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BOOK
II
PART
ONE
CHAPTER
I
Indeterminates,
Cosmic Determinations
and the Indeterminable
The Unseen with whom there can be no pragmatic relations,
unseizable, featureless, unthinkable, undesignable by name,
whose substance is the certitude of One Self, in whom world-
existence is stilled, who is all peace and bliss — that is the
Self,
that is what must be known.
Mandukya Upanishad.1
One sees it as a mystery or one speaks of it or hears of it as a
mystery, but none knows it.
Gita.2
When men seek after the Immutable, the Indeterminable, the
Unmanifest, the All-Pervading, the Unthinkable, the
Summit
Self, the Immobile, the Permanent,—equal in mind to all,
intent on the good of all beings, it is to Me that they
come.
Gita.
3
High beyond the Intelligence is the Great Self, beyond the Great
Self is the Unmanifest, beyond the Unmanifest is the
Conscious
Being. There is nothing beyond the Being,—that is the extreme
ultimate, that the supreme goal.
Katha Upanishad.4
Rare is the great of soul to whom all is the Divine Being.
Gita. 5
A
consciousness-force, everywhere inherent in Existence, acting even when concealed, is the creator of the worlds, the
occult secret of Nature. But in our material world and in our own being consciousness has a double aspect; there is a force
of Knowledge, there is a force of Ignorance. In the infinite consciousness of a self-aware infinite Existence knowledge must
be everywhere implicit or operative in the very grain of its action; but we see here at the beginning of things, apparent as the
base or the nature of the creative world-energy, an Inconscience, a total Nescience. This is the stock with which the
material universe commences: consciousness and knowledge emerge at
1 verse 7. 2
II.29. 3 XII. 3,4. 4
III. 10, 11. 5 vasudevah sarvamiti... VII.
19.
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first in obscure infinitesimal movements, at points,
in little quanta which associate themselves together; there is a tardy
and
difficult evolution, a slowly increasing organisation and ameliorated
mechanism of the workings of consciousness, more and
more gains are written on the blank slate of the Nescience. But still
these have the appearance of gathered acquisitions and
constructions of a seeking Ignorance which tries to know, to
understand, to discover, to change slowly and strugglingly into
knowledge. As Life here establishes and maintains its operations with
difficulty on a foundation and in an environment of
general Death, first in infinitesimal points of life, in quanta of
life-form and life-energy, in increasing aggregates that create
more and more complex organisms, an intricate life-machinery,
Consciousness also establishes and maintains a growing but
precarious light in the darkness of an original Nescience and a
universal Ignorance.
Moreover the knowledge
gained is of phenomena, not of the reality of things or of the
foundations of existence.
Wherever our consciousness meets what seems to be a foundation, that
foundation wears the appearance of a
blank,—when it is not a void,—an original state which is featureless
and a multitude of consequences which are not inherent
in the origin and which nothing in it seems to justify or visibly to
necessitate; there is a mass of superstructure which has no
clear native relation to the fundamental existence. The first aspect of
cosmic existence is an Infinite which is to our
perception an indeterminate, if not indeterminable. In this Infinite
the universe itself, whether in its aspect of Energy or its
aspect of structure, appears as an indeterminate determination, a
“boundless finite”,—paradoxical but necessary expressions
which would seem to indicate that we are face to face with a
suprarational mystery as the base of things; in that universe
arise—from where?—a vast number and variety of general and particular
determinates which do not appear to be
warranted by anything perceptible in the nature of the Infinite, but
seem to be imposed,—or, it may be, self-imposed,—upon
it. We give to the Energy which produces them the name of Nature, but
the word conveys no meaning unless it is that the
nature of things is what it is by virtue of a Force which arranges
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them according to an inherent Truth in them; but the
nature of that Truth itself, the reason why these determinates are what
they are is nowhere visible. It has been possible indeed for human
Science to detect the process or many processes of
material things, but this knowledge does not throw any light on the
major question; we do not know even the rationale of the
original cosmic processes, for the results do not present themselves as
their necessary but only their pragmatic and actual
consequence. In the end we do not know how these determinates came into
or out of the original Indeterminate or
Indeterminable on which they stand forth as on a blank and flat
background in the riddle of their ordered occurrence. At the
origin of things we are faced with an Infinite containing a mass of
unexplained finites, an Indivisible full of endless divisions,
an Immutable teeming with mutations and differentiae. A cosmic paradox
is the beginning of all things, a paradox without
any key to its significance.
It is possible indeed to question the need of positing an Infinite
which contains our formed universe, although this
conception is imperatively demanded by our mind as a necessary basis to
its conceptions,—for it is unable to fix or assign a
limit whether in Space or Time or essential existence beyond which
there is nothing or before or after which there is
nothing,—although too the alternative is a Void or Nihil which can be
only an abyss of the Infinite into which we refuse to
look; an infinite mystic zero of Non-Existence would replace an
infinite x as a necessary postulate, a basis for our seeing of
all that is to us existence. But even if we refuse to recognise
anything as real except the limitless expanding finite of the
material universe and its teeming determinations, the enigma remains
the same. Infinite existence, infinite non-being or
boundless finite, all are to us original indeterminates or
indeterminables; we can assign to them no distinct characters or
features, nothing which would predetermine their determinations. To
describe the fundamental character of the universe as
Space or Time or Space-Time does not help us; for even if these are not
abstractions of our intelligence which we impose
by our mental view on the cosmos, the mind's necessary perspective of
its picture, these too are indeterminates
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and carry in themselves no clue to the origin of the
determinations that take place in them; there is still no explanation
of the
strange process by which things are determined or of their powers,
qualities and properties, no revelation of their true
nature, origin and significance.
Actually to our Science this
infinite or indeterminate Existence reveals itself as an Energy, known
not by itself but by its
works, which throws up in its motion waves of energism and in them a
multitude of infinitesimals; these, grouping
themselves to form larger infinitesimals, become a basis for all the
creations of the Energy, even those farthest away from
the material basis, for the emergence of a world of organised Matter,
for the emergence of Life, for the emergence of
Consciousness, for all the still unexplained activities of evolutionary
Nature. On the original process are erected a multitude
of processes which we can observe, follow, can take advantage of many
of them, utilise; but they are none of them,
fundamentally, explicable. We know now that different groupings and a
varying number of electric infinitesimals can
produce or serve as the constituent occasion—miscalled the cause, for
here there seems to be only a necessary antecedent
condition,—for the appearance of larger atomic infinitesimals of
different natures, qualities, powers; but we fail to discover
how these different dispositions can come to constitute these different
atoms,—how the differentiae in the constituent
occasion or cause necessitate the differentiae in the constituted
outcome or result. We know also that certain combinations
of certain invisible atomic infinitesimals produce or occasion new and
visible determinations quite different in nature, quality
and power from the constituent infinitesimals; but we fail to discover,
for instance, how a fixed formula for the combination
of oxygen and hydrogen comes to determine the appearance of water which
is evidently something more than a combination
of gases, a new creation, a new form of substance, a material
manifestation of a quite new character. We see that a seed
develops into a tree, we follow the line of the process of production
and we utilise it; but we do not discover how a tree can
grow out of a seed, how the life and form of the tree come to be
implied in the substance or energy of the seed or, if that be
rather the fact,
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how the seed can develop into a tree. We know that
genes and chromosomes are the cause of hereditary transmissions, not
only of physical but of psychological variations; but we do not
discover how psychological characteristics can be contained
and transmitted in this inconscient material vehicle. We do not see or
know, but it is expounded to us as a cogent account of
Nature-process, that a play of electrons, of atoms and their resultant
molecules, of cells, glands, chemical secretions and
physiological processes manages by their activity on the nerves and
brain of a Shakespeare or a Plato to produce or could
be perhaps the dynamic occasion for the production of a Hamlet or a
Symposium or a Republic; but we fail to discover or
appreciate how such material movements could have composed or
necessitated the composition of these highest points of
thought and literature: the divergence here of the determinants and the
determination becomes so wide that we are no
longer able to follow the process, much less understand or utilise.
These formulae of Science may be pragmatically correct
and infallible, they may govern the practical how of Nature's
processes, but they do not disclose the intrinsic how or why;
rather they have the air of the formulae of a cosmic Magician, precise,
irresistible, automatically successful each in its field,
but their rationale is fundamentally unintelligible.
There is more to perplex us;
for we see the original indeterminate Energy throwing out general
determinates of
itself,—we might equally in their relation to the variety of their
products call them generic indeterminates,—with their
appropriate states of substance and determined forms of that substance:
the latter are numerous, sometimes innumerable
variations on the substance-energy which is their base: but none of
these variations seems to be predetermined by anything
in the nature of the general indeterminate. An electric Energy produces
positive, negative, neutral forms of itself, forms that
are at once waves and particles; a gaseous state of energy-substance
produces a considerable number of different gases; a
solid state of energy-substance from which results the earth principle
develops into different forms of earth and rock of
many kinds and numerous minerals and metals; a life principle produces
its vegetable
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kingdom teeming with a countless foison of quite different plants, trees, flowers; a principle of animal life produces an
enormous variety of genus, species, individual variations: so it proceeds into human life and mind and its mind-types towards
the still unwritten end or perhaps the yet occult sequel of that unfinished evolutionary chapter. Throughout there is the
constant rule of a general sameness in the original determinate and, subject to this substantial sameness of basic substance
and nature, a profuse variation in the generic and individual determinates; an identical law obtains of sameness or similarity
in the genus or species with numerous variations often meticulously minute in the individual. But we do not find anything in
any general or generic determinate necessitating the variant determinations that result from it. A necessity of immutable
sameness at the base, of free and unaccountable variations on the surface seems to be the law; but who or what
necessitates or determines? What is the rationale of the determination, what is its original truth or its significance? What
compels or impels this exuberant play of varying possibilities which seem to have no aim or meaning unless it be the beauty
or delight of creation? A Mind, a seeking and curious inventive Thought, a hidden determining Will might be there, but there
is no trace of it in the first and fundamental appearance of material Nature.
A first possible explanation points to a self-organising dynamic Chance
that is at work,—a paradox necessitated by the
appearance of inevitable order on one side, of unaccountable freak and
fantasy on the other side of the cosmic phenomenon
we call Nature. An inconscient and inconsequent Force, we may say, that
acts at random and creates this or that by a
general chance without any determining principle,—determinations coming
in only as the result of a persistent repetition of
the same rhythm of action and succeeding because only this repetitive
rhythm could succeed in keeping things in
being,—this is the energy of Nature. But this implies that somewhere in
the origin of things there is a boundless Possibility or
a womb of innumerable possibilities that are manifested out of it by
the original Energy,—an incalculable Inconscient which
we find some embarrassment in calling either an Existence or a
Non-Existence;
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for without some such origin and basis the
appearance and the action of the Energy is unintelligible. Yet an
opposite aspect
of the nature of the cosmic phenomenon as we see it appears to forbid
the theory of a random action generating a persistent
order. There is too much of an iron insistence on order, on a law
basing the possibilities. One would be justified rather in
supposing that there is an inherent imperative Truth of things unseen
by us, but a Truth capable of manifold manifestation,
throwing out a multitude of possibilities and variants of itself which
the creative Energy by its action turns into so many realised
actualities. This brings us to a second explanation,—a mechanical
necessity in things, its workings recognisable by
us as so many mechanical laws of Nature;—the necessity, we might say,
of some such secret inherent Truth of things as
we have supposed, governing automatically the processes we observe in
action in the universe. But a theory of mechanical
Necessity by itself does not elucidate the free play of the endless
unaccountable variations which are visible in the evolution:
there must be behind the Necessity or in it a law of unity associated
with a co-existent but dependent law of multiplicity,
both insisting on manifestation; but the unity of what, the
multiplicity of what? Mechanical Necessity can give no answer.
Again the emergence of consciousness out of the Inconscient is a
stumbling-block in the way of this theory; for it is a
phenomenon which can have no place in an all-pervading truth of
inconscient mechanical Necessity. If there is a necessity
which compels the emergence, it can be only this, that there is already
a consciousness concealed in the Inconscient, waiting
for evolution and when all is ready breaking out from its prison of
apparent Nescience. We may indeed get rid of the
difficulty of the imperative order of things by supposing that it does
not exist, that determinism in Nature is imposed on it by
our thought which needs such an imperative order to enable it to deal
with its surroundings, but in reality there is no such
thing; there is only a Force experimenting in a random action of
infinitesimals which build up in their general results different
determinations by a repetitive persistence operative in the sum of
their action; thus we go back from Necessity to Chance
as the basis of our existence. But what then
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is this Mind, this Consciousness which differs so radically from the Energy that produced it that for its action it has to
impose its idea and need of order on the world she has made and in which it is obliged to live? There would then be the
double contradiction of consciousness emerging from a fundamental Inconscience and of a Mind of order and reason
manifesting as the brilliant final consequence of a world created by inconscient Chance. These things may be possible, but
they need a better explanation than any yet given before we can accord to them our acceptance.
This opens the way for other explanations which make Consciousness the
creator of this world out of an apparent
original Inconscience. A Mind, a Will seems to have imagined and
organised the universe, but it has veiled itself behind its
creation; its first erection has been this screen of an inconscient
Energy and a material form of substance, at once a disguise
of its presence and a plastic creative basis on which it could work as
an artisan uses for his production of forms and
patterns a dumb and obedient material. All these things we see around
us are then the thoughts of an extra-cosmic Divinity,
a Being with an omnipotent and omniscient Mind and Will, who is
responsible for the mathematical law of the physical
universe, for its artistry of beauty, for its strange play of
samenesses and variations, of concordances and discords, of
combining and intermingling opposites, for the drama of consciousness
struggling to exist and seeking to affirm itself in an
inconscient universal order. The fact that this Divinity is invisible
to us, undiscoverable by our mind and senses, offers no
difficulty, since self-evidence or direct sign of an extra-cosmic
Creator could not be expected in a cosmos which is void of
his presence: the patent signals everywhere of the works of an
Intelligence, of law, design, formula, adaptation of means to
end, constant and inexhaustible invention, fantasy even but restrained
by an ordering Reason might be considered sufficient
proof of this origin of things. Or if this Creator is not entirely
supracosmic, but is also immanent in his works, even then there
need be no other sign of him,—except indeed to some consciousness
evolving in this inconscient world, but only when its
evolution reached a point at which it could become aware of the
indwelling Presence. The intervention of this
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evolving consciousness would not be a difficulty, since there would be no contradiction of the basic nature of things in its
appearance; an omnipotent Mind could easily infuse something of itself into its creatures. One difficulty remains; it is the
arbitrary nature of the creation, the incomprehensibility of its purpose, the crude meaninglessness of its law of unnecessary
ignorance, strife and suffering, its ending without denouement or issue. A play? But why this stamp of so many undivine
elements and characters in the play of One whose nature must be supposed to be divine? To the suggestion that what we
see worked out in the world is the thoughts of God, the retort can be made that God could well have had better thoughts and
the best thought of all would have been to refrain from the creation of an unhappy and unintelligible universe. All theistic
explanations of existence starting from an extra-cosmic Deity stumble over this difficulty and can only evade it; it would
disappear only if the Creator were, even though exceeding the creation, yet immanent in it, himself in some sort both the
player and the play, an Infinite casting infinite possibilities into the set form of an evolutionary cosmic order.
On that hypothesis, there must be behind the action of the material
Energy a secret involved Consciousness, cosmic,
infinite, building up through the action of that frontal Energy its
means of an evolutionary manifestation, a creation out of
itself in the boundless finite of the material universe. The apparent
inconscience of the material Energy would be an
indispensable condition for the structure of the material
world-substance in which this Consciousness intends to involve itself
so that it may grow by evolution out of its apparent opposite; for
without some such device a complete involution would be
impossible. If there is such a creation by the Infinite out of itself,
it must be the manifestation, in a material disguise, of truths
or powers of its own being: the forms or vehicles of these truths or
powers would be the basic general or fundamental
determinates we see in Nature; the particular determinates, which
otherwise are unaccountable variations that have
emerged from the vague general stuff in which they originate, would be
the appropriate forms or vehicles of the possibilities
that the truths or powers
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residing in these fundamentals bore within them. The principle of free variation of possibilities natural to an infinite
Consciousness would be the explanation of the aspect of inconscient Chance of which we are aware in the workings of
Nature,—inconscient only in appearance and so appearing because of the complete involution in Matter, because of the veil
with which the secret Consciousness has disguised its presence. The principle of truths, real powers of the Infinite
imperatively fulfilling themselves would be the explanation of the opposite aspect of a mechanical Necessity which we see
in Nature,—mechanical in appearance only and so appearing because of the same veil of Inconscience. It would then be
perfectly intelligible why the Inconscient does its works with a constant principle of mathematical architecture, of design, of
effective arrangement of numbers, of adaptation of means to ends, of inexhaustible device and invention, one might almost
say, a constant experimental skill and an automatism of purpose. The appearance of consciousness out of an apparent
Inconscience would also be no longer inexplicable.
All the unexplained processes of Nature would find their meaning and
their place if this hypothesis proved to be tenable.
Energy seems to create substance, but, in reality, as existence is
inherent in Consciousness-Force, so also substance would
be inherent in Energy,—the Energy a manifestation of the Force,
substance a manifestation of the secret Existence. But as
it is a spiritual substance, it would not be apprehended by the
material sense until it is given by Energy the forms of Matter seizable
by that sense. One begins to understand also how arrangement of design,
quantity and number can be a base for
the manifestation of quality and property; for design, quantity and
number are powers of existence-substance, quality and
property are powers of the consciousness and its force that reside in
the existence; they can then be made manifest and
operative by a rhythm and process of substance. The growth of the tree
out of the seed would be accounted for, like all
other similar phenomena, by the indwelling presence of what we have
called the Real-Idea; the Infinite's self-perception of
the significant form, the living body of its power of existence that
has
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to emerge from its own self-compression in energy-substance, would be carried internally in the form of the seed, carried in
the occult consciousness involved in that form, and would naturally evolve out of it. There would be no difficulty either in
understanding on this principle how infinitesimals of a material character like the gene and the chromosome can carry in
them psychological elements to be transmitted to the physical form that has to emerge from the human seed; it would be at
bottom on the same principle in the objectivity of Matter as that which we find in our subjective experience,—for we see
that the subconscient physical carries in it a mental psychological content, impressions of past events, habits, fixed mental
and vital formations, fixed forms of character, and sends them up by an occult process to the waking consciousness, thus
originating or influencing many activities of our nature.
On the same basis there would be no difficulty in understanding why the
physiological functionings of the body help to
determine the mind's psychological actions: for the body is not mere
unconscious Matter: it is a structure of a secretly
conscious Energy that has taken form in it. Itself occultly conscious,
it is, at the same time, the vehicle of expression of an
overt Consciousness that has emerged and is self-aware in our physical
energy-substance. The body's functionings are a
necessary machinery or instrumentation for the movements of this mental
Inhabitant; it is only by setting the corporeal
instrument in motion that the Conscious Being emerging, evolving in it
can transmit its mind formations, will formations and
turn them into a physical manifestation of itself in Matter. The
capacity, the processes of the instrument must to a certain
extent reshape the mind formations in their transition from mental
shape into physical expression; its workings are necessary
and must exercise their influence before that expression can become
actual. The bodily instrument may even in some
directions dominate its user; it may too by a force of habit suggest or
create involuntary reactions of the consciousness
inhabiting it before the working Mind and Will can control or
interfere. All this is possible because the body has a
“subconscient” consciousness of its own which counts in our total
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self-expression; even, if we look at this outer
instrumentation only, we can conclude that body determines mind, but
this is
only a minor truth and the major Truth is that mind determines body. In
this view a still deeper Truth becomes conceivable;
a spiritual entity ensouling the substance that veils it is the
original determinant of both mind and body. On the other side, in
the opposite order of process,—that by which the mind can transmit its
ideas and commands to the body, can train it to be
an instrument for new action, can even so impress it with its habitual
demands or orders that the physical instinct carries
them out automatically even when the mind is no longer consciously
willing them, those also more unusual but well attested
by which to an extraordinary and hardly limitable extent the mind can
learn to determine the reactions of the body even to
the overriding of its normal law or conditions of action,—these and
other otherwise unaccountable aspects of the relation
between these two elements of our being become easily understandable:
for it is the secret consciousness in the living
matter that receives from its greater companion; it is this in the body
that in its own involved and occult fashion perceives or
feels the demand on it and obeys the emerged or evolved consciousness
which presides over the body. Finally, the
conception of a divine Mind and Will creating the cosmos becomes
justifiable, while at the same time the perplexing
elements in it which our reasoning mentality refuses to ascribe to an
arbitrary fiat of the Creator, find their explanation as
inevitable phenomena of a Consciousness emerging with difficulty out of
its opposite—but with the mission to override these
contrary phenomena and manifest by a slow and difficult evolution its
greater reality and true nature.
But an approach from the
material end of Existence cannot give us any certitude of validity for
this hypothesis or for
that matter for any other explanation of Nature and her procedure: the
veil cast by the original Inconscience is too thick for
the Mind to pierce and it is behind this veil that is hidden the secret
origination of what is manifested; there are seated the
truths and powers underlying the phenomena and processes that appear to
us in the material front of Nature. To know with
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greater certitude we must follow the curve of
evolving consciousness until it arrives at a height and largeness of
self-enlightenment in which the primal secret is self-discovered; for
presumably it must evolve, must eventually bring out
what was held from the beginning by the occult original Consciousness
in things of which it is a gradual manifestation. In
Life it would be clearly hopeless to seek for the truth; for Life
begins with a formulation in which consciousness is still submental and
therefore to us as mental beings appears as inconscient or at most
subconscious, and our own investigation
into this stage of life studying it from outside cannot be more
fruitful of the secret truth than our examination of Matter.
Even when mind develops in life, its first functional aspect is a
mentality involved in action, in vital and physical needs and
preoccupations, in impulses, desires, sensations, emotions, unable to
stand back from these things and observe and know
them. In the human mind there is the first hope of understanding,
discovery, a free comprehension; here we might seem to
be coming to the possibility of self-knowledge and world-knowledge. But
in fact our mind can at first only observe facts and
processes and for the rest it has to make deductions and inferences, to
construct hypotheses, to reason, to speculate. In
order to discover the secret of Consciousness it would have to know
itself and determine the reality of its own being and
process; but as in animal life the emerging Consciousness is involved
in vital action and movement, so in the human being
mind-consciousness is involved in its own whirl of thoughts, an
activity in which it is carried on without rest and in which its
very reasonings and speculations are determined in their tendency,
trend, conditions by its own temperament, mental turn,
past formation and line of energy, inclination, preference, an inborn
natural selection,—we do not freely determine our
thinking according to the truth of things, it is determined for us by
our nature. We can indeed stand back with a certain
detachment and observe the workings of the mental Energy in us; but it
is still only its process that we see and not any
original source of our mental determinations: we can build theories and
hypotheses of the process of Mind, but a veil is still
there over the inner secret
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of ourselves, our consciousness, our total nature.
It is only when we follow the yogic process of quieting the mind itself
that a profounder result of our self-observation
becomes possible. For first we discover that mind is a subtle
substance, a general determinate — or generic
indeterminate — which mental energy when it operates throws into forms
or particular determinations of itself, thoughts,
concepts, percepts, mental sentiments, activities of will and reactions
of feeling, but which, when the energy is quiescent,
can live either in an inert torpor or in an immobile silence and peace
of self-existence. Next we see that the determinations
of our mind do not all proceed from itself; for waves and currents of
mental energy enter into it from outside: these take
form in it or appear already formed from some universal Mind or from
other minds and are accepted by us as our own
thinking. We can perceive also an occult or subliminal mind in
ourselves from which thoughts and perceptions and
will-impulses and mental feelings arise; we can perceive too higher
planes of consciousness from which a superior mind
energy works through us or upon us. Finally we discover that that which
observes all this is a mental being supporting the
mind substance and mind energy; without this presence, their upholder
and source of sanctions, they could not exist or
operate. This mental being or Purusha first appears as a silent witness
and, if that were all, we would have to accept the
determinations of mind as a phenomenal activity imposed upon the being
by Nature, by Prakriti, or else as a creation
presented to it by Prakriti, a world of thought which Nature constructs
and offers to the observing Purusha. But afterwards
we find that the Purusha, the mental being, can depart from its posture
of a silent or accepting Witness; it can become the
source of reactions, accept, reject, even rule and regulate, become the
giver of the command, the knower. A knowledge
also arises that this mind-substance manifests the mental being, is its
own expressive substance and the mental energy is its
own consciousness-force, so that it is reasonable to conclude that all
mind determinations arise from the being of the
Purusha. But this conclusion is complicated by the fact that from
another viewpoint our personal mind seems to be little
more than a
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formation of universal Mind, an engine for the
reception, modification, propagation of cosmic thought-waves,
idea-currents,
will-suggestions, waves of feeling, sense-suggestions,
form-suggestions. It has no doubt its own already realised expression,
predispositions, propensities, personal temperament and nature; what
comes from the universal can only find a place there if
it is accepted and assimilated into the self-expression of the
individual mental being, the personal Prakriti of the Purusha. But
still, in view of these complexities, the question remains entire
whether all this evolution and action is a phenomenal creation
by some universal Energy presented to the mental being or an activity
imposed by Mind-Energy on the Purusha's
indeterminate, perhaps indeterminable existence, or whether the whole
is something predetermined by some dynamic truth
of Self within and only manifested on the mind surface. To know that we
would have to touch or to enter into a cosmic state
of being and consciousness to which the totality of things and their
integral principle would be better manifest than to our
limited mind experience.
Overmind consciousness is
such a state or principle beyond individual mind, beyond even universal
mind in the
Ignorance; it carries in itself a first direct and masterful cognition
of cosmic truth: here then we might hope to understand
something of the original working of things, get some insight into the
fundamental movements of cosmic Nature. One thing
indeed becomes clear; it is self-evident here that both the individual
and the cosmos come from a transcendent Reality
which takes form in them: the mind and life of the individual being,
its self in nature must therefore be a partial
self-expression of the cosmic Being and, both through that and
directly, a self-expression of the transcendent Reality,—a
conditional and half-veiled expression it may be, but still that is its
significance. But also we see that what the expression
shall be is also determined by the individual himself: only what he can
in his nature receive, assimilate, formulate, his portion
of the cosmic being or of the Reality, can find shape in his mind and
life and physical parts; something that derives from
Reality, something that is in the cosmos he expresses, but in the terms
of his own self-expression, in the terms of
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his own nature. But the original question set out
for us by the phenomenon of the universe is not solved by the overmind
knowledge,—the question, in this case, whether the building of thought,
experience, world of perceptions of the mental
Person, the mind Purusha, is truly a self-expression, a
self-determination proceeding from some truth of his own spiritual
being, a manifestation of that truth's dynamic possibilities, or
whether it is not rather a creation or construction presented to
him by Nature, by Prakriti, and only in the sense of being
individualised in his personal formation of that Nature can it be
said to be his own or dependent on him; or, again, it might be a play
of a cosmic Imagination, a fantasia of the Infinite
imposed on the blank indeterminable of his own eternal pure existence.
These are the three views of creation that seem to
have an equal chance of being right, and mind is incapable of
definitely deciding between them; for each view is armed with
its own mental logic and its appeal to intuition and experience.
Overmind seems to add to the perplexity, for the overmental
view of things allows each possibility to formulate itself in its own
independent right and realise its own existence in
cognition, in dynamic self-presentation, in substantiating
experience.
In Overmind, in all the
higher ranges of the mind, we find recurring the dichotomy of a pure
silent self without feature
or qualities or relations, self-existent, self-poised, self-sufficient,
and the mighty dynamis of a determinative
knowledge-power, of a creative consciousness and force which
precipitates itself into the forms of the universe. This
opposition which is yet a collocation, as if these two were
correlatives or complementaries, although apparent contradictions
of each other, sublimates itself into the co-existence of an impersonal
Brahman without qualities, a fundamental divine
Reality free from all relations or determinates, and a Brahman with
infinite qualities, a fundamental divine Reality who is the
source and container and master of all relations and
determinations—Nirguna, Saguna. If we pursue the Nirguna into a
farthest possible self-experience, we arrive at a supreme Absolute void
of all relations and determinations, the ineffable first
and last word of existence. If we enter through the Saguna into some
ultimate possible of experience, we arrive at a
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divine Absolute, a personal supreme and omnipresent Godhead, transcendent as well as universal, an infinite Master of all
relations and determinations who can uphold in his being a million universes and pervade each with a single ray of his
self-light and a single degree of his ineffable existence. The overmind consciousness maintains equally these two truths of
the Eternal which face the mind as mutually exclusive alternatives; it admits both as supreme aspects of one Reality:
somewhere, then, behind them there must be a still greater Transcendence which originates them or upholds them both in its
supreme Eternity. But what can that be of which such opposites are equal truths, unless it be an original indeterminable
Mystery of which any knowledge, any understanding by the mind is impossible? We can know it indeed to some degree, in
some kind of experience or realisation, by its aspects, powers, constant series of fundamental negatives and positives
through which we have to pursue it, independently in either or integrally in both together; but in the last resort it seems to
escape even from the highest mentality and remain unknowable.
But if the supreme Absolute is indeed a pure Indeterminable, then no
creation, no manifestation, no universe is possible.
And yet the universe exists. What then is it that creates this
contradiction, is able to effect the impossible, bring this insoluble
riddle of self-division into existence? A Power of some kind it must
be, and since the Absolute is the sole reality, the one
origin of all things, this Power must proceed from it, must have some
relation with it, a connection, a dependence. For if it is
quite other than the supreme Reality, a cosmic Imagination imposing its
determinations on the eternal blank of the
Indeterminable, then the sole existence of an absolute Parabrahman is
no longer admissible; there is then a dualism at the
source of things,—not substantially different from the Sankhya dualism
of Soul and Nature. If it is a Power, the sole Power
indeed, of the Absolute, we have this logical impossibility that the
existence of the Supreme Being and the Power of his
existence are entirely opposite to each other, two supreme
contradictories; for Brahman is free from all possibility of
relations and determinations, but Maya is a creative Imagination
imposing these very things upon it, an originator of
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relations and determinations of which Brahman must necessarily be the supporter and witness, — to the logical reason an
inadmissible formula. If it is accepted, it can only be as a suprarational mystery, something neither real nor unreal,
inexplicable in its nature, anirvacaniya.
But the difficulties are so great that it can be accepted only if it
imposes itself
irresistibly as the inevitable ultimate, the end and summit of
metaphysical inquiry and spiritual experience. For even if all
things are illusory creations, they must have at least a subjective
existence and they can exist nowhere except in the
consciousness of the Sole Existence; they are then subjective
determinations of the Indeterminable. If, on the contrary, the
determinations of this Power are real creations, out of what are they
determined, what is their substance? It is not possible
that they are made out of a Nothing, a Non-Existence other than the
Absolute; for that will erect a new dualism, a great
positive Zero over against the greater indeterminable x we have
supposed to be the one Reality. It is evident therefore that
the Reality cannot be a rigid Indeterminable. Whatever is created must
be of it and in it, and what is of the substance of the
utterly Real must itself be real: a vast baseless negation of reality
purporting to be real cannot be the sole outcome of the
eternal Truth, the Infinite Existence. It is perfectly understandable
that the Absolute is and must be indeterminable in the
sense that it cannot be limited by any determination or any sum of
possible determinations, but not in the sense that it is
incapable of self-determination. The Supreme Existence cannot be
incapable of creating true self-determinations of its
being, incapable of upholding a real self-creation or manifestation in
its self-existent infinite.
Overmind, then, gives us no
final and positive solution; it is in a supramental cognition beyond it
that we are left to seek
for an answer. A supramental Truth-Consciousness is at once the
self-awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of
self-determination inherent in that self-awareness; the first is its
foundation and status, the second is its power of being, the
dynamis of its self-existence. All that a timeless eternity of
self-awareness sees in itself as truth of being, the conscious
power of its being manifests in Time-eternity. To Supermind therefore
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the Supreme is not a rigid Indeterminable, an
all-negating Absolute; an infinite of being complete to itself in its
own
immutable purity of existence, its sole power a pure consciousness able
only to dwell on the being's changeless eternity, on
the immobile delight of its sheer self-existence, is not the whole
Reality. The Infinite of Being must also be an Infinite of
Power; containing in itself an eternal repose and quiescence, it must
also be capable of an eternal action and creation: but
this too must be an action in itself, a creation out of its own self
eternal and infinite, since there could be nothing else out of
which it could create; any basis of creation seeming to be other than
itself must be still really in itself and of itself and could
not be something foreign to its existence. An infinite Power cannot be
solely a Force resting in a pure inactive sameness, an
immutable quiescence; it must have in it endless powers of its being
and energy: an infinite Consciousness must hold within
it endless truths of its own self-awareness. These in action would
appear to our cognition as aspects of its being, to our
spiritual sense as powers and movements of its dynamis, to our
aesthesis as instruments and formulations of its delight of
existence. Creation would then be a self-manifestation: it would be an
ordered deploying of the infinite possibilities of the
Infinite. But every possibility implies a truth of being behind it, a
reality in the Existent; for without that supporting truth there
could not be any possibles. In manifestation a fundamental reality of
the Existent would appear to our cognition as a
fundamental spiritual aspect of the Divine Absolute; out of it would
emerge all its possible manifestations, its innate
dynamisms: these again must create or rather bring out of a
non-manifest latency their own significant forms, expressive
powers, native processes; their own being would develop their own
becoming, svar\=upa, svabh\=ava. This then would be the
complete process of creation: but in our mind we do not see the
complete process, we see only possibilities that determine
themselves into actualities and, though we infer or conjecture, we are
not sure of a necessity, a predetermining truth, an
imperative behind them which capacitates the possibilities, decides the
actualities. Our mind is an observer of actuals, an
inventor or discoverer of possibilities, but not a seer of the occult
imperatives that necessitate
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the movements and forms of a creation: for in the front of universal existence there are only forces determining results by
some balance of the meeting of their powers; the original Determinant or determinants, if it or they exist, are veiled from us
by our ignorance. But to the supramental Truth-Consciousness these imperatives would be apparent, would be the very stuff
of its seeing and experience: in the supramental creative process the imperatives, the nexus of possibilities, the resultant
actualities would be a single whole, an indivisible movement; the possibilities and actualities would carry in themselves the
inevitability of their originating imperative,—all their results, all their creation would be the body of the Truth which they
manifest in predetermined significant forms and powers of the All-Existence.
Our fundamental cognition of the Absolute, our substantial spiritual
experience of it is the intuition or the direct
experience of an infinite and eternal Existence, an infinite and
eternal Consciousness, an infinite and eternal Delight of
Existence. In overmental and mental cognition it is possible to make
discrete and even to separate this original unity into
three self-existent aspects: for we can experience a pure causeless
eternal Bliss so intense that we are that alone;
existence, consciousness seem to be swallowed up in it, no longer
ostensibly in presence; a similar experience of pure and
absolute consciousness and a similar exclusive identity with it is
possible, and there can be too a like identifying experience
of pure and absolute existence. But to a supermind cognition these
three are always an inseparable Trinity, even though one
can stand in front of the others and manifest its own spiritual
determinates; for each has its primal aspects or its inherent
self-formations, but all of these together are original to the triune
Absolute. Love, Joy and Beauty are the fundamental
determinates of the Divine Delight of Existence, and we can see at once
that these are of the very stuff and nature of that
Delight: they are not alien impositions on the being of the Absolute or
creations supported by it but outside it; they are truths
of its being, native to its consciousness, powers of its force of
existence. So too is it with the fundamental determinates of
the absolute consciousness,—knowledge and will; they
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are truths and powers of the original Consciousness-Force and are inherent in its very nature. This authenticity becomes still
more evident when we regard the fundamental spiritual determinates of the absolute Existence; they are its triune powers,
necessary first postulates for all its self-creation or manifestation,—Self, the Divine, the Conscious Being; Atman, Ishwara,
Purusha.
If we pursue the process of self-manifestation farther, we shall see
that each of these aspects or powers reposes in its
first action on a triad or trinity; for Knowledge inevitably takes its
stand in a trinity of the Knower, the Known and
Knowledge; Love finds itself in a trinity of the Lover, the Beloved and
Love; Will is self-fulfilled in a trinity of the Lord of
the Will, the object of the Will and the executive Force; Joy has its
original and utter gladness in a trinity of the Enjoyer, the
Enjoyed and the Delight that unites them; Self as inevitably appears
and founds its manifestation in a trinity of Self as
subject, Self as object and self-awareness holding together Self as
subject-object. These and other primal powers and
aspects assume their status among the fundamental spiritual
self-determinations of the Infinite; all others are determinates of
the fundamental spiritual determinates, significant relations,
significant powers, significant forms of being, consciousness,
force, delight,—energies, conditions, ways, lines of the truth-process
of the Consciousness-Force of the Eternal, imperatives,
possibilities, actualities of its manifestation. All this deploying of
powers and possibilities and their inherent consequences is
held together by supermind cognition in an intimate oneness; it keeps
them founded consciously on the original Truth and
maintained in the harmony of the truths they manifest and are in their
nature. There is here no imposition of imaginations, no
arbitrary creation, neither is there any division, fragmentation,
irreconcilable contrariety or disparateness. But in Mind of
Ignorance these phenomena appear; for there a limited consciousness
sees and deals with everything as if all were separate
objects of cognition or separate existences and it seeks so to know,
possess and enjoy them and gets mastery over them or
suffers their mastery: but, behind its ignorance, what the soul in it
is seeking for is the Reality, the Truth, the Consciousness,
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the Power, the Delight by which they exist; the mind has to learn to awaken to this true seeking and true
knowledge veiled within itself, to the Reality from which all things hold their truth, to the Consciousness of which all
consciousnesses are entities, to the Power from which all get what force of being they have within them, to the Delight of
which all delights are partial figures. This limitation of consciousness and this awakening to the integrality of consciousness
are also a process of self-manifestation, are a self-determination of the Spirit; even when contrary to the Truth in their
appearances, the things of the limited consciousness have in their deeper sense and reality a divine significance; they too
bring out a truth or a possibility of the Infinite. Of some such nature, as far as it can be expressed in mental formulas, would
be the supramental cognition of things which sees the one Truth everywhere and would so arrange its account to us of our
existence, its report of the secret of creation and the significance of the universe.
At the same time
indeterminability is also a necessary element in our conception of the
Absolute and in our spiritual
experience: this is the other side of the supramental regard on being
and on things. The Absolute is not limitable or definable
by any one determination or by any sum of determinations; on the other
side, it is not bound down to an indeterminable
vacancy of pure existence. On the contrary, it is the source of all
determinations: its indeterminability is the natural, the
necessary condition both of its infinity of being and its infinity of
power of being; it can be infinitely all things because it is no
thing in particular and exceeds any definable totality. It is this
essential indeterminability of the Absolute that translates itself
into our consciousness through the fundamental negating positives of
our spiritual experience, the immobile immutable Self,
the Nirguna Brahman, the Eternal without qualities, the pure
featureless One Existence, the Impersonal, the Silence void of
activities, the Non-being, the Ineffable and the Unknowable. On the
other side it is the essence and source of all
determinations, and this dynamic essentiality manifests to us through
the fundamental affirming positives in which the
Absolute equally meets us; for it is the Self that becomes all things,
the Saguna Brahman, the
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Eternal with infinite qualities, the One who is the Many, the infinite Person who is the source and foundation of all persons
and personalities, the Lord of creation, the Word, the Master of all works and action; it is that which being known all is
known: these affirmatives correspond to those negatives. For it is not possible in a supramental cognition to split asunder the
two sides of the One Existence,—even to speak of them as sides is excessive, for they are in each other, their co-existence
or one-existence is eternal and their powers sustaining each other found the self-manifestation of the Infinite.
But neither is the separate cognition of them entirely an illusion or a
complete error of the Ignorance; this too has its
validity for spiritual experience. For these primary aspects of the
Absolute are fundamental spiritual determinates or indeterminates
answering at this spiritual end or beginning to the general
determinates or generic indeterminates of the
material end or inconscient beginning of the descending and ascending
Manifestation. Those that seem to us negative carry
in them the freedom of the Infinite from limitation by its own
determinations; their realisation disengages the spirit within,
liberates us and enables us to participate in this supremacy: thus,
when once we pass into or through the experience of
immutable self, we are no longer bound and limited in the inner status
of our being by the determinations and creations of
Nature. On the other, the dynamic side, this original freedom enables
the Consciousness to create a world of determinations
without being bound by it: it enables it also to withdraw from what it
has created and re-create in a higher truth-formula. It is
on this freedom that is based the spirit's power of infinite variation
of the truth-possibilities of existence and also its capacity
to create, without tying itself to its workings, any and every form of
Necessity or system of order: the individual being too by
experience of these negating absolutes can participate in that dynamic
liberty, can pass from one order of self-formulation to
a higher order. At the stage when from the mental it has to move
towards its supramental status, one most liberatingly
helpful, if not indispensable experience that may intervene is the
entry into a total Nirvana of mentality and mental ego, a
passage into the silence
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of the Spirit. In any case, a realisation of the
pure Self must always precede the transition to that mediating eminence
of the
consciousness from which a clear vision of the ascending and descending
stairs of manifested existence is commanded and
the possession of the free power of ascent and descent becomes a
spiritual prerogative. An independent completeness of
identity with each of the primal aspects and powers—not narrowing as in
the mind into a sole engrossing experience
seeming to be final and integral, for that would be incompatible with
the realisation of the unity of all aspects and powers of
existence—is a capacity inherent in consciousness in the Infinite; that
indeed is the base and justification of the overmind
cognition and its will to carry each aspect, each power, each
possibility to its independent fullness. But the Supermind keeps
always and in every status or condition the spiritual realisation of
the Unity of all; the intimate presence of that unity is there
even within the completest grasp of each thing, each state given its
whole delight of itself, power and value: there is thus no
losing sight of the affirmative aspects even when there is the full
acceptance of the truth of the negative. The Overmind
keeps still the sense of this underlying Unity; that is for it the
secure base of the independent experience. In Mind the
knowledge of the unity of all aspects is lost on the surface, the
consciousness is plunged into engrossing, exclusive separate
affirmations; but there too, even in the Mind's ignorance, the total
reality still remains behind the exclusive absorption and
can be recovered in the form of a profound mental intuition or else in
the idea or sentiment of an underlying truth of integral
oneness; in the spiritual mind this can develop into an ever-present
experience.
All aspects of the omnipresent Reality have
their fundamental truth in the Supreme Existence. Thus even the aspect
or
power of Inconscience, which seems to be an opposite, a negation of the
eternal Reality, yet corresponds to a Truth held in
itself by the self-aware and all-conscious Infinite. It is, when we
look closely at it, the Infinite's power of plunging the
consciousness into a trance of self-involution, a self-oblivion of the
Spirit veiled in its own abysses where nothing is manifest
but all inconceivably is and can emerge from that ineffable latency. In
the
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heights of Spirit this state of cosmic or infinite
trance-sleep appears to our cognition as a luminous uttermost
Superconscience: at the other end of being it offers itself to
cognition as the Spirit's potency of presenting to itself the
opposites of its own truths of being,—an abyss of non-existence, a
profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of
insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and
delight of existence can manifest themselves,—but they
appear in limited terms, in slowly emerging and increasing
self-formulations, even in contrary terms of themselves; it is the
play of a secret all-being, all-delight, all-knowledge, but it observes
the rules of its own self-oblivion, self-opposition,
self-limitation until it is ready to surpass it. This is the
Inconscience and Ignorance that we see at work in the material
universe. It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the
infinite and eternal Existence.
It is important to observe here the sense that is
acquired in such a total cognition of cosmic being by the phenomenon of
the Ignorance, its assigned place in the spiritual economy of the
universe. If all that we experience were an imposition, an
unreal creation in the Absolute, both cosmic and individual existence
would be in their very nature an Ignorance; the sole
real knowledge would be the indeterminable self-awareness of the
Absolute. If all were the erection of a temporal and
phenomenal creation over against the reality of the witnessing timeless
Eternal and if the creation were not a manifestation
of the Reality but an arbitrary self-effective cosmic construction,
that too would be a sort of imposition. Our knowledge of
the creation would be the knowledge of a temporary structure of
evanescent consciousness and being, a dubious Becoming
that passes across the vision of the Eternal, not a knowledge of
Reality; that too would be an Ignorance. But if all is a
manifestation of the Reality and itself real by the constituting
immanence, the substantiating essence and presence of the
Reality, then the awareness of individual being and world-being would
be in its spiritual origin and nature a play of the
infinite self-knowledge and all-knowledge: ignorance could be only a
subordinate movement, a suppressed or restricted
cognition or a partial and imperfect evolving knowledge with the true
and total self-awareness and all-awareness
Page 319
concealed both in it and behind it. It would be a temporary phenomenon, not the cause and essence of cosmic existence; its
inevitable consummation would be a return of the spirit, not out of the cosmos to a sole supracosmic self-awareness, but
even in the cosmos itself to an integral self-knowledge and all-knowledge.
It might be objected that the supramental cognition
is, after all, not the final truth of things. Beyond the supramental
plane of consciousness which is an intermediate step from overmind and
mind to the complete experience of
Sachchidananda, are the greatest heights of the manifested Spirit: here
surely existence would not at all be based on the
determination of the One in multiplicity, it would manifest solely and
simply a pure identity in oneness. But the supramental
Truth-Consciousness would not be absent from these planes, for it is an
inherent power of Sachchidananda: the difference
would be that the determinations would not be demarcations, they would
be plastic, interfused, each a boundless finite. For
there all is in each and each is in all radically and integrally,—there
would be to the utmost a fundamental awareness of
identity, a mutual inclusion and interpenetration of consciousness:
knowledge as we envisage it would not exist, because it
would not be needed, since all would be direct action of consciousness
in being itself, identical, intimate, intrinsically
self-aware and all-aware. But still relations of consciousness,
relations of mutual delight of existence, relations of self-power
of being with self-power of being would not be excluded; these highest
spiritual planes would not be a field of blank
indeterminability, a vacancy of pure existence.
It might be said again that, even so, in Sachchidananda
itself at least, above all worlds of manifestation, there could be nothing but
the self-awareness of pure existence and consciousness and a pure delight of
existence. Or, indeed, this triune being itself might well be only a trinity of
original spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite; these too, like all
determinations, would cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. But our position
is that these must be inherent truths of the supreme being; their utmost reality
must be pre-existent in the Absolute even if they are ineffably other there than
what they are in the spiritual mind's
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highest possible experience. The Absolute is not a mystery of
infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations; nothing can manifest that is
not justified by some self-power of the original and omnipresent Reality.
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