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CHAPTER
XXII
The Problem of Life
This it is that is called the universal Life.
Taittiriya Upanishad.¹
The Lord is seated in the heart of all beings turning all beings
mounted upon a machine by his Maya.
Gita.²
He who knows the Truth, the Knowledge, the Infinity that is
Brahman shall enjoy with the all-wise Brahman all objects
of
desire.
Taittiriya Upanishad.³
LIFE is, we have seen, the putting forth, under certain cosmic circumstances, of a Conscious-Force which is in its own
nature infinite, absolute, untrammelled, inalienably possessed of its own unity and bliss, the Conscious-Force of
Sachchidananda. The central circumstance of this cosmic process, in so far as it differs in its appearances from the purity of
the infinite Existence and the self-possession of the undivided Energy, is the dividing faculty of the Mind obscured by
ignorance. There results from this divided action of an undivided Force the apparition of dualities, oppositions, seeming
denials of the nature of Sachchidananda which exist as an abiding reality for the mind, but only as a phenomenon
misrepresenting a manifold Reality for the divine cosmic Consciousness concealed behind the veil of mind. Hence the world
takes on the appearance of a clash of opposing truths each seeking to fulfil itself, each having the right to fulfilment,
and therefore of a mass of problems and mysteries which have to be solved
because behind all this confusion there is the hidden Truth and unity pressing
for the solution and by the solution for its own unveiled manifestation in the
world.
This solution has to be sought by
the mind, but not by the mind alone; it has to be a solution in Life, in act of
being as well as in consciousness of being. Consciousness as Force has created
the world-movement and its problems; consciousness as Force has to solve the
problems it has created and carry the world-
¹
II. 3. ² XVIII. 61.
³II. 1.
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movement to the inevitable fulfilment of its secret
sense and evolving Truth. But this Life has taken successively three
appearances. The first is material,—a submerged consciousness is
concealed in its own superficial expressive action and
representative forms of force; for the consciousness itself disappears
from view in the act and is lost in the form. The
second is vital,—an emerging consciousness is half-apparent as power of
life and process of the growth, activity and decay
of form, it is half-delivered out of its original imprisonment, it has
become vibrant in power, as vital craving and satisfaction
or repulsion, but at first not at all and then only imperfectly vibrant
in light as knowledge of its own self-existence and its
environment. The third is mental,—an emerged consciousness reflects
fact of life as mental sense and responsive
perception and idea while as new idea it tries to become fact of life,
modifies the internal and attempts to modify
conformably the external existence of the being. Here, in mind,
consciousness is delivered out of its imprisonment in the act
and form of its own force; but it is not yet master of the act and form
because it has emerged as an individual consciousness
and is aware therefore only of a fragmentary movement of its own total
activities.
The whole crux and difficulty of human life lies here. Man is this
mental being, this mental consciousness working as
mental force, aware in a way of the universal force and life of which
he is part but, because he has not knowledge of its
universality or even of the totality of his own being, unable to deal
either with life in general or with his own life in a really
effective and victorious movement of mastery. He seeks to know Matter
in order to be master of the material environment,
to know Life in order to be master of the vital existence, to know Mind
in order to be master of the great obscure movement
of mentality in which he is not only a jet of light of
self-consciousness like the animal, but also more and more a flame of
growing knowledge. Thus he seeks to know himself in order to be master
of himself, to know the world in order to be
master of the world. This is the urge of Existence in him, the
necessity of the Consciousness he is, the impulsion of the
Force that is his life, the secret will of Sachchidananda appearing as
the individual in a world in which He
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expresses and yet seems to deny Himself. To find the conditions under which this inner impulsion is satisfied is the problem
man must strive always to resolve and to that he is compelled by the very nature of his own existence and by the Deity
seated within him; and until the problem is solved, the impulse satisfied, the human race cannot rest from its labour. Either
man must fulfil himself by satisfying the Divine within him or he must produce out of himself a new and greater being who
will be more capable of satisfying it. He must either himself become a divine humanity or give place to Superman.
This results from the very
logic of things because, the mental consciousness of man not being the
completely illumined
consciousness entirely emerged out of the obscuration of Matter but
only a progressive term in the great emergence, the line
of evolutionary creation in which he has appeared cannot stop where he
now is, but must go either beyond its present term
in him or else beyond him if he himself has not the force to go
forward. Mental idea trying to become fact of life must pass
on till it becomes the whole Truth of existence delivering itself out
of its successive wrappings, revealed and progressively
fulfilled in light of consciousness and joyously fulfilled in power;
for in and through these two terms of power and light
Existence manifests itself, because existence is in its nature
Consciousness and Force: but the third term in which these, its
two constituents, meet, become one and are ultimately fulfilled, is
satisfied Delight of self-existence. For an evolving life like
ours this inevitable culmination must necessarily mean the finding of
the self that was contained in the seed of its own birth
and, with that self-finding, the complete working out of the
potentialities deposited in the movement of Conscious-Force
from which this life took its rise. The potentiality thus contained in
our human existence is Sachchidananda realising Himself
in a certain harmony and unification of the individual life and the
universal so that mankind shall express in a common
consciousness, common movement of power, common delight the
transcendent Something which has cast itself into this
form of things.
All
life depends for its nature on the fundamental poise of its own
constituting consciousness; for as the Consciousness
is,
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so will the Force be. Where the Consciousness is
infinite, one, transcendent of its acts and forms even while embracing
and
informing, organising and executing them, as is the consciousness of
Sachchidananda, so will be the Force, infinite in its
scope, one in its works, transcendent in its power and self-knowledge.
Where the Consciousness is like that of material
Nature, submerged, self-oblivious, driving along in the drift of its
own Force without seeming to know it, even though by the
very nature of the eternal relation between the two terms it really
determines the drift which drives it, so will be the Force: it
will be a monstrous movement of the Inert and Inconscient, unaware of
what it contains, seeming mechanically to fulfil itself
by a sort of inexorable accident, an inevitably happy chance, even
while all the while it really obeys faultlessly the law of the
Right and Truth fixed for it by the will of the supernal
Conscious-Being concealed within its movement. Where the
Consciousness is divided in itself, as in Mind, limiting itself in
various centres, setting each to fulfil itself without knowledge
of what is in other centres and of its relation to others, aware of
things and forces in their apparent division and opposition to
each other but not in their real unity, such will be the Force: it will
be a life like that we are and see around us; it will be a
clash and intertwining of individual lives seeking each its own
fulfilment without knowing its relation to others, a conflict and
difficult accommodation of divided and opposing or differing forces
and, in the mentality, a mixing, a shock and wrestle and
insecure combination of divided and opposing or divergent ideas which
cannot arrive at the knowledge of their necessity to
each other or grasp their place as elements of that Unity behind which
is expressing itself through them and in which their
discords must cease. But where the Consciousness is in possession of
both the diversity and the unity and the latter contains
and governs the former, where it is aware at once of the Law, Truth and
Right of the All and the Law, Truth and Right of
the individual and the two become consciously harmonised in a mutual
unity, where the whole nature of the consciousness is
the One knowing itself as the Many and the Many knowing themselves as
the One, there the Force also will be of the same
nature: it will be a Life that consciously obeys
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the law of Unity and yet fulfils each thing in the
diversity according to its proper rule and function; it will be a life
in which
all the individuals live at once in themselves and in each other as one
conscious Being in many souls, one power of
Consciousness in many minds, one joy of Force working in many lives,
one reality of Delight fulfilling itself in many hearts
and bodies.
The first of these four
positions, the source of all this progressive relation between
Consciousness and Force, is their
poise in the being of Sachchidananda where they are one; for there the
Force is consciousness of being working itself out
without ever ceasing to be consciousness and the Consciousness is
similarly luminous Force of being eternally aware of
itself and of its own Delight and never ceasing to be this power of
utter light and self-possession. The second relation is that
of material Nature; it is the poise of being in the material universe
which is the great denial of Sachchidananda by Himself:
for here there is the utter apparent separation of Force from
Consciousness, the specious miracle of the all-governing and
infallible Inconscient which is only the mask but which modern
knowledge has mistaken for the real face of the cosmic
Deity. The third relation is the poise of being in Mind and in the Life
which we see emerging out of this denial, bewildered
by it, struggling—without any possibility of cessation by submission,
but also without any clear knowledge or instinct of a
victorious solution—against the thousand and one problems involved in
this perplexing apparition of man the half-potent
conscient being out of the omnipotent Inconscience of the material
universe. The fourth relation is the poise of being in
Supermind: it is the fulfilled existence which will eventually solve
all this complex problem created by the partial affirmation
emerging out of the total denial; and it must needs solve it in the
only possible way, by the complete affirmation fulfilling all
that was secretly there contained in potentiality and intended in fact
of evolution behind the mask of the great denial. That is
the real life of the real Man towards which this partial life and
partial unfulfilled manhood is striving forward with a perfect
knowledge and guidance in the so-called Inconscient within us, but in
our conscient parts with only a dim and struggling
prevision, with fragments of realisation, with glimpses of the ideal,
with flashes
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of revelation and inspiration in the poet and the prophet, the seer and the transcendentalist, the mystic and the thinker, the
great intellects and the great souls of humanity.
From the data we have now
before us we can see that the difficulties which arise from the
imperfect poise of
Consciousness and Force in man in his present status of mind and life
are principally three. First, he is aware only of a small
part of his own being: his surface mentality, his surface life, his
surface physical being is all that he knows and he does not
know even all of that; below is the occult surge of his subconscious
and his subliminal mind, his subconscious and his
subliminal life-impulses, his subconscious corporeality, all that large
part of himself which he does not know and cannot
govern, but which rather knows and governs him. For, existence and
consciousness and force being one, we can only have
some real power over so much of our existence as we are identified with
by self-awareness; the rest must be governed by
its own consciousness which is subliminal to our surface mind and life
and body. And yet, the two being one movement and
not two separate movements, the larger and more potent part of
ourselves must govern and determine in the mass the
smaller and less powerful; therefore we are governed by the
subconscient and subliminal even in our conscious existence
and in our very self-mastery and self-direction we are only instruments
of what seems to us the Inconscient within us.
This is what the old wisdom
meant when it said that man imagines himself to be the doer of the work
by his free will,
but in reality Nature determines all his works and even the wise are
compelled to follow their own Nature. But since Nature
is the creative force of consciousness of the Being within us who is
masked by His own inverse movement and apparent
denial of Himself, they called that inverse creative movement of His
consciousness the Maya or Illusion-power of the Lord
and said that all existences are turned as upon a machine through His
Maya by the Lord seated within the heart of all
existences. It is evident then that only by man so far exceeding mind
as to become one in self-awareness with the Lord can
he become master of his own being. And since this is not possible in
the inconscience or in the subconscient itself, since
profit cannot come by plunging down
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into our depths back towards the Inconscient, it can only be by going inward where the Lord is seated and by ascending into
that which is still superconscient to us, into the Supermind, that this unity can be wholly established. For there in the higher
and divine Maya is the conscious knowledge, in its law and truth, of that which works in the subconscient by the lower
Maya under the conditions of the Denial which seeks to become the Affirmation. For this lower Nature works out what is
willed and known in that higher Nature. The Illusion-Power of the divine knowledge in the world which creates appearances
is governed by the Truth-Power of the same knowledge which knows the truth behind the appearances and keeps ready for
us the Affirmation towards which they are working. The partial and apparent Man here will find there the perfect and real
Man capable of an entirely self-aware being by his full unity with that Self-existent who is the omniscient lord of His own
cosmic evolution and procession.
The second difficulty is that man is separated in his mind, his life, his body from the universal and therefore, even as he
does not know himself, is equally and even more incapable of knowing his fellow-creatures. He forms by inferences,
theories, observations and a certain imperfect capacity of sympathy a rough mental construction about them; but this is not
knowledge. Knowledge can only come by conscious identity, for that is the only true knowledge,—existence aware of itself.
We know what we are so far as we are consciously aware of ourself, the rest is hidden; so also we can come really to
know that with which we become one in our consciousness, but only so far as we can become one with it. If the means of
knowledge are indirect and imperfect, the knowledge attained will also be indirect and imperfect. It will enable us to work
out with a certain precarious clumsiness but still perfectly enough from our mental standpoint certain limited practical aims,
necessities, conveniences, a certain imperfect and insecure harmony of our relations with that which we know; but only by a
conscious unity with it can we arrive at a perfect relation. Therefore we must arrive at a conscious unity with our
fellow-beings and not merely at the sympathy created by love or the understanding created by mental knowledge, which will
always be the knowledge of their
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superficial existence and therefore imperfect in itself and subject to denial and frustration by the uprush of the unknown and
unmastered from the subconscient or the subliminal in them and us. But this conscious oneness can only be established by
entering into that in which we are one with them, the universal; and the fullness of the universal exists consciently only in
that which is superconscient to us, in the Supermind: for here in our normal being the greater part of it is subconscient and
therefore in this normal poise of mind, life and body it cannot be possessed. The lower conscious nature is bound down to
ego in all its activities, chained triply to the stake of differentiated individuality. The Supermind alone commands unity in
diversity.
The third difficulty is the division between force and consciousness in
the evolutionary existence. There is, first, the
division which has been created by the evolution itself in its three
successive formations of Matter, Life and Mind, each with
its own law of working. The Life is at war with the body; it attempts
to force it to satisfy life's desires, impulses,
satisfactions and demands from its limited capacity what could only be
possible to an immortal and divine body; and the
body, enslaved and tyrannised over, suffers and is in constant dumb
revolt against the demands made upon it by the Life.
The Mind is at war with both: sometimes it helps the Life against the
Body, sometimes restrains the vital urge and seeks to
protect the corporeal frame from life's desires, passions and
over-driving energies; it also seeks to possess the Life and turn
its energy to the mind's own ends, to the utmost joys of the mind's own
activity, to the satisfaction of mental, aesthetic,
emotional aims and their fulfilment in human existence; and the Life
too finds itself enslaved and misused and is in frequent
insurrection against the ignorant half-wise tyrant seated above it.
This is the war of our members which the mind cannot
satisfactorily resolve because it has to deal with a problem insoluble
to it, the aspiration of an immortal being in a mortal life
and body. It can only arrive at a long succession of compromises or end
in an abandonment of the problem either by
submission with the materialist to the mortality of our apparent being
or with the ascetic and the religionist by the rejection
and condemnation of the earthly life and withdrawal
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to happier and easier fields of existence. But the true solution lies in finding the principle beyond Mind of which Immortality
is the law and in conquering by it the mortality of our existence.
But there is also that fundamental division within between force of
Nature and the conscious being which is the original
cause of this incapacity. Not only is there a division between the
mental, the vital and the physical being, but each of them is
also divided against itself. The capacity of the body is less than the
capacity of the instinctive soul or conscious being, the
physical Purusha within it, the capacity of the vital force less than
the capacity of the impulsive soul, the vital conscious
being or Purusha within it, the capacity of the mental energy less than
the capacity of the intellectual and emotional soul, the
mental Purusha within it. For the soul is the inner consciousness which
aspires to its own complete self-realisation and
therefore always exceeds the individual formation of the moment, and
the Force which has taken its poise in the formation is
always pushed by its soul to that which is abnormal to the poise,
transcendent of it; thus constantly pushed it has much
trouble in answering, more in evolving from the present to a greater
capacity. In trying to fulfil the demands of this triple soul
it is distracted and driven to set instinct against instinct, impulse
against impulse, emotion against emotion, idea against idea,
satisfying this, denying that, then repenting and returning on what it
has done, adjusting, compensating, readjusting ad
infinitum, but not arriving at any principle of unity. And in the mind
again the conscious-power that should harmonise and
unite is not only limited in its knowledge and in its will, but the
knowledge and the will are disparate and often at discord. The
principle of unity is above in the Supermind: for there alone is the
conscious unity of all diversities; there alone will and
knowledge are equal and in perfect harmony; there alone Consciousness
and Force arrive at their divine equation.
Man, in proportion as he
develops into a self-conscious and truly thinking being, becomes
acutely aware of all this
discord and disparateness in his parts and he seeks to arrive at a
harmony of his mind, life and body, a harmony of his
knowledge and will and emotion, a harmony of all his members. Sometimes
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this desire stops short at the attainment of a
workable compromise which will bring with it a relative peace; but
compromise
can only be a halt on the way, since the Deity within will not be
satisfied eventually with less than a perfect harmony
combining in itself the integral development of our many-sided
potentialities. Less than this would be an evasion of the
problem, not its solution, or else only a temporary solution provided
as a resting-place for the soul in its continual
self-enlargement and ascension. Such a perfect harmony would demand as
essential terms a perfect mentality, a perfect
play of vital force, a perfect physical existence. But where in the
radically imperfect shall we find the principle and power of
perfection? Mind rooted in division and limitation cannot provide it to
us nor can life and the body which are the energy and
the frame of dividing and limiting mind. The principle and power of
perfection are there in the subconscient but wrapped up
in the tegument or veil of the lower Maya, a mute premonition emerging
as an unrealised ideal; in the superconscient they
await open, eternally realised, but still separated from us by the veil
of our self-ignorance. It is above, then, and not either in
our present poise nor below it that we must seek for the reconciling
power and knowledge.
Equally, man, as he develops, becomes acutely aware of the discord and ignorance that governs his relations with the
world, acutely intolerant of it, more and more set upon finding a principle of harmony, peace, joy and unity. This too can only
come to him from above. For only by developing a mind which shall have knowledge of the mind of others as of itself, free
from our mutual ignorance and misunderstanding, a will that feels and makes itself one with the will of others, an emotional
heart that contains the emotions of others as its own, a life-force that senses the energies of others and accepts them for its
own and seeks to fulfil them as its own, and a body that is not a wall of imprisonment and defence against the world, but all
this under the law of a Light and Truth that shall transcend the aberrations and errors, the much sin and falsehood of our
and others' minds, wills, emotions, life-energies,—only so can the life of man spiritually and practically become one with that
of his fellow-beings and the individual recover his own universal self. The
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subconscient has this life of the All and the superconscient has it, but under conditions which necessitate our motion
upwards. For not towards the Godhead concealed in the “inconscient ocean where darkness is wrapped within darkness”,¹
but towards the Godhead seated in the sea of eternal light,²
in the highest ether of our being, is the original impetus which has carried upward the evolving soul to the type of our
humanity.
Unless therefore the race is to fall by the wayside and leave the
victory to other and new creations of the eager
travailing Mother, it must aspire to this ascent, conducted indeed
through love, mental illumination and the vital urge to
possession and self-giving, but leading beyond to the supramental unity
which transcends and fulfils them; in the founding of
human life upon the supramental realisation of conscious unity with the
One and with all in our being and in all its members
humanity must seek its final good and salvation. And this is what we
have described as the fourth status of Life in its ascent
towards the Godhead.
¹
Rig Veda, X. 129. 3.
² The Waters which are in the realm of light above the Sun and those which abide below.—Rig Veda, III. 22. 3.
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