(a project of Mirravision Trust, Financed by Auroshakti Foundation)

A Psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo's

The Life Divine

Book II

The Knowledge and the Ignorance-The Spiritual Evolution

Chapter 14

The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil

Part IV

Mixed Morality

How does evolution work through our sense of good and evil? The human being has worked through the principle of selection and rejection selecting a religious, social or moral rule or ethical ideal. But all these methods are relative just as our values of good and evil are relative. Our morality is a mixture of such relative standards, forbidden or allowed by some religious or moral sanction and advocated or discouraged by an instinct called conscience. Actually all our activities of mental Knowledge-Ignorance are a mixture of truth and half-truth and error. For some time morality attempts to guide us but this control is always imperfect. The human being remains always a mixture of good and evil, sin and virtue with his mental ego having an inconsistent control over his nature. (CWSA 21-22, pg.648)

The call of the Infinite

The attempt to select what is good and reject whatever is evil and follow an ideal is "a more profound ethical motive" and rests on the idea that "our life is a becoming". (Ibid, pg.649) But the ideals constructed by the human mind are "selective and relative", they limit ourselves and do not facilitate a growth into a larger being. "The true call upon us is the call of the Infinite and the Supreme". (Ibid) We have to find the right way of self-affirmation and self-negation minus the ego or else life's instrumentation would break or "the push away from life" (Ibid) would be the only remedy recommended by a moralist religion. But that would only provide an escape from the banality of life, it won't solve anything. The ancient Indian system was better, it recommended at first moral values but then transcended them by growing into a greater consciousness of the Infinite and the Eternal -a greater being. In the process it freed one from the burden of sin and virtue which actually belonged to the Ignorance. One was liberated from the duality of truth and error, good and evil which are mental in nature to find repose in the infinite Good of the Transcendence.

But the ordinary problem of good and evil continues to plague us for the tree of good and evil arises from the Inconscience -the original matrix from where the manifestation evolves. That tree is nourished by the Ignorance which itself arises from the Inconscience. There can be no permanent solution unless our Inconscience is turned into a greater consciousness, our Ignorance is turned into a higher knowledge. A "radical transformation of our nature is the only true solution". (Ibid, pg.650) The Ignorance bases itself on the imperfect consciousness of the Inconscience which gives rise to wrong knowledge and wrong will without which we would have no error or falsehood, no wrong-doing or evil. A mere mental control would not effectuate a cure. "A total change of consciousness, a radical change of nature is the one remedy and the sole issue."(Ibid, pg.651)

Egoistic self-affirmation

But the root our difficulty is our divided existence created by our life-ego which separates us from all others as not-self and which is tied to our egocentricity and "the law of an egoistic self-affirmation". (Ibid) "It is in the errors of this self-affirmation that wrong and evil first arise". (Ibid) What happens is that wrong consciousness imparts wrong will to all members: mind, heart, life and body-consciousness. We employ sympathy, understanding and goodwill towards others but this is a clumsy substitute for true action. A larger mind and a larger heart may be more helpful but that too is limited. Even altruism produces a powerful ego that often equals to the ego of the selfish but actually it is more powerful being a self-righteous and magnified ego. (Ibid, pg.651-652)

"To affirm our being rightly so that it may become one with all is the true principle". (Ibid, pg.652) Even self-immolation which is necessary at times can feed the ego of others or magnify a collective ego. Sacrifice and self-giving are a spiritual necessity but need to be executed by a true consciousness and will. "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". All our endeavours are palliative and the solution, "true and total" is beyond our present capacity "and can only come when we have sufficiently evolved to see it and make it our main endeavour". (Ibid)

The true solution can come when we can by spiritual growth become one self with all beings. Religion advocates universal compassion and universal brotherhood but the ordinary human being living in the ego can hardly accomplish this. At best they can be accepted as an ideal to be followed by the heart or mind. Actually this ideal has to translate itself as feeling of oneness with others. "But even oneness with others is not enough by itself, if it is an oneness with their ignorance; for then the law of ignorance will work". (Ibid, pg.653) A fundamental oneness is a oneness in soul and spirit which can only come out by our liberation into soul-awareness and self-knowledge. Therefore a mental law of good has to be supplemented by a spiritual call for a true and integral good.

Steps of Self-achievement

There are three steps of self-achievement:

(a) The first step is to enthrone the soul, the psychic being, the individual self in place of the ego. Then even in the matrix of Ignorance we have a discerning witness, an illumining light, an invincible will, the heart's refusal to be misled and the life's freedom from vital passions and turbid falsehoods. (Ibid, pg.654)

(b) The second step is to become aware of the Jivatman, the unborn eternal self who is at once universal and individual. This self-liberates and universalizes, and does not mislead the inner being even if one is seated in Ignorance.

(c) The third step is to know the Transcendent Divine Being who includes and surpasses both the psychic being (the individual Being) and the Jivatman (the Universal or Cosmic Being). Both the Cosmic Being and the psychic being emerge from the Divinity within. While the Jivatman is the non-evolving self, the psychic being is the true evolving individual in our nature, "a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit." (Ibid) And simultaneously we become aware of the Divine Puissance, the Divine Shakti -- the Divine Will which acts on its own without recourse to mental standards or vital passions. The individual will is liberated by the Divine Will and this movement follows the liberation in knowledge; "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 a spiritual knowledge." (Ibid) Also, the division of our being from other beings can only happen by "removing the divorce of our nature from the inner soul-reality....by bridging the remoteness of our individuality in Nature from the Divine Being who is the omnipresent Reality in Nature and above Nature". (Ibid, pg.654-655)

Dynamic Transformation

But we need to grow into integral beings. We need to sublimate our natural modes of being, traverse from Nature to Supernature and exhibit "a spontaneous truth-awareness, truth-will, truth-feeling, truth-movement, truth-action". (Ibid, pg.655) The Supernature is the Self-Power of the Divine existence to which we must arise from Nature. The supreme Shakti or Supernature is active even before the Knowledge-Ignorance is removed, it needs to be received by the inferior nature of mind, life and body. But this is not enough and what is needed is an entire remoulding into the way and power of the divine Supernature. There must be a dynamic transformation and not merely "some illumination and transmutation of the inner ways of the being". (Ibid)

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu