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CHAPTER
XXV
The Knot of Matter
I cannot travel to the Truth of the luminous
Lord by force or by the duality.... Who are they that protect the foundation of
the falsehood? Who are the guardians of the unreal word?
Then existence was
not nor non-existence, the mid-world was not nor the Ether nor what is beyond.
What covered all? where was it? in whose refuge? what was that ocean dense and
deep? Death was not nor immortality nor the knowledge of day and night. That One
lived without breath by his self-law, there was nothing else nor aught beyond
it. In the beginning Darkness was hidden by darkness, all this was an ocean of
inconscience. When universal being was concealed by fragmentation, then by the
greatness of its energy That One was born. That moved at first as desire within,
which was the primal seed of mind. The seers of Truth discovered the building of
being in non-being by will in the heart and by the thought; their ray was
extended horizontally; but what was there below, what was there above? There
were Casters of the seed, there were Greatnesses; there was self-law below,
there was Will above.
Rig Veda.¹
IF then the conclusion at which we have arrived is correct,—and there is no other possible on the data upon which we are
working,—the sharp division which practical experience and long habit of mind have created between Spirit and Matter has
no longer any fundamental reality. The world is a differentiated unity, a manifold oneness, not a constant attempt at
compromise between eternal dissonances, not an everlasting struggle between irreconcilable opposites. An inalienable
oneness generating infinite variety is its foundation and beginning; a constant reconciliation behind apparent division and
struggle combining all possible disparates for vast ends in a secret Consciousness and Will which is ever one and master of
all its own complex action, appears to be its real character in the middle; we must assume therefore that a fulfilment of the
emerging Will and Consciousness and a triumphant harmony must be its conclusion. Substance is the form of itself on which
it works, and of that substance if Matter is one end,
¹ V.12.2, 4; X. 129. 1-5
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Spirit is the other. The two are one: Spirit is the soul and reality of that which we sense as Matter; Matter is a form and
body of that which we realise as Spirit.
Certainly, there is a vast
practical difference and on that difference the whole indivisible
series and ever-ascending
degrees of the world-existence are founded. Substance, we have said, is
conscious existence presenting itself to the sense
as object so that, on the basis of whatever sense-relation is
established, the work of world-formation and cosmic progression
may proceed. But there need not be only one basis, only one fundamental
principle of relation immutably created between
sense and substance; on the contrary, there is an ascending and
developing series. We are aware of another substance in
which pure mind works as its natural medium and which is far subtler,
more flexible, more plastic than anything that our
physical sense can conceive of as Matter. We can speak of a substance
of mind because we become aware of a subtler
medium in which forms arise and action takes place; we can speak also
of a substance of pure dynamic life-energy other
than the subtlest forms of material substance and its physically
sensible force-currents. Spirit itself is pure substance of
being presenting itself as an object no longer to physical, vital or
mental sense, but to a light of a pure spiritual perceptive
knowledge in which the subject becomes its own object, that is to say,
in which the Timeless and Spaceless is aware of itself in a pure
spiritually self-conceptive self-extension as the basis and primal
material of all existence. Beyond this foundation is the disappearance
of all conscious differentiation between subject and object in an
absolute identity, and there we can no longer speak of Substance.
Therefore it is a purely
conceptive—a spiritually, not a mentally conceptive difference ending in a
practical distinction, which creates the series descending from Spirit through
Mind to Matter and ascending again from Matter through Mind to Spirit. But the
real oneness is never abrogated, and, when we get back to the original and
integral view of things, we see that it is never even truly diminished or
impaired, not even in the grossest densities of Matter. Brahman is not only the
cause and supporting power and indwelling principle of the universe, he is also
its
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material and its sole material. Matter also is Brahman and it is nothing other than or different from Brahman. If indeed
Matter were cut off from Spirit, this would not be so; but it is, as we have seen, only a final form and objective aspect of the
divine Existence with all of God ever present in it and behind it. As this apparently brute and inert Matter is everywhere and
always instinct with a mighty dynamic force of Life, as this dynamic but apparently unconscious Life secretes within it an
ever-working unapparent Mind of whose secret dealings it is the overt energy, as this ignorant, unillumined and groping Mind
in the living body is supported and sovereignly guided by its own real self, the Supermind, which is there equally in
unmentalised Matter, so all Matter as well as all Life, Mind and Supermind are only modes of the Brahman, the Eternal, the
Spirit, Sachchidananda, who not only dwells in them all, but is all these things though no one of them is His absolute being.
But still there is this
conceptive difference and practical distinction, and in that, even if
Matter is not really cut off from
Spirit, yet it seems with such a practical definiteness to be so cut
off, it is so different, even so contrary in its law, the
material life seems so much to be the negation of all spiritual
existence that its rejection might well appear to be the one
short cut out of the difficulty,—as undoubtedly it is; but a short cut
or any cut is no solution. Still, there, in Matter
undoubtedly lies the crux; that raises the obstacle: for because of
Matter Life is gross and limited and stricken with death
and pain, because of Matter Mind is more than half blind, its wings
clipped, its feet tied to a narrow perch and held back
from the vastness and freedom above of which it is conscious. Therefore
the exclusive spiritual seeker is justified from his
viewpoint if, disgusted with the mud of Matter, revolted by the animal
grossness of Life or impatient of the self-imprisoned
narrowness and downward vision of Mind, he determines to break from it
all and return by inaction and silence to the Spirit's
immobile liberty. But that is not the sole viewpoint, nor, because it
has been sublimely held or glorified by shining and golden
examples, need we consider it the integral and ultimate wisdom. Rather,
liberating ourselves from all passion and revolt, let
us see what this divine order of the universe means, and, as for
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this great knot and tangle of Matter denying the
Spirit, let us seek to find out and separate its strands so as to
loosen it by a
solution and not cut through it by a violence. We must state the
difficulty, the opposition first, entirely, trenchantly, with
exaggeration, if need be, rather than with diminution, and then look
for the issue.
First, then, the fundamental opposition Matter presents to Spirit is
this that it is the culmination of the principle of
Ignorance. Here Consciousness has lost and forgotten itself in a form
of its works, as a man might forget in extreme
absorption not only who he is but that he is at all and become
momentarily only the work that is being done and the force
that is doing it. The Spirit self-luminous, infinitely aware of itself
behind all workings of force and their master, seems here to
have disappeared and not to be at all; somewhere He is perhaps, but
here He seems to have left only a brute and inconscient material Force
which creates and destroys eternally without knowing itself or what it
creates or why it creates
at all or why it destroys what once it has created: it does not know,
for it has no mind; it does not care, for it has no heart.
And if that is not the real truth even of the material universe, if
behind all this false phenomenon there is a Mind, a Will and
something greater than Mind or mental Will, yet it is this dark
semblance that the material universe itself presents as a truth
to the consciousness which emerges in it out of its night; and if it be
no truth but a lie, yet is it a most effective lie, for it
determines the conditions of our phenomenal existence and besieges all
our aspiration and effort.
For this is the monstrous
thing, the terrible and pitiless miracle of the material universe that
out of this no-Mind a mind
or, at least, minds emerge and find themselves struggling feebly for
light, helpless individually, only less helpless when in
self-defence they associate their individual feeblenesses in the midst
of the giant Ignorance which is the law of the universe.
Out of this heartless Inconscience and within its rigorous jurisdiction
hearts have been born and aspire and are tortured and
bleed under the weight of the blind and insentient cruelty of this iron
existence, a cruelty which lays its law upon them and
becomes sentient in their sentience, brutal, ferocious, horrible. But
what after all,
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behind appearances, is this seeming mystery? We can
see that it is the Consciousness which had lost itself returning again
to itself, emerging out of its giant self-forgetfulness, slowly,
painfully, as a Life that is would-be sentient, half-sentient, dimly
sentient, wholly sentient and finally struggles to be more than
sentient, to be again divinely self-conscious, free, infinite,
immortal. But it works towards this under a law that is the opposite of
all these things, under the conditions of Matter, that is
to say, against the grasp of the Ignorance. The movements it has to
follow, the instruments it has to use are set and made
for it by this brute and divided Matter and impose on it at every step
ignorance and limitation.
For the second fundamental opposition that Matter offers to Spirit, is
this that it is the culmination of bondage to
mechanic Law and opposes to all that seeks to liberate itself a
colossal Inertia. Not that Matter itself is inert; it is rather an
infinite motion, an inconceivable force, a limitless action, whose
grandiose movements are a subject for our constant
admiration. But while Spirit is free, master of itself and its works,
not bound by them, creator of law and not its subject, this
giant Matter is rigidly chained by a fixed and mechanical Law which is
imposed on it, which it does not understand nor has
ever conceived but works out inconsciently as a machine works and knows
not who created it, by what process or to what
end. And when Life awakes and seeks to impose itself on physical form
and material force and to use all things at its own
will and for its own need, when Mind awakes and seeks to know the who,
the why, the how of itself and all things and
above all to use its knowledge for the imposition of its own freer law
and self-guiding action upon things, material Nature
seems to yield, even to approve and aid, though after a struggle,
reluctantly and only up to a certain point. But beyond that
point it presents an obstinate inertia, obstruction, negation and even
persuades Life and Mind that they cannot go farther,
cannot pursue to the end their partial victory. Life strives to enlarge
and prolong itself and succeeds; but when it seeks utter
wideness and immortality, it meets the iron obstruction of Matter and
finds itself bound to narrowness and death. Mind
seeks to aid life and to fulfil its own impulse to embrace all
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knowledge, to become all light, to possess truth and be
truth, to enforce love and joy and be love and joy; but always there is the
deviation and error and grossness of the material life-instincts and the denial
and obstruction of the material sense and the physical instruments. Error ever
pursues its knowledge, darkness is inseparably the companion and background of
its light; truth is successfully sought and yet, when grasped, it ceases to be
truth and the quest has to continue; love is there but it cannot satisfy itself,
joy is there but it cannot justify itself, and each of them drags as if its
chain or casts as if its shadow its own opposites, anger and hatred and
indifference, satiety and grief and pain. The inertia with which Matter responds
to the demands of the Mind and Life, prevents the conquest of the Ignorance and
of the brute Force that is the power of the Ignorance.
And when we seek to know why this is
so, we see that the success of this inertia and obstruction is due to a third
power of Matter; for the third fundamental opposition which Matter offers to
Spirit is this that it is the culmination of the principle of division and
struggle. Indivisible indeed in reality, divisibility is its whole basis of
action from which it seems forbidden ever to depart; for its only two methods of
union are either the aggregation of units or an assimilation which involves the
destruction of one unit by another; and both of these methods of union are a
confession of eternal division, since even the first associates rather than
unifies and by its very principle admits the constant possibility and therefore
the ultimate necessity of dissociation, of dissolution. Both methods repose on
death, one as a means, the other as a condition of life. And both presuppose as
the condition of world-existence a constant struggle of the divided units with
each other, each striving to maintain itself, to maintain its associations, to
compel or destroy what resists it, to gather in and devour others as its food,
but itself moved to revolt against and flee from compulsion, destruction and
assimilation by devouring. When the vital principle manifests its activities in
Matter, it finds there this basis only for all its activities and is compelled
to bow itself to the yoke; it has to accept the law of death, desire and
limitation and that constant struggle to devour, possess, dominate which we have
seen to be the first aspect of Life. And when
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the mental principle manifests in Matter, it has to accept from the mould and material in which it works the same principle of
limitation, of seeking without secure finding, the same constant association and dissociation of its gains and of the
constituents of its works, so that the knowledge gained by man, the mental being, seems never to be final or free from doubt
and denial and all his labour seems condemned to move in a rhythm of action and reaction and of making and unmaking, in
cycles of creation and brief preservation and long destruction with no certain and assured progress.
Especially and most
fatally, the ignorance, inertia and division of Matter impose on the
vital and mental existence
emerging in it the law of pain and suffering and the unrest of
dissatisfaction with its status of division, inertia and ignorance.
Ignorance would indeed bring no pain of dissatisfaction if the mental
consciousness were entirely ignorant, if it could halt
satisfied in some shell of custom, unaware of its own ignorance or of
the infinite ocean of consciousness and knowledge by
which it lives surrounded; but precisely it is to this that the
emerging consciousness in Matter awakes, first, to its ignorance
of the world in which it lives and which it has to know and master in
order to be happy, secondly, to the ultimate barrenness
and limitation of this knowledge, to the meagreness and insecurity of
the power and happiness it brings and to the awareness
of an infinite consciousness, knowledge, true being in which alone is
to be found a victorious and infinite happiness. Nor
would the obstruction of inertia bring with it unrest and
dissatisfaction if the vital sentience emerging in Matter were entirely
inert, if it were kept satisfied with its own half-conscient limited
existence, unaware of the infinite power and immortal
existence in which it lives as part of and yet separated from it, or if
it had nothing within driving it towards the effort really to
participate in that infinity and immortality. But this is precisely
what all life is driven to feel and seek from the first, its
insecurity and the need and struggle for persistence, for
self-preservation; it awakes in the end to the limitation of its
existence and begins to feel the impulsion towards largeness and
persistence, towards the infinite and the eternal.
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And when in man life becomes
wholly self-conscious, this unavoidable struggle and effort and
aspiration reach their
acme and the pain and discord of the world become finally too keenly
sensible to be borne with contentment. Man may for a
long time quiet himself by seeking to be satisfied with his limitations
or by confining his struggle to such mastery as he can
gain over this material world he inhabits, some mental and physical
triumph of his progressive knowledge over its inconscient
fixities, of his small, concentrated conscious will and power over its
inertly-driven monstrous forces. But here, too, he finds
the limitation, the poor inconclusiveness of the greatest results he
can achieve and is obliged to look beyond. The finite
cannot remain permanently satisfied so long as it is conscious either
of a finite greater than itself or of an infinite beyond
itself to which it can yet aspire. And if the finite could be so
satisfied, yet the apparently finite being who feels himself to be
really an infinite or feels merely the presence or the impulse and
stirring of an infinite within, can never be satisfied till these
two are reconciled, till that is possessed by him and he is possessed
by it in whatever degree or manner. Man is such a
finite-seeming infinity and cannot fail to arrive at a seeking after
the Infinite. He is the first son of earth who becomes
vaguely aware of God within him, of his immortality or of his need of
immortality, and the knowledge is a whip that drives
and a cross of crucifixion until he is able to turn it into a source of
infinite light and joy and power.
This progressive
development, this growing manifestation of the divine Consciousness and
Force, Knowledge and Will
that had lost itself in the ignorance and inertia of Matter, might well
be a happy efflorescence proceeding from joy to greater
and at last to infinite joy if it were not for the principle of rigid
division from which Matter has started. The shutting up of the
individual in his own personal consciousness of separate and limited
mind, life and body prevents what would otherwise be
the natural law of our development. It brings into the body the law of
attraction and repulsion, of defence and attack, of
discord and pain. For each body being a limited conscious-force feels
itself exposed to the attack, impact, forceful contact of
other such limited conscious-force or of universal forces and, where it
feels itself
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broken in upon or unable to harmonise the contacting
and the recipient consciousness, it suffers discomfort and pain, is
attracted or repelled, has to defend itself or to assail; it is
constantly called upon to undergo what it is unwilling or unable to
suffer. Into the emotional and the sense-mind the law of division
brings the same reactions with the higher values of grief
and joy, love and hatred, oppression and depression, all cast into
terms of desire, and by desire into straining and effort, and
by the straining into excess and defect of force, incapacity, the
rhythm of attainment and disappointment, possession and
recoil, a constant strife and trouble and unease. Into the mind as a
whole, instead of a divine law of narrower truth flowing
into greater truth, lesser light taken up into wider light, lower will
surrendered to higher transforming will, pettier satisfaction
progressing towards nobler and more complete satisfaction, it brings
similar dualities of truth pursued by error, light by
darkness, power by incapacity, pleasure of pursuit and attainment by
pain of repulse and of dissatisfaction with what is
attained; mind takes up its own affliction along with the affliction of
life and body and becomes aware of the triple defect
and insufficiency of our natural being. All this means the denial of
Ananda, the negation of the trinity of Sachchidananda and
therefore, if the negation be insuperable, the futility of existence;
for existence in throwing itself out in the play of
consciousness and force must seek that movement not merely for itself,
but for satisfaction in the play, and if in the play no
real satisfaction can be found, it must obviously be abandoned in the
end as a vain attempt, a colossal mistake, a delirium of
the self-embodying spirit.
This is the whole basis of
the pessimist theory of the world,—optimist, it may be, as to worlds
and states beyond, but
pessimist as to the earthly life and the destiny of the mental being in
his dealings with the material universe. For it affirms
that since the very nature of material existence is division and the
very seed of embodied mind is self-limitation, ignorance
and egoism, to seek satisfaction of the spirit upon earth or to seek an
issue and divine purpose and culmination for the
world-play is a vanity and delusion; only in a heaven of the Spirit and
not in the world, or only in the Spirit's true quietude and
not in its phenomenal
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activities can we reunite existence and
consciousness with the divine self-delight. The Infinite can only
recover itself by
rejecting as an error and a false step its attempt to find itself in
the finite. Nor can the emergence of mental consciousness
in the material universe bring with it any promise of a divine
fulfilment. For the principle of division is not proper to Matter,
but to Mind; Matter is only an illusion of Mind into which Mind brings
its own rule of division and ignorance. Therefore
within this illusion Mind can only find itself; it can only travel
between the three terms of the divided existence it has created:
it cannot find there the unity of the Spirit or the truth of the
spiritual existence.
Now it is true that the principle of division in Matter can be only a
creation of the divided Mind which has precipitated
itself into material existence; for that material existence has no
self-being, is not the original phenomenon but only a form
created by an all-dividing Life-force which works out the conceptions
of an all-dividing Mind. By working out being into
these appearances of the ignorance, inertia and division of Matter the
dividing Mind has lost and imprisoned itself in a
dungeon of its own building, is bound with chains which it has itself
forged. And if it be true that the dividing Mind is the first
principle of creation, then it must be also the ultimate attainment
possible in the creation, and the mental being struggling
vainly with Life and Matter, overpowering them only to be overpowered
by them, repeating eternally a fruitless cycle must
be the last and highest word of cosmic existence. But no such
consequence ensues if, on the contrary, it is the immortal and
infinite Spirit that has veiled itself in the dense robe of material
substance and works there by the supreme creative power of Supermind,
permitting the divisions of Mind and the reign of the lowest or
material principle only as initial conditions for a
certain evolutionary play of the One in the Many. If, in other words,
it is not merely a mental being who is hidden in the
forms of the universe, but the infinite Being, Knowledge, Will which
emerges out of Matter first as Life, then as Mind, with
the rest of it still unrevealed, then the emergence of consciousness
out of the apparently Inconscient must have another and
completer term; the appearance of a supramental spiritual being who
shall impose on his mental,
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vital, bodily workings a higher law than that of the
dividing Mind is no longer impossible. On the contrary, it is the
natural and
inevitable conclusion of the nature of cosmic existence.
Such a supramental being would, as we have seen, liberate the mind from
the knot of its divided existence and use the
individualisation of mind as merely a useful subordinate action of the
all-embracing Supermind; and he would liberate the life
also from the knot of its divided existence and use the
individualisation of life as merely a useful subordinate action of the
one Conscious-Force fulfilling its being and joy in a diversified
unity. Is there any reason why he should not also liberate the
bodily existence from the present law of death, division and mutual
devouring and use individualisation of body as merely a
useful subordinate term of the one divine Conscious-Existence made
serviceable for the joy of the Infinite in the finite? or
why this spirit should not be free in a sovereign occupation of form,
consciously immortal even in the changing of his robe of
Matter, possessed of his self-delight in a world subjected to the law
of unity and love and beauty? And if man be the
inhabitant of terrestrial existence through whom that transformation of
the mental into the supramental can at last be
operated, is it not possible that he may develop, as well as a divine
mind and a divine life, also a divine body? or, if the
phrase seem to be too startling to our present limited conceptions of
human potentiality, may he not in his development of his
true being and its light and joy and power arrive at a divine use of
mind and life and body by which the descent of Spirit into
form shall be at once humanly and divinely justified?
The one thing that can
stand in the way of that ultimate terrestrial possibility is if our
present view of Matter and its
laws represent the only possible relation between sense and substance,
between the Divine as knower and the Divine as
object, or if, other relations being possible, they are yet not in any
way possible here, but must be sought on higher planes of
existence. In that case, it is in heavens beyond that we must seek our
entire divine fulfilment, as the religions assert, and
their other assertion of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the
perfect upon earth must be put aside as a delusion. Here
we can only pursue or
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attain an internal preparation or victory and, having liberated the mind and life and soul within, must turn from the
unconquered and unconquerable material principle, from an unregenerated and intractable earth to find elsewhere our divine
substance. There is, however, no reason why we should accept this limiting conclusion. There are, quite certainly, other
states even of Matter itself; there is undoubtedly an ascending series of the divine gradations of substance; there is the
possibility of the material being transfiguring itself through the acceptation of a higher law than its own which is yet its own
because it is always there latent and potential in its own secrecies.
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