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CHAPTER XII
The Origin of the Ignorance
By energism of consciousness
1 Brahman is massed; from that
Matter is born and from Matter Life and Mind and the worlds.
Mundaka
Upanishad.2
He desired, “May I be Many”, he concentrated in Tapas, by Tapas
he created the world; creating, he entered into it;
entering, he
became the existent and the beyond-existence, he became the
expressed and the unexpressed, he became
knowledge and ignorance,
he became the truth and the falsehood: he became the truth, even all
this whatsoever that is.
“That Truth” they call him.
Taittiriya Upanishad.3
Energism of consciousness1
is Brahman.
Taittiriya Upanishad.4
IT
becomes necessary and possible, now that so much has been fixed, to
consider at close quarters the problem of the
Ignorance from the point of view of its pragmatic origin, the process
of consciousness which brought it into existence. It is
on the basis of an integral Oneness as the truth of existence that we
have to consider the problem and see how far the
different possible solutions are on this basis applicable. How could
this manifold ignorance or this narrowly self-limiting and separative
knowledge arise and come into action or maintain itself in action in an
absolute Being who must be absolute
consciousness and therefore cannot be subject to ignorance? How is even
an apparent division effectively operated and
kept in continuance in the Indivisible? The Being, integrally one,
cannot be ignorant of itself; and since all things are itself,
conscious modifications, determinations of its being, it cannot either
be ignorant of things, of their true nature, of their true
action. But though we say that we are That, that the Jivatman or
individual self is no other than the Paramatman, no other than the
Absolute, yet we are certainly ignorant both of ourselves and things,
from which this contradiction results that what must be in its very
grain
1 Tapas.
2 I. 1. 8.
3 II. 6.
4 III. 2-5.
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incapable of ignorance is yet capable of it, and has plunged itself into it by some will of its being or some necessity or
possibility of its nature. We do not ease the difficulty if we plead that Mind, which is the seat of ignorance, is a thing of
Maya, non-existent, not-Brahman, and that Brahman, the Absolute, the sole Existence cannot in any way be touched by the
ignorance of mind which is part of the illusory being, Asat, the Non-Existence. This is an escape which is not open to us if
we admit an integral Oneness: for then it is evident that, in making so radical a distinction and at the same time cancelling it
by terming it illusory, we are using the magic or Maya of thought and word in order to conceal from ourselves the fact that
we are dividing and denying the unity of the Brahman; for we have erected two opposite powers, Brahman incapable of
illusion and self-illusive Maya, and pitchforked them into an impossible unity. If Brahman is the sole existence, Maya can be
nothing but a power of Brahman, a force of his consciousness or a result of his being; and if the Jivatman, one with
Brahman, is subject to its own Maya, the Brahman in it is subject to Maya. But this is not intrinsically or fundamentally
possible: the subjection can only be a submission of something in Nature to an action of Nature which is part of the
conscious and free movement of the Spirit in things, a play of its own self-manifesting Omniscience. Ignorance must be part
of the movement of the One, a development of its consciousness knowingly adopted, to which it is not forcibly subjected but
which it uses for its cosmic purpose.
It is not open to us to get rid of the whole difficulty by saying that the Jivatman
and the Supreme are not One, but eternally different, the one subject to
ignorance, the other absolute in being and consciousness and therefore in
knowledge; for this contradicts the supreme experience and the whole experience
which is that of unity in being, whatever difference there may be in the action
of Nature. It is easier to accept the fact of unity in difference which is so
evident and pervasive in all the building of the universe and satisfy ourselves
with the statement that we are one, yet different, one in essential being and
therefore in essential nature, different in soul-form and therefore in active
nature. But we thereby only state the fact, leaving the difficulty raised by the
fact unsolved,
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how that which belongs in the essence of its being
to the unity of the Absolute and should therefore be one with it and
with
all in consciousness, comes to be divided in its dynamic form of self
and its activity and subject to Ignorance. It is also to be
noted that the statement would not be wholly true, since it is possible
for the Jivatman to enter into unity with the active
nature of the One and not only into a static essential oneness. Or we
may escape the difficulty by saying that beyond or
above existence and its problems there is the Unknowable which is
beyond or above our experience, and that the action of
Maya has already begun in the Unknowable before the world began and
therefore is itself unknowable and inexplicable in
its cause and its origin. This would be a sort of idealistic as opposed
to a materialistic Agnosticism. But all Agnosticism is
subject to this objection that it may be nothing but our refusal to
know, a too ready embracing of an apparent and present
restriction or constriction of consciousness, a sense of impotence
which may be permitted to the immediate limitations of the
mind but not to the Jivatman who is one with the Supreme. The Supreme
must surely know himself and the cause of
ignorance, and therefore the Jivatman has no ground to despair of any
knowledge or deny his capacity of knowing the
integral Supreme and the original cause of his own present
ignorance.
The Unknowable, if it is at all, may be a supreme state of
Sachchidananda beyond our highest conceptions of existence,
consciousness and bliss; that is what was evidently meant by the Asat,
the Non-Existent of the Taittiriya Upanishad, which alone was in the
beginning and out of which the existent was born, and possibly too it
may be the inmost sense of the Nirvana of the Buddha: for the
dissolution of our present state by Nirvana may be a reaching to some
highest state beyond all notion or experience of self even, an
ineffable release from our sense of existence. Or it may be the
Upanishad's absolute and unconditioned bliss which is beyond expression
and beyond understanding, because it surpasses all that we can conceive
of or describe as consciousness and existence. This is the sense in
which we have already accepted it; for the acceptation commits us only
to a refusal to put a limit to the ascension of the Infinite. Or, if it
is
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not this, if it is something quite different from existence, even from an unconditioned existence, it must be the absolute
Non-Being of the nihilistic thinker.
But out of absolute Nothingness nothing can come, not even anything
merely apparent, not even an illusion; and if the
absolute Non-Existence is not that, then it can only be an absolute
eternally unrealised Potentiality, an enigmatic zero of the
Infinite out of which relative potentialities may at any time emerge,
but only some actually succeed in emerging into
phenomenal appearance. Out of this Non-Existence anything may arise,
and there is no possibility of saying what or why; it
is for all practical purposes a seed of absolute chaos out of which by
some happy, — or rather unhappy, —accident there has
emerged the order of a universe. Or we may say that there is no real
order of the universe; what we take for such is a
persistent habit of the senses and the life and a figment of the mind
and it is useless to seek for an ultimate reason of things.
Out of an absolute chaos all paradox and absurdity can be born, and the
world is such a paradox, a mysterious sum of
contraries and puzzles, or, it may be, in effect, as some have felt or
thought, a huge error, a monstrous, an infinite delirium.
Of such a universe not an absolute Consciousness and Knowledge, but an
absolute Inconscience and Ignorance may be the
source. Anything may be true in such a cosmos: everything may have been
born out of nothing; thinking mind may be only a
disease of unthinking Force or inconscient Matter; dominant order,
which we suppose to be existence according to the truth
of things, may be really the mechanical law of an eternal
self-ignorance and not the self-evolution of a supreme self-ruling
conscious Will; perpetual existence may be the constant phenomenon of
an eternal Nihil. All opinions about the origins of things become of an
equal force, since all are equally valid or invalid; for all become
equally possible where there is no sure starting-point and no
ascertainable goal of the revolutions of the becoming. All these
opinions have been held by the human mind and in all there has been
profit, even if we regard them as errors; for errors are permitted to
the mind because they open doors upon truth, negatively by destroying
opposite errors, positively by preparing an element in a new
constructive hypothesis. But, pushed too
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far, this view of things leads to the negation of
the whole aim of philosophy, which seeks for knowledge and not for
chaos
and which cannot fulfil itself if the last word of knowledge is the
Unknowable, but only if it is something, to use the words of
the Upanishad, which being known all is known. The Unknowable,—not
absolutely unknowable, but beyond mental
knowledge, — can only be a higher degree in the intensity of being of
that Something, a degree beyond the loftiest summit
attainable by mental beings, and, if it were known as it must be known
to itself, that discovery would not destroy entirely
what is given us by our supreme possible knowledge but rather carry it
to a higher fulfilment and larger truth of what it has
already gained by self-vision and self-experience. It is then this
Something, an Absolute which can be so known that all
truths can stand in it and by it and find there their reconciliation,
that we must discover as our starting-point and keep as our
constant base of thinking and seeing and by it find a solution of the
problem; for it is That alone that can carry in it a key to
the paradoxes of the universe.
This Something is, as Vedanta insists and as we have throughout
insisted, in its manifest nature Sachchidananda, a
trinity of absolute existence, consciousness and bliss. It is from this
primal truth that we must start in approaching the
problem, and it is evident then that the solution must be found in an
action of consciousness manifesting itself as knowledge
and yet limiting that knowledge in such a way as to create the
phenomenon of the Ignorance, — and since the Ignorance is a
phenomenon of the dynamic action of Force of Consciousness, not an
essential fact but a creation, a consequence of that
action, it is this Force aspect of Consciousness that it will be
fruitful to consider. Absolute consciousness is in its nature
absolute power; the nature of Chit is Shakti: Force or Shakti
concentrated and energised for cognition or for action in a
realising power effective or creative, the power of conscious being
dwelling upon itself and bringing out, as it were, by the heat of its
incubation1
the
1 Tapas means literally heat, afterwards any kind of energism, askesis, austerity of conscious force acting upon
itself or its object. The world was created by Tapas in the form, says the ancient image, of an egg which being
broken, again by Tapas, heat of incubation of conscious force, the Purusha emerged, Soul in Nature, like a bird
from the egg. It may be observed that the usual translation of the word tapasya in English books, “penance”,
is quite misleading,— the idea of penance entered rarely into the austerity practised by Indian ascetics. Nor
was mortification of the body the essence even of the most severe and self-afflicting austerities; the aim was
rather an overpassing of the hold of the bodily nature on the consciousness or else a supernormal energising
of the consciousness and will to gain some spiritual or other object.
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seed and development of all that is within it or, to
use a language convenient to our minds, of all its truths and
potentialities,
has created the universe. If we examine our own consciousness, we shall
see that this power of its energy applying itself to
its object is really the most positive dynamic force it has; by that it
arrives at all its knowledge and its action and its creation.
But for us there are two objects on which the dynamism within can act,
ourselves, the internal world, and others, whether
creatures or things, the external world around us. To Sachchidananda
this distinction with its effective and operative
consequences does not apply in the same way as for us, because all is
himself and within himself and there is no such
division as we make by the limitations of our mind. Secondly, in us
only a part of the force of our being is identified with our
voluntary action, with our will engaged in mental or other activity,
the rest is to our surface mental awareness involuntary in
its action or subconscient or superconscient, and from this division
also a great number of important practical consequences
emerge: but in Sachchidananda this division too and its consequences do
not apply, since all is his one indivisible self and all
action and result are movements of his one indivisible will, his
consciousness-force in dynamic operation. Tapas is the nature
of action of his consciousness as of ours, but it is the integral Tapas
of an integral consciousness in an indivisible Existence.
But here a question may arise, since there is a passivity in Existence
and in Nature as well as an activity, immobile
status as well as kinesis, what is the place and role of this Force,
this power and its concentration in regard to a status
where there is no play of energy, where all is immobile. In ourselves
we habitually associate our Tapas, our conscious force, with active
consciousness, with energy in play and in internal or external act and
motion. That which is passive in us produces no action or only an
involuntary or mechanical action, and we do not associate it with our
will or conscious force; still, since there too there
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is the possibility of action or the emergence of an
automatic activity, it must have at least a passively responsive or
automatic conscious force in it; or there is in it either a secretly
positive or a negative and inverse Tapas. It may also be that
there is a larger conscious force, power or will in our being unknown
to us which is behind this involuntary action, — if not a
will, at least a force of some kind which itself initiates action or
else responds to the contacts, suggestions, stimulations of
the universal Energy. In Nature also we know that things stable, inert
or passive are yet maintained in their energy by a
secret and unceasing motion, an energy in action upholding the apparent
immobility. Here too, then, all is due to the presence
of Shakti, to the action of its power in concentration, its Tapas. But
beyond this, beyond this relative aspect of status and
kinesis, we find that we have the power to arrive at what seems to us
an absolute passivity or immobility of our
consciousness in which we cease from all mental and physical activity.
There seem, then, to be an active consciousness in
which consciousness works as an energy throwing up knowledge and
activity out of itself and of which therefore Tapas is
the character, and a passive consciousness in which consciousness does
not act as an energy, but only exists as a status and
of which therefore absence of Tapas or force in action is the
character. Is the apparent absence of Tapas in this state real,
or is there such an effective distinction in Sachchidananda? It is
affirmed that there is: the dual status of Brahman, quiescent
and creative, is indeed one of the most important and fruitful
distinctions in Indian philosophy; it is besides a fact of spiritual
experience.
Here
let us observe, first, that by this passivity in ourselves we arrive
from particular and broken knowledge at a
greater, a one and a unifying knowledge; secondly, that if, in the
state of passivity, we open ourselves entirely to what is
beyond, we can become aware of a Power acting upon us which we feel to
be not our own in the limited egoistic sense, but
universal or transcendental, and that this Power works through us for a
greater play of knowledge, a greater play of energy,
action and result, which also we feel to be not our own, but that of
the Divine, of Sachchidananda, ourselves only its field or
channel. The result
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happens in both cases because our individual
consciousness rests from an ignorant limited action and opens itself to
the
supreme status or to the supreme action. In the latter, the more
dynamic opening, there is power and play of knowledge and
action, and that is Tapas; but in the former also, in the static
consciousness, there is evidently a power for knowledge and a
concentration of knowledge or at least a concentration of consciousness
in immobility and a self-realisation, and that too is
Tapas. Therefore it would seem that Tapas, concentration of power of
consciousness, is the character of both the passive
and the active consciousness of Brahman, and that our own passivity
also has a certain character of an unseen supporting
or instrumentalising Tapas. It is a concentration of energy of
consciousness that sustains, while it lasts, all creation, all action
and kinesis; but it is also a concentration of power of consciousness
that supports inwardly or informs all status, even the
most immobile passivity, even an infinite stillness or an eternal
silence.
But still, it may be said, these are in the end two different things,
and this is shown by their difference of opposite
results; for a resort to the passivity of Brahman leads to the
cessation of this existence and a resort to the active Brahman
leads to its continuance. But here too, let us observe that this
distinction arises by a movement of the individual soul from
one poise to another, from the poise of Brahman-consciousness in the
world, where it is a fulcrum for the universal action,
to or towards the poise of Brahman-consciousness beyond the world,
where it is a power for the withholding of energy from
the universal action. Moreover, if it is by energy of Tapas that the
dispensing of force of being in the world-action is
accomplished, it is equally by the energy of Tapas that the drawing
back of that force of being is accomplished. The passive consciousness
of Brahman and its active consciousness are not two different,
conflicting and incompatible things; they are the same consciousness,
the same energy, at one end in a state of self-reservation, at the
other cast into a motion of self-giving and self-deploying, like the
stillness of a reservoir and the coursing of the channels which flow
from it. In fact, behind every activity there is and must be a passive
power of being from which it arises, by which
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it is supported, which even, we see in the end, governs it from behind without being totally identified with it,—in the sense at
least of being itself all poured out into the action and indistinguishable from it. Such a self-exhausting identification is
impossible; for no action, however vast, exhausts the original power from which it proceeds, leaving nothing behind it in
reserve. When we get back into our own conscious being, when we stand back from our own action and see how it is done,
we discover that it is our whole being which stands behind any particular act or sum of activities, passive in the rest of its
integrality, active in its limited dispensation of energy; but that passivity is not an incapable inertia, it is a poise of
self-reserved energy. A similar truth must apply still more completely to the conscious being of the Infinite, whose power, in
silence of status as in creation, must also be infinite.
It is immaterial for the moment to inquire whether the passivity out of
which all emerges is absolute or only relative to
the observable action from which it holds back. It is enough to note
that, though we make the distinction for the convenience
of our minds, there is not a passive Brahman and an active Brahman, but
one Brahman, an Existence which reserves Its Tapas in what we call
passivity and gives Itself in what we call Its activity. For the
purposes of action, these are two poles
of one being or a double power necessary for creation; the action
proceeds on its circuit from the reservation and returns to
it, presumably, the energies that were derived, to be again thrown out
in a fresh circuit. The passivity of Brahman is Tapas
or concentration of Its being dwelling upon Itself in a self-absorbed
concentration of Its immobile energy; the activity is
Tapas of Its being releasing what It held out of that incubation into
mobility and travelling in a million waves of action, dwelling still
upon each as It travels and liberating in it the being's truths and
potentialities. There too is a concentration of force, but a multiple
concentration, which seems to us a diffusion. But it is not really a
diffusion, but a deploying; Brahman does not cast Its energy out of
Itself to be lost in some unreal exterior void, but keeps it at work
within Its being, conserving it unabridged and undiminished in all its
continual process of
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conversion and transmutation. The passivity is a great conservation of Shakti, of Tapas supporting a manifold initiation of
movement and transmutation into forms and happenings; the activity is a conservation of Shakti, of Tapas in the movement
and transmutation. As in ourselves, so in Brahman, both are relative to each other, both simultaneously co-exist, pole and
pole in the action of one Existence.
The Reality then is neither an eternal passivity of immobile Being nor
an eternal activity of Being in movement, nor is It
an alternation in Time between these two things. Neither in fact is the
sole absolute truth of Brahman's reality; their
opposition is only true of It in relation to the activities of Its
consciousness. When we perceive Its deployment of the
conscious energy of Its being in the universal action, we speak of It
as the mobile active Brahman; when we perceive Its
simultaneous reservation of the conscious energy of Its being kept back
from the action, we speak of It as the immobile
passive Brahman, — Saguna and Nirguna, Kshara and Akshara: otherwise
the terms would have no meaning; for there is
one reality and not two independent realities, one immobile, the other
mobile. In the ordinary view of the soul's evolution into
the action, pravrtti, and its involution into the passivity, nivrtti,
it is supposed that in the action the individual soul becomes ignorant, nescient
of its passive which is supposed to be its true being, and in the passivity it
becomes finally nescient of its active which is supposed to be its false or only
apparent being. But this is because these two movements take place alternately
for us, as in our sleep and waking; we pass in waking into nescience of our
sleeping condition, in sleep into nescience of our waking being. But this
happens because only part of our being performs this alternative movement and we
falsely think of ourselves as only that partial existence: but we can discover
by a deeper psychological experience that the larger being in us is perfectly
aware of all that happens even in what is to our partial and superficial being a
state of unconsciousness; it is limited neither by sleep nor by waking. So it is
in our relations with Brahman who is our real and integral being. In the
ignorance we identify ourselves with only a partial consciousness, mental or
spiritual-mental in its nature, which becomes
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nescient of its self of status by movement; in this
part of us, when we lose the movement, we lose at the same time our
hold
on our self of action by entering into passivity. By an entire
passivity the mind falls asleep or enters into trance or else is
liberated into a spiritual silence; but though it is a liberation from
the ignorance of the partial being in its flux of action, it is
earned by putting on a luminous nescience of the dynamic Reality or a
luminous separation from it: the spiritual-mental being
remains self-absorbed in a silent essential status of existence and
becomes either incapable of active consciousness or
repugnant to all activity; this release of silence is a status through
which the soul passes in its journey towards the Absolute.
But there is a greater fulfilment of our true and integral being in
which both the static and the dynamic sides of the self are
liberated and fulfilled in That which upholds both and is limited
neither by action nor by silence.
For Brahman does not pass alternately
from passivity to activity and back to passivity by cessation of Its dynamic
force of being. If that were really true of the integral Reality, then, while
the universe continued, there would be no passive Brahman in existence, all
would be action, and, if our universe were dissolved, there would be no active
Brahman, all would become cessation and immobile stillness. But this is not so,
for we can become aware of an eternal passivity and self-concentrated calm
penetrating and upholding all the cosmic activity and all its multiple
concentrated movement, — and this could not be if, so long as any activity
continued, the concentrated passivity did not exist supporting it and within it.
Integral Brahman possesses both the passivity and the activity simultaneously
and does not pass alternately from one to the other as from a sleep to a waking:
it is only some partial activity in us which seems to do that, and we by
identifying ourselves with that partial activity have the appearance of this
alternation from one nescience to another nescience; but our true, our integral
being is not subject to these opposites and it does not need to become unaware
of its dynamic self in order to possess its self of silence. When we get the
integral knowledge and the integral liberation of both soul and nature free from
the disabilities of the restricted partial and ignorant being, we too can
possess the passivity and the activity with a simultaneous
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possession, exceeding both these poles of the universality, limited by neither of these powers of the Self in its relation or
non-relation to Nature.
The Supreme, it has been declared in the Gita,
exceeds both the immobile self and the mobile being; even put together they do
not represent all he is. For obviously we do not mean, when we speak of his
possessing them simultaneously, that he is the sum of a passivity and an
activity, an integer made of those two fractions, passive with three fourths of
himself, active with one fourth of his existence. In that case, Brahman might be
a sum of nesciences, the passive three fourths not only indifferent to but quite
ignorant of all that the activity is doing, the active one fourth quite unaware
of the passivity and unable to possess it except by ceasing from action. Even,
Brahman the sum might amount to something quite different from his two
fractions, something, as it were, up and aloof, ignorant of and irresponsible
for anything which some mystic Maya was at once obstinately doing and rigidly
abstaining from doing in the two fractions of his existence. But it is clear
that Brahman the Supreme Being must be aware both of the passivity and the
activity and regard them not as his absolute being, but as opposite, yet,
mutually satisfying terms of his universalities. It cannot be true that Brahman,
by an eternal passivity, is unaware, entirely separated from his own activities;
free, he contains them in himself, supports them with his eternal power of calm,
initiates them from his eternal poise of energy. It must be equally untrue that
Brahman in his activity is unaware of or separated from his passivity;
omnipresent, he is there supporting the action, possesses it always in the heart
of the movement and is eternally calm and still and free and blissful in all the
whirl of its energies. Nor in either silence or action can he be at all unaware
of his absolute being, but knows that all he expresses through them draws its
value and power from the power of that absolute existence. If it seems otherwise
to our experience, it is because we identify with one aspect and by that
exclusiveness fail to open ourselves to the integral Reality.
There necessarily follows an
important first result, already arrived at from other viewpoints, that the
Ignorance cannot have the origin of its existence or the starting-point of its
dividing
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activities in the absolute Brahman or in integral
Sachchidananda; it belongs only to a partial action of the being with
which
we identify ourselves, just as in the body we identify ourselves with
that partial and superficial consciousness which
alternates between sleep and waking: it is indeed this identification
putting aside all the rest of the Reality behind us that is
the constituting cause of the Ignorance. And if Ignorance is not an
element or power proper to the absolute nature of the
Brahman or to Its integrality, there can be no original and primal
Ignorance. Maya, if it be an original power of the
consciousness of the Eternal, cannot itself be an ignorance or in any
way akin to the nature of ignorance, but must be a
transcendent and universal power of self-knowledge and all-knowledge;
ignorance can only intervene as a minor and
subsequent movement, partial and relative. Is it then something
inherent in the multiplicity of souls? Does it come into being
immediately Brahman views himself in the multiplicity, and does that
multiplicity consist of a sum of souls each in its very
nature fractional and divided from all the others in consciousness,
unable to become aware of them at all except as things
external to it, linked at most by communication from body to body or
mind to mind, but incapable of unity? But we have seen
that this is only what we seem to be in our most superficial layer of
consciousness, the external mind and the physical; when
we get back into a subtler, deeper, larger action of our consciousness,
we find the walls of division becoming thinner and in
the end there is left no wall of division, no Ignorance.
Body is the outward sign and lowest
basis of the apparent division which Nature plunging into ignorance and
self-nescience makes the starting-point for the recovery of unity by the
individual soul, unity even in the midst of the most exaggerated forms of her
multiple consciousness. Bodies cannot communicate with each other except by
external means and through a gulf of externality; cannot penetrate each other
except by division of the penetrated body or by taking advantage of some gap in
it, some pre-existent division; cannot unite except by a breaking up and
devouring, a swallowing and absorption and so an assimilation, or at most a
fusion in which both forms disappear. Mind too, when identified with body, is
hampered by its limitations; but in
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itself it is more subtle and two minds can penetrate
each other without hurt or division, can interchange their substance
without mutual injury, can in a way become parts of each other: still
mind too has its own form which is separative of it from
other minds and is apt to take its stand on this separateness. When we
get back to soul-consciousness, the obstacles to unity
lessen and finally cease to exist altogether. The soul can in its
consciousness identify itself with other souls, can contain
them and enter into and be contained by them, can realise its unity
with them; and this can take place, not in a featureless
and indistinguishable sleep, not in a Nirvana in which all distinctions
and individualities of soul and mind and body are lost, but
in a perfect waking which observes and takes account of all
distinctions but exceeds them.
Therefore ignorance and self-limiting division are not inherent and
insuperable in the multiplicity of souls, are not the
very nature of the multiplicity of Brahman. Brahman, as he exceeds the
passivity and the activity, so too exceeds the unity
and multiplicity. He is one in himself, but not with a self-limiting
unity exclusive of the power of multiplicity, such as is the
separated unity of the body and the mind; he is not the mathematical
integer, one, which is incapable of containing the
hundred and is therefore less than the hundred. He contains the
hundred, is one in all the hundred. One in himself, he is one
in the many and the many are one in him. In other words, Brahman in his
unity of spirit is aware of his multiplicity of souls
and in the consciousness of his multiple souls is aware of the unity of
all souls. In each soul he, the immanent Spirit, the Lord
in each heart, is aware of his oneness. The Jivatman illumined by him,
aware of its unity with the One, is also aware of its
unity with the many. Our superficial consciousness, identified with
body and with divided life and dividing mind, is ignorant;
but that also can be illumined and made aware. Multiplicity, then, is
not the necessary cause of the ignorance.
Ignorance, as we have already stated, comes in at a later stage, as a
later movement, when mind is separated from its
spiritual and supramental basis, and culminates in this earth-life
where the individual consciousness in the many identifies itself by
dividing mind with the form, which is the only safe basis of
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division. But what is the form? It is, at least as
we see it here, a formation of concentrated energy, a knot of the force
of
consciousness in its movement, a knot maintained in being by a constant
whirl of action; but whatever transcendent truth or
reality it proceeds from or expresses, it is not in any part of itself
in manifestation durable or eternal. It is not eternal in its
integrality, nor in its constituting atoms; for they can be
disintegrated by dissolving the knot of energy in constant
concentrated action which is the sole thing that maintains their
apparent stability. It is a concentration of Tapas in movement
of force on the form maintaining it in being which sets up the physical
basis of division. But all things in the activity are, we
have seen, a concentration of Tapas in movement of force upon its
object. The origin of the Ignorance must then be sought
for in some self-absorbed concentration of Tapas, of Conscious-Force in
action on a separate movement of the Force; to us
this takes the appearance of mind identifying itself with the separate
movement and identifying itself also in the movement
separately with each of the forms resulting from it. So it builds a
wall of separation which shuts out the consciousness in
each form from awareness of its own total self, of other embodied
consciousnesses and of universal being. It is here that
we must look for the secret of the apparent ignorance of the embodied
mental being as well as of the great apparent
inconscience of physical Nature. We have to ask ourselves what is the
nature of this absorbing, this separating, this self-forgetful
concentration which is the obscure miracle of the universe.
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