|
CHAPTER XX
Death, Desire and Incapacity
In the beginning all was covered by Hunger that is Death; that
made for itself Mind so that it might attain to possession of self.
rihadaranyaka
Upanishad.¹
This
is the Power discovered by the mortal that has the multitude
of its desires so that it may sustain all things; it takes the taste
of all foods and builds a house for the being.
Rig Veda.²
In our
last chapter we have considered Life from the point of view of the material
existence and the appearance and working of the vital principle in Matter and we
have reasoned from the data which this evolutionary terrestrial existence
offers. But it is evident that wherever it may appear and however it may work,
under whatsoever conditions, the general principle must be everywhere the same.
Life is universal Force working so as to create, energise, maintain and modify,
even to the extent of dissolving and reconstructing, substantial forms with
mutual play and interchange of an overtly or secretly conscious energy as its
fundamental character. In the material world we inhabit Mind is involved and
subconscious in Life, just as Supermind is involved and subconscious in Mind,
and this Life instinct with an involved subconscious Mind is again itself
involved in Matter. Therefore Matter is here the basis and the apparent
beginning; in the language of the Upanishads, Prithivi, the Earth-principle, is
our foundation. The material universe starts from the formal atom surcharged
with energy, instinct with the unformed stuff of a subconscious desire, will,
intelligence. Out of this Matter apparent Life manifests and it delivers out of
itself by means of the living body the Mind it contains imprisoned within it;
Mind also has still to deliver out of itself the Supermind concealed in its
workings. But we can conceive a world otherwise constituted in which Mind is not
involved at the start but consciously uses its innate energy to create original
forms of
¹ I.2.1.
²
V.7.6.
Page-188
substance and is not, as here, only subconscious in the beginning. Still though
the working of such a world would be quite different from ours, the intermediate
vehicle of operation of that energy would always be Life. The thing itself would
be the same, even if the process were entirely reversed.
But then it appears immediately that as Mind is only a final operation of
Supermind, so Life is only a final operation of the Consciousness-Force of which
Real-Idea is the determinative form and creative agent. Consciousness that is
Force is the nature of Being and this conscious Being manifested as a creative
Knowledge-Will is the Real-Idea or Supermind. The supramental Knowledge-Will is
Consciousness-Force rendered operative for the creation of forms of united being
in an ordered harmony to which we give the name of world or universe; so also
Mind and Life are the same Consciousness-Force, the same Knowledge-Will, but
operating for the maintenance of distinctly individual forms in a sort of
demarcation, opposition and interchange in which the soul in each form of being
works out its own mind and life as if they were separate from the others, though
in fact they are never separate but are the play of the one Soul, Mind, Life in
different forms of its single reality. In other words, as Mind is the final
individualising operation of the all-comprehending and all-apprehending
Supermind, the process by which its consciousness works individualised in each
form from the standpoint proper to it and with the cosmic relations which
proceed from that standpoint, so Life is the final operation by which the Force
of Conscious-Being acting through the all-possessing and all-creative Will of
the universal Supermind maintains and energises, constitutes and reconstitutes
individual forms and acts in them as the basis of all the activities of the soul
thus embodied. Life is the energy of the Divine continually generating itself in
forms as in a dynamo and not only playing with the outgoing battery of its
shocks on surrounding forms of things but receiving itself the incoming shocks
of all life around as they pour in upon and penetrate the form from outside,
from the environing universe.
In this view Life appears as a form of energy of consciousness intermediary and
appropriate to the action of Mind on Matter;
Page-189
in
a sense, it may be said to be an energy aspect of Mind when it creates and
relates itself no longer to ideas, but to motions of force and to forms of
substance.
But it must immediately be added that just as Mind is not a separate entity, but
has all Supermind behind it and it is Supermind that creates with Mind only as
its final individualising operation, so Life also is not a separate entity or
movement, but has all Conscious-Force behind it in every one of its workings and
it is that Conscious-Force alone which exists and acts in created things. Life
is only its final operation intermediary between Mind and Body. All that we say
of Life must therefore be subject to the qualifications arising from this
dependence. We do not really know Life whether in its nature or its process
unless and until we are aware and grow conscious of that Conscious-Force working
in it of which it is only the external aspect and instrumentation. Then only can
we perceive and execute with knowledge, as individual soul-forms and mental and
bodily instruments of the Divine, the will of God in Life; then only can Life
and Mind proceed in paths and movements of an ever-increasing straightness of
the truth in ourselves and things by a constant diminishing of the crooked
perversions of the Ignorance. Just as Mind has to unite itself consciously with
the Supermind from which it is separated by the action of Avidya, so Life has to
become aware of the Conscious-Force which operates in it for ends and with a
meaning of which the life in us, because it is absorbed in the mere process of
living as our mind is absorbed in the mere process of mentalising life and
matter, is unconscious in its darkened action so that it serves them blindly and
ignorantly and not, as it must and will in its liberation and fulfilment,
luminously or with a self-fulfilling knowledge, power and bliss.
In fact, our Life, because it is subservient to the darkened and dividing
operation of Mind, is itself darkened and divided and undergoes all that
subjection to death, limitation, weakness, suffering, ignorant functioning of
which the bound and limited creature-Mind is the parent and cause. The original
source of the perversion was, we have seen, the self-limitation of the
individual soul bound to self-ignorance because it regards itself by an
exclusive concentration as a separate self-existent
Page-190
individuality and regards all cosmic action only as it presents itself to its
own individual consciousness, knowledge, will, force, enjoyment and limited
being instead of seeing itself as a conscious form of the One and embracing all
consciousness, all knowledge, all will, all force, all enjoyment and all being
as one with its own. The universal life in us, obeying this direction of the
soul imprisoned in mind, itself becomes imprisoned in an individual action. It
exists and acts as a separate life with a limited insufficient capacity
undergoing and not freely embracing the shock and pressure of all the cosmic
life around it. Thrown into the constant cosmic interchange of Force in the
universe as a poor, limited, individual existence, Life at first helplessly
suffers and obeys the giant interplay with only a mechanical reaction upon all
that attacks, devours, enjoys, uses, drives it. But as consciousness develops,
as the light of its own being emerges from the inert darkness of the
involutionary sleep, the individual existence becomes dimly aware of the power
in it and seeks first nervously and then mentally to master, use and enjoy the
play. This awakening to the Power in it is the gradual awakening to self. For
Life is Force and Force is Power and Power is Will and Will is the working of
the Master-Consciousness. Life in the individual becomes more and more aware in
its depths that it too is the Will-Force of Sachchidananda which is master of
the universe and it aspires itself to be individually master of its own world.
To realise its own power and to master as well as to know its world is therefore
the increasing impulse of all individual life; that impulse is an essential
feature of the growing self-manifestation of the Divine in cosmic existence.
But though Life is Power and the growth of individual life means the growth of
the individual Power, still the mere fact of its being a divided individualised
life and force prevents it from really becoming master of its world. For that
would mean to be master of the All-Force, and it is impossible for a divided and
individualised consciousness with a divided, individualised and therefore
limited power and will to be master of the All-Force; only the All-Will can be
that and the individual only, if at all, by becoming again one with the All-Will
and therefore with the All-Force. Otherwise, the individual life in the
Page-191
individual form must be always subject to the three badges of its limitation,
Death, Desire and Incapacity.
Death is imposed on the individual life both by the conditions of its own
existence and by its relations to the All-Force which manifests itself in the
universe. For the individual life is a particular play of energy specialised to
constitute, maintain, energise and finally to dissolve when its utility is over,
one of the myriad forms which all serve, each in its own place, time and scope,
the whole play of the universe. The energy of life in the body has to support
the attack of the energies external to it in the universe; it has to draw them
in and feed upon them and is itself being constantly devoured by them. All
Matter according to the Upanishad is food, and this is the formula of the
material world that “the eater eating is himself eaten”. The life organised in
the body is constantly exposed to the possibility of being broken up by the
attack of the life external to it or, its devouring capacity being insufficient
or not properly served or there being no right balance between the capacity of
devouring and the capacity or necessity of providing food for the life outside,
it is unable to protect itself and is devoured or is unable to renew itself and
therefore wasted away or broken; it has to go through the process of death for a
new construction or renewal.
Not only so but, again in the language of the Upanishad, the life-force is the
food of the body and the body the food of the life-force; in other words, the
life-energy in us both supplies the material by which the form is built up and
constantly maintained and renewed and is at the same time constantly using up
the substantial form of itself which it thus creates and keeps in existence. If
the balance between these two operations is imperfect or is disturbed or if the
ordered play of the different currents of life-force is thrown out of gear, then
disease and decay intervene and commence the process of disintegration. And the
very struggle for conscious mastery and even the growth of mind make the
maintenance of the life more difficult. For there is an increasing demand of the
life-energy on the form, a demand which is in excess of the original system of
supply and disturbs the original balance of supply and demand and, before a new
balance can be established, many disorders are
Page-192
introduced inimical to the harmony and to the length of maintenance of the life;
in addition the attempt at mastery creates always a corresponding reaction in
the environment which is full of forces that also desire fulfilment and are
therefore intolerant of, revolt against and attack the existence which seeks to
master them. There too a balance is disturbed, a more intense struggle is
generated; however strong the mastering life, unless either it is unlimited or
else succeeds in establishing a new harmony with its environment, it cannot
always resist and triumph but must one day be overcome and disintegrated.
But, apart from all these necessities, there is the one fundamental necessity of
the nature and object of embodied life itself, which is to seek infinite
experience on a finite basis, and since the form, the basis by its very
organisation limits the possibility of experience, this can only be done by
dissolving it and seeking new forms. For the soul, having once limited itself by
concentrating on the moment and the field, is driven to seek its infinity again
by the principle of succession, by adding moment to moment and thus storing up a
Time-experience which it calls its past; in that Time it moves through
successive fields, successive experiences or lives, successive accumulations of
knowledge, capacity, enjoyment, and all this it holds in subconscious or
superconscious memory as its fund of past acquisition in Time. To this process
change of form is essential, and for the soul involved in individual body change
of form means dissolution of the body in subjection to the law and compulsion of
the All-life in the material universe, to its law of supply of the material of
form and demand on the material, to its principle of constant intershock and the
struggle of the embodied life to exist in a world of mutual devouring. And this
is the law of Death.
This then is the necessity and justification of Death, not as a denial of Life,
but as a process of Life; death is necessary because eternal change of form is
the sole immortality to which the finite living substance can aspire and eternal
change of experience the sole infinity to which the finite mind involved in
living body can attain. This change of form cannot be allowed to remain merely a
constant renewal of the same form-type such as constitutes our bodily life
between birth and death; for unless
Page-193
the form-type is changed and the experiencing mind is thrown into new forms in
new circumstances of time, place and environment, the necessary variation of
experience which the very nature of existence in Time and Space demands, cannot
be effectuated. And it is only the process of Death by dissolution and by the
devouring of life by Life, it is only the absence of freedom, the compulsion,
the struggle, the pain, the subjection to something that appears to be Not-Self
which makes this necessary and salutary change appear terrible and undesirable
to our mortal mentality. It is the sense of being devoured, broken up, destroyed
or forced away which is the sting of Death and which even the belief in personal
survival of death cannot wholly abrogate.
But this process is a necessity of that mutual devouring which we see to be the
initial law of Life in Matter. Life, says the Upanishad, is Hunger which is
Death, and by this Hunger which is Death, aśanāyāmrtyuh,
the material world has been created. For Life here assumes as its mould material
substance, and material substance is Being infinitely divided and seeking
infinitely to aggregate itself; between these two impulses of infinite division
and infinite aggregation the material existence of the universe is constituted.
The attempt of the individual, the living atom, to maintain and aggrandise
itself is the whole sense of Desire; a physical, vital, moral, mental increase
by a more and more all-embracing experience, a more and more all-embracing
possession, absorption, assimilation, enjoyment is the inevitable, fundamental,
ineradicable impulse of Existence, once divided and individualised, yet ever
secretly conscious of its all-embracing, all-possessing infinity. The impulse to
realise that secret consciousness is the spur of the cosmic Divine, the lust of
the embodied Self within every individual creature; and it is inevitable, just,
salutary that it should seek to realise it first in the terms of life by an
increasing growth and expansion. In the physical world this can only be done by
feeding on the environment, by aggrandising oneself through the absorption of
others or of what is possessed by others; and this necessity is the universal
justification of Hunger in all its forms. Still what devours must also be
devoured; for the law of interchange, of action and reaction, of limited
capacity and therefore of a final
Page-194
exhaustion and succumbing governs all life in the physical world.
In the conscious mind that which was still only a vital hunger in subconscious
life, transforms itself into higher forms; hunger in the vital parts becomes
craving of Desire in the mentalised life, straining of Will in the intellectual
or thinking life. This movement of desire must and ought to continue until the
individual has grown sufficiently so that he can now at last become master of
himself and by increasing union with the Infinite possessor of this universe.
Desire is the lever by which the divine Life-principle effects its end of
self-affirmation in the universe and the attempt to extinguish it in the
interests of inertia is a denial of the divine Life-principle, a Will-not-to-be
which is necessarily ignorance; for one cannot cease to be individually except
by being infinitely. Desire too can only cease rightly by becoming the desire of
the infinite and satisfying itself with a supernal fulfilment and an infinite
satisfaction in the all-possessing bliss of the Infinite. Meanwhile it has to
progress from the type of a mutually devouring hunger to the type of a mutual
giving, of an increasingly joyous sacrifice of interchange;—the individual gives
himself to other individuals and receives them back in exchange; the lower gives
itself to the higher and the higher to the lower so that they may be fulfilled
in each other; the human gives itself to the Divine and the Divine to the human;
the All in the individual gives itself to the All in the universe and receives
its realised universality as a divine recompense. Thus the law of Hunger must
give place progressively to the law of Love, the law of Division to the law of
Unity, the law of Death to the law of Immortality. Such is the necessity, such
the justification, such the culmination and self-fulfilment of the Desire that
is at work in the universe.
As this mask of Death which Life assumes results from the movement of the finite
seeking to affirm its immortality, so Desire is the impulse of the Force of
Being individualised in Life to affirm progressively in the terms of succession
in Time and of self-extension in Space, in the framework of the finite, its
infinite Bliss, the Ananda of Sachchidananda. The mask of Desire which that
impulse assumes comes directly from the third phenomenon of Life, its law of
incapacity. Life is an infinite Force working
Page-195
in
the terms of the finite; inevitably, throughout its overt individualised action
in the finite its omnipotence must appear and act as a limited capacity and a
partial impotence, although behind every act of the individual, however weak,
however futile, however stumbling, there must be the whole superconscious and
subconscious presence of infinite omnipotent Force; without that presence behind
it no least single movement in the cosmos can happen; into its sum of universal
action each single act and movement falls by the fiat of the omnipotent
omniscience which works as the Supermind inherent in things. But the
individualised life-force is to its own consciousness limited and full of
incapacity; for it has to work not only against the mass of other environing
individualised life-forces, but also subject to control and denial by the
infinite Life itself with whose total will and trend its own will and trend may
not immediately agree. Therefore limitation of force, phenomenon of incapacity
is the third of the three characteristics of individualised and divided Life. On
the other hand, the impulse of self-enlargement and all-possession remains and
it does not and is not meant to measure or limit itself by the limit of its
present force or capacity. Hence from the gulf between the impulse to possess
and the force of possession desire arises; for if there were no such
discrepancy, if the force could always take possession of its object, always
attain securely its end, desire would not come into existence but only a calm
and self-possessed Will without craving such as is the Will of the Divine.
If the individualised force were the energy of a mind free from ignorance, no
such limitation, no such necessity of desire would intervene. For a mind not
separated from Supermind, a mind of divine knowledge would know the intention,
scope and inevitable result of its every act and would not crave or struggle but
put forth an assured force self-limited to the immediate object in view. It
would, even in stretching beyond the present, even in undertaking movements not
intended to succeed immediately, yet not be subject to desire or limitation. For
the failures also of the Divine are acts of its omniscient omnipotence which
knows the right time and circumstance for the incipience, the vicissitudes, the
immediate and the final results of all its cosmic
Page-196
undertakings. The mind of knowledge, being in unison with the divine Supermind,
would participate in this omniscience and this all-determining power. But, as we
have seen, individualised life-force here is an energy of individualising and
ignorant Mind, Mind that has fallen from the knowledge of its own Supermind.
Therefore incapacity is necessary to its relations in Life and inevitable in the
nature of things; for the practical omnipotence of an ignorant force even in a
limited sphere is unthinkable, since in that sphere such a force would set
itself against the working of the divine and omniscient omnipotence and unfix
the fixed purpose of things,—an impossible cosmic situation. The struggle of
limited forces increasing their capacity by that struggle under the driving
impetus of instinctive or conscious desire is therefore the first law of Life.
As with desire, so with this strife; it must rise into a mutually helpful trial
of strength, a conscious wrestling of brother forces in which the victor and
vanquished or rather that which influences by action from above and that which
influences by retort of action from below must equally gain and increase. And
this again has eventually to become the happy shock of divine interchange, the
strenuous clasp of Love replacing the convulsive clasp of strife. Still, strife
is the necessary and salutary beginning. Death, Desire and Strife are the
trinity of divided living, the triple mask of the divine Life-principle in its
first essay of cosmic self-affirmation.
Page-197
HOME
|