(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 17

The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature

Part I

The hard problem in consciousness

Scientists talk about the hard problem in consciousness research -how does consciousness manifest from the Inconscience of Matter? How can consciousness with its manifold diversity, richness, emotional upheavals and cognitive ventures manifest from the matrix of Matter which seems to be the subject of physics and chemistry? Sri Aurobindo has answered this query. He has explained that the Inconscience is phenomenal, not fundamental. Through a complex process of involution, the Superconscience came down and got dormant in the Inconscience from where it will be slowly released through an evolutionary movement. Indeed, if Sachchidananda -the triad of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss got involved in the Inconscience, then it would be logical to realize that would manifest through evolution. But initially they cannot manifest in their totality but slowly through evolutionary forms that emerge from the Ignorance which is the hallmark of the Inconscience. At first emerges Matter backed by an inconscient Energy where consciousness is non-apparent. Then when Life manifests in plants and rudimentary animal life, consciousness is disguised in vital vibrations. At a higher level in a more advanced animal-life, consciousness can only formulate a partial pain and pleasure. In Man, a term Sri Aurobindo uses to designate the human being and not in a patriarchal or misogynist sense, Mind manifests becoming aware of itself and things. Though it is still partial and limited, a first conceptive potentiality with promise of an integral emergence becomes a reality. "That integral emergence is the goal of evolving Nature". (SABCL 19, pg.684)

The aim of Man

"Man is there to affirm himself in the universe, that is his first business, but also to evolve and finally to exceed himself: he has to enlarge his partial being into a complete being, his partial consciousness into an integral consciousness; he has to achieve mastery of his environment but also world-union and world-harmony; he has to realise his individuality but also to enlarge it into a cosmic self and a universal and spiritual delight of existence." (Ibid)

This means a transformation of all that is ignorant and erroneous in one's mentality so that one can arrive at a wide harmony and luminousness in knowledge and character. One must become "the inner real Man" (Ibid) who is master of oneself and one's environment and is simultaneously universal in being. The natural man subject to death must evolve into a divine immortal Man. Therefore "the human birth can be described as the turning-point in the evolution". (Ibid, pg. 685)

Beyond intellect

Ancient Indian thought considered knowledge to be a consciousness in possession of the highest truth "in a direct perception and in self-experience". (Ibid) It far surpassed the usual intellectual and pragmatic considerations of what is truth and right. Our aim must be to grow into our true being of Spirit which can embody Sachchidananda.

Sachchidananda -Existence, Consciousness and Delight is the sole Reality but they have turned into their opposites in Ignorance. We represent an ego-bound self which is an ignorance yearning for knowledge, a will attempting to replicate the true force and a desire seeking the Bliss of existence. We have to "become ourselves by exceeding ourselves". (Ibid) But this is a difficult proposition and is akin to the cross surmounted by an invisible crown. Yet this is the riddle proposed by the dark Sphinx of Inconscience from within and from above by the luminous Sphinx of the Superconscience. To surpass our ego and be our real self who can partake the Delight of Existence is the meaning our life.

Apparently we use our intellectual knowledge and pragmatism to know more and actualize more. But the intellect and will are not our sole powers. Our nature or Force of being is very complex; complex in terms of ordering of consciousness and in its instrumentation of force. Every aspect of that complexity is to be used to grow and expand continually, to reach the "largest possible breadth of universality and infinity". (Ibid, pg.686) All of human pursuit in science, arts, religion by which is increased the mental, vital, physical and spiritual existence have finally this one goal. One needs to approach, possess and express the "divine universality and supreme infinity" (Ibid) for this is what Vedic seers meant by Knowledge which is characterized by Immortality.

Man, Nature, God

The knowledge of oneness of the whole manifestation is not easily available to the ordinary human being. What is presented to him is the diversity of the manifestation and this diversity is summed up into three principal categories:

(a) Man or individual soul

(b) Nature, and

(c) God.

Man or individual soul: Even if the universe is considered as one being, the individual regards oneself as a separate ignorant being yet inseparable from the rest of the whole being. One strives to be sufficient but feels always insufficient. And one cannot exist in isolation without the aid of universal being and universal nature.

Nature: One knows Nature including the cosmos, world other beings or creatures indirectly through the mind and senses but this knowledge is incomplete. One feels identified with other beings but also feels oneself to be separate from them. Each seems to follow one's own way along the evolutionary curve.

God: Finally one divines something of the "invisible Reality and occult Infinite" (Ibid, pg.687) though one is not at all sure of it for one knows it through oneself and it corresponds to what one's being aims at. This "third something"-tertium quid (Ibid, pg.688) or unidentified third element has been named as God. By God one means "the Supreme, the Divine, the Cause, the All" (Ibid) -the absolute of all relativities, the Unknown by knowing whom the secret of all can be known.

Mankind has tried to deny all the three categories -Man, Nature and God but behind these denials lurks a greater yearning for a more fulfilling knowledge. One can affirm oneself only and consider all else as creations of the mind. One can affirm Nature only and everything else is considered as a phenomenon of Nature-Energy. Or one may affirm God only and consider the rest as existing due to some inexplicable Maya. None of these denials is definitive. The denial of God is denial of one's true existential quest. It is the denial of the eternal Veda within oneself. That is why naturalistic atheism has always been short-lived.

Search for Oneness

The human being finds both oneself and the cosmos inadequate to reveal the meaning of existence. He finds it necessary to posit a One or Oneness behind to which everything else can be related. An Absolute is needed to which all finite relativities owe their existence. That Absolute may be called "a Supreme, a Divine, a Cause, an Infinite and Eternal, a Permanent, a Perfection to which all tends and aspires". (Ibid, pg.689)

Yet the Absolute alone cannot affirm itself without considering Man and Nature. An exclusion of the human being leaves one meaningless or be a piece of "random foolishness". (Ibid) An exclusion of the cosmos either makes it a miserable paradox with false shows of wonder or delight or makes it a huge play of an insignificant blind energy. God, Man and Nature have to be considered simultaneously because Nature is fulfilled in man and man in Nature and both find their significance in God.

God, Man and Nature -each must be known in its completeness so that all the three meet and reconcile in our consciousness and become integrally one. Else, we would lack the total truth or the fundamental significance of the manifestation.

Rejecting Ignorance

This does not mean that the Supreme is not self-existent and self-sufficient. God exists wholly by Himself and is not dependent on Man and cosmos or Nature. But both Man and the cosmos are dependent on God. They are both manifestations of the power of God. What appears here as the individual is the Divine extended as the Self in the multiplicity. And it is through the knowledge of the self and the world that man progresses in the knowledge of God. "It is not by rejecting God's manifestation, but by rejecting his own ignorance of it and the results of his ignorance, that he can best lift up and offer the whole of his being and consciousness and energy and joy of being into the Divine Existence." (Ibid, pg.690-691)

Man can affirm one's individuality alone and can lose the universe. Or he can affirm the universe and lose one's personality in the impersonality of the cosmic movement. But he can also deal with "the equal integrality of both" (Ibid, pg.691) and exceed them to possess the Divine and be possessed by the Divine. The culmination of this movement is scheduled to be worked out in the Supermind. That is far off our usual capacities but something can be subjectively felt "by a spiritual reflection or reception in mind-life-body Nature". (Ibid)

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu