace) of the Lord and Mother that chooses ?
A : No, there are two parts of sadhana,—spiritual effort. The yogic life in Sri Aurobindo's path is divided into two parts : the personal effort and the Divine Grace. Personal effort is to be done by the individual and not by the Divine; aspiration, rejection and surrender are within the field of the individual effort. But to bring perception, to develop power, to give him the Truth, to give him the cosmic consciousness, to give him the experience of the transcendent consciousness, to give him the transformation, to bring the four-fold transformation and all the perfection of the Divine Power, is the work of the Divine Grace. That one cannot claim. One cannot say :"I did sadhana therefore I must have grace." The Divine is not interested in you as such; He has to do some work and he can utilise a Churchill, or a Roosevelt, if it suits Him, to carry some work through. But the advantage of the yogic life is the consciousness of the Divine grace. One is in contact while a great Churchill may not be in contact. He is ignorant while a yogi can be a man of knowledge whose small work for the divine done consciously is greater than the work which Churchill does unconsciously for the Divine. The unconscious work of a Churchill is good from the divine point of view, for the world but this work which the yogi does is necessary to raise the world to the Divine. Man has awakened only his reasoning faculty and developed his sciences to-day but when he is tired of it, perhaps, he will try to go into other fields and perhaps then he will find that there are realms of experience possible to
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him in other fields than material science. And that is a good sign because this materialism or the practical reason and the scientific attitude today is trying to acquire knowledge, more and more knowledge. That means it is trying to know the truth; by knowledge it means knowledge of Truth. And it goes on trying to acquire more and more knowledge. This very push will carry it beyond the limits of Matter, as they came to atom-fission all of a sudden. They kept on pushing, pushing, suddenly they found that even in Matter there is a power which they did not think was possible in it. This very push of trying to know more will take them beyond the limits of scientific effort. Today, even materialistic intellect believes in monism, (advaita) of Matter : Matter alone exists. They forget that Matter is a formation of some unknown force and we will find that it is not only Matter but it is energy. There is one energy at bottom; it firmly establishes itself in three forms : Matter, another Life, third Mind. One energy one seed, He manifests in many ways : In many ways it multiplies. So one cosmic energy manifests itself in triple form. That same energy takes the form of matter or material energy, takes the form of life and life-energy, takes the form of mind and mind-energy. And when you say energy, it is a conscious power. It cannot be unconscious energy which takes form in life and mind, particularly. This energy has a will. This will in man becomes will for infinite life, will for absolute or unlimited knowledge. This very energy now finds expression in man's mind, in his mental energy. In the life of man this energy wants to attain infinite life, infinite delight. This infinite energy, when it manifests itself in mind wants to attain perfect knowledge. It wants to attain a kind of perfection which it has not yet attained. So it is that will which is trying to work out through the triple form and attain some end which is intended for it. And this very will is working through science,—
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through material sciences. Science is now trying to control life; in many countries Governments have introduced birth-control. Doctors are trying to eliminate disease. This will is already working towards a kind of conquest though the agents who do the work are not conscious of it and which, if it becomes conscious in man, must sooner or later lead him to the opening of a new faculty and a new consciousness. A terrestrial omnipotence for humanity is the aim of the mastery of Matter. Sri Aurobindo says in The Life Divine that the scientist is trying to create for man a terrestrial omnipotence. In fact, man has become omnipotent so far as the earth is concerned. He can destroy germs, he can destroy animals, he can destroy vegetation, he can fly to other bodies in the heavens. He has become for practical purposes the ruler of the earth and so there is actually the terrestrial omnipotence for humanity today. Humanity is omnipotent so far as the earth is concerned. It can do what it likes—only the nations go on fighting with each other, otherwise it can just do what it likes to to do, today. While this has not come into being yet it has advanced so far that space and time have been reduced to the vanishing point. You start on the 20th and go to a place on the 19th ! Even science has done it, it wants to make man the master of circumstances and to make him outgrow his limits,—to overcome causality, if he can. Of course, he does not do it individually. Today scientific research is done in collective groups. It is not possible for an individual to do it. Collectivity must take advantage of scientific progress and apply it so that it is now the result of the groups. An individual is only a means to make this collective progress possible. But this scientific will or this will to increase knowledge in the collectivity— is it conscious ? In the collective, it is not conscious. The group does not think of scientific progress. The group only takes hold of the advantage which the individual gives
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to it by progressing. So this will is not conscious in the collectivity of mankind but something beyond the collectivity is dictating. And this cosmic impulse to increase knowledge is what the modern scientist is serving without knowing—the cosmic impulse to make man realise the omnipotent power, and rule the terrestrial life. And this the modern scientist is trying to do without knowing it.
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Lecture II
Chap. 3. The Two Negations : the Refusal of the Ascetic
Chap. 4. Reality Omnipresent
Chap. 5. The Destiny of the Individual Chap.
6. Man in the Universe
I will read a quotation from a book written by Mr. G.H. Langley who was the Vice-Chancellor at the Dacca University and who, on his retirement was asked by the Royal India-Pakistan-Ceylon Society to write a book on Sri Aurobindo. The Society published the book under the heading Sri Aurobindo, Indian Poet, Philosopher and Mystic. In that book Mr. Langley writes: "Sri Aurobindo is both a poet and a speculative thinker. The same is true of Rabindranath Tagore but the thought of Sri Aurobindo appears to me more comprehensive and systematic than that of Tagore." I use this comparison just to show that students of philosophy, without becoming devotees or disciples of Sri Aurobindo, have given him a place in their arrangement of philosophycal contribution which I think the ordinary man should notice.
There are such persons who do not belong to Sri Aurobindo's group of disciples or devotees. Here is another whom I think you know very well, Dr. Frederic Spiegel-berg of Stanford University. He wrote, "I have never known a philosopher so all-embracing in his metaphysical structure as Sri Aurobindo. None before him had the same vision. I can foresee the day when the teachings which are already making headway of the greatest spiritual voice of India, Sri Aurobindo, will be known all over America and be a vast power of illumination." This gives us a good start when we can feel that it is not at all a one-sided view that we are trying to take up and advocate.
When I spoke yesterday, I spoke of Sri Aurobindo's contribution
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as the Dawn of a new age. And today I would like to begin by giving some historical background. In the first decade of the present century, there was a profound stirring of the spirit of India "the Swadeshi Movement" as we call it. It was the beginning of the movement for Indian Independence.
It might be difficult for a reader of The Life Divine, the great philosophical work, today to imagine that its author was one of the very few nationalist leaders in those stormy days of Indian politics. When one takes up The Life Divine one imagines the author as a philosopher sitting in his cabin thinking of world problem. One would hardly know that he was a very great dynamic leader of an all-India stature.
It was during his detention, while under trial as a political revolutionary in 1908, that he got the second crucial experience of Yoga which became the turning point of his life. In a certain sense it was an epoch-making experience and he gave expression to it at a meeting in Uttarpara, in 1909. This spiritual experience in jail turned his mind to a problem of far greater magnitude than the winning of the freedom of the country. Subsequently, though invited several times to lead the political movement, he politely declined the honour because of his single-minded devotion to the pursuit of spiritual problem of man.
I give this historical background in order to bring to your mind the fact that The Life Divine is not an armchair philosophy, it is not a mere academic product. It is the result of the earnest and single-minded search for Truth extending over forty years by one of the foremost intellectuals of our times. It is important to note that the author not merely thought but lived the vision of the Reality and it is the solid work done for many years that has enabled him to make a lasting contribution to the thought and life of humanity. It is necessary that the present generation should be made
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aware of so great and valuable a contribution because that would enable it to solve the problems of today and of the future.
The Life Divine ushers in the dawn of the new age. We are told by many leaders of thought today that we are living in an atomic age, in the space age, in the age of cosmonauts, the age of technical advance and it seems at first sight natural that it should be so called because it has brought about and is even now bringing about in the individual and collective life vast changes by showing the possibilities of ameliorating the material conditions of the masses by technology all over the world. Man has been enabled to establish himself as the undisputed king among creatures of earth and he is expanding his physical consciousness to outer space as his domain. Mind has succeeded in mastering material energy by the knowledge of its processes.
Even with regard the control of mind over material energies, Sri Aurobindo laid down, long ago, a fundamental principle, indicating the nature of the new age of conquest even of Matter, conquest not dependent always on gross physical means and processes but the conquest of Matter by the Spirit. The control that man has attained over Nature at present is the control of mind and of life-force, which are in themselves not final realities but instruments of the Spirit. He writes in The Life Divine: "There is always a limit and an encumbrance; the limit of the material field in knowledge and encumbrance of the material machinery in power. But here also the latest scientific trend is highly significant of a freer future. As the outposts of scientific knowledge- come more and more to be set on the borders that divide the material from the immaterial, so also the highest achievements of practical science are those which tend to simplify and to reduce to the vanishing point the machinery by which the greatest effects are produced. Wireless
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telegraphy is Nature's exterior sign and pretext or a new orientation, the sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of the physical force is removed. It is only preserved at the points of impulsion and reception. Eventually even these must disappear, for when the laws and forces of the supraphysical are studied with the right starting-point the means will infallibly be found for mind directly to seize on physical energy to speed it accurately upon its errand. There once you bring yourself to recognize it, lie the gates that open upon the enormous vistas of future."
Now this quotation from The Life Divine shows how he envisages the still greater progress of man's conquest over Matter, not merely by mind but directly by the action of the Spirit. But man, the mental being, because of his blind desires, impulses, passions, ambitions, greed, and ego, is slave of ignorance. The advance in technique has given rise to a tendency to increase his needs and to raise the standard of living, as it is called. There is a tendency to multiply the gadgets for his comfort and it is slowly changing the values of life by promoting the false notion that the physical is the only Real. Such exclusive concentration on mere material advance is not enough to create a perfect individual or a perfect society. Even in societies that have achieved a very high material advance there are already signs of satiety and psychological malaise which manifest themselves in increasing nervous disorders. We may ask ourselves whether this scientific advance with its utility to life and mastery of sense data is leading man towards the Truth.
It is true that science gives efficiency which is very essential but efficiency alone is not, and cannot be, the goal of life. To a strictly scientific and rationalistic view Truth is unknowable. What is urgently needed today is not only mastery over
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nature but also mastery over self. The application of scientific advance to collective life has put into man's hands such a tremendous reservoir of material power that without a corresponding inner transformation of his nature, man would not be able to make a real advance in his culture. It means that material advance by itself would not solve man's problems though the possibility of its misuse has instilled fear in man's mind and that fear makes him halt. But that fear would only deter him, it would not bring about the necessary change. Billy Graham in the magazine Life, August 15, 1960, writes, "American genius has enabled us to change virtually everything but ourselves. It is absolutely impossible to change society and reverse the moral trend unless we ourselves are changed from inside out." This feeling and this perception is fairly widespread among the intelligentsia everywhere and, I believe, it is symptomatic of the new psychological change that is trying to establish itself in mankind. The material advance itself, man's mastery over unlimited material energy, and simultaneously man's feeling of a need for change in his own nature, are signs of the descent of the Supramental in our earth evolution. Sri Aurobindo advocates the control of Matter by the Spirit but in order to be able to do that man must rise above his present state of consciousness. He must rise from his mental consciousness to the Truth-Consciousness, to the Supermind.
When I spoke in Cambridge in Friends' Hall in 1955, I said to the audience, 'Yours is an old seat of learning, and it has the distinction of giving to the world great discoverers like Newton and Faraday and others. I have come to tell you that here, in this King's College, there was another distinguished discoverer, Sri Aurobindo, from India who laid bare the supramental level of consciousness, opening thereby an immense realm of spiritual experience
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to man'. In the words of Dr. Gokak, "his work opens up new horizons that spell new cultures upon earth".
The Life Divine meets the challenge of the agnostic and materialistic outlook now trying to dominate the world, but in a more profound view it satisfies the deepest need of man, his aspiration for an integral perfection. While it thus satisfies the spiritual need of mankind it is an equally characteristic contribution of India to the human culture of the future. Without those fundamental spiritual elements, no human culture could be perfect. Sri Aurobindo's works may be said to be the international form of Indian culture. My friend, Dr. Chandrashekhar, an Andhra Poet, says, "No other philosophy or religion gives to life on earth such a high significance as the works of Sri Aurobindo."
There are people who are confident about solving man's problems by other than spiritual methods. There are other factors also that have intervened and some of them advocate resorting to social or political action for solving them. There are three psychological factors that have emerged. One, an internationalism all over the world, a tendency to make the world one, not insisting on national egoism or national consciousness but a tendency to create a consciousness of the whole of humanity. Second, a universal demand for a kind of socialism everywhere; even when there has been a very individualistic and democratic outlook, the pressure has been to demand a kind of socialism, a kind of justice for all, and it is demanded that whatever one does must mean something to as many as possible. Third, an increasing prominence given to ethical values in international politics. Gradually the balance of power is shifting from economy and military force to ethical forces in international life.
There was a time when nations trying to decide the questions or solve their problems resorted either to economic or political pressures or military force. After the two worldwars
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the balance is now shifting slowly, not very quickly but slowly, to imponderable forces. In international life now ethical element,—whether what you do is right or not, is good or not,—is regarded as an important factor in deciding the policy of nations. This coming into prominence of ethical values in international life is also another important element.
The question is whether these new values with the scientific advance, would be able to solve man's problem. There is a great confusion also with regard to the nature of the problem itself. In fact, it is supposed by some that a plan or a programme carried out by social, political or other outer means would perhaps solve man's problems. About this Sri Aurobindo says that "the advocates of action think that by human intellect and human energy making an always new rush, everything can be put right. The present state of the world after the development of intellect and its stupendous output of energy—for which there is no historical parallel, is a signal proof of the emptiness of the illusion under which they labour. Yoga takes a stand that it is only by a change of consciousness that the true basis of life can be discovered. From within outward is indeed the rule." Some others think that a certain thought, some "ism", propagandized by sincere persons through agency of speech and travel and radio and press and books and television would bring about the necessary inner and outer change. It is true that thought, idea and an ideal or some programme of social or economic progress—these are great powers for effecting a change in life. But the most important thing very often forgotten is that there is no outer problem. The problem is not outer, the problem is inner: the problem is man and his ignorance. The next question then is : is it possible to attain perfection with the faculties that man possesses at present ? Sri Aurobindo shows
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that man must ascend to the Supermind, to the Truth-Consciousness, if he is to attain perfection. The general tendency, when such questions arise, is to regard them as fundamental and unsolvable. And if solutions are offered, it is said "this is a good solution but it is Utopian, impossible", "It is Shangri-la, it cannot be carried out in life." This wrong attitude prevents a proper approach and retards the solution of important problems.
An illustration can make the point clear. If Mahatma Gandhi had consulted the political leaders and statesman of his time to advise him about his contemplated resort to Satya-graha, Non-violence, to secure independence for India, what do you think would have been the reaction ? With one voice they would have declared him crazy and advised him against any such Utopian method that would surely invite failure if not political disaster. Granting that India does not owe its freedom entirely to Non-violence, still it is clear that Gandhi did the right thing in trying his novel experiment after consulting only his own conscience. The world has now a new weapon for setting right some of the wrongs of collective life. What is, or what seems impossible at one time becomes possible after sometime. So the sciences of medicine, physics, etc., have achieved many things that were at one time considered impossible. And Sri Aurobindo writes in his epic, Savitri,
"The high gods look on men and watch and choose,
Today's impossible for the future base."
So fundamentally there is nothing that should be considered impossible, I mean the programme that he lays down for man in books like The Life Divine.
Consciousness is the fundamental fact of the cosmos and cosmic consciousness of which the individual is only one
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particular application, is a secondary working out of it. Whether this cosmic consciousness is the highest, is a problem. This is one question and in this chapter which we are trying to read we will see that cosmic consciousness is not the whole of the Reality that is at work. There is something beyond the cosmic consciousness. There is the Transcendent, if you like to call it, or a supracosmic Reality. It is transcendent to the ego, but it transcends also the cosmos. The cosmic consciousness is far wider than the individual and the Transcendent consciousness is far wider than the cosmic. The cosmic consciousness which is far superior to the individual makes a great appeal to man when he awakens to it in his spiritual life. It is possible that man is overcome at the first contact of the supracosmic aspect of the Reality and he may conclude that That alone is real, the rest—the cosmic and the individual and the world—unreal: everything else except the Transcendent is felt as an illusion.
Matter is supported by the evidence of the senses and therefore we think that Reality ends with matter. That is not quite true. Even matter has its own occultism. Matter has conditions which our senses can not grasp. Physical realities there are which are really suprasensible. Our senses themselves have supra-physical capabilities : they can sense matter without using the gross organs. Telepathy, hypnotism, etc. bear evidence to what might be called occultism at the material level of consciousness. Though the knowledge of this occult world is at present imperfect because of defective manner of its acquisition and use, it requires to be checked, controlled, scrutinized, That matter has subtle states which our senses do not perceive is the truth. Just as beyond the cosmos there is the Transcendent, below matter or behind matter the scientist or the materialist does know that there is something occult which he does not know.
So that both ways there is a sort of transcendence, beyond
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the perception of the cosmic spirit and a transcendence of the limitations of matter when they are overcome by or they are removed by the occult phenomen a which occur on the plane of Matter. There in both directions, the worlds beyond already exist, beyond matter and beyond cosmos. Occultism is seen normally by man in life in the realm of spirit-communications, in telepathy, in faith-cure, in thought-transference and so on. One can say that the methods employed are not always reliable and refined and effective but require to be constantly checked and controlled and disciplined, but that they occur and that they are valid, I think, nobody can doubt.
Sri Aurobindo puts it down in The Life Divine that the occult is a part of existence. Science itself is, in its own way, an occultism, for it brings to light the formula which Nature hides and it uses the knowledge to set free operations of her energies which she has not included in her ordinary operations and to organize and place them at the service of man. This is a kind of physical magic. So occultism is not merely spiritual, it is also seen in the physical.
The question now arises : is then, cosmic existence real ?
The Transcendent beyond is the ultimate Reality, Matter and below matter what may be called the Transcendence of matter seems to have some Unknown at work. In between you feel the Cosmic Consciousness. Now is this real ? Because the ascetic refuses to believe it to be real. A logical and intellectual process is formulated by the ascetic to prove that the cosmic consciousness is not real. And the second question is : what is the value of human life ? Is the short life of the human individual meant for snatching from the transient existence whatever pleasure he can ? Should he give himself up to enjoying life as it is presented to him ? Or should he submit himself to a dispassionate, objectless service of the race knowing full well that all
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this is a transient fiction ?
This, I think, is the attitude which some of the modern schools of thought are advocating.
If life is not real, is it only a nervous spasm in matter ? If one accepts that, one comes to a material Mayavada that all is matter and matter is Maya, or illusion. Like Maya which 'is' and 'is not', matter also 'is' because it is present and compels, and "it is not" because it is phenomenal and transitory.
The second difficulty in solving this problem is the question whether cosmic consciousness is real or not. Normally man has no experience of the cosmic mind. He has no experience of the supermind, and so how is he to decide whether cosmic conciousness is real or not ? The remedy to solve this problem, Sri Aurobindo suggests here, is that we must try to extend the field of our own consciousness and get into the experience of cosmic consciousness. And this can be done not by simply wanting it, but by increasing the instrumental capacities of human nature.
Man is given certain instruments,—senses, nervous being, vital being, emotional being and mental being. These have certain capacities and they are capable of development. Man's intellectual capacity, his reasoning power, comprehension etc. can be developed. When the powers of the instruments are developed then man is able to expand his consciousness.
Man finds also that he has a great power of detachment from the instruments because he has within him the true Self. This Self is independent of nature. Man can detach himself in the mind or in the vital and experience a "witness" Self that can watch, without participation, all the movements of nature. The experience of the witness is really the beginning of expansion of consciousness and of true freedom. The witness watches not merely the
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individual nature but the whole of cosmic movement.
Modern psychology has begun to admit the existence of the cosmic consciousness in another sense than what the ancients knew. It is now called "the collective unconscious", whatever it may mean. The ancient seers and mystics had the experience of the cosmic consciousness : they knew matter to be only one working of the cosmic energy, another is life and the third is mind. In man matter, life and mind have organized the possibility of realising the witness Self, the Purusha.
What is the test that he has actually done it ? The test is that he is able to live in another consciousness, to be able to identify with the content of 'other' consciousness. He begins as an individual and expands into cosmic consciousness. When he takes up his individual station again he is able to identify himself with the content of consciousness of what, to him as an individual, are "others". He is able to know the content of consciousness which is not that of his individual self. That is one test. When we live in it, we live also in other minds, in other lives and we can produce effects on others and produce effect on the physical plane and mould events. One can take part in moulding world events. The cosmic consciousness therefore is real and its effects also are real. Thus the world which is a product of cosmic consciousness is also real world.
When we say the world is real or the cosmic consciousness is the real we do not mean to say that it is an independent existence. It is real because something greater than the cosmic consciousness is real. It is a dependent Reality, in the sense that it is an expression of a greater Reality than the cosmos, than the universe. The Transcendent Reality is the basis of the cosmos.
So that if one would ask : who created the world and answer "the cosmic consciousness", he would be right.
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But there is a Conscious Energy, one with Being that creates the world. It is the Sat and the Chit aspect of the Supreme that is responsible for the world creation. Therefore Conscious-Being that one speaks of, thus, is more than the universe.
Conscious Being—not cosmic being—is more than the Cosmos; it lives also within, inside the working of cosmic harmonies. The world that we know lives by That which is beyond the cosmos. But That does not live by the world. That is one thing to be grasped.
And the great fact of this life manifested on earth is that man can ascend to the Transcendent Being; it is possible for man, the individual, to ascend to the transcendent Truth, that by which the world lives but which does not live by the world. This is the whole basis of Life Divine, that it is possible for the individual to ascend to, to rise to the Transcendent Consciousness.
In the metaphysical language, he puts it as the Transcendent, the Universal, and the Individual as the three statuses of the Reality—Satchidananda—in the world. Whereas in poetry he puts it differently. He says in Savitri:
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone Has called out of the Silence his mute force Where She lay in the featureless and formless hush Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep The ineffable puissance of his solitude. Book I, Canto 4.
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has called out of the Silence his mute force
Where She lay in the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude.
Book I, Canto 4.
Here one finds three terms, Absolute, Perfect and Alone. The 'Alone' means there are no two Truths, there is only one Truth and that can have a personal as well as an impersonal aspect. The 'Perfect' implies the creation of the Universe, because a perfect thing can exist in the midst of relatively
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perfect or imperfect things. The 'Absolute' means free from or beyond all creation, beyond all relativities. The philosophical term 'Transcendent' can imply all the three. But the general idea is that what transcends is unrelated to, or rejects what it transcends. The Supreme is transcendent, but not in the sense of rejecting what it transcends; it only means it is greater than what it transcends. Even in our ordinary experience we know that life transcends matter but it does not reject it, it rises above it. So, also mind transcends life and matter but does not reject either.
There are philosophies that assert that the Transcendent is the only Reality and everything else is unreal. The aim of man is to reach or ascend to the Transcendent by rejecting the world and life. The Spirit is pure and luminous without duality. The Brahman is, moreover, inactive, silent, eternal; the world is unreal, temporary. The ascetic attitude rejects nature and life on that basis. In India this attitude has played a great part and men have been told to reject life in order to attain spiritual perfection. Perfect and eternal bliss is to be attained in the Brahmaloka, on the plane of the Infinite by merging into it. It is argued that in order to attain knowledge one must withdraw from ignorance which prevails in life. So, renunciation is said to be the sole path to Knowledge. Acceptance of life would be an act of ignorance, cessation of birth is the true aim of human birth. When the spirit calls one has to recoil from matter.
The age in which we live is not in sympathy with this ascetic ideal of refusal and renunciation of life. Did India accept it because her vitality was failing ? Perhaps.
Sri Aurobindo accepts that our age is not in sympathy with the ascetic attitude. But in spite of all that can be said against it, there is a great truth in the ideal of renunciation. It proves that so far as man is concerned, inner spiritual progress is more important than material possessions, that self-control
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is greater than self-indulgence, Spirit is greater than the world. The modern man is living a life subject to vital urges and outer values have acquired a great importance in his view. It is necessary for man to accept the truth that Spirit is the ultimate Reality. The integral attitude which Sri Aurobindo advocates is that the Spirit—call it Satchidananda, or Brahman or anything else,—is One. The One includes the All, "ekamevādvitīyam."
The limitation of the ascetic idea is that it fails to give any meaning to life and to the world; the descent of the Transcendent into Matter remains unexplained. Nevertheless the ascetic idea has also rendered service to human life by pointing out the importance of the Spirit. It will be seen that the capacity to give up things is always found in those who have attained greatness, it draws life out of the downward gravitational pull of animality, desire and ambition. It gives one* the capacity to reject ignorance.
What is, then, the solution of the opposition between Spirit and Matter ? Sri Aurobindo does not advocate a compromise. It is very often a bad bargain. It is necessary to reconcile the two—Spirit and Matter. The reconciliation is found in the Cosmic Consciousness which is the meeting point of Matter and Spirit; in the creation of the world Matter and Spirit meet. Both are divine; the Cosmic Consciousness on one side is the active Brahman and on the other side it is the inactive Brahman. There is no contradiction in these aspects, it is not as if the one denies and the other affirms the cosmic illusion. The Cosmic Consciousness has behind its active aspect the background of its tremendous impersonal, silent aspect. It is from that passive and silent aspect that the worlds are created. Sri Aurobindo shows that
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silence does not mean void, it only means consciousness held back from expression. What is contained in the silence expresses itself as the Word. It is the inactive aspect that sustains the cosmic action, supports the movement of the worlds. If the Infinite Brahman were not fully present at each point of manifestation the objects of our perception would not exist.
Some systems of thought have ended by accepting the silence as 'non-being'—'asat'. In an Upanishad it is stated that "Being came out of Non-Being" The meaning of the statement is that 'Being' comes out of that which to the human mind is 'Non-Being'. But if one accepts the idea of non-being as the ultimate truth then to merge into non-being, annihilation of oneself in it, would be the summum bonum. That would be the highest spiritual achievement of the human spirit.
Sri Aurobindo says : this is only a play with mere words. What after all does one mean by "Non-Being" ? 'Being' and 'Non-Being' are both ideas of the mind. 'Being'—Sat —is that which the mind can grasp, 'Non-Being'—Asat—is that which the mind cannot grasp, it is something beyond the reach of mind. And if one says that non-being is zero or void it is that which is the All. It is the Infinite that one cannot describe, it is like a blank to the human mind. In that sense only it can be said to be non-existence.
When it is stated that 'Being' came out of 'Non-Being' one can ask: when did it come out ? In fact, it is an eternal reality that exists and therein what mind calls 'Being' as well as 'Non-Being' have both existed simultaneously. There was no particular point of time at which 'Being' or 'Non-Being' began. Does entry into non-being mean negation of all experience ? How can such a negation of experience be an explanation of our experience ?
Non-being—'asat' —really means freedom of the Reality
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from 'Being' —, freedom from all the terms of existence,— not the denial of all reality of existence but the denial of all the limitation of its expression. Thus, simultaneous awareness of a conscious being, a Self as a Reality and an Unknowable beyond as the same Reality becomes realisable to the awakened human soul. Man then realises that the Reality is not limited to its expression. That is the meaning of the word 'Non-being'.
The Omnipresent Reality is the foundation of the Life Divine. Sri Aurobindo says : "An omnipresent Reality is the Brahman, not an omnipresent cause of persistent illusion. If it is asserted like the old Vedanta that 'Self alone exists' then one must equally accept: "All is the Self." i.e., a Divine Self exists and all is that Divine Self.
How did this Self manifest or create this universe ? Was the Self compelled to manifest, or create, or express the universe ? Was there a necessity ? Did something happen in its own Self and it had to submit unwillingly so that something contrary to its very being and nature came into existence ? How did a world of ignorance, suffering, pain, and evil,—a very imperfect world come into being from the Self or from the Brahman ? The question is : was there a compulsion, a necessity ?
Sri Aurobindo asserts that there was no such compulsion or necessity. Something is there that wills the manifestation and what else can that be if not the Omnipresent Reality ? It is not possible, logically, to put the responsibility from the one Omnipresent Reality to some other thing, like Maya or Avidya, the power of illusion. Sri Aurobindo accepts only the Omnipresent Reality as the basis of the Cosmos. As the universe proceeds from the Omnipresent Reality it is its manifestation. The question who is responsible for the world-ignorance, for suffering etc. is indirectly answered : the Omnipresent Reality is the cause of ignorance, pain etc.
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This can be called true Monism. Brahman is the Lord, it is base, it is the material of creation.
Existence, consciousness and bliss—Satchidananda—is the description of that One, the Omnipresent Reality. It is that which is the world, at work in it; but at the same time it is beyond the world in the sense of not being limited by this creation. In that sense only it is 'non-being' which at the same time supports the 'being'.
If one can accept the logic of this truth and follow the process of inner growth, then one can be integrally fulfilled. If the intellect is convinced of the Truth, then one has to pursue the path of self-culture—yoga—with faith. And faith will be justified by experience. The main difficulty is the perception of the whole universe as inert matter. One sees and knows 'forms' only; but they are valid only as the shapes and substances of manifestation of That which is incorporeal, immaterial; that which is behind the form is the Real, it is That which the form expresses. One sees matter and life but they exist in the Brahman, in the Omnipresent Reality.
But Brahman is not a unitarian Reality, it contains many forms of consciousness and being. Many planes of consciousness co-exist in the Brahman. It holds the Reality of the Individual, of the Universe, of the Transcendental. They are not separate from one another. The Supreme Reality occupies the three positions at the same time. The Transcendent transcends the cosmos, yet embraces it. The Universal is greater than the Individual but includes and supports it. The Individual holds within himself the capacity to liberate the Self from ego and expand into Universal Consciousness. He can even soar beyond the Universal into the Transcendent and keep his relation with life so as to bring the working of the highest status of Reality into life. The liberated individual thus becomes a point of light, a point of self-manifestation of the Supreme. Then the problem of man's life is solved.
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Lecture III
Chap. 6. Man in the Universe
Chap. 7. The Ego and the Dualities
Last time we got to the point where the emergence of the self-aware being was a great fact of evolutionary life. Man in the universe is really Conscious Existence which has become self-aware. In the language of the Vedas it is the Dawn. This Dawn is the awakening of human consciousness to its divine possibility, and the basis of this self-aware being we call Satchidananda. The Dawn represents the awakening to this infinite existence, infinite consciousness, infinite delight, Satchidananda. In one sense we can say that Satchidananda is here as the universe which the human consciousness tries to know all the time. This self-awareness therefore represents this infinite being, infinite consciousness, infinite delight. It does not know that it is seeking That, though in reality it is seeking only That. This universal existence has become self-aware in man. It has, therefore, a chance of becoming master of itself. And because self-awareness promises a chance of discovering the divine Self, it is called the Dawn. It opens the chance for further unfoldment of the human individual toward the fulfilment of That which has unrolled itself as the cosmos. The individual and the universal are terms of this Unknowable, this Unknowable which represents itself to man as Infinite, Satchidananda.
Whatever the human consciousness may be seeking it is, in reality, seeking the Infinite, Satchidananda. When man wants to progress it means that the self-awareness which has awakened in the cosmos wants to attain not merely objects, material and non-material, but another consciousness. The drive for progress, for amelioration, is the indication for changing his consciousness, for widening his awareness, for expansion
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of his being. Man wants to expand into or ascend to another consciousness. In this lies his real progress. Man's progress does not He in moving towards fulfilment of his vital desires and his mental ideas and its forms and of his emotional being but in growing toward and ascending to a universal consciousness, and from there rising to the highest attempt possible,—to the Transcendent consciousness. That is the real line of progress of the individual.
A glance at the working of this Satchidananda consciousness in the universe shows that: its infinite energy first casts itself in dumb material forms. Satchidananda there seems to be asleep, it is as it were in trance in matter. From there the energy struggles upwards into varied life-rhythms, forms and energies. In life the dumb movement is seeking but is not self-aware. The vegetable kingdom, the insect world, the animal world is not self-aware—it is, at the most vitally aware. Self-awareness has not yet come though a greater degree of consciousness has come into expression. And life therefore slowly has to struggle and emerge into mind; and in the mind, for the first time, one feels a subjective self, that is to say, a conscious individuality. This Infinite Consciousness Being and Delight, beginning with the dumb sleep of matter, creates forms and separateness of objects. From there it struggles into life and then, into various patterns and variations of life. And when it struggles and creates mind then it succeeds in creating the individual.
So the labour of the cosmic energy all along has been to create this individual, to create the self-aware centre of receptivity, a subjective self. Thus,one sees,as Sri Aurobindo says in the The Life Divine, that the universe is a diffusion of this Divine All, in infinite time and infinite space. And from that point of view the individual is its concentration and not diffusion. First it is a sort of diffusion, a throwing itself out into a multiplicity so to say, or into innumerable variety in matter or in
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life or in mind. But the individual is the concentration of the Divine within limits of time and space, and matter.
And then we try to see in what consists this conscious individuality which makes possible the breaking of the Dawn. What is the meaning of this coming into existence of a conscious individual in an inconscient universe ? He speaks of it as a crucial point or "a crisis" in the process of evolution. A crisis in the process of evolution came when mind awoke up into self-awareness and the individual was created because then he brought into actual dynamic movement the process of expanding out from the individual into the Cosmic, into the Transcendent. That process becomes possible only when the mind having come into existence becomes self-aware in man, in the subjective self, in the individual. And this individual is the centre of reception or of self-awareness or of concentration of the Divine in limited time and space and then the whole of the universe comes to this individual.
The universe comes to the individual,—the living and thinking human being—in the form of life. The individual meets first the dynamic movement of life. Man has first to master this life; for, in that lies man's progress. Life is the objective form and man is the subjective aspect of the universe. At first life poses a challenge, and the world acts as hostile to man. Then man gets attached to life, he gets enamoured of it, and does not see the need of understanding life. Man is not interested in knowing the secret of life. He wants to serve the demands of life. He does not realise that life is trying to exceed its limitations, it is aspiring to ascend to a higher plane. It is sad to see that man submits himself to life and acts as if satisfying the demands of life,—its impulses, desires, passions, greeds and ambitions,—wire the highest goal of man. In order to fulfil the true goal man has to understand and master life, he has to ascend to a level beyond life. In fact, the universe comes to the individual with a question, with
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a demand—that he should know and master it. The individual instead of understanding and mastering life goes on playing with it, submitting himself to it and generally goes round and round.
The reason why the universe as life-spirit comes to man is that man holds potentialities higher than life, he is the centre of those high potentialities. For example, man can bring into life the working of the Divine consciousness.
If the conditions are as we have stated above, how can we, then, affirm the possibility of divine life on earth ? That can only be if man can accept that there is something within him which is essentially superior to his present egoistic self, and that it is possible to attain it. In that acceptance of the higher possibility of man lies the basis of divine life. The difficulty is that man accepts his present life with all its difficulties, sufferings, pain etc. and believes that life is bound to be eternally subject to its imperfections. The problem is given up as "impossible".
Sri Aurobindo makes us see that life is Cosmos coming to man with a question : can you affirm and attain something greater than life? If man can answer in the affirmative then life divine becomes possible.
Then, instead of being eternally condemned, life becomes an opportunity. It is not an affliction or punishment, but a condition for progress to something greater than what man is at present. He writes in his epic Savitri:
Existence a divine experiment Cosmos the Soul's opportunity.
Existence a divine experiment
Cosmos the Soul's opportunity.
Ashwapathy, father of Savitri, who is the representative of the human race in its cultural advance "Saw the life that is, from a life that is to be." From the point of view of its future evolution he saw the actual working of life. Today
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man only sees what 'is' but he cannot see the potentialities of life. If he could see them then he would find the justification of all the complications and difficulties which life presents to man. He does not see that man would not eternally remain what he is. If man is bound to remain as he is then one must admit that ignorance is the permanent element of the universe and not a passing phase. The Omnipotence of the Divine loses its sense in that case : ignorance would be more powerful than the Divine Omnipotence.
Sri Aurobindo lays down that if the self-aware individual admits the possibility of awakening to a condition better than his present egoistic nature, then life divine can start. That, in fact, has been man's constant effort throughout the ages.
There is the problem of ego and dualities. An infinite being, consciousness, delight—Satchidananda—is the cause of and material substance of creation; it has put itself out in terms of cosmic and individual manifestation. But one sees in life not being or consciousness but inconscience, not delight but pain and suffering not harmony but discord and strife, not immortality but the reign of death. The question is why is this so ? How does it happen ?
Sri Aurobindo gave an answer to these questions in a letter to Maurice Magre, a French savant, who came to Pondicherry. It is published under the title The Riddle of this World. The question was : how does a world of imperfection come out of an original Divine perfection. The answer is : it is due to the divided being which distorts the original truth. How did it happen—this division ? It is caused by the separation of man's consciousness from its origin, the Divine. It is this that the Bible speaks of as the "fall of man". The temptation of Adam by Eve is the temptation of the Soul —the Purusha—by the potentialities of Nature : the Soul
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was attracted by Nature. The question arises why did the Absolute abandon its status and create this imperfect world ? The difficulty is to explain the basic unity and diversity with the existence of a condition contrary to it; for, to the mind, to understand something preexistent to it is hard. Mind is a creation of the fall, of the duality, created by separation from the Supreme. It can be answered by mind rising to the Supreme. But mind cannot be easily raised to the Higher Consciousness unless it is willing. That means a process of growth—it means Sadhana. For that to become possible mind has to admit some Reality greater than itself—it has to become quiet and open to the Higher Truth.
But we have first to try to convince the mind by logic. We start with the Absolute,—it is not zero, it is not void, it is not nothing. It must contain within itself infinite potentialities of knowledge, power, creativity etc. These potentialities do not exhaust the Absolute. Now, mathematically, these potentialities can contain an opposite possiblity —the negation of the Absolute. One of such potentialities is that the Absolute that is all-Knowledge, all-Consciousness etc. can become inconscient. These are not vain and abstract possibilities as we find in our mental consciousness. Mental ideas and truths are not all realisable in life. One can say that mental potentialities have not sufficient power to realize themselves in life. But we are considering the potentialities of the Absolute when mind was not created. These potentialities are charged with the power of realising themselves. It is the 'Divine-Idea', as Sri Aurobindo puts it in The Life Divine: it is Real-Idea, all its potentialities are charged with the power of the Supreme, filled with the power of self-realisation. Now, the one potentiality of the Absolute is to materialise the very opposite of itself, to become absolute Inconscience. An illustration might make the point clear. If an emperor should get into his mind the whim of relinquishing
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his throne in order to test whether the empire would come back to him in his self-exile, he being an absolute monarch can carry out his idea and become either an ordinary citizen or even a beggar. In the same way, something similar has taken place on the plane of the Absolute. The Absolute even when it accepts to become Inconscience has the power to recover its original status, because it has omnipotent power. This actualisation of the contrary to the Absolute is the Universe. Mathematically, Irifinity can reduce itself to zero. If it actually becomes a zero can it regain its infinity ? There is perhaps a pretty hard probability of it. It is not an impossibility. One can say that something similar has been accepted by the Omnipresent Reality in the creation of the universe.
The Supreme, it seems, has allowed the very opposite of itself to come into being and subjected itself to all that it implies. And now the whole is moving back towards self-recovery in life, step by step. It will recover its own status here because it is essentially Divine and cannot be under the fall for ever. The creation of ego was the fall from the Supreme but it was a necessity for the process of evolution. It was needed because otherwise the Many would not have come into being out of the One. The ego is the self-aware centre in an inconscient world and it feels itself as the centre of the universe. Each ego feeling itself as it were the centre of the universe creates division not only from the Supreme but from each other. This creates disharmony and struggle.
Formation of the ego consciousness, the ego-centric outlook as Sri Aurobindo says here, is only a prelude; it is not the final goal. It is a prelude to something better that has to follow. The formation of the ego is the first act because that brings into existence a self-aware entity, a subjective self, an individual who experiences pain and suffering and duality and death and evil and all kinds of distortions. That
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is the inevitable condition through which evolution has to pass. That creates universal disharmony instead of harmony of the Satchidananda. The progress lies in moving from this ego-centricity into universal consciousness, in this very ego realizing itself as the universal consciousness. When it realizes the universal consciousness the world does not change but the significance of all experience completely changes. When a man lives in the cosmic consciousness the sun does not begin to rise in the west. The accidents, difficulties and troubles and all kinds of conflicts of life and suffering are there but his view of them, his understanding of them undergoes a change. The cognition, the rendering of experience as value, completely changes. So that when something is seen it is not seen as the individual distorting consciousness sees it but as it is to be seen from the cosmic or universal consciousness. Then it is seen quite differently, so differently that it is difficult to convey the idea of it to the individual who doesnot know that one could see so differently the whole range of human experience.
The view of things undergoes a very great change. As discribed in Savitri :
In the worm he sees the coming God.
In the ordinary view the worm is seen only as a worm but the vision of one who has attained the higher consciousness sees in the 'worm' the evolution of a divine being after a long time. The worm is not an isolated item of the universe, it is a link in a long chain in which the Divine Being would find its place.
Even the events that take place change their values to man in course of time. Take the French Revolution as an illustration : one who lived during the Revolution would have felt it as the worst time in human history. Five hundred people
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were being guillotined every day in the Reign of Terror. But if one goes a hundred years forward the view changes. The French Revolution is seen as a great historical event that ushered in the age of democracy and equality all over Europe and subsequently in the world. So, the revolution though it appeared an unmixed evil at the time when it occurred, proved to be a great help to human progress in the long run. What it meant in terms of human progress is so different from what it was felt to be by the contemporaries.
Human ego is to be overpassed in order to enable man to achieve real progress. Pain, suffering, disharmony etc. continue in order that man may seek the radical cure for them. In this regard it is important to note that the scale of human experience is not fixed, it is variable. Heat and cold are relative, they have no fixed absoluteness. So also pain and suffering. We find this truth even in ordinary experience of life. Pain can be transformed into delight, it is only the question of changing the nature of the vibration. The bite of an ant when felt as an attack gives the sensation of pain, but felt as meeting of a consciousness with another consciousness it can become a pleasant contact. This does not mean there is no pain or suffering. It only means that values of ignorance are true in ignorance. And values of the same experience change when the consciousness of man rises to a higher plane. The first appearance, the first evidence of our sense mind is not final; very often the first reaction is not the true reaction. Scientific advance is made possible by not accepting the first evidence of the senses. To the first view the Sun appears going round the earth. But the truth is the other way, the earth is moving round the Sun. In spiritual life also one has not to accept the first movement of nature as true e.g. the ego feeling that it is the centre of the uinverse and that everything has to be judged by reference to it is the first movement; but it is ignorance. That the Satchidananda
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is the central Reality and men and the universe move round it is the Truth to be realized. Man has to attain his true psychological centre by a process of growth of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo puts it very clearly in The Life Divine: "To the egoistic consciousness God seems to be going round the ego and ego sits in judgment on the works of God." The truth is that the Omnipresent Reality is the centre and mind and all its experiences have to find their true significance in the Universal and in the Transcendent Divine. Therefore, to transcend the ego, to transmute all experience into radically different values, a complete trans-valuation of experience is a spiritual necessity.
The question is : is such perfection possible here on earth, —in human life? One can admit the need of the fall into ego as an indispensable condition for creating innumerable points of individuality and then the need of overpassing or dissolving the ego and ascending to a higher consciousness. But is that possible here in life ?
Many believe it is not possible. They try to prove that the law of imperfection is the only law for this world. There are schools of thought that reduce the world to unreality, so that permanent imperfection of life would not mean much in an unreality. Some religions believe that this world is a world of test in which perfection is not intended to be realised. Imperfection, ignorance etc. are all there to test the human soul, they test his faith, his piety, his devotion. If man passes these tests in his life on earth then he would be rewarded in Heaven. Some philosophies assert that the world is an illusion, not a reality. Some religions advocate withdrawal from life as the only solution of the problem of pain; they would suggest the wiping out of Being altogether as the radical remedy.
The question is, is it possible to transcend the ego formation here with all its imperfections by opening the individual
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consciousness to the Universal and to the Divine Consciousness ? It is hard to convince the ordinary mind, though it is not impossible to give a rationale of it because man is a mental being. Sri Aurobindo says : if you tell an ape and try to convince him that a being called man is possible,—man who would have the power of reasoning and judgment, of control over nature,—the ape would not believe it. And if you further try to tell him that not only such a being can exist but would be the result of evolution from the ape kind, he would believe it to be still more impossible.
Man has an advantage over other creatures,—he has got a mind. A monkey cannot conceive the possibility of a more perfect being evolving out of itself. But man can. His mind can conceive a possible perfection. It must be admitted though, that the ordinary man regards the ideal of perfection either as a superstition or an intellectual Utopia, or an act of ideal imagination. As Sri Aurobindo puts it very finely in The Life Divine, to the mind of man, to the reason of man, this possibility of transcending his ego appears to be "an inspiring vision of the impossible".
But it is strange that reason which refuses to admit the possibility of attaining a higher consciousness is all the time trying to go beyond the sense-data that is given to it. The sensation conveyed to the mind is of one kind, the conclusion of reason is quite different. In its pursuit of knowledge reason always transcends what is presented to it.
With regard to psychological problems reason says it is not possible to reject pain or death, etc. But one finds that the impulse of life is not to accept pain as natural. The very instinct of life rejects pain, pain is always felt as something alien. Man is trying to conquer death by conquering diseases. The instinct of life is to feel itself immortal. The difficulty of reason is that it is overcome by apparent fact,
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by appearance of things. In order to solve the problem reason has to grant the possibility of it and not be overcome by the actuality.
Radical solutions of the problems of man are often regarded Utopian. But in considering such a great problem one has to keep the mind open and admit untried possibilities, and undertake risks of experiment in new directions. It is just what man is doing in the realm of physical science. The way in which the mind has to be kept open and plastic is illustrated by Vinoba Bhave's attitude. He has been trying to live upto the ideal of "the world as a family", vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam. He has been preaching it by walking through India on foot. After years of experience of doing the work of preaching the ideal of the world as a family, he has come to accept the possibility of spreading the same idea without resorting to any outer method or means,—without walking long distances on foot or without delivering lectures. He says if somebody could sit down and wake dynamic thoughts within himself it would work. It would be like launching a ballistic missile to its target from a prepared base.
This chapter lays down that the Omnipresent Reality is the basis, the fundamental substance, of the universe; it is dynamic and works from three positions which it simultaneously occupies; the Individual, the Universal, the Transcendent : it is identical at all the three levels. The universe is a movement of evolution from apparent Inconscience to a greater and greater degree of Consciousness. It is a process in the direction opposite to that of involution in which there is a gradual covering of the Reality creating a world, a plane, at every downward step. Man, the mental being, is transitional. He has yet to ascend to a Higher Consciousness beyond mind. This is the great spiritual Odyssey that is now to be consciously undertaken by man.
If material science lays open before man a practically unlimited
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field of adventure and research and experience in the outer interstellar Space, the Supramental is not without similar attractions. The Life Divine is a call to a spiritual adventure, to a spiritual exploration. It initiates a vision of "heights of consciousness which have even been glimpsed and visited but which have yet to be discovered and mapped in their completeness". "The highest of these peaks of which the elevated plateaus of consciousness, the Supramental, lies far beyond the possibility of any satisfying mental scheme or map of it or any grasp of mental seeing and description." On those unexplored heights there lie inexhaustible treasures of Light, of Power which can effectively help mankind to solve its problems. A call is upon the young today all over the world and it is for them to answer. The Life Divine is not a poetical dream. It is not an abstract construction of mere intellect. It is a discovery that makes available a new source of Knowledge and Power to man. This is what I spoke at Banaras and I wanted to place it here at this point because I think it is important to note the implications of it in the modern context.
This assertion that there is a source of power available to man is not a speculation unrelated to the so-called hard realities of life. It may be seen from a statement of Sri Aurobindo himself about his outer retirement. : "His retirement from outer activity did not mean as most people supposed that he had retired into some height of spiritual experience devoid of any further interest in the world or in life. It could not mean that, for the very principle of his yoga is not only to realize the Divine and attain to a complete spiritual consciousness but also to take all life and all world activity into the scope of this spiritual consciousness and action and to base life on the spirit and give it a spiritual meaning. In his retirement he kept a close watch on all that was happening in the world and in India and actively
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intervened whenever necessary but solely with a spiritual force and silent spiritual action. For it is part of the experience of those who have advanced in yoga that besides the ordinary forces and activities of mind and life and body in matter there are other forces and powers that can and do act from behind and from above. There is also a spiritual dynamic power which can be possessed by those who are advanced in spiritual consciousness but all do not care to possess, or possessing, to use it and this power is greater than any other and more effective. It was this force which Sri Aurobindo used at first only in a limited field of personal work but afterwards in the constant pressure upon world forces and he had reason to believe that the results were not disappointing."
In his great epic Savitri, he wrote, "This world is a beginning and a base" "where Life and Mind erect their structured dreams". "An unborn power must build Reality". We have already structures created by Life and structures created by Mind in our human life today. It is all right, he says, it is a beginning and a base. Life and Mind create those structures of dreams but if you want to build Reality here, it is only an unborn power that can build the Reality. Supermind brings to birth this Unknown Power. Lest People should think that power is the only aspect of the Truth, I will give what Mother has to say on this problem. "Is the supramental truth-consciousness only power, only knowledge and illumination ? it is much more. Listen to the voice of the maternal Divine Love : "Oh beloved children, sorrowful and ignorant, and thou of rebellious and violent nature, open your hearts, tranquillize your force. It is the Omnipotence of Love that is coming to you."
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Lecture IV
Chap. 8. The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge
We have seen that the creation of the ego and dualities was a necessary step which has been symbolized in some schools of Religion and Philosophy as the fall of man. The fall of man is this separation from the original Divine Consciousness and assumption of limitations in which the separation becomes dynamic, and has consequences in what is called human life. When it is called a "fall" it only means it is a lure. Adam attracted by Eve is the Purusha—the subjective consciousness attracted by, or lured by, the potentialities of Nature which he feels within his own Self. Nature is felt within the Self of the Purusha and when the potentialities are seen in Nature, there is an attraction on the part of the subjective consciousness to accept the lure and the consequences that follow.
Redemption comes by the Self rejoining the Divine Consciousness and bringing it into life, into Nature. That is the real redemption. It is by a process of transformation of the being that accepted the limitation; the transformation consists in the widening of the same limitation into Universal and Transcendental consciousness, and embodying on earth and in Nature all the consequences of that transformation. It means embodying quite another Nature; a transformation not only of consciousness of Being but of Nature also. That is the solution of the problem.
Is it possible for the ego to widen out into universal consciousness ? Yes. Normally reason refuses to admit this potentiality and possibility. Perfectibility is not envisaged as a change of consciousness by reason, because reason is overcome by the actual, by fact, by what it has to face imme-
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diately. Reason asks : how can it be ? That is why I pleaded yesterday, in my talk on psychology, that those who have got the true vision of life see what "is", from what "can be" : "A world that 'is', from a world 'to be'". What is the world going to be ? From there, they get to what the world is. The limitations of reason come and say : what 'is', is final, almost, what is, is insurmountable. Well, that is how reason argues, and we argued yesterday also and accepted the position that so far as ignorance is concerned, the reading and feeling and knowledge of ego is valid for its own sake but it has no absolute validity in the sense that that is the only knowledge possible. It is possible to rise to another consciousness where all the values that reason admits as true, final and binding disappear completely and quite another revaluation can be valid. That is the position which we have taken last time. Reason even refuses to admit the possibility of any perfection.
Then the question is : is this universe working under a law of eternal imperfection ? Is imperfection the badge of this universe ? If we admit that the world is eternally imperfect, that will not be compatible with the Omniscience and Omnipotence of God. That is the stand of those who have despaired of any possibility of change of human consciousness. They have ignored those persons who have actually undergone a change of consciousness because they have always been overcome by quantity. Vast numbers of people are subject to ego, desire, dualities, suffering, pain, ignorance, selfishness, death, etc. but they forget that at least several hundred people have risen above this consciousness and declared that this is not the final experience possible to human beings; that there is another line of experience possible to man; that it is possible to rise to a universal consciousness, to a divine consciousness, and remain alive and bring something of that Light to life.
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This, reason naturally ignores and constantly argues against because it is overcome by the actual and the immediate.
How is it possible, reason says, to transcend the present limits of Nature ? On the same line, I told you yesterday, the ape would have also argued if it was faced with the possibility of conceiving a more perfect being than itself. If you tell the ape that not only is such a being possible, but that it itself would undergo such a transformation that from it an Einstein could evolve it would not believe it possible. That would be too much for it to believe. Just the same thing is happening to human reason, human mind, human outer senses and outer knowledge when it is faced with the possibility of Divine perfection. It always refuses, like the ape, the possibility and potentiality of self-evolution to a more perfect being. Yet, reason contradicts its own refusal, because reason does not limit itself to the sense data. We see that the sky and the earth meet at the horizon. That is the first sense-data. When I submit it to the reason, it says, "Well, let me see if it is quite true". It does not admit as final the first sense-data. So, reason in its own realm of limited knowledge admits the possibility of correcting the evidence that is given to it for arriving at higher and higher conclusions, or higher generalizations of knowledge.
You may say there is a double reason at work, one mixed and dependent, and the other pure and independent. When reason is mixed and dependent it accepts the sense-data but corrects the first evidence and goes beyond. So, when it pursues the truth reason itself overcomes the first sense-data, and corrects it in order to arrive at knowledge of the truth of the material world,—truth of the facts of life.
The argument which reason advances with regard to psychology of man, or development of consciousness is just the contrary of what it does in dealing with the evidence of the sense. It asks : how can one overcome pain and death
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which are natural? Sri Aurobindo says that those who admit the impossibility of change of consciousness, or of elimination of pain, ignore the fact that the sovereign impulse of life is to reject pain. The first reaction of the whole nervous system is to reject the sensation of pain, not to accept it as natural. The very nervous system, without the mind intervening, refuses it.
Reason does not take account of this great fact, that this rejection itself is not merely an instinct which is not bound to remain impotent, but is a line of potentiality, which, if - pursued, might lead to some practical results. That is what man has actually tried. He has tried to overcome pain by anesthesia, and by several mechanical methods. Is it not possible to do it by psychological processes ? The reaction of sensation and sense organism to reject pain shows that the insistence of life is on eternity or immortality and not on death. How does reason arrive at the mastery ? It tries to probe into phenomenon and to find out the cause. When it has known the cause it is able to master the result. It must find out the cause of pain, the cause of suffering and imperfection, then it can apply the knowledge of the cause to establish its mastery. But what reason actually does in its own field is that it occupies itself with secondary matters instead of with original root cause. She makes an effort to know how a thing happens, not why it happens. Entangled in these secondary causes, reason does not and cannot know the root cause of what happens; and the remedy for man lies in acquiring the knowledge of the root cause.
If reason could penetrate into the root cause of pain, suffering and duality, it would be able to set it right, because all knowledge, when it is real, is power. If man can know the cause he can set right the result.
The ultimate truth is an Omnipresent Reality, an infinite Being, an infinite Conscious-Power, an unlimited power
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of Delight, that is the basic truth, the material cause and the efficient cause of the world. Then, here in human experience is the ego, the fall into dualities. The knowledge of the Brahman, of the Infinite, the widening out of the ego into the cosmic and the infinite consciousness would eliminate the root cause, instead of the secondary causes. Reason allows itself to be overcome by images. If one can bring the infinite consciousness that would automatically eliminate the root-cause of these dualities, ego, and all the consequences of suffering, pain and ignorance. The remedy suggested here is the acceptance of the possibility of widening out of the consciousness into another plane, a plane of infinity, and when that is done the root cause of suffering and ignorance is removed. Many people know nothing about this but the beginning of all truth is like that. It begins with the minority of one to all and then it gradually spreads and ultimately it succeeds and the truth becomes part of life.
Spiritual experience of this widening out into infinity would bring about this result of elimination of the consequence of ego and the limitations of duality. Then one finds, says Sri Aurobindo, that not only oneself is That, but all is That. When one widens out into the Infinite it is not as if one comes into a special individual possession of a truth which belongs to no one else. In fact, it is the beginning of knowledge that all is the Infinite, all is the Satchidananda,all is That and That only exists. Still the multiplicity is there, forms are there, tendencies are there, individual egos are there. In the Satchidananda, as expressed in life, they are allowed to deform, to distort its original truth and even the ego reaction is allowed. One sees this truth when one widens out into the Infinite-Consciousness. It is not as if Satchidananda has been overcome, the Infinite faced by something opposite of itself, a not-self or an anti-divinity that came into play and overcame the omnipotence and omniscience
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of the Divine and made the Divine accept multiplicity and fall into ego and dualities. Rather, the deployment of the possibilities of the Infinite has made possible these creations and fall into the ego of its own Self, has allowed this division, this play of variations upon the basis of its own Unity, and has allowed the deformation and the distortion of its original truth. Even ego-reaction is allowed to create conflict in life. It is as if you take up a course which at first appears just the opposite of your original intent but you know that it is only by adopting this course that you arrive at the ultimate end. It is by adoption of this fall that the elimination is possible, for, the fall can be set right. Creation of ego, of duality is the essential condition of existence in the universe. To create a material universe with multidimensional consciousness it was necessary that the Satchitananda accept the fall and when in the reverse process of ascent to the Truth the ego and the dualities are eliminated then there would be a manifestation of the Supreme in the material universe.
Yet even when sense and mind are enlarged, reason argues that all this knowledge by identity, by widening of consciousness into Infinite or Cosmic Consciousness is moon-shine, and perfection is not possible. Man would acquire more and more knowledge of sense-data, develop the chemistry, astro-physics, mathematics and arrive at perfection one day. But that would be to go on enlarging the problem, and it is not possible to arrive at perfection though man may continue trying ad infinitum. It would be a movement on the same plane. The solution lies in rising to some other plane. However much men may go on enlarging the material and the outer, the fundamental, the root problem remains because it attacks only the secondary causes. The root solution lies in getting away from the plane of consciousness in which one lives. When one is on the plane of ego here,
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though it is widened even to infinity it will not make for the height of consciousness, for the ascent of consciousness. Until that is done, until a radical change in consciousness is brought about the solution cannot be found.
Sri Aurobindo says, that if you go on enlarging the field of sense-knowledge and mental knowledge however widely, it would only be increasing or enlarging the knowledge of phenomena, not of the Reality. Adding to phenomena, he says, is feeding yourself with more and more grass, not with any substantial food. It is knowledge in one sense, yes; every addition is something true but it is as it were, accumulating dry grass all the time. It is hay, it is not solid substantial food which can bring about a change in your system. To bring about a change in your spiritual system some other radical, more nourishing food is to be given, the spiritual food. That is Knowledge by identity,— Knowledge by oneness.
Knowledge by identity is the remedy, which means increase or expansion of self-awareness. When one says "man", or "I", or "I am the body", "I am desire", "I am impulses", "I am ideas", "I am thoughts", "I am feelings", "I am emotions", etc., that is the limitation of the present nature. When this self-awareness is widened, and when the "I" becomes the All,—the all are included in the "I", then the "I" becomes one with the Infinite. Therefore the knowledge of the content is contained in the knowledge of the container. If one can get the knowledge of the container then there is full knowledge of the content. The universe is the content of the Self, of the Infinite, of the Brahman, the Divine, the Satchidananda. If you are identified with it then the whole content of the universe is within that Infinite Consciousness. You know it by containing it.
The difficulty at present is that man wants to contain it by possessing. With the limited instrumentation given,
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with the little body, with the small nervous system, and with a mind that always requires data of the senses for its operation, how can one possess this All ? The All can be contained in consciousness; but the play of ignorance and the fall of ego and dualities compel this very impulse to possess the All by desires. Now, possession by external clutch or external hold is impossible and it is this running after the possession of the All by each and every individual ego that creates what people call conflict. It is nothing else but each one trying to possess the All at the same time. Conflict is nothing else but each one trying to eliminate all others. When one possesses the All in consciousness, one does not run after things. That is what the Isha Upanishad says: "Then all this becomes fit habitation for the Lord." When one realizes that whatever movement of the cosmic energy takes place is a movement of that supreme, all-governing, Infinite Power, one will not try to possess somebody else's wealth because it is one's own wealth really speaking. When he rises to that consciousness, the whole of it belongs to him. It is not necessary to possess or clutch externally; but the deformation of the Original impulse to possess the All takes many forms, and very disturbing forms in the vital are the impulses, passions, desires and ambition. These really are the problem of man.
The solution lies not in their suppression, nor rejection. One has to widen one's consciousness. Man can possess the All, even the delight of 'possessing the All'. It can be done only by widening the consciousness, not by dealing with the superficial consciousness which only takes the surface play as if it were the true movement in men. The Upanishad says in one place : if you want to know everything about the sound of the drum, you must take hold of the drummer. When you know and are identified with the drummer, you know all the play of the drum. The Universe, the World,
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is a self-manifestation of that Infinite Consciousness. When you want to know this All, go to the origin from which it has emanated and you know the root springs of what is happening in the world. That is what the Upanishad means when it says "True knowledge consists in knowing That by knowing which all is known."
True knowledge is not acquisition of farts. Reasoning upon sense evidence is a secondary process called Avidya. Avidya is not total ignorance, but secondary knowledge, knowledge of the superficial and secondary causes and not of the root-causes. The enlarging of consciousness into awareness of All, of the Infinite, that is knowledge by identity. Then you will see that life has to move from darkness to reason, from reason to a greater Light.
In the beginning was the inconscient All which was dark; in the middle is Reason which is a limited light; and the movement of life is toward a higher Light. Reason only prepares the being for this higher knowledge of the Super-conscient. In between the two universals, the realm of Reason and senses dominated by the ego is active in man. So, the movement is from darkness to Light and life passes from the darkness of the Inconscient All to the creation of partial light and play of mind and senses, ego-centric life subject to dualities on to the superconscient All which is the realm of Light. And this higher Light can penetrate and come down into mind—the mental being of man. When it comes to man's mind, it first takes the form of intuition. That is how the penetration of Light also takes you in the other direction partly. This is the intuition of Self which is Infinite, of the Purusha, a Being, a subjective Self or the whole cosmos. That is the first great intuition of all philosophies, all systems of yoga, and of all religions. There is a cognizing consciousness which is infinite, but which stands on the plane of indi-dividual consciousness as the Purusha. This consciousness
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of the Purusha is universal. This is infiltration from the superconscient Light.
"What is knowledge ?" This is an important question. In what does knowledge consist ? We have dealt with the knowledge by identity as a possible source of valid knowledge. And knowledge by identity is not mystic, superstitious or something abnormal, but normally known to almost the whole of humanity in the course of its cultural activity. There is no cultural activity in which something of the knowledge by identity has not worked. We have seen that knowledge by identity is something that actually concerns humanity. Humanity has been constantly taking advantage of this knowledge by identity, through the process of intuition. Knowledge by identity does not take place all at once. When identity begins it overpasses the realm of reason and brings the light of intuition, inspiration, revelation into human mentality and it is that which has moulded many of the forms of cultural expression of the human collectivity. The cultural activity of many races has originated from the great intuitions that came down from beyond reason, inspirations that came down and gave noble values to life. Study of literature—poetic and artistic,—reveals the contribution of the supraconscient realm of consciousness whose rays penetrated into the working of the human consciousness. The aesthetic sense or the sense of harmony, sense of beauty, or sense of perfection, owes its origin very often to the working of this greater influence.
Apart from this we have seen that the first instrument which man can and does use for increasing his knowledge is reason. This reasoning faculty has a double function : a mixed and dependent one, and a pure and free working. When reason confines itself to sense-data, to the appearance of things, then it knows even the Becoming superficially. When reason takes the sense-data as the starting-point but
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goes beyond it then it becomes pure in its action. From the knowledge of the facts it brings about an understanding of them, an interpretation and generalisation. It gives a view of the world and life. From physics it brings man to metaphysics.
But all the knowledge acquired by reason is the knowledge of the Becoming, of the "how" but not of the "what" and the "why". It studies processes and changes but does not know 'what' is and why.
Reason as an instrument of knowledge is very defective and therefore imperfect. It covers a very small part even of the material fact of the universe. The senses which furnish data to reason are limited and the evidence given by them requires constant correction. Reason studies facts and gives us ideas about facts. But these have to be constantly corrected and are therefore changing. The ideas that reason gives are not realities, they are representations of them.
Man's thirst for knowledge is not confined to the knowledge of the Becoming. He wants to know the Being. He wants to know 'what' is the world, what is matter, what is life, what is man. Ideas about these do not entirely satisfy him : conceptual knowledge is incomplete without experience : man wants what may be called "concrete" experience. An illustration may make the point clear. An essay on the taste of sugar may give man some conception of it, but the actual taste, which takes place on a different plane, gives him the concrete experience. Or, he may read an exposition on "anger" and form an idea of what anger is but one minute's experience of anger gives him the knowledge which is different from intellectual exposition.
In a certain sense it can be said that all experience is psychological. This is contrary to the general trend in psychology to-day because modern psychology is being reduced to physiology by tracing everything to the nervous reactions.
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Para-psychology is trying to establish the well-attested fact that suprasensual perception and knowledge are possible. Sri Aurobindo says that to try to reduce psychology to a physical science is to take hold of it by the wrong end. Reactions of nerves are not fixed. The whole organization of nature in man is only a working equation of so many forces—physical, nervous, vital, intellectual etc. Their functioning has become a constant habit and we promote it to the status of a law. Sri Aurobindo says that mind's dependence on the sense-data or evidence for its operation is a limitation imposed by its evolutionary condition. That dependence is "only a regularity of a dominant habit". It is not a law. This is proved by the mind directly knowing the object of knowledge. Exact descriptions of places by persons who have never been to them have been known. Under hypnosis knowledge of place, persons and events has been recorded and tested and found correct. It has helped medicine to perform operations without anesthetics and also helped the police in tracking criminals.
A.E.—George Russell,—in his book, The Candle of Vision, writes about his own suprasensual and mystic experiences.
Ordinary reactions of the nervous system are also normal operations of a "dominant habit"—they are not inevitable; for instance : operation and even amputation of limbs without anaesthesia, or walking two or three miles with one leg and arm blown off by a cannon-ball have been known to occur.
The present nature of man is governed mostly by his mental or vital being. But man can govern his nature by the spiritual entity, his psychic being that is in him. The being that ordinarily acts in man is some part of his nature, either his mental or his vital personality. It is really speaking awareness of becoming. One experiences something on the substratum of being. It is the "being" that undergoes the various states of transformation, it becomes "aware" of things.
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Why is this mind not able at present to act freely ? Because mind now depends upon matter. Mind is encased in matter, therefore its dependence upon matter has become now very great, almost an established habit. Mind is not operating in its freedom and purity. There is a barrier between mind and matter and the normal waking consciousness is so much habituated to depend upon the evidence of the sense data, so extroverted, that direct knowledge is not possible by the mind only. But the sense mind has a free' action if it is trained. For example, it is possible to know the weight of an object without weighing. Even direct knowledge of the object by the mind, or enlargement of the sense-mind and sensation, capacity to know directly without going through a material process, frees the mind but will not enlarge the consciousness into spirituality. It will merely enlarge the field of phenomena, the field of becoming. Sri Aurobindo explains that you must attack the field of being. You have to deal with what you are. To know that you are only a little body, a bundle of desires and motives, a bundle of ideas is not true knowledge of Self. One has to grow from mental awareness to Self-awareness, to Cosmic awareness and realize that the whole is One. Mental awareness must expand to Self-awareness, then the content of the Atman which is the universe will be known and that is the equation which we found out just now. This brings us to the intuition that is working behind mind. One is aware of the Self, feels "I am" by an act of identity. The first intuition which is at work is the intuition of the One, the Purusha.
The formula : "I am He"—So'ham is the first formula. I am He, the Urilimited, the Infinite, the Divine, the Supreme, the Lord, or the Cosmic Consciousness. "Then: Thou art That:" — Tattvamasi. So, not only, 'I am He', but that which I cognize outside myself as 'thou' is also That. And the third is, "All this that I see is, indeed, the
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In these three intuitions is contained the content of all knowledge by identity. If you want to have the knowledge by identity, all the three must be simultaneously satisfied, not just one. If you confine yourself to "I am He", then you will reduce all this universe to māyā. If you realize only "I am He", the mind may become enamoured of the experience and then the All would appear to it as non-entity. That would be only a partial realization. Idam Brahma — all this that is seen in front is, indeed, the Brahman, the infinite." Idam in Sanskrit means "that which I see in front of me". The three formulas in harmony give you the content of true knowledge, the knowledge of the "Being". Knowledge of the being is widening of the mental awareness to Self-awareness. The Self is He, the Infinite. I am He, the Infinite.
This intuition by the process of knowledge by identity has worked in humanity intermittently. It has worked brilli-andy now and then and brought some results, but it is not yet an established faculty. It is not yet organized into expression in life. The problem to-day which The Life Divine wants us to tackle is that this knowledge must now become ordered because otherwise it remains unused and very often lends itself to a misinterpretation or an exaggeration which does not allow the expression of perfection in life. To-day it is the reasoning power that leads and not the intuition. Today intellect is the leading power of man, it is the instrument of knowledge and pure reason has led to practical results in science. Reason proceeds by observation, by analysis, by experiment and arrives at a generalization by the application of scientific discoveries to life. Consciousness is the fundamental fact of the cosmos and the Sat Brahman is the true being that is Infinite. It is that which is the standing intuition on which this reason can base its operation. Then, perhaps, the reason can give us some clarification of this basis of knowledge.
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There are people who say that this knowledge by identity is good; but they question : is it practical ? Does it work ? Again and again the immediate and the present overpowers the reasoning faculty. Sri Aurobindo has answered this question in some of his writings and I think it is necessary for us to understand, side by side, that the attainment of this Higher Consciousness, this Infinite Consciousness, is not something abstract and without any dynamic consequence in life.
Sri Aurobindo was not a Guru in the traditional sense; so, he allowed his disciples great liberty. Being himself a product of this age he knew too well the intellectual doubts that beset the mind. His European training and mastery of the English language gave him the necessary background to deal with intellectual doubts. Another reason of his giving the latitude to the intellectual doubts was bis great compassion. He felt pity for man whose mind was beset by such petty doubts. So, a disciple could say "You do not know how the human mind is troubled by doubts". He would answer : "I must remind you that I am myself no stranger to doubt. Both Mother and myself have had one side of our mind as positive and insistent on practical results and more so than any Russell can be". Then he adds "I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. We could never have been content with shining ideas and phrases which a Rolland or another takes for gold coin of Truth. We know well what is the difference between a subjective experience and dynamic outward going and realising force. So although we have faith (and who ever did anything great in the world without having faith in his mission or the Truth at work behind him ?) We don't found ourselves on faith alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which have been developing and testing all our lives." (18-8-1932) A disciple asked him:
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"When you concentrate what do you do ?" He answered : "When I concentrate I work upon others, upon the world, upon the play of force." (19-12-1934) To a question whether an invisible force—like the force of a Higher Consciousness —can produce tangible results, he wrote : "The invisible Force producing tangible results both inward and outward is the whole meaning of the yogic consciousness.. .Who would be satisfied with such meaningless hallucination and call it power ? If we had not thousands of experiences showing that the power within could alter the mind, develop its powers, add new ones, bringing in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements,—control the conditions and functionings of the body, work as a concrete dynamic Force on other forces, modify events etc., etc., we would not speak of it as we do." (On Yoga, Tome I p. 237)
Another question was : "Is the spiritual Force you speak of concrete ?" He answered: "Concrete ? What do you mean by concrete ? Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a stream, for instance) of which one is aware and send it quite concretely on whatever object one chooses." (ibid p. 239) "If a spiritual force is working then it must always succeed"—wrote a disciple. He replied : "As for the Force, I shall write to you some other time. I have told you that it is not always efficacious, but works under conditions like all forces; it is only the Supramental force that works absolutely, because it creates its own conditions. But the Force that I am using is a Force that has to work under the present conditions. It is not the less a Force for that..." (Letters Vol. II P. 408)
In another letter he explained why the spiritual force used in the second world-war could not bring about all the results he wanted to. He wrote : "I have always said that the spiritual force I have been putting on human affairs such as the war is not the Supramental but the overmind Force, and
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then when it acts in the material world is so inextricably mixed up in the tangle of the lower forces that its results, however strong or however adequate to the immediate object, must necessarily be partial." (Letters Vol. II p. 245). When people learn about a spiritual force acting they believe it must always succeed in the human sense and fulfil man's hopes and desires.
The impartiality of observation about anything, including the working of the Spiritual Power that he was using, is a quality which I have never seen in another spiritual person. To a question whether his spiritual force was used only in the Ashram, he replied "Certainly, my force is not confined to the Ashram and its conditions. As you know, it is largely being used for the help in the right development of the war and of change in the human world. It is also used for individual purposes outside the scope of the Ashram and the practice of yoga, but that is silently done and mainly by the spiritual action." (Letters Vol. II p. 296).
We have now some idea of how perception, knowledge and action can take place without resorting to the ordinary functions of nature. There is possible direct action of the sense, a suprasensual perception, and knowledge in which the physical senses do not participate. It is possible, also, for the mind to act directly and acquire knowledge without resorting to the help of the senses or any mental process. We have also seen that direct action of the spirit,—of a Spiritual Power beyond mind, is capable of producing tangible results.
Q: Does it mean that one should be in the world but not of it?
A : Not merely that. One has to accept the world as the
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world of the Divine; one has to try to bring into life the Light of the Divine.
Q: To be in the world but not of it would be quite difficult to pratice, is it not ?
A : Not difficult if one wants to do it. People always complain about circumstances and there is often some truth in the complaint. But most often, it is the lack of resolution and sincerity that is a greater obstacle than the circumstances. One has to give priority to the growth of inner life and arrange other objectives of life in their proper place. One should not yield to the pressure of society or other conventions when it concerns one's inner life.
Q : The spiritual undercurrent in India is with you, while in Europe it is against you.
A : Yes—all the more reason that one should be firm and sincere. Why is a current always against you ? Perhaps, it is to test your sincerity. One has to take the conditions as one finds them and bring the full force of spiritual concentration and sincerity to bear upon them.
I said something about this at Los Angeles. The subject was the need of establishing higher values in our collective life to-day. At present it is dominated by economy-centric outlook. I said : "Some one from you will have to take up the cause of higher values against money. Some one who does not surrender to the pressure of this environment will have to oppose it. If one wants society to progress, often one has to break conventional values".
One need not be harsh and insulting, one can be gentle and kind even to opponents. We are living in a democratic age where one has a right to believe what one likes. One can maintain the quiet and yet be firm so far as spiritual values are concerned. One has, at times, to stand alone in such
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work. If one is sincere and firm he succeeds, because even though numerically alone he is not without support,—the Divine support is always there.
Q : Such opposition may provide conditions for a quicker spiritual growth, don't you think ?
A : Yes, one must never compromise on fundamentals so far as the inner life is concerned. In mamiaining the inner growth if one receives a knock one should learn to bear it. Generally one should try to create as much goodwill as possible. One should guard against the tendency to feel superior to others because one is trying to practise yoga, and live a spiritual life.
Q : Our intellect and reason seem to conflict with the idea of surrender which Sri Aurobindo advocates.
A : That comes when you want to practise the yoga. We are now reading The Life Divine where the metaphysical basis is being given for a perfect life on earth,—say, for the true fulfilment of man. Here in our exposition we have seen that an Infinite Consciousness works in life and tries to manifest an Omnipresent Reality. The universe is the expression of an infinite Being, Consciousness, Delight, of Satchidananda. Man is only one term of it. The Supreme for man is to enlarge his consciousness into that infinite Consciousness.
In deciding about this, reason has its own limitations. Also reason is not capable of solving man's problems. But it can accept the intuition of the Self, the infinite Being, in the universe. It is an intuition that has been accepted by man from the beginning of history.
If reason accepts Something—an Infinite Being, or a Purusha, a Self—then you can think about the process of growth. It is easy to see that the human being should give
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himself up to the Infinite Being in order to allow the Infinite Being to work in him. Surrender is not anti-rational, nor irrational. It is rational. If you want a wider current to work in you, you have to open yourself to it—then only can it come into you. If one stands completely closed saying "I cannot give myself up," then nothing flows from the reservoir of the Infinite. The lesser must open to the greater and give itself up so that the greater can enter into it. When the sun has risen you have to open the doors and windows to allow the light to enter your room.
It is difficult for a man with strong personality to surrender himself. But even a great personality has not much precious stuff to give up. What man has to surrender is his petty human nature, his ego, his desires, ambitions etc. He may even feel, on a closer introspection, that what he is and what he has is not something wonderful—it is often the ordinary trash of human weakness.
Q : People have fears about giving up the ego....
A : Yes, they are afraid of losing their personality. In reality the ordinary personality is not a very precious thing. Besides, surrender to the Truth-Consciousness can fulfil the personality as the ego never can. Surrender is not losing of yourself, but gaining a higher self. When you surrender you gain.
A constant aspiration has to be maintained in order to make the surrender effective. Aspiration and surrender are the two processes of our nature, of the mental and the vital being. They are—even when they act powerfully in nature, from the true being, the true Self trying to express itself. The constantly awake ideal in the mind, a flame in the heart, a will in the vital repeating "I want to change," "I must widen into the Higher Consciousness", is the sign that the being is active.
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For the practice of yoga it is not necessary to give up life, to renounce things externally. Aspiration—a constant will is the first necessity. When this becomes dynamic then the yoga starts and is natural. The Higher Truth which one wants to attain is not absent, it is always present and can act if allowed. One is always surrounded by the Divine Presence.
Q : Can one say aspiration is like a seed yearning to fulfill itself.
A : Yes. One has to understand that "aspiration" and 'desire' are not the same. If a seed could speak it would say: I want to become flowers and fruits—"When it aspires it is not asking for something from outside, something that is not within itself. It is, in fact, its spiritual, i.e. inner potentialities trying to realise themselves."
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Lecture V
Chap. 9: Pure Existent
Let us leave man out of our view and look at the universe. What does one see ? He finds there a boundless energy in infinite space, infinite movement in eternal time : an infinite existence and an infinite movement of energy. This existence and this movement is far more than the human individual or human collectivity. Man begins with the ego as the centre of the universe and thinks that the aim of the universal existence and movement is related to him. This is not true. Existence is for itself and not particularly related to human aims and fulfilling human ideas. We do not know its aim but we can see that its aim is independent of man's ideas, hopes and wishes. This great infinite movement of existence does not seem to give greater importance to man than to the most insignificant thing, to the great energy man does not seem to be all-important. It bestows minute care in finishing the details of an ant-hill as in the working of the solar system. It is equally busy with the design of a flower, the working of a plant, the contour of a mountain. It does not seem to care either for quality or quantity. If one looked at quality of existence one would say that the ant is greater than the solar system. That would be an exaggeration. The pure existent is equally concerned with all that is. If one observes impersonally one would see that the care bestowed upon the ant is the same that is bestowed upon the sun. The Pure Existent equally pervades all.
But when one says it is present in everything does one mean that it is equally distributed? Sri Aurobindo says : "No, it is present as a whole in each thing". The Gita says about it: "it is something undivided in beings but appears as if divided" 'avibhaktam vibhakteṣu vibhaktam iva ca
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sthitam' Each object while belonging to a class is the front of the whole of the Brahman. In order to arrive at the true conception of man's destiny and fulfilment one has to grasp this great truth.
Existence is the same in all. To man's mind the quality and the quantity of existence seem to differ but the Self behind them is the same.
Then the question of relation between this great, infinite being and energy at work and man arises. To man he himself seems all important, he thinks and acts as if he were the centre of the universe. This establishes a kind of mental self-sufficiency and gives man a false understanding of the world. Instead of allowing his mind to set up a false value what man has to do is to find out the aim of That which is and is working,—the infinite existence and energy. Then he would notice that he is only a partial movement of an infinite movement. The ordinary view is : Man=All. Independent of this : All=Zero. It is then possible for him to identify himself with the All,—with the infinite existence and movement.
When one has found this great link of an infinite existence and movement, he would discover that it is not without a stable ground. This total infinite existence and movement is supported by the One, a constant, indivisible Being, a Self. This timeless, spaceless Pure Existence may not have play of energy within itself, no manifestation, no world. It is, in one view, all stability, which may be, and often is, a block of movement. When the wheel of a cycle is moving fast it appears to be stable. In the same way the stability and immutability of the Pure Existent is, perhaps, a block of mvement. One may say that the energy in the Pure Existent is at rest. Energy is not always bound to be active; a reservoir of water need not flow all the time, but it can flow. It is possible for energy to be either at rest or active. In the Pure Existent energy may be active or in repose.
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Is existence always a movement? One can answer : infinite existence is timeless and spaceless. When it puts forth energy then one feels infinite time and infinite space. When the Pure Existent is put forth into energy then time and space come into existence. By space we do not mean spatial exten-tion, wideness of direction. In the Pure Existent space is psychological self-expansion, it is 'Being' widening itself. When there is a movement in the Pure Existent it is felt as time; time is really a movement of consciousness in the Pure Existent. In fact, if one watches carefully one finds there is no objective time even in ordinary life. Time is not a fixed something. Time as perceived by man is only movement, action, process, growth, change. If no change takes place one hardly notices time. When a man is inspired by a high ideal, time and space have a different value for him. Even in science the time for a process is not always fixed. One cubic centimeter of water may normally take a certain time for boiling —in that sense 'time' may be said to be fixed. But if one can change the conditions—the temperature and pressure—the time for boiling would change. Time is elastic—it can be extended, it can be compressed. If all the conditions of the process were fulfilled the result would be instantaneous—one may call it an act of grace or work of Omnipotence. If consciousness did not change we would not be conscious of time.
If there is no space or time in Pure Existent, how can one explain action and movement? Is existence, then, a fiction ?
Sri Aurobindo says : one can say it is 'something'—instead of calling it Pure Existent. That something carries in it the probabilities of repose : Energy in action implies energy abstaining from action. "Absolute energy not in action is simply and purely absolute existence."
And what is the purpose of this movement of energy ? Is it merely movement for its own sake ? It would be like a staircase in the void of the air : there would be want of fulfilment
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at the end of the process of existence. Our mentally conceived Truth is not the same that our senses give.
What is, is the Eternal indivisible succession of Time carrying in it the progressive movement of indivisible consciousness. In that sense, Becoming is the only Being or rather Becoming is the mode of Being. We are like the river that constantly flows, like the flame that unceasingly burns. The Pure Existent is the fundamental fact: "World existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view: it leaves the white existence precisely where and what it was, ever is and ever will be; its sole object is the joy of the dancing". A timeless, spaceless pure existence and a measureless movement in time : Shiva and Kali in one.
Q : Can one say : "Absolute existence is absolute nonexistence ?
A : To say "Absolute" non-existence is contradiction in terms. Non-existence is negative, one cannot put in a positive term like "absolute" with it. To negation of existence how can one add absoluteness ?
One can accept the Pure Existent as absolute—not in the sense that there are no qualities or forms in it; one can say it goes beyond them,—it exceeds all that is relative.
To argue that the Eternal alone exists, therefore whatever is is eternal and nothing has to be attained,—as one is attaining it even now,—would not be correct line of thinking. One has to know that the Eternal is not standing still, it is not something inert and unchanging. So far as the world is concerned the Eternal is a movement. And the individual has to determine the curve of the Eternal in himself by his own choice. Even the movement of the Eternal is predetermined, one can
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say. But then the determination is not known here in man's present state because man is not living in the Eternal. Man can know the predestination only if he can rise into the consciousness of eternity. The individual may find out the predetermination of the Eternal within his own self. To say that all is Eternal and therefore there is nothing to seek would not be the correct attitude. Man is not a simple being, he is complex—he is always dragged to the animal level, he has a mind that can believe and doubt. If one did not use the faculties of heart and intellect given to him there would be no point in giving them to him. The eternal is acting and has to act, through man's present nature. To say that 'to exist' is the most important thing is only partially true. One must know that there is a drive for value in existence, in the being. To exist is not the only drive in man. To the human being values are more important. Value is not a mental idea or an ideal. It compels obedience to itself in the individual. One is not subjected to existence mechanically, one can participate in the process of the Eternal at work. That is the utility of creating a conscious being. In a sense, what one calls Eternal is in time a progressive movement of consciousness. If one lives in that one can be fulfilled every moment. Until that is realised and man lives in an indivisible progressive movement of consciousness he cannot say that he is living in the Eternal which is present; What is Becoming ? A mode of Being. What is Being ? The basis of Becoming. The two are indivisible.
Q : Whether the pure Existent is conscious or inconscient?
A : All phenomenal existence that one perceives resolve themselves ultimately into force. A stone is atomic force, a tree is force of life, an animal is life-force at work. Force is movement of energy. All kinds of energies are at work-material, electrical, vital etc. We see this force as matter :
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it is all atoms and molecules reducible to electrons, which are further reducible to twenty six infinitesimal particles. We have photons, protons etc. Another way of seeing it would be to feel the force as vibration; force can be said to be vibration of energy : vibration that expands, vibration that contracts, giving rise to solidity. Our sensation is nothing else but the vibration of contact of the vibrating body. Thus are created touch, sight, taste, smell etc. When one sees a bird or a tree or a stone one perceives a vibration of energy.
Q : Is it an inconscient, mechanical vibration ?
A: That is the question: does an inconscient, mechanical energy go on producing inconscient, mechanical vibrations ? Man and an object: are these two different aspects of an inconscient energy ? And is their meeting or contact, the meeting of two inconscient energies ? The difficulty in accepting this view is that here at one point of reception there seems to be consciousness receiving the vibration of an inconscient object. Now can we say that the perception that results is the result of mere vibration ?
There is a difference in the vibration that takes place in a machine and one that takes place in man, in the magnet, the thermometer and the human being. The question is : what is consciousness ?
So far as sensation is concerned, there is first an awareness and then a judgement of the vibration that man perceives. The awareness and the judgement, "this is good", "this is pleasant" is not mechanically automatic.
About "consciousness" one can say that the force that is working in the Pure Existent must be conscious because it throws itself into rhythms of vibrations. The multiplicity of rhythms and their set formations give us the clue that it must be conscious.
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And if they are unconscious then there cannot be any "why" It just is,
Q : These attitudes have come and make man more and more irresponsible: there are no fixed values in life to-day.
A : The upsetting of values came in Europe and all over the world too, after the two world wars. Perhaps, it is the necessary condition through which man's consciousness had to pass.
Many new attitudes that have come in philosophy owe their origin to the great psychological disturbances that came after the two world wars. Old values are no more—in almost all departments of culture. The discovery that there was something fundamentally wrong in the values of life created by European culture has set many minds thinking. It is difficult for a new set of values to arise because the contact of the spiritual basis has been lost by the masses. The only thing they seem to rely upon is material progress and economic organisation and scientific advance. The war was not brought about by the people, but when it came it is the people that suffered the most. The idea that the individual is nonentity in such situation gained ground. But that is only partially true. The individual can resist, he can stand on his highest value and try to check the tide. It is not true that the majority of Germans were Nazis. They were hardly ten or fifteen per cent. But the rest of them should have acted according to their conscience and resisted.
Q: Can an organised effort help ?
A : More important than organised effort is the awakening of the individual. If there are individuals who stand up to their highest values then a collectivity can come into existence.
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Q: Could such disturbances be called the "churning of the ocean" by the Divine ?
A : There are apparent rational causes for such crises. But there are deeper ones that are more important. For instance to me, one of the deeper causes seems to be the pressure of the descent of the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness above the mind. It is that pressure that has thrown all the forces that are against it in the struggle to maintain their hold on earth-nature. One could clearly see the anti-divine movement on an unprecedented scale during the last war. It is not European culture that is to blame, but the powers that took hold of the reign of life and tried to utilise it for possessing the world. These powers of the vital plane were defeated by the awakened conscience of mankind helped by the Divine.
Now the atmosphere is slowly settling down, though elements of another crisis are not lacking in the situation today. The U.N.O. has begun the new departure. In the settlement of national disputes it is not military force and economic power that alone count to-day, though they have not lost their importance. Ethical considerations, safety of mankind etc. have begun to play their part in international matters. Humanity is entering upon a new age; only, it is preparing for it very tardily and without proper understanding. The dawn has already come—people may not know about it. The problem is not outer, not of nations but of humanity. The problem is to bring into the earth consciousness a new element, a Higher Consciousness. The great obstacle that prevents the descent is the materialistic outlook and domination of economy in collective life. Economic organization and scientific advance are in themselves great helps in the task of bringing about the descent of the Supermind. But man's psychology dominated by desire and ambition is the great obstacle.
I know cases in which people who have spiritual aspiration and hunger are unable even to make an effort for it. The
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collective atmosphere is responsible for it. I put this problem to some intellectuals in England when I was there in 1955. What they felt was something like this : "We have created here a culture that is efficient, but in which man is not free. He labours from morning to night to earn his bread, to dress and to have a house. The life collective is like a machine that grinds the individual in order to maintain collective prosperity and political status. We are so careful about economic waste that we do not mind wasting the human material. We count in terms of production—which man produces. We are putting man under the machine—and we do not mind grinding him." Economic progress is not bad, science is not bad. Science and money by themselves are neither good nor bad. Economy has to be put in its proper place in the scale of values. Economic progress is man's own work, man should not submit himsef to what he has created; man should be free, free to devote himself to his fulfilment.
Q : We have to pay more taxes and we have to contribute money to the whole world. Is it not something that we must do ?
A : Does it really help ? is it the best way of helping ?
Q : We do not have any choice. We are made to do it.
A : One can give one's wealth to the world. I am glad that America helps other nations because it is the material proof of the sympathy which brings humanity together, brings unity of mankind nearer. It is a work whose basis is very sound.
What we are discussing is the orientation of collective life by money, raising money to the highest value in human culture. It has become a craze with all nations. The whole world seems to be coming under the domination of economy-centric outlook. It is like a steamroller. Human culture is in danger everywhere. The U.N.O. can be a great instrument in ushering in the New Age of Human Culture.
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Lecture VI
Chap. 10. Conscious Force
Chap. 11. Delight of Existence : the Problem
We were discussing a universal or an infinite,—existing in its unlimited or infinite power, infinite force,—and the nature of this force. All that exists is surcharged with a force, whether that force is conscious or unconscious. We found that the rhythms of the force that is working cast themselves into an ordered movement. There must be a consciousness behind, because if we grant that the force is conscious, then only the question why, the aim purpose, fulfilment can, arise. An unconscious force can have no purpose, no end, no fulfilment. It could not necessarily cast itself into harmonious rhythms of self-expression if it was absolutely, definitely unconscious. When we look at it from the point of view of our mind and senses, the whole universal existence, which is independent of man, far vaster than man, appears to be apparently unconscious; but if we study the movement of the force that is at work, we find that the force seems to cast itself into rhythms of movement. One rhythm creates the material world, another creates the plant world, a third creates the insect world, a fourth creates the animal world, a fifth creates the human world. So that it seems as if it were casting itself into rhythms cognizable by the mind which gives to us the intuition that it must be conscious, or something conscious must be behind it. It could not have been an unconscious force working out according to certain rhythms, and if it is a conscious force, then we can seek for the why, wherefore, purpose, fulfilment. One need not try to find what is good, or right, or true, because these are not relevant to the working of an unconscious force, which need not bother about
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whether the consciousness that has arisen out of the inconscient, the human, seeks a truth or untruth, etc. That would be the rise of something positive out of something negative. But if we suppose that existence is conscious being or force, the question of why can arise.
Then we find, as we first saw in the 4th chapter, that there is a conscious subjective Purusha at work in the whole universal existence which is the Infinite—the 'I' itself at work. Just as the human individual is secondary to the universal in which he exists, the whole universal existence of which human existence is a part, is a part of an 'I', an infinite Self, of which the universe and the individual are terms of Self-expression. When we accept the Force as being conscious, immediately the intuition and the presence of the Infinite subjective Being, the Self of the cosmos, comes into our acceptance. We accept that it is a conscious Being, an independent entity of existence who is the witness, the seer; who is perhaps the supporter also of the whole movement. This becomes a possible assumption. If existence is conscious it has freedom to manifest or not to manifest; either to take up the process of creation and self-manifestation or to hold itself back. Why does it cast itself into this universal rhythm ? Why does the One, the Self, the Purusha, One who watches and is independent of this cosmic movement of conscious force cast Itself into these rhythms ? The freedom to manifest or not, must be inherent in this Being. When It holds Itself back from movement it does not mean that it has lost all the power of movement. It holds the power back. That is to say the movement of cosmos or creation becomes potential. It does not cease to exist. The power to manifest the rhythms of cosmic existence do not cease because they are not projected from the Self of the Being. The Infinite Conscious Being can either hold the power of expression in repose or passivity as potential,
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or can activate and throw Itself out into movement. Both are possible. Therefore, even if one finds that it is holding Itself back, force is always inherent in existence. Power will always be there wherever there is existence, whether manifested or not. Then we can say there is a conscious Force that is manifesting, a consciousness is working.
Now what kind of consciousness is it that is working in the universal, infinite force ? Is it a mental consciousness, a Mind that is at work ?
The mental consciousness, however wide, cannot be the creator of the movement of the cosmos. The universe cannot be the product of a Mind, however wide, however universal, however great the dimensions one may give to it, because mind by its very definition has subtle limitations which cannot go with the qualities and powers which we see in this creation. If it is a mental consciousness that is the creator, then in the creation, mental consciousness would have been present. But we find that in the inconscient, the mental consciousness is not present. And what is present is not of the mental type, of the mental nature. The consciousness that is manifesting itself in infinite universal existence is a consciousness—but not a mental, not an intellectual consciousness, because if it were mental the element of mentality would be present in all the rhythms which it casts out from itself. Because it is not so, the nature of that infinite consciousness which is the essential and inherent power of infinite existence must be other than mental consciousness. That seems to be almost axiomatic. Mental consciousness, therefore, is not the rule of the material universe. We know that something in us is conscious when we sleep, when mind is not active. If the nature of that consciousness were only mental, we would retain our mental consciousness all through. But there are conditions in which the mind is in abeyance and still man is conscious. The nature of the consciousness
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is not necessarily mental or intellectual. Our waking state is only a selection from the whole range of our conscious being. When we say "waking state", it is not all-pervading. This is what we were discussing the other evening when we were talking about psychology—that man's psychological being is like an iceberg. Perhaps four-fifth of it is below the surface in the subconscient, the inconscient, and one-fifth is visible in the waking consciousness. This one-fifth is largely governed by that which is below. So the waking consciousness cannot be taken as its characteristic, or as the whole of man's possible consciousness. The materialistic outlook is that however vast the consciousness may be extended it is inseparable from physical organs; it is, in fact, the result of physical organs; and one becomes conscious by the use of the physical organs. Because one has eyes, therefore one has sight. Having the physical organism for expression, the waking consciousness attaches itself to this material organism, never realizing that there is consciousness that is free from this organized material unit or organism which it is using. Consciousness is there and is using the physical organs. Because you have the 'I', therefore you have sight. The materialist forgets that consciousness is not a result of the brain, but consciousness is using the brain. Brain is only an instrument for transmission of thought, for acceptance of consciousness and decision by the consciousness of whether the sensation that is received is acceptable or unacceptable, pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad. Just as a typewriter that is being used is not the creator of what is typed, senses are not the creators of sensation. This is important to note : consciousness is using the brain, the brain is not producing consciousness. Sri Aurobindo gives a very fine argument: the engine does not cause or explain the the motive power. It is only a machanism for the working of a power. Power is independent of the motor, of the engine,
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and the engine is only mechanical device created for the operation of the power. The engine does not cause or explain the motive power either of steam or of electricity.
In the same way, the human organism does not explain the conscious-power which is working in the organism. It is only for some use, as the engine is for some use by a power. The physical, the nervous, the mental organism that is given to man is only for use by a Conscious Power. It is not that because the engine is there that the power comes into it. No. It may not come into it; that is what we call death. The engine is there but the power is not there. The material state is the emptiness of consciousness or the sleep of consciousness. We say consciousness is all-pervading, yet in matter we do not see any consciousness. But just as in a man who is asleep the consciousness is there within him, in the same way in matter also the consciousness is present but it is in trance, masked, hidden. It could be said that it is asleep or gathering itself into a sort of apparent unconsciousness; and physical impact brings out the consciousness that is there. In the whole operation of this energy which is replete with consciousness there are various states of this consciousness : Conscient, superconscient, subconscient, and subliminal states; so that the consciousness which is operative, active, or creative, has not just one aspect of its expression, one mode of manifestation. It can be, to the human mind, superconscient. It can be to the human consciousness something conscious or subconscious. It can be subliminal. So, there are various states of consciousness—and they operate. The subliminal state is able to act independently of human senses. No outer sense-instrument is needed to convey thought or impulse to someone else. Telepathy, hypnotism, faith-cures, and scores of other phenomena show that consciousness can act directly without the intervention or use of organized instruments of
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sensation and perception. And this Conscious Force has not just one rhythm. It is not necessarily mental nor necessarily bound to the waking condition. First, this is seen in a nutshell in man, but on a large scale, in the cosmos in the whole working of this energy. In plant life, and even in the metal there is a consciousness which, to our mind is subconscient, but still is present; a nervous system which corresponds to the nervous response of the waking organism of either man or animal. In the animal the consciousness is not mentally conscient as in man, but is vitally conscious.
So this cosmic consciousness or universal consciousness, which is the power of an infinite existence, works on several levels in the cosmos; they are all present in man, in a condensed, tabloid form. The Unconscious, subconscious, subliminal, vital, mental, are all there; man is the representative of the cosmos. He is the microcosm. All the cosmic energies are present in a rudimentary form, in seed forms, in the human individual. But also, one can see that this conscious power or force is operating in the plant, in the metal, and in the animal. Sometimes, even in man, it works in compartmental or tight divisions. His mind often does not know what his vital being is doing. There is a novel by R. L. Stevenson, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", that is based on, the perception of the double personality where the same consciousness is working in one part quite unknown to another part. Not that this happens in every case, but there are cases in which the same consciousness is operating on one level unknown to another level in the same organism. This illustrates how multiple are the hierarchical steps in which this consciousness works out whatever purpose it has. We are only trying to prove that Consciousness is not only mental. It is independent of mind and has several levels on which it manifests itself. So Consciousness is there as a common element in man, in animal, in plant, and in
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matter. This Shakti-energy creates the world.
Consciousness always implies knowledge, self-knowledge It must know. So, when we say that this operation is of a conscious-force or conscious-energy, we grant that it has intelligence, it must have self-knowledge. It must therefore be charged with purposefulness. It must know its purpose because of self knowledge. It knows the purpose because it knows itself, therefore, it knows the direction of the movement. This is seen in the working of plant life. The energy that is working in the plant seems as if it is conscious of the purpose. That is why the seed invariably produces the tree which it must produce. We see it working in the animals, in an instinct where the purpose of the organism is known. So Consciousness, implies intelligence, self-knowledge, self-awareness which, therefore knows well the direction.
The animal, for instance, finds its food by instinct. It knows danger by instinct and protects itself. It knows what is a pleasant and what is an unpleasant experience. We see this knowledge of direction in the vast belt of its expression in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. There may appear to be a great waste in what this energy is doing; for, in order to produce one change in colour or design or in the organism it takes hundreds of years, and kills thousands and millions of beings before it brings about the change. To this idea of waste Sri Aurobindo replies by saying that it is a mental view of the working of that Consciousness; one must identify oneself with that consciousness to know whether there is waste. It may be waste from the human point of view—but is that view enough ? He puts it very finely in poetic form, in Savitri, when he says "...prodigal of her rich divinity". The Divine power that is working, this Conscious Force, this Shakti, that is working at her task in the cosmos, is prodigal of its divinity. "She wastes eternity on a beat of time". She can afford to waste eternity on every beat of time. That
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is the richness and the plenitude of the Supreme Power of which we are speaking. He says that when we say waste, it is a human way of looking at the vast processes in which human values have a relative, if any, place. What is waste to the human mind, may not be waste to the Supreme.
We have seen that there is an intelligence and self-knowledge and purpose at work in the working of this world-force, and therefore this force is conscious. Why does it move in the cosmic manifestation, in the world of process ? The object of the movement is the emergence of potentialities that are in it, and these potentialities are infinite and unlimited. Therefore, the movement will be everlasting for all eternity.
We have dealt with the aspects of pure existence, its aspects of infinity, and its aspects of power, of energy. Now we want to understand : Why is this movement ? Why does the Conscious-Power take up the task of bringing out the potentialities at all ? That is the problem which he divides into two chapters. We have established the existence of the Omnipresent Reality. A Reality is working everywhere. There is Existence-Being. We say the plant is, stone is, hill is, river is —it means—they exist. So there is an infinite existence. Behind all this existence there is an omnipresent Reality. This is what we have established that it is an Infinite Being charged with an Infinite Consciousness.
Why does this Omnipresent Reality throw itself out in the forms of this creation ? Why this movement of emergence of potentialities of the consciousness into worlds of forms ? Is there a compulsion of something irresistible ? But we have assumed that it is free. There cannot be any compulsion. Then why does this movement take place at all ? Sri Aurobindo says that the only reason that we can mentally think of is "delight". Is this movement a result of bare existence of a crude inconscient force ? No, it does not seem so, because the evidence is not there. It is not a question of man's
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likes or dislikes. We have seen that it is not bare existence, because all existence is always full of consciousness. There cannot be existence without consciousness; nor consciousness without existence. It is not an inconscient and crude force, for we have seen by now that it is a conscious force. So that it is conscious existence which is bliss, the aspect of delight. It is possible to divide the three and put them into compartments, but that would be amenta! way of looking at the infinite Truth. The human mind says : Sat is being; consciousness is Chit Shakti; delight is Anahda, but it is triune in its operation. It is indivisible trinity. It is a trinity in which you cannot think of consciousness without delight, of delight without being, or consciousness without delight and being. It is one and indivisible Reality which manifests itself as being, consciousness, and bliss.
When we say that conscious existence is absolute, what do we mean by that absoluteness ? Those who do not want to explain the cosmos in this way will always say that their idea is that there is conscious existence and conscious being at work but it is Absolute, and in the Absolute there cannot be any possibility of creation. Sri Aurobindo asks: what does one mean by the Absolute ? There can be, in the Absolute illimitable bliss of conscious existence. If we negate every positive element in the Absolute, then the Absolute will be almost a void or zero. If nothing can exist in the Absolute then the very Absolute ceases to be absolute. It becomes something relative. Absolute is that which is free from the limitations of all relativities. It is not negation of relativities, but transcendence of relativities. All the relativities are included in the Absolute, yet the Absolute remains the absolute because it is not limited by the relativities which it manifests, or which it holds within itself. It cannot be said that it has nothing in it. It has everything and is more than all it holds. That is the, real meaning of Absolute.
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Delight is, when you experience your self-existence, free from any movement. It is a sort of a stillness in which you have the Delight of the Supreme Self-existence. It is said that Delight can, or should be always connected with stilless, with holding back from movement, with mounting into self-existence only, into consciousness only, not into movement. That is one outlook that has been given by some schools of thought and philosophy. But to move forth and enjoy this infinite movement and variation of Self can also be the object of Delight. Delight need not be withdrawal into the pure Being and Consciousness and stillness; delight can also be in the act of loosing forth into unlimitedness, unlimited movement of variation, of self-delight. The self-delight can move out into, can throw itself forth into, can pour itself into, unlimited creation,—creation of objects, creation of its own field of expression for the sake of play of this Delight. Satchidananda can enjoy the Delight of variation because all things are, in their ultimate constitution, that Infinite Being, Consciousness and Bliss.
Then two questions always come to the human mind. If this is a play of Delight, and Delight is the cause of the infinite existence and consciousness throwing itself out into an unlimited play of self-expression and variation, how is it that in the world there is pain ? How is that in the creation there is evil ? These two questions of pain and evil always come as difficult of explanation on the basis of an infinite bliss that is at work in infinite consciousness and existence. This pain is felt by the emotional and sensational consciousness of man and animals and beings, and the problem of evil is ethical, moral, it is concerned with right and wrong, good and bad, true and false. In our world of pain there is no delight, this is evident. But the sum of pleasure far exceeds the sum of pain in the cosmos, otherwise life would not continue. If the sum of pain were greater man would begin
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to commit suicide, which he does not do, in spite of whatever befalls him.
Pain is there, and the basis of the Buddhistic outlook on man's problems revolves round the problem of pain. Buddha gave up his royal position and went out, simply to solve the problem of how to make man free from pain. It is evident that Buddha was overpowered by the aspect of pain in life. There is an exaggeration in his perception of the place of pain in the human scheme of things. It makes such an effect on the human being that he is turned from the purpose of self-fulfilment. If one looks at pain through a microscope it would look very big, and that is what Buddhism seems to have done. It forgets how much pleasure and delight also are there. Pain alone does not exist.
These aspects which exaggerate one aspect of the whole creation can give a lop-sided reading of the ultimate purpose. One must have balance. One of the greatest things which Sri Aurobindo's outlook gives to anybody who has an intellectual seeking is a panoramic view of the whole cosmos. Not only of what is, but what can be, and what can be for the next 1000 or 2000 years. What he says is not necessarily possible for man to achieve today, but it is certain that man will have to attempt it in 500 years or 1000 years. In that scheme there is nothing that is exaggerated. There is pain, there is pleasure, there is ignorance, there is superconscient, and there is that Conscious-Force and Existence and Delight. One can open to all that and give expansion of movement of That in its working out. That is the solution. So nothing is outwardly changed and yet everything is so radically altered in values that there is a complete revaluation. Once you have opened to that Consciousness, though the universe remains externally the same, the evaluation has changed the whole thing radically. It becomes a play of delight and bliss. Do not look at it as if it were only a field of fresh pain in which
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man was submitted to unmerited suffering.
The Vedic Rishis never overrated the place of pain in human life. They always said "śatam jīvema śaradaḥ" —"Let us live a hundred winters, the life that is given to us by the gods". How ? The hymn says "Looking up at the Sun of divine illumination, trying to reach the Solar Light, worshipping the Sun of illumination, let us live a hundred winters. Let us hear something happy and harmonious through our ears; let us see things beautiful with our eyes, keeping our bodies in good health, let us enjoy the span of one hundred winters given to us by the gods." Thar is the Vedic outlook. It never overlooked pain, but also it never exaggerated it; and it put before man the more positive purpose even as the Upanishads did. All the beings that one sees, all the existences, are born from bliss and delight. In delight they remain and to delight they return. That is the outlook of the Upanishads. Only when Buddha came on the scene of the cultural life of the world was this exaggeration of the temporary aspect of pain raised to a permanent world-view which in actual life became a little lop-sided.
The Life Divine now emphasizes that the sum of pleasure far exceeds the sum of pain in existence. We do not see joy. Blissis not seen. Sri Aurobindo says that there are three aspects of it. It can be active, it can be passive, it can be on the surface, or it can be underlying. Most often this delight of existence is underlying, and men take it for granted never thinking that to exist is an act of Delight. When a man has good health he never feels "I am in good health." Only when he gets ill he feels that he is not in good health, he feels pain. The positive aspect is taken for granted. Man never thinks of his health as something positive. Pain is a negative element. Even when it comes it is never accepted as natural. And this all-pervading bliss is such that man does not feel it. It is like the air that we breathe. No one thinks of air at all, but our life
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depends upon it. It is everywhere all the time, and it supports life. Yet man is never conscious of it. It is the same in regard to the bliss which is all-pervading and no one knows it. Man knows only when there is a breach of it, when there is pain.
There are three conditions : Pain, pleasure, and neutral indifference. Neutral indifference is a state in which one does not feel the existence of the all-pervading delight. Man always feels the underlying presence which is there. Pain is always, to man's consciousness, a temporary and contrary occurance to that delight. Pain is never accepted as a welcome guest; the attitude is "It must go." No living creature thinks of pain as a necessary or desirable element to be continued. Pleasure is normally taken for granted. Pain affects us more intensely because it is abnormal to our very constitution and being. It is experienced as an outrage on our very existence. Existence should be without pain. This we take for granted. That is why people exaggerate this aspect, and so did Buddha.
Now the question is—why is there pain at all ? Why should there be suffering and pain at all in the scheme of an Omnipresent Reality which is Infinite Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss ? How could That which is the author of existence, God Almighty, create pain and evil ? In the Sanskrit language they say that when you give a God omnipotence and if you also ascribe to him creation of, or make him responsible for, suffering and pain, then He is both partial and cruel. He is less than the human being, because some human beings are not cruel and are very strict in their judgement, so they are very impartial. Well, in that case God would be less than His own creation.
Who created pain, whence was pain created, why was pain created ? In trying to answer these questions, Sri Aurobindo says that one must forget the idea of God as an Extra-cosmic Being, somebody who is away from the Cosmos which He has created, like the potter who has created a pot and is not in the
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pot and all the imperfections of the pot are there because of his inability to create a perfect one, or because he has deliberately created the pot like that. That idea is wrong. To believe in a God who is extra-cosmic, away from the creation which He has brought into existence, would not lead one to a correct solution of this question. When one has pain one says, "God has made me suffer," is it not ? Or, "He has made man subject to pain." But when one knows that it is the Omnipresent Reality that is this world, one says "How is it that He has inflicted pain on Himself?"
The problem is not why God is subjecting us to pain, but why does an Infinite Being, Consciousness, and Bliss, which is the world Becoming, inflict upon Himself, what we as human beings feel as pain and suffering ? That is the correct way of putting the question. Then, he says, there is some answer possible. Therefore the God of this world is not a moral God, He is superior to moral considerations and values of man. No rational explanation is possible on that basis. Therefore we accept "all is He" and it is He who bears the evil and suffering. That will partly explain the phenomenon of incarnation. Why does the Divine incarnate in the human? Because He bears the load first as an Infinite Being-Consciousness-Bliss, and as the load is here in man as pain and suffering, He comes down into the human in order to show how to bear it, how to overcome it. This opens a door to a part of the explanation of the phenomenon of incarnation; but just now, we are not concerned with that. We are only busy with the problem of explaining how this sole Infinite Existence-Consciousness-Bliss admitted into itself that which is pain, not bliss, not delight. Because all delight must be all good. How did evil come into that all good, how can it persist in life ?
The second point, we have to make clear to our mind, is that the world we live in is not an ethical world, just as God is
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not an extra-cosmic person who is away from the cosmos. Look back on the cosmos and you will see that there is no ethics below the human range. Even in the human range ethics is relative. Ethics for the human being is only a temporary stage to be passed through, but ethics is not the aim. A world of force, yes, if you like. Sri Aurobindo says : We should not try to read an ethical meaning into this world, for we will not get a true answer. Man reads himself into the world and therefore wants to find ethical values and this prevents him from seeing the solution of the problem. For instance, material Nature is not ethical. Electricity comes and strikes, there are no ethical considerations. The tornado arises and destroys, Earthquakes and storms come, they are not moved by ethical considerations at all. It is only force which acts. It either creates or destroys. Anybody who is clear-minded can see that if there is purpose in these it is not ethical. The whole animal world is non-ethical. The tiger is not blamed for killing the deer. If it didn't kill it would die, so it is pressed to do what it does. Sri Aurobindo shows how the basis of the cosmos is not at all subject to the ideas of ethics; therefore, to give to the whole an ethical meaning would be an exaggeration.
Ethics generally springs from recoil. Ethics begins in the primary stage, from fear and recoil. The victim fears the aggressor, then feels that this aggression is bad. That is how it begins, as a result of recoil of the nervous system and fear. Self-expression and self-development is a play of conscious force of existence which is light. Man is helped in his process of self-expression and self-development not only by ethics, but also by that which is non-ethical. Ethics is only a stage in man's evolution. The urge of this Truth-consciousness is toward self-expression, and that is common to all the stages. The first urge toward self-expression is non-ethical, infra-ethical, anti-ethical. It is below ethics, then it is
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anti-ethical, then ethical. It is only a means by which it struggles out of the lower harmony; the consciousness developing out of the animal level into man goes through the infra-ethical, anti-ethical and ethical stages in order that this lower harmony of sensation, impulse, desire, ego, selfishness, can be turned into a little higher harmony. It is not that the world has to become all ethical, but that man is helped out of his lower harmony by ethics. He struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon inconscience—, a life of discord, toward a higher harmony, based upon Oneness, a conscious perception of aims and ideals. Therefore the solution of the problem is not ethical, 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, with what you call elemental movements of life-force, desires, instincts. From that infra-ethical stage, man, by the evolution of ethics, works out a higher harmony, but then he must prepare for the supra-ethical ascension, supra-ethical development toward the higher than ethical harmony.
One must also realise that pleasure and pain attach themselves to mental and vital consciousness through the instrumentality of the nerves. They are limited by the capacity of the nervous being. They are, therefore, relative. But true delight does not belong to the mental consciousness. It comes from the Omnipresent Reality,—the supernal Satchidananda —and may be felt in the mental, the vital and even the physical consciousness. It is self-existent in its nature, not dependent on anything external like pleasure and pain.
When man seeks happiness or pleasure he is really seeking
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this all-pervading delight. The pleasure that objects give is temporary, whereas the delight is independent of objects and conditions. This seeking of true delight is covered in the ordinary man under the cover of impulses, desires and passions. It drives the man to seek possession. But one has to reject all desires in order to attain the true delight. It is when the being is purified of the dross of these lower elements that all sensation and feeling can become channels for the essential delight of existence. Such a transformation of nature alone can make life on earth attain its divine fulfilment.
The artistic temperament can open itself more easily to this universal delight. To the artist the flower is no longer an insignificant thing, a thing of beauty for a few hours only. It is the expression of Nature's delight.
Q: Will the evolution of the trees and everything etc. go beyond what they are, then ?
A : Yes, it might go. It can, one day, and even now when the consciousness rises to the supra-conscient; then trees will cease to be what they are now. They will become very conscious expressions of some universal truth of being, consciousness and delight. Not only that, but you can also have a communication with them—then you know what they mean. One of the Mother's prayers is very fine, in which she says that when she was in Japan, she saw that the trees were rising up because they wanted to open themselves to the higher Light. They were trying to aspire to the Light, and it was the expression of their aspiration that this upward movement signified in the vegetable world.
Q: I think that in childhood we all experience this delight so much that we don't know whether we are in this body or not.
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It is so marvellous. And we lose that. I had it so powerfully that I would wake up in the morning before anyone was awake. I would see great vistas of light, and I thought this was normal. Then I lost it.
A : You can get back either the vision itself or the result of the vision by the change of the consciousness. The vision is only a promise and it shows what you can experience, and if you are capable you can make the experience normal. Vision is not something abnormal. It may seen abnormal when it comes, but it is a signpost pointing to the place up to which you can march, and if you can march upto that then the result of the vision can become constant. So it can become a state of consciousness afterwards.
Q : Doesn't this very vision sometimes bring on an acceleration of our unfoldment? I also lost it, but isn't it partly because we have these oppositions in our natures ?
A : No. It is not only that. The consciousness is there and the aspiration is here. Now, that which is working knows the aspiration and it gives a promise. You can say it unfolds a pilgrimage. It is a path of pilgrimage. It puts before you the stage here, and then the stage is covered over. You have then to walk and walk, and make your way to that stage. That is the meaning of it. It has happened in many cases. In the spiritual life, a very high state is revealed to the aspirant, almost at the beginning, sometimes, when he has just opened, because he is very sincere at the time. All his difficulties are there in his nature but the best part of him is out. And when the being opens, then the Light also comes and responds; it immediately points out to him the stage and shows "Here, this is possible." Then that is covered over. What he has to do then is to struggle with his nature, character, purify it, widen it, enlighten it, put the experience as the first priority of life and pursue it sincerely. Then he will
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realise that which was revealed to him. Then a further stage will be revealed, if necessary. It is like that.
Q: I had an experience once. It was an explanation of the principle of pain and pleasure. I had been on an outing and was very susceptible to Poison-Ivy. I was completely covered with the rash. I was waiting for some people to bring me some medicine, so spent half the day in great desire to scratch this, but I knew I shouldn't. Hot water breaks the little blisters, the medicine is applied, then the rash dries up. I went to take my shower, and had the water very hot. When I started to step in, I drew back—the water was very hot and the heat caused pain. But at the same moment I realized that the heat that I felt as pain was the same sensation that I received from scratching. When I realized this, I stepped into the hot water and received the relief that I wanted to get all day long by scratching. The hot water that just an instant before I had felt as pain was now pleasure.
A : It is relative. This is a scale that can move upward or move down. It is a scale because it is limited by the capacity of sensation and perception and emotion. When the consciousness is widened out into the higher range or higher plane, then the scale changes. Then even this limited apparatus of mind and self is used by that vast and infinite Consciousness only as an indication, so that when you touch an object through the sense, you know that it is only an excuse for That to work, and show that it is not in the object but behind it. If you analyse, you will see that man is not able to maintain the vibration of the Delight that is given to him. For instance: taste. Certain kinds of food give delight which is only a part of that Infinite Delight, and if he can get into that, then this taste that comes will be only a symbol, a little point for representing, just a little sample; but what is really at work is That, and every taste will become equally accept-
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able, equally enjoyable. The limitations of taste, the preferences will go; everything will have the Universal taste in it. I remember an incident in Sri Aurobindo's life. The youngmen who lived with him had gone out to see a fire-walking ceremony in a village nearby. A youngster, K. Amrita, was left in charge and told to see that at midday Sri Aurobindo got his lunch and other routine. He completely forgot about it. He began to read a book and was absorbed in it. So he went on reading till the time for food was past. But it never occurred to Sri Aurobindo to ask whether his food was ready. He went on walking and meditating all the time. Then suddenly about 3 o'clock Amrita remembered. "Oh, the food, I forgot." Sri Aurobindo said "It is all right." When he was told "Food is ready", Sri Aurobindo came and took his food as usual. Once there was no salt in the curry, and everybody went on eating, including Sri Aurobindo. Sombebody then remarked, "In the curry there is no salt." Sri Aurobindo said, "In the curry there is no salt." They were surprised. Why did he not say in the beginning that there was no salt ? He said, afterwards explaining the experience "Without salt there is a taste in it, and with salt there is a taste in it." One can take equal delight in both. There is no point in saying it must be only this way. When one sees the working of spiritual truth like that one learns a great deal.
Q : One of our English poets said, "We look before and after and pine for what is not. Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught."
A : Yes, that is Shelley. How do you get Delight from the tragic ? The enjoyment of the tragic, for instance, is the instance in point to show that the universal Delight is felt even in sorrow, in the tragic. One does not go through any suffering, but one gets the enjoyment and delight of that
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suffering and then one knows that the tragic is not only suffering, it is delight. Otherwise people would not go to see a tragic drama. That is why art is a great ally of spiritual life. Art opens to the aspect of beauty of that Infinite Existence, Consciousness, and Bliss which is a very, very, great expression of it, the highest of it, so to say; but the modern artists do not see it. They never see beauty. They get wedded to intellectual theory, then go to the subconscient and want to express in art the lower elements of human consciousness and think they are creating something very original, marvellous, and wonderful, because nobody did it before. That is where they get away from the path. The true artists go straight to the perception of beauty in their seeking for the satisfaction of the artistic impulse, and I think they are on a very straight path for spiritual life also, because that is what spiritual life stands for.
Q: Isn't our attitude toward suffering also a means for growth ?
A : Suffering, if rightly taken, certainly tends to growth. It gives a good formation to the inner being, and if it is rightly taken and reacted to correctly, from the spiritual point of view, then it is a great gain.
Q: Does this refer to aspiration ?
A : To an understanding of life, first of all. Very great understanding of life comes when you realise that it is only a way of reaction to certain circumstances. To the human consciousness it means that conditions must change. By suffering, one is very often trying to exert will or pressure on the environment or circumstances to change them.
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Q : Thomas Hardy said it is not the life that matters, it is the courage.
A : The attitude. When a man takes it egoistically on himself, then the pressure of suffering is the greatest. When he can look upon it impersonally and try to learn from it, the pressure of it is minimum and his effect upon the circumstances is maximum. When a man puts himself in his ego and takes the whole burden of suffering, the pressure of the conditions that have created the suffering have the greatest effect on him. If he can look upon it impersonally and ask himself "What have I to learn from it ?", then the pressure of the circumstances that have created the suffering becomes less and his effect upon the environment becomes maximum. Probably it tends to change it also. When he becomes impersonal the pressure becomes so effective sometimes that conditions do change. The suffering was there to bring about certain change in him and when he has learnt the lesson probably the circumstances will also change. Sri Aurobindo would say, "Don't invite pain or suffering for you will get enough of it without inviting it". That also is perversity, according to him, to indulge in suffering.
There are people who take delight in it. That is wrong. That is a distortion of the true attitude. The true attitude is to be equal. If it comes, you accept it without too much personal reaction and try to learn, be impersonal, with equanimity and equality; not going under, and not running after it. Then one gets the maximum spiritual benefit and also the highest possible outer comfort. I am sure about it because forces immediately act.
Q: Zen Buddhism...Isn't that also another way of distorting? A : Yes, Zen Buddhism is a limited approach to man's fulfilment. It is a solution, but a very limited solution, because
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of its attitude, so far as the current Zen Buddhism is concerned; I don't know what is its origin, but current Buddhism is more or less overburdened by a sort of nihilistic outlook—and also a justification of the present as the only possible thing to be attained.
Q : In my experience with people who have been interested in Buddhism, it is the fact of meditation that apeals to them. In this active world it is something they have not thought of before,—serenity, and relaxation. That is one of the things that appeals.
A : That is only a washback from the outer activity to get back into something. But the whole question is how to bring into this activity, into life, something of the Divine. This is another problem. How to bring the divinity that is in each one into expression in life, whether passive or active, whether in meditation or in action. To divide life into meditation and action is artificial from Sri Aurobindo's point of view. Life is one and indivisible and the aspiration for higher life or spirituality must also pervade life. Life must become a field, first, for attaining to this Higher Consciousness, and after it is attained, for expressing it in life. That is what the Gita says, that when one is in the stage of the aspirant, he uses life as a ladder to rise to the Higher Consciousness. When he has risen to the top, then he uses it to bring it down into life.
Q : Which is exactly what one of the wisest men I have ever known, a Zen Master in San Francisco, says. His teaching of Zen may be a little different than the book teaching, but he is a true Master, and this is exactly what he teaches. He says you climb up the mountain, but you have to walk down again. He teaches the interdependency of life, he says you never do anything alone, you are always a part of all things. And
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meditation—although you sit for meditation, you are meditating also when you are apart.
A : Yes, you have to learn to meditate also when you are active, when you are in life. Keep the attitude of aspiration and surrender and rejection in life and then you are meditating. Meditating is not only taking up inactive posture of the body, or becoming inert in mind. Meditation is also an active process to be carried out in life. Aspiration, whatever you are doing, rejection of ignorant movement, and surrender to the higher Truth, when you carry this out in life it is meditation. It will certainly become a very powerful and efficient means for growth.
Q : Even suffering, he says, must be accepted.
A : Yes, in your consciousness, that is all. You do not accept it in the sense that it is desirable, but as something that has come to contribute to your rise, or give you development, to give you some knowledge, some understanding, and some growth. You get the growth out of it, and do not give too much importance to it, neither invite it or react powerfully to it by egoistic recoil.
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Lecture VII
Chap. 12. Delight of Existence : the Solution
The general considerations of this chapter might be analysed for our understanding as an explanation of the will to live. We will first take up only general considerations before the chapter proper. The will to live has been one of the powers noticed by some philosophers as the cause of continuation of existence. Nietzsche, I think, expressed it first—will to exist or will to live and will to power. Then men like Dr. Schweitzer translate this "will to live" into "will to love." If the "will to conquer", and "will to expand" are transformed by man's sense of cultural values into "will to love," he has then an active philosophy of life which does not necessarily explain the why and wherefore of the cosmos, but supplies a code of conduct, a value of life by which he can live satisfactorily so far as his outer mind is concerned. But is the will to live the first impulse, and is it mere self-preservation ? In this chapter we are trying to see into the cause of the will to live.
Secondly, this chapter brings out the place of pain in the scheme of things. Yesterday, I pointed out how the slightly exaggerated view of the place of pain in the scheme of human life brought about a lopsided view of life and its remedy in Buddhism. In this chapter, we might be able to put pain in its proper place in the economy of the universe; and also the possibility, not of avoiding pain, but if possible, of transforming it. Buddha thought that pain was one of the elements permanently connected with the cosmos, and inseparable from life. This chapter will show us that pain is not anything fixed—it is variable, and also an element that can be transformed and changed. If there is a possibility of transformation and change, then this chapter
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will show us how pain not only has a place in the scheme of universal evolution as a temporary stage imposed upon an evolving consciousness or evolving entity called man, but has a purpose to serve in the sense that it serves as an index to note certain superficial reactions to universal contacts.
And if the organism is capable of bringing out its own inmost Reality, then these reactions are capable of being transformed. Here, the problem of how comes out later, but the possibility of transformation is suggested, as well as diving into the cause of this suffering and pain. There is a probing into the why—why an Infinite Existence, Consciousness and Delight, chose or decided to accept, this channel of suffering and pain which we feel as an undesirable element. That is what this chapter covers.
Infinite Existence-Consciousness and Delight—that is at the basis of all things we see. The Life Divine wants to bring to our notice this idea that the reason for "will to life" is not merely self-preservation but this delight of existence. Delight is the secret of existence. Why preserve life ? Because it is delightful to continue to exist. Delight is not felt because it is natural to the normal consciousness of the organism or man. But if it was not at the base supporting this impulse for self-preservation, mere self-preservation would be meaningless. Delight is the secret of existence or creation. That is why the Upanishad says, "All creatures are born from Delight, they are maintained by Delight, and to Delight they return." Who created this movement of the world out of that Infinite Self-existence, Consciousness and Delight ? It is indivisible, infinite existence, and the world is rolling out from that. By what power was it brought into existence—this cosmos, this world, as we know it ? The word used by the original Veda and by some of the Upanishads subsequently is "Maya", which in later philosophical terminology of the ninth and the tenth
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centuries underwent a radical change in its original meaning. "Maya" is from the root mā—to measure, to formulate, to cut from the original piece (for a purpose). To measure out from the whole something for a definite purpose. Maya is the Power of formulation, power of delimitation, or power of taking out from the original what would be needed for a purpose. Suppose you have a roll of cloth. Now, a roll of cloth is all right as cloth, but if you want to clothe a child, an elderly man, or a soldier, you don't cover him with the whole roll. You take out the piece and say, "Well, so much is for this purpose, so much for another purpose, etc." So, the roll is measured out. Now, this is one sense in which we have to look at the process that must have, or seems to have, taken place. A formative power of the Supreme has created the world which is his measured out cosmos, or measured out Self-expression; therefore, it is not unreal, because it is His own Self that is measured out. There are people who say that in this power of self-formation one can formulate a dream. But when one formulates a dream, the dream is real within oneself. Dream is not false. Dream is a reality of oneself,—one and one's dream are one, there is no separation. It is only when one artificially divides one's mental consciousness from it that one says the dream was unreal. When it is actually being seen by the self then the self and the dream are one. It is a part of the self, in fact, and therefore partakes of the reality of the self. It is therefore real because the self is real. The form and the world, therefore, are eternal complements of this process of self-unrollment of an original Reality. It is a creation of Self-conscious Being out of Its own eternal Truth. The substance of the world, therefore, is real existence. Our mind, when it looks at this creation, can feel that though it can grant an infinite being and consciousness as the origin, the world that comes out of it is so different that it must
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be an illusion of that Infinite Consciousness.
To that Sri Aurobindo replies by saying that this conception of the world as an illusion of the Infinite is not a correct appraisement by our intellect, but is only a shadow of the Infinite seen by our own mental self. Actually, it partakes of the substance of the original Truth and Reality. Even if it is an illusion of Infinite Consciousness, it is only phenomenal, but it is the substance of the Real. It partakes of the nature of the Self,—the nature of the Infinite Reality. Then, if we accept this world as a creation of the Consciousness, it appears to our mind as a movement of Force. Some Force is moving out actively. When this Force moves, it seems to obey some secret will within itself. It is not merely an incon-scient force moving out to a chance, to a chaos, to an un-rhythmic play of its vibrations. It is Force that moves out and seems to be carrying out in its flow, or obeying by working or by actively moving some secret will, some play of original movement in its own Self. Infinite forms, world existence, all this flowing out is an expression of an infinite play of that consciousness, energy, or force. It is also a play of infinite Delight,—it is called 'Lila' or play.
What kind of play ? It is, in one sense, purposeless, that is, without a mental purpose. There is a spontaneity about the play. When we speak of play we imply spontaneity, naturalness; not necessarily a set purpose in which you subject your will to a tension. In play, your whole being is relaxed. Otherwise it is not play. This spontaneity of movement is called play, or 'lila'. It is like a child's play, or the poet's play—in his own creation, or act of play; there is joy in what one is doing. It is eternally young, fresh, and inexhaustible. So, too, the play that is moving out is eternally young and inexhaustible; and creating and recreating of Himself within Himself, for sheer bliss. That is the character of the Lila, where the play, the player, and the playground are all One. They are
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not divided; and this play of existence in relation to the Eternal, infinite Existence-Consciousness-Delight—Sat-chidananda—is called Maya or Prakriti or Lila. It is the power of self-measurement or self-formulation, power of objectivizing Himself; spontaneous play of inexhaustible Delight. All this, to our view of the world, is a mutable movement of force and a constant and yet mutable result. A constant rhythm is there and yet that constant rhythm is constantly changing. So, the constant play of mutable rhythm, eternal delight of Being, moving into infinite and variable delight of Becoming; that is the foundation. Delight of the infinite being flows into, activates itself into, a delight of Becoming, which is our perception of the world. That is the root of creation.
So there is one indivisible conscious Being behind all experiences, supporting them by its inalienable Delight. This support of the Being full of Delight—behind this variable inexhaustible play of multiple variant rhythm of its own Self, is our true Self, the true Self of the human individual. The true Self of the human individual is the one infinite Delight-Self, throwing Itself out, pouring Itself out, into an infinite inexhaustible Delight of Becoming. The mental self that we have is only representative of that self of knowledge in the Supermind. It is only representative for sensational experience in response to multiple contacts of the universe. There are multiple contacts, actions and reactions, so whatever the contacts are, whatever shock of its universe is given to us, the mental representative of that Being of delight is given to us for superficial reactions to it, for a sensational experience of shocks of existence. Essential Delight is of consciousness. Essential delight is not yet become a part of sense experience. Delight is self-existent. The delight is rendered available to the evolving consciousness here in terms of mental consciousness. It is mental consciousness that represents that
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Being of delight here. How does it get that original delight which is cause of being, which is cause of life and cause of its existence? It takes it only through sensation. For having these sensations, a machinery is provided in the form of mental and nervous conciousness. Nervous consciousness and mental consciousness together receive the multiple shocks of the cosmos, and render it in terms of pleasure, pain and neutral indifference. It is true they do not render all sensation in terms of delight. Fundamentaly the object is to give the experience of that self-existent Delight to the Being, which has evolved itself out of the Inconscient. So, the mental consciousness is not decisive so far as the creation is concerned, but only a representative put forward for sensational experience, to respond to the multiple contacts of the universe, to give a response. It is not able to render a perfect response.
This is one way of looking at the problem of why there is pain and suffering. Original Delight, which is infinite and full of variable rhythms creating the cosmos is flowing, and in its flow it gives rise to a mental consciousness which is representative of that true Self, and the contacts of the world are given to it in the form of sensation. Its response to the contact is imperfect. That is why the imperfect response to the original Delight renders itself in triple terms of pleasure, pain, and neutral indifference. What are the consequences of this limited being and limited response of the mental being ? The human being is limited in his mental consciousness, and has a narrow nervous apparatus given to him for reacting to all outer contacts. The first consequence is that though we are the One, indivisible, original Delight-Self, yet the disposition of our sensational experience gives us pleasure, pain, and neutral indifference. Though we are That in our original constitution, this experience in triple terms is there and it is only a superficial arrangement created by that limited part
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of us which is uppermost in our waking consciousness. This triple reaction is created as a superficial necessity and temporary arrangement by the waking consciousness. If you go deep down, it will be found that even the human mental personality has behind it an impersonal ground or plane where it is receiving without any distortion the universal delight that is flowing throughout the creation. It is able to contact that plane behind, and not on the surface consciousness of the waking being. Behind, there must be something much vaster than the human mental consciousness, than the superficial consciousness which we have, and which is capable of contacting impartially the delight universal that is flowing in creation. The delight that is flowing must be available to man somewhere in his depths, somewhere behind the surface consciousness, and it is this contact that supports the superficial being through all the labour, through all the suffering, in the progress of life. This is sometimes how one gets comfort in life.
A man faced with tremendous suffering thinks that the whole universal scheme is cruel, he feels that he is dealt with must unjustly, subjected to suffering and pain out of all proportion to his deserving and so on. Suddenly he goes out and sees somebody else worse off than himself so far as pain and suffering are concerned, and he begins to feel: "Who knows ? Perhaps I am better off than this man." Still further, one finds a stretch of poverty—ignorance in life and suffering—which causes one to ask, if he is sufficiently awakened : "Why is it that the man goes on living ? Why should he live ? Perhaps a foot, or a hand is amputated, so he has to depend for everything on other people. Yet, he doesn't want to die ! Most surprising !" It is that contact with the deeper delight, certainly unknown to him. It is that which supports the superficial being through all the labouring and unpleasant contacts of life. This 'I' that has
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evolved in man is only a trembling ray on the surface, but behind is the vast subconscient and also the vast subliminal and also the superconscient, which receives all the contacts of the universal consciousness, being, and delight. In life we dimly feel the Self calm and joyous, sometimes, and we know that this world is not Its master. Therein, man has gone through a great crisis, and if he can become conscious within himself, when he is alone, he knows that all that has nothing to do with him. This world is not his master. Even in the waking consciousness, this perception can come to the human individual in calmness because within him is the realisation of the Lord. It is the true Being that is in him. This self can smile at nature, and it can live in the delight Self, the ānanda-maya —behind the mental—consciousness, ever blissful. This Self is the truth of self. It is within ourself though not easily available to at present to our surface consciousness.
Now we come to the problem of pain. The first proposition which Sri Aurobindo wants us to consider is that pleasure, pain and neutral indifference have no absoluteness about them. Thre is no point at which you can say: this must be painful. We cannot say certain things must give pleasure. Perhaps not. The scale of reception of sensation of pleasure and pain is a variable scale. It can move from lower to the higher. There is also no compelling necessity for their existence. You cannot say that when your hand is cut you must feel pain; if the hand is rotten, you feel better when it is cut. You would feel that it is all right, it is better that it goes. There are people with reactions like that. Secondly, it is a temporary and superficial arrangement. The scale of pleasure and pain and neutral indifference that is given is only a scale of temporary arrangement, of superficial necessity. It becomes in man a habit only, really speaking, not a permanent and compelling part of his make-up. As it is only a habit, it can be changed. One can return the response of pleasure to what
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now brings pain, or pain to what now brings pleasure. One can even train oneself to give out the reaction of delight to all contacts. It is all a question of training. If you try to follow this process of the possibility of changing the scale of pleasure and pain, you will observe that in the mind it is pretty easy to attain this status or this poise. You can always separate the mind from what is pleasure and pain, and either change the values or react with only the reaction of delight in the mind. The mind is elastic.
The difficulty comes only in the body and the nervous system. There is an obstinate persistence in the original reading or value of the sensations which it receives. But in the mind the conversion of pleasure and pain becomes not at all difficult because the mind is elastic. The body and nervous system are more difficult because they are governed by external nature and external contacts. Yet even in the body and the nervous system one can see that the scale of pleasure and pain can be changed, if not by the man himself, by hypnotism. If a man under hypnosis is given sugar and told that it is bitter, he will throw it out. There are many examples. So this reaction of the body and nerves can be thoroughly altered on the body level. Then the body and nerves react on a completely changed scale. The problem we are considering is : how far is the present reaction compelling and how far it is possible to change it. We say that in the body the reaction to suffering is a scale that can be completely changed. There can be no suffering in going through actions which normally are very hard to bear.
Secondly, the place of this pain in the scheme of nature is also to be observed. We have to see that this pain is not without its utility, especially on the nervous level. Pain is a warning of nature that the contact is dangerous, that there is something to be guarded against. Pain is nature's device for attaining conventional ends, and one of the ends
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is to give warning of danger, or possible disaster, to the organism. This temporary experience is meant to help the evolution of this 'I' to a further stage. This 'I' is to be trained to return other responses to outside contacts. Pain is one way to begin it. It can learn to react to pain quite differently than it is accustomed to. The first training is to recoil from danger and harmful contacts, and warning to avoid danger. Pain is not present in the inconscience of matter. Gerald Heard has written a book called, "Pain, Sex and Time". He wants to prove, roughly, that pain, sex and time, give you the three levels of rise of the organism in the process of evolution. With pain, the evolution of the living organism or vital being begins and in sex it reaches a certain animal level, so to say, and in 'time' it comes to mental consciousness. This is just mentioned to show that in living organism, in matter, there is no experience of pain. There may be vibrations only—call it positive and negative, if you like—but there is no cognizing subjective sense to feel pain, pleasure, or indifference. Pain begins with life in matter and grows with the mental consciousness in matter. When the mind is free and unegoistic, then probably pain also would become much less. When the mind becomes less egoistic and less attached to the personal, then perhaps pain also would become less in its incidence on the consciousness. Elimination of pain, therefore, seems possible because there are currents of the Delight of existence coining to us as pleasure, pain, and neutral indifference. Therefore the conversion must be possible. A transformation of pain into that original Delight should be possible, theoretically and metaphysically.
What, then, is the cause of this wrong reception of the Delight ? Why is the Delight received as pleasure, pain and indifference ? The cause, according to Sri Aurobindo, is the psychological division from the Original Consciousness, the self-division is the cause, or acceptance of running into
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limited egoistic consciousness. Then, instead of receiving the universal contact, one reduces oneself to a small being and reduces the universal to individual contact. The universal contact coming through the individual machinery of the small individual channel, completely changes its character from delight into pleasure, pain, and indifference. Instead of trying to contact, or having a universal reception to contacts of the world, one reacts from the point of division, and with an egoistic view,—piecemeal. With a universal reception to all contacts of the world there is attached the universal delight, the sap, as they call it, the "rasa", in Indian terminology. Through all universal movements the universal delight is flowing all the time. It is possible to taste the sap that all things have. The Upanishad says in one of its great epigrammatic utterancs "He, the Supreme, is Rasa, the essence of delight". The ultimate truth of the Supreme is the essentiality of delight.
We don't receive it because we look to the manner in which it flows, and not to the essence. We look at the outer form of it, as it affects us, how it affects our desires, how it affects ours cravings. That is why it is deformed. This universal delight is deformed because in the reception there is a looking to the egoistic centre and how it affects it —to the manner and not to the essence. This creates in the human being an inability to seize this essence, this taste of universal delight.
We say that the universal delight is flowing. How do we know ? Is there any proof ? There is plenty of proof, though The Life Divine is not the place for providing it; but apart from it, there is plenty of proof that there is such a flow of universal delight; only man is not able to cognize, or seize, or experience it. It is in rare moments when the mind becomes disinterested, heart also becomes pure or disinterested, and it can put its detachment on the nervous system,
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then it can feel this delight, and also eliminate pleasure, pain and indifference, and gradually become free from this triple reaction. We go nearest to this in the appreciation of all arts; for example, poetry and drama. In the drama, man can actually take the delight of the tragic, the horrible, the repellent, the terrible. Something terrible may be happening, but because ego is taken out of the reaction, we are not affected, we can observe what is happening in an absolutely detached and impersonal way, and actually have the delight in seeing the tragedy. Even if we weep, we still enjoy the weeping, the suffering, but it does not affect us. It is not personal pleasure; this is not, of course, the pure form of that delight, but still it takes us very near to that universal delight: it shows that the delight is there. We are only concerned with the actuality of the thing.
Now, pain and suffering come to man and man cannot understand how suffering happens. Suffering is really due to the failure of this conscious force in man to meet some contact of the universe. It is the shocks of experience or existence. The conscious power in man is not able to meet the shock, and suffering is the result.
How to eliminate this ? Just as pain can be eliminated, limitation of pleasure, pain and indifference too can be eliminated and is actually eliminated in our aesthestic experience. Can we eliminate suffering ? Yes, there are three or four methods by which suffering can be eliminated completely, by a slow and gradual training. One is by titiksā, endurance, training oneself to endurance. It is not to train oneself to cruelty or hardness. It is to train our psychology to an equal reaction to pleasure and pain. Titikṣd is to bear the contact, to endure, it is the power of endurance. If happiness comes, one takes without elation. If an unhappy contact comes one takes it without depression. It is a question of training.
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When one first goes into a very cold or a hot climate, one gradually acclimatizes and learns to bear the cold, bear the heat. The body is trained by endurance. The psychological part of us can also be trained to this endurance. Powers of endurance can be induced, and can be brought to a state of almost perfection. So, suffering can be eliminated by this method of facing, enduring and conquering the shocks of life.
Another method is equality. Training oneself to equality, equanimity, which is a state of undisturbed serenity. It is not the same as the power that is at the back of endurance. In endurance the will is more at work. In equanimity a state of detachment and impersonality is at work. One faces the contact by a sort of impersonality; looking at it as if it were happening to some third person. Equality means equal indifference or equal gladness to all contacts, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. It is as though one were sitting on the top of a hill looking at what is happening below in the mind or the nervous system or the heart; and that which is happening to one's nature-personality is not able to affect one. One is undisturbed on the height of detachment, sitting above.
Then one can also convert this contact into an equal bliss of all contacts, an all-embracing bliss, by taking a path of surrender and losing the ego in the universal, all-pervading equal delight, or in the Supreme. A Fourth path is also open to one—to accept all contacts that come with an attitude of surrender. It is called nati.
I am only trying to show you that one can adapt oneself
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to, can accustom oneself to an attitude of surrender to such an extent that one can take whatever event comes as something intended by a Supreme Power, and from it one has got to learn something, that is all. This shows the limits of human psychology and its possibilities. A constant study of the nervous system and generalizations based on thousands of cases are of no great importance, because the possibilities of development are infinite. You cannot know how far the human consciousness can be trained to react to outside contacts, therefore you cannot generalize about the individual and his so-called 'normal' contacts, which are not rules but only long established habits. These habits are quite changeable. Habits can certainly be given up.
That is possible by first giving a neutral reaction, and then to turn it into an all-pervading equal delight of existence. To realize an all-pervading delight is the next step to an indifferent reaction.
Now, very often people who have not thought about this question, ask, "If delight is the cause, original substance, the maintaining power, and the end of all universe, why do we not see it ?" Sri Aurobindo tries to show that our perception has to become a little careful about it. Delight is there in matter, but it is self-gathered, absorbed, and sub-conscient, in the basis of physical universe. Then it takes up a neutral movement which is not yet a sensation. Vibration in matter is the only thing we notice. This vibration, scientists say, can be classified into positive and negative, and when the two meet, it is neutral. Perhaps, one could say, the positive is pleasure.
One must identify oneself with matter to know what matter feels like. But positive is there as a classification. Negative is there—which might be pain. This meeting of positive and negative becoming neutral might be neutral indifference. But in the actual process of evolution what we
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see is that in matter there is no experience of joy. There is neutral movement also, afterwards of life, but it has not yet reached the stage of sensation. Life in the elemental stage is not sensational, it is elemental. In primordial beings like the dinosaur, etc., the sensation has not yet become organized properly. There is only an elemental force of life, an impulse. From that comes a growth of mind and ego, then you get the triple reaction of pain, pleasure and neutral indifference, in the scale of evolution. Here, we get this triple reaction because of the limitations of the force of our consciousness in the form, and exposure to the shocks of universal nature, which are alien to this ego which has come into existence. Therefore the ego feels itself out of harmony with the total. That is why there is pleasure, pain and neutral indifference. We can say it has wrong reaction or returns partial shocks to the environment because it is out of harmony.
What is the solution ? The solution is that in this mental consciousness of man, there should take place the emergence of Satchidananda. It should be possible to evoke the emergence of Satchidananda in its own creations. This should now become possible because that possibility, partly, is indicated by the subliminal, and by the universal behind the organized consciousness of man's egoism. Behind it is the subliminal, subconscient, and supraconscient. It should be possible to evoke the supraconscient Satchidananda into expression here in life.
We do not see the Infinite Delight, Existence and Consciousness at work at all. It is hidden in that which is the very opposite of Satchidananda,—matter, the inconscient. This possibility of the Infinite houses itself in what seems to be its opposite and then it sets about the process of Self-finding, even under terms that are opposed to it. This is a paradox, and this is what we call a problem that omnipotence alone can solve. God alone can create ignorance because He alone
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can eliminate and transform it. The Divine alone can create and inflict Ignorance upon Himself because He has within Him the omnipotence and omniscience to overcome that Ignorance which is His own creation, is His own Self in another way. Infinite Being loses Itself in the appearance of non-being first and emerges in the appearance of a finite soul. Infinite consciousness loses itself in appearance of insensible matter, discordant rhythm of life, where it experiences pleasure, pain and neutral indifference; and infinite Unity loses itself in appearance of chaos of multiplicity, then emerges in discord of forces and beings seeking to recover that Unity, to recover it by possession, by dissolving, or by devouring each other. The solution lies in reaching the source, the emergence of Satchidananda in the play. Then there will be the resolution of the disharmony and conflict.
Satchidananda must emerge, therefore, in this creature, man. Man has to become universal and the mental consciousness has to be transformed by man opening to the Supraconscient in whom unity is the law, and each embraces all. Then the narrowness is lost in the universal love, the vital restricted being returns equal shock to the whole universal contact, and then it becomes capable of universal delight. Even the physical being has to know the One with the indivisible force that is All, and individual nature has to reproduce the nature of the original creative Divine Delight, the nature of the Satchidananda, which is perfect. Then it is always the same delight, of oneness in all; it is harmony realized by the realization of the Supreme, Satchidananda.
That might give us the resolution of this problem. Delight is the problem and Delight is the solution.
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Q : He who loses his life shall find it.
A : It is not bliss. "I am the resurrection and the light. He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And he that liveth and believeth in Me shall never de." That is the text, is it not ?
Q : His teaching is identical with the teaching of Sri Aurobindo. He said, "Why do you weep ? a greater than I shall comfort thee, Truth shall be your comforter." The Truth-consciousness, in other words, wouldn't that mean ?
A : Yes, it is the realization of the original creative impulse, of the creative Truth. There are many sayings in the Bible that express profound spiritual experience. But it does not seem to have been understood in the right sense by the followers.
First of all, the Bible is not the expression of Christ's personal experience. This is one difficulty. We know it should be 90 % authentic because there is no reason why the disciples should say something which was not authentic. But still it is not as if he sat down with the idea : "I want now to put into words or put in language what I want to say." Then it would carry the stamp of his authority. It does carry an indirect light. And the same thing has happened to Buddha. We have no authentic exposition of Buddha in his own language. The Sutta, the first exposition by his disciples, has preserved many of his words, and from that we get what Buddha said. I think, most probably he did say them. But Buddha did not sit down with a resolution : "Let me put my understanding of man and his problem, and the universe, in language." Then we would have been satisfied that we have an authentic exposition. So, with regard to the the Bible the one great difficulty is that the authenticity of
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the Bible, so far as it concerns the responsibility of Christ, is certainly in doubt. We take it as an honest attempt and accept it as true; but it is so piecemeal, so cut up that one cannot make out a total view of how he looked at the world. Many subjects of perenial concern to humanity have been dealt with. But a picture of the cosmos and the why and wherefore of it, and probing into causes and the profundities of it, and then giving it not merely a philosophy but also a line of growth toward that Light, thereby explaining the individual and the collective life of man—these things are lacking. What I have seen is that the modern mind is faced with so many different problems that the Bible though a great revelation in a certain sense, does not satisfy it to-day.
This is one great advantage of Sri Aurobindo. He does not require a commentator. If you can go to the original the exposition is there in his own words, and, so you can judge for yourself. It does not matter whether you agree or not, but it is not somebody else who is explaining him to you. Here it is he himelf who is speaking, so you know what he says and what to make of it. In other cases of ancient scriptures like the Vedas and the Upanishads also, the difficulty is that they have expressed themselves in symbolic language, and now the explanation of the symbol is so difficult that somebody is required to explain the symbol. And there are differences in the explanations. But the Gita is an exception. The Gita is clear. Only its authorship is not known. It is spoken in the name of Krishna. We hope it is true. The knowledge embodied is so vast and the synthesis is so wonderful and grand that one feels that a divine spirit is certainly behind it. And it is clear as far as it goes. It is one man's own exposition, and you can make what you like of it from the original without resorting to any commentator. Sri Aurobindo's advantage is that he knows well the western mind. The development of intellect, knowledge of modern
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problems, knowledge of modern attitude of man toward problems, and also the difficulties of man today—all are known to him. He has in addition, the experience of spiritual life.
Q : Some people understand this when put in terms so that the mind can understand and accept and it can be consistent with the mental approach. Do some people find it too intellectual for them ? There are individuals to whom it just does not appeal. They are not intllectual enough.
A : That is not the fault of The Life Divine... it is their shortcomings. For them he has written 2 or 3 books. You can recommend them : Thoughts and Glimpses; Aphorisms— People go to these and say "Wonderful" !!! Then, Evolution —a small book; and More Lights on Yoga; and The Hour of God.
Q : Would "The Riddle of This World" be one ?
A : Yes, it can be, but it is intellectual. The letter which gives the title to the book is an answer to a member of the Academie FranÇaise, Maurice Magre. He came to Pondicherry and wrote to Sri Aurobindo asking some questions. This letter was his answer. It is intellectual. The Mother is a very fine book. And The Mother's writings are very simple and straight. You can give them to anybody and he will immediately follow. They are direct and straight and clear. The Life Divine is a fete of intellectuality. His chapters on the Origin of Ignorance are not only original but there is very little in philosophical writing which can come near it. There is a vastness so great that when you read you say, "In the world's philosophy nobody ever thought of explaining ignorance in that way. It is a marvellous explanation. We will come to it in The Life Divine.
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Q : But the intellect, or the intellectual, is not necessary for spiritual experience, is it ?
A : Not necessarily. But one who hasn't developed the intellect and is seeking, for him there is an answer. And there is a place for the intellect in the spiritual life. But intellect is not indispensable. There are plenty of people who do not have any intellectual training or aptitude, and they are progressing in Yoga quite all right. It is an instrument that is given to man by Nature and when it is sincere and seeking it can be satisfied. When it is egoistic and wilful, then one can never satisfy it. That is why Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter not to try to answer "doubt's" because the spirit of doubt is insatiable. One who submits himself to the spirit of doubt can never be satisfied, because it doesn't want to be satisfied.
Q : I was just thinking about the suffering of Christ in Gethse-mane and the relation of pain and suffering. Do you wish to comment on this ?
A : Yes, it is an expression of universal love. The willingness of being consecrated by accepting universal love. How far can the expression of universal love be attained in life ? If you want to see it exemplified, you see it in Christ. You can say, not only universal but Divine Love, for that matter.
Q : Do you think that Christianity has over-exaggerated suffering so that it has become a distortion of what Christ Himself tried to...
A : Not only that; you must leave aside Christianity as an organized religion. I am only asserting that Christ's personal suffering stood for a consciousness and a realization. Christianity, after the 13th, or 14th century, gave this up almost completely—the goal of realising man's unity with his Creator or the Supreme. That was the basis of Christ's expe-
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rience, and that, Christianity never seriously attempted. They gave themselves up to social good service, piety, devotion, charity—which was and is very good. It did a lot of good work, but it was far away from the original intention of Christ. And in fact, the Church is not a creation of Christ, historically. If you study, you find it was a creation of the disciples. Whether Christ, left to himself, would have created a church or not is another question. You can say that because the disciples were sincere, they felt inspired to create this hope—probably Christ consciousness was behind it,—but that is only a way of explaining it to ourselves. It is not possible to put the whole responsibility on Christ; so the turn that Christianity took is not the turn probably intended by the founder.
Q : Isn't it the tendency of the human mind with its dogmatism...
A : Not only dogmatism. When religion becomes a social function or a social institution it is always two portions that come into existence. One, the kernel, the eternal portion of religious life; and second, the outer forms. And it is the outer forms that win ultimately and the inner spirit generally evaporates in the outer religious forms. It happens to all religions, including Hinduism. One has to preserve the religious impulse, which is to reach the Truth. Instead it begins to affirm some principle or believe in something or go through some ceremony, which is quite a different thing, and later, as it goes on developing it becomes a social institution. People meet in church very often as they go to a ball-dance. Even in America when they meet, it is more to socialize. How do they run the church? let us have lotteries, let us do this, let us do that. Now what has that to do with the ultimate aim of religion life ? People need clubs and social meetings —why call it church ? Where you are seriously devoted to
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activating the religious impulse, then it is all right. But why feel that somehow, we must keep it alive ? It is better, if it is not living, to allow it to die, so that something new and true can take its place. Now we are preserving a form with the wrong belief that we are religious when we are not. What is the use ? To be frankly and honestly irreligious is better than professing religion which has no basis. If something outlives its purpose, it does no good. A new Christianity, will arise, something new will come to take its place. But if you keep a semblance alive or keep a dead form alive, the real thing takes time to come into existence.
Q : We won't get away from this, will we, until we get off the mental plane and into a higher plane ? There will always be dogmatism on the mental plane, isn't that natural ?
A : Well, it is a question of allowing the Higher Power to work out. We see that the religious impulse is working out in forms that are not worth preserving. Inertia is there, upward drive is there, progressive tendency is there. What we have to do is to stress the essential and to follow it without having disgust or dislike for anything. We must not run down anything and say, this is wrong if that is what the people like. But our perception of the essential is that the real change must come in consciousness. Those people who feel called upon to try and tackle the problem differently, let them do it. There is no question of our feeling any superiority, or feeling that this is more essential. Our perception is that if they feel that there is another solution, let them try.
Q: Going back to your talk, in your elimination of suffering, you gave four methods. It seems to me that at back of all it is the same identical thing. It seems like it all boils down to "indifference".
A : No, it can happen in many ways. When you use the
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endurance, you have to exercise your will. In another indifference you have to exercise detachment. When you sit on a higher plane and watch your personality going through what to outsiders is suffering—you are exercising a detachment, but when you put endurance, then you are putting forth your will, in order to react equally to pleasure and pain. The force that is evoked is not the same; not on the same plane. In one there is a strength of vibration of will, in another detachment of consciousness.
Q: It seems likely that at the back of all of them is a form of withdrawal.
A : Not necessarily withdrawal. It is a form of meeting. In titiksā you meet the contact. I gave you roughly the instance of cold and heat and the nervous system. Then you put forth a reaction of equality to cold and heat. That is endurance. That gives an idea that there is a positive action. There is no withdrawal at all. There is a resolution of consciousness to meet both shocks equally, that's all.
Q : But isn't it a withdrawal from permitting the shocks to...
A : No. On the contrary, it is the return of the shocks outside. It is really throwing out a greater vibration than the one that is given by heat or cold or pleasure or pain.
Q : Is one more egotistical than the other ? Is the willpower more of the ego than detachment?
A : Not necessarily. Even the exercise of the will can be impersonal. Only the will is an aspect of power whereas detachment acts more on the basis of knowledge, that is all. In the one you stress the power aspect and in the other you act upon the knowledge aspect, or the subjective being detached from all the reactions of nature (Prakriti).
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Q: Isn't that a withdrawal from it—saying 'not that'— (neti, neti) this in a sense is withdrawal. If you surrender to it, not letting the effects touch you, that's withdrawal. And the training to endure, that too is a withdrawal. It seems like it is all the same...
A : I don't think—because withdrawal is not the solution of the problem, first of all. You see, the flow of life is expression. It is going out, it is manifestation. Now, any withdrawal would be only a negative solution. In that way Buddha also gave a sort of solution, which is a half solution and couldn't be applied to life. That is why Buddhism had to go out of India. It is possible to give a partial solution and say "withdraw." If you withdraw you can get only a temporary solution. You cannot get a radical solution at all by withdrawal, because withdrawal is not the law of the cosmos. Universe is a manifestation. It is Self-expression ; withdrawal is want of expression.
Q : Well, isn't it want of expression when you equalize all— when you equalize pleasure and pain you are making the hills level.
A : No. You are bringing into possible expression the experience of delight.
Q : Is this withdrawal a form of expression ?
A : You can say so, if you like. What happens to the contact of life and how it is related to ultimate aim of self-expression, that is the problem. If the withdrawal is in keeping with the aim of self-expression, then it is a necessary condition. But ultimately the withdrawal will have to transform itself into an equal experience of Delight. That would be the solution so far as the basis of the chapter is concerned.
Q: That is for an evolved person. Don't most of us react
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according to a pattern of habit and social training ? And it is more instantaneously. Don't we have to reckon with that, too ? We have to see which way is easiest for...
A : Yes. That is why 2 or 3 methods were suggested. One in whom the nature is strong and powerful, who likes to take up adventure and danger, for him, titiksā, the endurance method is good, the warrior method. For one who is more impersonal and ready to intellectualize, for him detachment is better. Or one who is emotionally inclined, for him the submission to what comes as a dispensation of the Higher Power and therefore, an equal acceptance without any normal reactions—tends to create some sense. So according to natural aptitude one takes up the method. The culmination of the process would be to reduce first all contacts to an indifference and then you can move to an equal acceptance of delight in all conditions, of all sensations. That's the aim.
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Lecture VIII
Chap. 13. The Divine Māyā
The problem is : how can the One, Infinite and Eternal, —free from all limitations, and relativities—create something that is finite,—a world of conflict, suffering, pain and evil? How does the One Being manage to become the world ? To the human mind the difficulty remains because mind is finite and cannot, therefore, follow the infinite, the Absolute, in its process easily.
The explanation of the process may be the three-fold movement of the Absolute,—or, what to the mind appears to be the triple movement. The first process seems to be the involution of the Divine into the Inconscient. That which we see or know as the Infinite and Eternal has involved itself in Something quite opposite of its own Self. Second is the process of Evolution or rather emergence. The One, Infinite that is involved in the inconscient is rising, emerging from there into the triple world of matter, life and mind. That has culminated into the living and thinking being, man. Third is the process which is working out the One at play in the World. It would end by the recovery of Satchidananda here in life.
The next question is : what is or could be, the actual process by which the Reality—the One, infinite Reality turns itself into phenomena, this world.- It must be by some law within itself . It cannot be that something outside itself made it act—as there is nothing outside of it. It must be by a self-determining Power. And in the working of the power of self-determination, there must be a kind of selective power at work. When one takes up a determination it is a selection out of the whole material presented to oneself. When God said : "Let there be light and there was light"—what does
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it mean ? There were any number of things in the Infinite as potentialities,—light as well as not-light were present. After selective self-determination by the Supreme, light was there,—light that was a potentiality became an actuality. So light was selected as against not-light. Not only was it brought into existence, it had also to be protected from all that not-light.
The selective faculty of self-determination in the Infinite is called māy is the power of the infinite consciousness to comprehend, contain and measure out Name and Form out of the vast illimitable Truth of infinite existence. That is to say, out of the Supreme being, in which all is all without barrier of separative consciousness, emerges a phenomenal being in which All is in Each and Each is in All for the play of existence with existence, of consciousness with consciousness.
There are two kinds of māyā the higher and the lower; the one by which the Infinite determines his own self-manifestation by the selecive power, the second is the lower play of the māyā in the mental, in the vital and in the material world. It is the higher māyā that creates the world, the lower māyā cannot create the world. It is lower māyd of mind, life and body which is concerned with intermediate terms. Mind is only an intermediate term—there is no knowledge that governs the working of the mind; it is seeking for knowledge all the time. In the lower māyā the soul of man is imprisoned in works, it is not free to create. That is why mind cannot explain the world and therefore we can say that mind did not create the world. To say that an Infinite Mind created the universe would mean that the mind must be so different as not to be 'mind' in the sense we understand the word. It is not a mental idea that could have created the world. If at
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all it is an Idea—we must call it "Real-Idea" to distinguish it from the mental idea. There are two ways of looking at the problem—from above—a descending point of view, from below, an ascending point of view. One can say it is a double ladder of ascent and descent—of involution and evolution. At one end in Matter the Spirit is involved, at the other end in Spirit, Matter is involved.
All creation is nothing but self-manifestation: Existence acts and creates by its power of pure delight of conscious being. Satchidananda is the cause and object or goal of all becoming all creation. Knowledge in the Infinite means Self-vision and Law there expresses innate knowledge. When a poet creates, it is himself that he creates. The power is a manifestation of Something within him that was unmanifest, a potentiality which he develops and actualises. Even though the poem is the self of the poet, it is possible for him to separate himself from it and look at it as if it was somebody else's. The same is the case with the artist, the musician, mathematician etc. They all bring out something that was in them, lying hidden but is themselves.
Similar is the case with regard to the Infinite and its relation to the world. In the Veda there is a very fine hymn in which the Creator himself says to the Rishi "Look at this poem (the universe) of mine,—it neither dies nor grows old." The universe is the poem of the Supreme, it is immortal and ever fresh. The creation partakes of the nature of the creator.
Sri Aurobindo gives the example of the seed : out of the seed evolves that which was already "pre-existent in the being, predestined in the will to become, prearranged in the delight of becoming." The potentiality in the seed is unlimited, for after the seed has grown into the tree the potentiality again resumes its existence in the form of numerous seeds. So also the whole of the resultant organism is held in infinitesimal plasm.
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The individual being can make distinction between himself and the force that works in him : I and my mind, I and my power etc. But the force is himself, the resultant force is also himself. So, in the creation "One existence, One force, One delight of being, which concentrates itself at various points, says of each : 'this is I,' and works in it by a various play of self-force for the play of self-formation. What it creates is itself only. The goal is complete release of Satchidananda in the world-play.
It is observed that such a completeness is not possible in man because Infinite Being, Consciousness and Delight are alien to him, he is a finite being. The remedy is the emergence of the infinite consciousness in the finite. That would be the goal of the world-movement in the individual. It would be the recovery of the Truth of himself by self-knowledge. Man would then attain the truth of infinite being, consciousness, delight repossessed as his own Self. The finite is only a mask of the Reality and an instrument for its various expression.
But apart from man, how does the Satchidananda realise the world-play ? As already suggested, it is done by a triple movement: First of involution,—that is a self-absorption of the conscious being into the density and infinite diversity of the substance; otherwise no finite variation is possible. Second, of Emergence rather than Evolution of the self-imprisoned force into formal beings, living beings and thinking beings. And third, by a release of the formed thinking being into realisation of itself as the One and Infinite at play in the world. By this release the recovery of Satchidananda in the world-play which even now it is secretly, eternally.
And by what process—if any—does the Reality turn itself into the world phenomenon ? At first it looks as if there need be no 'process' or 'law' for the working of the infinite Being-Consciousness-Delight. Can it not work directly, almost
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irresponsibly ? Why should there be a process, a law ? In that case we could have a world of chance, of chaos, a world in which things are in a mess. Instead, we find a world which, in spite of all the elements of disharmony, conflict, pain and evil, is a world in which working of a law is discoverable by our mind. The 'law' that the mind perceives may not be the law accepted by the Infinite in creating the world.
What do we mean by a 'law' ? Sri Aurobindo asks. By law is meant an equilibrium of forces,—it means the powers and energies working in a certain context are balanced; there are fixed lines of working. Very often what we call "laws" are "habits of past realised energies". Now if we accept the law as something unchanging, fixed, then it would mean that there is only inconscient Force at play. But we have seen that the Force is the self-existent; then the line taken by the Force would correspond to some Truth of the same. It must be directed by a self-conscious Power.
But this play of the Higher māyā is concealed from us by the play of the lower māyā,—the mental conciousness, which persuades each to accept that he is in All but not all in him, and he is in all as a separated being, not inseparably one with all existence. In the higher play of the māyā 'each' and 'all' coexist in the unity of the One.
What is the remedy for the lower play of the māyā ? The remedy is to accept and overcome the double aspect of the creative Power. That is to say, to accept its lower play and overcome it: to accept it as God's play with division, darkness and suffering, limitation, desire, strife etc. in which He subjects himself to the Force that has come out of Himself. The other, the Higher, māyā now concealed by the mental māyā, has also to be "overpassed and then embraced". It is God's play of the infinities of existence, the splendours of Knowledge, Love, Power etc., where He emerges out of the hold of the Force, the lower māyā. Then,
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the Higher Power (māyā) lays hold on the lesser Force (Prakriti) and fulfils in her that for which she went out from the Supreme.
A solution that is suggested and practised is to abandon the lower māyā and to rise above even the Higher māyā and merge into the Infinite. Such an acceptance would go against the very spontaneous movement of the Infinite. It is not as if the world is creation of the lower māyā. Mind is only an intermediate term of the Reality. It is there to help the Soul, imprisoned in Nature and its works to free itself in knowledge and the Satchidananda is emerging out of the instruments it has created for its descent and ascent: in the descent mind is an instrument for creating multiple becomings, in the ascent it is a transitional stage.
If the mind is not the creator of the world who is the creator ? And why should man accept the world-play ? In Sri Aurobindo's vision the world is self-determination of the Supreme Knowledge, power and wisdom in the higher Nature. This world is not a creation of the lower māyā working in the opposition to the Higher. Creation is not a "Child of the Void, nor a wearer of fictions"; a conscious Reality is at work throwing itself into mutable forms of its own imperishable and immutable Substance. What is labouring here is That which is beyond mind, the Real-Idea of the Supermind. (as opposed to the mental-idea).
From the point of the ascending curve of consciousness we can say that Real-Idea is behind all that is. To the mind, labouring from below, the Real-Idea of the Supermind appears as an ideal—a Truth to be realised, perfection to be attained. This attraction towards perfection instinctively turns to an aspiration, a steady movement of the whole inner being towards the ideal. But even the ideal envisaged by the mind is not a perfect Reality, it is imperfect and the human being moves from imperfect idealism to a Transcendent
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Reality. Thus we see that the pull of the Higher consciousness is already acting on the mind even when the veil intervens between the two.
Mind cannot explain the universe. The Infinite Consciousness must become an infinite faculty of knowledge to create this world. An infinite power of knowledge and action is Omniscience and Omnipotence. Mind is not the faculty of perfect knowledge, it is neither Omniscient, nor a direct instrument of Omniscience. Mind is "ignorance seeking for knowledge." Mind can attain a truth, but it does not possess it—it does not know but is constantly trying to know. Mind never knows completely but always sees as "in a glass darkly". Mind is only a reflective mirror which receives impressions, or representations of Something that already exists, mind does not create anything. What it finds is something that was already there. When it formulates the law of gravitation, the working of gravitation was already there. Mind lives from moment to moment and therefore is not in possession of the whole Truth, Truth to it is gradual unfoldment. Mind is the "law of the immediate appearance of the universe", it has nothing directly to do with the original Truth, the essential Truth at work in the universe. Mind is not the power that could create the world. It is sometimes said : Infinite Mind —meaning God's mind—created the world. But then infinite mind is not mind at all. An infinite human mind would only create infinite chaos. An infinite, Omnipotent mind would not be mind. What seems to be at work in the universe is Something more than mind and life. "The world expresses a foreseen Truth, obeys a predeterminnd will, realises an original formative self-vision"; World is the "growing image of a divine creation".
Is this only an inference ? One has to accept that man's reasoning power is only a messenger, a representative of a greater consciousness. We have seen that infinite Being is
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infinite Consciousness; infinite Consciousness and Power is Omnipotent Force. And when it makes the world the object of its consciousness then it becomes seizable by our thought. The Higher Consciousness has no need to reason because it knows.
Q : How does one enter the life of yoga ? because, ordinarily man has many motives that satisfy him in life.
A: Ordinary motives—like satisfaction of desires and impulses or higher motives like acquiring wealth or making a success, or ambition for fame or having a place in public life etc., etc.—do contribute to man's inner and outer progress. Only, that path is a very wasteful path. Besides, all these motives do not satisfy man when he succeeds in realising them. Whatever life can give is inadequate—there is badge of imperfection on life.
It is then that man realises the Truth of what Sri Aurobindo writes in Savitri :
All is too little that the world can give;
And cannot fill the Spirit's sacred thirst.
Then one begins to seek the Reality, seek the Truth, the Purpose in life. When this seeking becomes steady it becomes an aspiration, a flame of inner life rising up to meet the Truth, to know and surrender to a Power that is felt, and a contact is established. For those who know and have some understanding of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, it is easier to establish the contact because they have, by their long practice of yoga, channelised the Power for humanity.
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The two processes are called "opening" and "receptivity". When you expect somebody you keep your doors open and you are in the mood of receiving the guest. One adopts the same attitude in the inner life keeping open to the Divine and receptive to Him. The results of these may not be noticeable at first—they depend upon sincerity of the aspiration— but some working may begin even unconsciously in the aspirant. Difficulties of inner life may tend to become less, what one thought impossible may become possible, one may begin to know oneself better than before etc.
Q: Sometimes an athlete may overstrain and may have to stop training for a while to get back to the right condition. Can this apply to yoga ?
A : Yes, partly, depending upon the case. The overstrain in yoga may come by a defect in the attitude—by haste spurred by ambition, or ego. But one who is sincere is generally protected.
Periods of fatigue are probable in yoga because the changes required in nature are radical and time is required for assimilating the new experience and in adjusting the whole of one's nature to it.
One has also to bear in mind that in this yoga which accepts life and nature, ignorance has to be eliminated. And that cannot be done completely by the effort and will of the aspirant. In this yoga one has to have the help of the Divine in the work of transforming one's nature. One has only to give the necessary consent, the rest of the work is done by the Higher Power. Permanent ascent—not merely an occasional glimpse—to the Higher Consciousness or a steady status in the inner soul is needed to carry out thoroughly the process of change. It is so because when one begins yoga the problem seems individual—in a certain sense it is even personal but when one begins to work it out, one finds,
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at a certain point, that the probem is universal; it is not A or B or C who has the imperfection—it is universal imperfection one is up against.
And to succeed in one's efforts the help of the Divine is indispensable. That is why 'surrender' to the Divine is an indispensable part of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.
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Lecture IX
Chap. 14. The Supermind as Creator
Chap. 15. The Supreme Truth-Consciousness
We are in the 14th chapter and I would like to compress, if possible, the 14th and the 15th together. We have worked up to what might be called self-possession of the One on one side : the Infinite is, of course, the one Satchidananda. There is the Self-possession of the One and then there are the Many or the multiple on this side. World of ignorance, infinite succession of the movement of the many. There are these two things going on : One and the Many. These many are changing constantly because they flow in time. The flux of the many that we see on this side, flows all the time from the One. Between the world of flux and the world of the One there is the connecting link called the supermind, the Truth-Consciousness. Supermind is a connection—infinity the supermind and the world. Here is the infinite world of the One which is the realm of the truth and the reality—then the world of flux and Many,—of human mind, of ignorance, and the connecting link of the supermind. Supermind is really the creator of the world. We can say that when the infinite turns its gaze toward creation, or moves to creation its nature becomes supermind or Truth-Consciousness. It first becomes truth-conscious before it projects itself into the world as we know it. The one infinite and absolute, when it moves to create the first step that it takes within its own self,—without projection in this material world that we know,—is the creation of a truth-world, a supramental plane of consciousness. Creation begins with Truth-Consciousness and not with a false consciousness. That is the law. At present, it is too high for man to reach but it is attainable by man because it is man's own highest
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possibility or the highest self. Man can and does occasionally open to that consciousness. Mind means the mental consciousness including the intellect and the heart, and generally the vital will-power is added to it. Sometimes the mind ascends and opens to it, or glimpses it, but then it closes; the door opens again and something comes down,—either the light of knowledge or power of it comes down and again the door closes. That is the present relation between mind, and the channel supermind which connects it to the Infinite. Occasionally, there is a chink through which the Light flows on this side of the mind, in society, in man, and that creates religion, philosophy, seeking for truth etc., etc. Now the question that Sri Aurobindo puts here is how to make a permanent relation between this lower triplicity of mind, life and body on this side,—the world of flux,—and the Truth-Consciouness which is attainable by man, which is a potential capacity— the highest to which man can attain. The problem is how to make a permanent ascent to the supramental consciousness. The door has opened occasionally, some Light has come down and the door has closed again. Light has come down and worked here and maintained the world. Even now when the world is not open to it, it is supporting the world from behind. That is not the solution of man's problem. That is the Divine's working. But the world is not divine. To man's consciousness and to his perception the world is not divine though the Divine is supporting it from behind. That is the whole problem. There are people who say the divine is working everywhere and the world is being supported by the Divine, so everything is all right. It is all right when one gets into the Divine consciousness; but when one is not in the divine consciousness then the world is not all right and the world is indeed imperfect. Then the problem of attaining perfection does arise and if it does not arise there is no use trying to set it. To one who says he does not
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believe in possible perfection, the question does not arise. The honest egoistic attitude is much better than saying all is God, everything is God, everything is nice, everything is perfect. Things may be perfectin the Supermind. That is where one has to ascend, then there will be perfection but not now. You cannot know or say with justification and with any sense of honesty that it is perfect because imperfection is self-evident: imperfection does not require to be proved. The Divine is supporting the world otherwise the world would not be, but from that it does not follow that man has to do nothing, rather man has a lot to do. Man who represents the Divine here in mind, life and body, is not merely a piece of matter. That is the first truth to be realized. And because it is the Divine that has allowed the multiplicity and flux of the many and the movement of the universe man has to open his consciousness and ascend to the Higher consciousness and take a permanent station in it. Earth-consciousness would begin to solve its problem when man who is the embodiment of mind, life and body consciousness,—the lower triplicity— consciously embodies within himself the higher working of the Truth-Consciousness which is a first projection of the world from the Infinite, from the One, from Satchidananda. It is difficult to convey to the mind what is the Supermind and how the infinite One, above all relativities and absolutes, manages to create this world and become the creator. To the mind this is difficult to convey because the process is not mental. Still there is some relation between Mind and Supermind; between this world and the Truth-World. One can not say that because it cannot be described, therefore it does not exist. If I experience something wonderful and marvellous, it may defy description but it does not mean that it does not exist. There is a relation between this imperfect world and that perfect world, but it is very difficult, to convey the idea to the mind because of the rarety of the
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experience and also the difficulty of communication. Human language and mind being limited instruments of expression of the soul, do not lend themselves easily to an expression of this truth, which is so baffing to the mind. That is why, those who speak about it resort to symbols when they express the higher Reality. It is not that they do not have the experience. They have the experience but to convey it in terms of the intellect is very difficult. Therefore, they make use of symbols. That is the easiest way of conveying whatever truth they see to other people. Still, mind can certainly know something about it. But when it knows something about it, it can also doubt it and ask : "Does that world really exist or are you making a mental concept and a vision out of it ? Is it only the mind's vision which has relevance only to mind without any applicability to life ? Does this Truth-Consciousness correspond to a Power, not merely a vision of Truth—something that is there as seen, not something that can work and is dynamic ? These questions the mind can ask. One way of solving them is for the mind to make an ascent to the Higher Consciousness and learn the truth. In fact mind is derivative from Supermind. You can see that the process of creation, from being to becoming, from the One to the Many, from the absolute, to the relative, or, from the Truth-Consciousness to the world as we know it, includes the creation of mind, life, and matter. So mind is a derivative power of this Truth-Consciousness. Therefore, there is a relation between them. Mind, even without its knowing, is supported by this Consciousness. Mind is not left alone to work out the problem of reaching the Reality. Mind seeks the Reality because it is derivative from the Reality. Naturally, therefore, it tries to go back to the reality. We can know something about it in the mind when it works in the mind as inspiration, as revelation. That is how people have known something about it. An intuition comes, an inspiration
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comes, some light comes, a vision of some revelation comes—giving a vision of some higher Truth. Thus an opening is made in mental consciousness. That gives us a first inkling.
More than that, the fingerpost of this nature of creative Divine Consciousness is given in one of the oldest books of the world, the Veda. The language used is symbolic but still it points to the process of how the Satchidananda, the infinite and the Eternal has become, so to say, the flux that we perceive as the world. The flux, the world, is contained in it. In what way is it contained ? It speaks of this as the 'Vast', Bṛhat—a vastness that is beyond the firmament of our physical and mental consciousness. It says The Vast is "beyond earth and heaven." Earth is the physical consciousness, Heaven is the mental consciousness. Beyond the two firmaments of earth and heaven is the Vastness, Bṛhat, the word they use in the Veda. It is all-comprehensive, luminous Truth-Consciousness, it is harmony of being. And in the Vastness you have comprehensiveness, luminosity of truth and harmony of being and we speak of this as God. The consciousness of God is Truth-Consciousness; it is not a mental consciousness. Agni is said to be Seer-will, the will that actuates itself in it. Light is one with the force of Will, Knowledge and Will go together; where the vibration of knowledge is one with rhythm of will and both become indistinguishable. There the divine nature is described as distinguished from human nature. When the Rig Veda speaks of the realm of the gods or the realm of Truth-Consciousness, it is really describing to us the divine nature and its function—, and how the divine nature is constituted. The first knowledge you get is a fingerpost on the path in which divine nature is described in its two-fold power of spontaneous self-formation and a self-arrangement which comes out naturally from the essence of the thing that is manifested. The seond part
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of it is the force of light that is inherent in the thing itself. This is a little difficult but let us take the Vedic guide because without that perhaps the indication will not be clear. The two processes by which man begins to know the Divine Consciousness are inspiration and revelation, the two powers by which mind has known something of it. Hearing the vibration of Truth and seeing the vision of Truth—these two powers have brought man some inkling of the constitution of divine nature. It means there is a plane of consciousness where you can see the Truth. There is some plane where a vibration of Truth is sent forth and the mind can hear it and can receive the vibration of truth and give expression to it either in language, generally symbolic, or in some other way. So that these two or rather three powers in the human consciousness,—inspiration, intuition and revelation—give an inkling into the working of that divine nature which has first projected itself into the world. It is truth-vision and truth-audition as Sri Aurobindo calls it and this is reflected in mental consciousness. One can say or put it a little differently : Satchidananda, the infinite and the absolute projected the supermind, and from the supermind is derived the mind. You can put it that way if you like and then the contrary process will be from mind to ascend to the supermind; and from there to the Infinite One. You see the absolute one and indivisible consciousness, then the projection of it first in the supermind —the Truth-Consciousness and then in mind, which is the analytical and dividing faculty. Supermind is comprehensive and creative consciousness. That is how the eternally stable One gives rise to eternally mutable Many. Eternally stable Unity above and eternally mutable multiplicity here below. The one, eternal, always holds within himself the potentiality of the many. It is not as if the One was negative and incapable of the multiplicity. It is there that human mind gets into difficulty and is lost in the maze. It is the One but
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it is not a mental one. This One that we speak of is the infinite and the eternal, therefore, not subject to the terms of mind. That is why the one eternal and stable holds within itself also the potentiality of the many all the time. It is not as if the One was unitarian; because those who try to describe the Absolute do not realise that when they assert that the absolute cannot become active, cannot create, cannot have any multiplicity within it, they arbritarily limit the absolute. If mind can so define the Absolute and put it within limits, then it will cease to be the Absolute. People question : if Brahman is infinite, how can it create the world ? How can it be Brahman if it creates the world ? This is the logic of the finite applied to the logic of the infinite. The logic of the finite is true only in the mental world. For example, man generally acts out of attachment. The argument advanced is that if Brahman creates the world, it will also fall from its status. But then it would no longer be Brahman,—it would be a human being. You see the logic of the finite is not commensurate with the logic of the infinite. In the finite two plus two is equal to four, but in the mathematics of the infinite, infinite plus infinite is equal to infinite. Infinite multiplied by infinite is infinite. One has to bear in mind that the freedom of the Eternal is absolute,—that is to say, it is freedom beyond unity and also beyond multiplicity. Even our description of it as Sat, Chit and Ananda is the mental way of defining that which is One. If we allow the mind to arrange its intuition it would say: Satchidananda is indivisible unity and mind is essential mutiplicity. It is in the Supermind that the link between the Eternal Satchidananda and the Triple world of mind, life and body exists, that unity and diversity co-exist without division—they both stand and act on the basis of the Infinite Brahman.
Mind is only a preparatory term—not an instrument of essential knowledge. Mind is analytical, it cuts from the
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whole and treats the parts as if they were wholes. And at the end what mind knows is its own analysis of the subject, it does not know the object. It happens so because in terrestrial evolution mind is embedded in matter and is limited by the inertia of matter to a great extent. Mind and life both enlighten matter but they are only passages, not the culmination of the process of enlightenment.
In the Supermind, that is the Truth-Consciousness, there is unity but it is not a negative unity. Rather, it is original self-concentration of the Infinite which is greater than the All. Therefore to say that it is One does not seem logical. It is true that the nature of the absolute self-concentration of the Supreme is unity, the One. But in the Supermind it becomes vast self-extension of the Infinite which knows and contains it: it thus has the original self-concentration which is the One and also a power of self-diffusion. In the Mind this self-diffusion might appear as disintegration of the unity. But the Supermind has its firm hold on the self-extension of the Truth-Consciousness which contains the diffusion and prevents disintegration. It maintains unity in diversity and thus keeps stability in utmost mutability.
Creation, therefore, is a movement between two involutions : that of the Spirit involved in Matter and of Matter involved in the Spirit. Every seed implies all infinity—all infinity of possibility. Nature really is seer-will, knowledge-force of the Conscious-being at work. In the mind thought seems separate from existence, in the mind abstract thought and Reality are distinct from each other, so also are will and idea. In the Supermind all being is consciousness and all consciousness is being. In the Supermind consciousness of being, consciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will— all is one movement. There is, we may say, Idea in the Supermind but it is only light of the Reality,—not an abstraction of the mind. One may say it is vibration of consciousness and
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being which Sri Aurobindo calls the Real-Idea to distinguish it from the mental idea. Real-Idea may be said to be effective self-awareness of the Supermind in which knowledge and power are one like light and burning power of fire.
The problem of man is to rise to the Supermind and bring it down here in life so as to make it a direct dynamic factor in the evolutionary process on earth. As we have already remarked one may say that a process of double evolution is at work. The process can be understood by taking the analogy of a seed. We see a power of spontaneous self-formation and self-arrangement at work. A force inherent in the being of the seed fulfils that which is involved in it. The tree is pre-existent in the seed. The whole world is pre-existent in the Supermind —there the idea is not separate from the impulse at work. In the mind the ideal and the power of realisation are not inseparable. In the Supermind self-awareness is effective,—while in the mind self-awareness is not effective.
We may ask : what is the Supermind, and the reply in the light of previous exposition is : "Nature of the Divine Being in action is the Supermind." So Supermind is the Lord, it is the Creator. It appears to us as an operation of the Truth-Consciousness in which an ordering self-knowledge seems to be at work,—a world of matter, a vetgetable world, an insect world, an animal world. If the ordering self-knowledge was not there, there would be only chaos. If infinite potentialities of the Infinite were set to work without this ordering self-knowledge it would only lead to chaos—and we would not find any order either in matter or in life. It would be as Sri Aurobindo says- "a play of unbounded and uncontrolled chance." But we find an order, and not "a teeming amorphous, confused uncertainty." In fact, we find on the contrary the working of a law. The working of a self-determining self-knowledge is perceived by the mind as law. Law is
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mind's perception of the working out of the Real-Idea, which is predetermined, predestined. Law can be said to be the expression of self-natate, svabhāva, which is "determined by the compelling truth of the Real-Idea" in each thing. The world is a movement in time and space, its development is "a regulated interaction of related things in space to which succession of time gives the aspect of causality."
The causality perceived by mind is not a law without exception. The mind is tempted to connect two consecutive events and establish the relation of cause and effect between them. If a particular sound was regularly followed by a flash of light the mind would jump to the conclusion that the sound was the cause and light the effect, whereas as matter of fact two phenomena may happen to succeed each other by a pure coincidence. Apart from such a possible source of error one can see that even in phenomena on the material plane the result may be due not to one but several known and unknown circumstances. And so to establish a relation of cause and effect would not be rational. That is what seems to have happened in the realm of physical science in which the law of causation was supposed to act without exception. The latest position in science seems to be that instead of law of causation the law of Indeterminacy is prevailing. It is found that in many important cases the cause cannot be determined. For example, in the atomic ring it is not possible to determine the position or speed of the particle because one has to introduce the ray of light to see the phenomenon; that would interfere with the process. Hence the result is indeterminable. Take the case of a cylinder filled with a gas. The particles of the gas break up on bombardment from X-ray. It is found that some particles break up and others don't. The cause of this behaviour is not possible to know, it is indeterminable. Why a particular number of particles break up and not others is not determinable by science.
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Science now claims to give only average behaviour. If we carefully watch the working of the law of causality in the mind, we find that it is rather a complex of preceding conditions followed by a complex of succeeding conditions. In fact, the mind does not know all the factors of the preceding conditions which bring about the result, and so when in actuality there is breach in the law of causation, one comes across a factor or factors which were not perceived before. The result which the mind sees may not be the result of the cause recognized by it. There are innumerable examples that illustrate the truth of this indeterminacy. When all the possible causes for success are provided something turns up and the result intended does not materialise. In the last war the Allied army under Lord Montgomery was poised for attack and everything pointed to the carrying out of the plan. Next day, the papers came out : "General Mud in charge" —the attack was postponed because of the rain. In certain diseases the doctors and even others assert that it is incurable, and yet there are cases in which one finds that it is cured.
Time and Space are the Conscious-Being viewing itself in extension subjectively as Time, objectively as Space. Space is, thus, the self-extension of the Infinite—the Brahman. Space is not empty, it is filled with the silence of the Infinite. "Mind measures time by event and space by matter." Time and Space are only two aspects of the universal force of consciousness. To a consciousness higher than mind time would be eternal Present and so it can know the world quite in another way than the mind. Eternity of time can be compressed into a moment, it can be expanded to everlasting time. Sri Aurobindo wrote a poem "In hori's aeternum" "Eternity in an hour". Blake, I think, wrote about "Eternity in a grain of sand." Man has in him his natural instruments —mind, heart, vital being, nervous and physical being—and
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the true Self, the Spark of the Divine. Man can awaken his true Self and identify it with the Eternal, and immortal. It is then possible for it to project its perfection into the instruments of nature and make them participate in the immortality of the Spirit by a process of transformation. Immortality is not merely avoidance of death of the body, it is participation in the immortality of the Spirit by the instruments of nature. Ordinarily, the mind refuses to accept the possibility of attaining a Higher Consciousness and of transformation of nature.
Supermind, on the contrary, working as Truth-Consciousness embraces the whole and unifies the succession of time and divisions of space. When we say Supermind embraces and unifies the whole it means it does so "in a succession of developing harmony". If the Eternity of which we speak was static then all would exist in it and not be worked out. One has to use an analogy and imagine the creator of the universe as a poet or a dreamer. Things are worked out from within even in time, and not from outside. The outer aspect of the shock and struggle and straining is only the superficial working of the inner forces. "Supermind sees things steadily and sees them whole"; that is its nature.
First, Supermind contains all forms of itself; second, it "pervades them as the indwelling Presence, self-revealing light". It is present in every force and form, and "limits the variations which it compels", it gathers, disposes, modifies, energises. It is seated within everything as the Lord, "in the heart of all existences" as the Gita says. Each thing in Nature is governed by this indwelling Presence; it carries out the work of intelligence in the plant and in the animal without intelligence. Thus it works out the Real-Idea in which "Self-knowledge is inseparable from self-existence." Therefore Supermind is " all - comprehensive, all-pervading, all-inhabiting consciousness wherein the Knower, Knowledge
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and Known are identical."
Mind is not prepared to accept this just as it is not willing to accept that the earth is going round the Sun because of the contrary appearances. This is due to the inherent duality of mental consciousness which even in introspection needs 'I' and 'not-I'. Mind does not see that behind its apparent fundamental division there is. oneness. Supermind, on the contrary, "possesses the unity in a single act of vision" and this Vision is Life. Supermind has the "indivisibility of Truth which contains all multiplicity" without derogating the unity. It feels the emergence of the tree out of the seed in which it is already contained. There is a fixed process in the phenomenon of form and a permanence of form which is the permanence of the Real-Idea. To the mind the form and the spirit are separate, to the Supermind they are not separate at all,—the tree and the process are not separate things. The tree does not explain the seed nor does the seed explain the tree. "Cosmos explains both—God explains Cosmos." The process at work is not a mental process. When people put the question whether the egg was first or the hen, they do not understand that the question is beyond logic, beyond mind. One is already referring to a universal energy which has been carrying out the Real-Idea. The process can go on infinitely repeating itself in an infinite recurrence. In the Supermind there is "no independant centre of existence", no individual separate ego : all is absolutely identical One, and the One is all existences. It is "equally present everywhere," it is single and equal,
Q: Should one observe the rules of society while purusing spiritual life ?
A : If you study carefully the growth of societies you will
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find that standards of good and bad, even ideas of morality have been constantly changing. One can observe them so long as they do not clash with the conscience, with the needs of spirituality. But if one does not flout them when they clash with the inner need, there would be no progress. Take the case of untouchability in India or colour bar here. If the conscience revolts against it one has to oppose it even if it has lasted for centuries in a community. A spiritual man is not bound by these rules. He keeps the door for redemption open even for the worst criminal, knowing the Omnipotence of Divine Grace.
Q: You spoke of the Real-Idea—can it be the same as Prajā
A : No. It is Prajñā or Prajñāna of the Upanishads. It is the Divine's own self-view.
Q: There are eminent persons who not only do not accept the idea of God but they ridicule it. Why is that ?
A: In the age of democracy we can't object to people holding their views particularly because God does not seem to object to their views. Dilip Kumar Roy, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo, sent him Anatole France's strictures on God and it evoked a very interesting reply. I reproduce the correspondence in full—
(Either God would prevent evil if he could, but would not, or he could but would not, or he neither could nor would, or he both would and could. If he would but could not, he is impotent if he could but would not, he is perverse, if he neither could nor would he is at once impotent and perverse; if he both could and would why on earth hasn't he done it, Father ?)
I send this to you as I immensely enjoyed the joke and am
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sure you would too, hoping you would have something to say to it.
Dilip
Dilip,
Anatole France is always amusing whether he is ironising about God and Christianity or about the rational animal humanity (with a big H) and the follies of his reason and his conduct. But I presume you never heard of God's explanation of his non-interference to Anatole France when they met in some Heaven of Irony, I suppose it can't have been in the heaven of Karl Marx, in spite of France's conversion before his death. God is reported to have strolled up to him and said "I say, Anatole, you know that was a good joke of yours; but there was a good cause for my non-interference. Reason came along and told me : 'Look here, why do you pretend to exist ? You know you don't exist and never existed or, if you do, you have made such a mess of your creation that we can't tolerate you any longer. Once we have got you out of the way all will be right upon earth—tip-top, A-I; my daughter Science and I have arranged that between us. Man will raise his noble brow, the head of creation, dignified, free, equal, fraternal, democratic, depending upon nothing but himself, with nothing greater than himself anywhere in existence. There will be no God, no priestcraft, no religion, no kings, no oppression, no poverty, no war or discord anywhere. Industry will fill the earth with abundance, Commerce will spread her golden reconciling wings everywhere, universal education will stamp out ignorance and leave no room for folly or unreason in any human brain; man will become cultured, disciplined, rational, scientific, well-informed arriving always at the right conclusion upon full and sufficient data. The voice of the scientists and the experts will be loud in the land and guide mankind to the earthly paradise. A perfected society; health universalised by a developed
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medical science and a sound hygiene; everything rationalised; science evolved, infallible, omnipotent, omniscient; the riddle of existence solved; the Parliament of Man, the Federation of world; evolution, of which man, magnificent man, is the last term, completed in the noble white race, a humanitarian kindness and uplifting for our backward brown, yellow and black brothers; peace, peace, peace, reason, order, unity everywhere'. There was a lot more like that, Anatole, and I was so much impressed by the beauty of the picture and its convenience, for I would have nothing to do or to supervise, that I at" once retired from business—for, you know that I was always of a retiring disposition and inclined to keep myself behind the veil or in the background at the best of times. But what is this I hear ? It does not seem to me from reports that reason even with the help of Science has kept her promise. And if not, why not ? Is it because she would not, or because she could not ? Or is it because she both would not and could not ?—Or because she both would and could, but somehow did not ? And I say, Anatole, these children of theirs, the State, Industrialism, Capitalism and the rest have a queer look; they seem very much like Titanic monsters—armed too with all the powers of Intellect and all the weapons and organisation of Science. Yet it does look as if mankind were no freer under them than under the Kings and the Churches ! ! What has happened ?—or is it possible that Reason is not supreme and infallible, even that she has made a greater mess of it than I could have done myself ! ! ! Here the report of the conversation ends; I give it for what it is worth, for I am not acquainted with this God and have to take him on trust from Anatole France.
Sri Aurobindo
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Lecture X
Chap. 16. The Triple Status of Supermind
Chap. 17. The Divine Soul Chap. 18. Mind and Supermind
It is perhaps good to take chapters 16, 17, 18, together as all the three deal with the subject of the Supermind. Then the chapters that follow upto chapter 28th may be regarded as applications of the working of the Supermind. The 17th gives the status of the Divine Soul,—the central being, in the Supermind; the 18th deals with Mind and Supermind, while Chapters from 19th to 22nd deal with Life and its nature and the working of the Supermind. Chapter 23 deals with the Double soul and then 24th-27th deal with Matter, and in Chapter 28th the distinction between Supermind, Mind and Overmind is clearly made for the first time. The importance of Overmind as an intermediate plane between Supermind and Mind is noteworthy.
We have seen that the One Infinite Existence-Conscious-ness-and Bliss eternal gives rise to the flux of the many, the world. And the connection between the two is the link of the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness, into which the Satchidananda or the infinite consciousness of the Eternal casts itself in a self-vision, a self-knowledge in which all the potentialities are held together. And it is the Supermind that projects itself into the world that we know,—in mind, life and body—in the mental, vital and physical worlds, so to speak. They are a working out of that principle. Now in these chapters Sri Aurobindo is trying to show that Mind, Life and Matter are a working of the Supermind from behind the veil.
These chapters are devoted to the development of the idea that Supermind first projects out of itself, the Truth-Consciousness
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It becomes, so to say, the Truth-Consciousness. And when it becomes the Truth-Consciousness then it becomes a parent or creator of the worlds that follow. The world of mind, the world of life and the world of matter are nothing else but a veiled working of the Supermind, a veiled working of the Truth-Consciousness. It is there working behind the working of mind, behind the working of life, behind the operation of the inconscient and gross matter.
Now, if we grant the proposition that Supermind can be the creator of this world or that Truth-Consciousness can originate a world of the flux of the many, then we need not go into every detail of the argument, for the chapters are filled with the argument proving the working of mind supported behind the veil by the working of the Supermind, the working of Life supported from behind by a working of Conscious-Power, and a working of matter supported by Infinite existence, the principle of Being. It is that which is working. In chapters 16 and 17 you have to move the material forward showing how the Supermind projects itself into the world as we know it. I will therefore give the main ideas of chapter 16.
First God, is illimitable bliss of existence-consciousness and He is our highest Self. That is the conception of God at which we have arrived. And when concentrated within Himself, He is Bliss. When He is active He becomes the delight of the play of Bliss. It becomes for us the universe. Divine consciousness possesses that delight eternally. For that, the problem does not exist. But if man is to attain divine life then that veiled Divine Self must be unveiled to man. Otherwise he cannot live the divine life here. In actuality we feel two things : one is the unity of Satchidananda, and the other is the divided mentality; that is to say, the mental consciousness of man is not at all capable of reali-
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zing that fundamental, essential, self-existent Delight. These two oppose each other. Human mind in its search for perfection says : one of them must be true and the other must be false. If the other is true, then to reach the Delight which is the true expression of the Supreme, one must be able to give up this world of life. That line of thought we have once considered. Sri Aurobindo gives here again the argument to show that Supermind works on a triple status, or three stages which it takes up. But we need a link, and we saw last time that the link is Supermind. It is the link between Satchidananda and the world of division, between the world of mind, life and body. Satchidananda is proceeding out of the poise of unity into this movement.
And it is the Infinite Being moving out into determinative self-knowledge, force of the Self also—at the same time—and all the forms are its conscious becomings created by its own force in its own self-extension in infinite time and in infinite space. This we considered last time. Now, in the Supermind the Divine takes up three poises of world formation—the unity of things—not in the sense of unitarian unity or unitarian consciousness,—in which the potentiality of the Many is held. The second poise is that of the modification of that unity which becomes the play of the Many in the One, and the One in the Many, so as to support the manifestation of the many. And in that modification the supramental poise is of One in the Many and Many in One. That is to say, there is one soul-essence, and the differentiation is there only in the soul-forms. In the second poise the differentiation of One into many, and many into One takes place without creating division or separation, and without Satchidananda's undergoing a real process of separation—a condition in which the One is conscious of the Marty and the Many are filled with the presence of the One. That is to say, there is difference only in the soul-form and not in the Soul essence, that
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is what may be called the Jīvātman, the individual Divine. The third is a further modification which creates diversified individuality, which becomes the ego ultimately, following the creation of the mind. In the third poise of the Supermind the mental consciousness, or mind, comes into existence because the diversification has got to individualize itself. There in the first poise of the One and the Many the Truth-Consciousness is present and the Infinite.
There is of course a supporting concentration of the Supermind even when the being projects itself into the movement and is involved in it. There is the bliss of supramental unity in the duality. But the consequence of this projection is lapse into Avidya, ignorance. Then the Many are felt as the real fact of existence and the One is known only as the sum of the many. This Self in the Supermind would know the truth of the stable unity and truth of differentiation. It is the foundation and culmination of the divine play. It has the joy of differentiation of and the joy of unity. Of course, the Ananda would vary, that is to say, the poise enjoying it would vary. The Many would depend on the One and the Eternal would depend on the Many—there would be eternal persistence, eternal recurrence of the Many.
This is difficult for the mind to grasp; in its exclusive concentration it creates mutually destructive philosophical schools. But we who seek the integral Truth need not bother about them. It would be "vain labour of enslaving to our mental distinctions and definitions the absolute freedom of the divine Infinite." If you take only the first manifestation of the Supreme, you get an imperfect idea of the Reality. You must take all the three poises together. Unless and until the One is known as the Individual Self of the One, the Cosmic Self of the All, and the Transcendent above with individual and the All you have not got the right perspective of the Truth-consciousness. Truth-consciousness is itself at
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the centre of the individual. It is the common cosmic or all-pervading consciousness of the All and it is beyond the individual and the cosmic consciousness, both of which are derivatives of that One. If you grasp these three aspects which are here expressed in the formula of the Upanishads— "All Beings are in the Self", "The Self is in all Beings" and "All beings are the Divine"." Then it gives you the correct perspective.
Here the author is trying to show how the Supermind in taking the three poises becomes the origin of our ignorant world. The mental world is a variation of the third poise in which a further modification of the unity of the Truth-Consciousness takes place, creating the individualized ego. The individualized ego is the further modification of the limitation of this consciousness. We may grasp intellectually what is the eternal Reality and how out of that eternal Divine Reality the world has come. That which has come out of the Divine must inevitably return to the Divine. That is the logic of the Life Divine. Because it has come from the Divine it should be logical for it to go back to the Divine. This truth, however convincing intellectually, does not give us the satisfaction of the thing that is "experienced." And so he puts this question : how must we now change and what must we become in order to arise then in the Divine consciousness ? In order to have the real change man will have to undertake a serious inner effort and become so changed in his nature in life and his relation to others as to be able to embody the divine life. How must we changed in order to do that ? He is presenting that problem; and in Chapter 17 he says we have seen the descent of the Divine, the descent from the Truth-Consciousness to the ego formation, to life and to matter. But we have not seen the possibility and the necessity of the ascent. We stand at the point where the descent of the Divine is understood, but
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what is to be done ? In the descent we have lost the contact of the Infinite. The background was lost when the diversified ego was created. So the problem here in the 17th chapter is that while we know the descent to some extent and also understand that we are the Divine that has descended : the problem now is for this Divine in the human to ascend or rather to reascend to its own Divine Consciousness. And you can say that this being that wants to ascend to the Divine consciousness is already contained in the essential Satchidananda. The soul, the psychic being, behind the ego wants to ascend, but it is self-contained in the Supreme. That is the Divine Soul and you may call that the Jīvātman, the Central Being of the human individual here whose distortion is the ego. Sri Aurobindo puts it here with logic : the Divine Soul is pure, infinite Self-existence in its being and sense-existence and a free play of immortal life in its becoming. It is there in the Divine; there the true individual, the Central Being, is already contained in the Satchidananda, in the Infinite, and for it there is no death, no birth and no change. In Eternal Satchidananda it is free from time and therefore inevitably in bliss. Now, to the intellect this is only an abstract conception. It tells us that the Infinite is there in some way, "but the intellect cannot bring us into its presence" just by bringing the idea to our mind. The divine soul lives in it and it feels itself a manifestation of the Absolute; and as spoken of in the Rig Veda, we might sometimes have a glimpse of it. In that case, the divine soul that is always existent and contained in the Satchidananda would not only not lose the background of the Infinite, free from time and birth and change and death, but it would simultaneously live in the One and in the Many because there the unity is Self-existent and automatically operative. It is not an effort to realize the One in the Many and the Many in the One on the level of the Divine Soul in the Supermind where the division has
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not yet intervened. The Divine Souls therefore simultaneously would live in the One and in the Many,—the two terms of the expression of the Satchidananda. All actually lives so, but the divided consciousness of man compels him to live either in the One or in the Many. In actuality, the One and the Many do co-exist, but in man's consciousness either he is compelled by the limitedness of his consciousness to accept the position of the One or accept to live in the many. He must abandon the many in order to live in the One or live in the Many and forget the One. This is inevitable in the present conditions. "The Divine Soul is not so enslaved to diversity and duality." Infinite self-Concentration and infinite self-expansion and diffusion, bring about the One and the many: Self-concentration is Being, self-extension is the Many. It is constant self-extension and diffusion of the One in the Many and the Many in diffusion are drawn always to the One. This vast view is the mould of Truth-Consciousness. This is the real "I", he says. All is in it, the potentialities of the One, and all that we find as expression comes out of the silence of the One.
Now, the divine soul, when it extends itself, will be aware of three grades of Satchidananda of which we have spoken. "All things are the Self", its own Self. There is One Self-being, and One Seff-becoming. All are soul-forms of the One, that is the whole is in the One and the whole is in all. Thus it sees a relativity that proves to be the Absolute behind the form. It is based on self-knowledge, self in us becoming All-existences. All existences are in the Self and the Self is in all existence. That is the triple formula which we have dealt with.
This Divine Soul deals with others also as its own self. There is no division, and therefore, as the Veda puts it, Agni is called Indra, Indra is called Vayu, Vayu is called Mitra, and each one is expected to fulfil its function as a working
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out of an infinite Power. It is not expected to operate independently of others. Agni, Fire has its own function but it is also all the other Gods, for all the Gods are One. We will, in the next chapter, consider the psychological conditions for realizing this Divine Soul in life, and see how to bring the expression of the Divine Soul here in life. We are trying only to envisage the existence of the Divine Soul in the Truth-Consciousness and to understand in what state it would be living if it had its permanent station there. It would live in identity with the One and in a self-extension in the many who would be continually referable to the One, so that there would be no loss of identity and yet there would be a particularization or a variation allowing it to function as an individual Soul-form without any difference in the Soul-essence. It is given a particular function because of the will, but it is not therefore divided from all the rest because there they are all operations of one and the same Will. If Satchidananda projected predominantly a mental consciousness in one Divine Soul and projected a predominantly vital consciousness in another Soul, the two would not feel as if they were isolated from each other. They would know that the will that is operating in both is one. The power that is acting in both,—in one form in the mental power, another in vital power,—is one and the same, deriving from one inalienable, eternal, infinite Source. That would be the status of the Divine Soul. It is clear that it would not be an individuated mental egoistic soul separated from its source. It would have an individuation and an evaluation, and yet it would be constantly conscious of the background of infinity and multiplicity. It would be conscious of the unity and the many. So it would consciously fulfil a particular variation or a function assigned to it by the Divine Will which is common to all. As for the conditions of realizing this Divine Soul in life we will come to the subject when we take
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up the detail of the process.
Then he takes up the three powers, and that is important to understand. They are mind, vital being and matter— mind, life and body. In Chapters 18,19 and 20, he deals with the Mind and Life to show how they are derived from the Supermind, how there is a derivative action from the Supra-mental Truth-Consciousness. Mind as we know it is derived from That. Life as we feel it is derived from That. There is a relation of the Supermind to mind, life and body. We have seen five planes : the Transcendent, the Infinite, or Eternal Satchidananda; then there is the Supermind or Truth-Consciousness; and then from there are derived the three : Mind, Life and Body. Now here what we are trying to do is to see that bridging these five is Divine Maya, and there is the undivine Maya, undivine nature. Maya is another name for Nature. Now the question is : what is the relation between these two natures and these three planes ? That is what he is trying to work out, the relation between the Transcendent, and the Supermind and these three, mind, life and body and how they are related to the Truth-Consciousness and to the Transcendental. (It is a little analytical, not that we go into every detail because when we take the position on the basis of the chapters we have worked out up to the 12th—we can see afterward that these following chapters are an application of the basis that is already established.) The Supermind is a working out or welling out of this self-existent Delight into movement. Eternal Self-existent Delight concentrated within itself gives you the view of the Transcendental, eternal and infinite; and when it moves out into self-extension, its Delight turns into play of Delight. Then the world is created. He says that we do not feel the Delight. The argument with which he begins this chapter is that if the universe, or creation is a play of the Delight of the Eternal and the Infinite, mind, life and body do
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not feel the presence of the delight and the experience of it. It is the opposite of the original constitution of the being. Is it then possible to have a relation between the two or is it that mind can ascend to it ? That is one problem. Is it that we have to resort to abandoning life ? Has man to abandon mind, life, and body in order to ascend to the Delight ? Is it possible for mind by some process to expand out into that Delight or is it compulsory that man must abandon this formula of mind, life and body here and then perhaps somehow return to the Delight of which it is an expression here ? Sri Aurobindo says it is not necessary to abandon them because mind, life and body are within the formula of the Real-Idea of the Supermind. They have not been created in opposition to the Truth-Consciousness. It is not as if Supermind wanted to create a perfect world and suddenly our imperfect world happened to come into existence. In the working out of the Supermind an individuation was necessary to be created out of Matter and that individuation became so thoroughly exclusive as not to remember its origin, that's all. The whole problem for man is how to awaken to the Supermind so as to eliminate ignorance and consequent imperfection from life. Sri Aurobindo says this is a derivative working of the Real-Idea of the Supermind. The Truth-Consciousness has seen the possibility of a mental world, a vital world and a material world. And it is that which has projected itself into actuality for us. So, as it is a derivative working, it is not necessary to abandon life, or abandon mind or abandon the body in order to go back to the source of Real-Idea, to Truth-Consciousness in the Satchidananda. Now, why do they operate as they do on the basis of separation, creating first division, conflict, pain, suffering and all the problems of life? It is because they are separated from the origin, the problem has become acute because of the separation of these instruments, mind, life and body. And if the separation is removed, then
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expansion of consciousness also is possible. If the separation from the origin is removed, the same consciousness which is now limited, working on a basis of division and separation, can expand into its original Truth-Consciousness. And then the problem would be how to give the process of expansion a trial in life. The problem is how to provide the process of expansion from limited and egoistic mental, vital, and physical consciousness to a consciousness of unity, universality, infinity and delight ? If this can take place then the divine manifestation becomes possible. Then the remoulding of all the instruments of mind, life, and body can also occur. For that we have to take cognizance of the fact that for man, the manifestation is taking place on the basis of matter, on the basis of earth, and that man is founding himself as if he were proceeding from the earth outward, from the earth upward. So, in the earth-consciousness, if the establishment of the connection between the mental consciousness and our world takes place on the earth itself, there would be a first connection, and after the connection, perhaps, an expression or manifestation of that Truth. Something more than mind would manifest; if the connection is "permanent then that which is beyond mind—would remould the instrumentation of mind, life and body. The problem then is to establish the connection by the process of self-expansion, expansion of consciousness. Man has been so much subjected to ignorance, division and conflict and suffering, still, the inner soul in man, has contacted that Truth in the form of various conceptions of a Divine entity. One may call it God, some have called it the Infinite, some call it Lord. It does not matter what name you give to it. The inner contact between the Consciousness working within the formula of ignorance of mind, life and body, and that One in the inner being has, more or less, been constant. Inner unity with the Divine has been achieved more or less by some people
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or even by many people. But the victory of God in the field of external nature has not yet been achieved. Victory of the Divine Truth, victory over ignorance is possible. Then not only the manifestation of the Divine consciousness in the world would be possible, but also His power could remould man's life and body until the image of the Satcid-ananda is projected in life. And the victory in the outer nature may be the victory of God in humanity. The next step would be the victory of the Divine in the outer manifestation in life.
How does the mind happen to be held in the Supermind ? It is held as the Real-Idea. We have seen that all cosmic mind, universal mind, is held there as a potentiality of the Supreme. All perfection which mind can conceive is already there, because the mind would not get the idea if it did not exist. The idea, the thought, is the representative of that which exists somewhere. That which the mind conceives as the ideal is really something which already exists in the Supermind as the Real-Idea. What is an ideal that mind conceives ? An ideal generally is an eternal Reality, perceived by the mind but not yet manifested, or realized in our conditions of life. And this ideal itself is an indication that that which is envisaged by the mind is already in the Real-Idea. It is the Real-Idea which is at work. The whole of mental working, therefore, is reaching out to the Truth held in the Higher Consciousness. The Divine Maya comprehends both vidyā The Divine Maya which creates the world has the comprehension of knowledge and of ignorance. Ignorance of the mind also is held in it, so to say, and therefore it must have a Consciousness that contains all the finite. All the finite working of the mind is also contained in the Divine Maya. When this aspect of mind is realized by the mental Consciousness of man, then mind will not be rejected. Supposing one reaches this Reality, the supreme
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Truth Consciousness—what would be the use of mind afterwards ? Would there be nothing left for the mind to do ? Mind would not be necessarily abrogated. Mind is not an instrument to be thrown away. It is not something that would have no use in the scheme of manifestation of Divine perfection. Sri Aurobindo shows, that it has a place in Truth-Consciousness as a secondary operation of the Truth-Consciousness. Only the difficulty is being created by a complete isolation of the ego, a division of the being. But when the division is removed, mind would become an instrument of the Higher Consciousness. Immediately when the veil is removed, mind would not have to be rejected. It is not that you would have to tolerate it somehow, until you ended bodily existence. When the mind becomes conscious of the need of dealing with divisions in the working of the Truth-Consciousness in life it is able to fulfil its true function. What is the true function of mind ? He defines it now. "It is to translate the Infinite in terms of the finite". The true function of mind would be restored when the veil is removed and mind becomes a conscious working of the Truth-Consciousness. Only the forgetfulness of the Infinite is not allowed to intervene. Then mind is able to perform its function of translating the Infinite in terms of the finite, without forgetting the Infinite. That would be the change. The second function that the mind would perform when it contacts the Supermind would be to hold the forms apart from each other. Otherwise they would mingle up. So the mind is allowed the function of "holding the forms, not the spirit, apart from each other by the phenomenal purely formal delimitations''. The delimitation of their activity is not actual, for "behind this the Universality of the being will remain completely conscious and untouched". Now this can be made clear by an instance. Take America. America is one,—but suppose we want now to create some organisation
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for social or political life. Then you take the New York state, and follow it up by other states. When you prepare a map of America you put on the map a limit for each state. Does it divide America ? It does not. It is just something similar that happens in the mind. He says the mind holding forms apart from each other, is only phenomenal and purely formal, it forms delimitations. You put a line of the map but the map is only a delimitation for practical purposes. It is not that you are dividing anything, for behind it the Real must be always conscious and untouched, just as the oneness of the nation is not touched. In fact, it is conscious and yet the delimitation is there. That would be the function of the mind. There are two functions which the Supermind will allow the mind to continue, when it actually takes hold of and transforms the mind. One is its power to render the Infinite in terms of the finite, because if the mind dealt always with the Infinite as the Infinite you cannot have life. The Infinite is not lost. It is there all the time present, but it is being applied to conditions of material manifestation of earth-consciousness which is based on Matter. And in Matter the subdivision Mind, we have already seen, is a dividing faculty. It conceives perceives and sense things as if cut off from the background —not as whole—and it deals with parts as if they were wholes. This work of the mental consciousness to limit, to cut out from the all and deal with it as a whole is a fiction that creates the first division. Mind can multiply also as it divides, it can add as it can subtract, but it is unable to go beyond its limits. It cannot conceive the infinite, it can figure it as the vast. Possession of the Infinite can come only by the ascent of consciousness, an opening to the descent of the Higher Consciousness. It is the mind's way of functioning that brought the elements of division into being. For example, the infinity of the One came to be translated into extension in conceptual time and space. In the same way the Omnipotence
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in that self-extension translated itself into "multiplicity of conscious souls", and that multiplicity of soul-forms is constituted into "divided habitation of extended unity." The Purusha that is manifested in each soul-form is really the One and all Purushas enjoy the same Prakriti. But when the Purusha is completely identified with form and movement—then it becomes the ego. There is free identification from moment to moment,—only the self-knowledge of the Divine Soul prevents it from fixing itself in rigid chain of separation. Still a new action of the Conscious-Force is needed to create "a helplessly limited mind as opposed to freely limiting mind".
This new power is avidyā, the self-ignoring faculty, which acts by an exclusive concentration in the mind. Then the mind perceives only the particular not the universal: it takes up an exclusive concentration on the object excluding the rest of the all. This Mind is the final operation of the apprehending Truth-Consciousness; it is a subordinate process of the Eternal Seer, and Thinker. We have already seen that the Divine Maya comprehends both vidyā and avidyā-Knowledge and Ignorance. What we call "ignorance is mind separated in its knowledge from the source of knowledge and giving a force of rigidity and mistaken appearance of opposition and of conflict to the harmonious play of the Supreme Truth in its universal manifestation." It is by an exclusive concentration of consciousness which becomes complete identification with the moment, the field or form; then the indivisibility of time, force, substance is lost. Thus Ignorance does not create anything new or bring into being absolute falsehood. It is only mis-representation of the Truth.
Mind has to rediscover the truth of the Real-Idea. The veil that intervenes has to be rent. The dividing mind has become divided mentality. To be aware of the self as only the body, to know oneself as desire, —that is ignorance. The
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true individual is only a form of the One. But when it becomes a separate centre of the One, or even a centre of the All then it has fallen in ignorance. When this falsifying stand is lost then Mind can get back to the Truth of itself and of things. Then mind would be an instrument of the Truth-Consciousness. "Self-ignorance is therefore the perversity of our existence and that perversity stands fortified in the self-limitation, the egoism which is the form taken by that self-ignorance." All ignorance and perversity is only the distortion of the truth and right and not absolute falsehood.
In chapter 19 Sri Aurobindo takes up the problem of Life. Universal Energy which seems to be at work has covered three great steps in unfolding the process of evolution. It has brought into existence Matter,—organised Inconscience —as the first evolute. It has brought Life into being appa-rendy from Matter and Mind from Life. Matter, Life and Mind is the accomplished triple evolution. We have also seen that Supermind is working behind the veil in Mind which is its derivative. Man is the epitome of evolutionary process already accomplished having in him the Body-consciousness which is based on Matter,—Vital-consciousness which is based on the Life-principle and Mental consciousness of which he is the special representative. But Mind is not the end of the process of evolution, a further development beyond what is accomplished is possible. You cannot ask Nature to stop at a certain point in her labour. The Life Divine has proved that in chapter 4. In fact, there is already a tendency, a tension at work in the mental consciousness always to go beyond the difficulties of a divided being that is man. For man to refuse the ascent to the higher plane would be to limit the force of evolution. Sri Aurobindo wants man to justify the upward trend of Nature by making a conscious movement to go beyond the mental consciousness.
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Now the question is : Is Supermind working behind Life ? We have already seen that it is involved and is indirectly working in Mind. Is the Supermind involved in Life also ? We have considered Mind as an independent power. But here on earth there is no mental consciousness that is not in Life, because Mind here manifests itself in Life. When we say Life we mean to imply—if not a mental consciousness, at least awareness and some intelligence working from behind.
Then the question is : What is Life ? Also what is its relation to Satchidananda and Supermind ? This is important because man is preoccupied with Life. Very few people care for Mind while the majority are interested in Life. Men do not mind if they do not understand, what they want is enjoyment. The Upanishad also says : "Whatever is established here in the triple heavens is under the control of life." What we see in the universe has life, earth is living, the vegetable world is living, the insect and the animal worlds are alive. How has Life come into being ? By what compulsion or necessity did it come to birth from the Satchidananda ? What has given rise to Life from the Supermind ?
Is Life an evil, a delusion, a delirium, an insanity ? There are philosophers like Schoepenhauer who maintain that life is a delusion. At first sight it seems as if life is a force that works at random, as Sri Aurobindo puts in Savitri "a force that is gone wry". Is it condemned permanently to remain imperfect, restless, always inviting difficulties, dangers, and suffering ? It never seems to atain what it strives for—it is like the labour of Tantalus from whose lips the cup is always receding. Man seeks happiness in life but hardly finds it. If life is an evil and delusion, why is it so ?
We have arrived at the conception of the Omnipresent Reality as the fundamental truth of the world—including life. And we ask : why has the Omnipresent Reality inflicted upon itself the scourge of life as we find it ? We have reached
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the conclusion that the ultimate Reality is infinite Being, Consciousness and Delight, it is Satchidananda. If it is the play of delight that brought the world into existence, why is it that we do not find that delight in life? Does the play of Satchidananda creating the worlds, flow into life ? Is life a divine principle in its origin, if not in its actual working ? When Mind sees Life it perceives a cosmic energy which builds and creates forms of energies, it stimulates, disintegrates and renews them. All the three are processes of life, not life. All is life—as we have already seen—all existence is universal life that takes form—it is first submental in Matter, it is not apparent in metal, stone and gas. It appears like an inanimate force. In man, animals and plants it is animate. All renews, nothing perishes. Even death is process of life. Even physical disintegration is a renewal. When the physical body is dissolved the elements are used by other organisms.
The second thing about Life is that it is impelled to go on creating eternally. Life depends upon Matter for its continuation and growth. Breathing, eating, feeling are all necessary for life—these help life to remain, to increase, to express itself. But life can be without them. Life can exist without breath and continue when the heart stops. "Life is everywhere, secret or manifest, organised or elemental," It is all-pervading and imperishable. Even in metal there is life. J. C. Bose proved the nervous response in plants,—that the plant suffers, is drugged and dies. The metals show a kind of fatigue. We must change our idea of 'Life' which is generally confined to living beings. Life can have a submental organisation,—the nervous system in the plants is not mental. Mind can continue when Life is suspended. Attraction and repulsion of elements is a sign of some movement which to the conscious being would become "like and dislike." Positive and negative in the material world become in the world
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of Life, attraction and repulsion. In hibernation life is suspended and continues after months when good conditions return. When we say "a man is dead" we mean that the body organism has become completely unusable by life. When some bodily function is impaired so that life cannot function in it, then life withdraws from it, it is not destroyed.
An important characteristic of life is its mutability. Life is the working of universal energy in which transition from the Inconscient to Consciousness is managed. It is an "intermediary power latent or submerged in Matter, delivered by its own force into submental being, delivered finally by the emergence of Mind into full dynamis." Same processes of birth, growth, decay and death characterise life in various aspects e.g. in the plants and insects and animals and man. Then there is maintenance, propagation, and nourishment from outside as characteristics of life in the body. Even though the individual forms disintegrate there is a tendency in life to form aggregates. Life is the conscious-force acting.
"Life as nervous energy carries the force of form as a sensation to modify mind and brings back force of mind to modify Matter."
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Lecture XI
Chap. 19. Life
Chap. 20. Death, Desire and Incapacity
Chap. 21. The Ascent of Life
We were dealing with the force of life representative of the Truth-Consciousness—and we came to know that all these derivatives here that happen to appear to our mind as if they were the result of the Inconscient are in fact supported, guided and governed by a veiled Truth-Consciousness. To the mind the universe appears as a chance world or a world of accident or a world of inconscience only. But mind is half-knowledge and half-ignorance; it is a movement projected for effecting the division of the Infinite into the finite. It is a movement necessitated by keeping the ego of form into which the souls have cast themselves to keep them separate in order to evolve a world of relations, a world of mutuality. If the Unity alone acted without any necessity of an intervening principle of differentiation, variation—not division—then there would be no world. That variation appears as separation and division to the mind unconnected with the Infinite. But the problem was to create first a conscient centre in the inconscient, a centre of consciousness which would cognize the world.
Nature succeeded first by evolving the physical, the vital and the mental individuahty, as we know them. And this individuality is the first cognizing centre,—subjective centre, —of the whole inconscient world. Having created this individuahty, Nature has got to preserve this creation and see to it that it does not again merge directly into the One without fulfilling its multiple function in the universal. So it has to guard the separately created egos, keep the forms separate so that they can realize the unity of soul and evolve a world of patterns of relations, patterns of mutuality, that
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create the universe or cosmos. The universe is not a manifestation of one element. The universe is a manifestation of infinitely multiple, varied elements into a world which at least has some homogeneous principle holding it together. Otherwise it would not be a cosmos, it would be only chaos.
So having created this, its interest is to see that mind acts as an instrument,—first, to give a shape to the Infinite and afford it finite forms and, second, to maintain the finite individuated forms with a demarcation, without division. Demarcation is a necessity for practical purposes in a world of Matter. Therefore, though governed now indirectly from behind the veil by the Supermind, mind will not be abrogated when the Supermind overtly descends into man; mind will not be reduced to non-existence or be rejected as an illusory instrument. Rather, it will be utilized for carrying out directly and consciously the purposes of the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness. That will be its task and its office, the function of turning the Infinite into finite forms, giving soul-forms, so to say, for the manifestation of the Infinite —and then to hold these separated soul-forms apart so as to create a world of relations.
Then we come to life. If mind is a veiled working of the Supermind, what is life ? And we saw that life is not merely a delusion or something that is of the nature of insanity, but it is action of the eternal movement of the Conscious-Force of the Eternal. It is the cosmic power which builds forms and energizes them by stimulation, integrates and disintegrates and renews them. It brings a form into existence and again reduces it to non-existence. So disintegration and renewal, are the processes of life. Nothing in life that is manifested perishes. It is always renewed. It seems to perish because that is a process of life. Death itself is a process of life. We find that life in all its forms,—manifested either in the plant, or in the animal or in man, has the same characteristics.
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The processes of life are assimilation, digestion, response to stimuli etc. They are processes of life not life. Life is an element which is present everywhere, even in what appears to be inconscient. Life is present in the earth, in the material elements, because they are an expression of life. They are not devoid of life because Life in them takes the submental or subconscious form. If life were not present in them they could not have come into existence. That is the basis on which we tried to see this problem of the all-pervading imperishability of life.
And we have also found the existence of life in matter. In plants it is only a nervous sensation and a response indicating the presence of pleasure and pain, waking and sleeping, suffering and fatigue, etc. But even in metals the same tendencies have been located by science, as fatigue, resistance, etc. It is a universal energy manifesting itself as life, Conscious-Being projecting itself or flowing out into life-movement in which the transition from the inconscient to the conscient is effected. So life is a mid-term between the inconscient and the conscient. Life seems to begin with the inconscient matter and ends in mind-consciousness. Life is present in matter as submental life, not mental life, a submental operation of an intelligence and will in material form, in atoms, in molecule and particles and elements. And it leads from there to a gradual awakening of consciousness. It seems to our mind to act as a kind of connecting link between the inconscience of matter and the evolution of mind; life seems to be holding, so to say, the two in its grasp. Life holds matter on one hand, mind on the other. It is an intermediary power which is latent or submerged in matter. If matter were not living it could not support life. If some element of life were not present in it matter could not continue to exist. Life is supported by matter because some common life-force is there which living organisms are able to assimilate from
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what appears to be inconscient matter. Mere inconscient matter has the power of life latent or submerged. Gradually, finally, there has been the emergence of mind with the full dynamism of the life force. We know that life in plant, in animal, and man is the same thing; birth, growth, and decay are taking place in all the realms of life. In the plant also, you see childhood, growth, and then maturity and old age. Throughout the unending thread of life, infinite rungs of the ladder of life, you find the common characteristics running. The plant has in itself the essence of the force of life, and that is why the plant is able to supply life to all organisms. The common characteristics are birth, growth, and decay, and also propagation of the seed, maintained by nourishment from outside. Nourishment from outside, dependence on food from outside, sleep and waking, infancy, maturity and old age, all these are characteristics of all forms of life. Infinitely varied though they might be in their expression, still the common processes are seen easily by our mind. Life that is involved, in matter, gives rise to forms of life proper by a pressure of life from above. Material energy creates not living groups, but inanimate aggregates. In the insect world you find—in the ant-hill or the beehive, for instance,—a first instinctive beginning of collective consciousness. In the vegetable kingdoms you can divide the whole vegetable kingdom into botanical orders, and each order has common characteristics. Thus the beginning of group-life goes right up to vital life, and creates even in insects by the working of an instinct a social organization more perfect even than that of man. That is what Maeterlinck wrote in his books on white-ants. He said that they exhibited a perfection in their social organization which man has not yet reached. The perfection there is automatic, instinctive; but the root of collective life is to be traced there; and even in Matter where consciousness is not directly present
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on the surface, the pressure of this drive for unity,—for the Universal manifests itself in aggregations—creates groups of atoms, which hold together. Even though life-force seems to work on another plane, nevertheless it is the same life-force in the atom. Universal operations of a consciousness and force are found even in matter. So the first form of life is subconscious vibration where the force of life is asleep, so to say. In matter the force manifests as vibration. It is consciousness rendered in terms of energy at work. It is consciousness and there the point of note is that this vibration is subconscious, indicating that life is asleep there. It is not absent in the sense of non-existence. It is there, only it is asleep and when the opportunity arises, when the pressure is exerted, life comes into existence in the insect, in the amoeba, and the small beginnings of the vegetable kingdom. The first units of life, the protoplasm, and the amoeba go on dividing themselves into more and more units, until the process builds up the whole organism. And then when the second stage comes, it is a response to an outer stimulus which appears to be not a mental response, but submental-automatic on the life-plane itself. When you touch the Mimosa plant you find that it shrinks immediately. You can see the automatic response of the nervous system to outer stimuli where mind does not seem to be present. Now in the third step, life evolves further and gives a conscious response of the life organized to outer stimuli. In the human being or even in the animal the response is conscious. In man it becomes mentally conscious and in the animals it is vitally conscious; in the animal the beginning of mind is already taking place. I mean mind has begun to come out into expression in the animal already, only it is a vital-mind and not an intellectual or reasoning mind as man has. It cannot put two and two together and come to a conclusion. The animal has a vital rationality which is different from intellectual rationality.
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They have no questions but they have perception and perception gives them a connection between the subsequent and the precedent conditions—what we call cause and effect. So if you constantly have a door open in a certain way, the animal at once knows the action that precedes it and therefore it will automatically react. It is not by a process of reasoning— "that is the way to open the door." "What is this?" "Why is this ?" are questions not present in the animal. But they have an instinctive understanding of processes at work and that is the logic of vital life rather than mentality, not logic of intellect but logic of life. From the human, by contact with the human, the animals get many human qualities developed in them; they become very, very humanized when they come in contact with men, especially the tame animals or the animals that are domesticated. Some of the qualities of the animals are to be recommended to men,—e.g. the faithfulness of the dog. It is difficult for man to surpass the dog in faithfulness. Not that we do not meet it in some human beings, but it is very rare; whereas to find an exception among dogs is difficult. So we see the development of this life-force in this triple formation.
Life as nervous energy carries the force of form as a sensation to modify mind. You take life at one end, it becomes nervous energy in the vital being. And when you say "you see", the question is : what is seeing ? Seeing is form carried to the mind as a sensation, is it not? You do not get the whole form inside you; that cannot be done. So what happens is that the form is carried to the mind as a sensation by the nerves. What is a form ? It is a material organism, it is matter. And force of matter works as a sensation carried to the mind. Really speaking, it is not form only that is carried but the force that is behind the form. So matter that has a force or power is sending a message to the mind and bringing about a change in the mind. And then mind sends out a
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response, which can again modify the form with material energy. Life, acting in the inconscient matter, inconscient vitality, inconscient mentality, connects this inconscient material force to the highest development of its own expression, mind. When you "see", it is the vibration of the form that is carried. Form is nothing else but energy of matter. Material energy is expressing itself in form. This material energy expresses itself as a cup. Now this energy of matter is carried to my mind, not as material energy but as a sensation. That is the task done by the nervous system. So life, in the nervous system, connects the inconscient energy of form and the conscient energy of mind. First, mind is modified. You see something that pleases you and, your mind gets into a pleasant state. Matter has come and influenced mind, is not it? You stand before the hill and you say it is nice. It is matter that is actually influencing mind. It is matter that puts your mind into a different state. There is nobody there to say to you, "Please have this impression." What Keyser-ling says about the Himalayas is interesting. The first time he saw them he said "I could not believe that matter, mere matter, could be so sublime." It was when he stood before the Himalayas that he found that matter could be something more than beautiful; it-can be something that strikes you dumb with awe. What an arrangement of matter in form and what a grandeur of proportion and the capacity to produce an impression on mind. The result is that mind acts on matter as a response because there is a conscious reception. Sensation in the mind performs a double function,—one is the reception, the other is the reply. There is a double machinery in the mind, that of sensory nerve and that of motor nerve. The sensory nerve carries the impression, the motor nerve replies to it. The reply is of the mind and not only of the sense. Reaction to sensation is not only mechanical vibration,— but it is also of the will that is independent of the nervous
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system. The reaction that goes back and says "this is good, it is pleasant", is a mental art conveyed back again to the sensation, with the result that the sensation can modify the mind and mind can react on and change the material condition of the form. Mind can send back its reaction to the sensation so as to change the condition of material energy. In the chain that is established between mind and matter, life intervenes and provides the machinery or technique of sensation which carries matter to mind and mind again to matter to bring back the force of mind as will to modify matter. You say there is a sensation of the river; then mind resorts to an abstract process of reasoning and with the help of science it conceives the idea of a dam. "If I can store up the water and if I can do this then I can have electricity." All that mental operation comes back again to matter, and mind modifies the state of matter through the machinery of sensation which is provided.
Now, the 20th chapter I leave for the time being because it is a chapter which refers to a schematic idea so that you can understand why I leave it. We have taken the Supermind, or Truth-Consciousness more correctly—that is a better name. Now, this Truth-Consciousness is veiled, veiled to mind, veiled to life and veiled to matter. It is working now behind the veil. We have seen that mind is a subsidiary working of the supermind. We have also seen that in the life-force or vital-force there is also the working of the presence of the supermind behind the veil, and this matter that we see is also a working of a submental operation of life, of mind and also of supermind. That there is" law operating in matter and that it is cognized by our mind shows that there is a will and also an intelligence at work in matter. And this matter, when it is expressed in life, is first inconscient. Then it becomes desire. This inconscient becomes death and it becomes incapacity. The chapter that I am leaving out refers to "Death, Desire and Incapacity" as elements or as functions
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that take place on the plane of matter, and each one is a distortion of the true working of the Supramental. These are its expressions in life. When Matter becomes living, it tries to control life; when it succeeds it returns to its original incon-science,—that is death. Desire at bottom is the impulse to possess the all; and incapacity means inadequacy of the human power to take the whole of the Omnipotence and manifest it. The living organism feels the impact of matter as death, desire and incapacity. These are the workings of the elements of inconscience in matter operating in the present world, particularly in the field of life. Here the inconscience works as an element bringing about the end of the organism, a constant devouring hunger of desire in all living organisms, not only in man. All over the hunger is there which manifests itself as desire, and as incapacity to take the whole, because the power which is given to this particular expression of life is inadequate to hold the infinite. And the hunger is for the Infinite. Therefore life, when manifested here in terms of earth-consciousness,—not life in its purity—is subjected to the almost ovewhelming power of matter which manifests in life as the necessity of death, compulsion of desire, and experience of incapacity. That becomes the working out of it and the existence of law there shows that it is not merely against something, it is not merely a negative working, because even in them the supermind is working as the law compelling the divided life and mind to continue working under the conditions of ignorance; otherwise, the evolving organism would not make an effort to overleap, overreach, go beyond the formula of mind.
The necessity is that the spirit that is manifested in life with mind, that is man, must overleap the present formula —and if it cannot manifest the Satchidananda, the delight, consciousness and existence of the infinite now in terms of its material existence, then it must necessarily pass through a
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temporary phase of death, disharmony and incapacity. It must pass through that phase in order to go beyond. This is a condition enforced by evolutionary process working in the medium of inconscient matter. It is the necessity and a condition. Mind, life and matter—all the three are,—the world in which we live is,—governed by a veiled operation of supermind. The more important conception that emerges out of it is that the world is not a play of falsehood, that it is not an anti-divine element that has brought this desire and death and incapacity into existence, that it is the operation of a Truth-Consciousness working under the conditions of material inconscience. It is not, as if it was unreal, or that man has no escape from it. That attitude is wrong, because it takes only a temporary condition as if it were the permanent law. The conclusion that Sri Aurobindo substantiates through all these long chapters is that this world, ignorant, full of problems, suffering, conflict, evil, pain, and death is a working out of an Omnipresent Reality. Even when not perceived, even when hidden behind the veil, it is the Truth-Concsiousness that is working. So that behind all the distorted operations and expressions, it is that which is really driving the forces of evolution. The world has to be understood as an expression of a Reality and therefore the possibility of bringing that Truth-Consciousness into an open expression or into an evolved element in the total process of cosmic manifestation becomes the problem for man.
The 21st chapter takes the subject further in the sense that life itself is the parent of this death, desire and hunger in things, because this life is an expression of infinite Conscious-Force. And because it is infinite, it wants to possess the Infinite. In trying to possess the Infinite it gets an infinite hunger for devouring everything. That becomes its badge of what we feel as imperfection. But really the drive is to
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express the Infinite, to possess the Infinite. So life is the parent of this death, desire and hunger and incapacity because it is a dark figure of the Super-Conscient Force, of Infinite Existence, Consciousness and Delight. It is here the dark figure is operating, and yet it is not so completely isolated as to have no relation with the original Truth. Therefore, it feels this drive of reaching out to the Infinite all the time. This effort of the small being manifested in the little ego—to reach out to the Infinite takes the form of insatiable desire, hunger for everything. He wants everything, and in one sense, the want is right, because he is the All, therefore he wants to possess all. Only, he wants to possess it in the egoistic self by addition, possession by an outer act of seizing, so to say. Because of the limited physical organism and a vital capacity which is also limited, it cannot hold the whole thing together. It can only hold it in an inner act, an inner act of self-expansion. It is not possible to possess the universe by an outer act of seizing it; it can only be possessed by widening the consciousness to include it within oneself. That is the solution that is hinted at. But here Sri Aurobindo tells us first that the dark figure of the Super-conscient Force called Life has its drive towards immortality, towards infinite delight, towards omnipotence. That is what life is, in its origin, in the Truth-Consciousness. Now Life wants to become that here on earth. And in that we see a triple manifestation of life. We will only take life now because that is the fulcrum of the cosmic manifestation. We will take universal life, its first manifestation, the second stage and the third stage. We will indicate the direction toward which it is moving.
The first stage is infinite division, life subjected to infinite division. In the second, division is there, but also some sort of capacity to increase. Life is first subconscient and subject to infinite division. It gives rise to atoms, because that
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is the limit of division and it is subconscient. It is only physical energy here. Life becomes physical energy, it is life we are dealing with here—not material energy. It is therefore blind, you can say. The force of life is blind as physical energy, yet is potent. It has a very powerful action, the energy of material force, electricity or magnetism, light or heat is irresistible. It is the most potent energy in the physcial world. So that this physical world is an expression of life force. Life's first manifestation on earth,—to our mind— is atomic existence in matter. And this physical energy is blind to our view—but it is full of tremendous power. It is life infinitely divided into material particles giving rise to materiality as a first expression of life. The second is that in which it moves toward conscious mind. This is subconscient mind, if you like to call it. Mind—intelligence and will— is subconscient in the atom, but is moving toward conscious mind. And in the third stage, it evolves mind, conscious mind. Now in this movement toward conscious mind, we find hunger and devouring as the fulcrum of the movement —impulse and desire—the tendency is to increase, expand, to seize and possess; and therefore the nature of this life is struggle,—a struggle for life. All the laws of Darwin are included in this second phase of life. It strives not only for survival but also for possession and perfection. This is what life wants to do here, in the second stage when it is moving toward conscious mind, toward increasing the degree of consciousness. The third is when mind is evolved. When mind is actually evolved then it brings new possibilities. Earth life at the third stage brings not only strife but association as a necessary element. It introduces the principle of preservation of the individual even—the individual here in life feels that his preservation also depends upon association. Mind brings this to the evolving life. When life is evolving it is made to understand that even for individual
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life, association is a principle for its preservation and progress. This is the second division. And it accepts the necessity and desire for interchange. The urge for interchange is a blind impulse. Here the interchange is intellectual, conscious, with understanding, and there is also interchange that is under the drive of passion. We see that in animal life or in plant life there is interchange all the time of life-force, but there the interchange is not mentally conscious and is not a result of an understanding of the need of association on their part. There it works only as an instinct, a result of impulse and passion from almost the subconscient level; whereas in mind it becomes a necessity of interchange and a desire for interchange, and even self-giving,—self-giving in the form of love.
Now in this third process of awakening of life, life moving from the subconscient material physical world to create more conscious mind, goes through an intermediate stage of hunger and desire, desire to possess and enjoy; and therefore through struggle and survival, possession and effort at perfection. Then it comes to the mental consciousness where mind realizes that even for individual life association is necessary, it accepts the need of interchange, and the necessity of self-giving and even the experience of love.
A fourth stage now becomes necessary. These three have been, so to say, passed by Nature, by life in Nature. Life has gone through these three phases. The fourth will be the stage in which the coming down of the Higher Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness, will operate. Now, Truth-Consciousness holds within itself the principle of knowledge. It is Being with knowledge,—it is consciousness and power, or consciousness and energy, and delight. These will be the terms towards which life must now make a move. But two principles have emerged in this study which we have made.
The two principles are, first, the will of a separative ego, its
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will to be distinct. You can call it the evolution of a subjective point of experience and expression, the will of ego to remain distinct all the time and guard its identity. This is what life does. It is the first thing that emerges when you study life. First is emergence of the sense of ego, "I", which constantly wants to preserve itself, wants to preserve its existing personality and wants to guard itself against all annihilation. That is one. And the second is a compulsion imposed on it when it reaches the third stage to fuse itself with others, into something other than itself. These two apparently contradictory impulses emerge out of the three levels through which life has passed. These are the three phases through which life has passed. First comes preservation of the subjectively-evolved entity, individuality. Secondly, there is a compulsion of the individual to fuse with others—a mutuality, the necessity of association. It is expressed poetically by Alexander Selkirk in his poem "Solitude". The poet is stranded and alone on an isolated island in the Ocean:
I am the monarch of all I survey My right there is none to dispute.
I am the monarch of all I survey
My right there is none to dispute.
yet he cries out:
O Solitude, where are the charms The sages have seen in thy face ?
O Solitude, where are the charms
The sages have seen in thy face ?
He finds that it is preferable to live in the midst of alarms rather than live in this solitary place, a horrible place. This dislike for solitude is due to the compulsion against the tendency to mix and mingle with other people. This impulse to fuse oneself with a person, a group, a nation, society, to carry out in collective life the ideal of bringing truth, perfection, justice or democracy shows the working of the
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tendency to interchange, its compulsion to reciprocity.
Now, the third point is, when nature has succeeded in creating a stable individual, going from the infinite to the finite, then she reverses the process. Then from the finite she wants to go back to the Infinite. The finite individual is forced again by a reversal of the process, to seek the Infinite.
In the first process Nature was, as it were, putting out a point of consciousness from this vast inconscience. And now when she has created a mental being, a mental life, she wants to reverse the process. She reverses the process when the ego is formed. From the infinite, the first labour was to create, to manifest or to bring about this individual into being. When this was brought into being, the process is reversed, and it is the path to the universal consciousness, to the Truth-Consciousness of the Infinite again. That is how the supramental operation is leading the whole phase of life towards the original truth from which the individual has been created.
Now, when she has reached this stage, the individual perishes and the aggregate remains. In the process of going back the first thing that mind perceives is that in what we call communism, socialism, and all kinds of "isms",—which argue that the individual perishes and the aggregate continues, therefore the collectivity is to be accepted as the real entity—there is some basic truth. The aggregate profits by the perishing of the individual, by whatever contribution the individual gives to the aggregate, to the group life. But in this process of reversal this is not the final stage. The mistake comes in when the collectivity is accepted as the highest truth. Socialism and communism go wrong philosophically when they posit the collectivity as the final reality to be realized, and as the final Truth that is operating in the Universe. After all, this collectivity is not divine. Secondly, it is not a conscious collectivity in the sense of having a separate organization
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of its own in the form of a mind or a body. It is superimposed on the individual. An individual has a point of reference to a conscience or mind to decide what he must do. A collectivity has no referable point, no conscience to which it can refer to decide whether it is right or wrong. You elect a hundred people and they sit down and say : here we are, the collectivity, but each one is an individual on whom the consciousness of the collectivity is superimposed, it may be the national consciousness or the racial consciousness, or whole humanity's consciousness. And they sit down to promote collective life; what they do would depend upon their identification with the others, first of of all. For the individual is egoistic even there. And his ego is not submerged into the larger collective ego of the race or culture or nation or humanity. Until it becomes indentified in the soul,—not in the mind, not in self-interest, not in the power-aspect of the collectivity but in the soul-aspect of the collectivity,—it cannot know. And this soul-aspect, if you study carefully, comes out in life or in overt operation only when there is a great crisis. When England is faced with war, she can forget her empire. She forgets the empire and speaks of democracy, freedom of thought, freedom of association, and Atlantic Charter etc. In England, America, or in any country, it is when there is a crisis that the individuals who compose the leadership are compelled to contact the soul of the race, the collective soul, and that collective soul is an emanation of the Supermind, of the Truth-Consciousness. It is not something abstract. It is based on the Truth-Consciousness of the Divine, and therefore it is a personification or a personal aspect of a collective Divine Consciousness. It is necessary for the whole of humanity, and whatever contribution the collectivity has made is a contribution toward the perfection of cultural life of the whole of mankind. It is at such times that you see what a nation's soul
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is capable of and what it stands for. It is, then, through the crisis, that we see England as a great country. You feel that it is a great nation because it could forget at that time its interest in empire and keeping it up somehow or other. And Hitler promised to keep what he called "the ramshackle empire." England refused. That is the spirit and that is what ultimately brings the soul of the race to its fulfilment.
In 1953 I gave a talk in the Rotary Club at Bulwayo in South Rhodesia. South Rhodesia is a hot-bed of colour-bar. And I was called upon to address the Rotarians there. Europeans there, are keeping down the black Africans and they think they are doing a wonderful job. One Mr. Wilson had written an article on the policy of America and England with regard to Africa. He made out a case that giving equality was the wrong way of dealing with the African situation. Africa will ultimately become the battle ground between Asia and Europe. England he said has committed a great blunder in giving freedom to the Egyptians, Indians and other people. I said at the meeting: You are living 1200 miles from the coast, inland. And therefore you are almost living in the 17th or 18th century, I am afraid. Thoughts don't seem to come here. There are obscure corners of the globe where people hold to the colour bar and think that that is something wonderful. I think that history will give quite a different judgment, because this man seems to be reading history with the telescope turned upside down so that he looks at the same events but doesn't quite see them in their right proportion. England by its one act has created history. She had an understanding of what should be done as a collectivity. In order to come to the correct conclusion the leaders must live in contact with the racial genius, as you call it, or the soul of the race,—the spirit of England. It is something for which she has stood and she proved faithful to it in the second world war. Though she has materially
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lost an empire, I am perfectly sure that she has gained in inner stature, which is more important after all. Man attains his fulfilment not by money nor by possessions, but by growth of consciousness, an inner growth. You can say, England has done good things out of enlightened interest. But even behind the enlightened self-interest, the drive is that of oneness of humanity. Even when America wants to give aid to other people because of her economic interest,—that is, enlightened self-interest,—even that presupposes great sympathy for others. There is desire to raise the standard of living of all people. This is a universal movement. It is the first sign which indicates that humanity is already becoming one. It has become one already.
Now we are looking at this problem from the point of the growth of life. And I was trying to tell you that those systems of philosophy of social life that consider the collectivity as the ultimate truth or reality stop half way and therefore give a false lead to mankind. There is nothing divine in the collectivity. Collectivity has a truth which is in the Divine, but a collectivity can be as selfish, as egoistic, as full of faults as an individual. Perhaps more, because its faults can ruin a nation. It is titanic. One man committing a mistake can ruin one family or two families or three. But one nation doing something terrible or wrong will ruin millions of people and bring difficulties to others who have nothing to do with it. The imperfections of the collective life have far-reaching bearing on vast masses of mankind; and therefore, it is necessary in collective life to see that we do not put the collectivity in place of the Divine, because collectivity, though a manifestation of the Universal Divine, is not divine in its operation and because it is vast, its proportions do not reduce its ignorance. Because it is vast, it can be vastly ambitious; it can be vastly egoistic. It is only the imperfections of man increased to colossal size.
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Therefore, a decisive change has become possible with the evolution of mind where the compulsion of association is brought into being. The second stage was the hunger to possess, the desire to go on acquiring more and more. Now, there is an interchange necessary, so there is a desire to give and receive, to receive and give. There is an interchange established; there is an understanding that if one wants to possess, one must allow oneself to be possessed. Love in its beginning obeys the law of hunger where the organism or the individual, simply goes trying to impose itself, to dictate, and to devour almost. Love as a devouring force, you can see, nine cases out of ten in human life. Perhaps it is mutual devouring, sometimes, but it is devouring all the same in the beginning. Equal giving and equal receiving that is the second stage, and the third stage is—only giving, and not receiving; that happens when the psychic being is in front. When the inner soul is in front, then the process is only giving, not thinking of receiving at all—not calculating what one receives. Those are the three stages. The highest is that in which the individual flies into unity or throws himself into the unity. True love means the discovery of one's own highest self outside, in some one else. That is a sign of the acme, where this interchange reaches its highest point. Mind is now the dominant element in the growth of life and it imposes its law on material existence; and mind, therefore, cannot be totally devouring because it knows and sees, even with its limited knowledge, that to give is the best way to receive. It also imposes the law of growth and tries to turn or move the life-force toward conscious unity in difference. This imposition of interchange with others—what does it mean ? Why is the individual ego, evolved after so much labour, again compelled to reverse the process and move toward interchange with others ? It is, really speaking, a movement of trying to realize conscious
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Unity in difference. That is the law of Satchidananda, that is the law of Truth-Consciousness,—unity in difference. There all individualities exist as variations on the infinite one. The infinite one holds innumerable variations of its own self within itself where there is no difference but only a variant or differentiation on the basis of the one. The same is now imposed on the evolving entity, the ego; it is compelled to admit the necessity of conscious unity in difference. Difference is not abrogated, difference is not regarded as an insuperable obstacle to the realization of unity in the midst of difference. So that is the movement toward the realization of an aspect of Satchidananda in life manifested in earth-consciousness. This impulse to realise conscious unity in difference cannot be fully realized in mind. So long as the organism remains confined to mind in an individual or even in a group, a complete realization of this unity in difference is not possible. It can be only possible by mind or life rising to the fourth term. We have seen life from the submental and subconscious to the conscious, then to the mental; and now it must go beyond mind in order to realize fully the impulse that is at work. The fulfilment of this can come only by ascending beyond mind, because mind is only an inferior term of the Supermind. It is only an instrument for the descent of the higher Truth into form to create individuality and then to ascend back again into the Reality. That is the office which mind has to perform. Mind is an instrument for descent so that the infinite existence of Satchidananda can create an individual, a subjective centre of its expression. And when it goes back, when the evolving mind ascends, it is a step of the ascent toward the Reality...
And, therefore, the perfect solution of the problem of life is not merely by promoting the impulse of association, or merely by accommodating to the ordinary idea of love. It must come by the fourth status to which Life must rise to
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the eternal unity of man with the Spirit-realization of one spirit, eternal, present in all. The perfect solution is to realize the foundation of human consciousness in the unity and freedom of the Spirit, the freedom to have various self-expressions of its own being operating on the basis of unity. When man has risen to that status then the perfect solution of the problem of collective life will be attained by him. We say man, but it is really life. Life has to go to the fourth status in which unity and freedom of the spirit, creating infinite multiplicity, coexist on the basis of infinite unity. When that is realized then the impulse of association and collectivity in life will have reached its real fulfilment.
Q: It is quite colossal. It is very hard to visualize this vast consciousness involving human beings, involving humanity.
It has its laws, it has its functions....
A : Yes, these are the laws which we are studying now. All other laws are derivatives from mind. These are the laws given to us by somebody who has the vision of the Truth-Consciousness, experience of the Truth-Consciousness, and also the experience of the operation of the Truth-Consciousness. So, it is not unrelated to practical life. The most important part of the whole contribution of Sri Aurobindo is that it is not merely an abstract individual experience, but it is the experience of a Reality which he has tried not only to apply to himself but to a collective life. It is something that he has done; so that it is something that can be done. Only we should not think we are now given the task of solving the problem. We are given the task of solving our own problem. You should not be overcome by the proportions. Naturally, when Sri Aurobindo gives you the solution he gives you the vast cosmic background, so that you can see that that
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alone is the solution. The whole logic of it boils down to this: don't look to another solution, because this is the solution. Other solutions are good in their own way like some palliatives. You apply a remedy for a disease. You have a boil, so you apply something and get rid of it. But unless the system is purified and the possibility of its reappearing is not obviated, it will be there again. What he is suggesting is the radical remedy. And a radical remedy people do not want to try. It is easily understandable; they want something they can do tomorrow. So he says all right, then try a five-year plan. Then, you try lend-lease, or you do this or that. Thousands of things are possible. I want to do something now and here. You do something now and here; it is good. It is in the same direction. It is all right. Even the opposition has ultimately to help this movement. We do not say that therefore they should not do something they like to do. They cannot do anything else. It is better that they do something. They must do what they are doing—that is a good thing. It is not a solution. It helps a little way. A little push in the right direction is good, but it is not the solution. The solution is what Sri Aurobindo points out.
In order to show the rationality of his solution he shows you the whole panorama of life. It is not as if he is talking in the air. He is talking on the earth, very well grounded in the perception of the world as we see it with our mind. We see the material world; we see the animal world, we see the plant world; we see the human world and we see life as the fulcrum over which the whole process is proceeding until it has reached the stage of evolving mental consciousness, and the conscious individuality. Well, now, there is the impulse to perfection and the impulse to delight, which is the driving force of the whole cosmos or the whole process of evolution. How is it going to be realized—the impulse to experience delight, perfection, harmony, knowledge and will,
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indivisible and harmonized in human life, individual and collective ? For that one has to reach the highest state. One has to open to the Supramental Consciousness or Truth-Consciousness and allow it to descend here and govern and mould life. We think, or most of us think, that we will have to do the whole job, as if the Truth-Consciousness was impotent; but it is not true. If one opens to the Truth-Consciousness one will find that it is dynamic. God is not somebody completely devoid of power. So if the Truth-Consciousness is consciously allowed to descend or an opening is made in mind for it to descend, it will work. It depends on our sincerity and our aspiration; but more, it will depend upon the Higher Power that will work. You are to do your bit; you are to do that, and as I said yesterday, that bit is big enough. If you do that much, then the rest is done by the Higher Power, because that is an active power, a dynamic force. It is not as if it does not know what to do or what to create. It knows what world it is going to create. The difficulty is with the mind all the time saying "I know everything; and I will do it." When the mind is receptive, then the Higher Consciousness that knows what is to be done, gives the right guidance to the mind, to life and to the physical being of man so as to create a mould for its own expression —the expression of the Truth-Consciousness. The purpose of the creation is the manifestation, of the Satchidananda here,—it would be the highest perfection here. Man's idea that he has to do the whole job, is only partially true in the sense that he has to fulfil his part which is quite enough for him.
There was one Girishchandra Ghose,a disciple of Sri Rama-krishna Paramahansa. This is an authentic story. It happened only in the last century. He was a great actor, and a great dramatist. But he was addicted to drinking. He used to come sometimes drunk to Sri Ramakrishna. Sri Ramakrishna did not care. He used to come, fall at his feet, sit there and say he
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was hopeless, he was a sinner, he was very bad. "Yes, of course. You can change if you want to change," said Sri Ramakrishna. "But you are there, why don't you help me;" asked Girish. "Yes, if you allow me to help you, then I shall help you." So he said, "Take up my burden." Sri Ramakrishna replied, "All right, if you give me your burden, I will take it up." Then when Girishchandra was on his deathbed, he told his people: "He told me to give my burden to him, but I was not able to give it." So you see it is not easy to give oneself.
Q: This flow of evolution, this emergence through crisis, through wars, great events that have meaning—now, will that break down the dead mass of weight of law ? We think law is essential instrument now, but we have so many laws that I think we are just buried under them.
A : Yes, that is to say there is a need for changing values in collective life. The collective life is being shaken. It has been shaken by these two world wars and it is not finding its right direction. Nature is forcing unity of mankind on this collective consciousness all over the world; and it is by fear and by interest and by many other factors that unity of mankind is being promoted. It leaves out the most important, the psychological, factor: the feeling that we are one and that the world is one. This is very simple, but man is evading it. It is difficult but it is there. The world is one and humanity is one. And as soon as the thinking proceeds on that line, you will see that numerous problems will be there, but they will not have the baffling aspect which they have now. You know the acuteness of it and so on. It is because each nation is still seeking somewhere in terms of its own interest and in terms of its own separate existence, and yet the world is one and humanity is one. It is already one. The difficulty is how to convince most people that it is one. Very often man does not see the things before
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his very eyes. The very acts that he is doing show that the world is one. Still he would not understand it. One should think in terms of all; one should not think : "What should I do to remove unemployment in my nation ?" Rather he should feel "How will all men be employed usefully ?" It is the same thing. You think in terms of "we have got the problem of low wages." It should rather be : What are reasonable wages for all men in the world ? Always think in terms of all. The problem will remain, but then the solution will not be a solution brought about by conflict, by what you call a tug of war, all the time pulling in different directions. It will be then the will of humanity put to the solution of the task. The whole of humanity will combine in that case, and therefore it will be a co-operative, it will be on the basis of harmony. There would be no disharmony and conflict. And that is what UNO can do. That is its real function. It will come to that, ultimately. It will ultimately have to become the government of the world without a rigid constitution; a free association of nations where things are done in the interests of the whole humanity and no nation is considered more important than others because of its size or power or its economic or military strength. When this psychological factor begins to work then UNO itself will become a realization of the world unity, on one plane at any rate,—on the international plane. It is really there. People do not see it. The wave of realizing this unity after the second world war perhaps might ultimately come to something. But if the proper understanding were there it might come quickly, a proper understanding means that ultimately this has to be done. Well, as soon as they realize that this has to be done, everybody will settle down to that way and not go on pulling in different directions. Then the thing might come more quickly and be more effective.
The best solution you can dunk of is to bring the Truth- Consciousness
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into the dynamic life. Bring that in and allow it to work on life. That would be the most potent power that an individual can bring to bear upon this problem. An American wrote a book, "Ethics of American Foreign Policy." Somebody asked me to speak about international unity and gave me this book. So I took it as a theme. It was an association of International Fellowship in Madras. The writer advocated creating public opinion to influence the policy of the Government. I said there is no use trying to influence the policy of the government. Government policy is laid down and it is not going to be changed by anybody's trying to influence it. Governments do not allow their policies to be influenced by anybody. What is the use of saying "If you create American opinion..." ? That will take how many years, you do not know. The parties are already organized, their programmes are formulated and they work on that basis. Government will not bring about international unity. It is the consciousness that will work. Inner factors have to be evoked into operation. Psychological powers will work, not only political and economic powers. And psychological powers become irresistible, ultimately. It is the change of consciousness. When that is there, Government will have to bow to it, because if there is a change of consciousness, automatically the change will be felt there. So that it is a psychological change which is more important than either political action or social change. The psychological change seems to work in an individual only, but its vibrations or repercussions can be everywhere. You never know. It is not a human power. You are tuning your radio here to New York or to London. You think you alone are receiving. Yes, but it is all the time in the air and anybody can receive it and be affected. The Higher Power is therefore more effective in its working even when it works in an individual; it may not be known to people. But it is not the less effective.
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Lecture XII
Chap. 22. The Problem of Life
Chap. 23. The Double Soul in Man
And when evolution arrives at mind, life awakes to the necessity of giving up the finiteness or the inconscience with which it started. Its business first was to create a conscious centre of experience, a subjective being which could receive the whole universe. Having created such a centre in life, that is, the mental being, it forces the mind to go back, to reverse the process of individualizing into a necessity of accepting collective life, the need for interchange, the need for exchange, the need for "other" in order to fulfill one's self. That is what the process of nature seems to do when it evolves from the inconscience of matter. Life begins with the inconscience of matter, develops the half-conscient forms of life and the ego emerges into full mentality. When it emerges into full mentality, the process is reversed. Nature reverses the process by compelling the individual, the ego, to expand, to merge into another being, or into other beings. And the fulfilment of it would lie in ascending to the plane of consciousness beyond mind, where the law which operated and created this reversal would reach again the next step of its ascent. And this reversal from mind to the necessity of collective life drives the individual from egocentricity into universality; and universality must culminate into Truth-Consciousness, because the universal consciousness is not the whole truth of the Omnipresent Reality. Universal consciousness is only one term of it, and universal mental consciousness has a double strain of knowledge and ignorance. When you speak of the Universal Consciousness it is not as if you were dealing with highest spiritual Consciousness: You are dealing with the universal consciousness of which mind is the dominating
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instrument. But in that case, universal consciouness itself is not perfect. It has the double movement, vidyā and avidyā—knowledge and ignorance in it, and therefore fulfilment of this impulse to realize complete unity would come truly if one could go beyond the formula of mind as an essential element of manifestation. That is where we left off yesterday.
Now today we take up this problem of life. Life is a conscious working of Satchidananda. That is how we have looked at life,—that it is the Consciousness-Force of Satchidananda manifesting itself as life. The element of the Infinite that is behind life is Consciousness-Force or cit-śakti of Satchidananda. Being, or Sat, becomes the basis of existence reducing itself to matter. When infinite Sat reduces itself to cosmic terms, we see it as Matter, the base of the material universe. Consciousness-Force becomes what we know or cognize as Life. Supermind becomes what we cognize as Mind. Ananda or delight becomes what we have within us as our true soul, the Psychic Being. That gives us a correspondence. Sat, Chit, Ananda, these three are the supernals of the Eternal, and its instrument of action is the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness. It is this instrument by which this ever-present Reality creates the world. These four are the terms of knowledge, Sat, Chit, Ananda, Vijnana. Theirs is the realm of Infinity and Knowledge, therefore, it is the world of truth. And in this lower triplicity of manifested or evolved universe, Existence corresponds to Matter, Conscious-Force or Consciousness-Force becomes the two aspects of will and knowledge, manifesting itself as Life. And in this Truth-Consciousness or Supermind becomes Mind and Ananda becomes the Psychic Being.
That gives you a rough correspondence of the whole scale, how the world of Truth, the world of Infinity, world of Omnipresent Reality is related to the present manifested
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universe. There is the principle of being, Sat, which when it is completely covered up, becomes matter, complete inconscience—even apparent non-existence. Chit is conscious-force which is the aspect of knowledge and conscious power. When manifested here it is life. The third principle, Ananda, is manifested here as the psychic being, psychic plane of consciousness, the true individuality in man. It is the delight aspect that is the cause of the universe, cause of its continuation, cause of its manifestation and it is the driving force for its realization. That is why the whole of creation is moving toward realization of Delight. So that the Divine creates the world not out of any compulsion but out of self-vision of the Eternal and the Infinite in which the self-awareness of the Supreme throws itself out into Truth-Consciousness. The vision of the Supreme cannot be a vision of both truth and falsehood, and it cannot be ignorance. It cannot be compelled, cannot be necessitated. It is an automatic self-movement or self-determination of the Supreme that first takes the form of Truth-Consciousness in which the totality of the universe exists as a seed where the unity of the Infinite is the basis and multiphcity is variation on the basis of that unity. So all that is here exists without losing the basis of infinity and unity. Unity remains, infinity remains, and yet there is a variation and a differentiation based upon that unity. That is the world of Truth-Consciousness. And as a secondary operation, when it creates or turns further toward this creation, it adopts the constitution of mind. First, universal mind comes into being. It is not individual mind that comes into being first, Universality of mind comes into operation and then begins its principle of division. Then only, the creation of a limited individuality or separate ego becomes possible. It goes on hiding or veiling its light more and more till it comes to matter. This very process comes into operation in creating universal life. It ends in creating universal matter and out of it starts
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evolution. Then there is the ascent. In the ascent this drive of universal mind becomes possible because of the conscious entity, that is the ego. The ascent rises from matter to life, to mind, to Supermind. When life has reached the point of creating a conscious centre of ego on the basis of matter, then the process is reversed and has to move back to the original Truth-Consciousness. We are now at a point where the central circumstance of this truth is the cosmos. The process of Satchidananda is here in the second term. The second term is Conscious Existence. Satchidananda is not triple. If you look at the Infinite like that, then you have A+B+C. But ABC is nothing but the Infinite—Satchidananda. This Conscious Being or Conscious Power has become Life, and it is this aspect of Life which we are considering. We have already considered the knowledge aspect of it. Now, of the three conscious aspects, we take up life—the force of Satchidananda putting itself forth under cosmic conditions. It becomes Life when it evolves from cosmic matter. The first projection is universal matter and the second projection is universal life. This life that has come into existence is subjected to the operation of universal mind. Therefore, the dividing faculties are already at work when life comes into existence. Mind is the dividing action of a force which itself is undivided—e.g. Truth-Consciousness, or Supermind. This undivided force creates duality, creates oppositions, and creates denial of Satchidananda and its Nature.
And the problem to solve, therefore, is to find out how to create or make emerge the Unity and Infinity and Delight which are behind this world of clash. It is there above,—the play of the Truth, play of Omnipresent Reality, play of the Divine, play of Reality, play of Satchidananda. The problem is to find out whether there is a play of unity behind apparent clash, division, and duality which you find rampant in the
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world, which is a projection of the Conscious-Force under the conditions of universal manifestation. Under the constitution of the universe the Infinite, self-existent and self-conscious force of Satchidananda takes up the form of life in the universe. And that life has the aspect of division, separation, conflict and struggle. Now, the question is : is there a truth that is working behind this aspect of struggle and is it possible to realize the Truth-Consciousness here in life ? The solution has to be sought not by our mind alone. The solution of this problem of division and duality and clash is not a mental solution but a solution for and in life. Mind can isolate itself, isolate the problem and seek an independent solution on the basis of mind only. And mind can say : all this struggle is unreal; I retire into myself when I have to face the struggle. The solution has to be sought not by the mind alone, but also by life. Consciousness as force created this world movement and this problem; therefore, consciousness as force must solve it. Life appears first in matter, and it emerges in the vital field and then in the mental field. The consciousness is delivered from the slavery to the outer form in the mind. And it is freed also from its own limitation of form because mind can be quite free from the limitations of life and body. The crux of the difficulty is here—that man is a mental being and has a mental consciousness, and as a mental being and as a mental consciousness he is aware of universal forces. He is aware of the universal force, of a universal life and then he knows that he is only a part of it. And he does not know that he, himself, is universal. This is the knot of the difficulty. There is a mind at work and this mind comes in contact with energy or consciousness all around and it knows that there is cosmic or universal energy at work, universal life at work. But the mind is not conscious of its own universality; therefore, man who is the representative of mind in the world is unable to deal with the general
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life and his own life effectively because he does not know his own universality. The central drive of pure mind is to know. First, it drives man to know matter. It drives mind to know life. Mind wants to know matter; mind wants to know and tries to understand life; and mind wants to understand man, himself. And really this effort 'to know' that one finds in the mind is the will of the Satchidananda. It is the will of the Supreme working in him for self-restoration. The impulse to know is the operation of the secret urge of the Satchidananda because it is urging it to know its own self. It is trying to have self-knowledge because it has lost that self-awareness having created the world and having become an individual centre of expression on a point of matter and life and mind. Having sunk into the ego, it has lost the connection with the All, the Infinite, the Eternal, and has become confined into the realm of the ego. Appearing as an individual in the world Satchidananda has put this secret will in the individual and the world in which he expresses himself and yet he seems to deny himself. And therefore the will to "know" is a process of the energy by which he will be able to come back to himself. Man has either to satisfy this drive of evolution, or if he cannot or would not do it, then the drive of Nature— evolution—must create another being who can do it. Man may become obsolete and some other being may take his place. In any case, the drive towards levels of being beyond mind has got to succeed. A restoration of the lost identity of the Supreme must succeed in terms of matter. In life it is manifested as earth-consciousness. The identity is not to be realised above where it already exists, where it is self-existent. It is here on earth that it does not exist. The problem is here. The advocates of absolute monism so-called go wrong when they tell us : go back to Satchidananda and merge into it; there no problem exists. But in Satchidananda no problem ever existed. The solution has to be sought here where the
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problem exists. Man has either to evolve beyond mind in humanity or give place to some being which will be able to embody the Truth-Consciousness in himself. If you observe life you find that there is a correspondence between consciousness and force : consciousness and force are proportionate to each other. If there is infinite consciousness, the force at the disposal of infinite consciousness must be also infinite. If there is consciousness submerged in matter or in inconscience, then the force operating will be inconscient. If the consciousness rises to the plane of unity in the midst of life and its diversity, then the force also will be correspondingly capable of handling unity and diversity. So in life consciousness has a correspondence to force. Man's feeling that he is weak and incapable is not the final condition because the consciousness will have a corresponding force, and if you depend upon the consciousness which is infinite, you will get an infinite force to support you. And when consciousness is one that can be in unity and diversity at the same time, you will have power that deals with unity and diversity at the same time. When you surrender to a Higher Consciousness, to an Omnipotent, Omniscient Force or Reality, then the force of that consciousness will work in you. You are an individual with a divided consciousness. In a divided consciousness it is egoistic force, and you have to aspire from there. If you appeal to the Divine consciousness, then the Divine force can work in you. By aspiration one opens oneself to the Infinite consciousness, to the Divine Omnipresent Reality, and appeals to that Infinite consciousness to work in him. Therefore, when you have a great defect or difficulty you shouldn't think, "I can't remove it !" because you alone are not going to remove it. When you want to remove it, you use your will to remove it and when you call in the help of the Divine, your own sincerity will be one factor, but the work is accomplished by a much higher Power.
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In man's divided consciousness you find that the force is separated from consciousness. In matter the force seems to be completely isolated from consciousness. At present man is in the third stage which is that of divided consciousness, and he is able to see the problem. It is only when he rises to the plane of coexistent unity and diversity that his problem of life can be solved. When from the divided consciousness he rises to a consciousness in which unity and diversity coexist then the problem of life, that is, the problem of division, struggle and opposition, and aspect of duality will be radically solved. That is how the overcoming of the limit of mental consciousness will operate. Individuals live in themselves. Then, when the individual rises to this unity and diversity simultaneously existing and working, individuals will know themselves and view each other as the one consciousness and one being in many souls, one power in many minds.
Three difficulties present themselves in this process of rising from the third to the fourth status, from the ordinary divided-consciousness to the undivided consciousness in which unity and diversity coexist. One is that man realises that all knowledge he has is of partial self, an incomplete knowledge of self. That is to say, he is only living on surface consciousness. He knows only his surface consciousness and is unconscious of his own subconscious and subliminal being which are not the same. Below the surface is the subconscious and behind the veil the subliminal. That is one difficulty why man is not able intelligently and spontaneously, without making a conscious effort, to rise from the third to the fourth status. The second difficulty is this formula of our mind and life and body separated from universal life. Man as mind, life and body, or man the mental, the vital, and the physical being, is separated from the universal. First, he does not know himself fully. He is not conscious
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of the whole range of his being. Second, he is cut off from the universal consciousness which surrounds him. Far from being one with universal, he is not conscious of his identity with his own fellows and feels them as separate. If he lived in the universal being he would be able to feel at least his identity with his fellow beings which now he does not. Therefore, he feels that all that has manifested on the plane of mind is also separated and isolated. The third difficulty is the division between force and consciousness in his own being. There is a want of harmony between various instruments of his own nature. The force in him is divided. Mind wants to do something, while the emotional being goes in another direction, the vital being pulls in a third direction. So the whole force of man's consciousness is divided. The consciousness is divided and force is divided. There is not a sort of harmony in the operation of the consciousness of man because man is not an integrated being. He does not act as one organized and integrated consciousness. He works as three or four persons working at the same time.
These three difficulties prevent the rise to the fourth, or Truth-Consciousness in which unity and diversity would play on the basis of infinity of Truth-Consciousness. Some of the philosophies state that man is not a free agent. Partly there is great truth in it. Man has not got freedom, though there is a sense of mastery in him, though there is a feeling of somebody in him who can rule his nature, he is not actually able to rule himself because his passions control his moods, and he is quite unconscious of the wide range of his own constitution. He does not know the subconscious and the subliminal. Then he makes a separate stand from the universal and is divided within himself. Therefore man is not free. He is governed by bis nature, and it is nature that works in him. But he is capable of taking
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the current or flow of Nature toward ascent or toward the fourth step which life reaches and which will be the solution of his problems. If he is governed by Nature, as he actually is at present, then he cannot manage to make the ascent. There is a Lord in him who is the master but for that he must rise from this ignorant Maya to the creative Maya of the Supreme, to the Maya that governs the world, Maya the creative power of the Satchidananda. If man can rise to that the problem for him is easy to solve, because he will become one who can consciously govern his nature. The problem of life can be solved only by life's rising to that fourth status where unity and diversity coexist, on the basis of infinity.
This force of Nature and Conscious Being are everywhere in the universe. There is always a dichotomy in it, a sort of division between the force of Nature and the conscious force of Being that holds the same force of Nature. For example, there is a mental person and there is a mental force. If you carefully observe, the force that is working as mental energy is not the same as the conscious being who holds himself as the mental being or mental person. Between the mental being, the subjective self, and mental power or mental nature, there is always a division. Whatever the subjective being knows, nature does not always confirm, whatever it wills the nature does not necessarily carry out. In fact, very often it carries out the very opposite of what the mental person wills. There is no correspondence between conscious force of nature, and conscious being that holds that nature as its form, or as its mould. It holds mind as its mould for expression, but mental force or mental energy that is working is not under the control of the mental Puru-sha, it does not run parallel to the will of the mental Purusha. The nature force operating in mind has another way of operating, very different. There is mental, vital, and physical
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being—mental nature, vital nature, physical nature, and the purusha in each,—mental purusha, vital purusha, and the physical purusha means the subjective self. There is always a division in mind, life and body. All this is reconciled on the level of the Supermind. It is only at the level of the Truth-Consciousness that the conscious-self and the powers or forces of nature are in agreement. The capability of perfection, therefore, is not in mind, life and body. In the subconscience there is Perfection in one sense, because there is as yet no division. In matter laws operate without any intervention of self and operate correctly and without exception. Consciousness and force of consciousness can be reconciled on the level above mind, in the Supermind.
Now we take up part of the 23rd chapter. Up till now we have dealt with this consciousness aspect as operating through Supermind in the world and we have seen how it is connected with the need to return to the origin from which it has come. The delight aspect of the triple Satchidananda manifests itself here as the psychic being. And in this chapter Sri Aurobindo shows how this delight of self-existence, consciousness and bliss, translates or manifests itself as the psychic being into the universe in which we live. It is the true individual behind human egoism, it is the true divine spark of individuality operating behind the functioning of mind, life and body of man. This psychic being takes up a double aspect when it works in man. A part of it undergoes an operation of avidyā, the power of ignorance —and another part keeps back, behind, independent and free.
We have seen that the first status of life is dumb inconscience. The second status of life is rooted in desire, eagerness to possess, therefore is subject to them. The third status opens into mind and there the element of love begins to operate and that opens out, like a bud. Life has gone
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through the three. It is to go to the fourth. That is what we have seen, because that aspect of love must become universal, and if it is to become universal it will have to be freed from the limitation of mind. For that it must rise to the Truth-Consciousness. Now, love universal, means that love itself will be freed from the limitations of ego in its operation here then only it can become love universal. The psychic being, the true individuality in the human being, is seeking this universal delight as the result of universal love. The true individuality in man is not seeking the fulfilment of the ego in terms of ego. What it is seeking is widening out into the new universality so as to contact the Delight— the Ananda—of which it is a representative in ignorance. It is seeking for delight, for universal delight. Everything that exists wants to experience delight, wants to manifest the delight. Delight drives the material inconscience to the infinity of the Spirit. World therefore is Satchidananda masked, it is a veil, a mask of Matter, mask of the Inconscient, mask of struggle, mask of group, mask of the individual. The world is Satchidananda masked. The secret movement of this Conscious-Force is life. Why does it move ? Because it is seeking delight. If delight is held back, if life meets its opposite, pain and suffering it is not discouraged. Life does not accept suffering and pain as if they were laws of life. To seek for Delight is therefore the fundamental impulse and central drive of life. Delight itself is self-existent; it is not happiness. Delight is inward and that Delight is the pure ultimate constituent of the Reality. Where is this delight in man ? In which instrument does it reside ? Bliss exists in man in the form of his psychic being, the soul. Soul is an emanation of the delight of Satchidananda and therefore it always seeks delight and can get it, because it is always universal, when it gets back to its true experience or realization of self. Delight is the true constituent of the
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self of man, not mind, life or body. The mental being in man is not his true being. Mind is his instrument. The true human being is- not the life-being or the vital-being in man. The true human being is not the body or force at work in the physical being. The true human being is a psychic being which uses mind, life and body as its instruments and is itself a projection of the delight of Satchidananda. You find a dichotomy even in his psychic being : there is a surface self, working as the desire-soul in mind, life and body. Each instrument of nature has a conscious part which is on the surface and a part that is subliminal, behind the veil. Mind has a surface consciousness, and a subliminal consciousness. Life is two-fold, body is two-fold and this being also when it comes here forgets one part in the ignorance and one part is kept behind. In case of the psychic being what comes to the front is the desire-soul,—the psychic being in ignorance becomes the desire-soul. This desire-soul is the projection of the psychic being in ignorant nature. Then it is not able to act in its purity. The delight it seeks is the delight through the operation of desire in mind, desire in vital, desire in body. It is seeking the true spiritual Delight really speaking, but it seeks it ignorantly as a desire or passion or ambition. The problem for man is therefore to get back from the desire-soul to the psychic being. Then he can get universal delight. If he remains confined to this desire-soul he meets with the experience of happiness and suffering, pleasure and pain,—a distorted experience of delight. The delight itself comes to it in three forms, pleasure, pain and neutral indifference. When it withdraws from the desire-soul and regains the true self, then it opens to universal delight; and then all contacts become contacts of that delight. When it opens to universal delight, it is the delight of the Satchidananda, really speaking. In the mind, there is a surface mind, the ego and so on, and the subliminal
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self. In the life also, there is an outer vital personality and an inner vital being, you can say, a subliminal vital being. There is a subtle physical body behind this gross physical body. Desire-soul is the projection of the psychic being in this world of ignorance—in the mind, life and body. When it withdraws the desire-soul and comes to the surface then it can open to universal delight; then each impact of the outside world becomes only an impact of delight. Now this psychic being is the true individuality and it is very close to universal consciousness and delight. In the action of desire-soul, it is the' universal delight that enters, but it is deformed while coming through the distorting and narrowing medium of desire and ego. So what the desire-soul, which is a projection of the psychic being in the nature part, gets is not something fundamentally wrong. It does not experience what it should. It is the desire-soul that distorts it. To awaken to the true soul is the remedy out of this difficulty. Soul is the Self's delegate and the Self that is in man is the Self of the world; therefore, it can always open to the universal delight. Reception and enjoyment of delight is called Rasa. Rasa,—reception of this delight—is determined by the condition of consciousness in which one lives. If you stand on the level of ego and desire-soul, you get pleasure, pain and neutral indifference. The delight is running through the whole gamut of creation,—through the inconscient, the conscient and the superconscient, all is pervaded by the flow of delight. Soul takes the joy of all experience when it retires and identifies itself with the psychic being. One can bring about a change in the desire-soul by going back into the psychic being that is behind. Soul can come to the surface of nature—and then one experiences through mind, through life and through body equal and all-embracing delight. Sometimes man gets it even when he is not consciously in contact with the psychic being, but somehow,
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unconscious to him, the psychic being conies in front. Then man even in his ignorant state is able to experience this equal and all-embracing Delight. Take the case of a lover of Nature. In his case the desire-soul is pressed back for the time being and the psychic being comes to the front without his knowing. When he is in tune with Nature then he experiences all Nature full of delight. In the case of a poet or an artist or a lover of Nature all contacts that come to them strike them first with the vibration of delight. It is the operation of the psychic being that has come to the front temporarily. Few artists can keep that personality all the time; if one could, then one would be a yogi. There is always the vital personality, the egoistic being, the mental being and the selfish being, perhaps a very unconventional being also. And this lower foundation of our nature has to be changed in order to make available the cosmic or universal delight. Psychic being is the flame of the Lord, an inextinguishable flame. It is the witness that is concentrated; it is a control that is in us; it is the guide; it is an inner life; it is a divine voice imperishable. It is not the unborn self, because the psychic being accepts to work in ignorance and therefore the psychic being is not the unborn self but the self that has accepted to work in ignorance and embody delight, manifest the delight.
At first the psychic being has to act through the instruments of ignorant nature-mind, life and body. Its action, therefore, is concealed and partial. It awakens in the nature of man thirst for the Truth, attraction for Beauty, for Love, for Harmony. This it is obliged to do because in strong nature it is the divine-soul that leads. The devotion for truth, right, justice, the zeal for unselfish ideals that awake in man's nature is a sign of the working of the psychic being.
Then the question is : is psychic governance of nature sufficient to establish spiritual perfection here ? It is true
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that one comes to the possession of the true individual soul when one attains the psychic being. But another step of transformation from above is needed which can give man the possession of his self in its universality and transcendence. It is possible that the psychic being as the true individual, can choose to be static to the cosmic Self and return to the Silent Divine—and merge in love and rapture.
But Sri Aurobindo says that more is possible : the exposition that is given is in terms of our mental consciousness in which division prevails. In the Supermind, all those divisions of the mind disappear. It is possible then to establish one's status in the Spirit and participate in world-dynamis. The ego-centre is useful for nature, the individual moves round it and it acts as the defence against the pressure of cosmic forces. But in spiritual life we must loose the 'ego'. But merely loosing the ego would not bring about true dynamism for action in life. In the traditional Vedanta the knowers of Reality—the Brahman—are classified into four groups. One who is like a child—bāla; one who is mad— unmatta; one who is inert—jaḍa and one who is like a possessed being piśāca. It does not give a picture of ideal spiritual life. It would be like the condition of a king with incapable minister. Supramental transformation alone can bring about the perfect spiritual status and faultless divine dynamism.
Q: Don't we identify ourself with a thing or person...?
A. Yes. It is an imperfect operation of unity. When unity operates through mind or vital being it takes the form of sympathy and the outer forms in which you see it working. But it is a mental form of it or forms subject to our present limited consciousness: The real solution is identity, unity of soul. Then you realise that mere sympathy cannot make
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one know. Then you understand also what only sympathy of heart or mind is not able to give you. Sri Aurobindo does not say it is not good to have sympathy. Don't misunderstand him. There should be sympathy but one must not stop at sympathy. Sympathy is the first step, but it is really by overpassing the mental consciousness that we reach the truth of which sympathy is a symptom. Sympathy is the symptom indicating the possibility of identity, oneness.
Q: Is it not the experience of one Self in all?
A. It is the one soul in all, one being in All which is divine. The first realization is the One in All, but then one will realise that it is not only one in all but more than the all. It is Infinite. It is a question of growth of consciousness. When the consciousness grows, then the consciousness has this concrete experience. It is not mental; the mind may have an idea, the heart may have a feeling, even the will may have an operation to realize it but they are only processes by which the consciousness grows. It is a concrete experience of consciousness that one has to have. What Sri Aurobindo indicates is not only an idea but a realization or a concrete experience, and concrete experience comes to consciousness, not only to mental consciousness. The true being is the psychic being—not the mental being and the psychic is nearest to the universal. Therefore, the psychic being automatically or easily expands into the universal consciousness and realizes oneness with all. And that oneness with all is so much more intense in its experience than sympathy and other things. It can't be put in the same category. Sympathy is a step, but identity is something else. And that unity brings about a vibration in life, in the individual and in the atmosphere which solves the problem of division that is the difficulty of man's consciousness. Sympathy can go to the extent of extending help,—material or vital or mental or emotional
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help,—but identity and unity can help by eliminating the very cause of difficulty and suffering. People have no idea of this power of identity and therefore they think that it can do nothing. Maybe a man is poor and you have sympathy. That may help him a little; but identity would be much more effective. When you are identified with him, the incidence of his poverty is reduced. By the very fact of your identity he may feel the pinch of his conditions much less than he would have felt if you had not had that identity. What you can do by identity you cannot do by sympathy. Identity helps the world. People do not realize it, therefore, they think that it is only the outer expression of sympathy that helps the world. This inner dynamic identity is something very powerful. It can change a circumstance or a situation.
Indian mythology is full of stories that illustrate this principle. I will, in short, cite only one.
Krishna is recognised as the incarnation of the Divine throughout India. In his young age, he studied with several students at Rishi Sandipani's place and was very friendly with a poor student called Sudama who was physically very ugly but had many good qualities one of which was his love for Krishna. They became chums. In those days students had to go to the forest and cut wood for the teacher. In fact, the students lived in the teacher's house and were regarded as members of one family. Sudama used to cut Krishna's share of the wood.
After study they separated, Krishna became the premier prince of Dwarka and a very prominent statesman of his times. Sudama lived in an obscure village and was poor. He got a large family and very often it came to theverge of starvation. Sudama used to tell his wife about his friendship with the great Krishna in his early days. So once his wife asked him to go to Krishna and get some help to feed the family. Sudama was reluctant; he did not want to use his friendship for such a purpose but
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he yielded to the frequent importunities of his wife. He did not want to go to his friend without some gift. His wife went round the neighbours and begged some fried rice which she gave him as a gift for his friend, royal Krishna.
Sudama somehow reached Dwarka and found out Krishna's palace. He was stopped at the gate, his poor appearance was enough to bar bis way. With difficulty he sent his name to Krishna who had just finished his bath and was being waited upon by bis queens. When he heard Sudama's name, Krishna rushed to the door and escorted him to his personal chamber. The queens were all astonished to see a poor and not very prepossessing person being so honoured with familiarity by Krishna.
Then the two friends were in reminiscent mood, and talked of their early days. Krishna found that Sudama had married and had many children. He asked him if his wife had given some gift for him. Sudama was so overcome by the grandeur of the capital and the affluence of Krishna that he was hiding the little bundle of fried rice under him. Krishna noticed it and took it away in spite of his remonstrances. He ate the fried rice with great joy and appreciated its taste to the discomfiture of the queens. Krishna served Sudama as a personal guest making him feel like old days— the days of boys' equality.
Sudama could not ask for Krishna's help for removing his poor condition and returned home rather disappointed with all the ideas of men in. common life.
When he reached his place he found it was so transformed that he could not recognise his own house, till his wife came and assured him of its sameness in spite of the great change which came over because of Krishna's grace.
This story, so current in India, gives an illustration of how the inner identity is more effective in its work than outer sympathy. It also shows that grace does not work in human
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ways and that man's offering to the Divine is not valued in the human way.
It is very difficult to recognize the Divine when it has taken up a human consciousness. Indian Mythology is full of such stories.
Q: You spoke of the descent and the ascent; from where is the descent ?
A. The descent has taken place from the Infinite—that is one ladder and the ascent is from Matter to what to us is the Infinite,—another ladder. There is an Infinite and from that there is a line of descent. And that line of descent takes the form of a ladder; the Infinite does not plumb down straight into the inconscience. It is, as it were, a ladder and the steps go one, two, three, four and then a plunge. Then comes the inconscience. Then, to our view, there is a rising ladder—with steps one, two, three, four. The descent is from Satchidananda to Matter or Inconscience, and the ascent is from Inconscience back to Satchidananda, the world of Truth.
Q: Is there this duality—can we refer to the dark force against the individual?
A. In the Satchidananda you can say that one end is the spirit, the other end is Matter. Spirit is involved in Matter and Matter is involved in Spirit.
Q: There is a mythological story about angels descending in dream and there is mention of jacob's ladder. Can the descent take place in the human body ?
A. The body also is a field for expression of the higher Reality. Therefore, perfection of body is not to be kept out from the scheme of spiritual perfection. The body has to participate in the scheme of perfection. Only one should not give
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too much importance to the body and stop with the body. But the body is not to be neglected. The body, nervous system, vital being, emotional being, and all the ranges above the mind,—all that can participate and should participate in the scheme of perfection. That is Sri Aurobindo's stand. And so, when the descent is taking place, all the steps of the descent have to be covered in the ascent, and although they have now been embodied by men, the material part, vital part, and the mental part, all must participate in the perfection.
Q: Don't you think there are people who can actually see all this ?
A. Oh, yes. While doing Sadhana, one can open to the vision. I know several people who have seen these things. One should not strain to see unless it is necessary for further development.
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Lecture XIII
Chap. 24. Matter
Chap. 25. The Knot of Matter
Chap. 26. The Ascending Series of Substance
We were dealing with Matter and how it is related to an Omnipresent Reality. It is not a world of chance or accident even though to our mind it wears the appearance of an inconscience. The world of mind, of life, of matter—the human, the animal and vegetable and the material world— even though so different and disparate is not without an Ordering Reality. The whole universe seems, then, to be the veiled working of an Omnipresent Reality. And Matter which seems to be the categorical refusal of the Spirit, the last term nearest to the Nescience, is itself the working of the Omnipresent Reality, to reach its vast ends using a secret Consciousness and Will which is the master of its own complex action.
Consciousness presenting itself to its own self-awareness as an object of cognition is substance. Between Matter and Spirit there is a vast practical difference. When cosmic mind is presented with the substance, it turns it at the end into atomic division by its dividing faculty. This form of substance—which we called Matter—which the mind senses is nothing else than the original divine principle of Infinite Being—Satchidananda. Matter is a form of force, force of Conscious-being. The Consciousness there is concealed. Even the delight of being is there concealed; it offers itself to the consciousness concealed in it as an object of sensation. This delight of being offers itself to the concealed consciousness as object of sensation in order to tempt the hidden godhead to come out of is secrecy.
Sri Aurobindo has taken these three chapters (24-27) to
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explain the constitution of Matter in the scheme of bis vision. He takes note of the sharp division between Matter and Spirit. That is the normal perception of man. A oneness which is indivisible generates infinite variety in this cosmos, in this universe. There is unity which is inalienable or indivisible, a unity which cannot be abrogated by anything; that seems to be at work and it generates infinite variety. That is the first step. Then the second step of the cosmic creation that we notice is the constant reconciliation behind apparent division, a struggle combining all possible, separate or disparate elements, to reach some vast end. It seems to be the working of some secret consciousness though outwardly, it wears the aspect of struggle and division. Struggle and division seem to be the only operating principles and yet the universe has emerged out of the infinite, unity creating an infinite variety. That is the second aspect. The third aspect must be of will and consciousnes fulfilling themselves trium-phandy in a harmony. It would be, he says, the emergence of the will and consciousness which are operating there in that world, triumphantly creating a harmony. That should be the third stage.
On one end you take Matter, on the other end you take the Spirit. Both are connected by substance. Substance connects the two ends of existence, Matter and Spirit, because substance is the form of Conscious Existence. Matter here is substance of form of the conscious existence. Now, in this chapter, Sri Aurobindo explains that though there is a vast practical difference in the forms yet substance is one. Substance is Conscious Existence presenting itself to the self as object. Substance is conscious existence presenting itself as object to our sense, or to universal sense. It does so in order to establish a sense-relation so that a world may be created. Conscious existence as substance presents itself to the sense, becomes an object. And when it becomes an
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object it becomes also possible to establish a sense relation with the object. And when various sense relations are established it becomes a world of relationships. It becomes a cosmos. If it remained undifferentiated unity then there would be no world. So that substance presenting itself to the consciousness as object and establishing a sense relation brings the world as we know it into being. But this relation is not of one type. There is an ascending series of substance : there is pure-mind-substance, life-substance, spirit-substance, and what men call physical or material substance. There is substance of truth-consciousness, and Satchidananda substance. So that substance connects Spirit and Matter, the two ends of the whole rung of existence. It is really a series of substance ascending from Matter to Spirit.
Q: Is there a sharp line between the vital and the mental or is it a gradual fading from one to another ?
A : Always it shades from one to another. We make these distinctions only for our minds to understand clearly. Really speaking it is like a wave, in which each element melts into the other without a sharp division. We make a division because we are dealing with mind and mind is the instrument of division. It is the ignorance of our mind that requires explanation. It can't be helped. Mind is division and therefore we have to divide what is indivisible, really speaking, because the substance is only one. But our mind says : "then it can't be many." But it is many; so varied is the manifestation that the extent of worlds of substance is unimaginable. Take only the substance on the life-plane. How varied is its manifestation ? Similarly substance of mind... .And yet it is one substance. To the mind it is baffling. But that is the truth and mind has to learn it. Mind has to learn that what is contrary to it is, perhaps, the truth. Truth is where the contradictions of the mind meet. Truth is not
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to be found in rigid divisions of the mind. So that one has to teach the mind to put its contraries together and reconcile them in a greater consciousness. Mind says there cannot be many. Then you say, let me put one and many together; where the two meet without contradicting is the realm of the Truth. Take activity and passivity which cannot be conceived together by the mind; a plane of consciousness on which activity and passivity can be together. That is the realm of the truth. The mind divides, the truth unites and reconciles. Now there, is pure mind substance, pure spirit substance, pure life substance or pure material substance and beyond this conscious manifestation there is possibility of no substance. Then there is no universe. It is conceivible that there is no substance, somewhere. Where there is no substance then there is no world. Material substance, vital substance, mental substance, spiritual substance, all this is one Substance but in actual working it lends itself to all kinds of demarcation or difference. There is a series which seems to descend from Spirit to Matter and again tries, to rise from Matter to Spirit,—from the bottom to the top. So that the series of substance seems to lend itself to our concept of division. Now of all this series, of the process of, what to our mind appears as, descent and ascent the supreme Brahman or Infinite is the Substance. This Substance is the consciousness-force of the infinite, presenting itself as a form. Taking up a form, so to say, to its own self. That is the true substance. Satchidananda or Brahman, is the Substance. Then what is supermind ? Supermind is, as Sri Aurobindo puts it "unmentalized matter". It is unmentalized substance or unmentalized spiritual substance. It is substance but it is not yet rendered in terms of mind. Matter or life or mind or supermind—they are nothing else but modes of the Brahman, modes of the infinite and the Eternal Brahman is the material and the sole material of cosmos.
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Now when the mind looks at it, matter seems to be completely cut off from the spirit, though it is one series of substance which is pervading from the inconscient to the supraconscient. To the mental view there is a division. If that is so—what is the solution? Is it to merge into the spirit substance again? Insistance on the spirit as the highest substance and rejection of matter which seems to be, to the mind, fallen substance, or substance which is divided from the spirit, would seem to be the solution. Besides, even a view of life as lived by men seems to the mind a world of suffering, limitation, division, conflict, imperfection and death. Not only is matter the lowest substance but even when life takes hold of matter we find that life becomes gross, limited by physical organisms, then it becomes subject to pain and subject to death. So the ascent of substance from matter to life does not seem to help very much. When the substance that is matter takes up mind, then mind becomes incapable, "half-blind", looses its freedom, its wings are clipped, its feet are tied to the earth. Matter is mind, life is animal grossness, mind is rendered impotent. Now this view that acceptance of the substance of matter, by life or by mind, or by mind and life together, subjects the higher substance of life and mind to cramping limitations, is the experience of the mental being.
Therefore mind wants to take up the attitude that ultimate wisdom lies in rejecting matter—rejecting physical existence or the material world or the plane of matter. This, Sri Aurobindo believes, is not correct and holds that it is not the integral and ultimate wisdom. To take up this attitude as the last word of wisdom because life or mind are limited in their operations when they are encased in matter would not be the correct solution. It may be the first reaction of mind because to mind matter is ignorance at its height. The acme of ignorance is matter; it does not know, because it has no mind.
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Matter is blind and inconscient, it creates and destroys indiscriminately; powerful storms, sudden earthquakes, irresistible tornadoes—are its indiscriminate workings. It does not care; because it has no heart. Not only it has no mind, it has no heart. Then the difficulty that mind encounters is, that out of this matter which has no mind, mind has come into being. And this is "a pitiless miracle," in the language of the LifeDivine. Because man is the representative of this mind, he struggles helplessly as an individual and, a little more powerfully, collectively against this colossal ignorance. That is what happens actually when out of this no-mind, mind appears. And this "heartless Inconscient" slowly gives rise to hearts "which are tortured by blind cruelty". So, the heartless inconscient gives rise to hearts. This clutch of ignorance even after mind has appeared, is terrible. All the instruments of Man's nature—his mind, life and body —are determined by matter. All the instruments by which the spirit, encased in matter, has to work, are limited by matter and its opposition to the spirit. Material substance of which they are made obstructs their free working. It imposes bondage to mechanical laws. And this matter itself is colossal inertia. It does not move, though it is itself infinite motion. Science affirms that in a stone every particle is moving at the speed of light. So that matter itself though powerfully active, is inconscient, is moved by mechanical force. When this inconscience embodies life or mind, it allows life and mind to change it a little. It allows life or mind to make a little modification or change in its inertia or inconscience. To a very small measure inertia does respond to the demand of mind or life but prevents a total conquest of ignorance. And this is because matter is the principle of division carried to the last point. The basis of action of matter therefore is division. That is why the conquest is not allowed to alter the principle of which division
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is not the basis. Thus we have seen that matter brings to the human being limitations of his bodily, vital and mental existence, and therefore the pessimistic theory that this basis will not change seems rational to the mind. There will always be matter. We cannot do anything with matter; we should make the best of this terrible condition in which we are somehow compelled to be. And the best is to live for sometime and accept that ignorance and ego, limitations, divisions, difficulty, strife, struggle, suffering are the laws because matter is the basis. And it will not allow mind and vitality or life-force to conquer it. The conclusion, therefore, is that the world is a world of eternal mechanical laws and those laws will not change. So there is no possible escape for man out of the inevitable laws of matter. That is how the pessimistic spirit justifies the conclusion that the world will remain what it is; any attempt to change it is vanity, "All is vanity and vexation of the spirit". Therefore, reject this world either as an error of the inconscient force or an error of the infinite.
But Sri Aurobindo says it is mind that has created this division; this matter is not created by mind. Division is created by the mind but matter is not created by mind. We have seen that matter is nothing else but a form of the Infinite being, consciousness and delight. Then what is the relation between sense,—as developed in life and mind,— and substance ? Is the present relation the only relation between sense and substance ? Our mind says that the present relation is the eternal law, the fixed formula of life is that matter will remain matter. But we know that states of matter other than the known exist and so there is no reason to suppose that the present relation between sense and substance, as represented by matter, is binding. Is the relation between substance and sense bound by the present form of mental consciousness ? That is the problem. Even material states exist which man has not yet perceived, and so there is no reason to suppose that the present knowledge and possibility
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of matter is binding on the spirit. An ascending series of gradations of substance is possible in which matter would accept the law of the higher rung of the series of substance. Substance being one, from one end of existence to the other, the end of matter could accept the law of the other higher phase of the same substance. The only thing that can prevent it is the present view of matter taken by man. It can stand against this view and prevent man's supreme fulfilment by insisting all the time that matter must remain matter. But there is no intrinsic reason to suppose that the material form of substance is unchangeable. Material form of substance can open to higher series of substance and be influenced by it, be moulded by it. Theoretically there is no reason to believe that matter must remain what it is to our senses. The relation between matter and the present life and man's mind and his sensations is a particular equation. Sri Aurobindo says that there is no reason to suppose that this equation is the last. And that brings us to the 26th chapter where the ascending series of substance is treated. The ascending series of substance, is like one straight line but it is an ascending line. Matter in the series of substance is influenced by life, partly now; it is influenced by mind, partly now. It is man who embodies in him the three series of mental substance, vital and physical substance. He holds in himself the first possibility of opening the higher series of substance. He creates the first possibility in which the spirit-substance can act directly upon this material substance. There is no instrument, there is no channel through which the higher series of substance can act directly on matter. Man is the instrument who embodies in him this possibility of direct action. The descending power of the supramental substance can act upon the triple series of mental, vital and physical substance embodied in man and change it. What is it that we call matter ? What are
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the qualities of matter ? Sohdity. Matter is something which is felt as solid, tangible; matter is a form that responds to touch. The more subtle a thing becomes, the less material it appears to us. The ancient people also called this earth the material principle and they said that touch is the basis of all sensation. Sense essentially means touch. You touch by the eyes, you touch by the ears; you touch by the skin, touch is a fundamental sense. Sensation means touch, that is contact. So form is the basis of contact or touch. All sense means, basically, contactual sense. From earth to ether is from gross to subtle according to the Sankhya philosophy. From ether to earth would be from subtle to gross. It is all one substance, "one material substance" one can say. Of all substance form is the basis. All forms are concentrations of some energy or force; then they offer resistance to outer touch; there is mutual impenetrability of form; each has a distinct separate existence, there is a division. Form cannot exist unless there is some delimitation of the infinite,—of the formless. Form means concentrating something at one point; form has the capacity to resist any destructive or disturbing element. A form cannot penetrate into another because each must always retain its identity; therefore it has an individuality or separateness. Now, matter is the limit of divisibility because it is made up of infinitesimal particles,—atoms and others. Therefore atom is the last form of material substance. When you reach the limit of divisibihty, you reach the end of substance called Matter. Matter is one end of substance,—Spirit is the other end. You take a form. The form is not durable. Then you ask : What is it that is durable ? Then you know that the essence of the form is durable. It is eternal. "Away from durability of form we draw towards eternity of essence." Essence of the form is that which embodies itself in the form. When form is dissolved, where does it go ? Things are indestructible.
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If you take something formed of a material element and you dissolve the form, the form will be dissolved into essence and the essence is eternal. Essence houses itself into the form, and it becomes available to our contact or sense in the form. Form therefore gives an occasion for the essence to house itself in it and manifest a quality, a power, that is there. Form gives the essence an opportunity to bring into manifestation through sensation a quality which without form could not have been known. Without form one cannot satisfy one's thirst for water, even though one may have the highest consciousness, because the substance must take the form of water in order to satisfy the thirst of the human body. Away from persistent separation, you draw to a height of a divine poise in infinity and unity. If you move away from the resistance of Matter you draw towards the divisibility of the Spirit. So, there is a line from the gross substance to the spirit substance.' Therefore substance seems to expand or extend itself. It is our mind that divides the one indivisible substance into gross-substance and spirit-subtance. During evolution gross substance moving to-toward the spirit-substance has ended in Mind and there is the problem. Physical existence of man, or mind's physical existence, is subjected to mutual resistance, division, death, between masses of same life-force. But this rhythm which now prevails is not the only possible rhythm that man can experience. In the present physical constitution of the universe, there is an ascending scale of substance from the gross to the subtle. Even now there is a gradation of matter. We see that in the gradation matter and material force seem to be the last result of pure substance in which consciousness is lost. Material universe is less than the subtle states of which it is the result. We see material universe but we do not notice or sense the vaster subtle universe of which it is the result. Subtler states and gradations of
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substance correspond to the ascending stages of matter, life and mind, going up to the supermind and Satchidananda.
Now sense-life and thought on earth, start by obeying —as we saw—the law of the earth,—the law of the substance of matter; and they accommodate themselves to new development but they have all the time to take count of the basis of matter. So that, limitation of the physical instrument to the sense of the nervous system to life, corporeal body to the mind, all these act as limitations. Essentially, sense, life and mind, in their own constitution, are free. If you take mind as an independent principle,—not mind manifested in life, then mind has subliminal range and is cosmic and free. But mind, manifested in evolution, is limited. Sense, for instance—universal sense,—is free but sense manifested here in man or in life is limited, because of the limitations of gross matter. That is how telepahty, clairvoyance, and other occult phenomena are possible not because of matter but because of the freedom of mind and sense. Mind and sense are fundamentally free. That is why whey can act independently of physical organism. And when they so act, we get what are called miraculous or occult phenomena. That is nothing else but the assertion of freedom of vital being and mental being, even when it is manifested in terms of matter. Life and mind, acting freely without depending upon instrumentation or organs that are provided by matter, produce what we call the occult or miraculous phenomena. Sri Aurobindo points out that substance is not bound to be always limited by the limitations of matter which at present seem to be operating on the spirit embodied in life, mind and matter. The Spirit manifests itself in a series of gradations of substance. In the manifestation of the universe, the present limitation to which mind and life are subjected in their substance, is not final and binding. Because even now we see the influence or impact of the other gradations of substance
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on the level of mind, on the level of life and even on the plane of matter. It is not the sense-organs that create sense perception; only cosmic sense creates sense organism. The nervous system does not create life; it is cosmic life-force which creates the nervous system for its own work. Brain does not create thought but brain is the result of cosmic mind trying to prepare for it an instrument for action in the cosmos. So what obtains is not the fundamental law, but a constituted principle "adopted by the intention of the spirit to involve itself in a world of matter". To evolve a world of matter this is a construction which is adopted intentionally by the spirit.
The next grade of substance is life. We have seen how matter operates. Now we will try to see how life operates. When the life-substance acts in its freedom, then desire is its dominating law. And on the plane of life it determines all the facts of vital plane on the basis of desire and impulse. There matter is not allowed to intervene. Independent of material life, if you can conceive of life plane—where matter is not indespensable to life,—there life acts on impulse and desire. There it is not limited by matter at all. So that a spirit in the vital world, can have hunger which is practically insatiable. And there desire is not limited by the formula of material substance. There is no limit because there is no physical body to limit its working. We see something of it when a human being is possessed by some of these vital beings. It is said that Rasputin, the Russian monk, used to drink for the whole night and yet not get drunk. He remained conscious and normal which shows that the vital substance can impress itself upon the physical. There can be an intervention of a pure vital being, on the plane of matter. Even matter is made sufficiently plastic to manifest powers which are absolutely against the normal operation of its so-called laws. Take the third organisation of substance,—the sub-
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stance of mind; it is very subtle and flexible and is capable of being manipulated by other minds. One can influence somebody's mind straight, without any channel of communication. That is how an evolved being can help some other being by changing the condition of the mind if there is an opening and a relation.
Is it possible to bring the world of supramental substance, and of Satchidananda in contact with the world of material substance, just as the world of mind-substance, and vital-substance has been? Planes or worlds of divine substance, like the supramental and the Satchidananda, do exist, though they are not yet a part of earth-nature. This cosmic existence as a whole is a very complex harmony. It is not limited to one plane, to one particular substance. The universe in which we live is a complex play of many substances. And man experiences some of the substances, and the forces of substance descend and ascend. In the present universe we see that the universes of substance interpenetrate one another. Mind influences life, life influences matter as matter influences both mind and life. There is a cross play of this complex substances in the universe. It is a complex harmony not limited to one particular substance and the substances seem to be ascending and descending like a many-runged ladder. It is a ladder with many steps. At each step a vast self-extension of the Infinite or the One takes place. Each step is a world or a universe. On the plane of mind there is a mental world. On the earth there is a mental life. So that mind is not limited to human beings only. On each step a vast self-extension of the One seems to take place,—the more subtle, the more powerful, more penetrating, more effective. Each step is not isolated from the rest. Therefore our very material existence and substance is a complex play in its design and pattern of the spirit. In this one principle, matter, all the other principles of substances have entered in the
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process of descent. Material world is a result of all the other worlds. The last world of descent becomes therefore the first world of ascent. When one reaches the last point of division, that point begins the first step of the ascent, backward to the spirit. Why does it become the first step of ascent ? Because all the possibilities and potentialities of all other substances are involved in the substance of matter. And the when division has reached the last point the evolution begins because the substance begins to manifest that which is involvedin it. Therefore material being does not stop with gases, suns, nebulae and systems of atoms, and aggregations only, but evolves life. If matter was only matter life would not have come out of it. Therefore it evolves mind, and is bound to evolve the Supermind, because that also is involved in matter. Evolution comes by the unceasing pressure of the supramaterial planes on the material and from below a kindred pressure. Material principle wants to free the involved substance; the free substance exerts pressure on the material substance to evolve what is involved in it. As a result of the double pressure, the higher principles, the higher substances go on manifesting in our universe, which is a complex harmony. The higher can descend and manifest itself, here, but then an instrument would be needed. And Sri Aurobindo says man is the instrument because he is one who holds in himself,—material substance, vital substance, mental substance. Man brings the whole evolved powers of the cosmos to a point; and his substance does not end with the body. A more perfect physical body, also, can be evolved if man admits the possibility. The body cannot be denied the possibility of changing into a higher substance than matter.
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Q: You gave the example of Rasputin, the Russian Monk; was he possessed by some vital being?
A. I think it was not a case of mere possession but perhaps that of an incarnation of some vital being. It may be that of a vampire.
Q: Is not the presence of a Divine Principle admitted in the past ?
A. Yes. The admission of the divine principle has never been in doubt by people who believed in it. A divine principle and all-pervading divine element has been admitted. Then two or three questions arise. First, what is man to do with it? And then how to proceed about it and when you come in contact with it what is the form that it is going to take or should take in the present world? In the past they had a very vague idea about these questions. For instance, they speak of the Kingdom of Heaven; but we have no clear idea of the perfection it implies. Here in Sri Aurobindo you find the explanation of creation by an Omnipresent Reality. How it organises or can organise itself as the Truth-Consciousness and how in the Truth-Consciousness all knowledge and will is indivisible and how harmony works. That is the truth-world—the perfect world. To the question how our world come out of it, Sri Aurobindo gives a satisfactory explanation. The explanation given by Sri Aurobindo is unrivalled in the world of philosophy. He understood the problem of pain and explained it and also pointed out a way out of it. Why is his explanation different from that of Gautama Buddha ? No comparison or competition is implied; the Light in the past has served man and continues to do it. Our effort is not to go back to the past; we can't. What has been done has been assimilated, has been achieved. What good had
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to be done, has been done. Now we cannot bring those remedies and apply them today because it would not work. It is not a question of disrespect for anyone. We have full respect for the past incarnations because they are divine and so we respect them, we evoke their help so far as it can be of help in the present conditions, but the highest help that one can have in his mind, in his vital life, in his individual life, in his collective life today, is from a Light like Sri Aurobindo, because he gives you the full expanded view of that perfect world; its relation with this world; then the way to reach it; the way to bring it down. He explains what form it is likely to take—all in details. Nobody else has ever worked it out like that; not even in the Upanishads which are regarded as sources of wisdom in India. It is no disrespect to the Upanishads to say that they did not speak about things that Sri Aurobindo deals with. We have to look forward to the future, not look back to the past. We have to take all the gains of the past with us and go ahead. Generally men regard the past as always more perfect than the present.
Q: If you go to heaven then you have to create one, right?
A. No. It is not a question of going to heaven. The problem is how to bring heaven or perfection here in this world. Sri Aurobindo says that the problem can be solved here only, because in the perfect world above there is no problem, imperfection is not there.
Q: Virgin birth throughout the ages. I never believed in any explanation of it; how it could occur ?
A. Virgin birth is not to be taken literally; it is a symbol. The conception of the world takes place beyond mind. Shakti—the Virgin—creates directly out of the spiritual consciousness, without resorting to any material medium. Even in spiritual life, even now, the Guru who is the guide
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helps the disciple by giving him a second birth. And the second birth is an inner birth, not an outer birth.
Q: It is said in the Bible that we must be born again.
A. Yes, that's true. And the second birth is an inner birth and not an outer birth. The second birth takes place when you awaken to your spiritual possibilities. Till one is not awakened to the idea of spiritual life, or of realizing God one is only physically born. When one awakens to the inner need of spiritual life that is the second birth.
Q: Does that second birth come at the meeting, right at the beginning of the meeting, of the Guru or does it come all the way through?
A. No, the second birth comes when the soul of the individual perceives the necessity of outliving the present attractions of life, the ordinary way of life,—career, money, fame, family, and all that. Now, when he sets the growth of his inner being as his aim, that is the second birth. Then he may meet his Guru afterwards, who can effectively give him the second birth, because one is not easily able to take second birth himself fully. He can feel the necessity of a birth, like a child trying to want to be born but must be helped to be born, and it is the Guru who helps him to be born by an inner conception, so to say. The consciousness of the Guru is like a mother. It bears the soul of the disciple and then gives it back to him. But that is an inner process.
Q: When you speak of Guru are you speaking of your higher self?
A. Yes, your own higher self in a way, whom you can meet in a human person.
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Q: You don't always meet... ?
A. No. You may not always meet but he is always there, the inner guide. The guru is always there, the higher self of man. You may identify and meet him in a human person. That also happens and then you can recognize him. Then it is not his human nature that will gude you. People mistake when they see a guru and judge him as quite an ordinary person like any other man. But his mind and outer being does not guide; it is the inner consciousness that guides. That is a truth very difficult for the modern mind to understand.
Q: Didn't Sri Aurobindo say in his Synthesis of Yoga that it is possible for the person to contact the spirit of truth within his own self?
A. Yes, the guru is in the heart, the inner guru, he is the inner guide. The true guru is in the heart. He is always there. Sri Aurobindo has clearly said that the guru is within. All people cannot contact or awaken this guru within; so they meet the guru outside. The guru outside is not ruled out because it is your inner guru whom you meet outside. The guru is your own highest self.
Q: Well, there is no outside, in a way. There is no outside— it doesn't make so much difference.
A. Yes. If you put this question to yourself: Suppose I want to become perfect, or become like God, how would I be like ? Then you meet somebody and you say, "Oh, It is like him that I would like to be. That's all. There you have met your guru. He may not be perfect but he satisfies your need of that perfection that you see and that is the spirit, at work. If he is also humanly perfect, well, it is more easy to accept him but even with imperfections the guru is felt within the consciousness. You accept that consciousness —"this is right."
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Q: It is difficult to the western mind to worship a person, embodied soul, as a guru. In India I think that is usual. But here it is unusual. It is difficult for people here to accept this idea, even.
A : Yes. In one sense it is good and in another sense it is bad. It is good in the sense that you don't easily submit your personality to somebody else who might not be as perfect as you imagine him to be; it removes superstitions, it prevents you from resigning your judgment and your common sense, sometimes, and so on. It prevents many faults. But the mind refuses to recognize the guru manifest in a body, or even the Divine incarnated in a human person. Mind has got the set idea that no human being can be Divine. So, even when He is there man refuses to accept him. There are so many notions about the Divine, in the mind; it almost would seem as if mind was dictating to the Divine. If the Divine heard it He would say, "Well, my dear fellow, leave me some freedom. I must also be able to put limits to myself if I want to, why not ? Why should I do what you want me to do everytime ? I must do sometimes what I want to do. If I want to take up a human body, why not ?" The mind goes on insisting—"You can't" !!
Q : We are taught this so often in Sunday schools that God is like an old man with a beard in the clouds, it is difficult to get away from that idea—that all people are imperfect and anyone who says differently is a big fool.
A : Yes. The Gita puts it in the mouth of Krishna in this way: "Fools or idiots do not take cognisance of Me or rather disregard Me when I have taken up a human body."
Q : Also it seems easier for us to conceive of a father, to worship a father, to conceive of father or the male consciousness than to express the ideal of a mother.
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A : Rather, it is easier to think of the creator as the mother and the creation as the child. It is a more organic, more natural, intense and very happy relation and also a dynamic relation. You can't imagine a more dynamic relation than of a mother and her child. The universe is the child. The creation is the child of the creatrix and she is very anxious that it should be perfect, that it should be good, that it should be marvellous. Well, that is what every mother wants her child to be. Children always prefer the mother to the father.
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Lecture XIV
Chap. 27. The Sevenfold
Chord of Being Chap. 28. Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Māyā
The relation between Matter and the Omnipresent Reality operating as Supermind is made clear in the three chapters that have preceded. They explain why a cosmic existence has manifested out of Transcendent Satchidananda whose nature is infinite existence, consciousness and bliss. The world could have been an infinity of figures without any fixed order or relation. But we find it is not so. The reason is that the Satchidananda acts first as Supermind. Therefore cosmic law is not to be imposed from outside, it acts from inside as automatic development, or rather as self-development as it happens in the case of a seed. In the seed the truth of its being is involved and the result is determined by the potentiality. It is the result of the working out of the Real-Idea.
Supermind as Real-Idea has two aspects, the comprehensive and the apprehensive. The comprehensive aspect knows all as One, and all things as the One in his manifold aspects. The apprehensive aspect knows all things separately as object of its knowledge,—each is apprehended separately from All, yet without loosing connection with the All. In the first the concentration is on the Oneness, in the second the concentration is on the Eachness. This Supermind in its descent has created the triple world of Mind, Life and Matter.
We have seen in previous chapters that even in the world of Matter, based upon what appears to be the principle of Inconsciece, there is a rising scale of manifestation from Matter to Life, from Life to Mind. Therefore, we can see that in the evolutionary world the law that is now operating
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cannot be absolute because only the Infinite is Absolute.
When the Infinite manifests itself the potentialities are endless; therefore they cannot be determined. The form and the course of evolution cannot be fixed down to a rigid formula. Infinite would not be infinite if it had not complete freedom to assume manifold finiteness. Absolute must have, therefore, boundless capacity of self-determination. And in this movement of self-determination of the Supermind, Life and Matter are also needed. They act in the human consciousness as forces of ignorance, in the triplicity of body, life and mind. But looked at from the point of view of the Supermind the three are needed; Mind is needed in order to create a self-diffusion of the Supermind in the universal, or to create infinite centres. Without determining or limiting action, there would not be any cosmos, without limiting or determining action we would not have a world of the One and the many. And Mind makes this limiting determination for the infinite, therefore, it is necessary. Only, it is a subordinate term of the Supermind and so is Life and so is Matter, Matter is a world of substance in which everything seems to be divided and it brings the substance of the original Infinite, Brahman, into materiality, the final point of subdivision, the final point of finiteness. The second thing that follows from this is that the cosmos presents to us one front and we see the world as world of Matter. We see another plane, Life. We see a third plane, Mind. Now each seems to present one front and it represents a front only, one side, of this principle substance but that is only an appearance, because in the one substance all the others are also included; in each principle all the others are included.
In the 28th Chapter, we take up the subject of the Overmind, which is related to the two terms, Supermind and Mind. The Overmind is an intermediate term between Mind and Supermind. The question is how did this lapse
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into ignorance of Mind, Life and Body take place from the Truth-Consciousness, from the Supermind ? Truth-Consciousness is the first projection from the nature of the Divine Being, from the Satchidananda. How did it lapse into Mind ? This lapse is not yet explained. Mind, being the consciousness of division, is the basis of ignorance. Supermind being based on the infinite consciousness, existence and bliss is founded on Truth, is based on Reality. How did this division then come into indivisible Supermind ? That is the question. What was the action by which this lapse took place ?
Let us conceive of the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness, as the sun. Now if that is the sun, the rays of the sun disperse all around. You know that there is the corona of the sun; corona is the surrounding area of light which surrounds the body of the sun. When there is a total eclipse of the sun, you see the corona, the lighted region around the circumference of the sun. Now imagine this region going further and further, the Light travelling further. The sun is the body of Truth-Consciousness,—it is the symbol of the Supra-mind. The corona of the sun is the Overmind, the further projection of the Truth-Consciousness. The Light working in the corona is the Overmind. It is from there that the mind arises at a certain stage. A dispersal of Light takes place through mind, it goes into the Inconscient and completely disappears. The Light in the Overmind goes on penetrating further and further and it comes into the Inconscient. In the Inconscient, all the Light is absorbed and it becomes a dark shadow. That is a rough picture of the descent of the Supermind from Truth-Consciousness to the Inconscience. Now how does Mind come into existence from the Supermind ? What is the gradation of the descent? Sri Aurobindo explains that first there is the powerful aura or corona of the sunlight of the Supermind which is Overmind that is in
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contact with the body of the sun. But as it proceeds further, and further and disperses, Mind comes into being. Man, the being in mind, feels that the Light is proceeding from him, —he is not conscious of the source. Man feels, being in the mind, that it is he who is projecting the Light from himself. There is some truth in that feeling but really speaking, in the process of creation the descent took place from Supermind to Overmind and further into the region of division. There is no complete darkness yet. The first region is Mind and then Life, and then Matter and below Matter you find all the Light is absorbed and a darkness is thrown back like a shadow of the Light. We therefore feel that there is no consciousness in Matter—the Light of consciousness is completely absorbed there. One can take the shading of an electric lamp as an analogy. One can put one shade and then a second shade and a third shade till the light of the lamp is completely covered and one cannot see any light. After the first shade—if it is transparent, the light is seen. That would be something like the Overmind. Mind is a power of ignorance and division. It is seeking for the truth, groping, reaching only mental constructions. When mind tries to ascend, it reaches only mental constructions, and representations and sometimes bright but shadowy photographs of the Reality. And this Mind is subjected to the limitations of body and life, it is not free when it operates in the body and life. Body limits its operation, so does life. One sees that the operation of the mind, even the freest mind in its own right, is limited.
But there are occasions when mind tries to reach beyond itself, to overpass the barrier so to say. When mind tries to overpass the limits, it is trying, in fact, to enter the Overmind region which is in contact with the Truth-Consciousness. There is a region in which mind comes in contact with the Overmind. It is when mind first opens to this region that it is able to experience Intuition, Inspiration, and impersonal
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Cosmic Consciousness. The phenomenon of genius, people having extraordinary power over subjects, or Revelation, intuitive perception or intuitive discernment and number of such mystical experiences belong to the intervention of this higher region. Mystical experience in which one knows things without any process of reasoning is an indication that there is the connecting region between mind and Overmind being the first step toward creation of mind. So the light of the Supermind, moving toward creation of the mind, passes through an intermediate stage called the Overmind.
The ascent from mind to the Supermind cannot be sudden. Sri Aurobindo found in his Yogic experience that the mind cannot ascend directly to the Supramental consciousness. It is, too big, too long a jump. To get into Supermind directly from mind would be too sudden and too much of a change for man to manage, to bear. And he found that there is the necessary intermediary status just as the space Scientists have to have an intermediate station in space before they can launch to the moon. Overmind is such an intermediate level of consciousness for the human spirit when it moves from mind towards Supermind. Mind while ascending to the Overmind experiences the working of some new faculties Intuition, Inspiration, then Revelation, etc. When it reaches the Overmind then it is able to enter and make an approach to the Truth-Consciousness. There is a constant stream of mutual communication between Overmind and Supermind. The ascending consciousness of man is able to contact the Supermind through the descending step of the Overmind. Supermind, as the Truth-Consciousness has number of gradations and some of them are supraconscient to mind. Just as mind cannot communicate with the animal, easily, unless it trains itself—though they are known to each other in a certain way, and there is an interchange between them—still mind is not able to know the operation of animal consciousness.
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The same thing happens to the mind trying to know the Supermind. As mind does not know what is below, it does not know what is above.
The transition from Supermind to Matter takes place in stages : Supermind, Overmind, Mind, Life, Matter. If mind wants to ascend back, it can do so by a double movement, the first movement is inwards : that is, the mind turns inward. When it turns inward, it goes into the subliminal, and the veil between the external and internal is rent. When the veil is rent, then the consciousness opens out into a vast static silent Self and begins to communicate with the Oneself which is in all.
The Second movement is that of a dynamic descent of light, knowledge, power etc. The Higher Consciousness descends after rending of the veil. So by a descent of Light, Power and Knowledge from above, or by an inward turn opening to the self, the universal consciousness, one knows the subliminal parts of one's own being and subliminal movement of universal nature.
In the transition from mind to the Supermind one first comes to the movement of what Sri Aurobindo calls the Higher Mind. The next higher layer will be that of the Illumined Mind; the third layer will be Intuitive Mind. The fourth will be Overmind, and Overmind directly puts one in contact with the Supermind. The movement of ascent from mind often begins by stopping all mental activity,— there is no thinking. In the Higher Mind, one does not reason as he does in the mind. The action of the Higher Mind is like coming down of knowledge-light rather than darkness trying to pierce upwards into light. "We are aware of a sealike downpour of a spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has different character from the process of thought to which we are accustomed."—The Life Divine. This downpour of illumination
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assumes the nature of thought when it comes to the mind. Higher Mind does not ratiocinate, does not think, does not proceed from no-knowledge to acquiring knowledge. In the Higher Mind knowledge comes down. That is its nature. There is no labour of speculation, no difficulty of thinking. Sri Aurobindo explains by giving an analogy. If you take sun as the aspect of the truth, the Higher Mind would be like steady sunshine coming down all the time. The next would be the Illumined Mind which has the constant light of the Overmind. "If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth—we may compare the energy of the Illumined Mind to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming Sun-stuff"— as if the body of the sun was throwing out lightnings and the constant operation of solar lightning full of power and knowledge combined was at work all the time. In the third stage, one reaches Intuitive Consciousness. The Intuitive Consciousness or the level of Intuition is not the same as the action of intuition in the man's nature. It is true, intuition works in the mind, it works in the vital being, it can work in the body. But that is not the Intuitive Consciousness. It is intuition coming down in the nature of man. In fact, many people come to know many things by intuition in ordinary life. They just simply have the knowledge. That is the operation of this plane of Intuitive being penetrating into the mind or into the life or into the physical consciousness. Those who constantly, or occasionally, get intuitions are not the persons who have risen to the Intuitive consciousness. Intuitive level is an independent level of consciousness, above mind, which can be steadily attained,—in which one can constandy live just as one lives in the mind if one developes the faculty. Intuition does work in the normal nature of man in the form of intellectual suggestion, or it lights up a region of knowledge, or gives guidance in action, by a voice. It also works when man is faced with a number of possibilities out
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of which he has to make a choice—particularly when the pros and cons in favour of them are equal. Intuition then works as intuitive discrimination and makes the correct choice. It is possible to establish oneself in the intuitive consciousness so that all inner and outer activities are done intuitively. The faculty of Intuition acts unerringly because it is in contact with the Truth-Consciousness, its thought proceeds from the Truth, its sensation is charged with Truth. It is like lightning constantly playing on the half-darkness of human mind. Intuition may be compared to the edge of the Sun of knowledge.
Above these levels is the Overmind consciousness and there one finds that the Overmind consciousness is not individual. The first thing one realizes is that it is no one man's consciousness. It is global. So far as intuitive consciousness is concerned one may say that it is working in him. One might feel that one is there all the time in the intuitive plane. But in the Overmind one feels a vast, cosmic expansion of consciousness. It feels as if light is covering the whole world, the sunlight is holding the whole world within its light. The infinite cosmic consciousness is there and it covers the whole lower hemipshere of knowledge and ignorance made of mind, life and body. This Overmind connects the Supermind with the lower creation of mind, life, and matter. Sri Aurobindo says that the Overmind acts as a veil covering with its wings the whole triple creation of mind, life and matter. It veils also the face of the higher worlds from the sight of the lower. In one sense, it brings the Light to the lower, in another sense it encloses the Light of the Higher consciousness. It is said in the Ishopanishad that, "Face of the truth is covered by the golden lid". Overmind can be said to be the 'golden lid', for, it is light which covers the whole cosmos and glows like a cosmic eagle covering with its wings of light the whole triplicity of the Mind, Life
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and Matter. So from below, from mind, one sees the light of the Overmind first, not the light of the Supermind with which it is connected. In a sense it screens one off from the Higher Light.
For Supermind it acts as a step of descent, and is a necessary convenient step; for mind it is the necessary step of ascent. Thus it divides the two worlds—the world of Truth and that of Ignorance. Between the two Overmind "intervenes with its flood of infinite possibilities."
What is the nature of this Overmind consciousness? It is a plane of Infinite possibilities, and all possibilities are given equal chance of self realization in it. In the Supermind, all determinations are certainties, but here you have a field of infinite possibilities. Overmind becomes therefore an obstacle to our seeking because when we enter it we see infinite possibilities. It is likely that the great Shankaracharya came in contact with this Overmind plane and seeing it full of infinite potentialities and possibilities concluded that the Higher Nature also was Maya, illusory. Perhaps he thought that there was no decisive Self-determination of the Truth-consciousness at work in the world. The mistake was to feel that Overmind was the Highest plane of consciousness. There is a plane of Supermind above the Overmind the highest action of which is the "Categorical imperative of the Divine." The world is not left to chance and merely to a play of infinite possibilities. Through the play of possibilities a definite, decisive movement is acting all the time. Of all the possibilities, there are some that are approved and sanctioned by a supreme Truth-Consciousness. Only, they are allowed to materialise. In the world we live in all the potentialities are given a trial;—in fact they make up the play of the complex of forces which is the world. Many results in our world are results of this complex play of infinite possibilities. But the final and definite result is the choice of the Supermind. Just
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as at one end, Matter is determinative,—quantitatively and qualitatively, so at the other end Surpermind is categorical. Matter has a kind of omnipotency of its own. The same is true at the other end of the Spirit. There also determination works out which is the result of the Omniscience. Matter at the lowest end is decisive, though apparently inconscient yet seems charged with knowledge and will,—with a kind of omnipotence. At the highest rung in the evolutionary ladder of the Spirit, the Supermind is the plane of definite determination working out the Divine will and knowledge.
Overmind is a delegate of the Supramental consciousness, —it is delegate of the Supermind to the Ignorance,—to Mind and a delegate of Ignorance to the Higher Consciousness. "It is by projection of this Luminous overmind corona that the diffusion of the diminished Light in the ignorance and the throwing of the contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all the Light, the inconscient, became at all possible." By the gradual shading of the light of the Overmind corona, the phenomena of Inconscience becomes a possibility and a certainty. If you take Supermind and Overmind, you will see that the two have an agreement and a difference. Supermind is the chord of essential Truth of being, it holds essential Truth: in the Overmind the integrality of the Truth is absent. Truth is present but the integrality of the truth is not present. In the Supermind the essential truth is completely held, Truth of the total, that is to say, of the One and the Many, is held together in complete clarity. Here it uses the individual self-determination of all, self-determination—you have established a relation without being limited by any of the determinations; so a number of self-determinations are at work at the same time. In the Supermind the total is held together in perfect Unity which allows free interpenetration of One and Many. The One and the Many basing themselves on the Infinite have a free interchange
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and mixing. In the Supramental Truth Consciousness, total and individual determinations are held together. In All and the One, the One and the Many are held tgether, in clarity, "in complete incomparable Unity," and "yet close in interpenetration," free and full consciousness allowed to each other. The total One is free and full; each is again free and full in the Supermind. In the Overmind the integrality is not present though it is aware of the Truth; Overmind has consciousness of the infinity and integrality behind, but uses individual determination without being limited; in the Overmind each aspect, each power is given an independent action to realise itself, which acquires a separate importance. Each potentiality becomes separately important. For instance, take Purusha-Prakriti. In the Supermind, Purusha-Prakriti are one, they are "a single truth, two aspected." The two aspects are the subjective and the objective aspects. They are one in the Supermind. In the Overmind, Purusha and Prakriti are present; they are not completely divided but each is separate and deals with the other. It is not unity on which they are proceeding. The basis of independence is given to Purusha as well as Prakriti; they are able to deal with each other; they know each other; can have relation with each other but they are not two aspects of one entity, inseparable in their essence. In the Supermind the Real-Idea covers the whole thing, it is one and total. Whereas, in the Overmind, millions of possibilities are released into action and each empowered to create its own world, capable of relation and interplay, can communicate with the other, but is charged with an idea or force to realize itself. In the Supermind, for instance, democracy would not go against equality. In the Overmind the two powers work independently for a separate self-realisation.
And in mind they develop "irreconcilable differences." In the Supermind the basis of democracy and the basis of
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equality are not in contradiction. But in the Overmind, the idea of democracy and that of equality, each is allowed to work out separately.
Sri Aurobindo did not write about the Overmind in the monthly magazine, Arya, in which The Life Divine appeared in its first form. There he wrote about the Interpretative, the Representative and the Imperative Supermind. Later on when the working of the Higher Power became more precise he found that between Mind and Supermind an intermediary plane, the Overmind, is indispensable as a halting place for the ascending soul from Ignorance and for the descending Divine from the Supermind.
Once when he was asked about the Overmind and its nature he said it has not the Truth-consciousness of the Supermind though it retains the back-ground of the One. Overmind is like a bundle containing seeds—thousands and millions of them, but the bundle is one. If the million seeds are let out they naturally tend to divide, each becoming something separate from others. Overmind holds the potentiality of division within itself; the Real-Idea of the Supramind gets broken into many of its sides, its aspects and each tends to become independent. In the Supermind the force and consciousness are one but in the Overmind the force and consciousness become divided into million forces and centres of consciousness. What to the mind is contrary become in the Overmind, complementary. In the mind, matter, or life, or thought or idea each is separate and excludes the rest. In the lower ignorance, mind does not know life, life does not know mind. So, there is a complete division between the mind, life and matter, in the ignorance.
Whereas in the Overmind consciousness there is no exclusiveness because each knows the other. Overmind therefore is the principle of cosmic truth; all dynamism as well as separate dynamisms are present in it. Its comprehension
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is global rather than integral, inclusive rather than synthetic. It includes everything without the principle of integration, without bringing it into an organization conforming to the central Truth. Its totalities are global wholes, not organized, integrated wholes. For instance, all religions would be true in the Overmind, because they are the expressions of religious impulse which is one. Each would be necessary to the whole, in the Overmind. Overmind can be said therefore to be a play of all possibilities of knowledge and power that makes ignorance possible, because among the possibilities there are those that tend towards ignorance. In one sense it makes ignorance possible and, when it goes further and further from the central truth, it leads to the fragmentation in the Inconscient and the one total Truth is concealed by this fragmentation : One is concealed in the Inconscient. The separation is there even in matter, and yet underlying this separation, there is Oneness. That is what renders possible our dealing with matter on the basis that matter is One. In spite of all elements and atoms being completely divided and separate, the unity is there; this underlying oneness drives toward harmony. The underlying oneness on each plane makes for harmony. So that even when fragmentation and division has taken place, the division is not allowed to isolate things completely from each other. On the contrary, division is made to seek and realise the harmony and unity because unity is there as the basis. The Oneness is coming together. The drive of unity is there visible. The harmony at the root of existence, the underlying harmony is trying to come to the surface. Between Supermind and Overmind, the dividing veil is transparent. Overmind depends upon the Supermind for whatever force, knowledge, power, or potentiality it receives. And when it comes to the mind, the veil becomes thicker, there each thing becomes completely separate. Still in mind, the ignorance is not
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complete, because division is not carried out to the last limit. Mind is capable of unities and conceptions of wholes in which many finites are included. Therefore complete division comes when the substance sinks into the inconscience of matter. Because mind is not completely ignorant, it becomes possible in mind to organize some kind of right relations between elements and things. Mind has limited knowledge which one can call ignorance but it is not totally false knowledge or complete error. There is no basis for affirming that mind is a power that deals with complete falsehood, that it is to be rejected in spirutal life. Sri Aurobindo shows how mind becomes only a shade of the higher light. It is a distortion or a sort of intervention or veil, rather than something which is contrary to the original Reality. It does not create something contrary to the original Reality. And when it descends into Matter it is not an illusion.
And Overmind communicates with the organized mind through intuition, through intimations of the mind. Mind's effort to universalise itself, is rewarded by the Overmind, by giving it first knowledge of the One, and its application in power. Mind is able to go further and further toward the Light. Thus the complete separation even in Matter does not make the whole process illusory. Overmind, through intuition and other activities in the mind, puts the flashes of Light into the Lower parts and they do come through the ignorant consciousness even of mind; only, they are intermittent. Even now, Intuition, Overmind and Supermind are working; their action in the present constitution of man is concealed and the problem for man is to make its action conscious. So the ascent from Mind to the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, to Overmind and Supremind seems to be the rungs of the ladder to reach the Truth-Consciousness. That is the problem and it can be
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solved by rending the veil, by going inside, or by possibility of the descent of the Higher consciousness into the present constitution of man.
Q : You spoke about two processes for rending the Veil, What are they?
A : One is by going within—that is, withdrawing the consciousness from outside and entering the inner mind, inner vital being and other subliminal parts. The second process is by allowing the Higher Power to descend into oneself.
Q : There are so many persons who speak about the All, the One as the Real and rest is relegated to either illusion or unreality.
A : The Planes of the Overmind and Supermind are not easily reached by spiritual aspirants. There are experiences that are mental, others come to the vital—and they may be striking—powerful and true as far as they go. But the Universal consciousness, the Overmind and the Supermind are not attained easily.
Q : You spoke about the ideas that are mutually irreconcilable in Mind. How are they experienced in Overmind and in the Supermind?
A : It is difficult to convey the experience to the mind. One evening Sri Aurobindo gave an idea as follows : "Take absolute passivity and absolute activity. In mind they are not at all reconcilable. In the Overmind both can meet together and each is allowed independent action to realise itself. They co-exist in the Overmind. In the Supermind they are one."
There are so many ways of Yoga and so many experiences
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possible that one cannot generalise from one type. Many people declare themselves "incarnations" on the basis of their realisation.
Q : I met two people during the course of a day and they told me they are incarnations of Jesus.
A : That is what happens. There are so many "incarnations" in India !
Q : What would be all religions in the Supermind ? You said that in the Overmind all religions would be true.
A : In the Supermind the very origin of all religions will be known. It may be in the form of a symbol that the knowledge may come. For example, in the Veda the symbol is that of Fire. This Fire symbolises the Divine Will. In man it becomes the Fire of aspiration for the Divine, aspiration for the Truth—which is the root of all religions.
Q : The higher you go the more intense the vibrations that are felt.
A : Yes, not only more intense but wider also. It is a double process of intensity and wideness at the same time.
Q : When a person receives illumination is that the working of the Overmind?
A : Not in all cases. It might be only Intuition; it might be the Illumined Mind, it might be the Higher Mind. Overmind is very rare. Some operation of Overmind one may feel, but not the Overmind itself—Overmind itself is overwhelmingly wide.
Q : Are there different stages of illumintion ? A : Yes, from mind you go to Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuitive Mind and the Overmind. That's
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how you generally progress. But it may not go regularly in that order. There are many complex movements.
Q : Is cosmic consciousness Overmind?
A : It is cosmic in the sense that it is cosmic connected with the Light and has not lost contact with the Light. Cosmic consciousness when it becomes mental, becomes a double play of knowledge and ignorance, light and darkness. The mental universe is a double play of light and darkness. But the Overmind is connected always with the Supermind and therefore the Light is not lost in the Overmind. Cosmic mind allows any number of world forces to act. It will allow democracy and dictatorship, or capitalism and communism to work at the same time. From the struggle of forces in life the intended result is worked out.
Q : I was thinking about this book by Dr. Bucke. You probably know it: "Cosmic consciousness."
A: Yes.
Q : Bucke speaks about many people who have had this experince of Light. I was just wondering if that experience of Light was what you are calling Cosmic.
A : I have the record of a talk about it in the Evening talks. Kindly refer to the book for Sri Aurobindo's comments. He refused to admit bis generalization that the experience of cosmic consciousness must be of one type and that it must be for a short duration only, that it cannot last for long. In fact, it can be made a permanent part of one's consciousness. But it is true that many persons had the experience of cosmic consciousness. But the generalizations which he makes from that are not all right.
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Q : Are the questions in "The Evening Talks" by different disciples ?
A : Yes, their names are given in a list at the beginning.
Q : Purani, are you going to tell us sometime more about your personal experience, not personal but your experiences with Sri Aurobindo.
A : Yes, I can. Sometime.
Q : Who was Shankaracharya ?
A: He came after the Buddhistic period in India in the 8th Century. He was born in South India, and was precocious even from his childhood. That is the traditional story. At the age of 8 or 9 he had already acquired full knowledge of the Sanskrit Scriptures. He died at 32. Before that he had revolutionized the whole Philosophical thought of India. He travelled from North to South and across the country from West to East. He organized the Monism of Vedanta. According to the Shankar's school of Monism the Infinite Reality is the ultimate truth and the world is a secondary reality, i.e. a reality of the second order. Therefore, the purpose of this creation is to rise to and merge into the Infinite. Except merging in the Brahman he did not posit any positive fulfilment on earth. But he did not advocate, according to my study, the doctrine of non-existence of the world. The world that man lives in is an illusion, he says, and the purpose of its illusions is to make man rise to the Reality, that's all.
The weak points in his thesis are two or three. One is he admitted God also as responsible for creation. Now the purpose of the human individual is to merge into the Absolute. There is a sort of a contradiction here, because if God is there in between, how is the individual to merge into the Absolute without the intervention of God ? And if God
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carries on the management of the universe then there must be sanction for the world in the Reality, in the Absolute. Shankara accepted God, probably, to explain the creation of the universe and that of individual being. According to him, the Brahman, the Infinite, could not have created the world; there is no impulse in the Infinite to create, the Absolute does not want to create anything. Then how did the universe comeinto being ? Somehow, indescribably, Maya, the power of illusion projected itself on the Absolute and so, God-Omnipotent, Omniscient and Omnipresent came into being in the Higher Maya. He is there to manage this illusion. But the purpose of life in the World is that man must get out of the Maya and merge again into the Absolute. Now that makes also the purpose of the manifestation of the world futile. Thirdly, it does not explain, the phenomenon of Avatarhood, the Incarnations. If the world is an illusion, why should the Divine incarnate in it and try to save it? An illusion does not need to be saved, it is to be liquidated. Why should the Avatar come and confirm man into life, if life were an illusion ? The position of God in Shankara's philosophy seems to be a weak point. Sri Aurobindo's outlook gives you the correct basis of God's place in the universe because God is not anything else but the organisation of that infinite Self-existence, Conscious-force and Delight taking up the role of the Creator or the Truth-Consciousness. That is God.
Sri Aurobindo is also a monist in a more correct sense. That is to say, he does not admit a duality by the backdoor like Shankara. Shankara posits the One, Infinite Brahman but admits Maya to explain the creation of the universe. Sri Aurobindo affirms, like Shankara, the existence of an Omnipresent Reality which is Infinite Existence-Consciousness-Bliss—Satchidananda. But he explains the creation of the Universe by the action of the Consciousness Power
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the Chit-Shakti—in the One. The first projection of this self-conscious Power is Satya Loka, the world of Truth-Consciousness, the Supramental world. Then there takes place a graded descent creating various planes of universal existence—like the Overmental, the Mental, the Vital, the Material and the Conscient and the Inconscient. These worlds then rise from the Inconscient, step by step again covering the ladder of existence reaching at last the other extreme of the Spirit and its eternity.
This vision gives not only an explanation of the creation of universe from the One, Omnipresent Reality but endows life on earth with a tremendous significance. The world becomes holy because it is the abode of the Supreme; life is "soul's opportunity to make it divine." Sri Aurobindo's is the most consistently rational philosophy based on the Spirit as the ultimate Reality.
Q: I grant it is an all-organic synthesis in the respect that explains life and the necessity of ascending from our plane to higher planes. It is very difficult to conceive of the higher planes — I think we have to believe in them—that is, believe in their existence, and the need of rising to them. It is all so removed from our ordinary comprehension.
A. No. It is not a question of believing anything irrational. Our belief is founded on a more positive evidence within ourselves. Leave the Supermind aside, the aspiration for the Supermind aside—unless you want to explain the whole universe to yourself on the basis of the Spirit or God. But if you do not want to bother yourself you say "Well, let me leave aside as it is too high." Then you can try to find it in the form of your aspiration for perfection, some kind of higher status of consciousness than what you are in. If you are religious-minded you will say that you want to realize God. If you have an ethical
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basis you will say I want to realize Truth. If you are social minded you will say I want to improve society, or create perfect collective life. You will say I want to have self-control or I want to have peace etc. All that is an operation of the Supreme here. It is That which is working here in man and not allowing him to rest satisfied with what he is now. And he will not be allowed to be satisfied until he makes an effort. So the short way is to answer the demand of the Supermind by making the effort. Then the whole of it will be supporting you. That is something wonderful. That is what Sri Aurobindo and Mother say, that you are not alone when you have kindled the flame in your heart, the Fire of aspiration for perfection. Then you will be supported and you will help in creating here a new world based on Truth, based on the Light. Then Life will move around, not money but Truth, around Perfection, which is necessary and very badly needed. That is the one thing that is lacking in the whole progress of man. Man does not think of perfection at all. He thinks of acquisition and finding more means of making himself comfortable till he becomes a slave of what he creates, and he keeps on creating more and more.
Q: One very helpful method is to try to see the Truth for oneself in oneself.
A. Yes. Begin with yourself. If you want to change the world, begin by changing yourself. That is all. Begin with yourself and all the world will begin to change from one end. You build perfection brick by brick and the whole edifice will come in time. If one does not begin nothing can happen.
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THE ORIGIN OF THE IGNORANCE
It is rather difficult to make up one's mind to speak on a subject that has taken the philosophers of the world life-long efforts to arrive at what might be called even a working solution of the problem, the origin of the Ignorance. It would be daring and presumptuous to think that within a short span of time we could solve ultimately and finally the problem which has baffled great philosophers. I will try to make out some points along the lines not merely of metaphysics, but along the line of spiritual experience which gave Sri Aurobindo solutions for all the problems of life which beset humanity today. It is not that there is no metaphysical justificaion for his solution. What I mean to stress is that it is based on something more than mere metaphysics.
Sri Aurobindo's contribution to the world of Thought and Philosophy now is not new. It was the late Sir Francis Young-husband who said that it is the greatest contribution to contemporary philosophy after that of Henry Bergson. His master-piece, The Life Divine, was highly prized by Romain Rolland. In what consists the speciality of the contribution ? Apart from his spiritual experience what has he given to the world of philosophy ? There are more than three fundamental problems on which he has thrown light, among them the explanation of the baffling problem of the origin of ignorance is one. This has been called the "Ass's bridge" of philosophers, for many systems have floundered in solving it. It is curious that human mind has tried to give an explanation of this problem while remaining in Ignorance ! It looks so contradictory. And yet it is a feat of which the human intelligence is quite capable. And here I will try to place before you one such feat that, to my mind, surpasses all the feats performed in the realm of philosophy.
An explanation of the origin of the Ignorance on the basis
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of religious belief is very easy. Accept a Satan, an Ahriman, or a Mara as against a God, an Ahurmazda or a Buddha and you have the explanation of the problem, especially if you don't inquire as to who created the Satan and his equals. You can say there is an eternal duality at the basis of this world— a power of Good, beneficent, all-knowing and a power that opposes it, a power of Evil,—a power malevolent. This is an easy explanation if the mind could accept it and rest content. Thus, on the basis of what is called dogma, Ignorance is the result of an eternal duality. One can even maintain that this duality is going to remain perpetual in this world.
It is also possible to explain the existence of Ignorance on the basis of dualistic philosophy. If you admit the existence of an Infinite Reality at the basis of this universe and then try to see how Ignorance could have originated from it then you find yourself face to face against a kind of dualism which you have to explain. In that case you say : "The Absolute is there, but Ignorance is not in that Reality." That is to say, Ignorance is "here" in this world, in life. Somehow or other a principle opposed to the nature of the self-existent Reality,—all-conscious and all-delight,—has succeeded in inflicting itself upon that Reality. This is "indescribable"— "Anirvachaniya",—it is something that should not have happened but has happened. But whether one experiences the infinite Reality or not in life one is bound to experience Ignorance, Ignorance is inescapable. In fact, the experience of Ignorance is itself a sign of awakening to knowledge. What the monistic explanation,—though in fact it is dualism,—wants to say is that there is no Ignorance or no place for Ignorance in the ultimate Reality. Ignorance is operating in the human consciousness. It is man who feels the infliction of Ignorance on himself and the worst of it is that he cannot manage to make himself at home with this Ignorance ! That is man's trouble.
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In spite of all the explanations, rational and convincing to one part of his being, something in the very structure of man refuses to accept this eternal duality and the perpetual infliction of Ignorance on himself as the last word of wisdom. Something from his depth says : "I am capable of knowledge." In man's very constitution there is something that says : "this Ignorance is not native to me, it is not a part of my true being".
Monism posits an absolute, infinite Being as the only Reality in which this phenomenon of Ignorance is not given any place—that is, any real existence. It amounts to saying that the experience of Ignorance is unreal. But the question remains : who, then, experiences this Ignorance ? Philosophies based on so-called absolute monism assert that this experience is due to the mind;—but mind has no place in the ultimate Reality, in the Absolute. Mind, according to them, is a derivative phenomenon which has come into existence due to the imposition of Maya, the Power of illusion, on the Absolute. So, if you get rid of your mind you can get rid of Ignorance. It is like proposing to a patient that he has to get rid of a limb by amputation in order to cure his malady : cut off the troubled limb—there will be no trouble afterwards. It may be the shortest cut, but I do not know if that is the only and the best way of cure. After all there may be some utility and fulfilment of the limb intended by Nature or God. This solution based on monism has been accepted by a portion of humanity and is even followed by it. And it must be admitted that there is some truth in that outlook, however exaggerated. An infinite, omnipresent Reality is at the basis of this universe and in that Reality Ignorance does not find a place as it finds in man's consciousness : it does not exist in it as it does in man.
Sri Aurobindo starts his whole philosophy with only one
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assumption : that an Omnipresent Reality is at the basis of this universe. There are two main outlooks, one based on acceptance of Matter and another on that of Spirit. Sri Aurobindo takes up the materialistic basis and shows how it is unable to satisfy the demands of our reason. On the basis of an Omnipresent Reality it is possible to explain the phenomenon of Ignorance, though at first sight it looks an impossible task; for, how can an all-knowing, infinite Being, an all-pervading conscious Reality,—Something that in its very constitution is incapable of Ignorance, inflict upon itself an Ignorance with all the consequences of falsehood, suffering, evil etc. ? Our religious sense is outraged at the thought that a God all-merciful, all-knowing—if you call that Omnipresent Reality, God—has created a creature called man and inflicted Ignorance upon him; but that is not true. According to this view, God has managed to become ignorant: He has submitted Himself to a process which we know as Ignorance. And now the same Divinity—in man—feels a very galling sense of imperfection due to Ignorance. It is surprising how man has not been able to feel himself at home with his Ignorance in spite of so many years of its experience. But even granting that an Omnipresent Reality is the source of this universe the question does remain : how did this Reality succeed in creating this self-division and become ignorant, subject to sorrow and pain, give rise to evil within itself ?
It is difficult to explain; but let us not be baffled and let us not despair in face of this difficulty. The Master can help us out. Let us first of all reduce the problem to its proper proportions.
Some philosophers have tried to make out as if Ignorance was an all-pervading element, as if there was nothing in the world outside the field of its operation. This view appears true at first sight; but it is not quite true. It may be
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true so far as humanity is concerned. But in considering this problem we are not to be limited to humanity. We have to think in terms of the whole universe, because Ignorance is a phenomenon that happens in the universe. We have already seen that Ignorance cannot be in the Absolute, in the essential Reality above. If there is an Omnipresent Reality, it cannot be ignorant of itself, unconscious of itself, it cannot cease to know itself. It may be that in the action of its conscious Force, perhaps in its dynamic movement, it has managed to manipulate an operation which has created, in the flow of Time, what we feel as Ignorance.
But now let us see how this Ignorance operates in the universe we know. Imagine the whole cosmos stretched on a vast canvas moving from the Inconscient to Mind in humanity, and let us go back to the beginning,—to the Inconscient. Do we see Ignorance there ? No, we see neither Ignorance nor Knowledge. The first organised element to come out of this Inconscient is Matter. Do we find Ignorance in Matter ? No, because, to our sense and mind Matter is inert, it is neither conscient nor inconscient. It is, perhaps, negation of both Ignorance and Knowledge. It is like the absence of morality in the animal consciousness which is called amoral. So, the vast stretch of material universe is not subject to the operation of Ignorance, it has no experience or active sense of Ignorance.
Next in the vegetable kingdom and the insect-world we find the working of an Instinct which guides the action of the organism towards self-preservation, self-protection, towards pleasure and away from pain. In the vegetable kingdom there is spontaneous action of something that can be called nervous life-energy. But it does not feel its state as Ignorance, though perhaps to man's view it may appear to be very ignoranct. But we find that in many respects its instinctive reactions are far more unerring and wider
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than those of reason in man. So far as the action of life-instinct is concerned the animal is far more correct than man who acts by outer sense and reason: when it seeks safety or food or pleasure it is almost always unerring in its actions. But when man seeks his food we know what a mess he makes and how he finds tremendous difficulties in reaching his end! The ant seeking to make her home automatically selects a place which is on a higher level than the surroundings and where water does not accumulate. The mother-bird knows when and where to build her nest. In these instances we see such an effective operation of spontaneous knowledge—which we term instinct—that there seems no place for the feeling of Ignorance. So far as the animal kingdom is concerned there is no active Ignorance. On the contrary the organism seems equipped with sufficient and effective knowledge for the purpose of life and its needs.
So, the omnipresent Reality has left out the vegetable and the animal kingdom and has inflicted Ignorance upon itself in the human being. Even there if we take the whole span of human history and the evolution of man in it we find that man has been an ignorant being and has been conscious of it, yet sometimes an individual appears and declares: "I am not ignorant, I have attained knowledge". And people —large sections of humanity—have accepted this affirmation. Those who declared their liberation from Ignorance also promised a similar liberation to those who would follow them and adopt their methods of attaining knowledge. It was thus that in an Upanishad some one declared Veddhām etam puruṣam mahāntam, ādityavarṇam, tamasaḥ parastāt— "I have known that great Being, effulgent with the solar light (who shines), from beyond the Darkness." Or, when some great incarnation says : "I and my father are one" humanity accepts the assertion. It is then seen that a humaan being —human in the sense of having a body, life, and mind
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can exist, from whom the veil of Ignorance is lifted. In one Upanishad mankind is addressed thus: "Listen to me all children of Immortality." Man is not called there the degraded mortal. Thus, even among men there are some who have reached the golden Light of the Truth and crossed the dark ocean of Ignorance; they even promise to lead us to the Light. Religions assert that it is the destiny of man to attain the Light. There are thus all over the world individuals who claim to have gone beyond Ignorance, and there are collectivities that have tried and are trying to go beyond Ignorance. That gives us some hope of finding an explanation of its origin.
But that is from the side of the human being. We have started with the assumption that an Omnipresent Reality is the basis of this universe. In that case the question arises: why does the Divine Reality create Ignorance within itself? The process, the Cause, the purpose require an explanation, because to our mind the fact of the Divine losing its all-knowldge, consciousness and delight seems, if not absurd and impossible, at least most irrational. Why should the Divine who is perfect become something imperfect, who is All become partial and limited? It has now got imprisoned in the body and thinks it is the body, it becomes fired by desires and believes that desires are itself, it identifies itself with thought and becomes limited to a mental formula. How has the Divine managed to create this apparent impossibility?
It is true that one of the definitions of Omnipotence is the power to do something which to our mind seems, or is, impossible. So one can say that the Omnipotence of the Divine alone could have successfully created this great miracle of Ignorance.
But our mind will not accept such an answer, for, it seeks conviction; to the mind the fact of the Divine becoming
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Mr. So and so, or, a helpless child seems quite illogical. So let us see the problem from another angle.
Let us find out if man is really ignorant and if so how far. Leave aside exceptions like Lord Buddha and Jesus Christ, Sri Krishna or Sri Aurobindo. The average human being does feel his Ignorance and generally when we think of man's Ignorance our attention is mainly directed to his waking condition, to his apparent being. But, is man really the waking consciousness only ? Is he only that which apepars to us from outside,—the surface consiousness ? Modern psychology will tell you that man's waking consciousness is only a fraction of his subconscious being. In fact, what man does on the surface-consciousness is very often the result of the action of the subconscient, or even of the environmental consciousness. There is available to man even a subliminal consciousness in which the incidence of his Ignorance is considerably reduced.
Take, for instance, the sense organisation. Ordinarily the range of our senses is extremely limited and poor. The eye cannot see beyond a certain range, it has to be helped by devices like the microscope or the telescope. But the limitation of the sense is not final, its range can be considerably increased. A man in hypnosis can see much farther than the eye ever can. The power of communicating thought which is unconscious in most men can become a conscious faculty. Clairvoyance, telepathy etc. are today recognised phenomena. After Sir William Crooks, the founder of the psychic Research Society, London, it is difficult to call these phenomena superstition. In fact, we should be glad to welcome the almost unlimited field of experience opened out by these occult sciences. The subliminal part of man's being is not so ignorant as his surface Consciousness; it has a vast store of knowledge which can be available to man.
So the human being has not only the surface consciousness —body
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and senses, desires and ideas but he also has a subconscient and a subliminal part which are vast and almost universal. Sri Aurobindo, on the basis of his own experience and the spiritual tradition of India, would add the Super-conscient. This Superconscient is at present a potentiality in man. Man can rise from his mind to Intuition, to Inspiration. Man is not eternaly confined to his present consciousness. Man finds that his ignorance is most intense in his waking condition, and even there he is acting on a selection from the subconscient or the environmental consciousness. Subtle levels of consciousness, vast ranges of knowledge and action are available to man. So, Ignorance is not like a dark sheet completely shutting out all Light, it is rather like a hazy light,—it is partial knowledge. In fact, this Ignorance holds within itself the possibility of a wider consciousness and knowledge for man. Man can train himself and increase the range of his being, he can communicate at a distance, he can influence persons and events at a distance, he can cure diseases by will. These things are being done everyday in life. Emile Coué, a French doctor, used to cure hundreds of patients by auto-suggestion.
It could still be maintained that in spite of all these ranges of consciousness available to man, he is ignorant because he does not know himself. After all self-knowledge is the true knowledge. The feeling of being ignorant is due to the lack of self-knowledge. Man does not experience his unity with the Omnipresent Reality, and he finds that he is subject to time,—past, present and future—he lives from moment to moment,—he does not live in Eternity, does not feel that he has been for ever and for ever. On the contrary, he feels he is subject to death. This is his fundamental ignorance; add to it his ignorance about other men and the world around him and you find that the question : how did the Omnipresent Reality become all this remains to be answered.
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Let us imagine this Omnipresent Reality at the start and see how Ignorance could have resulted from it. We have already seen that active or operative Ignorance is found only in the human being and there is a stage in the progress of the Human being at which man seems to go out of darkness, of Ignorance and live and act in the Light. So, it seems that Ignorance is like a mass of dark clouds covering a certain belt of evolutionary movement of universal Energy. This universal Energy is moving from the darkness of the Inconscient right up to some self-existent Light, and in between, at a certain stage, it is subjected to the dark belt of Ignorance. Below that line there is no active Ignorance and beyond it Ignorance cannot exist, as it is completely eliminated. So, the divine Reality becomes self-forgetful, becomes even an ego subject to Ignorance only in an intermediate state.
Now, the Divine who is Absolute cannot be a zero or a void; it cannot be without content. There are schools of philosophy that believe that the Absolute cannot have any content, that if it has power, or quality, action or creativity it would cease to be the Absolute. But if the Absolute is subjected to such conditions laid down by the mind then it is no longer Absolute but relative. No definition or dictation from the mind can limit it. Absolute would be true absolute only if it could become all relativities and yet remain Absolute. It cannot be bound down to its unitarian unity. In fact the Absolute must hold within itself infinite potentialities of knowledge, consciousness, delight, energy, substantiality, which can manifest in the course of evolutionary movement in time. These potentialities being those of the Reality must all be charged each with a power of self-realisation. They are not, like mental possibilities, idle dreams or mere abstractions which may or may not actualise themselves. The nature of mental or vital determinations is that they succeed partially in realising themselves in actual life;
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very often they fail entirely. In case of man, knowledge and will are hardly commensurate, most often they are separated by a wide gulf. But in regard to the Reality the power to realise itself is inherent in the self-determination, the power behind each potentiality is the power of the Absolute.
The question may arise; what makes the Absolute accept the multiplicity, this self-division into innumerable parts, and portions ? It is already answered above in the infinite potentialities of the Absolute. It can be said that it is the very nature of the Supreme to manifest himself multitudi-nously, and behind each self-determination the power of entire Absolute stands supporting it. It is like each wave of the ocean determined by the whole and supported by its entire power. It is when the wave feels a separate existence that it becomes small, identified with the little form. But if it could retain the knowledge of its identity with the ocean then every wave could be also surcharged with the consciousness of the totality and in that case every wave-form would be the result of the self-determination of the infinite ocean.
Even admitting the analogy one may find that the process, the "how", remains to be known. How does the Infinite become the infinitesimal, the One, the Alone, become many, the Perfect imperfect ? To understand this "how" we must come back to ourselves, and find something in our own experience which can give us an idea of the process. Otherwise we may have the philosophical explanation but not the conviction. If we take an individual we find that though he appears to us a single person yet there are several personalities in him. He is a son in relation to his father, a brother, a husband, a member of a club, a friend to some one, a scientist or a shopkeeper in his profession. An individual thus is so many persons in one. Now when one personality is working in him all the other personalities seem to be non-existent;—when the scientist is working in his laboratory then it is the scientist in
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him that should absorb all his energies. Then only he can secure the maximum success. Now what happens to the other personalities in him when the scientist is in front ? It seems the other personalities are cut off from him. But this is not true. The total being is supporting the personality that is projected in front of consciousness for a particular effectivity. This limitation of concentration on a particular personality is necessary for effectivity. All the other personalities are put into background, they are not destroyed, they do not become unreal. In fact, they can all be called up to the surface, each according to the need. This selective projection of a personality for a particular purpose secures full efficiency. This exclusive concentration on one personality may render the individual practically "ignorant" of his other personalities,—for the time being at least. It is curious but true that the more exclusive the concentration, i.e. greater the ignorance of other personalities,—the greater is the effectivity.
In the case of this universe, the Omnipresent Reality projects infinite self-determinations in innumerable forms of the cosmos in each of which one aspect, one power, one quality, a necessary, effective variation of the common background, is embodied. The rest of the Omnipresent Reality is kept in the background to support the play of variation. In the embodiment of its self-determination there is an exclusive concentration. Thus a world of infinitely varied forms and relations comes into being. In the lower kingdoms where there is no mind, the form or the organism acts with a knowledge that seems to be self-existent. Only in man, the mental being, an infinite play of possibility of choice being given, human knowledge is subjected to an uncertainty and a wrong choice which makes possible the experience of Ignorance. This Ignorance really proceeds from an exclusive concentration of consciousness in the external being, the ego
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and its nature and an oblivion of the true divine Being, which one really is. When the human being turns from the ego to seek the soul then Ignorance begins to melt.
In the Upanishad the creation of this universe is said to be the result of "Tapas"—of energising or concentration. "Sa tapas taptvā idam sarvam usṛjata". The Supreme energised,—having gathered his consciousness in concentration,—created all this. What it this "Tapas"—this gathering of consciousness ? You can have an idea of it if you know what is "brooding". The bird hatches its egg—but this hatching is really "brooding". It is during this process of brooding that the heat of incubation is generated and the egg gives rise to the bird. That which was held in potentiality in the egg is released in to expression as "bird". This universe is called "Brahmāṇḍa"—"the Egg of the Infinite". It holds within itself all the infimte content of the Divine. It is the brooding concentration of the Supreme that releases the universe into manifestation.
It is when the individual or the organism so created loses contact with the Source that Ignorance comes into play. It is as if an actor playing a part so completely identifies himself with the character that he totally forgets his true self. That is effective ignorance. So long as he remembers bis true self which is all the time behind the actor, he can always go back to it. But if he forgets his true self he would not even think of going back to it. Then he would be really ignorant. Something of the same nature happens to the human being when he gets enclosed in the ego-consciousness. Then he loses contact with his true Self, the Divinity that is within and becomes ignorant.
The Omnipresent Reality has provided avenues of escape from the prison of ego-consciousness, from this Ignorance in man. There is a hidden passage in the heart leading to the holy Presence. That Divine spark is all the time there waiting
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to be sought, to be unveiled. This divine Presence in the heart of man is declared by all the religions and is confirmed by the experience of mystics all over the world. One has to find out the passage which leads to it in the "Cave of the heart", as the Upanishad says. It is thus possible to reach the Light even from and in the midst of the condition of Ignorance.
For what purpose could the Divine have undertaken this perilous adventure,—this loss of self-knowledge, consciousness and perfection? It could only be to bring into existence a world of multiple relationship in which the play of the divine Delight—when it succeeds in its aim—would create here, in the conditions of the Inconscient, a world of Harmony and Light.
An analogy, perhaps, may help us to grasp the idea. Imagine a diamond of infinite dimensions with innumerable facets of geometrical shapes. If we see only one facet we think and believe that the light belongs to it. But, in reality, no facet has any brilliance of its own. Each gets its light from the whole. It is the self-determination of the whole that gives reality to each individual facet. But this, again, does not reduce each facet to unreality. There is a truth behind each self-determination, each facet. So that on each point of its self-expression the total power of the Reality is present. It is this omnipotent power of the Supreme that Sri Aurobindo called "prodigal of her rich divinity", so full of her Divinity that She could afford to be prodigal.
Apart from the Power-aspect, if we could visualise the sea of Beauty—beauty to create which the universal Energy might have taken millions of years,—going to waste every second in this world we would be apalled. Look at the beauty of design and colour and the sweetness of fragrance of a flower which lasts only a few hours, beauty unseen by man, and you will understand Sri Aurobindo's line in Savitri, "Spiritual beauty ...squanders eternity on a beat of Time." The expression of
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eternal Delight is thrown in Time where its eternity seems to us to be squandered. Behind each form of Beauty this Eternity is present. That such beauty and delight from Eternity should play in Time perpetually is the greatest miracle one could conceive, a miracle that is possible only for the divine Omnipotence. It is the acceptance of the limitations of form i.e. of Ignorance—which renders this miracle possible. What greater miracle could there be than this, that in a world based on the Inconscient there should occur not only the phenomena of Life and Mind but that the mental being should aspire for and conceive it possible to attain the Divine and manifest Perfection in life on earth ? This great achievement, the achievement of Divine Perfection out of terms which are the very opposite of any perfection is the wager which the Supreme seems to have taken with Himself when he accepted Ignorance and descended into the Inconscient. It is the Supreme alone who can accomplish that miracle,—to the mind an impossibility, to the Omniscience and Omnipotence a legitimate aim.
The Origin of Ignorance is essentially in the sanction of the Supreme to create, or become, a Universe of multiple self-manifestation. Listen to what the Master says in Savitri:
"The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has called out of the Silence his mute Force
Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush
Has entered with his silence into space:
He has fashioned these countless persons of one self;
He lives in all, who lived in his Vast alone".
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"The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune,
One who is in us as our secret self,
Our mask of imperfection has assumed,
He has made this tenement of flesh his own,
His image in the human measure cast T
hat to his divine measure we may rise;"
"A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme;
His nature we must put on as he put ours;
We are sons of God and must be even as he:
His human portion, we must grow divine."
It is for working this great miracle that the Supreme has accepted Ignorance and limitation in an infinitesimal particle of Matter with a very poor mental consciousness. The whole ocean can thus be manifested in a drop of water—this miracle is performed by the Divine and under the goad of this very Ignorance man is going to achieve its highest marvel : the manysided multiplicity of Ignorance trying to rise to All-Knowledge will one day succeed in transforming Ignorance into Knowledge. Ignorance is the necessary intermediate stage on the way to a Divine Perfection,—it is not a permanent infliction without any significance or justification. To strive for that Divine Perfection should be the natural result of such an understanding of the Origin of the Ignorance.
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