THE GLORY OF MATTER
ARABINA
BASU
Sri
Aurobindo Asharm,
Karl
Marx said that he had stood Hegel upside down. He meant
that while Hegel’s dialectic method was right, his concept of the Reality, the
Absolute Idea was all wrong. One can say in a more real sense that Sri
Aurobindo has stood the whole Yogic tradition upside
down. This may seem to be a tall claim, indeed unjustified. It could even be
asserted that it cannot be done nor is it necessary to do so? What could be the
purpose in making any radical change in the Yogic tradition respected, honoured cherished, found to be true through thousands of
years? Can there be anything new that
can be added to the tremendous achievements of the different Yogas in
If
a student of Yoga takes an unbiassed view of the
different Yogas, he is sure to discover that they
have different aims. Also that later Yogas have entertained
diverse ideas about the nature of existence and necessarily therefore varied
ideals to be realized. Surely it can be said without any fear of contradiction
that the Yoga of the Gita supplements the Yoga of the
Upanishads. True that the Upanishads contain in seed-form all
that is there in the Gita. Nevertheless the
Lord’s Song elucidates many points left unclear in the Upanishads, supplements
many ideas and complete the view of realisation laid
down in the more ancient scriptures. While the Isha
Upanishad gives in almost aphoristic form the gospel of Karma-Yoga, it is the Gita which has made it its special subject matter. It is
The
Upanishads do speak of Prema, Love, and
of the Self as the dear one, But would
it be wrong to say that there is not in these great spiritual
scriptures the same development of bhakti, devotion
and love, as the most important element of spiritual life and discipline as
found in the Vaishnava religions, especially in
Bengal Vaishnavism? One could give other examples of
this kind of development. It cannot be gainsaid that there is an evolution of
yogic goals and methods.
Sri
Aurobindo’s unerring vision has reiterated the
age-old perception of the Vedic and Upanishadic Rishis and the Tantric Yogis that
Atman has become everything, that Brahman is all. If Atman is pure Spirit, if
it has become everything, sarva-bhutani, it
stands to reason to conceive a power of concealment in the Self-Creative Force
of the Self. Its function would in other words be described as a process of
involution, a progressive hiding of the spiritual nature of the Spirit. As Sri
Aurobindo has shown, the seven rays or the seven streams of the Veda are
symbols of seven planes of being or consciousness. Thus the Self has become
Matter. It was not without reason that Bhrigu, Varuna’s son, after doing tapasya
went to his father and declared: Matter is Brahman. True
that his father, a knower of Brahman, sent the aspirant son back to do further tapasya. Obviously this means that his son had not
known everything about Brahman. Indeed it appears from the context that Bhrigu Varuni was only at the
beginning or the spiritual journey. But it is also to be noted that he did not
contradict his son or point out that he was wrong. And this would obviously
mean that the young aspirant’s initial perception of the nature of Brahman was
not wrong though it was not complete.
We
know the rest of the story, how Bhrigu Varuni went from perception to higher perception at the end
of each stage of Saadhana till he came
to see that Ananda, Bliss, is Brahman. He ascended
from Matter to the planes, one after the other, of the Vital, Mental, the Supramental and Bliss. (It need not be said that the planes
of Chit and Sat are not expressly mentioned but implied.)
It
would appear from this account that from Ananda to
Anna, Bliss to Matter, there is the one and the same Reality which has arranged
itself in a hierarchy of categories projected from itself. We can in this
connection remember the four-fold Self of the Mandukya
Upanishad, the Turya. Sushupti, Svapna
and Jagrat. These according to Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation are respectively the absolute
and the original status of the Self, its aspect of the omniscient and
omnipotent Lord in the causal world, its aspect of the enjoyer of the subtle
world and its aspect of the enjoyer of the gross world. Nowhere does the
Upanishads assert that the three lower aspects are unreal. Sri Aurobindo
concedes that according to a strict and rigid logic, these three may be
regarded as illusion but he also emphatically states that this is not a
necessary conclusion. It is not our purpose here to enter into a discussion on
this question. We would content ourselves with noting that Sri Aurobindo
accepts the realistic Adwaita of the Upanishads
though he does not deny that an element of illusionism crept into some of them.
Now
if the Self has become or at least has manifested itself in the gross world of
our waking consciousness after manifesting itself as the causal and subtle
worlds, no question is more pertinent than this–why should the Self manifest
itself as the World? Is it an exercise without any purpose whatsoever? Or if
there be a goal, what can it possibly be? The traditional answer is that the
Divine creates the world as Lila, as a spiritual sport. The creative Energy of
God overflows and takes concrete shape in the things of the world. And even if
the Divine has involved Himself in Matter, he, as an individual soul, evolves
back to its original divinity. The soul realises
itself as a portion of the universal Lord or one with the cosmic Self,
or identical with the transcendent Absolute. This is why the soul comes into
the world. Matter has not been created for any higher
aim than to provide a temporary abode for the Lord who dwells in everything.
Sri
Aurobindo joins issue with this view of creation. Not that it
is not true at all but it is not the whole truth. The world is created
so that the Creator can have the delight of Becoming, it is Lila. But if Matter
is a form of conscious Self, if it is sustained in its existence by the
conscious power of the self-same Spirit, we can surely say there is a concealed
consciousness in Matter itself. The Prakriti of Samkhya has to be moved into action by the static conscious
Purusha. The Maya of Sankara-Vedanta
is moved and controlled by Ishwara, the personal,
qualified Brahman. Nowhere do we come across an explanation of the work of an intelligence in the apparently non-spiritual universe
except on the basis of asserting some connection between the active power and
the foundational Consciousness.
A
rigid mental logic will ultimately sever all connection between force and
consciousness, as is evident from Samkhya and Sankara-Vedanta. But would it not be wiser, asks
Sri Aurobindo, to accept the fact as it is actually found and experienced? The
logic of existence and developing spiritual experience outsteps
the boundaries of the logic of mind. If there is observed a secret intelligence
functioning in the operations of universal Nature, it is perfectly reasonable
to assert that there is a conscious Force inherent in it.
Matter
is only a concrete presentation of itself by this conscious Force to itself.
Sri Aurobindo believes that not only can the consciousness in Matter be aware
of its own essential nature beyond the universe, but that it can come to its
own, be aware of itself even in Matter. Another way of stating the same idea
would be that Matter can become conscious of what it truly is, namely, a form
of Brahman. To prepare Matter for this consummation is the purpose of creation.
The
idea may be explained from another point of view. While everything is a
manifestation of the Divine, nothing in the universe manifests the indwelling
Spirit. The Divine is unmanifest in the world which
he has manifested out of his own being. Yet every- thing points to something
beyond itself, all things are symbols of God. If this is true, it is a
worthwhile ideal to make the symbols capable of not merely suggesting the Symbolised but to express it overtly. The most dense symbol of conscious Spirit is Matter. This last
stronghold of unconsciousness is to be radically changed into a conscious
instrument for the manifestation of the Divine in the world. Pure Spirit must
be realised in such a way that Matter can become
Spirit. God having become entirely Nature, Nature wants to be God.
This
idea has not been seriously entertained before in the Indian Yogic tradition,
or for that matter, anywhere else in the world because the specific
principle and force of God that can realise it has
not been attained and made operative in mind, life and body. Man has in the
spiritual quest ascended to high levels of mental consciousness which are
capable of opening to and receiving in the spiritual Knowledge, Peace, Joy,
Power. These levels of the mind are divine and the spiritual experiences
attained in them are genuine and highly satisfying. But mind even on its
highest level is a limited consciousness. It is not able integrally to realise the Divine in all its aspects, far less harmonise Spirit and Matter. Consciousness in man must
evolve into a level higher than mind, a plane which has Knowledge inherent in
it and where there is no need to seek it. It is Consciousness turned into
integral Knowledge and invincible Will. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind.
The
Vijnaana of the Taittiriya
Upanishad is neither a massed consciousness without any expression or
self-variation, nor is it the buddhi of
the lower Prakriti of the three modes. It is true
that the term has been taken to mean either of these two. Sri Aurobindo says it
is that intermediate level of consciousness which is
not Chit as such nor the lower category of pure reason. But it is consciousness
which has organised itself into the infinite faculty
of Knowledge and infallible power of Will and execution. It is this supramental consciousness which is
the true seed and efficient cause of the universe and the
Spirit on this plane is truly the Lord, the Creator. The Supermind
is also the Idea, based in Brahman, of the whole Universe which is to be
created, the inherent Law and process of its manifestation. At the same time it
is the substance, the essence of everything in the world though overlaid by the
limitations of mind, life and matter. When the concealed but inherent Supermind in Matter wishes to manifest itself more openly
and in a less hampered way, it brings about the emergence of Life and then of
Mind in living Matter. The physical organism undergoes great changes as a
result of the evolution in it of Life and then of Mind in living Matter. But
the urge of evolution presses further forward, says Sri Aurobindo, and the Supermind is now asserting, itself in order to effect a new
and obvious manifestation of itself in the world. The soul in Mind will ascend
to the plane of integral Knowledge-Will and become the soul in Supermind. Then it will not have to despise Matter, or be
frightened by life or limited by Mind. The emergence of Supermind
in them will transform them, enable mind to shed all limitations and receive
the truth perfectly, make life serene and self-sustaining devoid of desires and
cravings, yet dynamic as a channel of conscious force, change body into divine
substance enabling it to know and enjoy the Immortal in it. The most despised
would be the most fulfilled. Spirit will embrace Matter which will know and
enjoy Brahman as its soul, and what could be a greater glory.