|
CHAPTER
XI
Delight of Existence: The Problem
For who could live or breathe if
there were not this delight of existence as the ether in which we
dwell?
From Delight
all these beings are born, by Delight they exist and grow, to Delight
they return.
Taittiriya Upanishad.¹
BUT even
if we accept this pure Existence, this Brahman, this Sat as the
absolute beginning, end and continent of things and
in Brahman an inherent self-consciousness inseparable from its being
and throwing itself out as a force of movement of
consciousness which is creative of forces, forms and worlds, we have
yet no answer to the question “Why should Brahman,
perfect, absolute, infinite, needing nothing, desiring nothing, at all
throw out force of consciousness to create in itself these
worlds of forms?” For we have put aside the solution that it is
compelled by its own nature of Force to create, obliged by its
own potentiality of movement and formation to move into forms. It is
true that it has this potentiality, but it is not limited,
bound or compelled by it; it is free. If, then, being free to move or
remain eternally still, to throw itself into forms or retain
the potentiality of form in itself, it indulges its power of movement
and formation, it can be only for one reason, for delight.
This primary, ultimate and
eternal Existence, as seen by the Vedantins, is not merely bare
existence, or a conscious
existence whose consciousness is crude force or power; it is a
conscious existence the very term of whose being, the very
term of whose consciousness is bliss. As in absolute existence there
can be no nothingness, no night of inconscience, no
deficiency, that is to say, no failure of Force,—for if there were any
of these things, it would not be absolute,—so also there
can be no suffering, no negation of delight. Absoluteness of conscious
existence is illimitable bliss of conscious existence;
the two are only different phrases for the same thing. All
illimitableness, all infinity, all
¹
II. 7; III. 6.
absoluteness is pure delight. Even our relative
humanity has this experience that all dissatisfaction means a limit, an
obstacle,—satisfaction comes by realisation of something withheld, by
the surpassing of the limit, the overcoming of the
obstacle. This is because our original being is the absolute in full
possession of its infinite and illimitable self-consciousness
and self-power; a self-possession whose other name is self-delight. And
in proportion as the relative touches upon that
self-possession, it moves towards satisfaction, touches delight.
The self-delight of Brahman
is not limited, however, by the still and motionless possession of its
absolute self-being. Just
as its force of consciousness is capable of throwing itself into forms
infinitely and with an endless variation, so also its
self-delight is capable of movement, of variation, of revelling in that
infinite flux and mutability of itself represented by
numberless teeming universes. To loose forth and enjoy this infinite
movement and variation of its self-delight is the object of
its extensive or creative play of Force.
In other words, that which
has thrown itself out into forms is a triune
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sachchidananda,
whose consciousness is in its nature a creative or rather a
self-expressive Force capable of infinite variation in phenomenon
and form of its self-conscious being and endlessly enjoying the delight
of that variation. It follows that all things that exist are
what they are as terms of that existence, terms of that conscious
force, terms of that delight of being. Just as we find all
things to be mutable forms of one immutable being, finite results of
one infinite force, so we shall find that all things are
variable self-expression of one invariable and all-embracing delight of
self-existence. In everything that is, dwells the
conscious force and it exists and is what it is by virtue of that
conscious force; so also in everything that is there is the
delight of existence and it exists and is what it is by virtue of that
delight.
This ancient Vedantic
theory of cosmic origin is immediately confronted in the human mind by
two powerful
contradictions, the emotional and sensational consciousness of pain and
the ethical problem of evil. For if the world be an
expression of Sachchidananda, not only of existence that is conscious-
force,—for that can easily be admitted,—but of
existence that is also infinite self-delight, how are we to account for
the
universal presence of grief, of suffering, of pain? For this world
appears to us rather as a world of suffering than as a world
of the delight of existence. Certainly, that view of the world is an
exaggeration, an error of perspective. If we regard it
dispassionately and with a sole view to accurate and unemotional
appreciation, we shall find that the sum of the pleasure of
existence far exceeds the sum of the pain of existence,—appearances and
individual cases to the contrary
notwithstanding,—and that the active or passive, surface or underlying
pleasure of existence is the normal state of nature,
pain a contrary occurrence temporarily suspending or overlaying that
normal state. But for that very reason the lesser sum
of pain affects us more intensely and often looms larger than the
greater sum of pleasure; precisely because the latter is
normal, we do not treasure it, hardly even observe it unless it
intensifies into some acuter form of itself, into a wave of
happiness, a crest of joy or ecstasy. It is these things that we call
delight and seek and the normal satisfaction of existence
which is always there regardless of event and particular cause or
object, affects us as something neutral which is neither
pleasure nor pain. It is there, a great practical fact, for without it
there would not be the universal and overpowering instinct
of self-preservation, but it is not what we seek and therefore we do
not enter it into our balance of emotional and sensational
profit and loss. In that balance we enter only positive pleasures on
one side and discomfort and pain on the other; pain
affects us more intensely because it is abnormal to our being, contrary
to our natural tendency and is experienced as an
outrage on our existence, an offence and external attack on what we are
and seek to be.
Nevertheless the
abnormality of pain or its greater or lesser sum does not affect the
philosophical issue; greater or less,
its mere presence constitutes the whole problem. All being
Sachchidananda, how can pain and suffering at all exist? This,
the real problem, is often farther confused by a false issue starting
from the idea of a personal extracosmic God and a
partial issue, the ethical difficulty.
Sachchidananda, it may be
reasoned, is God, is a conscious Being who is the author of existence;
how then can God
have created a world in which He inflicts suffering on His creatures,
sanctions pain, permits evil? God being All-Good, who
created pain and evil? If we say that pain is a trial and an ordeal, we
do not solve the moral problem, we arrive at an
immoral or non-moral God,—an excellent world-mechanist perhaps, a
cunning psychologist, but not a God of Good and of
Love whom we can worship, only a God of Might to whose law we must
submit or whose caprice we may hope to
propitiate. For one who invents torture as a means of test or ordeal,
stands convicted either of deliberate cruelty or of moral
insensibility and, if a moral being at all, is inferior to the highest
instinct of his own creatures. And if to escape this moral
difficulty, we say that pain is an inevitable result and natural
punishment of moral evil,—an explanation which will not even
square with the facts of life unless we admit the theory of Karma and
rebirth by which the soul suffers now for antenatal
sins in other bodies,—we still do not escape the very root of the
ethical problem,—who created or why or whence was
created that moral evil which entails the punishment of pain and
suffering? And seeing that moral evil is in reality a form of
mental disease or ignorance, who or what created this law or inevitable
connection which punishes a mental disease or act
of ignorance by a recoil so terrible, by tortures often so extreme and
monstrous? The inexorable law of Karma is
irreconcilable with a supreme moral and personal Deity, and therefore
the clear logic of Buddha denied the existence of any
free and all-governing personal God; all personality he declared to be
a creation of ignorance and subject to Karma.
In truth, the difficulty thus sharply presented arises only if we assume the existence of an extracosmic personal God,
not Himself the universe, one who has created good and evil, pain and suffering for His creatures, but Himself stands above
and unaffected by them, watching, ruling, doing His will with a suffering and struggling world or, if not doing His will, if
allowing the world to be driven by an inexorable law, unhelped by Him or inefficiently helped, then not God, not omnipotent,
not all-good and all-loving. On no theory of an extracosmic moral God, can evil
Page-94
and
suffering be explained,—the creation of evil and suffering,—except by
an unsatisfactory subterfuge which avoids the
question at issue instead of answering it or a plain or implied
Manicheanism which practically annuls the Godhead in
attempting to justify its ways or excuse its works. But such a God is
not the Vedantic Sachchidananda. Sachchidananda of
the Vedanta is one existence without a second; all that is, is He. If
then evil and suffering exist, it is He that bears the evil
and suffering in the creature in whom He has embodied Himself. The
problem then changes entirely. The question is no
longer how came God to create for His creatures a suffering and evil of
which He is Himself incapable and therefore
immune, but how came the sole and infinite
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss to admit into itself that which is not
bliss, that
which seems to be its positive negation.
Half of the moral difficulty—that difficulty in its one unanswerable
form disappears. It no longer arises, can no longer
be put. Cruelty to others, I remaining immune or even participating in
their sufferings by subsequent repentance or belated
pity, is one thing; self-infliction of suffering, I being the sole
existence, is quite another. Still the ethical difficulty may be
brought back in a modified form; All-Delight being necessarily all-good
and all-love, how can evil and suffering exist in Sachchidananda, since
he is not mechanical existence, but free and conscious being, free to
condemn and reject evil and
suffering? We have to recognise that the issue so stated is also a
false issue because it applies the terms of a partial
statement as if they were applicable to the whole. For the ideas of
good and of love which we thus bring into the concept of
the All-Delight spring from a dualistic and divisional conception of
things; they are based entirely on the relations between
creature and creature, yet we persist in applying them to a problem
which starts, on the contrary, from the assumption of
One who is all. We have to see first how the problem appears or how it
can be solved in its original purity, on the basis of
unity in difference; only then can we safely deal with its parts and
its developments, such as the relations between creature
and creature on the basis of division and duality.
We have to recognise, if we thus view the whole, not limiting ourselves
to the human difficulty and the human
standpoint, that we do not live in an ethical world. The attempt of
human thought to force an ethical meaning into the whole
of Nature is one of those acts of wilful and obstinate self-confusion,
one of those pathetic attempts of the human being to
read himself, his limited habitual human self into all things and judge
them from the standpoint he has personally evolved,
which most effectively prevent him from arriving at real knowledge and
complete sight. Material Nature is not ethical; the
law which governs it is a co-ordination of fixed habits which take no
cognisance of good and evil, but only of force that
creates, force that arranges and preserves, force that disturbs and
destroys impartially, non-ethically, according to the secret
Will in it, according to the mute satisfaction of that Will in its own
self-formations and self-dissolutions. Animal or vital
Nature is also non-ethical, although as it progresses it manifests the
crude material out of which the higher animal evolves
the ethical impulse. We do not blame the tiger because it slays and
devours its prey any more than we blame the storm
because it destroys or the fire because it tortures and kills; neither
does the conscious-force in the storm, the fire or the tiger
blame or condemn itself. Blame and condemnation, or rather self-blame
and self-condemnation, are the beginning of true
ethics. When we blame others without applying the same law to
ourselves, we are not speaking with a true ethical judgment,
but only applying the language ethics has evolved for us to an
emotional impulse of recoil from or dislike of that which
displeases or hurts us.
This recoil or dislike is
the primary origin of ethics, but is not itself ethical. The fear of
the deer for the tiger, the rage of
the strong creature against its assailant is a vital recoil of the
individual delight of existence from that which threatens it. In
the progress of the mentality it refines itself into repugnance,
dislike, disapproval. Disapproval of that which threatens and
hurts us, approval of that which flatters and satisfies refine into the
conception of good and evil to oneself, to the community,
to others than ourselves, to other communities than ours, and finally
into the general approval of good, the general
disapproval of evil.
But, throughout, the fundamental nature of the thing remains the same. Man desires self-expression, self-development, in
other words, the progressing play in himself of the conscious-force of existence; that is his fundamental delight. Whatever
hurts that self-expression, self-development, satisfaction of his progressing self, is for him evil; whatever helps, confirms,
raises, aggrandises, ennobles it is his good. Only, his conception of the self-development changes, becomes higher and
wider, begins to exceed his limited personality, to embrace others, to embrace all in its scope.
In other words, ethics is a stage in evolution. That which is common to
all stages is the urge of Sachchidananda towards
self-expression. This urge is at first non-ethical, then infra-ethical
in the animal, then in the intelligent animal even anti-ethical
for it permits us to approve hurt done to others which we disapprove
when done to ourselves. In this respect man even now
is only half-ethical. And just as all below us is infra-ethical, so
there may be that above us whither we shall eventually arrive,
which is supra-ethical, has no need of ethics. The ethical impulse and
attitude, so all-important to humanity, is a means by
which it struggles out of the lower harmony and universality based upon
inconscience and broken up by Life into individual
discords towards a higher harmony and universality based upon conscient
oneness with all existences. Arriving at that goal,
this means will no longer be necessary or even possible, since the
qualities and oppositions on which it depends will naturally
dissolve and disappear in the final reconciliation.
If, then, the ethical
standpoint applies only to a temporary though all-important passage from one
universality to another, we cannot apply it to the total solution of the problem
of the universe, but can only admit it as one element in that solution. To do
otherwise is to run into the peril of falsifying all the facts of the universe,
all the meaning of the evolution behind and beyond us in order to suit a
temporary outlook and a half-evolved view of the utility of things. The world
has three layers, infra-ethical, ethical and supra-ethical. We have to find that
which is common to all; for only so can we resolve the problem.
That which is common to all is, we have seen, the
satisfac-
Page
-97
tion of conscious-force of existence developing
itself into forms and seeking in that development its delight. From
that satisfaction or delight of self-existence it evidently began; for
it is that which is normal to it, to which it clings, which it
makes its base; but it seeks new forms of itself and in the passage to
higher forms there intervenes the phenomenon of pain
and suffering which seems to contradict the fundamental nature of its
being. This and this alone is the root-problem.
How shall we solve it?
Shall we say that Sachchidananda is not the beginning and end of
things, but the beginning and
end is Nihil, an impartial void, itself nothing but containing all
potentialities of existence or non-existence, consciousness or
non-consciousness, delight or undelight? We may accept this answer if
we choose; but although we seek thereby to explain
everything, we have really explained nothing, we have only included
everything. A Nothing which is full of all potentialities is
the most complete opposition of terms and things possible and we have
therefore only explained a minor contradiction by a
major, by driving the self-contradiction of things to their maximum.
Nihil is the void, where there can be no potentialities; an
impartial indeterminate of all potentialities is Chaos, and all that we
have done is to put Chaos into the Void without
explaining how it got there. Let us return, then, to our original
conception of Sachchidananda and see whether on that
foundation a completer solution is not possible.
We must first make it clear
to ourselves that just as when we speak of universal consciousness we
mean something
different from, more essential and wider than the waking mental
consciousness of the human being, so also when we speak
of universal delight of existence we mean something different from,
more essential and wider than the ordinary emotional
and sensational pleasure of the individual human creature. Pleasure,
joy and delight, as man uses the words, are limited and
occasional movements which depend on certain habitual causes and
emerge, like their opposites pain and grief which are
equally limited and occasional movements, from a background other than
themselves. Delight of being is universal, illimitable
and self-existent, not dependent on particular causes, the background
of all
back-
grounds, from which pleasure, pain and other more neutral experiences emerge. When delight of being seeks to realise
itself as delight of becoming, it moves in the movement of force and itself takes different forms of movement of which
pleasure and pain are positive and negative currents. Subconscient in Matter, superconscient beyond Mind this delight seeks
in Mind and Life to realise itself by emergence in the becoming, in the increasing self-consciousness of the movement. Its
first phenomena are dual and impure, move between the poles of pleasure and pain, but it aims at its self-revelation in the
purity of a supreme delight of being which is self-existent and independent of objects and causes. Just as Sachchidananda
moves towards the realisation of the universal existence in the individual and of the form-exceeding consciousness in the
form of body and mind, so it moves towards the realisation of universal,
self-existent and objectless delight in the flux of particular experiences and
objects. Those objects we now seek as stimulating causes of a transient pleasure
and satisfaction; free, possessed of self, we shall not seek but shall possess
them as reflectors rather than causes of a delight which eternally exists.
In the egoistic human being, the
mental person emergent out of the dim shell of matter, delight of existence is
neutral, semi-latent, still in the shadow of the subconscious, hardly more than
a concealed soil of plenty covered by desire with a luxuriant growth of
poisonous weeds and hardly less poisonous flowers, the pains and pleasures of
our egoistic existence. When the divine conscious-force working secretly in us
has devoured these growths of desire, when in the image of the Rig Veda the fire
of God has burnt up the shoots of earth, that which is concealed at the roots of
these pains and pleasures, their cause and secret being, the sap of delight in
them, will emerge in new forms not of desire, but of self-existent satisfaction
which will replace mortal pleasure by the Immortal's ecstasy. And this
transformation is possible because these growths of sensation and emotion are in
their essential being, the pains no less than the pleasures, that delight of
existence which they seek but fail to reveal,—fail because of division,
ignorance of self and egoism.
HOME
|