BY VELURI CHANDRASEKHARAM

"World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of one God numberlessly to the view: it leaves that white existence where and what it was, ever is and ever will be; its sole absolute object is the joy of the dancing." This is the gist of the knowledge enshrined in this great work.

But this, it may be objected, is mystic rapture, or high poetic conception, not safe philosophy; for we seem to take our idea of philosophy from what it has been in modern times in the West. Modern philosophy has been profoundly influenced by modern science; its view is dominated by the world-picture derived from the Sciences: and those sciences too, the sciences of inorganic Nature and not the sciences of Life or Mind, which are yet in their infancy. It has rarely stepped out of the charmed circle of imaginative rationality, a great exception being Spinoza. Pure Reason can greatly help us in elucidating and organising our experience and in unifying different departments of thought into one coherent whole, but the nature of Reality eludes its grasp. That is why the first direction given in India to the seeker of Reality has been, "Energise your consciousness." Among modern philosophers of the West, Bergson seems to recognise that the approach to Reality should be made through a certain, intensification of consciousness.

"The Life Divine " proceeds on the basis of this direction; for the present organisation of our consciousness is not its final possibility. By an extension and intensification, by a finer and superior organisation of consciousness, we can through progressive comprehension attain Reality. Reason too, by a complete purification of its purely conceptive activity, starting from observation of phenomena though not confined to them, can arrive at a perception of the truth of things; and the truth of that perception, by the very nature of the constitution of man and the universe, must be capable of verification by, and realisation in, his experience. There is also a form of knowledge by identity possessed by the mind, which gives it its self-awareness. That can be extended to an awareness of the Self or Reality of the universe and man can thus enter into communion with it. But the highest or true form of knowledge by identity, which alone gives complete possession of Reality, can be reached when the mind attains to a superior organisation of consciousness beyond itself. These, then, are the ways we should follow in our quest of Reality.

The great problem of the human mind is the opposition of Spirit and Matter. We may acquiesce in the opposition as final; or we may explain away one or the other and then base the world on matter and mechanical causation or Spirit and self-determinism. But usually we get along with a sort of weak-hearted compromise between the two concepts, reserving one concept for one kind of phenomena and the other for the other kind. But reason, or rather the faith behind reason, cannot tolerate this discord, for Nature and her instruments seek reconciliation and harmony. The ancient Seers and intuitive thinkers of India found this reconciliation and harmony in the experience and concept of ‘Sachchidananda.’ With the help of this formula, together with that of Involution-Evolution, they arrived at an understanding of the essential oneness of the manifold universe and resolved all contradictions and oppositions in their experience. They beheld ‘Sachchidananda’ or Existence-Consciousness-Bliss as the sole Reality and the material universe as the scene of its progressive manifestation in a gradually ascending series of inanimate and living forms.

The infinite energy of Becoming, which the universe is to our experience, is the outpouring of a pure, infinite existence. It is inexpressible, omnipresent Reality and no mere hypostasised universal. It is not merely an immutable, unacting stability, timeless and spaceless, serving only as a support for the phenomenal movement. Nor is it a Nihil behind the movement, with existence as a momentary recurring, and hence illusory, phenomenon. Infinite energy is inherent in It. It is free–free beyond intellectual conception–so free that it is not subject to, or compelled by, its inherent potentialities. And infinite energy is self-aware Force of this Absolute Existence. It would be wrong to think that awareness is confined only to the forms of it with which we are familiar; there are other forms of consciousness in Nature. Again, it is a most astounding fact that we are not aware of even our own entire consciousness. From this ensues that consciousness may be present within while not manifesting itself on the surface. Also, an invariable connection may not necessarily exist between vital organisation and consciousness and, anyhow, vital organisation is only an instrument of consciousness and not its generator. It becomes necessary to envisage a universal Force of consciousness organising itself variously on different levels. We are, therefore, led to the conception of a self-aware primal Energy manifesting itself in the forms of the universal forces of Consciousness. Life and Matter, the gamut of consciousness reaching downward into matter’s inconscience and rising upward into Spirit’s superconscience. Finally, this pure Being is Bliss, this limitless and illimitable Consciousness is Delight, this movement of infinite Energy is Joy. It is bondage and limitation that are the cause of sorrow. And the affirmations of the higher emotional and dynamic, aesthetic and mystic movements of man’s consciousness point and lead to a Bliss-Self of the universe. This then is the Upanishadic conception of ‘Sachchidananda’ or Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, through involution-evolution manifesting itself as the universe without any the least derogation from its absolute status.

But the ancient Seers did not work out the full intellectual implications of this position. They did not present to the mind a systematic and rational effort to assimilate our normal experience to this conception of Reality; only, they threw out intuitive suggestions to impel the seeking mind towards the goal. But intuition is like the fitful flash of lightning, which may help us to reach our destination if we do not stumble and fall in the dark intervals of the journey. Its flashes have to be organised into a steady light which will throw a continuous illumination all along the path, And the pronouncements of the higher consciousness and the perceptions of pure Reason have to be justified to our intellect and ordinary experience. All this has been accomplished in the fullness of time by "The Life Divine."

Not that the work was not attempted before; the course of centuries is strewn with such attempts. They are to be bound in the ‘Darshanas’ initiated by the Sages and in the philosophical schools created by the great commentators. Some accepted difference and multiplicity as ultimate in the teeth of the ancient teaching. Many found in Karma, a sort of mental-moral edition of mechanical causation, a too ready and facile solution of their many difficulties. Some drove a wedge between pure conscious Being and its infinite Energy. Some, trying to hold fast to the central element of non-duality in the teaching, declared universal Becoming a mirage falsely appearing on the desert-waste of Reality. Surely, they were revenged that had set up that nightmare of Matter existing in its own right through eternity, placed mechanical causation on the throne of the universe, and banished will and purpose into Nowhere. But, equally surely, the true poise of the ancient Wisdom was lost.

Sri Aurobindo has, through some mystic sympathy of his being, recaptured the thought of the ancient Seers in its purity and integrity. Even when he deals with the later systems of thought or ways of discipline, his vision penetrates to their core; their very errors and fanaticisms yield up to his vision the truth which is their soul of good and hence their source of strength. Into whatever apartment of our ancestral treasure-house of Wisdom he may enter, he emerges with his hands full of pure, bright-gleaming gold, freed from the accumulated dross of centuries. In his integral world-view, all truths of the partial and exclusive systems appear to find of their own accord their right place and relation. Thought, having reached its highest centre, seems to present a true and complete picture of its domain. It is as if a mountain-climber reached the summit and some miracle of the mountain air gave inconceivable increase to the range and vividness of his vision, and then he commands a complete and perfect view of all that lies in the full circle of the horizon. Error often is error of perspective, of narrowness of outlook. A wider vision and a finer perspective help us to attain a greater harmony of truth.

Any philosophy that bases the world on Spiritual Reality has to face the problem of suffering and evil. Any philosophy to be satisfying must satisfy us on this problem, for it is this which is often the cause of our philosophical enquiry. It is the same problem of the opposition of matter and spirit appearing in another context. If the problem of that opposition has been rightly solved, its new form in a different context should be automatically capable of solution on the same lines.

The problem looms terrifyingly large before the human mind because we often look at it through a magnifying medium–through great emotional disturbance, through the mists of certain kinds of religion and poesy that thrive on our sense of sin and sorrow, through deliberately gloomy pictures of our existence drawn by ascetic zeal with the purpose of turning us away from the good things of the world. But if we look at the problem dispassionately, its acuteness diminishes to a great extent. Suffering and evil are so intensely felt because they are the exception and not the rule, because they are really foreign to our being, and nature pointedly calls our attention to them in order that we may deal with them and conquer them. Existence should be joyous in its own right, but our mental interpretation gives the value of pleasure or delight only to those states where the normal joyous existence rises above a particular intensity; normal existence is interpreted by it as neutral. But our vital consciousness should all along be interpreting as pleasurable, for on no other supposition can we understand the overwhelming strength of the vital instinct of self-preservation. Moreover, if we view the problem of suffering and evil against the cosmic background, we find that it occupies only a small intermediate stretch of the evolutionary process. Neither the galactic systems nor the high gods know of it. Thus reviewed, the problem loses much of its acuteness and shrinks into narrow limits. But still, it must be admitted, the problem as regards the fundamental nature of suffering and evil remains the same.

It is true that on any theory of extra-cosmic God the problem remains insoluble. But the Upanishadic Reality is One without a second and the universe is its creative self-expression. The one indivisible Spirit has built out of itself infinitely divisible matter as the basis for the multiplicity of this world. In matter’s inconscience are involved universal forces of Life and Mind which emerge in an ascending series of forms. It is the effort to make of recalcitrant matter a fit vehicle for higher and higher powers of Life and Mind that involves suffering. The suffering is there only in the superficial vital and mental consciousness, but behind reigns unruffled the joy of existence, urging upward the cosmic effort. Evil, too, the cause of moral suffering, is there, only because man strives yet unsuccessfully to merge himself in the universal. The problem of evil does not exist for the animal. From the depths of man’s being comes the urge which compels him to grow into one with the collectivity, one with the universal. When man in his ascent recovers his identity with the universal, he transcends evil and becomes an instrument for its elimination in the world. Suffering and evil are only a temporary incident of the Spirit’s stooping to conquer this material world. Man shall cease to be subject to them when, with the help of a higher godhead of his spiritual nature, he will uplift body, life and mind into their divine perfection.

But still the mind from its human standpoint may urge: "Why at all this scheme of things where life thrives only on life and Nature is red in tooth and claw? Why this awful travail of man’s being, even though it be to deliver the godhead lying imprisoned in his nature?" Posed thus, the question becomes a Part of the wider question, "Why and to what end should pure Being throw itself out into this universal movement?" A Completely satisfactory answer to this question, an answer that cannot be translated in the terms of cause and end, can be reached only on a higher level than the mind. The mind may seize a fragment of its significance in its most liberated moments. "From Ananda," as the Upanishad says, "all existences are born, by Ananda they remain in being and increase, to Ananda they depart."

But now the question has to be answered, how out of the indivisible unity of pure Being do multiplicity and difference arise? The ineffable Being proceeds out of its status into various poises of itself, but ever on the inalienable basis of the primal status, which is always present as the all-comprehending continent of all poises of Being. Consciousness-Force moves forth into graded formulations of itself, into different forms of its energy and into various rhythms of its activity. Becoming active in its various modes, diffusing itself in multiple viewpoints in self-extension of Being, it initiates a progressing movement of self-absorption in its own modes of working, so that in the lower self-formulations the consciousness involved in the workings grows oblivious of itself in the whole, the consciousness involved in the multiple viewpoints or centres of Being appears separated from itself in the whole. Thus the appearance of multiplicity and separateness is to be traced in the last resort to the self-absorption of Consciousness-Force in its modes and centres. This formative and delimiting power of infinite Consciousness through which the One becomes the Many was, as Sri Aurobindo points out, called Maya by the ancient Seers. But later on this fateful word came to mean power of illusion, and the universe came to be represented as an illusion which was the creation of the Ignorance. The non-duality of the Self of the Universe was sought to be preserved by making the universe itself an illusory projection on the one and sole reality of the Self.

For the crux of the whole matter lies in this, that the mind cannot form an adequate conception of Spirit’s unity. The mind’s idea of unity is either quantitative or qualitative; even the unity of living organisms is somewhat hazy to it. That is why, in order to remain faithful to the perception and experience of unity underlying the multiplicity of the world, so many expedients have come to be tried, such, for instance, as an illusory universe, difference and non-difference or modified non-duality. If we conceive of the sole infinite Reality as a positive or negative Absolute incapable of relations, we shall have to bring in some principle of mind such as Cosmic Ignorance or Cosmic Karma from somewhere and fasten upon it responsibility for the universe. This has been the way of Illusionism and Nihilism. It is difficult for the mind, formed into shape by its dealings with a material environment, to grasp the unity of Spiritual Being that reproduces itself in infinite centres without abolition or diminution of its unity. But here is a fact–the fact of consciousness secretly present while not outwardly manifest, which supplies the clue to an understanding of the essential oneness of the universe; in it can be found the solution to the conundrum of finite out of the Infinite, of apparently divided beings out of the one indivisible Being; it will open the door to the understanding of how the Absolute can enter into relations and yet remain untrammelled by them. That is why the Upanishad says, "the Seers beheld the power of the divine Self hidden by its own modes of working."

It is evident that Sri Aurobindo uses the word Maya in a sense entirely different from that of the philosophical systems. He has restored to it the significance it has in the original Vedanta. There it is a power both of the knowledge and the Ignorance, that is, Vidya and Avidya. But the great Acharya of Illusionism knows it only as power of the ignorance. Sankara seems to intend by it some cosmic principle of Mind–not omniscient, not omniponent, co-present but not in relation with Reality–which is compelled to realise its imaginings in Time and Space. But Idea or Thought, Imagination or Dream of such a Mind cannot account for the Divine Law at work in the universe. Only an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent Mind can create and uphold the universe. And it is to that high status of Consciousness which forms in itself the seed of Creation and develops it according to unalterable Law, and which the Veda and the Upanishads refer to in their different symbolisms, that Sri Aurobindo gives the name of Super-Mind.

Mind is based on division while Super-Mind is based on unity. To our mental awareness thoughts are different from things; our idea and will float up from somewhere within our being and often clash with each other. They are not self-effective because the means and the result are outside them. Even the notion of our being is hazy to the mind because only knowledge based on distinction is vivid to it. In Super-Mind being is not broken up in this manner. In it, being, consciousness and will are three effective aspects of a single movement. Consciousness is the light of self-luminous Being and will its creative, self-fulfilling Force. Its Idea is consciousness of a Truth of Being, that is to say, it is the seed of a cosmic formulation, the origin of a universal law and process. Its Will is a seeing Force, working itself out in substance that is not foreign to itself, but which is another effective aspect of Being like itself.

Super-Mind is that intermediate poise of Consciousness-Force which pure and indivisible Being assumes in its descent into the material world. It is described in Rig-Veda as the Vast without the separating barrier, as the Truth of the Stability and the Truth of the Movement where the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent Divinities that are different Names and Forms of the One, and who preside over the work of the evolutionary creation of this lower hemisphere of existence, take their birth. "All in each and each in all" is the formula of this poise of consciousness. Here there is multiplicity but not separateness. Through intervening gradations Super-Mind merges itself into the Cosmic Mind, where the Knowledge of unity completely recedes somewhere into the obscure background and the play of multiplicity on the principle of separateness and division occupies its entire active attention.

It follows that the universe is no illusion but a real creation of the Super-Mind. On the level of the Mind consciousness falls into the Ignorance, that is, the Knowledge of Oneness retires, leaving free field for the principle of separateness. But mental, vital and material energies, perceived though they are in evolved, individualised units, are nonetheless universal forces. These three principles of our human existence are specialisations of one and the same Consciousness-Force, material substance-energy appearing as the final aspect of Supramental Being, life as the final aspect of the dynamic energy of the Super-Mind and mind as the final aspect of an apprehending and confronting, as contrasted with a comprehending and pervasive, movement of consciousness in the Super-Mind. But all being the play of one, all is in each and each is in all. So out of inconscient Matter emerge by a process of evolution the involved energies of Life and Mind.

In the forefront of this evolution is man. Is the urge of evolution to come to a stop with the development of mental consciousness in him, or will it sweep forward to the level of the Super-Mind? If it is to sweep forward, is man to be left behind and another creature to take his place and carry forward the evolutionary urge? This is for man the question of questions. The message of Sri Aurobindo is that man is that creature of destiny in whom the rising wave of consciousness shall reach the Supramental level. Man can realise the Supermind, "although to live in it and see and act from it is," as Sri Aurobindo says, "a victory that has not yet been made humanly possible." And it is Sri Aurobindo’s mission to realise and create this possibility.

Such, in hurried outline, is the theme of the great work under consideration. It is evident that this is no mere abstract speculation but a grand synthesis of our knowledge and experience in the light of psychological discoveries made at high altitudes of our being. The Veda and the Upanishad have been waiting for centuries for the next forward and inevitable step. That step has now been taken. The result of that step is "The Life Divine." ¹