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CHAPTER XIV
The Origin and Remedy
of Falsehood,
Error,
Wrong and Evil
The Lord accepts the sin and the virtue of none;
because knowledge
is veiled by Ignorance, mortal men are deluded.
Gita.1
They live according to another idea of self than the reality, deluded,
attached, expressing a falsehood,—as if by an
enchantment they see
the false as the true.
Maitrayani Upanishad.2
They live and move in the Ignorance and go round and round, battered
and stumbling, like blind men led by one who is
blind.
Mundaka Upanishad.3
One whose intelligence has attained to Unity, casts away from him both
sin and virtue.
Gita.4
He who has found the bliss of the Eternal is afflicted no more by the
thought, “Why have I not done the good? Why
have I done evil?” One
who knows the self extricates himself from both these things.
Taittiriya Upanishad.5
These are they who are conscious of the much falsehood in the world;
they grow in the house of Truth, they are the
strong and invincible sons
of Infinity.
Rig Veda.6
The first and the highest are truth; in the middle there is falsehood,
but it is
taken between the truth on both sides of it
and it draws its being from the
truth.7
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.8
IF Ignorance is in its nature a
self-limiting knowledge oblivious of the integral self-awareness and confined to
an exclusive concentration in a single field or upon a concealing surface of
cosmic movement, what, in this view, are we to make
1 V. 15.
2 VII. 10.
3 I. 2. 8.
4 II. 50.
5 II. 9.
6 VII. 60. 5.
7 The truth of the physical reality and the truth of the spiritual
and superconscient reality. Into the intermediate
subjective and mental realities which stand between them, falsehood can enter, but it takes either truth from
above or truth from below as the substance out of which it builds itself and both are pressing upon it to turn its
misconstructions into truth of life and truth of spirit.
8 V. 5. 1.
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of the problem which most poignantly preoccupies the mind of man when it is turned on the mystery of his own existence
and of cosmic existence, the problem of evil? A limited knowledge supported by a secret All-Wisdom as an instrument for
working out within the necessary limitations a restricted world-order may be admitted as an intelligible process of the
universal Consciousness and Energy; but the necessity of falsehood and error, the necessity of wrong and evil or their utility
in the workings of the omnipresent Divine Reality is less easily admissible. And yet if that Reality is what we have supposed
it to be, there must be some necessity for the appearance of these contrary phenomena, some significance, some function
that they had to serve in the economy of the universe. For in the complete and inalienable self-knowledge of the Brahman
which is necessarily all-knowledge, since all this that is is the Brahman, such phenomena cannot have come in as a chance,
an intervening accident, an involuntary forgetfulness or confusion of the Consciousness-Force of the All-Wise in the cosmos
or an ugly contretemps for which the indwelling Spirit was not prepared and of which it is the prisoner erring in a labyrinth
with the utmost difficulty of escape. Nor can it be an inexplicable mystery of being, original and eternal, of which the divine
All-Teacher is incapable of giving an account to himself or to us. There must be behind it a significance of the All-Wisdom
itself, a power of the All-Consciousness which permits and uses it for some indispensable function in the present workings
of our self-experience and world-experience. This aspect of existence needs now to be examined more directly and
determined in its origins and the limits of its reality and its place in Nature.
This problem may be taken up from three points of view, — its relation
to the Absolute, the supreme Reality, its origin
and place in the cosmic workings, its action and point of hold in the
individual being. It is evident that these contrary
phenomena have no direct root in the supreme Reality itself, there is
nothing there that has this character; they are creations
of the Ignorance and Inconscience, not fundamental or primary aspects
of the Being, not native to the Transcendence or to the infinite power
of the Cosmic Spirit. It is sometimes reasoned that as Truth and
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Good have their absolutes, so Falsehood and Evil must also have their absolutes, or, if it is not so, then both must belong to
the relativity only; Knowledge and Ignorance, Truth and Falsehood, Good and Evil exist only in relation to each other and
beyond the dualities here they have no existence. But this is not the fundamental truth of the relation of these opposites; for,
in the first place, Falsehood and Evil are, unlike Truth and Good, very clearly results of the Ignorance and cannot exist
where there is no Ignorance: they can have no self-existence in the Divine Being, they cannot be native elements of the
Supreme Nature. If, then, the limited Knowledge which is the nature of Ignorance renounces its limitations, if Ignorance
disappears into Knowledge, evil and falsehood can no longer endure: for both are fruits of unconsciousness and wrong
consciousness and, if true or whole consciousness is there replacing Ignorance, they have no longer any basis for their
existence. There can therefore be no absolute of falsehood, no absolute of evil; these things are a by-product of the
world-movement: the sombre flowers of falsehood and suffering and evil have their root in the black soil of the Inconscient.
On the other hand, there is no such intrinsic obstacle to the absoluteness of
Truth and Good: the relativity of truth and error, good and evil is a fact of
our experience, but it is similarly a by-product, it is not a permanent factor
native to existence; for it is true only of the valuations made by the human
consciousness, true only of our partial knowledge and partial ignorance.
Truth is relative to us because our
knowledge is surrounded by ignorance. Our exact vision stops short at outside
appearances which are not the complete truth of things, and, if we go deeper,
the illuminations we arrive at are guesses or inferences or intimations, not a
sight of indubitable realities: our conclusions are partial, speculative or
constructed, our statement of them, which is the expression of our indirect
contact with the reality, has the nature of representations or figures,
word-images of thought-perceptions that are themselves images, not embodiments
of Truth itself, not directly real and authentic. These figures or
representations are imperfect and opaque and carry with them their shadow of
nescience or error; for they seem to deny or shut
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out other truths and even the truth they express
does not get its full value: it is an end or edge of it that projects
into form
and the rest is left in the shadow unseen or disfigured or uncertainly
visible. It might almost be said that no mental statement
of things can be altogether true; it is not Truth bodied, pure and
nude, but a draped figure, — often it is only the drapery that
is visible. But this character does not apply to truth perceived by a
direct action of consciousness or to the truth of
knowledge by identity; our seeing there may be limited, but so far as
it extends, it is authentic, and authenticity is a first step
towards absoluteness: error may attach itself to a direct or identical
vision of things by a mental accretion, by a mistaken or
illegitimate extension or by the mind's misinterpretation, but it does
not enter into the substance. This authentic or identical
vision or experience of things is the true nature of knowledge and it
is self-existent within the being, although rendered in our
minds by a secondary formation that is unauthentic and derivative.
Ignorance in its origin has not this self-existence or this
authenticity; it exists by a limitation or absence or abeyance of
knowledge, error by a deviation from truth, falsehood by a
distortion of truth or its contradiction and denial. But it cannot be
similarly said of knowledge that in its very nature it exists
only by a limitation or absence or abeyance of ignorance: it may indeed
emerge in the human mind partly by a process of
such limitation or abeyance, by the receding of darkness from a partial
light, or it may have the aspect of ignorance turning
into knowledge; but in fact, it rises by an independent birth from our
depths where it has a native existence.
Again, of good and evil it can be
said that one exists by true consciousness, the other survives only by wrong
consciousness: if there is an unmixed true consciousness, good alone can exist;
it is no longer mixed with evil or formed in its presence. Human values of good
and evil, as of truth and error, are indeed uncertain and relative: what is held
as truth in one place or time is held in another place or time to be error; what
is regarded as good is elsewhere or in other times regarded as evil. We find too
that what we call evil results in good, what we call good results in evil. But
this untoward outcome of good producing evil is due to
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the confusion and mixture of knowledge and
ignorance, to the penetration of true consciousness by wrong
consciousness, so
that there is an ignorant or mistaken application of our good, or it is
due to the intervention of afflicting forces. In the
opposite case of evil producing good, the happier and contradictory
result is due to the intervention of some true
consciousness and force acting behind and in spite of wrong
consciousness and wrong will or it is due to the intervention of
redressing forces. This relativity, this mixture is a circumstance of
human mentality and the workings of the Cosmic Force in
human life; it is not the fundamental truth of good and evil. It might
be objected that physical evil, such as pain and most
bodily suffering, is independent of knowledge and ignorance, of right
and wrong consciousness, inherent in physical Nature:
but, fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an
insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which
makes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature or unable to
assimilate and to harmonise itself with the contacts of the
universal Energy; they would not exist if in us there were an integral
presence of the luminous Consciousness and the divine
Force of an integral Being. Therefore the relation of truth to
falsehood, of good to evil is not a mutual dependence, but is in
the nature of a contradiction as of light and shadow; a shadow depends
on light for its existence, but light does not depend
for its existence on the shadow. The relation between the Absolute and
these contraries of some of its fundamental aspects
is not that they are opposite fundamental aspects of the Absolute;
falsehood and evil have no fundamentality, no power of
infinity or eternal being, no self-existence even by latency in the
Self-Existent, no authenticity of an original inherence.
It is no doubt a fact that once truth or good manifests, the conception
of falsehood and evil becomes a possibility; for
whenever there is an affirmation, its negation becomes conceivable. As
the manifestation of existence, consciousness and
delight made the manifestation of non-existence, inconscience,
insensibility conceivable and, because conceivable, therefore in a way
inevitable, for all possibilities push towards actuality until they
reach it, so is it with these contraries of the aspects
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of the Divine Existence. It may be said on this
ground that these opposites, since they must be immediately perceivable
by
the manifesting Consciousness on the very threshold of manifestation,
can take rank as implied absolutes and are
inseparable from all cosmic existence. But it must first be noted that
it is only in cosmic manifestation that they become
possible; they cannot pre-exist in the timeless being, for they are
incompatible with the unity and bliss that are its substance.
In cosmos also they cannot come into being except by a limitation of
truth and good into partial and relative forms and by a
breaking up of the unity of existence and consciousness into separative
consciousness and separative being. For where
there is oneness and complete mutuality of consciousness-force even in
multiplicity and diversity, there truth of
self-knowledge and mutual knowledge is automatic and error of
self-ignorance and mutual ignorance is impossible. So too
where truth exists as a whole on a basis of self-aware oneness,
falsehood cannot enter and evil is shut out by the exclusion
of wrong consciousness and wrong will and their dynamisation of
falsehood and error. As soon as separateness enters,
these things also can enter; but even this simultaneity is not
inevitable. If there is sufficient mutuality, even in the absence of
an active sense of oneness, and if the separate beings do not
transgress or deviate from their norms of limited knowledge,
harmony and truth can still be sovereign and evil will have no gate of
entry. There is, therefore, no authentic inevitable
cosmicity of falsehood and evil even as there is no absoluteness; they
are circumstances or results that arise only at a
certain stage when separativeness culminates in opposition and
ignorance in a primitive unconsciousness of knowledge and
a resultant wrong consciousness and wrong knowledge with its content of
wrong will, wrong feeling, wrong action and
wrong reaction. The question is at what juncture of cosmic
manifestation the opposites enter in; for it may be either at some
stage of the increasing involution of consciousness in separative mind
and life or only after the plunge into inconscience. This resolves
itself into the question whether falsehood, error, wrong and evil exist
originally in the mental and vital planes and are native to mind and
life or are proper only to the material manifestation because inflicted
on
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mind and life there by the obscurity arising from the Inconscience. It may be questioned too whether, if they do exist in
supraphysical mind and life, they were original and inevitable there; for they may rather have entered in as a consequence
or a supraphysical extension from the material manifestation. Or, if that is untenable, it may be that they arose as an
enabling supraphysical affirmation in the universal Mind and Life, a precedent necessity for their appearance in that
manifestation to which they more naturally belong as an inevitable outcome of the creative Inconscience.
It was for a long time held by the human mind as a traditional
knowledge that when we go beyond the material plane,
these things are found to exist there also in worlds beyond us. There
are in these planes of supraphysical experience powers
and forms of vital mind and life that seem to be the prephysical
foundation of the discordant, defective or perverse forms
and powers of life-mind and life-force which we find in the terrestrial
existence. There are forces, and subliminal
experience seems to show that there are supraphysical beings embodying
those forces, that are attached in their root-nature
to ignorance, to darkness of consciousness, to misuse of force, to
perversity of delight, to all the causes and consequences
of the things that we call evil. These powers, beings or forces are
active to impose their adverse constructions upon
terrestrial creatures; eager to maintain their reign in the
manifestation, they oppose the increase of light and truth and good
and, still more, are antagonistic to the progress of the soul towards a
divine consciousness and divine existence. It is this
feature of existence that we see figured in the tradition of the
conflict between the Powers of Light and Darkness, Good
and Evil, cosmic Harmony and cosmic Anarchy, a tradition universal in
ancient myth and in religion and common to all
systems of occult knowledge.
The theory of this traditional knowledge is perfectly rational and
verifiable by inner experience, and it imposes itself if
we admit the supraphysical and do not cabin ourselves in the
acceptation of material being as the only reality. As there is a cosmic
Self and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so
too there is a cosmic Force that moves all
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things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and
act many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its
universal action. Whatever is formulated in the universe has a Force or
Forces that support it, seek to fulfil or further it, find
their foundation in its functioning, their account of success in its
success and growth and domination, their self-fulfilment or
their prolongation of being in its victory or survival. As there are
Powers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are
Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is
to prolong the reign of Ignorance and
Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that
live by the Falsehood and support it and work for its
victory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the
existence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there
are Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and
the impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic
Invisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle
between the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil
for the possession of the world and the government of the life of man;
— this was the significance of the contest between the
Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured
in a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa,
Pisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double
Principle and the later Semitic opposition of
God and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the
other, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man
to the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to
the undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and
Evil. Modern thought is aware of no invisible forces other than those
revealed or constructed by Science; it does not believe
that Nature is capable of creating any other beings than those around
us in the physical world, men, beasts, birds, reptiles,
fishes, insects, germs and animalculae. But if there are invisible
cosmic forces physical in their nature that act upon the body of
inanimate objects, there is no valid reason why there should not be
invisible cosmic forces mental and vital in their nature that act upon
his mind and his life-force. And if Mind and Life, impersonal forces,
form conscious beings or use persons to embody them in physical forms
and in a physical world and can
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act upon Matter and through Matter, it is not impossible that on their own planes they should form conscious beings whose
subtler substance is invisible to us or that they should be able to act from those planes on beings in physical Nature.
Whatever reality or mythical unreality we may attach to the traditional figures of past human belief or experience, they
would then be representations of things that are true in principle. In that case the first source of good and evil would be not
in terrestrial life or in the evolution from the Inconscience, but in Life itself, their source would be supraphysical and they
would be reflected here from a larger supraphysical Nature.
This is certain that when we go back into ourselves very deep away from
the surface appearance, we find that the
mind, heart and sensational being of man are moved by forces not under
his own control and that he can become an
instrument in the hands of Energies of a cosmic character without
knowing the origin of his actions. It is by stepping back
from the physical surface into his inner being and subliminal
consciousness that he becomes directly aware of them and is
able to know directly and deal with their action upon him. He grows
aware of interventions which seek to lead him in one
direction or another, of suggestions and impulsions which had disguised
themselves as original movements of his own mind
and against which he had to battle. He can realise that he is not a
conscious creature inexplicably produced in an
unconscious world out of a seed of inconscient Matter and moving about
in an obscure self-ignorance, but an embodied soul
through whose action cosmic Nature is seeking to fulfil itself, the
living ground of a vast debate between a darkness of Ignorance out of
which it emerges here and a light of Knowledge which is growing upwards
towards an unforeseen termination. The Forces which seek to move him,
and among them the Forces of good and evil, present themselves as
powers of universal Nature; but they seem to belong not only to the
physical universe, but to planes of Life and Mind beyond it.
The first thing that we have to note
of importance to the problem preoccupying us is that these Forces in their
action seem often to surpass the measures of human relativity; they are in their
larger action superhuman, divine, titanic or demoniac, but
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they may create their formations in him in large or
in little, in his greatness or his smallness, they may seize and drive
him at
moments or for periods, they may influence his impulses or his acts or
possess his whole nature. If that possession happens,
he may himself be pushed to an excess of the normal humanity of good or
evil; especially the evil takes forms which shock
the sense of human measure, exceed the bounds of human personality,
approach the gigantic, the inordinate, the
immeasurable. It may then be questioned whether it is not a mistake to
deny absoluteness to evil; for as there is a drive, an
aspiration, a yearning in man towards an absolute truth, good, beauty,
so these movements, — as also the transcending
intensities attainable by pain and suffering, — seem to indicate the
attempt at self-realisation of an absolute evil. But the
immeasurable is not a sign of absoluteness: for the absolute is not in
itself a thing of magnitude; it is beyond measure, not in
the sole sense of vastness, but in the freedom of its essential being;
it can manifest itself in the infinitesimal as well as in the
infinite. It is true that as we pass from the mental to the spiritual,
— and that is a passage towards the absolute, — a subtle
wideness and an increasing intensity of light, of power, of peace, of
ecstasy mark our passing out of our limitations: but this
is at first only a sign of freedom, of height, of universality, not yet
of an inward absoluteness of self-existence which is the
essence of the matter. To this absoluteness pain and evil cannot
attain, they are bound to limitation and they are derivative.
If pain becomes immeasurable, it ends itself or ends that in which it
manifests, or collapses into insensibility or, in rare
circumstances, it may turn into an ecstasy of Ananda. If evil became
sole and immeasurable, it would destroy the world or
destroy that which bore and supported it; it would bring things and
itself back by disintegration into non-existence. No doubt
the Powers that support darkness and evil attempt by the magnitude of
their self-aggrandisement to reach an appearance of
infinity, but immensity is all they can achieve and not infinity; or,
at most, they are able to represent their element as a kind
of abysmal infinite commensurate with the Inconscient, but it is a
false infinite. Self-existence, in essence or by an eternal inherence
in the Self-existent, is the condition of
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absoluteness: error, falsehood, evil are cosmic powers, but relative in their nature, not absolute, since they depend for
existence on the perversion or contradiction of their opposites and are not like truth and good self-existent absolutes,
inherent aspects of the supreme Self-existent.
A second point of questioning emerges from the evidence given for the
supraphysical and pre-physical existence of
these dark opposites: for that suggests that they may be after all
original cosmic principles. But it is to be noted that their
appearance does not extend higher than the lower supraphysical
life-planes; they are “powers of the Prince of Air”, — air
being in the ancient symbolism the principle of life and therefore of
the mid-worlds where the vital principle is predominant
and essential. The adverse opposites are not, then, primal powers of
the cosmos, but creations of Life or of Mind in life.
Their supraphysical aspects and influences on earth-nature can be
explained by the co-existence of worlds of a descending
involution with parallel worlds of an ascending evolution, not
precisely created by earth-existence, but created as an annexe
to the descending world-order and a prepared support for the
evolutionary terrestrial formations; here evil may appear, not
as inherent in all life, but as a possibility and a pre-formation that
makes inevitable its formation in the evolutionary
emergence of consciousness out of the Inconscient. However this may be,
it is as an outcome of the Inconscience that we
can best watch and understand the origin of falsehood, error, wrong and
evil, for it is in the return of Inconscience towards
Consciousness that they can be seen taking their formation and it is
there that they seem to be normal and even inevitable.
The first emergence from the Inconscient is Matter, and in Matter it
would seem that falsehood and evil cannot exist,
because both are created by a divided and ignorant surface
consciousness and its reactions. There is no such active surface
organisation of consciousness, no such reactions in material forces or
objects: whatever indwelling secret consciousness
there may be in them seems to be one, undifferentiated, mute; inertly
inherent and intrinsic in the Energy that constitutes the
object, it effectualises and maintains the form by the silent
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occult Idea in it, but is otherwise self-rapt in the form of energy it has created, uncommunicating
and inexpressive. Even if it differentiates itself according to the form of
Matter in a corresponding form of self-being, rupam rupam pratirupo
babhuva,1
there is no psychological organisation, no system of conscious actions
or reactions. It is only by contact with conscious
beings that material objects exercise powers or influences which can be
called good or evil: but that good or evil is
determined by the contacted being's sense of help or harm, of benefit
or injury from them; these values do not belong to the
material object but to some Force that uses it or they are created by
the consciousness that contacts it. Fire warms a man or
burns him, but that is as involuntarily he meets it or voluntarily uses
it; a medicinal herb cures or a poison kills, but the value
of good or evil is brought into action by the user: it is to be
observed too that a poison can cure as well as kill, a medicine kill
or harm as well as cure or benefit. The world of pure Matter is
neutral, irresponsible; these values insisted on by the human
being do not exist in material Nature: as a superior Nature transcends
the duality of good and evil, so this inferior Nature
falls below it. The question may begin to assume a different aspect if
we go behind physical knowledge and accept the
conclusions of an occult inquiry, — for here we are told that there are
conscious influences that attach themselves to objects
and these can be good or evil; but it might still be held that this
does not affect the neutrality of the object which does not act
by an individualised consciousness but only as it is utilised for good
or for evil or for both together: the duality of good and
evil is not native to the material principle, it is absent from the
world of Matter.
The duality begins with conscious life and emerges fully with the
development of mind in life; the vital mind, the mind of
desire and sensation, is the creator of the sense of evil and of the
fact of evil. Moreover, in animal life, the fact of evil is
there, the evil of suffering and the sense of suffering, the evil of
violence and cruelty and strife and deception, but the sense
of moral evil is absent; in animal life there is no duality of sin or
virtue, all action is neutral and permissible for the
1 Katha
Upanishad, II. 2. 9.
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preservation of life and its maintenance and for the satisfaction of the life-instincts. The sensational values of good and evil
are inherent in the form of pain and pleasure, vital satisfaction and vital frustration, but the mental idea, the moral response
of the mind to these values are a creation of the human being. It does not follow, as might be hastily inferred, that they are
unrealities, mental constructions only, and that the only true way to receive the activities of Nature is either a neutral
indifference or an equal acceptance or, intellectually, an admission of all that she may do as a divine or a natural law in
which everything is impartially admissible. That is indeed one side of the truth: there is an infrarational truth of Life and
Matter which is impartial and neutral and admits all things as facts of Nature and serviceable for the creation, preservation
or destruction of life, three necessary movements of the universal Energy which are all connectedly indispensable and, each
in its own place, of equal value. There is too a truth of the detached reason which can look on all that is thus admitted by
Nature as serviceable to her processes in life and matter and observe everything that is with an unmoved neutral impartiality
and acceptance; this is a philosophic and scientific reason that witnesses and seeks to understand but considers it futile to
judge the activities of the cosmic Energy. There is too a suprarational truth formulating itself in spiritual experience which
can observe the play of universal possibility, accept all impartially as the true and natural features and consequences of a
world of ignorance and inconscience or admit all with calm and compassion as a
part of the divine working, but, while it awaits the awakening of a higher
consciousness and knowledge as the sole escape from what presents itself as
evil, is ready with help and intervention where that is truly helpful and
possible. But, nonetheless, there is also this other middle truth of
consciousness which awakens us to the values of good and evil and the
appreciation of their necessity and importance; this awakening, whatever may be
the sanction or the validity of its particular judgments, is one of the
indispensable steps in the process of evolutionary Nature.
But from what then does this
awakening proceed? what is it in the human being that originates and gives its
power and
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place to the sense of good and evil? If we regard
only the process, we may agree that it is the vital mind that makes the
distinction. Its first valuation is sensational and individual, — all
that is pleasant, helpful, beneficial to the life-ego is good, all
that is unpleasant, malefic, injurious or destructive is evil. Its next
valuation is utilitarian and social: all that is considered
helpful to the associated life, all that it demands from the individual
in order to remain in association and to regulate
association for the best maintenance, satisfaction, development, good
order of the associated life and its units, is good; all
that has in the view of the society a contrary effect or tendency is
evil. But thinking mind then comes in with its own
valuation and strives to find out an intellectual basis, an idea of law
or principle, rational or cosmic, a law of Karma perhaps
or an ethical system founded on reason or on an aesthetic, emotional or
hedonistic basis. Religion brings in her sanctions;
there is a word or law of God that enjoins righteousness even though
Nature permits or stimulates its opposite, — or perhaps
Truth and Righteousness are themselves God and there is no other
Divinity. But, behind all this practical or rational
enforcement of the human ethical instinct, there is a feeling that
there is something deeper: all these standards are either too
narrow and rigid or complex and confused, uncertain, subject to
alteration by a mental or a vital change or evolution; yet it is
felt that there is a deeper abiding truth and something within us that
can have the intuition of that truth, — in other words, that
the real sanction is inward, spiritual and psychic. The traditional
account of this inner witness is conscience, a power of
perception in us half mental, half intuitive; but this is something
superficial, constructed, unreliable: there is certainly within
us, though less easily active, more masked by surface elements, a
deeper spiritual sense, the soul's discernment, an inborn
light within our nature.
What then is this spiritual or psychic witness or what is to it the
value of the sense of good and evil? It may be
maintained that the one use of the sense of sin and evil is that the
embodied being may become aware of the nature of this
world of inconscience and ignorance, awake to a knowledge of its evil
and
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suffering and the relative nature of its good and
happiness and turn away from it to that which is absolute. Or else its
spiritual use may be to purify the nature by the pursuit of good and
the negation of evil until it is ready to perceive the
supreme good and turn from the world towards God, or, as in the
Buddhistic ethical insistence, it may serve to prepare the
dissolution of the ignorant ego-complex and the escape from personality
and suffering. But also it may be that this
awakening is a spiritual necessity of the evolution itself, a step
towards the growth of the being out of the Ignorance into the
truth of the divine unity and the evolution of a divine consciousness
and a divine being. For much more than the mind or life
which can turn either to good or to evil, it is the soul-personality,
the psychic being, which insists on the distinction, though in
a larger sense than the mere moral difference. It is the soul in us
which turns always towards Truth, Good and Beauty,
because it is by these things that it itself grows in stature; the
rest, their opposites, are a necessary part of experience, but
have to be outgrown in the spiritual increase of the being. The
fundamental psychic entity in us has the delight of life and all
experience as part of the progressive manifestation of the spirit, but
the very principle of its delight of life is to gather out of
all contacts and happenings their secret divine sense and essence, a
divine use and purpose so that by experience our mind
and life may grow out of the Inconscience towards a supreme
consciousness, out of the divisions of the Ignorance towards
an integralising consciousness and knowledge. It is there for that and
it pursues from life to life its ever-increasing upward
tendency and insistence; the growth of the soul is a growth out of
darkness into light, out of falsehood into truth, out of
suffering into its own supreme and universal Ananda. The soul's
perception of good and evil may not coincide with the mind's artificial
standards, but it has a deeper sense, a sure discrimination of what
points to the higher Light and what points away from it. It is true
that as the inferior light is below good and evil, so the superior
spiritual light is beyond good and evil; but this is not in the sense
of admitting all things with an impartial neutrality or of obeying
equally the impulses of good and evil, but in the sense that a
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higher law of being intervenes in which there is no longer any place or utility for these values. There is a self-law of
supreme Truth which is above all standards; there is a supreme and universal Good inherent, intrinsic, self-existent,
self-aware, self-moved and determined, infinitely plastic with the pure plasticity of the luminous consciousness of the
supreme Infinite.
If, then, evil and falsehood are natural products of the Inconscience,
automatic results of the evolution of life and mind
from it in the processus of the Ignorance, we have to see how they
arise, on what they depend for their existence and what
is the remedy or escape. In the surface emergence of mental and vital
consciousness from the Inconscience is to be found
the process by which these phenomena come into being. Here there are
two determining factors, — and it is these that are
the efficient cause of the simultaneous emergence of falsehood and
evil. First, there is an underlying, a still occult
consciousness and power of inherent knowledge, and there is also an
overlying layer of what might be called indeterminate
or else ill-formed stuff of vital and physical consciousness; through
this obscure difficult medium the emerging mentality has
to force its way and has to impose itself on it by a constructed and no
longer an inherent knowledge, because this stuff is
still full of nescience, heavily burdened and enveloped with the
inconscience of Matter. Next, the emergence takes place in
a separated form of life which has to affirm itself against a principle
of inanimate material inertia and a constant pull of that
material inertia towards disintegration and a relapse into the original
inanimate Inconscience. This separated life-form has also to affirm
itself, supported only by a limited principle of association, against
an outside world which is, if not hostile to its existence, yet full of
dangers and on which it has to impose itself, conquer life-room, arrive
at expression and propagation, if it wishes to survive. The result of
an emergence of consciousness in these conditions is the growth of a
self-affirming vital and physical individual, a construction of Nature
of life and matter with a concealed psychic or spiritual true
individual behind it for which Nature is creating this outward means of
expression. As mentality increases, this vital and material individual
takes
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the more developed form of a constantly self-affirming mental, vital and physical ego. Our surface consciousness and type
of existence, our natural being, has developed its present character under the compulsion of these two initial and basic facts
of the evolutionary emergence.
In its first appearance consciousness has the semblance of a miracle, a
power alien to Matter that manifests
unaccountably in a world of inconscient Nature and grows slowly and
with difficulty. Knowledge is acquired, created out of
nothing as it were, learned, increased, accumulated by an ephemeral
ignorant creature in whom at birth it is entirely absent
or present only, not as knowledge, but in the form of an inherited
capacity proper to the stage of development of this slowly
learning ignorance. It might be conjectured that consciousness is only
the original Inconscience mechanically recording the
facts of existence on the brain-cells with a reflex or response in the
cells automatically reading the record and dictating their
answer; the record, reflex, response together constitute what appears
to be consciousness. But this is evidently not the
whole truth, for it might account for observation and mechanical
action, — although it is not clear how an unconscious record
and response can turn into a conscious observation, a conscious sense
of things and sense of self, — but does not credibly
account for ideation, imagination, speculation, the free play of
intellect with its observed material. The evolution of
consciousness and knowledge cannot be accounted for unless there is
already a concealed consciousness in things with its
inherent and native powers emerging little by little. Further, the
facts of animal life and the operations of the emergent mind
in life impose on us the conclusion that there is in this concealed
consciousness an underlying Knowledge or power of
knowledge which by the necessity of the life-contacts with the
environment comes to the surface.
The individual animal being in its
first conscious self-affirmation has to rely on two sources of knowledge. As it
is nescient and helpless, a small modicum of uninformed surface consciousness in
a world unknown to it, the secret Conscious-Force sends up to this surface the
minimum of intuition necessary
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for it to maintain its existence and go through the
operations indispensable to life and survival. This intuition is not
possessed
by the animal, but possesses and moves it; it is something that
manifests of itself in the grain of the vital and physical
substance of consciousness under pressure of a need and for the needed
occasion: but at the same time a surface result of
this intuition accumulates and takes the form of an automatic instinct
which works whenever the occasion for it recurs; this
instinct belongs to the race and is imparted at birth to its individual
members. The intuition, when it occurs or recurs, is
unerring; the instinct is automatically correct as a rule, but can err,
for it fails or blunders when the surface consciousness or
an ill-developed intelligence interferes or if the instinct continues
to act mechanically when, owing to changed
circumstances, the need or the necessary circumstances are no longer
there. The second source of knowledge is surface
contact with the world outside the natural individual being; it is this
contact which is the cause first of a conscious sensation
and sense-perception and then of intelligence. If there were not an
underlying consciousness, the contact would not create
any perception or reaction; it is because the contact stimulates into a
feeling and a surface response the subliminal of a
being already vitalised by the subconscious life-principle and its
first needs and seekings that a surface awareness begins to form and
develop. Intrinsically the emergence of a surface consciousness by
force of life contacts is due to the fact that in both subject and
object of the contact consciousness-force is already existent in a
subliminal latency: when the life-principle is ready, sufficiently
sensitive in the subject, the recipient of the contact, this subliminal
consciousness emerges in a response to the stimulus which begins to
constitute a vital or life mind, the mind of the animal, and then, in
the course of the evolution, a thinking intelligence. The secret
consciousness is rendered into surface sensation and perception, the
secret force into surface impulse.
If this underlying subliminal
consciousness were to come itself to the surface, there would be a direct
meeting between the consciousness of the subject and the contents of the object
and the result would be a direct knowledge; but this is not possible,
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first, because of the veto or obstruction of the
Inconscience and, secondly, because the evolutionary intention is to
develop
slowly through an imperfect but growing surface awareness. The secret
consciousness-force has therefore to limit itself to
imperfect renderings in a surface vital and mental vibration and
operation and is forced by the absence, holding back or
insufficiency of the direct awareness to develop organs and instincts
for an indirect knowledge. This creation of an external
knowledge and intelligence takes place in an already prepared
indeterminate conscious structure which is the earliest
formation on the surface. At first this structure is only a minimum
formation of consciousness with a vague sensational
perception and a response-impulse; but, as more organised forms of life
appear, this grows into a life-mind and vital
intelligence largely mechanical and automatic in the beginning and
concerned only with practical needs, desires and
impulses. All this activity is in its initiation intuitive and
instinctive; the underlying consciousness is translated in the surface
substratum into automatic movements of the conscious stuff of life and
body: the mind-movements, when they appear, are
involved in these automatisms, they occur as a subordinate mental
notation within the predominant vital sense-notation. But
slowly mind starts its task of disengaging itself; it still works for
the life-instinct, life-need and life-desire, but its own special
characters emerge, observation, invention, device, intention, execution
of purpose, while sensation and impulse add to
themselves emotion and bring a subtler and finer affective urge and
value into the crude vital reaction. Mind is still much
involved in life and its highest purely mental operations are not in
evidence; it accepts a large background of instinct and vital
intuition as its support, and the intelligence developed, though always
growing as the animal life-scale rises, is an added
superstructure.
When human intelligence adds itself to the animal basis, this basis
still remains present and active, but it is largely
changed, subtilised and uplifted by conscious will and intention; the
automatic life of instinct and vital intuition diminishes and cannot
keep its original predominant proportion to the self-aware mental
intelligence. Intuition becomes less purely intuitive: even when there
is still a strong vital intuition, its vital character is concealed
Page 614
by mentalisation, and mental intuition is most often
a mixture, not the pure article, for an alloy is added to make it
mentally
current and serviceable. In the animal also the surface consciousness
can obstruct or alter the intuition but, because its
capacity is less, it interferes less with the automatic, mechanical or
instinctive action of Nature: in mental man when the
intuition rises towards the surface, it is caught at once before it
reaches and is translated into terms of mind-intelligence with
a gloss or mental interpretation added which conceals the origin of the
knowledge. Instinct also is deprived of its intuitive
character by being taken up and mentalised and by that change becomes
less sure, though more assisted, when not
replaced, by the plastic power of adaptation of things and
self-adaptation proper to the intelligence. The emergence of mind
in life brings an immense increase of the range and capacity of the
evolving consciousness-force; but it also brings an
immense increase in the range and capacity of error. For evolving mind
trails constantly error as its shadow, a shadow that
grows with the growing body of consciousness and knowledge.
If in the evolution the surface consciousness were always open to the
action of intuition, the intervention of error would
not be possible. For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the
secret Supermind, and an emergent Truth-Consciousness,
however limited, yet sure in its action, would be the consequence.
Instinct, if it had to form, would be plastic to the intuition
and adapt itself freely to evolutionary change and the change of inner
or environing circumstance. Intelligence, if it had to
form, would be subservient to intuition and would be its accurate
mental expression; its brilliancy would perhaps be
modulated to suit a diminished action serving as a minor, not, as it is
now, a major function and movement, but it would not
be erratic by deviation, would not by its parts of obscurity sink into
the false or fallible. But this could not be, because the
hold of Inconscience on the matter, the surface substance, in which
mind and life have to express themselves, makes the surface
consciousness obscure and unresponsive to the light within; it is
impelled moreover to cherish this defect, to substitute more and more
its own incomplete but better grasped clarities for the unaccountable
inner
Page 615
intimations, because a rapid development of the Truth-Consciousness is not the intention in Nature. For the method chosen
by her is a slow and difficult evolution of Inconscience developing into Ignorance and Ignorance forming itself into a mixed,
modified and partial knowledge before it can be ready for transformation into a higher Truth-Consciousness and
Truth-Knowledge. Our imperfect mental intelligence is a necessary stage of transition before this higher transformation can
be made possible.
There are, in practical fact, two poles of the conscious being between
which the evolutionary process works, one a
surface nescience which has to change gradually into knowledge, the
other a secret Consciousness-Force in which all
power of knowledge is and which has slowly to manifest in the
nescience. The surface nescience full of incomprehension
and inapprehension can change into knowledge because consciousness is
there involved in it; if it were intrinsically an entire
absence of consciousness, the change would be impossible: but still it
works as an inconscience trying to be conscious; it is
at first a nescience compelled by need and outer impact to feeling and
response and then an ignorance labouring to know.
The means used is a contact with the world and its forces and objects
which, like the rubbing of tinders, creates a spark of
awareness; the response from within is that spark leaping out into
manifestation. But the surface nescience in receiving the
response from an underlying source of knowledge subdues and changes it
into something obscure and incomplete; there is
an imperfect seizure or a misprision of the intuition that answers to
the contact: still by this process an initiation of responsive
consciousness, a first accumulation of ingrained or habitual
instinctive knowledge begins, and there follows upon it first a
primitive and then a developed capacity of receptive awareness,
understanding, reply of action, previsional initiation of action, — an
evolving consciousness which is half-knowledge, half-ignorance. All
that is unknown is met on the basis of what is known; but as this
knowledge is imperfect, as it receives imperfectly and responds
imperfectly to the contacts of things, there can be a misprision of the
new contact as well as a misprision or deformation of the intuitive
response, a double source of error.
Page 616
It is evident, in these conditions, that Error is a
necessary accompaniment, almost a necessary condition and
instrumentation, an indispensable step or stage in the slow evolution
towards knowledge in a consciousness that begins from
nescience and works in the stuff of a general nescience. The evolving
consciousness has to acquire knowledge by an
indirect means which does not give even a fragmentary certitude; for
there is at first only a figure or a sign, an image or a
vibration physical in character created by contact with the object and
a resulting vital sensation which have to be interpreted
by mind and sense and turned into a corresponding mental idea or
figure. Things thus experienced and mentally known have
to be related together; things unknown have to be observed, discovered,
fitted into the already acquired sum of experience
and knowledge. At each step different possibilities of fact,
significance, judgment, interpretation, relation present themselves;
some have to be tested and rejected, others accepted and confirmed: to
shut out error is impossible without limiting the
chances of acquisition of knowledge. Observation is the first
instrument of the mind, but observation itself is a complex
process open at every step to the mistakes of the ignorant observing
consciousness; misprision of the fact by the senses and
the sense-mind, omission, wrong selection and putting together,
unconscious additions made by a personal impression or
personal reaction create a false or an imperfect composite picture; to
these errors are added the errors of inference,
judgment, interpretation of facts by the intelligence: when even the
data are not sure or perfect, the conclusions built on
them must also be insecure and imperfect.
Consciousness in its acquisition of knowledge proceeds from the known
to the unknown; it builds a structure of
acquired experience, memories, impressions, judgments, a composite
mental plan of things which is of the nature of a
shifting and ever modifiable fixity. In the reception of new knowledge,
what comes in to be received is judged in the light of
past knowledge and fitted into the structure; if it cannot properly
fit, it is either dovetailed in anyhow or rejected: but the
existing knowledge and its structures or standards may not be
applicable to the new object or new field of knowledge, the
fitting may be a misfitting
Page 617
or the rejection may be an erroneous response. To
misprision and wrong interpretation of facts, there is added
misapplication of knowledge, miscombination, misconstruction,
misrepresentation, a complicated machinery of mental error.
In all this enlightened obscurity of our mental parts a secret
intuition is at work, a truth-urge that corrects or pushes the
intelligence to correct what is erroneous, to labour towards a true
picture of things and a true interpretative knowledge. But
intuition itself is limited in the human mind by mental misprision of
its intimations and is unable to act in its own right; for
whether it be physical, vital or mental intuition, it has to present
itself in order to be received, not nude and pure, but garbed
with a mental coating or entirely enveloped in an ample mental vesture;
so disguised, its true nature cannot be recognised
and its relation to mind and its office are not understood, its way of
working is ignored by the hasty and half-aware human
intelligence. There are intuitions of actuality, of possibility, of the
determining truth behind things, but all are mistaken by the
mind for each other. A great confusion of half-grasped material and an
experimental building with it, a representation or
mental structure of the figure of self and things rigid and yet
chaotic, half formed and arranged, half jumbled, half true, half
erroneous, but always imperfect, is the character of human
knowledge.
Error by itself, however, would not amount to falsehood; it would only
be an imperfection of truth, a trying, an essay of
possibilities: for when we do not know, untried and uncertain
possibilities have to be admitted and, even if as a result an
imperfect or inapt structure of thought is built, yet it may justify
itself by opening to fresh knowledge in unexpected
directions and either its dissolution and rebuilding or the discovery
of some truth it concealed might increase our cognition or
our experience. In spite of the mixture created the growth of
consciousness, intelligence and reason could arrive through this
mixed truth to a clearer and truer figure of self-knowledge and
world-knowledge. The obstruction of the original and
enveloping inconscience would diminish, and an increasing mental
consciousness would reach a clarity and wholeness which would enable
the concealed powers of direct knowledge and intuitive process to
emerge,
Page 618
utilise the prepared and enlightened instruments and make mind-intelligence their true agent and truth-builder on the
evolutionary surface.
But here the second condition or factor of the evolution intervenes;
for this seeking for knowledge is not an impersonal
mental process hampered only by the general limitations of
mind-intelligence: the ego is there, the physical ego, the life-ego
bent, not on self-knowledge and the discovery of the truth of things
and the truth of life, but on vital self-affirmation; a
mental ego is there also bent on its own personal self-affirmation and
largely directed and used by the vital urge for its
life-desire and life-purpose. For as mind develops, there develops also
a mental individuality with a personal drive of
mind-tendency, a mental temperament, a mind-formation of its own. This
surface mental individuality is egocentric; it looks
at the world and things and happenings from its own standpoint and sees
them not as they are but as they affect itself: in
observing things it gives them the turn suitable to its own tendency
and temperament, selects or rejects, arranges truth
according to its own mental preference and convenience; observation,
judgment, reason are all determined or affected by
this mind-personality and assimilated to the needs of the individuality
and the ego. Even when the mind aims most at a pure
impersonality of truth and reason, a sheer impersonality is impossible
to it; even the most trained, severe and vigilant intellect
fails to observe the twists and turns it gives to truth in the
reception of fact and idea and the construction of its mental
knowledge. Here we have an almost inexhaustible source of distortion of
truth, a cause of falsification, an unconscious or
half-conscious will to error, an acceptance of ideas or facts not by a
clear perception of the true and the false, but by
preference, personal suitability, temperamental choice, prejudgment.
Here is a fruitful seed-plot for the growth of falsehood
or a gate or many gates through which it can enter by stealth or by an
usurping but acceptable violence. Truth too can enter
in and take up its dwelling, not by its own right, but at the mind's
pleasure.
In the terms of the Sankhya
psychology we can distinguish three types of mental individuality, — that which
is governed by
Page 619
the principle of obscurity and inertia, first-born
of the Inconscience, tamasic; that which is governed by a force of
passion
and activity, kinetic, rajasic; that which is cast in the mould of the
sattwic principle of light, harmony, balance. The tamasic
intelligence has its seat in the physical mind: it is inert to ideas, —
except to those which it receives inertly, blindly, passively
from a recognised source or authority, — obscure in their reception,
unwilling to enlarge itself, recalcitrant to new stimulus,
conservative and immobile; it clings to its received structure of
knowledge and its one power is repetitive practicality, but it
is a power limited by the accustomed, the obvious, the established and
familiar and already secure; it thrusts away all that is
new and likely to disturb it. The rajasic intelligence has its main
seat in the vital mind and is of two kinds: one kind is
defensive with violence and passion, assertive of its mental
individuality and all that is in agreement with it, preferred by its
volition, adapted to its outlook, but aggressive against all that is
contrary to its mental ego-structure or unacceptable to its
personal intellectuality; the other kind is enthusiastic for new
things, passionate, insistent, impetuous, often mobile beyond
measure, inconstant and ever restless, governed in its idea not by
truth and light but by the zest of intellectual battle and
movement and adventure. The sattwic intelligence is eager for
knowledge, as open as it can be to it, careful to consider and
verify and balance, to adjust and adapt to its view whatever confirms
itself as truth, receiving all that it can assimilate, skilful
to build truth in a harmonious intellectual structure: but, because its
light is limited, as all mental light must be, it is unable to
enlarge itself so as to receive equally all truth and all knowledge; it
has a mental ego, even an enlightened one, and is
determined by it in its observation, judgment, reasoning, mental choice
and preference. In most men there is a predominance
of one of these qualities but also a mixture; the same mind can be open
and plastic and harmonic in one direction, kinetic and
vital, hasty and prejudiced and ill-balanced in another, in yet another
obscure and unreceptive. This limitation by personality,
this defence of personality and refusal to receive what is
unassimilable, is necessary for the individual being because in its
evolution, at the stage reached,
Page 620
it has a certain self-expression, a certain type of experience and use of experience which must, for the mind and life at
least, govern nature; that for the moment is its law of being, its dharma. This limitation of mind-consciousness by personality
and of truth by mental temperament and preference must be the rule of our nature so long as the individual has not reached
universality, is not yet preparing for mind-transcendence. But it is evident that this condition is inevitably a source of error
and can at any moment be the cause of a falsification of knowledge, an unconscious or half-wilful
self-deception, a refusal to admit true knowledge, a readiness to assert
acceptable wrong knowledge as true knowledge.
This is in the field of cognition,
but the same law applies to will and action. Out of ignorance a wrong
consciousness is created which gives a wrong dynamic reaction to the contact of
persons, things, happenings: the surface consciousness develops the habit of
ignoring, misunderstanding or rejecting the suggestions to action or against
action that come from the secret inmost consciousness, the psychic entity; it
answers instead to unenlightened mental and vital suggestions, or acts in
accordance with the demands and impulsions of the vital ego. Here the second of
the primary conditions of the evolution, the law of a separate life-being
affirming itself in a world which is not-self to it, comes into prominence and
assumes an immense importance. It is here that the surface vital personality or
life-self asserts its dominance, and this dominance of the ignorant vital being
is a principal active source of discord and disharmony, a cause of inner and
outer perturbations of the life, a mainspring of wrong-doing and evil. The
natural vital element in us, in so far as it is unchecked or untrained or
retains its primitive character, is not concerned with truth or right
consciousness or right action; it is concerned with self-affirmation, with
life-growth, with possession, with satisfaction of impulse, with all
satisfactions of desire. This main need and demand of the life-self seems
all-important to it; it would readily carry it out without any regard to truth
or right or good or any other consideration: but because mind is there and has
these conceptions, because the soul is there and has these soul-perceptions, it
tries to dominate mind and get from it
Page 621
by dictation a sanction and order of execution for
its own will of self-affirmation, a verdict of truth and right and good
for its
own vital assertions, impulses, desires; it is concerned with
self-justification in order that it may have room for full
self-affirmation. But if it can get the assent of mind, it is quite
ready to ignore all these standards and set up only one
standard, the satisfaction, growth, strength, greatness of the vital
ego. The life-individual needs place, expansion, possession
of its world, dominance and control of things and beings; it needs
life-room, a space in the sun, self-assertion, survival. It
needs these things for itself and for those with whom it associates
itself, for its own ego and for the collective ego; it needs
them for its ideas, creeds, ideals, interests, imaginations: for it has
to assert these forms of I-ness and my-ness and impose
them on the world around it or, if it is not strong enough to do that,
it has at least to defend and maintain them against others
to the best of its power and contrivance. It may try to do it by
methods it thinks or chooses to think or represent as right; it
may try to do it by the naked use of violence, ruse, falsehood,
destructive aggression, crushing of other life-formations: the
principle is the same whatever the means or the moral attitude. It is
not only in the realm of interests, but in the realm of
ideas and the realm of religion that the vital being of man has
introduced this spirit and attitude of self-affirmation and
struggle and the use of violence, oppression and suppression,
intolerance, aggression; it has imposed the principle of
life-egoism on the domain of intellectual truth and the domain of the
spirit. Into its self-affirmation the self-asserting life
brings in hatred and dislike towards all that stands in the way of its
expansion or hurts its ego; it develops as a means or as a
passion or reaction of the life-nature cruelty, treachery and all kinds
of evil: its satisfaction of desire and impulse takes no
account of right and wrong, but only of the fulfilment of desire and
impulse. For this satisfaction it is ready to face the risk of
destruction and actuality of suffering; for what it is pushed by Nature
to aim at is not self-preservation alone, but life-affirmation and
life-satisfaction, formulation of life-force and life-being.
It does not follow that this is all
that the vital personality is
Page 622
in its native composition or that evil is its
very nature. It is not primarily concerned with truth and good, but it
can have the
passion for truth and good as it has, more spontaneously, the passion
for joy and beauty. In all that is developed by the
life-force there is developed at the same time a secret delight
somewhere in the being, a delight in good and a delight in evil,
a delight in truth and a delight in falsehood, a delight in life and an
attraction to death, a delight in pleasure and a delight in
pain, in one's own suffering and the suffering of others, but also in
one's own joy and happiness and good and the joy and
happiness and good of others. For the force of life-affirmation affirms
alike the good and the evil: it has its impulses of help
and association, of generosity, affection, loyalty, self-giving; it
takes up altruism as it takes up egoism, sacrifices itself as well
as destroys others; and in all its acts there is the same passion for
life-affirmation, the same force of action and fulfilment.
This character of vital being and its trend of existence in which what
we term good and evil are items but not the
mainspring, is evident in subhuman life; in the human being, since
there a mental, moral and psychic discernment has
developed, it is subjected to control or to camouflage, but it does not
change its character. The vital being and its life-force
and their drive towards self-affirmation are, in the absence of an
overt action of soul-power and spiritual power, Atmashakti,
Nature's chief means of effectuation, and without its support neither
mind nor body can utilise their possibilities or realise their aim here
in existence. It is only if the inner or true vital being replaces the
outer life-personality that the drive of the vital ego can be wholly
overcome and the life-force become the servant of the soul and a
powerful instrumentation for the action of our true spiritual
being.
This then is the origin and nature of
error, falsehood, wrong and evil in the consciousness and will of the
individual; a limited consciousness growing out of nescience is the source of
error, a personal attachment to the limitation and the error born of it the
source of falsity, a wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego the source of
evil. But it is evident that their relative existence is only a phenomenon
thrown up by the cosmic Force in its drive towards evolutionary self-expression,
and it is there that we have
Page 623
to look for the significance of the phenomenon. For
the emergence of the life-ego is, as we have seen, a machinery of
cosmic Nature for the affirmation of the individual, for his
self-disengagement from the indeterminate mass substance of the
subconscient, for the appearance of a conscious being on a ground
prepared by the Inconscience; the principle of
life-affirmation of the ego is the necessary consequence. The
individual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation
of the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness, or a
subjective substitute for the true self in our surface
experience: it is separated by ignorance from other-self and from the
inner Divinity, but it is still pushed secretly towards an
evolutionary unification in diversity; it has behind itself, though
finite, the impulse to the infinite. But this in the terms of an
ignorant consciousness translates itself into the will to expand, to be
a boundless finite, to take everything it can into itself, to
enter into everything and possess it, even to be possessed if by that
it can feel itself satisfied and growing in or through
others or can take into itself by subjection the being and power of
others or get thereby a help or an impulse for its
life-affirmation, its life-delight, its enrichment of its mental, vital
or physical existence.
But because it does these things as a separate ego for its separate
advantage and not by conscious interchange and
mutuality, not by unity, life-discord, conflict, disharmony arise, and
it is the products of this life-discord and disharmony that
we call wrong and evil. Nature accepts them because they are necessary
circumstances of the evolution, necessary for the
growth of the divided being; they are products of ignorance, supported
by an ignorant consciousness that founds itself on
division, by an ignorant will that works through division, by an
ignorant delight of existence that takes the joy of division. The
evolutionary intention acts through the evil as through the good; it
has to utilise all because confinement to a limited good would imprison
and check the intended evolution; it uses any available material and
does what it can with it: this is the reason why we see evil coming out
of what we call good and good coming out of what we call evil; and, if
we see even what was thought to be evil coming to be accepted as good,
what was thought to be good accepted as evil,
Page 624
it is because our standards of both are
evolutionary, limited and mutable. Evolutionary Nature, the terrestrial
cosmic Force,
seems then at first to have no preference for either of these
opposites, it uses both alike for its purpose. And yet it is the
same Nature, the same Force that has burdened man with the sense of
good and evil and insists on its importance: evidently,
therefore, this sense also has an evolutionary purpose; it too must be
necessary, it must be there so that man may leave
certain things behind him, move towards others, until out of good and
evil he can emerge into some Good that is eternal and
infinite.
But how is
this evolutionary intention in Nature to fulfil itself, by what power,
means, impulsion, what principle and
process of selection and harmonisation? The method adopted by the mind
of man through the ages has been always a principle of selection and
rejection, and this has taken the forms of a religious sanction, a
social or moral rule of life or an ethical ideal. But this is an
empirical means which does not touch the root of the problem because it
has no vision of the cause and origin of the malady it attempts to
cure; it deals with the symptoms, but deals with them perfunctorily,
not knowing what function they serve in the purpose of Nature and what
it is in the mind and life that supports them and keeps them in being.
Moreover, human good and evil are relative and the standards erected by
ethics are uncertain as well as relative: what is forbidden by one
religion or another, what is regarded as good or bad by social opinion,
what is thought useful to society or noxious to it, what some temporary
law of man allows or disallows, what is or is considered helpful or
harmful to self or others, what accords with this or that ideal, what
is prompted or discouraged by an instinct which we call conscience, —
an amalgam of all these viewpoints is the determining heterogeneous
idea, constitutes the complex substance of morality; in all of them
there is the constant mixture of truth and half-truth and error which
pursues all the activities of our limiting mental Knowledge-Ignorance.
A mental control over our vital and physical desires and instincts,
over our personal and social action, over our dealings with others is
indispensable to us as human beings, and morality creates a standard by
which we can guide ourselves and establish a
Page 625
customary control; but the control is always imperfect and it is an expedient, not a solution: man remains always what he is
and has ever been, a mixture of good and evil, sin and virtue, a mental ego with an imperfect command over his mental, vital
and physical nature.
The endeavour to select, to retain
from our consciousness and action all that seems to us good and reject all that
seems to us evil and so to re-form our being, to reconstitute and shape
ourselves into the image of an ideal, is a more profound ethical motive, because
it comes nearer to the true issue; it rests on the sound idea that our life is a
becoming and that there is something which we have to become and be. But the
ideals constructed by the human mind are selective and relative; to shape our
nature rigidly according to them is to limit ourselves and make a construction
where there should be growth into larger being. The true call upon us is the
call of the Infinite and the Supreme; the self-affirmation and self-abnegation
imposed on us by Nature are both movements towards that, and it is the right way
of self-affirmation and self-negation taken together in place of the wrong,
because ignorant, way of the ego and in place of the conflict between the yes
and the no of Nature that we have to discover. If we do not discover that,
either the push of life will be too strong for our narrow ideal of perfection,
its instrumentation will break and it will fail to consummate and perpetuate
itself, or at best a half result will be all that we shall obtain, or else the
push away from life will present itself as the only remedy, the one way out of
the otherwise invincible grasp of the Ignorance. This indeed is the way out
usually indicated by religion; a divinely enjoined morality, a pursuit of piety,
righteousness and virtue as laid down in a religious code of conduct, a law of
God determined by some human inspiration, is put forward as a part of the means,
the direction, by which we can tread the way that leads to the exit, the issue.
But this exit leaves the problem where it was; it is only a way of escape for
the personal being out of the unsolved perplexity of the cosmic existence. In
ancient Indian spiritual thought there was a clearer perception of the
difficulty; the practice of truth, virtue, right will and right doing was
regarded as a necessity of the
Page 626
approach to spiritual realisation, but in the
realisation itself the being arises to the greater consciousness of the
Infinite and
Eternal and shakes away from itself the burden of sin and virtue, for
that belongs to the relativity and the Ignorance. Behind
this larger truer perception lay the intuition that a relative good is
a training imposed by World-Nature upon us so that we
may pass through it towards the true Good which is absolute. These
problems are of the mind and the ignorant life, they do
not accompany us beyond mind; as there is a cessation of the duality of
truth and error in an infinite Truth-Consciousness,
so there is a liberation from the duality of good and evil in an
infinite Good, there is transcendence.
There can be no artificial escape from this problem which has always
troubled humanity and from which it has found no
satisfying issue. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil with its
sweet and bitter fruits is secretly rooted in the very
nature of the Inconscience from which our being has emerged and on
which it still stands as a nether soil and basis of our
physical existence; it has grown visibly on the surface in the manifold
branchings of the Ignorance which is still the main
bulk and condition of our consciousness in its difficult evolution
towards a supreme consciousness and an integral
awareness. As long as there is this soil with the unfound roots in it
and this nourishing air and climate of Ignorance, the tree
will grow and flourish and put forth its dual blossoms and its fruit of
mixed nature. It would follow that there can be no final
solution until we have turned our inconscience into the greater
consciousness, made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis
and transformed our ignorance into a higher knowledge. All other
expedients will only be makeshifts or blind issues; a
complete and radical transformation of our nature is the only true
solution. It is because the Inconscience imposes its original obscurity
on our awareness of self and things and because the Ignorance bases it
on an imperfect and divided consciousness and because we live in that
obscurity and division that wrong knowledge and wrong will are
possible: without wrong knowledge there could be no error or falsehood,
without error or falsehood in our dynamic parts there could be no wrong
will in our members; without wrong will there could be no wrong-
Page 627
doing or evil: while these causes endure, the
effects also will persist in our action and in our nature. A mental
control can
only be a control, not a cure; a mental teaching, rule, standard can
only impose an artificial groove in which our action
revolves mechanically or with difficulty and which imposes a curbed and
limited formation on the course of our nature. A
total change of consciousness, a radical change of nature is the one
remedy and the sole issue.
But since the root of the difficulty is a split, limited and separative
existence, this change must consist in an integration, a healing of the divided
consciousness of our being, and since that division is complex and many-sided,
no partial change on one side of the being can be passed off as a sufficient
substitute for the integral transformation. Our first division is that created
by our ego and mainly, most forcefully, most vividly by our life-ego, which
divides us from all other beings as not-self and ties us to our ego-centricity
and the law of an egoistic self-affirmation. It is in the errors of this
self-affirmation that wrong and evil first arise: wrong consciousness engenders
wrong will in the members, in the thinking mind, in the heart, in the life-mind
and the sensational being, in the very body-consciousness; wrong will engenders
wrong action of all these instruments, a multiple error and many-branching
crookedness of thought and will and sense and feeling. Nor can we deal rightly
with others so long as they are to us others, beings who are strangers to
ourselves and of whose inner consciousness, soul-need, mind-need, heart-need,
life-need, body-need we know little or nothing. The modicum of imperfect
sympathy, knowledge and good-will that the law, need and habit of association
engender, is a poor quantum of what is required for a true action. A larger
mind, a larger heart, a more ample and generous life-force can do something to
help us or help others and avoid the worst offences, but this too is
insufficient and will not prevent a mass of troubles and harms and collisions of
our preferred good with the good of others. By the very nature of our ego and
ignorance we affirm ourselves egoistically even when we most pride ourselves on
selflessness and ignorantly even when we most pride ourselves on understanding
and knowledge. Altruism taken as a rule of life does not deliver us; it is a
Page 628
potent instrument for self-enlargement and for
correction of the narrower ego, but it does not abolish it nor
transform it into
the true self one with all; the ego of the altruist is as powerful and
absorbing as the ego of the selfish and it is often more
powerful and insistent because it is a self-righteous and magnified
ego. It helps still less if we do wrong to our soul, to our
mind, life or body with the idea of subordinating our self to the self
of others. To affirm our being rightly so that it may
become one with all is the true principle, not to mutilate or immolate
it. Self-immolation may be necessary at times,
exceptionally, for a cause, in answer to some demand of the heart or
for some right or high purpose but cannot be made the
rule or nature of life; so exaggerated, it would only feed and
exaggerate the ego of others or magnify some collective ego,
not lead us or mankind to the discovery and affirmation of our or its
true being. Sacrifice and self-giving are indeed a true
principle and a spiritual necessity, for we cannot affirm our being
rightly without sacrifice or without self-giving to something
larger than our ego; but that too must be done with a right
consciousness and will founded on a true knowledge. To develop
the sattwic part of our nature, a nature of light, understanding,
balance, harmony, sympathy, good-will, kindness,
fellow-feeling, self-control, rightly ordered and harmonised action, is
the best we can do in the limits of the mental formation,
but it is a stage and not the goal of our growth of being. These are
solutions by the way, palliatives, necessary means for a
partial dealing with this root difficulty, provisional standards and
devices given us as a temporary help and guidance because
the true and total solution is beyond our present capacity and can only
come when we have sufficiently evolved to see it and
make it our main endeavour.
The true solution can intervene only when by our spiritual growth we
can become one self with all beings, know them
as part of our self, deal with them as if they were our other selves;
for then the division is healed, the law of separate
self-affirmation leading by itself to affirmation against or at the
expense of others is enlarged and liberated by adding to it
the law of our self-affirmation for others and our self-finding in
their self-finding and self-realisation. It has been made a rule of
religious ethics
Page 629
to act in a spirit of universal compassion, to love
one's neighbour as oneself, to do to others as one would have them do
to
us, to feel the joy and grief of others as one's own; but no man living
in his ego is able truly and perfectly to do these things,
he can only accept them as a demand of his mind, an aspiration of his
heart, an effort of his will to live by a high standard
and modify by a sincere endeavour his crude ego-nature. It is when
others are known and felt intimately as oneself that this
ideal can become a natural and spontaneous rule of our living and be
realised in practice as in principle. But even oneness
with others is not enough by itself, if it is a oneness with their
ignorance; for then the law of ignorance will work and error of
action and wrong action will survive even if diminished in degree and
mellowed in incidence and character. Our oneness
with others must be fundamental, not a oneness with their minds,
hearts, vital selves, egos,—even though these come to be
included in our universalised consciousness,—but a oneness in the soul
and spirit, and that can only come by our liberation
into soul-awareness and self-knowledge. To be ourselves liberated from
ego and realise our true selves is the first necessity;
all else can be achieved as a luminous result, a necessary consequence.
That is one reason why a spiritual call must be
accepted as imperative and take precedence over all other claims,
intellectual, ethical, social, that belong to the domain of
the Ignorance. For the mental law of good abides in that domain and can
only modify and palliate; nothing can be a
sufficient substitute for the spiritual change that can realise the
true and integral good because through the spirit we come to the root
of action and existence.
In the spiritual knowledge of self
there are three steps of its self-achievement which are at the same time three
parts of the one knowledge. The first is the discovery of the soul, not the
outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the
divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we
are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as
its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good,
the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its
luminous law and leads our life and being
Page 630
towards spiritual completeness. Even within the
obscure workings of the Ignorance we have then a witness who discerns,
a
living light that illumines, a will that refuses to be misled and
separates the mind's truth from its error, the heart's intimate
response from its vibrations to a wrong call and wrong demand upon it,
the life's true ardour and plenitude of movement
from vital passion and the turbid falsehoods of our vital nature and
its dark self-seekings. This is the first step of
self-realisation, to enthrone the soul, the divine psychic individual
in the place of the ego. The next step is to become aware
of the eternal self in us unborn and one with the self of all beings.
This self-realisation liberates and universalises; even if our
action still proceeds in the dynamics of the Ignorance, it no longer
binds or misleads because our inner being is seated in the
light of self-knowledge. The third step is to know the Divine Being who
is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the
Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within
of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual
in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal
Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness
ever living within us and the conscious instrument of its light and
power and joy and beauty. Aware of the Divine as the
Master of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his
Shakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her
rule of light and power within us. Our action will not then be mastered
by our vital impulse or governed by a mental standard, for she acts
according to the permanent yet plastic truth of things, — not that
which the mind constructs, but the higher, deeper and subtler truth of
each movement and circumstance as it is known to the supreme knowledge
and demanded by the supreme will in the universe. The liberation of the
will follows upon the liberation in knowledge and is its dynamic
consequence; it is knowledge that purifies, it is truth that liberates:
evil is the fruit of a spiritual ignorance and it will disappear only
by the growth of a spiritual consciousness and the light of spiritual
knowledge. The division of our being from the being of others can only
be healed by removing the divorce of our nature from the inner
soul-reality, by abolishing the veil between our becoming and our
self-being, by bridging the
Page 631
remoteness of our individuality in Nature from the Divine Being who is the omnipresent Reality in Nature and above Nature.
But the last division to be removed is the scission between this Nature
and the Supernature which is the Self-Power of
the Divine Existence. Even before the dynamic Knowledge-Ignorance is
removed, while it still remains as an inadequate
instrumentation of the spirit, the supreme Shakti or Supernature can
work through us and we can be aware of her workings;
but it is then by a modification of her light and power so that it can
be received and assimilated by the inferior nature of the
mind, life and body. But this is not enough; there is needed an entire
remoulding of what we are into a way and power of the
divine Supernature. The integration of our being cannot be complete
unless there is this transformation of the dynamic action; there must
be an uplifting and change of the whole mode of Nature itself and not
only some illumination and transmutation of the inner ways of the
being. An eternal Truth-Consciousness must possess us and sublimate all
our natural modes into its own modes of being, knowledge and action; a
spontaneous truth-awareness, truth-will, truth-feeling, truth-movement,
truth-action can then become the integral law of our nature.
End
of the Second
Book, Part
I
Page 632
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