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CHAPTER
XIX
Life
ARGUMENT
MIND
as a final action of Supermind
is a creative and not only a
perceptive power; in fact, material force
itself being only a Will in
things working darkly as the expression
of subconscious Mind, Mind is the immediate creator of the material universe.
But the real creator is Supermind; for wherever there is Mind conscious or
subconscious, there must be Supermind regulating from behind the veil its
activities and educing from them their truth of inevitable result. Not a mental
Intelligence, but Supermind is the creator of the Universe. - Mind manifests
itself in the form of Force to which we give the name of Life, and Life in
Matter is an energy or power in dynamic movement which builds up forms,
energises, maintains, disintegrates and recreates; death itself is only a
process of life. It is one - all-pervading Life or constant movement of dynamic
energy which creates all these forms of the material universe and is not
destroyed in the destruction of its forms. - The distinction between animal and
plant life is unreal and that between the animate and the inanimate unessential.
Plant-life has been found to be identical in organisation with animal-life and,
although the organisation may differ, life is also present in the metal, the
earth, the atom. This Life-force pervades the universe and is present in every
form of it and there is a constant interchange of its energies which creates the
symptoms and characteristics of vitality recognised by us; but even where these
are suspended, Life is present and only withdraws by a process of dispersion
which replaces the process of continual reconstitution of the form. The presence
of these symptoms and characteristics is not the essential nor is their absence
a sign of the absence of Life force. Even where we do not detect Life, it
exists. - Conscious
nervous sensation accompanies
life in the animal, but much of
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the
action of nervous or life-energy
is subconscious; in the plant, as many actions
of man, the nervous sensation is present but the mentality of
the sensation is subconscious. In the very atom there is a subconscious
will and desire which must also be present in all atomic aggregates because they
are present in the Force which constitutes the atom. That force is Chit-shakti,
force of conscious being, variously represented in various forms of life.- Life is an energising of conscious being in substance of Matter,
which on one side is constantly supplying the material of physical
formation and on the other labouring to release mind and sense from
their subconscious sleep in Matter. It is therefore the dynamic link between
Mind and Matter. To create form and evolve consciousness out of its imprisonment
in form is the sense of the imprisonment Life in the universe.
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CHAPTER
XX
Death,
Desire and
Incapacity
ARGUMENT
LIFE
is the same whatever its workings and
its terms need not be limited to those proper to physical existence. Life is a
final operation of divine conscious-force for individualising existence; it is
the energy-aspect of Mind when that creates and relates itself to form of
substance: it has the universal conscious-force of existence behind it and is
not a separate entity or movement. Life in us must become conscious of this
divine Force behind it in order
to become divine. - Life,
at first darkened, ignorant, divided and helplessly subject, seeks as it
develops to become master and enjoyer, to grow in Power; but until it escapes
from the bonds of individuality it must be subject to its three
badges of limitation, Death, Desire and Incapacity. -
The nature
of physical life imposes death because all life exists by a mutual
devouring and struggle and Life itself feeds on the forms
it creates; but the fundamental justification of Death is the necessity of a
constant variation of experience in succession of Time, the soul seeking thus to
enlarge itself and move towards the realisation of its own infinity. - The
process of Death results inevitably from the division of substance; life's
attempt to aggrandise its being thus divided and limited translates itself into
the hunger that devours. This hunger is the crude form of Desire, and Desire is
the necessary lever for self-affirmation; but eventually Desire has to grow out
of the law of Hunger into the law of Love. - Desire is itself the result of the
limitation of capacity which is the consequence of divided life working as the
energy of ignorant mind, All-Force being only possible to all knowledge.
Therefore growth by struggle is the third law of Life. This strife again has to
divinise itself and become the clasp of Love. Until then Death, Desire and
Strife are and must be the triple mask of the divine Life-principle in its
cosmic self-affirmation.
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CHAPTER
XXI
The
Ascent
of
Life
ARGUMENT
THE
development of Life starts from
an original status of division, subconscious will and inert subjection to
mechanical forces. This is the type of material existence. –
The terms of the second status which we recognise as vitality, are death,
hunger and conscious desire, sense of limited capacity and the struggle for
survival and mastery. This is the basis of the Darwinian conception of Life, the
struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. But this struggle involves a
third status whose preparation is marked by the emergence of the conscious
principle of love. - The
third status contradicts the others in appearance, but really fulfils
them. Life begins with division and aggregation based on the refusal of the
atom, the first principle of ego and individuality to accept death and fusion by
dissolution. This gives a firm basis for the creation of aggregate forms to be
occupied by vital and mental individualities. In the next stage we have the
general principle of death and dissolution by which the individual form fuses
itself its elements into other lives. This principle of
constant fusion and interchange is the law of Life and extends into vital
and mental existence as well as the physical. The
two principles of individual persistence and mutual fusion have
to be harmonised and this can
only be done by the emergence and full development of mind which alone is
subtle enough persist in individual consciousness beyond all fusion and
dissolution of forms.
Here the union and harmony of the persistent individual and the
persistent aggregate life become possible. -
Love is the power by which this union and harmony are worked; for love
exists by the persistence of the individual and his conscious acceptance of the
necessity of and desire of interchange
and self-giving.
Its growth means the emergence of Mind imposing its law on the material
existence, for Mind does
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not need to devour in order to possess
and grow; it increases
by giving and confirms itself by fusion with others. -
Subconscious will in the atom
becomes hunger and conscious desire it the
vital being. Love is the transfiguration of desire, a desire of
possessing others but also of
self-giving; at first subject to hunger, and the desire of possession it
reveals its own true law by an equal or greater joy in self-giving. - The inert
subjection of the will in the atom to the not-self becomes in the vital being the
sense of limited capacity and the struggle for possession and
mastery. In the third status the
not-self is recognised as a greater
self and subjection to its law and need freely accepted; at the, same
time the individual by making the aggregate life and all it has
to give his own, fulfils his impulse of possession. This is the,
Mind's reconciliation of the two conflicting principles which we find at the root of all existence.
- But
the true and perfect
reconciliation can only come by passing beyond Mind and founding all the
operations of life on the essential freedom and unity
of the spirit.
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CHAPTER XXII
Problem
of Life
ARGUMENT
LIFE being a divided movement of consciousness although really an
undivided force becomes a clash of opposing truths each striving to fulfil
itself. Mind has to solve the land and one problems resulting but in Life itself
not merely in thought. The difficulty lies in its ignorance of itself and the
world. Man knows only the surface of
his own being and does not know the
universality of the Force of which he is a part; therefore he can master
neither himself nor the world. He has to know and
solve the problem or else give place to some higher evolutionary being. -
The poise of Life is determined by the
relation of the Force to the Consciousness which drives it. Accordingly
we have, besides the Infinite Existence, first the life of material Nature
ruled by the infallible Inconscient; secondly the life of conscious being
in material Nature emerging out of the inconscient, fallible, bewildered, only
half-potent, which is our own; and thirdly the life of the real Man to which we
are moving where Consciousness and Force are fulfilled and in harmony the
One at unison with the many. That life will be founded on the awareness of one
Consciousness in many minds, one Force working
in many lives, one Delight of being in
many hearts and bodies. -
Man's difficulties: first, he only
knows and governs apart
of himself, the greater part of himself is subconscient and this
greater cosmic part that really governs his surface being. This is what is meant
by his being governed by his Nature and by the Lord seated
within through the Maya or apparent denial of Sachchidananda by Himself.
It is only by becoming one with the Lord that man can be master of himself, but
this union must be in the Divine Maya, in the superconscient and not only
or chiefly in this lower Maya of
the mental existence. -
Secondly, he is separated by
his individuality from the universal and does not
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know
his fellow-beings. He must be not only in sympathy with them, but arrive at a
conscious unity with all and this conscious unity exists only in what is now
supraconscient to us. - Thirdly
Life is at war with body, Mind at war with the Life and the body, each
frying to subject the others to its own law. Only the supramental
can find the law of immortal harmony which shall reconcile
this discord of our mortality. Each of these principles has besides
a soul in it which seeks a self-fulfilment beyond what the
present force of life, mind or
body can give. There is a conflict between opposing instincts of the
body; opposing desires and impulses of the life, opposing ideals of the mind.
The principle of unity is above in the supermind. - Man. as he develops becomes
acutely aware of all these discords and seeks a
reconciliation with himself and with his fellow-beings. This can only
come by the perfection of his own existence through the principle in himself to
which he has not yet attained and by embracing
consciously the life of -
others in his own through an
universal consciousness which must also be gained by the supraconscient
becoming conscient in us through an upward
evolution.
Page-388
CHAPTER XXIII
The
Double Soul
in
Man
ARGUMENT
THE ascent of Life is in its nature the ascent of the divine
Delight in things from its dumb conception in matter to its luminous
consummation in Spirit. Like the other original divine principles, this Delight
also must be represented in us by a cosmic principle corresponding to it in the
apparent existence. It is the soul or psychic being. -
As there is a subliminal luminous mind behind our surface mind, a
subliminal life behind our mortal life,
a subliminal wider corporeality behind, gross body, so we have a double
soul, the superficial desire and the true psychic entity. -
The superficial in us is the small and egoistic, the subliminal is in touch with
the universal. So our subliminal or true psychic being is open to the universal
delight of things, the superficial
desire-soul is shut off from it. It feels the outward touches of things,
not their essence and therefore not
their rasa or true touch; and because it cannot reach the
universal world-soul, it cannot find its own true soul which is one with the
world-soul. - The desire-soul returns the triple response of pleasure, pain and
indifference, but the psychic being behind it has the equal delight of all of
its experiences; it compels the desire-soul to more and more experience and to a
change of its values. By bringing this soul to the surface we can overcome the
duality of pleasure and pain, as is actually done in certain directions of
experience by the artist, Nature-lover, God lover, etc. each in his own fashion.
But the difficulty is to do it the desire-soul at its centre where it comes into
contact with
practical living; for here the human mind shrinks from applying the
principle of equality. - To
bring this subliminal soul to the surface is not enough; for it is open
passively to the world- soul but cannot
possess the world. Those who thus arrive, become close to the universal
delight, but not masters of life. For
Page-389
there are two principles of order and
mastery, one false, the egosense,
the other true, the Lord who is one in the many. By merely suppressing
the ego-sense in the impersonal delight we gain the centreless Impersonal and
are fulfilled in our static being but not in our active being.. We must
therefore gain the other centre in the Supermind by which we shall consciously
possess and not, merely undergo the delight of the One in His universal
existence.
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CHAPTER
XXIV
Matter
Argument
LIFE
and Mind are in the fact of
evolution conditioned by
the body and therefore by the principle
of Matter. The body is
the chief difficulty in the way
of a spiritual transformation of life; it
has therefore been regarded by spiritual aspiration,
as an enemy
and the escape from the material
existence has, made an
indispensable condition of the final emancipation.- The
quarrel begins with the, struggle
between Life and Matter with the
apparent defeat of life in death as its
constant circumstance; it
continues with the struggle of the Mind against the
life and the body and culminates
with the struggle of the spirit against all its instruments; but the
right end and solution of these discords
is not an escape and a severance but a
complete victory le higher over the lower. - We have to examine the
problem le reality of Matter. Our present experience of Matter does give
us its truth; for Matter is only an
appearance of the Reality, a form of its force-action presented to the
principle of sense in the universal consciousness. As Mind is only a final
dividing action of Supermind and Life of Conscious-Force work- in the conditions
of the Ignorance, so Matter as we know it is only the final form taken by
conscious-being as the result of it
same working.
Mind precipitating itself into Life to create
frill gives
to the universal principle of Being the
appearance of material substance instead of pure substance, that is to
say, of substance offering itself
to the contact of mind as a stable thing object.
This contact of mind with its
object is Sense. – In the divine Mind there is a movement which
presents to the divine Knower the
forms of Himself as objects to
.His knowledge and is would create a division between the Knower and the
object, If knowledge
if there were not at the same time, inevitably, another
movement by which He feels the
object as Himself.
Page-391
This movement, in the divided state of existence created by dividing
Mind, is represented to us as the contact of sense which becomes
a basis for contact through the thought-mind by
Which we
return towards unity. -Since
the action of Mind is to divide
infinitely the one infinite existence,
Matter, the result of that, action,
becomes in its apparent nature an infinite atomic division
and atomic aggregation of infinite substance. But its reality is one and
Indivisible, even as is the reality of Life and of Mind. Matter is
Sachchidananda represented to his own mental experience as a formal basis of
objective knowledge, action and delight.
Page-392
CHAPTER XXV
The
Knot of Matter
Argument
SPIRIT and Matter are two ends of a unity, Spirit the soul and reality of
Matter, Matter the form and body of Spirit. There is an ascending series of
substance and Spirit at the summit is itself pure substance of being. Brahman is
the sole material as well as the sole cause of the universe and Matter also is
Brahman; it is, like Life, Mind and Supermind, a mode if the eternal
Sachchidananda. - Still, practically, Matter seems to be cut off from Spirit and
even its opposite and the material existence incompatible therefore with the
spiritual. Matter is the culmination of the principle of Ignorance in which
Consciousness has lost and forgotten itself and the self-luminous Spirit is
represented by a brute inconscient Force in whose mere action there appears to
be no self-knowledge, mind or heart. In this huge no-mind Mind emerges and has
to labour besieged and limited by the universal Ignorance and in this heartless Inconscience a heart has manifested which has to aspire opposed and corrupted by
the brutality of material Force. This is the form- absorbed Consciousness
returning progressively to itself, but obliged to
work under the conditions of Matter, that is to say, always
bound and limited in its results. - For
Matter is the opposite of
the Spirit's freedom and mastery, the culmination of bondage;
it is a huge force of movement, but of
inertly driven movement subject to a law of which it has no conscience
nor initiative but mechanically obeys. It opposes therefore to the attempt of
Life to impose itself and freely utilise and the attempt of Mind to impose
itself and know and freely guide the constant opposition of its inertia; it
yields reluctantly to a certain extent, but brings always in the end a definite
denial, limit and obstruction. For this reason knowledge, power, love, etc., are
always pursued, accompanied and hedged in by their opposites. – For
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Matter is the
culmination of the principle of division and struggle. It can only unify by an
association which carries with it the possibility of dissociation and an
assimilation which devours. Therefore Life and Mind in Matter working under this
law of division and struggle, that is to say, of death, desire and limitation,
aggregation and subsequent dissociation, labour without any finality or
certainty of assured progress. -
But especially the divisions of Matter
bring in the law of pain. Ignorance and Inertia would not be
necessarily a cause of pain if the Mind and Life were not aware
of an infinite Consciousness,
Light and Power in which they live but are prevented from participating by the
Ignorance and Inertia of Matter or were not stirred to possess this wideness
partly or wholly. Man especially, because he is most self-conscious, develops
this awareness to a high degree, nor can he be permanently satisfied with
increase of power or knowledge within the limits of the material world, for that
is also limited and inconclusive and, being aware of and impelled by the
infinite within and around him, he cannot escape the necessity of seeking to
know an possess it. This progression of the conscious being out of the
Inconscient to the infinite Consciousness might be a happy out flowering but for
the principle of rigid division and imprisonment of each divided being in his
own ~go which imposes the law of struggle, the dualities of attraction and
repulsion, pleasure and pain, effort and failure, action and reaction,
satisfaction and dissatisfaction. All this is the denial of Ananda and implies,
if the negation be insuperable, the futility of existence; for if in this
existence the satisfaction sought by the Infinite in the finite can- not be
found, then ultimately it must be abandoned as an error and
a failure. - This
is the basis of the pessimist theory of
material existence which supposes
Matter to be the form and Mind the cause of the universe and both of these to be
eternally subject to limitation and ignorance. But if on the contrary it is
immortal and infinite Spirit which has veiled itself in Matter and is emerging,
the development of a liberated supramental being who shall impose on Mind, Life
and Matter a higher law than that of limitation and division, is the inevitable
conclusion from the nature of cosmic existence. There is no reason why such a
being should not liberate and make divine the physical existence as well as the
Page-394
mind
and life, unless our present view of Matter represents -the sole possible
relation here between sense and its object, in which case, indeed, fulfilment
must be sought only in worlds beyond. But there are other states even of Matter
and an ascending series of the gradations
of substance, and their higher law is possible to the material being
because it is there in it already latent and potential.
Page-395
CHAPTER XXVI
The Ascending
Series of Substance
ARGUMENT
THE materiality of Matter consists in a concentration
of the density of substance and its resistance to the conscious-force of which
through sense it becomes the object. An ascending scale of substance from Matter
to Spirit must mean; a diminution of resistance, division and bondage and an
increasing subtlety, flexibility, power of assimilation, interchange,
transmutation, unification. - There
is such an ascending scale from the dense to the subtle even in material
substance and beyond the subtlest material essence we have grades of other
substance corresponding to the series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and
Spirit. Each, that is to say, is the basis of a world or other kind of
existence in which these higher principles successively dominate
the others and fulfil themselves with their aid. In each
therefore there is an ever wider range of being, consciousness and force
ascending from the inconscience of material substance
to the infinite self-consciousness of spiritual. But all these principles
are interconnected. Matter contains all of them and evolves them out of itself
in obedience to the constant pressure of the higher worlds, an evolution which
must continue until they are able to
express themselves fully in the material principle. -
Man is the fit instrument for
this fulfilment. He has other bodies besides the physical in which he can become
conscious and so enter into the supraphysical grades of substance and impose
their law upon his material existence. Therefore his complete perfection is
through the ascent to supermind and the conquest of the physical also by the
supramental substance so that he will be able to command a diviner physical life
and conquer death in a divine body.
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The
Sevenfold
Chord
of Being
THERE
are, therefore, seven or else eight principles of being and the four which
constitute human existence are a refraction of the four which constitute divine
existence, but in inverted order. The Divine descends from pure existence to
Supermind to cast itself into cosmic existence; the creature ascends from Matter
to Mind towards the Divine and meets it where Mind and Supermind meet with a
veil between them. By the rending of the veil each of the four divine human
principles can find its transfigured self in its divine equivalent. This
transfiguration is the only possible positive goal of the creative evolution. -
The presence of the seven principles is essential to all cosmic being. For
cosmic being cannot exist except as the All-existence figuring itself in its
self-conception as Time and Space, nor can this figuration take place except by
an infinite Force which being of the nature of an all-determining and
all-apprehending Will must repose on the action of an all-comprehending infinite
Consciousness. Nor could the result be a cosmos but for a power of infinite
knowledge and will determining out of the infinity in each figure of things
their law, form and course through a self-limitation by Idea proceeding from a
boundless liberty within. That power of Knowledge-Will, that Idea is the fourth
name of the Divine: it is the Supermind or supreme Gnosis. - The lower trilogy
is also necessary in some form however different it may be from our experience
of Life, Mind and Matter. For there must be a subordinate power and action of
Supermind measuring, creating fixed standpoints of mutual view and interaction
in the universal self-diffusion as between an infinite number of centres of the
one Consciousness; and such a power would be what we mean by Mind. So too, Mind
once given, Life, which is the working of Will and energy
Page-397
and
conscious dynarnis of being dependent on such fixed stand.- points of
interaction, must accompany it and substance with differentiation of form must
also be present. - It follows that in every cosmic arrangement the seven
principles must be existent, either manifested in simultaneous apparent action
or else all apparently involved in one of them which then becomes the initial
principle, but all secretly at work and bound to evolve into manifestation.
Therefore out of initial Matter latent Life and Mind have emerged as apparent
Life and Mind, and latent Super. mind and the hidden Spirit must emerge as
apparent Supermind and the triune glory of Sachchidananda.
Page-398
CHAPTER XXVIII
The
Knowledge and the Ignorance
ARGUMENT
THE seven principles are, then, one in their reality, inseparable
in their sevenfold action. They create the harmony of the universe and there is
no essential reason why this should not be a complete harmony free from the
element of discord, division and limitation. -
The Vedic seers believed in such
a creation and held its formation in man - called immortality - to be the object
of man's Godward effort. But this is difficult for the human mind to accept,
except in a beyond, because here the
Inconscient seems to be all and the conscient soul an accident or an
alien unable fully to realise itself. Here Ignorance seems to be the law. -
It is true that here we start from the inconscient
and arc governed by the Ignorance; we must there- re examine this power of
Consciousness and determine its operation and origin, -
not accepting the refusal of some
philosophies to consider the question because it is insoluble; and first
we must fix what we mean by the Ignorance. -
In the Veda the Ignorance is the non-perceiving of the essential unity
which is beyond mind and of the essence and self-law of things in their original
unity and actual universality; it is a false knowledge based on division of the
undivided, insistence on the fragmentary and little and rejection of the vast
and complete view of things; it is the undivine Maya. - The Vedantic
distinctions of Vidya and Avidya made the opposition more trenchant, Vidya being
the knowledge of
unity, Avidya the knowledge of multiplicity, but the knowledge of both
was held to be necessary for the Truth and the Immortality;
the Ignorance was not a mere falsehood and seeing of
unreality. The One really becomes the Many. - Later, the opposition was
supposed to be rigid and irreconcilable, the world
* Centenary
Edition, Book Two, Part I, chapter VII. The original chapter was recast
and enlarged in 1939-40.
Page-399
unreal, a super-imposition of name and form on featureless Unity by Mind, the
Ignorance an absolute nescience of the Truth.- This
we reject, because such diametrical oppositions, flawed at
their source, represent no
actual reality of existence as a whole;
there is no irreconcilable opposition of dual principles, Ignorance
creative, Knowledge destructive of world-existence, but an essential
unity. As pain is an effect of the universal Delight produced in the recipient
by incapacity, as incapacity is a disposition of the universal Will-force, so
ignorance is a particular action of the universal Knowledge. -
Consciousness, which is Power, takes three
poises: its plenitude of the divine knowledge invariable in unity and
multiplicity and beyond; its dwelling upon apparent oppositions, the extreme
being the superficial appearance of complete nescience in the Inconscient; and a
mediary term or compromise between the two which is a superficial and partial
emergence of self-conscious knowledge, our own egoistic ignorance or
false-knowledge. The exact relations between these three have to be determined.
Page-400
CHAPTER
XXIX*
Memory, Self-Consciousness
and
the Ignorance
ARGUMENT
MEMORY
is believed by some schools to
be the constituent of our
continuous personality; but memory is only a mechanism, a device, a substitute
for direct consciousness. The mind is directly conscious of existence in the
present, holds existence in the past by its substitute memory, infers its future
existence from this direct present self-consciousness and the memory of its
continuity in the past. - This
sense of self- conscious existence it extends into the idea of eternity,
but the only eternity
the mind really seizes is a continuous succession of moments of being in
eternal Time; of this eternity it possesses the present moment, a limited
portion of the past held fragmentarily
and nothing at all of the future, while
it is unable to know any timeless eternity of conscious being, any real
eternal, Therefore
the nature of our Mind is an Ignorance seizing knowledge by successive
action in the moments of Time. – If mind is all, then we must remain forever
in this Ignorance which is not absolute nescience, but an ineffectual and fragmentary
seizing at knowledge. But there are
really two powers
our conscious being, Ignorance of the mind, Knowledge beyond mind,
simultaneously existing, either separately in an eternal dualism
or, as is really the fact, as superior and inferior, sovereign and
dependent states of the same consciousness, by which the Knower sees his
timeless being and the action of Time in that self through the knowledge while
he sees himself in Time and travelling in the succession of its moments by the
Ignorance. For this reason the Upanishad declares that Brahman can really be
known only
by knowing him as both the Knowledge and the Ignorance
and so only can one arrive at the
status of Immortality.
* Centenary
Edition, Book Two, Part I, Chapter VIII.
Page-401
-
Ignorance is therefore the consciousness of
being in the succession of Time, and it is so called because, actually
self-divided by the moments of Time, the field of space and the forms of
the multiplicity,
it cannot know either eternal Being or the World, either the transcendent or the
universal reality. Its knowledge is partly true, partly false, because it
ignores the essence and sees only fugitive parts of the phenomenon. - It is
through self-consciousness that the mind can arrive most readily at the
eternal
Reality; the rest of its means of knowledge
are, like memory,
devices and substitutes for direct consciousness. It is easy therefore to
regard the knowledge and the self within as real and the rest as not-self and
illusion. But the distinction is illusory and self-absorption in the stable self
within is only one state of consciousness like
self-dispersion in thought and memory and
will
the real self is the Eternal who is capable simultaneously of the
mobility in Time and the immobility basing Time. All object of knowledge is that
real and eternal self whether seen in essence and stability or in phenomenon and
instability of Time. - The
Ignorance is a means by which it
is rendered into values of knowledge
and action, Time being a sort of bank on which we draw for valuation and action
in the present, with a realised store in the account of the past and an
unrealised infinite deposit to be taken from the future so as to be made
valuable for Time-experience and valid for Time-activity. But, behind, all is
known and ready for use according to the will of the Self in its dealings with
Time and Space and Causality.
Page-402
CHAPTER XXX*
Memory,
and Self-Experience
ARGUMENT
CONSCIOUSNESS
of Self has two different aspects,
the awareness of a stable, immutable
and timeless beyond mentality and the awareness of a various
self-experience in the process of Time and the field of Space. There is a
constant shifting of the point of Time,
a constant though less obvious
changing of the habitation and the environment and in a
constant subjective modifying of the experience of the of
personality and the experience of the environment. -
Memory here is an indispensable factor in the linking of past and present
experience and is necessary to secure its continuity and coherence. Still Memory
is not all; it is only a mediator between mind-sense and the coordinating mind. -
It is the mind sense which
shapes the object of experience as a wave of the conscious being
into a movement of emotion, vitality, sensation or thought-perception.
There is also an act of mental observation a
valuation of this wave in the
sense-mind. There is also the
subject or mental being
who thus modifies his mental becoming and observes and values it by an act of
mind. It is when the mental being stands back from the mental becoming and even
from the, mental act that he begins to
perceive himself as something different from the all becoming, mutable in
that, but immutable beyond it. He is not two selves, one that is and one that
becomes, one immutable who sees changing phenomena of his being, immutability
evident to a direct and pure self-consciousness, mutable evident indirectly
through a conditional and secondary mental consciousness. -
It is the character of this indirect mental consciousness which can
experience only by succession of
Time that brings in the device
of Memory. Memory is not the essence
of mental experience of becoming, nor
of its continuity,
Page-403
nor of the recurrence of the
same experience or the same cause,
and effect in Time. These are circumstances of the movement; of the stuff
of conscious being and conscious force of being, a movement
which is really undivided though only seen by mind in artificial
divisions. Memory is a device by which the experiences of the mind-sense are
linked together and these artificial divisions in
Time bridged over so that the coordinating
mind and will may better and better use the material of experience and
impose order on its conscious knowledge of its self and its conscious action
in its environment. It is an aid to our ignorance of self developing,
in the evolution of mind out of inconscient force, knowledge of self by
experience. - The ego-sense is a mental device by which the mental being
develops towards knowledge of that which experiences as well as that which is
experienced. Memory only tells us that
the successive experiences have happened
in the same field of conscious being; it is the coordinating and distinguishing
mind which tells us that it is the same mental being who experiences. -
Mind-substance suffers the changes of becoming; mind-sense experiences them;
memory assures the mind-sense of its continuity of experience; the coordinating mind
of knowledge relates them together and relates them also
to the ego or being who, it says, is the same in past and present whether
he forgets or remembers. In the animal this may be little 1
more than a coordination in the
sense-mind by a discernment largely involved in the sensations and the memories,
but in man it becomes a coordinating reason superior to sense and memory. It is
by this development that the ego-sense becomes distinct and disengaged from its
aids. - But it is itself only a device and basis for self-development of true
self-knowledge; it is a stage in the evolution from nescience to partial
knowledge and from partial knowledge to true self-consciousness. The evolving
Mind becomes by it aware of an "I" that becomes and then of a
selfsuperior to the becoming. It may fix on either to the rejection of the
other, but in doing so it acts on an imperfect self-know- ledge. It is yet
ignorant of all even of the individual becoming which is not superficial;
ignorant of the universal becoming except indirectly, as a not-self exterior to
it. Its attempt to find the true relation of the self and its becomings is based
therefore
Page-404
on
an Ignorance; that can only be truly known by an attempt to live out the
relation in an integral development of self-knowledge.
That is the natural goal of our evolution which is the movement of the Ignorance
to exceed itself and arrive at the conscious Truth
of its being and conscious knowledge of all being.
Page-405
CHAPTER
XXXI*
The Boundaries of the Ignorance
ARGUMENT
WE
KNOW only a part even of our superficial life and conscious becoming, fastening
only on a little of our experience of self and things, memorising less, using
still less for knowledge and
action. What we reject, Nature stores and uses in
our
development, for the most part by her subconscious action. Our waking self is
only a superimposition, a visible summit; the great body of our being is
submerged or subliminal. -
The
subliminal
self perceives, remembers, understands, uses all that we fail to perceive,
remember or use. It provides all the material of our surface being which is only
a selection from its wider existence and activity. It is only the
physical and vital part of
our existence which is, properly
speaking, subconscient; the subliminal self is the true mental being and in
relation to our waking mind is rather secretly circumconscient; for it envelops
as well as supports. Of all this larger part of our being we are ignorant. -
We are ignorant also of the superconscient, that which we ordinarily call
spirit or oversoul; yet this we find to
be our highest and widest self, Sachchidananda creating and
governing all
that we are and become by His divine Maya. We are ignorant of the
subliminal sea of our being which casts up the wave
of our superficial existence; we are ignorant also of the superconscient
ether of our being which constitutes, contains, overroofs and
governs both the subliminal sea and the superficial wave.
-
We are ignorant of
ourselves in Time, for we know only a part
of the present life we are living, yet that exists only by all our past
of which we are ignorant and its trend is determined by all our future of which
we are still more ignorant. For our superconscient Self is eternal in its being
and Time is only one of its
*
Centenary Edition, Book Two, Part
I, Chapter XI. The chapter was recast and enlarged in 1939-40.
Page-406
modes,
our subliminal is eternal in its becoming and Time is its infinite
field of experience. -
We are equally ignorant of the world, holding it to be not-self, ignorant of
ourselves in Space; for the world is one Self developing the movement of its
conscious force in its self-conceptive extension as Space. We confine our-selves
in our consciousness to a single knot of the one indivisible Matter, a single
eddy of the one indivisible Life, a single station bf the one indivisible Mind,
a single soul-manifestation of the one indivisible Spirit. Yet it is only by
knowing the One that this individual mind, life, body, soul can know itself or
its action. - Thus
ignorance of self is the nature
of our mind, but an ignorance full of the impulse towards self-possession and
self-knowledge. A many-sided Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing
Knowledge is the definition of man, the mental being.
Page-407
CHAPTER
XXXII *
The Integral
Knowledge
ARGUMENT
THE ignorance in which we live is a
sevenfold
self-ignorance; an ignorance of the Absolute and
knowledge only of the
relations of being and becoming; an ignorance of our timeless and immutable
self-existence and knowledge only of
the
cosmic becoming; an ignorance of our cosmic self
and
knowledge only
of our egoistic existence; an ignorance of our eternal becoming in Time and
knowledge only of the one life present to our memory; an ignorance of our larger
and complex being in the world and knowledge only of our surface waking
existence; an ignorance of the higher
principles of our existence
and
knowledge
only of the life, mind and body; an ignorance therefore of the right law and
enjoyment of living and a knowledge only of the confused strife of the
dualities. - Our conception of the Ignorance determines our conception of the
knowledge and by that of the aim of our existence, which coincides with the
ideal of the earlier Vedic thought. -- We confirm by it our rejection of the
extreme views which hold the absolute Non-existence or absolute Existence to be
alone true, and the relative world of being and becoming an ignorance to be
renounced. There is the un-manifest. Absolute and there is its manifestation; to
fulfil the manifestation and live in the sense of it as the Absolute manifesting
himself is the Knowledge. -
We reject the view that regards the One, Infinite, Formless, Spirit,
Superconscient as the sole truth and the opposite terms as unreal or eventually
false and vain values to be abandoned. We accept it and them also not as
alternates, but as simultaneous values of the manifestation and their union in
our consciousness and right use of their relations as the knowledge.
-
We reject equally the views that
*Centenary
Edition, Book Two, Part II, Chapter XV, "Reality and the Integral
Knowledge." The chapter was considerably recast and enlarged in 1939.40.
Page-408
affirm
a pluralistic Becoming without Being or see Mind, Life or
Matter
as the original principle, and we reject
the limitation to our apparent
Nature which is their practical conclusion. Becoming as the working out of the
energies of Being, Mind, Life and Matter as inferior terms of the higher divine
Nature to be illumined, uplifted, transformed by the higher terms is our view of
the knowledge. - We reject also intermediate theories like that
which
makes God
and cosmos one,
-
perceiving as we do that
cosmos
exists in God who exceeds it and not God by
the cosmos, -
or like that which seeks to abandon the earth and find fulfilment
only in
heavens where the Many enjoy the presence of the
One,
- perceiving, as we do, that there is a higher knowledge which
leads to
complete identity and that divine life based upon
it
need not be confined to heavens beyond, but may embrace the earth
also.
-
Ignorance is an
initial state of knowledge the essence of
which is to create a sense of limitation and division; it is this which we have
to overcome and transcend without creating
an
opposite self-limitation. The integral aim of our existence can
only be the
possession and power and joy of our integral self-knowledge.
Page-409
CHAPTER
XXXIII *
The Progress
to Knowledge
ARGUMENT
To RISE
out of the sevenfold Ignorance into the
integral Knowledge is the progress of man's being; it is to grow in all his
complex existence and consciousness into the full possession and enjoyment of
his whole and his true being. - He starts with three categories, himself, Nature
or cosmos and
God, and though he tries to deny any two of these in
order
to affirm the third only, he cannot really
succeed; for he is neither separate nor sufficient to himself, cosmos also is
not sufficient to itself; but points always to an infinite, one and absolute
behind it, and to affirm the Absolute to the exclusion of these two others
leaves man unsatisfied and cosmos unexplained. - In affirming himself man has
first to put himself, in front and act and feel as if God and the world existed
for him and were less important to him than himself; this is his egoistic phase
necessary to disengage his individuality out of Nature and as if against her and
to bring it out into force and capacity. He has to affirm himself in the
Ignorance before he can perfect himself in the Knowledge. Afterwards he has to
seek for himself in Nature and God and others, but it is still himself that he
seeks to know and possess and his own perfection or salvation which is his
motive. - In the progressive enlargement of his knowledge he gets rid of his
sevenfold ignorance; of the temporal by growing into his eternal being with its
pre-existence and subsequent existence in Time; of the psychological by
enlarging his self-knowing beyond the waking self into the subconscient and
superconscient; of the constitutional by realising his spiritual being and its
categories; of
the cosmic by discovering his timeless Self; of the egoistic
by realising the cosmic consciousness; of the original by
. Centenary
Edition, Book Two, Part II, Chapter XVII, "The Progress to Knowledge -
God, Man and Nature". The chapter was recast
and enlarged in 1939-40.
Page-410
opening
to the Absolute of whom Self,
individual and Nature fare
so many faces. - At the same time he
realises the unity of himself
and Nature in the first three steps of knowledge, of himself and
God in the others; of himself with all beings relatively
in
Nature and absolutely in God ;of God and Nature because it is the Self who has
become all these beings and the nature of the Lord which is apparent in cosmos. - The
knowledge of Nature leads
him to the same
results as soon as he goes beyond Matter
and
Life to Mind; for he discovers a
subconscient and superconscient,
a soul in Matter, and perceives a supernature in which he realises the Self, the
Spirit, the Absolute. - In the quest of
God
he begins by seeing him through Nature and himself, crudely and obscurely at
first, till he finds more luminously, the one Truth behind all religions; for
all seize on the Divine in many aspects and their variety is necessary in order
that man should come to know God entirely. - When he arrives at
the unity of his
knowledge of God, man and Nature, he has the complete knowledge, the sense and
goal of humanity's progress and labour and the sure foundation of all
perfections and all harmonies.
Page-411
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