|
CHAPTER
XXVI
The Ascending Series of Substance
There is a self that is of the essence of Matter—there is another inner self of Life that fills the other—there is another
inner self of Mind—there is another inner self of Truth-Knowledge—there is another inner self of Bliss.
Taittiriya Upanishad.¹
They climb Indra like a ladder. As one mounts peak after peak, there becomes clear the much that has still to be done.
Indra brings consciousness of That as the goal.
Like a hawk, a kite He settles on the Vessel and upbears it; in His stream of movement He discovers the Rays, for He
goes bearing his weapons: He cleaves to the ocean surge of the waters; a great King, He declares the fourth status.
Like a mortal purifying his body, like a war-horse galloping to the conquest of riches He pours calling through all the
sheath and enters these vessels.
Rig Veda.²
IF WE consider what it is that most represents to us the materiality of Matter, we shall see that it is its aspects of solidity,
tangibility, increasing resistance, firm response to the touch of Sense. Substance seems more truly material and real in
proportion as it presents to us a solid resistance and by virtue of that resistance a durability of sensible form on which our
consciousness can dwell; in proportion as it is more subtle, less densely resistant and enduringly seizable by the sense, it
appears to us less material. This attitude of our ordinary consciousness towards Matter is a symbol of the essential object
for which Matter has been created. Substance passes into the material status in order that it may present to the
consciousness which has to deal with it durable, firmly seizable images on which the mind can rest and base its operations
and which the Life can handle with at least a relative surety of permanence in the form upon which it works. Therefore in
the ancient Vedic formula Earth, type of the more solid states of substance, was accepted as the symbolic name of the
material principle. Therefore, too, touch or contact is for us the essential basis of Sense; all other physical senses,
¹ II. 1-5. ²
I. 10. 1, 2; IX. 96. 19, 20.
Page- 252
taste, smell, hearing, sight are based upon a series of more and more subtle and indirect contacts between the percipient and
the perceived. Equally, in the Sankhya classification of the five elemental states of Substance from ether to earth, we see
that their characteristic is a constant progression from the more subtle to the less subtle so that at the summit we have the
subtle vibrations of the ethereal and at the base the grosser density of the earthly or solid elemental condition. Matter
therefore is the last stage known to us in the progress of pure substance towards a basis of cosmic relation in which the first
word shall be not spirit but form, and form in its utmost possible development of concentration, resistance, durably gross
image, mutual impenetrability,—the culminating point of distinction, separation and division. This is the intention and
character of the material universe; it is the formula of accomplished divisibility.
And if there is, as there
must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of
substance from Matter to
Spirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these
capacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a
progressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us
to the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is
to say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form,
more and more subtlety and flexibility of substance
and force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of
assimilation, power of interchange, power of variation,
transmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we
draw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from
our poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical
Matter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the
infinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit. Between gross substance
and pure spirit substance this must be the fundamental
antinomy. In Matter Chit or Conscious-Force masses itself more and more
to resist and stand out against other masses of
the same Conscious-Force; in substance of Spirit pure consciousness
images itself freely in its sense of itself with an
essential indivisibility and a constant unifying interchange as the
basic formula even of the most diversifying play of its own
Force. Between these
Page-253
two poles there is the possibility of an infinite gradation.
These considerations become of great importance when we consider the
possible relation between the divine life and
the divine mind of the perfected human soul and the very gross and
seemingly undivine body or formula of physical being in
which we actually dwell. That formula is the result of a certain fixed
relation between sense and substance from which the
material universe has started. But as this relation is not the only
possible relation, so that formula is not the only possible
formula. Life and mind may manifest themselves in another relation to
substance and work out different physical laws, other
and larger habits, even a different substance of body with a freer
action of the sense, a freer action of the life, a freer action
of the mind. Death, division, mutual resistance and exclusion between
embodied masses of the same conscious life-force
are the formula of our physical existence; the narrow limitation of the
play of the senses, the determination within a small
circle of the field, duration and power of the life-workings, the
obscuration, lame movement, broken and bounded functioning
of the mind are the yoke which that formula expressed in the animal
body has imposed upon the higher principles. But these
things are not the sole possible rhythm of cosmic Nature. There are
superior states, there are higher worlds, and if the law
of these can by any progress of man and by any liberation of our
substance from its present imperfections be imposed on
this sensible form and instrument of our being, then there may be even
here a physical working of divine mind and sense, a
physical working of divine life in the human frame and even the
evolution upon earth of something that we may call a
divinely human body. The body of man also may some day come by its
transfiguration; the Earth-Mother too may reveal in
us her godhead.
Even within the formula of
the physical cosmos there is an ascending series in the scale of Matter
which leads us from
the more to the less dense, from the less to the more subtle. Where we
reach the highest term of that series, the most
supra-ethereal subtlety of material substance or formulation of Force,
what lies beyond? Not a Nihil, not a void; for there is
no such thing as absolute void or real nullity and what we call by that
Page-254
name is simply something beyond the grasp of our sense, our mind or our most subtle consciousness. Nor is it true that there
is nothing beyond, or that some ethereal substance of Matter is the eternal beginning; for we know that Matter and material
Force are only a last result of a pure Substance and pure Force in which consciousness is luminously self-aware and
self-possessing and not as in Matter lost to itself in an inconscient sleep and an inert motion. What then is there between this
material substance and that pure substance? For we do not leap from the one to the other, we do not pass at once from the
inconscient to absolute consciousness. There must be and there are grades between inconscient substance and utterly
self-conscious self-extension, as between the principle of Matter and the principle of Spirit.
All who have at all sounded
those abysses are agreed and bear witness to this fact that there are a
series of subtler and
subtler formulations of substance which escape from and go beyond the
formula of the material universe. Without going
deeply into matters which are too occult and difficult for our present
inquiry, we may say, adhering to the system on which
we have based ourselves, that these gradations of substance, in one
important aspect of their formulation in series, can be
seen to correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind,
Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of
Sachchidananda. In other words, we find that substance in its ascension
bases itself upon each of these principles and
makes itself successively a characteristic vehicle for the dominating
cosmic self-expression of each in their ascending
series.
Here in the material world
everything is founded upon the formula of material substance. Sense,
Life, Thought found
themselves upon what the ancients called the Earth-Power, start from
it, obey its laws, accommodate their workings to this
fundamental principle, limit themselves by its possibilities and, if
they would develop others, have even in that development to
take account of the original formula, its purpose and its demand upon
the divine evolution. The sense works through physical
instruments, the life through a physical nerve-system and vital organs,
the mind has to build its operations upon a
Page-255
corporeal basis and use a material instrumentation, even its pure mental workings have to take the data so derived as a field
and as the stuff upon which it works. There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so
limited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments
and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life's
action and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic
Life-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of
the cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material
universe which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and
law of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and
determining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated
by the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.
In the next grade of
substance the initial, dominating, determining fact is no longer
substantial form and force, but life
and conscious desire. Therefore the world beyond this material plane
must be a world based upon a conscious cosmic vital
Energy, a force of vital seeking and a force of Desire and their
self-expression and not upon an inconscient or subconscient
will taking the form of a material force and energy. All the forms,
bodies, forces, life-movements, sense-movements,
thought-movements, developments, culminations, self-fulfilments of that
world must be dominated and determined by this
initial fact of Conscious-Life to which Matter and Mind must subject
themselves, must start from that, base themselves upon
that, be limited or enlarged by its laws, powers, capacities,
limitations; and if Mind there seeks to develop yet higher
possibilities, still it must then too take account of the original
vital formula of desire-force, its purpose and its demand upon
the divine manifestation.
Page-256
So too with the higher gradations. The next in the series must be
governed by the dominating and determining factor of
Mind. Substance there must be subtle and flexible enough to assume the
shapes directly imposed upon it by Mind, to obey its
operations, to subordinate itself to its demand for self-expression and
self-fulfilment. The relations of sense and substance
too must have a corresponding subtlety and flexibility and must be
determined, not by the relations of physical organ with
physical object, but of Mind with the subtler substance upon which it
works. The life of such a world would be the servant
of Mind in a sense of which our weak mental operations and our limited,
coarse and rebellious vital faculties can have no
adequate conception. There Mind dominates as the original formula, its
purpose prevails, its demand overrides all others in
the law of the divine manifestation. At a yet higher reach
Supermind—or, intermediately, principles touched by it—or, still
higher, a pure Bliss, a pure Conscious Power or pure Being replace Mind
as the dominant principle, and we enter into those
ranges of cosmic existence which to the old Vedic seers were the worlds
of illuminated divine existence and the foundation
of what they termed Immortality and which later Indian religions imaged
in figures like the Brahmaloka or Goloka, some
supreme self-expression of the Being as Spirit in which the soul
liberated into its highest perfection possesses the infinity and
beatitude of the eternal Godhead.
The principle which
underlies this continually ascending experience and vision uplifted
beyond the material formulation
of things is that all cosmic existence is a complex harmony and does
not finish with the limited range of consciousness in
which the ordinary human mind and life is content to be imprisoned.
Being, consciousness, force, substance descend and
ascend a many-runged ladder on each step of which being has a vaster
self-extension, consciousness a wider sense of its
own range and largeness and joy, force a greater intensity and a more
rapid and blissful capacity, substance gives a more
subtle, plastic, buoyant and flexible rendering of its primal reality.
For the more subtle is also the more powerful,—one might
say, the more truly concrete; it is less bound than the gross, it has a
Page-257
greater permanence in its being along with a greater
potentiality, plasticity and range in its becoming. Each plateau of the
hill
of being gives to our widening experience a higher plane of our
consciousness and a richer world for our existence.
But how does this ascending
series affect the possibilities of our material existence? It would not
affect them at all if
each plane of consciousness, each world of existence, each grade of
substance, each degree of cosmic force were cut off
entirely from that which precedes and that which follows it. But the opposite is the truth; the manifestation of the Spirit is a
complex weft and in the design and pattern of one principle all the others enter as elements of the spiritual whole. Our
material world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical
universe, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have
seen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the
descent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in
the material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin
and end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but
evolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence. Evolution
comes by the unceasing pressure of the supra-material planes on the material compelling it to deliver out of itself their
principles and powers which might conceivably otherwise have slept imprisoned in the rigidity of the material formula. This
would even so have been improbable, since their presence there implies a purpose of deliverance; but still this necessity
from below is actually very much aided by a kindred superior pressure.
Nor can this evolution end
with the first meagre formulation of life, mind, Supermind, spirit
conceded to these higher
powers by the reluctant power of Matter. For as they evolve, as they
awake, as they become more active and avid of their
own potentialities, the pressure on them of the superior planes,
a
pres-
Page-258
sure involved in the existence and close connection and interdependence of the worlds, must also increase in insistence,
power and effectiveness. Not only must these principles manifest from below in a qualified and restricted emergence, but
also from above they must descend in their characteristic power and full possible efflorescence into the material being; the
material creature must open to a wider and wider play of their activities in Matter, and all that is needed is a fit receptacle,
medium, instrument. That is provided for in the body, life and consciousness of man.
Certainly, if that body,
life and consciousness were limited to the possibilities of the gross
body which are all that our
physical senses and physical mentality accept, there would be a very
narrow term for this evolution, and the human being
could not hope to accomplish anything essentially greater than his
present achievement. But this body, as ancient occult
science discovered, is not the whole even of our physical being; this
gross density is not all of our substance. The oldest Vedantic
knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the
vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific
and to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of
our substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient
figurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths
of our substance were the material of three bodies,
gross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which the soul actually
and simultaneously dwells, although here and now we are
superficially conscious only of the material vehicle. But it is
possible to become conscious in our other bodies as well and it
is in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently
between our physical, psychical and ideal personalities
which is the cause of those “psychic” and “occult” phenomena that are
now beginning to be increasingly though yet too little
and too clumsily examined, even while they are far too much exploited.
The old Hathayogins and Tantriks of India had long
ago reduced this matter of the higher human life and body to a science.
They had discovered six nervous centres of life in
the dense body corresponding to six centres of life and mind faculty in
the subtle, and they had found out subtle physical
exercises by which these centres, now closed, could be
Page-259
opened up, the higher psychical life proper to our subtle existence entered into by man, and even the physical and vital
obstructions to the experience of the ideal and spiritual being could be destroyed. It is significant that one prominent result
claimed by the Hathayogins for their practices and verified in many respects was a control of the physical life-force which
liberated them from some of the ordinary habits or so-called laws thought by physical science to be inseparable from life in
the body.
Behind all these terms of ancient psycho-physical science lies the one
great fact and law of our being that whatever be
its temporary poise of form, consciousness, power in this material
evolution, there must be behind it and there is a greater, a
truer existence of which this is only the external result and
physically sensible aspect. Our substance does not end with the
physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base,
the material starting-point. As there are behind our
waking mentality vaster ranges of consciousness subconscient and
superconscient to it of which we become sometimes
abnormally aware, so there are behind our gross physical being other
and subtler grades of substance with a finer law and a
greater power which support the denser body and which can by our
entering into the ranges of consciousness belonging to
them be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and
substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of
being for the grossness and limitation of our present physical life and
impulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of
a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of
animal birth and life and death, of difficult alimentation
and facility of disorder and disease and subjection to poor and
unsatisfied vital cravings ceases to have the appearance of a
dream and chimera and becomes a possibility founded upon a rational and
philosophic truth which is in accordance with all
the rest that we have hitherto known, experienced or been able to think
out about the overt and secret truth of our
existence.
So it should rationally be;
for the uninterrupted series of the principles of our being and their
close mutual connection is
too evident for it to be possible that one of them should be condemned
and cut off while the others are capable of a divine
Page-260
liberation. The ascent of man from the physical to the supramental must open out the possibility of a corresponding ascent in
the grades of substance to that ideal or causal body which is proper to our supramental being, and the conquest of the lower
principles by Supermind and its liberation of them into a divine life and a divine mentality must also render possible a
conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance. And this means the evolution not
only of an untrammelled consciousness, a mind and sense not shut up in the walls of the physical ego or limited to the poor
basis of knowledge given by the physical organs of sense, but a life-power liberated more and more from its mortal
limitations, a physical life fit for a divine inhabitant and,—in the sense not of attachment or of restriction to our present
corporeal frame but an exceeding of the law of the physical body,—the conquest of death, an earthly immortality. For from
the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic
Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he
enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the
being and nature.
Page-261
HOME
|