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Life Divine Detailed Summary of Book II Part 1

Chapter I   Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable

Chapter II   Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara -- Maya, Prakriti, Shakti

Chapter III   The Eternal and The Individual

Chapter IV  The Divine and the Undivine

Chapter V   The Cosmic Illusion - Mind, Dream and Hallucination

Chapter VI   Reality and the Cosmic Illusion

Chapter VII   The Knowledge and the Ignorance

Chapter VIII   Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance

Chapter IX   Memory, Ego and Self-Experience

Chapter X   Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge

Chapter XI   Boundaries of Ignorance

Chapter XII   The Origin of Ignorance

Chapter XIII   Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance

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

Chapter I   Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable

1. A Consciousness-Force is the creator of the worlds.

  • It is the occult secret of Nature.
  • In the material world and in us, consciousness has a double aspect -- knowledge and Ignorance.
  • A Total Nescience, an Inconscience is the base of the crea­tive world-energy. It is its nature.
  • Universe commences here.
  • Consciousness and knowledge emerge in little quantities.
  • Consciousness establishes a precarious light in the dark­ness.

2. Knowledge thus gained is of the phenomena.

  • Wherever our consciousness meets a foundation, it is a blank, not related to the superstructure.
  • The first aspect of cosmic existence is an Infinite per­ceived as an indeterminate.
  • In this Infinite, the universe appears as a "boundless finite".
  • This is mysterious.
  • We call the Energy which produces the appearance Nature.
  • Unless it explains as the nature of things, it is meaning­less.
  • Science has discovered many processes.
  • It does not explain how out of a blank those aspects emerge.
  • At the origin there are

               --  an Infinite containing finites,  

                -- an Indivisible full of divisions,

                -- an Immutable of mutations.

  • This is a cosmic paradox.

3. One can question the need of positing an Infinite but the alternative is a Void.

  • Even Time or Space does not give us a clue.

4. Science sees this Infinite as Energy.

  • The Original process and the other multitude of processes are inexplicable.
  • We know that electric infinitesimals can cause an occasion, but we fail to discover how they came to be constituted. We know how oxygen and hydrogen produce water but do not know why.
  • Similarly we see a tree growing out of a seed but do not know how. So also we fail to see how material movements in the brain of Shakespeare or Plato can produce a Hamlet or a Symposium.
  • Science shows how but does not answer the why.

* 5.   

Behind the Action of material energy     

secret involved consciousness

Through the action of the frontal energy

Means of an evolutionary manifestation

Boundless finite in the material universe 

creation out of itself (Infinite)

Consciousness involves itself                 

into its opposite of mate­rial world substance

Infinite creation of its powers and truths

Manifestation in material disguise

Forms of vehicles of these truths and powers                                              

basic funda­mentals determinations of  Nature   

*Unaccountable variations which are the particular determi­nants                        

The truths and powers these fundamentals   bore within them

The principle of free variation              

Aspect of inconscient Chance

The principle of truths and powers of the Infinite's impera­tive                            

Mechanical Necessity in Nature

Infinite's imperative to fulfill itself in its truths and real powers                        

A constant experimental skill and an automa­tism of purpose (mathematical architecture, of design, effective arrangement of numbers, of adaptation of means to the ends, device, invention)

                The appearance of Consciousness out of Inconscience becomes intelligible.

Consciousness -- Force

Knowledge - will

                   (design, quantity, number)     (quality  & property)

                  Existence           --     Consciousness  --       Ananda

|

Force

|

Energy

|

Substance 

p. 5 Based on that hypothesis,

--there must be behind the action of material energy, a secret involved consciousness.

--building up the means of manifestation through the action.

--Infinite creation becomes boundless finite in the material universe.

--Inconscient material energy is the indispensable condition for the structure of material world substance.

--Creation of the Infinite out of itself is a manifestation in material disguise of truths and    powers of itself.

--The forms of vehicles of these truths are the basic funda­mental determinations of Nature.

--(*)Possibilities the truths or powers bore within the funda­mentals express as the unaccountable variations emerging from the vague general stuff.

--Principle of free variation becomes the inconscient chance.

-- Principle of truths and powers of the Infinite's imperative becomes the mechanical Necessity in Nature.

--The Infinite's imperative to fulfill its truths and powers becomes (the mathematical accuracy...) the automatism.

--As a result, consciousness appears out of inconscience.

6. There is more to perplex us.

  • A necessity of immutable sameness at the base, of free and unaccountable variations on the surface is the law. But who determines?

7. A possible explanation is self-organising dynamic chance.

  • But the insistence of an iron order contradicts this. This can be explained by a mechanical necessary. This cannot justify the free play.
  • Behind the Necessity there may be a law of multiplicity. If so, multiplicity of what?
  • This will lead us back to chance.
  • We have also to explain the emergence of consciousness from the Inconscient and the role of the Mind.

8. There can be other explanations of consciousness creating this world from Inconscience. A Mind seems to have done the work.

  • Then, creation is by an extra cosmic Divinity.
  • No doubt, an extra cosmic Divinity cannot be seen by us. Even if it is an immanent Divinity, it can be seen only at a certain point of evolution, not at all times.
  • Still, the incomprehensibility of the purpose of creation remains.
  • A play?

9. If consciousness is creating out of inconscience, behind the material energy there must be a secret consciousness.

  • Then, inconscience is indispensable for the evolution of consciousness.
  • In that case, only the truths and powers of the being in­volved will be evolving.
  • The principle of free variation to the Infinity explains the evolution.
  • They would be the opposite of mechanical Nature out of which they evolve. Thus the appearance of consciousness out of inconscience is explained.

10. By the above hypothesis, all the unexplained processes can be explained.

  • Energy seems to create substance.
  • in reality, as existence is inherent in Consciousness-Force, substance is inherent in Energy.
  • Energy is a manifestation of Force.
  • Substance is a secret manifestation of Existence. But it is spiritual substance
  • It could be apprehended by the material sense only when it gives by Energy the forms of Matter seizable by the sense.
  • Now we understand how design, quantity and number can be the base for the manifestation of quality and property.
  • They can be made manifest by a rhythm and process of sub­stance.
  • The growth of the tree would be accounted for by the Real-Idea.
  • The Infinite's self-perception of the significant form, the living body of its power of existence that has to emerge from its own self-compression in energy-substance would be carried internally in the form of a seed, carried in the occult consciousness involved in that form and evolved out of it.
  • We can also understand how infinitesimals of a material character like the gene and the chromosomes can carry the psychological elements.
  • At bottom, it is the same for objectivity of Matter as for subjective experience.

11. So also, body's physiological functions determine mind's psychological functions because body is not mere unconscious Matter. A structure of secretly conscious energy that has taken form in it.

  • Body is occultly conscious.
  • But it is the vehicle of expression of an overt conscious­ness that has emerged and is self-aware in our physical energy-substance.
  • The body 's functionings are a necessary machinery for the movements of this mental Inhabitant.
  • This is necessary for the physical manifestation of the Conscious Being.
  • In turn, the body's functionings influence the mind's forma­tions.
  • The body may even dominate its user, the mind.
  • All this is possible because the body has the subconscient.
  • Still, the body determining the mind is a minor truth.
  • The major Truth is mind determines the body.
  • The spiritual entity determines mind and body is a greater truth.
  • Thus, the conception of divine Mind and will creating the Cosmos becomes tenable.

12. An approach from the material end of Existence cannot give us this validity.

  • The veil is so thick that it may not be penetrated.
  • The prime secret is self-discovered when we move to a point of self- enlightenment.
  • In Life it is clearly hopeless to try to discover the truth. There it is submentalor sub consciousness.
  • In human mind there is the first hope of free comprehension.
  • Here the possibility of self-knowledge and world-knowledge exists.
  • At first mind can only observe facts and processes and infer the rest.
  • In order to know the secret of consciousness, it has to know itself, and determine the reality of its own being and pro­cess.
  • In Man, the mind-consciousness is involved in the whirl of thoughts.
  • We do not freely determine our thinking; it is determined by our nature.

13. Only when we follow the yogic process and quieten the mind, self-observation is possible. We discover Mind is a subtle substance, a general determinate which mental energy throws into forms of thoughts, etc. If so,

  • When the energy is quiescent, it lives in either torpor, or immobile silence or peace of self-existence.
  • Next we see the determination of the mind does not proceed out of itself. It comes from a universal Mind.
  • We perceive an occult subliminal mind from which thought, etc. arise.
  • We also see higher planes of mind from which superior mind energy works on us.
  • Finally we see a mental being supporting the mind substance and mind energy.
  • First the mental being is a silent witness Purusha.
  • If this is all, we have to accept the domination of Nature.
  • The Purusha can move to be a knower, a giver of commands.
  • We see here that all mind determinations arise from the Purusha.
  • A complication arises because our mind is part of the uni­versal mind.
  • Three questions arise:

1) whether evolution is phenomenal creation by universal energy presented to the mental being, or

2) it is an activity imposed by the Mental Purusha's inde­terminate existence,  or

3) The whole is something predetermined and only manifested on the mind  plane.

  • To know that, we have to enter a cosmic state of being and consciousness.

14. Overmind consciousness is such a principle.

  • It is even beyond universal mind in the Ignorance.
  • It carries the masterful cognition of cosmic truth.
  • Maybe the answer is here.
  • Here we see the individual as well as cosmos is from the transcendent.
  • Mind and life must be partial self-expressions of the Cosmic Being.
  • But the expression is decided by the individual himself.
  • But the original question remains unsolved.
  • Original questions:

           1) whether it is not a creation presented to him by Nature.

            2) It might be a play of cosmic (illusion) imagination.

            3) whether the building of thought is truly a self-expression.

  • Each view has its own logical support.
  • Overmind adds to the complexity.

15. In Overmind, in all the higher ranges of mind, we find the dichotomy of silent self and the mighty dynamis.

  • This contradiction sublimates into the impersonal Brahman.
  • Impersonal Brahman is the source of all relations and deter­minations -- Nirguna, Saguna.
  • If we pursue the Nirguna into a farthest possible self-experience, we arrive at a supreme Absolute.
  • If we enter through Saguna similarly, we arrive at the divine Absolute.
  • The divine Absolute is a personal supreme omnipresent God­head transcendent as well as universal.
  • This is an infinite Master of all relations, he can uphold in his being a million universes and pervade each with a single ray of his self-light and a single degree of his ineffable existence.
  • The Overmind maintains two truths, mutually exclusive alter­natives. Behind them there must be a greater Transcendence which upholds them both in Eternity.
  • What can that be except an original Mystery?
  • In the last resort, it escapes even the highest mentality.

16. If the supreme Absolute is indeterminable, no manifestation is possible.

  • But there is a universe.
  • What then creates it.
  • As the Absolute is the sole Reality, this Power must have a relation with it.
  • If the power is imagination, the sole existence of absolute Parabrahman is not possible.
  • It is logically impossible that the Supreme Being and the Power that issues out of it are opposite.
  • Brahman is free from all possibility of relations.
  • But Maya is a creative imagination, an originator of all relations which Brahman supports.
  • This is inadmissible.
  • It is clear that the Reality is not an Indeterminable.
  • It is perfectly understandable that the Absolute must be indeterminable in the sense that it cannot be limited by any determination but not in the sense it is incapable of self-determination.

17. Overmind then gives no final solution.

  • We have to seek for it in a supramental cognition.
  • The supramental is a self-awareness and a power of self-determination.
  • The first is a foundation and status.
  • The second is a power of being, the dynamism of self- existence.
  • All that a timeless eternity of self-awareness sees in itself as truth of being, the conscious power of its being manifests as Time-eternity.
  • To Supermind, the Supreme is not an indeterminable, not an infinite of being complete to itself in its own existence
  • The Infinite of Being must also be an Infinite of Power.
  • It must also be capable of eternal action and creation.
  • It must be a creation out of its own self eternal and infi­nite.
  • An infinite consciousness must hold endless truths of its self-awareness.
  • These in action would appear as aspects of its being, to our spiritual senses as powers and movements of its dynamis, to our aesthesis as instruments of its delight.
  • Creation would then be self-manifestation. It would be an ordered deploying of the infinite possibilities of the Infi­nite.
  • Every possibility must have a truth of being behind it.
  • A fundamental reality of the Existent would appear to our cognition as a fundamental spiritual aspect of the Divine Absolute.
  • Out of it would emerge all possible manifestations.
  • These create non-manifest latency of forms, powers, process­es.
  • Their own being would develop their own becoming swabhava, swarupa.
  • This then would be a complete process of creation.
  • In our minds, we do not see the complete process but only possibilities that determine themselves as actualities.
  • Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor of possibil­ities, not a seer ofoccult imperative.
  • The Original Determinant is veiled from our minds.
  • For the Supermind it would be apparent.
  • In the Supermind, the Determinant and process and possibili­ties are one whole.

18. Our cognition of the Absolute is by intuition as Existence, Consciousness and Delight.

  • In the Overmind and mind these three can be exclusively enjoyed. But in Supermind these three are always an insepa­rable Trinity.
  • Each has its primal aspects of its inherent self-formations.

            Delight             --  Love, Joy, Beauty 

            Consciousness  --   Knowledge-Will, Consciousness-Force

            Existence          --   Self, the Divine, the Conscious Being,     

                                           Atman, Ishwara, Purusha.

19. Each of these aspects reposes on a triad or Trinity:

  • Knowledge -- knower, known, knowledge
  • Love -- Lover, Beloved, Love
  • Will -- Lord of Will, the object of the Will, the executive force.
  • Joy -- Enjoyer, the Enjoyed, the Delight
  • Self -- Self as subject, Self as object, Self-awareness holding together Self as subject-object.
  • These are the fundamental spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite.
  • All others are determinants of the fundamental spiritual determinates, significant relations, significant powers, forms of being, consciousness, force, delight -- energies, conditions, ways, lines of the truth-process of the Consciousness-Force of the Eternal, imperatives, possibilities, actualities of its manifestations.
  • All these deploying powers are held together by Supermind in an intimate oneness.
  • There is no imposition of imagination.
  • But in the Mind of Ignorance appear these impositions.
  • Behind the ignorance, the soul is seeking for the Reality.
  • This limitation and this awakening are also process of self-determination.
  • They too bring out the possibility of the Infinite.

20. Indeterminability is necessary for conceiving of the Abso­lute.

  • The Absolute is not bound by any determination.
  • It is the source of all determination.
  • Its indeterminability is natural and necessary to its infin­ity of being and itsinfinity of power of being.
  • This essential indeterminability of the Absolute that trans­lates itself through
  • § the fundamental negating positives of our spiritual experience

1. the immobile immutable self 

2. the Nirguna Brahman 

3. the Ineffable 

4. the unknowable                           

  • § the fundamental affirming positives,

1. the Self that becomes all things

2. the Saguna Brahman

3. the Eternal with infinite qualities

4. the one who is the Many

5. the Infinite Person           

6. The Lord of creation

7. the WORD

8. the Master of works

9. That which being known, all is known.

  • In the Supramental cognition it is not possible to split asunder the two sides of the One Existence.

21. Even the separate cognition has its validity.

  • For the primary aspects of the Absolute are fundamental spiritual determinants answering at the spiritual end or beginning to the material end ofthe descending and ascend­ing Manifestation.
  • Those that seem to us negative carry in themselves the freedom of the Infinite from limitations by its own determi­nations.
  • Their realisation disengages the spirit within.
  • Once we pass into the immutable self, we are no longer bound in the inner status by the determinations of Nature.
  • On the dynamic side, the original freedom enables us to create a world of determinations without being bound by it.
  • It enables us to withdraw from what it has created and recreate in a higher truth-formula.
  • It is on this freedom that is based the spirit's power of infinite variation, free from Necessity or system.
  • The individual being can pass from one order of self-formulation to a higher order.
  • At this stage it has to move from the mental to the Supra­mental status.
  • Here one can enter into total Nirvana.
  • A realisation of the pure Self must always precede the clear vision of the spiritual prerogative that gives the free power of ascent and descent.
  • An independent completeness of identity with each of the primal aspects and powers is a capacity of overmind cogni­tion.
  • The Supermind keeps always the realisation of the Unity.
  • The Overmind still keeps the sense of the underlying unity.
  • In Mind, knowledge of the unity is lost.
  • Even here, the total reality is behind the absorption and can be recovered as intuition. In the spiritual mind this can be an ever-present experience.

22. All aspects of the Omnipresent Reality have their fundamen­tal truth in theSupreme Existence.

  • Even the power of Inconscience corresponds to a Truth.
  • At the heights of Spirit it is the trance of Supercon­science.
  • At the other end it is the Inconscience.

23. It is important to observe the importance of Ignorance.

24. Is the supramental the final?

  • Beyond is Sachidananda.
  • Here existence would be a pure identity in oneness.
  • But supramental is inherent here too.
  • The only difference here would be that the determinations would not be demarcations, they would be interfused, each a boundless finite.
  • For all is in each, each is in all radically and integrally.
  • There would be to the utmost,
  • a fundamental awareness of the identity
  • a mutual inclusion and interpenetration of con­sciousness
  • knowledge as we know would not exist
  • all would be a direct action of consciousness in being itself identical, intimate, intrinsically self-aware and all-aware.
  • It could be said that in Sachidananda itself there could be nothing but self-awareness.
  • Like all determinations this too could cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute. Our position is there must be inherent truths of the Supreme Being.
  • Their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute.
  • The Absolute is not a mystery.
  • Nothing can manifest that is not justified by the Omnipres­ent Reality.

Summary:

--The Consciousness-Force that creates the world does not reveal itself to us.

--The scientist looks for the clue in the material movements.

--The hypothesis of consciousness evolving out of inconscience is valid.

--It explains the seed, tree, oxygen, water, chromosomes, etc.

--Analogous to the subjective experience and objective matter we see mind determines matter.

-- It is ultimately not the human mind but the divine mind.

-- It takes us to the universal mind, overmind, cosmic state of being and Super-mind.

-- The Supermind is the determinant and mind finds the process occult.

-- The Absolute reveals as Sachidananda and splits itself into a triad and further trinities.

-- Overmind can see the separate faculties but in Supermind they are not two or  three, but one.

--The Absolute discloses as fundamental, negative positives and affirming positives such as Nirguna and Saguna.

--They too are one in Supermind where unity is maintained but are separate in the mind that is absorbed where it can be recovered as intuition.

--It is important to know the importance of Ignorance.

--All aspects of the Omnipresent Reality have their fundamental truths in the Supreme Existence.

--Supermind need not be final. There is Sachidananda of self-awareness.

-- Even there Supermind is there and even that awareness is a determination in the Absolute.

--Nothing can manifest that cannot be justified by the Omnipresent Reality.

Chapter II   Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara -- Maya, Prakriti, Shakti

25. The Supreme Reality, eternal, absolute, infinite is indefinable, inconceivable, indeterminable by Mind. The spiritual being in us which is of the Supreme Existence can know it. It is self-evident to it.

26. If the Supreme Reality escapes the logic of the finite, it can be caught by the logic of the Infinite and be expressed by a poetically intuitive speech as of the Vedas.

  • Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara are ways in which the Reality reveals. There are dozens of such statements that are comprehensive. Mind can cut away a little and throw away the rest. For an integral knowledge one has to accept the many-sided statements and their truth.

27. (Atman) Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara and their Powers Maya, Prakriti, Shakti taken together as a single whole reconcile the separateness between Transcendence, Universality, Individuality. By itself Absolute contradicts the relative universe; our real existence is contradicted by the incommunicable Reality.

  • But Brahman is omnipresent in all relativities.
  • This picture of Self-Existence is a convincing totality to a unitary, unlimited whole of vision, but is untenable logically.
  • The difficulty lies in our own inability to seize the supreme clue. A finite consciousness cannot measure the Infinite; this smallness cannot measure this Immensity. An instinct and intuition is needed which intellect does not have. Higher still is the suprarational. Final enlightenment must come from Supramental vision and knowledge.

28. What is magic to our reason is logic to the Infinite. World is not an imaginative Will acting in a void upon a free caprice; it is the truth of the Infinite affirming itself in the determinations of the finite.

  • The higher Consciousness cannot act in accordance with our reason. To see the parts alone or the totality alone is an ignorance. A part may be greater than the whole because it belongs to the Transcendence. Even to see the essence alone can be a capital ignorance. A whole knowledge that is plastic enough to look at all sides and all aspects and seek through them for that in which they are one, is needed.

29. To see Ishwara alone or the pure Being alone or the Purusha alone will be partial. It is not only I am That but also all is That. Seeing the essential being is to see the svarupa only; seeing the essential nature is to see the swadharma only. Insisting on our self alone or other selves alone is an error. It is the Self of all on which a unity of action is to be founded, because it is the nature of working of the Infinite.

30. For a wider view the difficulties that meet us are not real, only verbal and conceptual. What appears to be a contradiction is only a dual statement by the human reason of a single inescapable fact because the human reason attempts to define and limit by negation the infinite and illimitable.

31. The Infinite is essentially free from all qualities, features and properties; also the Infinite is teeming with all qualities, properties and features. The Mind and its language find it comfortable to express only one side of it but is bewildered to include both of them. Both are true. The difficulty arises from the finiteness of thought.

32. Oneness of Spirit, Being, Cosmos is seen as well as the Many. Mind is unable to reconcile the two, because mind sees oneness in infinity and plurality in finiteness. For the logic of Infinite the eternity of the Many in one is natural and possible.

33. Mind sees an opposition between silence and status and dynamis and movement. In truth the silence and status are the basis for dynamis and movement.

34. Form and Formlessness are not in opposition. Form is one expression of freedom by the Formlessness. Name embodies the inherent power of a thing in its origin.

35. The existence of Infinite and finite is not a mere juxtaposition. The finite is the frontal aspect of the Infinite. Each object is that Infinite and one in essential being with all the other objects that are forms and names of the Infinite.

36. In all divisions and diversities is there an incoercible unity.

  • Complete minus Complete = Complete (Upanishads)
  • The identical is their root, their constituting substance.
  • Immutability and infinite variation: Because of Self and Spirit in things and beings everywhere, Nature can afford this luxury of infinite differentials.

This is the miracle, the Maya of the universe.

37. A monotone of sameness would dispel reason and logic since logic perceives relations and reason discovers the underlying law that unifies the many. Divine Self-knowledge brings out its truth in manifestation as Lila.

38. Maya is the Supreme and universal Consciousness and force of the Eternal and Infinite. It can put forth many states of consciousness at a time, many dispositions of Force without ceasing to be the same consciousness-force forever.

39. A second possibility of the Infinite consciousness is its power of self-limitation or secondary self-formation into a subordinate movement. This is the consequence of self-determination.

40. A third power is its power of self-absorption. It can absorb itself into Superconscience or Inconscience or any one aspect of its being. The status of conscious awareness of one field while others are cut off are thus explainable.

  • A clue to Maya can be found by accepting the three powers of putting forth any status, self-limiting to any status and self-absorbed in any status.

41. To be absorbed in Superconscience, to be lost in the dynamic revelation, to situate ourselves in the double consciousness where both are simultaneously felt, is possible for the human consciousness, though unintelligible to the limited surface reason.

42. Brahman is the Absolute; Maya is the Consciousness and Force of the Absolute.

  • As we initially see the Silent Brahman, it is possible to see the dynamic Brahman, and also the all-inclusive status.

43. Purusha the conscious Being is universal. Individual. It retains the impersonality, eternity, universality but can also put on a personal aspect. [Sankya says soul is an independent existence though all souls experience a common universal Nature].

  • The witness becomes Iswara when it refuses sanction to Nature.

44. Primal matter is the formal basis of action developed by Prakriti. It further develops life, action and intelligence. Intelligence being a product of primal matter is inert, mechanical, inconscient.

  • Purusha and Prakriti cannot be separated as the consent of Purusha is needed by Prakriti.

45. The spirit takes the appropriate form to each poise of nature. Purushothama -- Para prakriti; Mental being -- Mind Nature; Vital being -- Life Nature; Physical being -- Matter; Psychic being -- Embodied Individual.

  • The Being is the lord of Nature. The Supreme Person, the Being in its transcendental Cosmic consciousness-force, is the Ishwara superior to personal gods or popular religion, superior to Saguna Nirguna Brahman, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine Transcendence.

46. Personality that should be shed to reach the universal is superficial. Behind it is the Person who can acquire several personalities. What is impersonal is only a power of the Person. That Person is the Conscious being, Omnipotent.

47. Personality of the Divine Being is not mechanical or anthropomorphic.

48. To get a complete view let us put this view in close connection with all the other views. Placing ourselves in silent Self-Existence, we see Maya doing everything. If we step back not into witness Purusha but into the dynamic participating experience of the Spirit, we see Maya is a power of the being. The Lord does everything. What Nature does is really done by the Spirit.

49. There is no inherent contradiction between the poises of Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara and their powers Maya, Prakriti, Shakti.

50. Spirituality is concrete. Our inquiry being philosophical, our explanation is abstract. Experience will make it concrete.

51. One is the fundamental Truth. Many exist by their dependence on the One. Ego conceals this dependence. Soul in us belongs to Transcendence. By the self-giving and surrender of the soul and nature in us to the Divine Being, we attain the Supreme Reality.,

52. Entering into the Supremely Real, truths of the universe like manifestation and non-manifestation vanish.

  • Our basis is what is in unmanifestation is the Timeless Eternal which has manifested as Time-Eternity.
  • The Timeless is a spiritual status of existence not subject to time movement. The Timeless Spirit may hold all in itself in essence without reference to time, perhaps in eternal unity.
  • These two are the same Eternity in double status.

53. Space and Time would then be a dual aspect of one and the same self-extension of the cosmic Eternal to hold forms and objects and the deployment of movement.

54. Time is a dimension of Space necessary to complete the action of the Energy.

  • The origin or basic reality of Space becomes clear when we go behind the physical. Our mind can move in its own space in such a way as to effectuate a movement also in space of Matter or act upon something distant in space of Matter. Spiritual space is deeper still.

55. The original status of Time is the eternity of the Eternal, the original status of Space is the infinity of the Infinite.

  • The three statuses of Time: 1. Timeless Eternity; 2. simultaneous integrality of Time; 3. Time movement.

56. Simultaneous multiplicity of self-presentation of one Reality makes possible coexistence of Timeless Eternal and Time Eternity.

 Summary

  • It is entitled "Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara".
  • Its theme is the Absolute is one, of unity and ever remains so and all the divisions we see are the perceptions of the mind.
  • Sri Aurobindo explains it from 10 or 12 angles and goes into describing the three states of Time, Timelessness and Simultaneous Integrality Time in the greatest possible detail.
  • One who is fully in tune with this chapter will certainly know the concepts of Unity, integrality, totality, Freedom, the unmanifest in the manifestation. That will be conception, not sensation.
  • How can one who got this conception move to its perception and then to sensation? Can he?
  • Comprehension maturing to deeper levels will do, is the answer. How does this maturity come? His answer is put in more than one way. 1. by All-inclusive concentration, 2. psychic opening, 3. moving into the Subliminal. It can be done by a massive total effort or initiated as a token and built up.
  • Essentially both are the same, but still there will be preference.
  • If one can resort to surrender after making a massive effort, it will open massively.
  • To make one reach a higher plane, one should act according to the principles of that plane.
  • The other man's point of view, to conceive of the contradiction as a complement, to know the other, the rival as oneself are principles of the higher consciousness. Reaction is to treat another as a rival. Non-reaction is to treat him as oneself. To initiate such an action and spread it over one stretch of 24 hours will open the veil to reveal a glimpse of totality. A flash is not a passive force, but a beginning that can lead to the end.
  • A beginning based on FULL comprehension of the spirit of this chapter will not end in a flash but will lead one to the end if persisted in.

"Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara --  Maya, Prakriti, Shakti"

1) Not the mind, but the spiritual being through an instinct or intuition, not intellect, can comprehend Reality.

2) A wider view of taking Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara which sees the One as well as the Many, Silence and status, Form and Formlessness, the finite as the frontal aspect of the Infinite will resolve the difficulties of the mind.

3) Three possibilities:

                        Maya can put forth many possibilities;

                        Power of self-limitation;

                        Power of Self-absorption as in Superconscience  or Inconscience.

4) Placing ourselves in silent Self-Existence, we see Maya doing everything. Slipping back not into witness Purusha but into the dynamic experience of the spirit, we see Maya is a power of the being. There is no inherent contradiction between Brahman, Maya, Purusha, Prakriti, Ishwara, Shakti.

5)  Spirituality is concrete. Metaphysical inquiry is abstract. Practice will make it concrete.

    One is fundamental. Ego conceals this. Soul belongs to Transcendence.

    By the self-giving and surrender of the soul and nature in us to the Divine being, we attain to the Supreme Reality.

6)   In the Supreme Reality difference between manifestation and non-manifestation vanishes. Time and Timelessness are the same Eternity in double status.

7)   Simultaneous multiplicity of self-preservation of one Reality makes possible co-existence of Timeless Eternal and Time Eternity. 

Chapter III   The Eternal and The Individual

57. The Omnipresent Reality is in and above the cosmic manifestation and is immanent in the individual.

  • There is a dynamic power of this Reality. It is a creative, self-manifesting action of its infinite consciousness. A phase of this is descent and ascent.
  • This is the basis for the possibility of divine life.
  • Our chief need is to understand the nature of the Ignorance and process of soul's recovery.
  • The knowledge is there hidden in the Ignorance.
  • The main difficulty is to admit that the individual is eternal.

58. Logical reasoning will not serve our purpose.

59. Reason identifies the individual with ego. If this were so, with the abolition of ego, the individual must disappear. Ego is a practical constitution to centralise our activities. Perception of Mental, Vital, physical experiences as ourselves (distinguishing it from the rest of the being) constitutes our ego-sense.

  • Our individualisation is for the use of one body temporarily. Behind it is the Purusha who determines this individualisation and is not determined by it. Purusha synthesizes through successive lives, from its experience of the world-being.
  • Our individualisation exists by virtue of the world-being.
  • Neither can experience without the other. We have to recognise both.

60. In the end, the Purusha comes to embrace all other beings and the whole world. It exceeds its limitation and attains universality.

  • Does the Purusha cease to exist?
  • Does he become the world Purusha?
  • It is not so.
  • The Purusha still individualises, making the world-being the material for individual experiences.
  • The Purusha regards the world-being as a source from which to draw upon.
  • Here the Purusha perceives it is one with Transcendence, dwelling within it, taking its constructed individuality a formation for world-experience.

61. Our unity with the world-being is the consciousness of the Self.

  • The Self at once cosmicises in the world and individualises in the Purusha.
  • Both in the world-being, and in the individual being and in all the individual beings, it is aware of the same Self.
  • That then is a Self which must be one in its being and yet must be capable in its very unity of cosmic differentiation and multiple individuality.
  • The unity is its being.
  • The multiple individuality is the power of its being.
  • Why should the power be exercised when the unity is there?
  • Then we will accept the divine being but not our part in the power and consciousness and delight of the Divine.

62. Maybe the lack of full union in the power is the reason for rejecting the delight.

  • Presently the perfect undifferentiated unity is there in the status of consciousness and not in the act of consciousness.
  • In the waking union of individual with the Divine, there must be a differentiation of experience.
  • In this active unity the individual Purusha enlarges its active experience as well as its static consciousness into a way of union with this Self of his being and of the world-being and yet individualisation remains and therefore differentiation.
  • The Purusha is aware of all other individuals as selves of himself. He may be aware of the mental and practical action in others as he is aware of it in himself. This he can do by a dynamic union. By a subjective union with them, he may determine their actions.
  • The individual exists. He exceeds the ego.
  • The universal exists but does not abolish the individual.
  • Can we get rid of differentiation by absorption into unity? We do not forfeit the perfect union by accepting the differentiation any more than the Divine forfeits HIS oneness by accepting it. Can we seek peace and rest by merging with His oneness?
  • The Divine possesses the eternal calm in the midst of His eternal action. The differentiation has its divine purpose.
  • It is a means of greater unity. We enjoy by it our unity with other selves and with God in all, which we exclude by our rejection of his multiplicity.
  • In either experience it is the Divine in the individual possessing and enjoying in one case the Divine in HIS pure unity or in the other the Divine in that and in the unity of the cosmos.
  • It is not the absolute Divine recovering having lost His unity.
  • There is no reason why we should not participate in the large possession and bliss of His universal being which is the fulfillment of our individuality.

63. We see that it is not solely and ultimately the cosmic being into which our individual being enters but something in which both are unified.

  • Our individualisation in the world is a becoming of that Self.
  • The world too is a becoming of that Self.
  • The world-being includes always the individual being.
  • Therefore the cosmic and the individual are always related and mutually dependent. The individual also comes in the end to include the world in its consciousness. This is not by abolition of the spiritual individual but by his coming to his full, large and perfect self-consciousness.
  • Therefore the individual always included the cosmos.
  • Only in the surface consciousness failed to possess that inclusion because of ego.
  • We travel beyond the normal reason when we speak of the world in me, me in the world, all in me, I in all.
  • The plane of consciousness of the liberated individual is not dependent upon the physical mind.
  • The cosmos we include is not the physical cosmos.
  • They are the harmonically manifest being of God in certain great rhythms of consciousness-force and self-delight.
  • This mutual inclusion is spiritual and psychological.
  • It is a translation of the two forms of the Many, all and individual into a unifying spiritual experience, a translation of the eternal unity of the One and the Many; for the One is the eternal unity of the Many differentiating and undifferentiating itself in the cosmos. This means the cosmos and the individual are the manifestations of a transcendent Self who is an indivisible being though seeming to be divided and distributed.
  • He is not really divided and distributed, but indivisibly present everywhere. Therefore all is in each and each is in all and all is in God and God is in all.
  • When the liberated being (soul) comes into contact (union) with this Transcendent, it has the self-experience of itself and cosmos which is translated psychologically into a mutual inclusion and a persistent existence both in a divine union which is at once a oneness and a fusion and an embrace.

64. Normal reason is not applicable to the higher truths.

  • The ego is the individual only in ignorance.
  • The true individual is not the ego, has an eternal relation with all other individuals. That individuality is not egoistic or self-separative, is of practical mutuality founded in essential unity.
  • This mutuality founded in unity is the whole secret of the divine existence in its perfect manifestation.
  • Normally individuality is something separate. Such a thing does not exist. The true individual is a conscious power of being of the Eternal always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which is capable of liberation and immortality.

65. To describe the individual as a conscious power of being of the Eternal is still human or intellectual.

  • Rather we can say that the individual is a conscious being who is for our valuations of existence a being of the Eternal in his power of individualising self-experience.
  • It must be a concrete power that enjoys immortality, not an abstract power.
  • He manifests Himself in that which He manifests within Himself.
  • The individual exists in the Transcendent but all the Transcendent is there concealed in the individual.
  • I am one with God in my being and yet I can have relations with Him in my experience.
  • I, the liberated individual can enjoy the Divine in His transcendence, unified with Him, and enjoy at the same time the Divine in the other individuals and in His cosmic being.
  • Evidently we have arrived at some primary relations of the Absolute.
  • This defies human language.

66. The normal mind flings its logic at this mystery. There is a triple error in the comprehension of the normal mind.

i) Making an unbridgeable gulf between the Absolute and the relative.

ii) The error of making too simple and rigid and going too far in the law of contradictions.

iii) The error of conceiving in terms of Time the genesis of things which have their origin in the Eternal.

67. The Indian thought calls the Absolute Brahman.

  • All relatives can only exist by something which is the truth of them all and yet exceeds them.
  • Reason says such an Absolute must exist.
  • Spiritual experience realises that.
  • That Absolute is Ineffable.

68. The mind by its habit of opposition creates in the Absolute an inexorable hostility to the relative. This is a false step.

  • This makes for logical untenability.
  • By this we arrive at an Absolute incapable of relativity.
  • This difficulty is only in our minds. The Absolute does in reality exist in the relative.
  • The consciousness of infinite existence is other than mind consciousness.
  • It reconciles what is irreconcilable to the mind.

69. We describe by an all-exclusive negation the Absolute.

  • The Seers not only said neti neti but also iti iti.
  • Brahman they said is Life, Mind, Matter etc.
  • Brahman cannot even be described by our largest conception of Sachidananda.
  • In the world, for every positive, there is a negative.
  • The negative is not a zero. It is packed with force.
  • The existence of a negative does not make the corresponding positive non-existent. The positive and negative live side by side, in relation to each other and by each other. They complete and would explain one another.
  • Our intelligence must approach the Absolute by such an intuition.

70. The positives of the Absolute are its various statements of itself to our consciousness.

  • Its negatives bring in the rest of the positivity by which its limitation to these first statements is denied.
  • In each pair of finite and infinite; conditioned and unconditioned; qualified and unqualified, the negative conceals the whole power of the corresponding positive which is contained in it and emerges from it.
  • There is NO real opposition.
  • In a less subtle order we have the transcendent, the cosmic, the universal and the individual. Here each member of these pairs is contained in its apparent opposite.
  • The universal particularises itself in the individual.
  • The universal finds all its consciousness by the variation of numberless individuals, not by suppressing the variations.
  • The individual fulfills itself when it universalises, not when it limits itself.
  • The cosmic contains in all itself and in each thing in it the complete immanence of the transcendent.
  • It maintains itself as the world being by the consciousness of its own transcendent reality.
  • It finds itself in each individual being by the realisation of the divine and transcendent in that being and in all existences.
  • In the Absolute all this relativity finds not its complete denial, but its reason for its existence.
  • Cosmos and individual go back to something in the Absolute which is the true truth of its individuality.

71. Our law of contradictions cannot bind down the Absolute.

  • The law of contradictions is used in our divisions of Space and Time.
  • It represents truths of dynamic workings, useful in material phenomenon.
  • Here we are supposed to have one power at a time, to be one thing at a time. This helps analysis. By getting beyond it, we arrive at a greater Truth.

72. Diamond, Pearl, its individuality, commonality, essentiality.

  • By knowing the commonality, we can make them, knowing their essentiality, we can transmute one into another.

73. Man, plant, animal are different but we see each as a stage of the other.

  • Each is the whole eternal concealed.
  • Man is the individual, yet he is all mankind. He is all and yet he is himself and unique. He is what he is, contains the past and the potentials of the future. We cannot understand him if we look at his general manhood. Nor we can understand him in his essential being where his individuality disappears.
  • Each thing is in the Absolute, all are that One. But in these three terms the Absolute makes its statement of its developed self-existence.

74. A thing is beautiful or ugly but not limited to it.

  • A seemingly destructive war may bring greater good.
  • No particular act has behind it absolute justice.
  • Behind all acts there is something absolute which we call justice.
  • So also there is absolute good and absolute beauty.
  • We have to get beyond the appearances, not to an indeterminate but to the Absolute.
  • By the opposite method we can come to absolute evil, absolute falsehood etc.

75. It is not as if the Infinite became finite forever at some time.

  • But the Infinite and finite coexist and exist in and by each other.
  • The first source and primary relations lie beyond our mental divisions of Time.
  • There all meet and all principles and persistent realities.
  • The finite as a principle is as persistent as the infinite.
  • The One, the Many, the divisions are not fictions but realities.
  • In the all-view of the Absolute there is no opposition.
  • This is the weakness of Science.
  • The great spiritual truths are one and the same Reality experienced on two sides.
  • Similarly with the One and the Many, the finite and the infinite.

76. There are three terms each of which contains the other two.

  • The Transcendent, the Universal, the individual.
  • The secret intention is the unfolding of the transcendent light and joy in the individual and universal.

SUMMARY

-- The chief need is to understand Ignorance.

-- The true Individual is contained in the world-being and dwells in the Transcendent. It is he who is immortal.

-- 3 errors: Assume a gulf between the relative and the Absolute Insistence on law of contradiction

To consider Time as the Origin.

-- The Absolute is ineffable.

-- The positive and negative live by each other. There is no real opposition.

-- Individuality, commonality, essentiality -- Pearl and diamond

Knowing the commonality we can make them;

Knowing the essentiality, we can transmute one into another.

-- The weakness of Science is to see an opposition between the Absolute and the relative where none exists.

Chapter IV  The Divine and the Undivine

77. The distinction between the Divine and the undivine must be brought out.

78. It is a distinction between a life of knowledge and a life of Ignorance. A life of Ignorance is stamped with marks of imperfections. Evil, suffering and other aspects bring out the imperfections.

79. Moral evil and sensational suffering do not exhaust the list of imperfections. The root of the matter lies in the phenomenon of Division.

  • The first imperfection is by limitation.
  • Secondly, the effect of perversion.
  • There exists in us an attachment to this experience of division and consequent suffering.
  • As the principle of Consciousness-Force and Ananda is at the root, nothing can endure if it has not a will in our nature, a sanction of the Purusha, a sustained pleasure, even if it be perverse pleasure, in the continuance.

80. All is a divine manifestation means, in its essentiality, all is divine even if the form baffles or repels us.

  • In a psychological sense, in all things there is a primal Reality -- the Self, the Divine, the Brahman which is pure, blissful and infinite. Its infinity, purity, bliss are not stained.
  • The Upanishads describe the Purusha as the Fire which is unaffected by the faults of others.
  • But this does not explain why the stain is there and is tolerated.

81. No solution is in sight.

  • The Buddhist position is a way out, but not a true one.
  • Immersion in the purity of depths, the dissonances are lost but in us there is the need for total consciousness.
  • So long as the world is not Divinely explained to us, the Divine is unknown.

82. We condemn something as undivine because we do not see the Divine purpose behind.

  • Perfection cannot reside in the thing in its separateness. Perfection is the perfection of the divine harmony.

83. To find the Divine within us is the real solution. To become perfect as That is perfect, to attain liberation by likeness to it, sadrshya, sadharmya, is the real solution.

84. The divine in the aspiration for perfection is the inherent light of a power within which maintains them so that the Divine will unfold in the evolution of Nature.

85. What is, is justifiable only by what can and will be.

  • To search for and find the key of things is the law of our being. Our present state is only transitional.
  • There are three propositions about God and the world.

1) There is an Omnipresent reality by which everything exists.

86. 2) The supreme consciousness and power of this reality governs everything.

3) The Divine Reality and world reality are of different order.

These three do not go together.

87. The division between Soul and Nature needs explanation. If the Divine is at all concerned in the manifestation of his creation, there can be no escape from explaining the suffering and evil.

88. The past - evil - viewed in the context of the whole regains its full meaning and significance.

89. There is no limitation of being, but there is the limitation of consciousness.

  • Ego-consciousness is the first instinct of self-experience.
  • We identify with that.
  • The ego gives us the sense of practical division.
  • Here we have to discover that our ignorance of separation from Reality is a power of knowledge.
  • The frontal power of Ignorance is a power of concentration in a limited working.

90. This power of concentration -- the Ignorance -- is the greatest power of the divine Consciousness.

  • All nature is its external witness.
  • You can meet this witness in the inner being.

91. The power to work through this limitation is not a weakness but a sign, proof, reality of an absolute omnipotence, because through this power of apparent failures, the Omnipotence executes infallibly and sovereignly its purposes.

  • Suffering is a consequence of our limitation of consciousness. It is the Divine that is there behind the appearances; we call the appearance by the name suffering.

92. Evil and its expressions are real.

  • § Our sense of evil is part of a true sense.
  • § Our values of evil are necessary to their complete values.
  • § There is a cosmic and individual utility of evil.
  • § Without experience of pain we would not get the infinite value of delight of which pain is in travail.
  • § All ignorance is a penumbra which environs the orb of knowledge.
  • § Every error is significant of the possibility and of the effort of discovery of truth.
  • § Every weakness and failure is the first sounding of the gulfs of power and potentiality.
  • § All divisions enrich the joy of unity.
  • § Our present feeling of the evil is an imperfection.
  • § The revolt of our consciousness against them is also a necessary valuation.
  • § First we have to endure them, finally we have to reject them.
  • § The soul must learn their reactions as a spur to the endeavour of mastery and conquest.
  • § This is possible in inner equality.
  • § The great of the soul need to conquer it for others too.

93. The reason for imperfection is to discover the full intensity of delight.

  • The manifestation and the movement make law necessary.
  • We cannot simply say they are created by the mind. They, in fact are created by the Divine Consciousness.
  • The Divine Consciousness projected mind away from its all-knowledge so as to realise its opposites to all power, all knowledge, all delight, all being and unity.

94. If Man is to shun evil, error etc., he must give up with them the good, the right, too.

95. To explain Lila as the whim of God to have an adoring humanity is not possible unless we answer two questions:

1) conscious assent by the individual soul;

2) a reason in the All-Wisdom.

96. Imperfection becomes a necessary term of evolution since the divine nature is concealed in the Inconscient and must be gradually delivered out.

  • Imperfection demands the contrary characteristics to divine nature.
  • The imperfection in its outlook of what is beyond becomes a contrary positive.
  • It originates error, wrong knowledge, at first wrong by mistake, finally wrong by choice, delight in falsehood.

The simple contrary turns into complex perversion.

97. To this the assent of the Divine Purusha and that of the Individual Purusha is necessary.

  • Self-concealing and self-discovery are the greatest of Joys.
  • The Infinite's right of self-manifestation makes this possible giving it a profound significance.

SUMMARY

-- The distinction between the Divine and the Undivine is that between a life of knowledge and a life of Ignorance.

-- Imperfection issues out of division and expresses as limitation and perversion.

-- So long as the world is not divinely explained to us, no solution is in sight. To know us as the Divine is the solution.

-- Limitation is in the Consciousness -- ego consciousness -- not in the being.

-- Ignorance is the greatest power of the Divine Consciousness.

-- Pain makes for the fuller enjoyment of delight.

-- Mind is pushed away from all-knowledge so as to enjoy its opposite too.

-- Giving up evil means giving up good too.

-- Lila must have the assent of the Individual soul and the Divine Purusha.

-- As Divine Nature is concealed in the Inconscient, imperfection, which is a stage in evolution, is necessary to deliver it out.

-- The right of the Infinite to self-manifestation makes Lila possible with its profound significance. (*) - - - - -

(*) The greater the difficulty, the greater the enjoyment of self-discovery.

Chapter V   The Cosmic Illusion - Mind, Dream and Hallucination

98. Human experience moves between a constant affirmation and negation.

  • Human mind has not failed to negate everything up to the Reality.
  • It has also affirmed them.
  • An abiding conviction is not for the human mind.
  • Our life being is also like that.
  • Proceeding from fundamental ignorance and having no hold on assured truth, all truths mind sought reveal as partial.
  • Ignorance negates, is unable to believe even the actual realised fact due to absence of knowledge.

99. Physical mind accepts physical facts.

  • To it non-objective objects are unreal.
  • Physical science is a vast extension of this mentality.
  • Its test of the real is verification by positive reason and objective evidence.

100. Life mind, not satisfied by the actual, seeks further possi­bilities.

  • Thinking mind, going further, builds and unbuilds affirma­tions.
  • The history of the human mind is an ever-increasing search after greater possibilities.
  • It has not arrived at a firm certitude yet.

101. At a certain point of this travail,

  • the physical mind becomes agnostic,
  • the vital mind feels life is an illusion, Maya, and
  • the thinking mind begins to look at the Absolute feel­ing life is hallucination.
  • The principle of negation prevails over the principle of affirmation.
  • The great world-negating religions start from here.
  • Buddha and Shankara gave life to it in India.
  • Three great principles of karma, moksha, maya loom large.
  • Let us examine illusionism and juxtapose our Realism with it.
  • Illusionism: an unreal universe reposing on a transcendent Reality.
  • Our Realism: a real universe reposing on a Reality at once universal and transcendent or absolute.

102. The vital being aversion to life cannot be valid by itself.

  • It is disappointed and frustrated even as the idealist has a cardinal hope.
  • Human social, and political endeavours turn in a circle.
  • Altruism and Christian love have not made the world a whit happier.

103. If life is imperfect and an illusion, we have to seek per­fection elsewhere.

  • This second conclusion is not philosophically sound.
  • The relation between here and elsewhere is not explained.
  • The necessity for the ordeal is not explained.
  • Maybe it can be explained as an adventure in Ignorance by the immortal spirits.
  • If it were so, it would be incidental.
  • Such a theory can be explained without bringing in Maya.

104. But there is a higher mental basis for the philosophy of negation.

  • It can be said that the world is a lesser Reality, the greater one being Brahman.
  • But the whole thing depends upon mind's conception or ex­perience of Reality.

105. Cosmic illusion is explained as an unreal subjective experi­ence and is temporarily imposed on a pure Existence, a dream in Infinite.

  • Mayavadins give the analogy of a dream.
  • It is difficult for the physical mind to admit that we are inexistent.
  • Let us give the full value to the dream analogy and examine our sense of world experience.

106. If dream is unreal, how does it prove that that state is unreal when we come out of it.

  • If a soul from another world finds earth circumstances unreal, it would not prove earth is unreal.
  • Similarly, if the world is unreal to us when we move into Nirvana, it does not prove the world is unreal.
  • It would amount to the world being real to us here and Nirvana being real to him who goes into it.
  • Next they say dream is evanescent, without an antecedent or a sequel.
  • Our life after sleep takes up the thread of the previous day whereas thedream does not have coherence.
  • Therefore, there is no analogy between life and dream.
  • Our life is accused of evanescence and lack of inner co­herence.
  • Going within, it assumes a complete connected significance.
  • The surface appears to have firm sequence.
  • It may be said that the sequence does not exist but is created by our minds.
  • It does not remove the difference of the two states of consciousness.
  • In dream, the coherence given by the inner consciousness is absent.
  • One dream has no connection with the other.
  • The evanescence of waking life is of details.
  • There is no evidence of evanescence in the connected totali­ty of world experience.
  • Our bodies perish, but souls proceed for ages.
  • There is no analogy between life and dream.

107. Are dreams totally unreal?

  • In sleep our consciousness withdraws from waking experi­ence.
  • The waking activities are in abeyance, the inner conscious­ness is not suspended.
  • It is a passage for our dreams and a dream builder.
  • Behind it is the mass of the subliminal.
  • It is the subconscious dreams that are pure fantasy.
  • Recently psycho-analysis has started an inquiry.
  • It appears there is something real, which is of great prac­tical importance.

108. The subconscious is not the sole dream builder, which is the antechamber of the Inconscient.

  • The waking consciousness has no clue to the subconscient's system of significances.
  • After a time, the subconscious system sinks back into the Inconscient.
  • This we say is the dreamless sleep.

109. What we call dreamless sleep is only deeper layers of sub­conscious of which we are unaware.

  • But deep down dreams continue.
  • We are aware of it when we go deep inside.
  • It is possible to reach deeper subliminal layers to which sleep gives the right secret entry.
  • A transcript from there can reach us. It is from the sublim­inal, not the subconscient.

110. Subliminal in the dream makes the dreams clear and even solve unsolved problems in life.

  • Those can reveal other planes of our being or universal being.
  • Developing the inner being, dreams can be more of the sub­liminal plane.

111. It is possible to be wholly conscious in sleep.

  • We can be aware of the luminous rest, the true restorer of energies.
  • A greater retention, till the whole is once more before us, is possible.
  • A coherent knowledge of sleep life is possible.
  • Our subliminal self is not the result of inconscience.
  • It is the meeting place of the subconscient and the Super­conscient.
  • The inner existence is the origin of our concealed origin.
  • Here the direct contact with the universal is there.
  • It is not limited to the material plane.
  • In sleep or trance we withdraw into this plane.

112. The subliminal with the subconscious as an annex of itself is the seat of things and supraphysical experiences.

  • The Upanishad says the subliminal is the Dream Self, the superconscient is the sleep self. The incommunicable Self or One Existence (Atman, Adwaita) is the 4th State.

113. If dream-experience is true, the analogy of illusion fails.

  • Dreams can be called transcripts of reality; our waking experience issimilar.
  • Our life might be described as a dream experience.
  • The fact is, it is not merely a sense transcript, but we are looking at the reality through sense-images.
  • Even if our images are incorrect, they try to image reali­ties.
  • The image of a tree may be inexact, but the tree is true or something is there in place of the tree, not a nothing.
  • A pure Indeterminable cannot be rendered by an image. The dream analogy fails.

114. Hallucination is no better. Two types of hallucinations: mental and visual.

  • Imaging things that are not is visual hallucination, e.g. mirage.
  • Taking a subjective structure of the mind for an objective fact is a mental hallucination (rope as snake).
  • Cosmic consciousness, our entry into the vast reality break­ing mental limitations, is classed as hallucination.
  • In each case (mirage, rope, etc.) the false image is not of something non-existent.
  • It is an image of something not present where we see.
  • Therefore the analogy is not helpful.
  • It would be a true analogy if our vision constructed in the void air afigure of things that exist nowhere or if it imposed on the bare ground both rope and snake that existed nowhere.

115. These analogies do not hold good.

  • They may be good if there is an attribution of the activi­ties of the Saguna to the quiescence of the Nirguna.
  • This cosmic illusion is only a wrong perception of reali­ties.

116. Other analogies reveal their inapplicabilities.

  • The imposition of a multiple and mutable unreality upon a sole andunique immutable Real can have no application.
  • Seeing two moons in place of one does not illustrate the juxtaposition ofworld and Brahman.
  • Mind illusion is a stupendous cosmic illusion without paral­lel.
  • A Reality of Oneness manifesting as a reality of numberless forms and powers is what we see.
  • Its process is a mystery, but not a magic of the unreal.

117. Is Mind the child of the original Illusion?

  • Our own mind is not primary creative power of Consciousness.
  • Mind is in between Superconscience and Inconscience and receives from both.
  • It is between the occult subliminal existence and cosmic phenomenon.
  • It receives from unknown inner resources. It receives from observed cosmic phenomenon.
  • What it receives are truths essential, possible, actual.
  • Mind brings out the unrealised possibilities from the re­alised actualities, after making a selection.

118. Our mind mediates between truth and actuality; does not have the omniscience of infinite consciousness.

  • Mind supplements its limited knowledge by imagination and discovery.
  • Infinite consciousness manifests the known; mind discovers the unknown.
  • Mind seizes the possibilities of the Infinite not as results of a latent truth but as the creations of its own boundless imagination.
  • Mind does not have the omniscient energy of the infinite.
  • It can only realise what cosmic Energy will accept.
  • Mind creates but is not an original creator.
  • Maya must be an original creator for it creates out of nothing unless we say it creates out of Reality hazarding the idea that its creations are real.

119. Mind is sure of its steps when it deals with actualities.

  • This is the reason for the enormous success of Science.
  • Mind can only create what is already in Nature.
  • On the other hand, mind receives inspiration from within which cannot become actual in Nature.
  • Maya creates forms and the Reality is supposed to be Form­less.
  • Maya creates determinations and the Reality is supposed to be indeterminable.

120. Mind's faculty of imagination may make it look analogous to Maya.

  • Imagination is an instrument of Ignorance.
  • Mind summons out of Being its infinite possibilities, not out of knowledge but out of ignorance.
  • As they are truths the mind summons, they are realised later, like air travel which the human mind had long imag­ined.
  • Mind's imaginations are not altogether illusory.

121. Mind creates a mermaid, but the possibility is out of two realities.

  • As mind ascends, this power of imagination becomes Truth- imagination.
  • Mind, then, is not a sovereign creator of things non-existent.
  • Its illusions have a basis of truth.

122. There is the dual possibility.

  • First, an original consciousness creates illusions so that the universe becomes a fiction of Maya.
  • The other Mind is a power of ignorance, is capable of shed­ding the ignorance to rejoin knowledge, the Reality.
  • We endorse the second stand.
  • The problem that exists is out of a mixture of knowledge with ignorance which when we understand will solve the prob­lem.

SUMMARY

  • The physical mind becomes agnostic, vital mind feels illusion and the thinking mind seeks the absolute.
  • We oppose illusionism with Realism.
  • Dream and hallucination as analogies do not hold good, as dream is real to the subliminal and hallucination thinks of things that exist.
  • Two possibilities: original consciousness creates illusion and Mind, a power of Ignorance, is capable of shedding and rejoining the Reality. We support it.
  • Memory is the mediator between sense mind and co-ordinating intelligence.
  • Four elements of mental function.
  • When the mental person is fully detached from the mental act, first ego and then the witness reveals. The witness can become or be immutable.
  • Mind cannot hold its action except by divisive Time.
  • Consciousness or events are not divided. It is divided in our observation.
  • For a true basis of knowledge, we must see both our self and nature as a whole on the surface and depth.

Chapter VI   Reality and the Cosmic Illusion

123. We have dealt with one part of the inquiry, the other part, Reality, is left outside.

  • All here turns on the mind's experience or conception of reality.
  • Mental cognition has 3 parts: percipient, perception and percept.
  • All or any of these can be affirmed or denied reality. Our question is, what is the relation between Reality and the Illusion.

124. It is possible to affirm percept and deny the other two.

  • Theory of Matter considers consciousness as operation of Matter- Energy.
  • The individual has only temporary value and temporary reali­ty.
  • The percipient, perception, percept are only phenomena of Energy, but an Energy working in a void.
  • The Buddhist theory gave room to such a conclusion and it led to Non- Being.
  • It may not be Energy but consciousness.
  • If consciousness works in a void, we arrive at the same conclusions. But they are not binding.
  • Behind the consciousness there may be the original Exist­ence.
  • This original Reality might be a cosmic spiritual Existence.
  • In any case, there will be no universal illusion, but a true universe.

125. Illusionism accepts supreme spiritual Existence as the one Reality.

  • It is the Self by its essentiality.
  • The natural beings of which it is the Self are only appear­ances.
  • It is in its absoluteness the substratum of all things.
  • The universe erected on it is a non-existence. It is a cosmic illusion.
  • The Reality is one without a second.
  • There are no true becomings of this Being.
  • If so, what is the relation between this Reality and Illu­sion.
  • How did the Illusion originate or abide in Time forever?

126. There can be no true creative power of Brahman as it is the only Reality.

  • Brahman consciousness cannot be aware of real Beings lest Becoming is true.
  • Maya's creations are contradictory of the One Existence.
  • Maya is unreal, non-existent, an illusion, parent of number­less illusions.
  • Still this illusion does exist, so it must be in some way real.
  • There is then a reality of Maya.
  • As Maya is existent and non-existent, real and unreal, let us say it is neither real nor unreal.
  • What is the nature of Maya?
  • Let us suppose that Brahman is the percipient of Maya, as He is the sole Reality.
  • Any other percipient does not exist.
  • If so, how is it possible for the illusion to persist for a moment?
  • Provisionally, at least, we have to accept the reality of the Universe.

127. If Maya is real, Brahman is the percipient of Maya. 

  • Maya must at least be some power of Brahman consciousness.
  • But Brahman is self-aware forever.
  • Therefore, Brahman consciousness must have a double status, one conscious of Reality, the other of unrealities.
  • These unrealities cannot be of the Reality. If so, it must be real, too.
  • This view cannot accept the Upanishadic view that the world is a product of the supreme Existence.
  • Brahman is not the material cause of the universe.
  • Our nature is not made of its spiritual substance. It is out of the unreal reality of Maya.
  • On the contrary, our spiritual being is of that substance, is indeed Brahman.
  • Brahman is above Maya.
  • But He is also the percipient of His creations both from above and from within Maya.
  • This is the sole plausible explanation  --  a real eternal Percipient, an  unreal Percept, and a perception that is a half real creator of unreal percepts.

128. If maya is the sole conscious power of Brahman, one of two things must be real: 

  • 1) Maya is a subjective action of Brahman consciousness, OR
  • 2) Maya is Brahman's power of cosmic Imagination which means either Maya would be real but her work entirely ficti­tious, OR the world is purely subjective, unreal reality.
  • The first is a logically untenable solution. 
  • The second solution could hardly exist  in Brahman con­sciousness since subjective action of consciousness is an imposition on Brahman.
  • The distinction between the consciousness of Brahman and being of Brahman could not be valid.
  • If so, Brahman would know illusions are imposed on him.
  • This duality is what happens to us when we withdraw from Nature into the inner Self and have to act on the surface as if the world is real.
  • This solution negates the idea of sole indivisible pure Existence.
  • It creates a dualism in featureless unity like that of Sankya view of Purusha and Prakriti.
  • Let us put them aside.

129. If we admit dual consciousness, it cannot be knowledge-Ignorance. 

  • We cannot accept Brahman is subject to Maya.
    • It would be to impose our limitation on the eternal Reality.
    • Three or four explanations are given which are beyond logic or        comprehension.
    • A will to create is there.
    • If it is a will of Brahman, it can only create realities of the Real.

130. There is so far no answer.

  • We may err in attributing reality to Maya.
  • The true solution lies in facing courageously the mystery of Maya and its utter unreality.
  • We cannot accept that line of reasoning which excludes it.
  • Verbal acrobacy, sophism, etc. are of no avail to us.
  • We are confronted with a pure, static and immutable Reality and an  illusory dynamism.

131. If Brahman is not the percipient, then the individual being is.  

  • But this percipient is created by the Illusion and the unreal.
    • The perceiving consciousness is itself unreal.
    • Thus everything is reduced to unreality, our spiritual experience, salvation, etc.  
    • If our Being is that of Brahman, our consciousness is something of the consciousness of the Brahman; it is to that extent real. If it is so, why is not the being of the uni­verse real?

132. Finally, we may say the percipient individual and the per­cept universe are unreal, but Maya by imposing itself on Brahman acquires some reality and it lends itself to the individual so long as the illusion lasts.

  • For whom is the experience valid, real?
  • For an illusory unreal being cannot put on reality and suffer from a real  bondage or escape from it by a real act of evasion or self-extinction.
  • It can only seem real to some real self.
  • In this case the real self has become subject to Maya.
  • It must be the consciousness of Brahman projecting into Maya or the being of Brahman that puts forth something into Maya and withdraws again.
  • Or what is this Maya that imposes itself on Brahman.
  • If it is not already in Brahman, where does it come from?
  • For illusion to become real, that reality must come from the Being or  Consciousness of Reality.
  • Again the duality -- Brahman involved in illusion and Brah­man free from it.
  • The only possible answer is, it is a mystery, anirvacanya.

133. Getting rid of absolute unreality and admitting a compro­mise, an answer is possible.   

  • Accepting the idea of the Upanishads of sleep and dream -- illusory subjective world awareness -- here is an answer.
    • For affirmation, Brahman as Self is four-fold.
    • 1. The Self is Brahman.
    • 2. All that is, is Brahman.
    • 3. All that is, is the Self seen by the Self in 4 states of its Being.
    • As man in deep sleep passes into dreams where he experiences self- constructed unstable structures, the Self develops out of a state of massed consciousness its subjective and objec­tive cosmic experience.
    • The One self sees itself as Many; but it is subjective.
    • There is a reality of subjective experience of a real Being, but no objective universe.

134. Nowhere do the Upanishads say the three-fold condition is unreal. 

  • It is constantly affirmed that all that is, is Reality.
    • That emphatic assertion leaves no room for an illusory Maya.
    • Taking this four-fold status of the Self, we get either an illusionary creation or creative Self-knowledge.  
      • i) Superconscient state where there is no subject or object.
        •  
          • ii) A luminous trance in which superconscience becomes amassed consciousness.
          • iii) subjective state of being
          • iv) objective status of being.

135. The sleep state and dream state seem to be figurative names.  

  • It is through these states that the surface consciousness passes out of the perception of objective things into the inner subliminal and the superior supramental or overmental status.
    • There it sees the supraphysical realities of dream or vision.
    • It is through the subliminal and this superconscient condi­tion we can pass into the supreme superconscience of the highest state of self being.
    • Making the transition not through trance but the waking state, we become aware of the Omnipresent Reality.
    • There need be no perception of Maya or Illusion.
    • There is only experience in the transition from Mind to Beyond so that our mental structure ceases and another is substituted for it.
    • In this state it is possible to be awake to all states of being which sees Reality everywhere.
    • The mind, while  plunging by trance into sleep-state or passing abruptly into Superconscience, during its passage can be seized by a sense of unreality.
    • It passes by subjective abolition of them into the supreme superconscience.
    • This sense is the justification of a world created by Maya. But this is not conclusive or binding.

136. None of the above arguments are conclusive.  

  • They do not show illusion is inevitable.
    • Nor do they close the gap between Reality and Illusion.
    • They endeavour to show the coexistence of Reality and Illu­sion.
    • They erect one contradiction to destroy another contradic­tion.
    • It reduces to a self-contradictory dual status of conscious­ness of One to annul a self-contradictory dual status of being of One.
    • A phenomenal truth of multiplicity of the One is annulled by setting up a conceptual falsehood in the One, creating an unreal multiplicity.
    • The self-aware pure existence of One imagines infinite multiple unaware beings suffering, doomed to salvation in a single file.

137. Maybe our original foundation was incomplete.  

  • Reality of immutable oneness supporting dynamic diversity is what we think of.
    • The dynamis brings out in relief the immutable oneness.
    • If Brahman consciousness can be dual, its self-experience can also be dual.
    • Then the cosmic consciousness is not an illusion but a truth of the Absolute.
    • This may be more tenable logically.
    • Shankara's philosophy may be called qualified illusionism.
    • This affirms a qualified reality for Maya.
    • A distinction is made between two orders of reality, abso­lute reality and temporal reality.  
    • As the argument develops, what was conceded as truth turns out to be all the time illusion.

138. The gulf between mind's ignorance and supreme Truth disables themind from discovering the true connection between tran­scendent Reality and Cosmic Reality.  

  • In a higher status of consciousness, the disability disap­pears. 
    • To condemn the universe ultimately as unreal, an imposition of the Formless, will not stand scrutiny.
    • The pot that is fashioned out of earth and returns to it is not the less real even after its disappearance.
    • Time is not necessarily cancelled out of existence by time­less Eternity. It is not a relation of contradiction but one of dependence.

139. Similarly the reasonings that cancel the dynamics of the Absolute are difficult to accept.

140. At the basis of the refusal to accept the universe as real, is the experience of the Reality as immutable. 

  • The universe being the result of dynamis in movement, can be regarded as a contradiction of a static Reality.
    • There is no reason why we should not conceive of a Reality which is at once static and dynamic. Also there is no reason why it should not be simultaneous.
    • On the contrary, status of being, form of being are necessary to kinesis of being.
    • The eternal status and eternal dynamis are both true of Reality.

141. Action does not bind Reality, the eternal, the Purusha, the Psychic or true being.   

  • It binds only the surface personality.
    • All is one Being, one Consciousness, one even in infinite multiplicity and there is no need to bisect it into Reality and Maya.

142. An intuition intensely aware of the inmost Reality and a vigorous rational intelligence in conflict is seen in Shan­kara.  

  • Reason has to affirm the reality of phenomenal existence.
    • Passing beyond phenomenon to Reality, it still exists, but is unreal to our consciousness.
    • Shankara resolves it by obliging the reason to recognise its limits and to acquiesce in the soul's intuition of Reality.
    • He supports it by a dialectic which ends by dissolving the whole cosmic edifice.
    • This is his escape imposed on the mind by Maya.
    • His position is:
    • There is a self-existent Transcendence.
    • There is a world only phenomenal.
    • The Reality manifests to the phenomenal world as Self and Ishwara.
    • The Ishwara by his Maya constructs this world.
    • This phenomenon is imposed by Maya on the superconscient Reality.
    • Brahman, the Reality, appears in the phenomenal world as Self of the living individual.
    • When the individuality is dissolved by intuitive knowledge, the phenomenal being is released into self-being.
    • By this release it is extinguished in the Reality.
    • But the world continues to exist as the Mayic creation of the Ishwara.

143. This is an arrangement of ideas that opens a way out but gives no solution.  

  • Ishwara is not a phenomenon of Maya, he is real.
    • If the individual has the power of self-discovery, he has a truth of   Transcendence.
    • So, it is an ignorance of self and world that has to be overcome, not an illusion.

144. As the Transcendence is suprarational, the mystery of the universe is also suprarational. 

  • If it is otherwise, it would not be insoluble by intellectu­al reason.
    • To penetrate the mystery we have to pass beyond the intel­lect.
    • It is the intellectual reason that crystallizes and perpetu­ates a contradiction by creating its opposite or dividing concepts -- Brahman, Self, Ishwara, .....
    • If Brahman alone is real, the division of these concepts must disappear.
    • In Brahman Consciousness the divergences cannot exist.
    • The divisions of reason may be a reality, a reality of manifold Oneness.
    • The Buddha discovered the principle of construction and the way of  release.
    • Shankara went beyond to the suprarational mystery, saw that ultimately the world must be suprarational mystery; but he posited an unreal reality to the world.
    • To know the real truth of the world, it must be seen from the suprarational awareness.
    • To a self-creative supreme consciousness, the world cannot be incomprehensible.

145. If the Reality alone exists, then the universe is real. 

  • If it does not reveal in its forms the Reality it is, that is because it is a progressive self-expression our conscious­ness cannot yet see in its essential significance.
    • In this sense, we can say the Universe is That and not That.
    • All finites are in their spiritual essence the Infinite.
    • If the universe that is a manifestation is not needed for the Reality, it does not also need illusion.
    • The Absolute can have no need for anything. It cannot be coerced to create but it cannot also be prevented to create as it chooses.
    • The Absolute manifest in Timelessness can manifest itself in Time.
    • Even if the universe is only a phenomenal reality, still it is a phenomenon of Brahman.
    • The imputation of unreality is superfluous. All needed distinction is in  Time.

146. The one thing that can be unreal reality is our individual separativeness. 

  • This sense is pragmatically necessary for our surface per­sonality.
    • Stepping back into infinite consciousness, the individual has no separate reality.
    • The world would be unreal only if it were itself images without substance of being.

147. Maya creates more difficulties than it solves.  

  • It does not solve the problem of existence; it renders it insoluble.
    • Here the knowledge that frees us no less than ignorance binds us.
    • The bondage and release were only appearances.
    • Even the spiritual experience may turn out to be illusion.
    • Our experience of Self, Brahman lose their base since it rests on one aspect of illusion.
    • The intellect that arrived at unreality will question the reality of Self.
    • The Buddhists did not hesitate to do this not only to God but to Self and   Brahman.

148. Maya solves no issue. It shows the individual a way out.  

  • There is a less drastic nullity of an ignorance misappre­hending the real.
    • Otherwise, if the beings of whom Brahman is the self are illusory, its selfhood is not valid.
    • The experience 'I am That' is vitiated for there is no 'I'.
    • The experience 'I am He' is doubly ignorant because there is no 'He'.
    • A real solution needs our existence and world existence to be true and in their relation to That.

149. That knowledge which justifies our ignorance and illusion and cures them is the highest one.

150. A single decisive spiritual experience may undo a whole edifice of reasonings.  

  • Yet all spiritual experiences are experiences of the Infi­nite.
  • There are a hundred ways of approaching the Supreme Reality.
  • One passes into the ineffable of which no report can be given to the  mind.
  • All these definitive culminations can be considered penul­timate.
  • Is passing into pure immobile self-existence or this Nirvana a penultimate one?
  • Or is it the final and absolute realisation?
  • It is possible to travel beyond by a greater negation or a greater affirmation -- to extinguish self in Non-Being or to pass through the  double experience of cosmic consciousness and Nirvana of world    consciousness in the One Existence to a greater Divine Union and Unity which holds both these reali­sations in a vast, integral Reality.
  • It is said beyond the duality and non-duality there is That.
  • A consummating experience which proceeds by the exceeding and elimination of all other possible but lesser experiences is, as a step towards the Absolute, admissible.
  • A Supreme experience which affirms and includes the truth of all spiritual experience gives to each its own absolute, integralises all knowledge and experience in a supreme reality, might be the one step  farther that is at once a largest illuminating and transforming Truth of all  things and a highest infinite Transcendence.
  • The Brahman, the supreme Reality, is That which being known, all is  known. To the illusionist it is That, being known, all becomes unreal and an incomprehensible mystery.
  • In this other experience, the Reality being known, all assumes its true significance, its truth to the Eternal and Absolute.

151. All truths are valid.

  • All philosophies have their value.
  • At a certain stage mind loses its feeling of the definitiveness of theseviews to rise to a catholic view.
  • At this point it realises the unreality of all.
  • This 'all' becomes a universal unreality to the mind.
  • As the mind falls into a negativing purity of an absolute experience, only a silent Absolute remains.
  • In the passage of mind from mental to overmental cognition, this many-sided unity is the leading experience.
  • Standing on the border between Overmind and Supermind, and looking back, manifestation is a singular and mighty harmo­ny.

152. We should explore this harmony.

  • Excluding the illusionist, we are left with Ignorance and knowledge.

153. The question is, 'What is Reality?'

  • We must distinguish between essential reality and phenomenal reality.
  • Our senses create misleading expressions.
  • They say the earth is flat.
  • To the scientist, mind is a subjective result of matter.
  • To the psychologist, even Matter may be a field of mind.
  • A further view of self and spirit.
  • In this deeper search, mind and matter may be lesser truths.

154. Mind cuts things into pieces.

  • An original consciousness would see the world as a whole.
  • If that consciousness sees only unreality in the world, it could not have any reason for maintaining it in Time.
  • It maintains it because it is based on realities.
  • To the greater consciousness, the finite would reveal as a power of theInfinite.

155. An original and ultimate consciousness would be a conscious­ness of the Infinite and necessarily unitarian in view.

  • It would see the essence of things.
  • Reason holds that truth must be empty of any conflict.
  • Essence and phenomenon of essence are complimentary and not contradictory.
  • The phenomenon manifests the essence.
  • Creation raises no problem and that is what is expected in an action of the Infinite.
  • Problems are created by the finite intellectual reason.

156. The impression of limitation is created by the infinite.

  • The Absolute does not permit limitation of any description.
  • This impression is illusory, not the finite nor the Infi­nite.

157. The Absolute has to be approached by experience.

  • It can be approached by the absolute negation of existence.
  • It can be approached through an absolute affirmation of all the fundamentals of our existence.
  • Through an absolute of Light and knowledge, of Love and Beauty,through Force, Peace or Silence, the Absolute can be approached. It can be approached through an absolute of being, or of consciousness, or of power of being or of delight of being, or a supreme experience in which these things become inex­pressibly one.
  • The individual need only deny his small separate ego exist­ence.
  • He can approach the Absolute through a sublimation of his spiritual individuality, taking up the cosmos into himself and transcending it.
  • He may negate himself altogether, but it is still the indi­vidual who by self-exceeding enters the Absolute.
  • By sublimation of his being, consciousness, delight, he may enter the Absolute.
  • On the path of affirmation, there is a status of manifesta­tion nearest to the Absolute that can be reached by entering into Cosmic Consciousness where all is in each and each in all, where oneness and multiplicity are in perfect harmony -- a supreme status of manifestation.
  • The Absolute is the ineffable overtopping and underlying and immanent and essential in all we call existence and non-existence.

158. The Absolute is the supreme reality.

  • A distinction is made between being and existence.
  • They say being is real, existence is unreal.
  • If what exists is form of Being and substance of Being, this conclusion is not valid.
  • It would be valid only if it were a form of Non-Being, asat, created out of the Void, sunya.
  • The states of existence through which we enter into Absolute must be real as an unreal path cannot lead to reality.
  • What issues from the Absolute, what the Eternal manifests must have a reality.
  • A manifestation of the real must be real.
  • Nothing can appear in Time unless it has a basis in timeless Reality.
  • If my self and spirit are real, my thoughts, etc. that issue out of them must be real.
  • It can be reconciled saying the timeless and time are different orders of reality.
  • All manifestation depends on being, also upon consciousness.
  • Even the Inconscient is a status and power of consciousness.
  • So too, the Superconscient is consciousness taken up by it into an absolute of being.
  • There is also a status of the Supreme in which no distinc­tion can bemade between being and consciousness.
  • For the force of being and force of consciousness are too much onethere.
  • It is the status of the Supreme Ishwara; its force of being is the dynamis of the Absolute.

159. But unreality is a fact of cosmic existence.

  • It is in the power of Mind to conceive of things unreal.
  • Our consciousness is a mixture of true and false.
  • The structure it builds is not so much an unreality as a half comprehension.
  • If this world is evolutionary, if our knowledge is a half ignorance, agreater manifestation is possible. 
  • Our mind insists on a standard of actuality, restricted to material universe.
  • In a manifestation of Time, other realities may be constant­ly emerging.
  • Our mind takes the unrealised reality as unreality.
  • This is due to limitation of ignorance, a problem of cosmic ignorance.
  • As our material world arises out of Inconscience, our igno­rance itself is something that has appeared out of the Inconscience. 
  • The mystery is not of an original illusion but of the origin of Ignorance and Inconscience and the relation between knowledge and Ignorance tothe original Superconscience.

Chapter VII   The Knowledge and the Ignorance

160. We found the seven principles of existence are one in es­sence.

  • For matter is nothing but a status of Spirit, and so are other principles.
  • The Light, the Sound is one; their action is sevenfold.

161. The world is based on original Inconscience.

  • We have seen that in the seven principles, there is no need for this Ignorance.
  • A universe free of Ignorance is conceivable.
  • The Vedic seers conceived of such a world.
  • They too found our world a world of darkness, justifying man's actual existence.

162. The key word of the ideal creation is a plenary self-consciousness and self-possession in the infinite Soul and a perfect oneness.

  • The key word of creation is an original inconscience devel­oping into a limited, divided self-consciousness, an original inert subjection to a blind self-existent Force developing in life into a self-conscious being to establish the reign of will and knowledge.
  • The Inconscient to our perceptions is the beginning and the end.
  • The soul appears as a foreigner.
  • If not an accident, it is perhaps a mistake.

163. Only an absolute idealist stung into indomitable enthusiasm can live up to this ideal, in case it is valid.

  • Most turn away from it.
  • The consistent materialist seeks a short-lived power.
  • The religionist seeks it in the other world.
  • The philosophic mystics seek Nirvana in the Absolute.
  • Since there are two sides, the reconciliation of the Veda must be possible.
  • The millennium, the vision of the Alwars, the Apocalypse are all out of this hope.
  • We have arrived by the train of our reasoning, that this need be no more than an error of the sense mind.
  • There is a rational basis for victory because the lower terms contain the seeds of self-exceeding.

164. The co-existence of Knowledge and Ignorance is left out of our scope.

  • Admittedly we start from the opposite of divine Truth.
  • This Ignorance has its roots in the nature of Mind.
  • But Mind is a universal principle.
  • Only when the Mind separates itself from its higher origin, it becomes Ignorance.

165. There is a master clue in discovering the origin of Igno­rance.

  • Buddha refused to consider it.
  • Ignorance cannot be understood is their position.
  • To them the nature of original Existence is undiscoverable.
  • Their concern is how to get rid of it, not to understand its origin. 
  • We cannot remain satisfied.
  • This is the root question that cannot be avoided.
  • It is always the business of man to think and know.
  • Man has to pursue the signs, continue thinking till the veil is rent.

166. The first origin of Ignorance is beyond us as we live in Ignorance.

  • It is true of all things and it will land us in agnosticism.

167. The distinction between knowledge and Ignorance begins with Rig Veda.

  • Knowledge here is consciousness of Truth, citti.
  • Ignorance is unconsciousness of the Truth, acitti.

168. In the Vedantic thought, the original terms change into Vidya and Avidya.

  • Vidya is the knowledge of the One.
  • Avidya is the knowledge of (the many) the Many.
  • Knowledge of Many is darkness, knowledge of the One is a greater darkness.

169. This leads to a fine excess of logic.

  • As the One cannot become Many and does not become Many, another principle like Mind should have entered and created an illusion.

170. Let us return to the original Vedantic conception.

  • This obliges us to withdraw from the conception of Maya.
  • This powerful obsession can be removed only when we fathom the true nature of Ignorance and knowledge.
  • If these two are original powers of consciousness, illusion pursues us.
  • No dialectical discussion will offer the solution.
  • A penetration of facts of consciousness -- on the surface and below the surface -- alone yields results.

171. Dialectics will not reach the solution.

  • Intellectual statement is an account to our intelligence only.
  • What we have to see is the nature of our consciousness.
  • Being is no doubt the object of enquiry but we can approach it only through consciousness.

172. In us consciousness seems to be identical with the Mind.

  • Along with Mind there is life, body and spirit. But Mind is ignorant.

173. If the highest Reality and ignorant Mind alone exist, we have to accept Avidya or Maya. Then Mind would be the ignorant consciousness of a soul that is part of Maya.

  • If Brahman is essentially one in self-awareness, this cannot be.
  • If Brahman can divide itself, a duality arises.
  • Maybe, then, we have to accept One becoming Many or Many becoming One.
  • If that is acceptable, Maya is not needed.
  • We may then accept the Infinite and Eternal capable of many formsincluding Inconscience.

174. If Mind alone is real, the real world makes for knowledge.

  • Mind has a power for truth.
  • It starts with Ignorance and makes for knowledge.
  • Matters and Life may be forms of realities.
  • Spirit may have secret supernal realities.
  • All depends upon the Supreme Consciousness and its relation to Mind and Inconscience.

175. All changes when we penetrate the consciousness and unite them in the Omnipresent Reality.

  • In our world unity governs; but multiplicity is a fact.
  • Below the surface there is no binding dualism.
  • All multiplicity resolves into manifoldness of one Being.
  • Pain can pass into pleasure, vice versa, and both can re­solve into Ananda.
  • Weakness means Force holding back its power.
  • Fundamentally, Ignorance would be dependent on knowledge, a limitation of knowledge.

176. To know, we have to dissolve ignorant, self-willed intellect.

  • Its fundamental fact is consciousness is power and it has 3 ways.
  • First it is all embracing, second, an extreme opposition to Truth, and third, a compromising Ignorance.

177. If Ignorance and Knowledge are two independent powers, they would go up to the Absolute.

  • Even an absolute evil may gain currency.
  • If Ignorance is a limitation of knowledge, then a subor­dinate role opens up, a role of revealing knowledge con­cealed in it.

Chapter VIII   Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance

178. Ignorance trying to turn to knowledge is our normal status.

  • Memory links together our experiences and relates them to the one and the same individual entity.
  • This stand is based on our existence in the succession of Time and accepts process as the key to essential Truth.
  • Process is mere utility.
  • The truth lies not in the process but in the consciousness and Beingbehind.

179. Memory will give us the key to our conscious existence.

  • There are two applications of the mind, memory of self and memory of experience.
  • Memory says, 'I am now. I was in the past, I shall be in future.'
  • Memory tries to render the eternity of the conscious being in terms ofTime.
  • The sense of persistent continuity of memory can extend into a conviction of eternity.

180. The conviction may be true or a hallucination.

  • Death and cessation are only an intellectual conception to us. So too is the idea of conscious eternity.

181. Our surface mind cannot solve these questions.

  • The belief in our immortality is a faith; the belief of mortality is also a faith.
  • The materialist cannot prove that consciousness ends with death.
  • The one great fact is the very nature of our mind is Igno­rance.
  • If real existence is a temporal eternity, then mind does not know the real being.
  • If real existence is a time transcending eternity, mind is still more ignorant.

182. If mind is all, we cannot be anything more than Ignorant.

  • If there is a power of consciousness which can look on Time, then there are two powers, knowledge and Ignorance, vidya and avidya of Vedanta. 
  • From the Vedantic view, we must view ourselves not as dual consciousness but as one consciousness with a double phase.

183. The divine consciousness is not shut up either in Light or darkness, but holds the immutable One and the mutable Many in one eternal all-relating, all-uniting self-knowledge.

184. Mind can only have direct consciousness of the self in the moment of its present being.

  • It makes up for its deficiency by memory and other devices.
  • The one thing that is not a device is direct self-consciousness of thepresent moment.

185. The present and past self-consciousness are tricks of the mind.

  • Behind the mind there is a stable consciousness which knows Time andTimelessness.
  • We can become aware of it when we draw back.
  • First, we see its immobile status. If that alone becomes real, it becomes a dream.
  • This self-absorption is one action of consciousness as the self-dispersion. The real self is capable of both. This is the supreme Soul, Self, and Being, para purusha, paramatman, parabrahman of the Gita.
  • So far we considered mind and memory in regard to self-consciousness of the mind in Time.
  • Considering them with regard to self-experience as well, the results will be richer.
  • So far we have seen, an eternal conscious Being free from Time, supporting action in Time.
  • As the mental entity does not observe his essential self, he puts the aspect of fleeting and uncertain upon fleeting and uncertain things.
  • In reality, he is always the Eternal, for he is himself whoexperiences Time.

186. Time is a bank of conscious existence turned into values of experience and action.

  • The surface mental being uses it as coin of mental which he creates.
  • Ignorance is a utilisation of Being's self-knowledge in such a way as to make it valuable for Time experience and valid for Time activity.
  • What is not coined remains unknown.
  • Our surface being is only the deeper eternal self in us adventuring inTime.

 Chapter IX   Memory, Ego and Self-Experience

187. The direct self consciousness is aware of the Self in its essence featureless, relationless behind the mentality.

188. Those who live on the surface find what is behind unreal and by the same process, those who do draw back into the real Self consider the surface life unreal.

189. Surface consciousness constantly shifts and changes by its own modification and by the external changes.

190. Even the objective and the external is known to the mind only as subjective experience.

  • Memory plays a role here. Memory is the mediator between sense mind and coordinating Intelligence.

191. There are four elements of mental function:

  • object, act, occasion, subject.
  • The object is always a wave of conscious being, anger, hunger, etc.
  • The act is mental observation and conceptual valuation of this movement.
  • E.g., in anger either one loses himself in anger or observes "I am angry."
  • An analysis of 4 elements:
  • Object -- action -- occasion -- subject
  • Anger -- analysis -- ego -- mental person

witness

  • "The Being presenting itself through the senses of the mind is matter."
  • Mental Person -- Being
  • Being presenting to itself -- Anger
  • Mind -- analysis
  • ego or witness -- sense
  • This is the process of creation taking place everywhere and here too in the mind.

192. In self-observation there is not the detachment of the mental person from the mental act but a partial detachment of the object from the act. When the mental person is fully de­tached from the mental act, first ego and then the witness self reveals to me.

  • The witness self can observe, can detach itself, can become or can be immutable.

193. The immutable Self and that which becomes are not two selves. They are one and the same. To the direct conscious­ness it is immutable.

  • To the sense perception and mind perception it is a flux.

194. Memory is that act of thought-mind which can repeat and link.

  • Mind is basically divisive. It cannot hold its actions except by divisive Time.
  • When you are angry, you sense it.
  • When you observe it, you perceive it.
  • Neither is memory. Memory comes in only when you recall a past act. That becomes possible because mind can repeat a past act and link it to the present consciousness.

195. Consciousness or events are not divided.

  • It is divided for our observation whose scope is narrow. Mind resorts to the device of memory to bridge the past with the present.

196. Memory is a great indispensable factor in the process of mindless inconscient energy evolving into self-conscient existence till the coordinating mind of knowledge and will is able to possess and use all the material of self-experience.

197. Ego is a coordinating mind of knowledge which senses, feels, remembers, thinks.

  • It retains its first constant intuitive perception. Reason in man is the overt form of Ego.

198. Mind sense is the basis; memory is the thread on which experiences are strung by the self-experiencing mind. Double personality, hypnosis and past memory explain the role of the co-ordinating mind.

199. The ego-sense is the first step to self-knowledge.

  • Mind in forms is aware of all its superficially conscious becoming asrelated to an 'I'. That I is aware of becoming and its superior being. Reason aids the 'I' to coordinate and prompts it to limit its self-experience only to becom­ing.
  • Or, it may limit the self-experience to being only.

200. Ego is separative. Self-knowledge based on it cannot be complete. Ego's knowledge is only of the surface.

  • Secondly, its knowledge is only of himself and excludes the world.
  • Also the true relation between being and becoming is worked out here by Ignorance, not knowledge.
  • Hence, mind's effort at knowledge is a trenchant cutting away of one part, an absorption into being or becoming.
  • An integral knowledge is the aim here.

201. To know we have to go in from the surface. Surface life is a diminished representation of our greater existence.

  • To find the immobile self in us, the mental vital activities are to be quieted.
  • But the dynamic parts are also diminished figures of our greater existence.
  • Out of our surface evolution an immeasurably wider and more subtle perception, a life energy with a greater dynamism, a subtle-physical substance with a larger and finer receptivi­ty is building.
  • Psychic is there behind the occult activities.
  • Ego is only a false substitute.
  • The psychic holds the self-experience and world-experience.
  • For a true basis of knowledge, we must see both our self and nature as a whole on the surface and depths.

SUMMARY

 object  --  a wave of conscious being like hunger, anger, etc.

 act  --   mental observation and conceptual evaluation of this movement.

  occasion

  subject

Chapter X   Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge

202. Knowledge belongs to a four-fold order.

  • i) knowledge by identity, native to the occult self in things.
  • ii)  a derivative knowledge by direct contact associated at its roots with the knowledge by identity (knowledge by intimate direct contact).
  • iii) knowledge by separation from the object of observation with some direct contact and partial identity (knowledge by separative direct contact).
  • iv) complete separative knowledge relying on a machinery of indirect  contact (wholly separative knowledge by indirect contact).

203. Direct awareness of our essential existence (by identity).

  • Pure fact of self and being.
  • Of nothing else in the world our surface being has  the same kind of awareness.
  • In an uprush of wrath or other passions we become those passions.
  • Ordinarily there is a double movement of the thinker sepa­rate from the thought. ---
  • By a simultaneous separation and partial identification, by an inner detachment, we can liberate ourselves from mind nature and become the witness or ruler.
  • This is double knowledge of subjective movement.
  • In this subjective experience, three movements meet, 1) a certain kind of knowledge by identity, 2) a knowledge by direct contact, 3) a separative knowledge.

204. To separate the thinker from thought is difficult.

  • It can be done only in retrospect.
    • Thinking and conscious direction of mind's action can be partially achieved simultaneously.
    • The knowledge of internal movements is of double nature, separation and direct contact.
    • Our knowledge is always based on direct (contact) touch, a kind of  identity.
    • The separative attitude is the method of our reason.
    • All our observable movements are both ways, the separative and the intimate.
    • We feel the body as part of us.
    • The mind is separate; it can exercise a detached control.
    • This gives to our normal knowledge an intimacy, immediacy and directness though somewhat superficial.
    • This is absent in our knowledge of outside, because it is of not-self.
    • An instrument of sense is to be used.

205. Our knowledge of external things is entirely on a separative basis, anindirect perception.

  • Here, not only identification is lacking, direct contact is absent.
    • In the external objects or persons, the only evidence is through senses.
    • This way, we can afford to know very little.
    • A sense mind intuition, a vital intuition, an intuition of perception and the understanding intelligence, intervene to equate the sensations with the  object.
    • Reason plays a similar role. Still the intuitive interpreta­tion is inconclusive.
    • Hence the significance of reason that can be relied upon.

206. Our world of knowledge is imperfect.

207. Power has come with knowledge.

208. An imperfect knowledge cannot know the true use of power.

209. As there is little self-knowledge, our imperfection becomes worse.

210. Self-knowledge and self-mastery are wanting.

211. Our surface is of mixed knowledge and ignorance.

212. As our means are indirect, it is naturally so.

213. Our concentration on the surface leads to this imperfection.

  • Our consciousness has to defend its ego-centric individuali­sation against 1) the deeper infinity of self and 2) the cosmic infinite.
    • Our body provides the gates through which the ego can relate to the outer world.
    • Our mind supplements it.
    • Knowledge so gained is objective.

214. Self-imprisonment and self-fortification are the cause of our ignorance.

  • The walls of ego are to be broken by our being.
    • From a knowledge of indirect contact, we have to go to knowledge by identity.

215. The inward self-finding makes the outward cosmic self-finding possible.

  • All secret initiatives, our intuitions are inside.
    • They are conditioned by the outermost nature.
    • We have to discover the part played by both in our building.
    • The surface is full of vague dots or figures of precision.
    • Even introspection is only a sum of these precise figures.
    • The surface is very much conditioned by the innumerable versions of the ego.
    • The surface is organised self-deception added to an organ­ised self- ignorance.

216. Different from the surface beings, there is a larger mental being, vital being and even a subtle-physical being inside us.

  • The contradictions of the surface are due to mutually dis­cordant mental vital tendencies.
    • Inside, those contradictions tend to lessen and disappear.
    • In the subliminal we see the power of harmonisation.
    • Therefore the entry into the inner being is essential.

217. In essence, the knowledge of the inner being and the surface are thesame.

  • Knowledge by identity becomes clearer inside than on the surface.
    • We can possess the whole self-expression of Purusha here.
    • A complete control and understanding are possible.
    • The vital can be mastered if the psychic or mental is strong.
    • The subliminal is still movement of the knowledge-Ignorance.
    • As knowledge is great in the subliminal, ignorance too can be great.

218. The subliminal has a larger direct contact with the world.

  • Telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight belong to the sublim­inal.

219. The subliminal has the power to enter into direct contact of consciousness -- a revealing intimation, a self-communicat­ing impact of thoughts, feelings, etc.

  • The inner being acts through this faculty.
  • Sometimes we see this phenomenon in our surface being.

220. On the surface we live ignorant of others.

  • In the subliminal we are conscious of others as well as have powers over them.

221. Our dealings with impersonal forces change.

  • Their centre is the psychic.

222. Just now the relation of the subliminal to the true knowl­edge concerns us.

  • Its main character is knowledge by direct contact of con­sciousness with its object or the consciousness with other consciousness.
    • In truth, this is a secret knowledge by identity, a transla­tion into separate awareness of things.
    • In the indirect surface cognition it is the friction of living beings with existence that awakens the sparks of conscious knowledge.
    • In the subliminal it is the contact that sets in action a pre-existent secret knowledge and brings it to the surface.
    • Consciousness is one in the subject and object.
    • The pre-existent knowledge comes to the surface as knowledge acquired; in the subliminal it arises as things seen.
    • The senses serve as gates for the surface mind to contact the outside but no such ready-made opening to its own inner being is available.

223. The subliminal inner being breaks its boundaries of individ­uality and enters into cosmic consciousness.

  • The subliminal is limited from the cosmic by the subtler sheaths of our being, just as the gross being is separated by the physical sheath from universal Nature.
    • The subliminal has a formation which projects beyond all sheaths to form a circumconscient through which the ego dissolves to become the world being.
    • This opens one to universal Energy.
    • There is a direct awareness of universal Nature and being.
    • A greater unity with the being of others is there.
    • No longer the cosmic being is an idea, it is a certainty.

224. Cosmic consciousness is knowledge by identity.

  • Cosmic consciousness is a separation in identity, a contact in identity.

225. If identity is of the consciousness, on the side of action energies move in masses.

  • The individual is a receptacle for the cosmic forces.
    • The surface is unaware of it; the inner being knows through a direct  contact.

226. For a complete knowledge by identity, one has to go beyond the subliminal to the superconscient.

  • In the supreme timeless Existence, existence and consciousness are one.
    • Consciousness can exist with no overt operations or signs.
    • Consciousness is intrinsic in being, self-existent, not abolished by inaction or absorption.
    • In the supreme timeless status, it is not a separate reality but a pure, self-awareness in existence.
    • There is no need or operation of knowledge.
    • It is self-evident to itself.
    • If this is true of pure existence, it is also true of all primal All-Existence.
    • This is not by an act of knowledge.
    • Thus conscious of its timeless self-existence, the Spirit, the Being is aware in the same way of Time-Existence and of all that is in Time.
    • This is the essential awareness by identity.

227. The spiritual identity translates itself into our way as 'He who sees allexistences in the Self,' 'He who sees Self in all existences,' 'He in whom the Self has become all exist­ences', which are inclusion, indwelling, identity.

228. Drawing back, tertiary powers of spiritual knowledge take their first origin.

  • The spirit's infinite self-experience moves between sheer identity and a multiple identity.

229. A separative knowledge arises when the sense of separation overpowers identity.

  • At first it is not self and not-self; but self and other-self.
    • Knowledge of identity is replaced by knowledge by inter­change. Finally, identity disappears; and there is play of being with being, consciousness with other consciousness. Identity underlies, but is not experienced.
    • There is no feeling of self meeting self, but mutuality is there.
    • Separateness is not yet, a complete otherness and ignorance arise.
    • Here the original knowledge is curtailed by division.
    • It loses its primal, essential completeness.
    • It effects closeness, not oneness.
    • The power of inclusion of the object in the consciousness is there.
    • But it is an inclusion of now externalised object.
    • It has to be made an element of ourselves by a dwelling of consciousness upon the object, a taking possession of it as part of its existence.
    • The power of penetration is there, but does not lead to identity.
    • The knower by a direct contact is aware of the world around him.
    • This is the origin of knowledge by direct contact of consciousness with its object.
    • * This is normal to our inner being, but foreign to the surface. (Is this the separate direct contact?)

230. The separative ignorance is a play of divided being working upon areality of underlying unity and arriving at imperfect results.

  • Knowledge by identity belongs to the higher hemisphere.
  • Knowledge by direct contact belongs to the highest supraphysical mental planes of consciousness.
  • It can be an element in all the supraphysical.
  • Its main instrumentation is the subliminal self.

231. On the surface a division of self and not-self, but no direct means of knowing it.

  • Senses mediate. Reason is added.

232. Inconscience is the inverse of the Superconscience.

  • Even in this inconscience there is a concealed identity.
    • In all material things there is an involved Real-Idea.

233. We can now know the stages of evolution from involution.

  • The material existence has a physical and not a mental individuality but there is a subliminal Presence.
    • It is the one Conscious in unconscious things that determines the operation of its indwelling energies.
    • Human sciences bring plants and material into contact with persons or objects and help their influence become active.
    • These powers and influences are attributes of Being.
    • They are forces of Spirit emerging by Energy.
    • They first open in the submental forms but are unable to communicate or externalise themselves.
    • Due to its immobility, it absorbs contacts.
    • The inconscience still works out by a secret identity; there is still no surface contactual means.
    • That begins with overtly conscious life.
    • This is a growth from inconscience into a limited separative knowledge.

234. The original spiritual Awareness brings out all the inherent powers.

  • First emerges sensations, vital instinct and concealed intuition.
    • Then a life mind manifests.
    • Emotion vibrates out and seeks an interchange with others.
    • Last arises the surface conception, a thought, reason, etc.
    • Still consciousness cannot act directly on consciousness, no knowledge by identity.
    • Only the subliminal brings a little of deeper methods to the surface.
    • Only by opening to the inner being, a direct intimate awareness can be added to the indirect one.
    • The inmost soul, the superconscient alone is capable of knowledge by identity.
    • (*) Knowledge by identity -- The Timeless Self in us, the Superconscient.
    • Knowledge by intimate direct contact  -- subliminal
    • Knowledge by separate direct contact -- inner being   (?)
    • Separative knowledge -- Surface
    • Since Ignorance is a phenomenon of the dynamic action of Force of consciousness, this Force aspect deserves inquiry.
    • Force can be still or mobile, but it is the same Brahman in stillness or movement.
    • So, the absolute Brahman or integral Satchidananda cannot be the origin of Ignorance.
    • Multiplicity is not the cause of Ignorance since Brahman is not incapable of containing the hundred.
    • Ignorance rises when Mind separates from Supermind.
    • This too will not hold good as it is Tapas which is common to all.
    • So, the origin of Ignorance is in self-absorption of Conscious-Force in action.
    • Knowledge emerging in concealed consciousness creates error.
    • Vital self-affirmation of ego, en evolutionary process, distorts emerging knowledge.
    • Life affirms good as well as evil.
    • A wrong ego consciousness helps evil expand.
    • Discord created by ego is necessary for the growth of divided being.
    • Ethics controlling through mind will not solve the problem.
    • As split nature creates evil, integration alone can solve it.
    • Spiritual growth into divine nature eliminates evil.

Chapter XI   Boundaries of Ignorance

In this chapter, Sri Aurobindo says man is not a mere body, but a soul that co-exists with souls. In our ignorance we mistake ourselves as our ego,, but our own being is the same as the Being of the Cosmos of which our mind is aware only a little surface - it is subliminal, the being is below the mental cognition - and in a huge part of our being our entire past is buried of which we are not conscious - subconscious. God, the Superconscient, Sachchidananda, Oversoul, are great term s expressing the enormous size of our own being. As these are above our consciousness, we call this Superconscience. We are not aware of any of them, except our egoistic, personal life in the society. Thus, man has developed seven ignorances.  In an attempt to draw a parallel, we can conceive of the social man in business in the context of his customers, his own sales persons, and the wider society.  The shop owner is the profit-motivated little ego. His sales staff are his vital personality, the customer and public are his wider body, the widest society is his God, the oversoul. The running ideas in this chapter are written down below page after page and the commercial version is given alongside in red ink. A businessman trying to rewrite any chapter along these lines will get the parallel into his mind better. This is written as a helpful model. What applies to a businessman applies to anyone else, even a housewife.

page 553

There are four grades of knowledge. Ego has a separative knowledge on the surface. the subliminal below the mind has a wider knowledge of what goes on beyond the reach of ours senses. the intuition has a penetration which the intellect has not. The soul identifies itself with the Super-Conscient. Man is labouring from his separate knowledge to rise to the knowledge of identity with the Superconscient.

The businessman is the profit-motived ego. His wide customer public who knows every little detail of the market is his subliminal personality. His sales people who have an intuitive perception into the customer public are unavailable for the shopkeeper to raise his profit. Their intuitive perception is overlaid by the veil of lifeless relationship among them and with the proprietor. above all, the whole Society is there waiting for him to recognise it, like God, to serve him infinitely.

Waves of being and force, from outside and inside, become stuff of consciousness and formulate mental cognition of Self in Time and Space.

Waves of customer public from outside and urges of ambition and action from inside become the stuff of business consciousness and formulate the selling policy of the ego in Time and Space.

The force of being in him works to prolong his becoming in the future.

The inner urges of ego, dynamism, ambition, greed, and profit motive work to prolong his growth in the future.

All these movements are coordinated by his ego sense.

All these movements are coordinated by his ego-sense.

Ego formulates the habit of response of self-experience to contacts in Nature.

His ego formulates the sales policies of self-experience to public contacts in the society.

The ego-sense turns into ego-idea in the mental consciousness.

His ego-experience in the shop turns into the ego-idea of his policies in his mental consciousness.

The ego is necessary until the true self emerges.

The profit motive is necessary until the true service motive emerges.

Page 554

We are immensely more than what we know ourselves to be.

The size of the customer public is immense, more than what we know our business has. In fact, the whole Society, all over the world is the customer public of our little shop.

Page 555

Our surface being is the crown of our far greater inner being.

Our shop is the crown of our far greater social being.

Page 556

To know of our inner being is the first step of real self-knowledge. (The entry into the inner being leads us to the subliminal mind and permits us to rise above mind to the range of spiritual mind).

To know our thoughts, emotions and attitudes towards the business is an important fist step in reaching the greater depths of our commercial potentiality and ONLY from that appreciation one can have access to the wider local market, or national or international market.

Page 557

Somewhere in our subliminal the much wider, more luminous inner being resides.

Somewhere in our attitudes and motives resides the capacity to fully KNOW what exists outside as a market.

In the same way there is a superconscient part of our total existence in which our highest self resides.

In the same way there is the international market representing our Superconscient Self where lies our greatest opportunity.

Page 558

The vital and physical become conscious only so far as they are enlightened by mind and observable by intelligence.

The staff and customers become live only so far as they are given attention by the owner and observed by his intelligence.

If we draw back, we can discover that life and body have a consciousness of their own.

If we draw back and introspect, we can discover that our staff and the customer public have a consciousness of their own.

Since they are less in possession of themselves, we call it sub-mental, as they carry the stamp of mentality. They are really not subconscious.

As the staff and the customers do not know their own minds, we call them uninformal but they carry the stamp of the social mentality. Really they are NOT ignorant.

The body and the vital do not depend on the mind for their own responses.

The staff and the public do not depend on the shop owner for their own commercial response.

They have their own separate reactions to contact.

The staff and customers do have their own commercial perceptions of their selfish good.

Standing back, we see a gradation of awareness different from that of the mind.

When we withdraw from our personality and try to understand the thinking of our employees as well as that of the public, we become aware of another mentality very different from ours.

The true subconscious is other that he vital and physical. It is the inconscient.

The true wider market is not the entire city of ours or even our country. It is the global market.

Page 559

The subliminal self does not have this subconscious character.

Our staff and customers are not ignorant. They are clear headed, well informed, have well-defined opinions.

It is in full possession of mind, life-force, subtle physical sense of things.

They know exactly what the price is in other shops. They know every bit of gossip everywhere.

It has the same capacity of the waking being, and is more sovereign too.

They know about our internal conditions and the external market as much as we know about our shop.

Page 560

There are three elements of our total being.

1) The submental and the subconscient that appear as inconscient.

2) The subliminal comprising the inner being with the psychic supporting them.

3) The waking consciousness, which the subliminal and subconscious throw up. But this is not all.

The market has three types of perceptions.

1) The unthinking and unformed opinion of the public at large that appears fully ignorant.

2) The keen, alert perceptions of our staff and our customers with their native goodness buried in their behaviour.

3) The shop owner's waking consciousness which is the result of or impact of the ignorant public and the intimate customers. But that is not all.

There is something Superconscient to all the three, aware of the supreme highest Reality, God, Spirit, oversoul.

There is something superior to all of our known market that can horizontally extend all over the globe and vertically new-create higher dimensions of the future market.

Page 561

The Spirit; God, Oversoul, are  ultimately our own highest, deepest, vastest, Self.

Global market is ultimately our own highest, deepest, vastest right as market.

It is apparent on its summit or by reflection in ourselves as Sachchidananda creating us and the world.

When we reach the summit of experience or reach it by reflection, it is apparent that that global market is ours, even as we now understand the wider market has created our shop.

This is a real Being, Lord, Creator, Cosmic Self.

This widest Market is Real, really our own, is there for us to possess.

If the subliminal and subconscious can be compared to the sea, the superconscience may be compared to an ether than over-roofs.

If the staff and customers are our base, this greater potential in public is our mental resource and emotional spring.

It is there in the higher ether that we are conscious of our self and spirit, not here by a reflection in the silent mind or by the knowledge of a hidden Being within us.

It is not by sitting with our employees or having an intercourse with our customers that we get a glimpse of our highest possibilities or potentials, but only in the realities of the wider, rarefied heights of the newly created global dimensions that we see it.

We are ignorant of this supreme Self.

We are ignorant of this supreme opportunity.

It is our first capital Ignorance.

Page 562

We exist in Time.

We exist in the changing market.

We believe that birth and death are our beginning and end.

We believe we start with our store and end with our town.

Our real self in the cosmos is the Superconscient that becomes subliminal.

The vision of the wider global market is FULLY reflected in our employees and customers.

Our becoming in Time is wider than our present life.

Our success in our town can be wider than our present sales.

Our ignorance of this is another trust rating ignorance.

The ignorance of the shop owner of this possibility is another frustrating experience to the consultant.

Page 563

Man is ignorant of his Superconscient self, considers his subliminal self as another.

The employer knows NOT the global opportunity for him. To him his employees and customers are other than himself.

Getting into our subliminal consciousness, we find it one with the world, and entering into our Superconscient Self, we see the world is its own manifestation.

When we open to our staff and customers, we see they know all that the commercial world does and by contemplating on the global market expansion, we see it is REALLY a manifestation, a creation of ours.

It is the ego that separates.

It is our own closed mind that makes not eyes blind to this vast storehouse of knowledge and opportunity.

Page 564

As we are ignorant of Time, we are ignorant of Space.

As we are ignorant of our town, so we are ignorant of what they can do by word of mouth to us.

Space, according to one view, is the coexistence of things or souls.

Market can be said to exist in the minds of people.

If the co-existence is there, it is the co-existence in one Being.

If the market exists, it exists in a live field which is truly our expanded personality.

It is the one spiritual Existence displaying its field of movement of its Conscious-Force in its own self as Space.

That market potential is the display of a single man's extended and expanded personality.

The Conscious-Force concentrates in manifold bodies, lives and minds.

The widest market exists concentrated in the lives of people.

The soul presides over one of them.

There is an active opinion for each person.

Our mentality considers this as ourselves and the rest others, as it considers this birth as the only existence.

Our mentality considers our shop as ours and the rest as others.

You cannot know one mentality without knowing the one Mind.

You cannot know your own shop without knowing the universal market.

The world lives in us, but we think we live.

The entire world market is inside our shop, but we see only our shop.

            As we are ignorant of our timelessness, of our Superconscient, of our subliminal and subconscient, so we are ignorant of our universal self. A many-sided Ignorance striving to become all-embracing knowledge is our consciousness.

            As we are ignorant of the opportunity beyond our town, of the global market, of our customers and staff, so we are ignorant of our right and opportunity to expand all over the globe. A many-sided construction striving to become all-embracing accomplishment is our consciousness.

Chapter XII   The Origin of Ignorance

235. Integral Oneness does not permit Ignorance.

  • Ignorance must be part of the movement of the One, knowingly adopted.

236. Jivatman has no ground to deny his capacity of knowing the integralSupreme and the original cause of his own present ignorance.

237. The Unknowable may be a supreme state of Satchidananda.

  • Asat evidently means it.
  • Maybe the Nirvana of Buddha is Asat.

238. Out of Nothingness nothing, not even illusion, can rise.

  • One may argue anything may arise out of Non-Existence.
  • This view negates philosophy that seeks knowledge.
  • If the last word of knowledge is Unknowable, it can only be that being known, all is known.
  • That Unknowable will not destroy what we know, but will enrich it.
  • And That alone can carry a key to the paradoxes of the universe.

239. That in its manifest nature is Satchidananda.

  • The solution for ignorance must be found in the action of consciousness.
  • Since Ignorance is a phenomenon of the dynamic action of Force ofconsciousness, this Force aspect deserves inquiry.
  • Force of Shakti has created this universe.
  • It did so by the power of conscious being dwelling upon itself, andbringing out power of its energy, applying it to its object is really the most positive, dynamic force it has.
  • For us there are two facts, internal and external.
  • Satchidananda does not have this division as he is all himself.
  • Also, in us part of the consciousness is in action, the rest is behind.
  • This division too does not apply to Satchidananda.
  • Tapas is the nature of action of his consciousness as ours, but to him, it is integral Tapas of an indivisible con­sciousness in an indivisible Existence.

240. The rule of this Force in the immobile status arises.

  • The dual status of Brahman, quiescent and creative, is one of the most important distinctions; it is a fact of spiritu­al experience.

241. In passivity we are aware of the universal power or tran­scendental power.

  • Tapas belongs to the status of action.
  • In immobility too there is tapas.
  • Concentration of energy supports action as well as still­ness.

242. Getting back into our own conscious being, our whole being standsbehind any act.

  • A similar truth must apply to the conscious being of the Infinite whose power in silence of status as in creation must also be infinite.

243. It is not a passive Brahman or active Brahman but one Brah­man.

244. There is no opposition between passivity or activity; the opposition lies in relation to the activities of Its con­sciousness.

  • They are Saguna and Nirguna; kshara and akshara.
  • The spiritual-mental being remaining self-absorbed releases silence through which the soul passes in its journey towards the Absolute.
  • There is a greater fulfillment of the integral being where both the silent and dynamic states are liberated and ful­filled in That.

245. We too can possess the passivity and activity with a simul­taneous possession when we get the integral knowledge.

  • What the Integral Brahman possesses, we too can have.

246. The Gita says that the Supreme exceeds the mobile and immo­bile beings.

  • Neither in silence nor in action can Brahman be at all unaware of his absolute being.
  • If it seems otherwise to our experience, it is because we identify witheither one of the statuses.
  • It follows that ignorance cannot have its origin in the absolute Brahman or in integral Satchidananda.
  • Ignorance belongs to a partial action like the body's waking or sleep.
  • This identification of putting all the rest behind is the constituting cause of the Ignorance.
  • Therefore there can be no original, primal Ignorance.
  • Maya, if it be an original power, cannot be akin to igno­rance.
  • Is ignorance inherent in the multiplicity of the souls?
  • We have seen that when we get back there is no wall of division, noIgnorance.

247. Body is the sign of division. It is the beginning for the recovering of unity.

  • Bodies cannot penetrate each other except by a gap in them.
  • Mind can penetrate another mind without hurt or division.
  • Soul can easily merge with another soul.

248. Ignorance and self-limiting division are not inherent in Brahman.

  • Brahman is not the mathematical integer, one, which is incapable of containing the hundred and is therefore less than hundred. He contains the hundred, is one in all hundred.
  • Jivatman is aware of the unity.
  • Multiplicity is therefore not the cause of the ignorance.

---

  • Ignorance, we have seen, comes when mind separates from Supermind.
  • It is a concentration of Tapas in movement of force on the form maintaining it in being which sets up the physical basis of division.
  • But all things are a concentration of Tapas in movement of force upon its object.
  • So, the origin of Ignorance must be sought in some self-absorption ofConscious-Force in action.
  • To us, this takes the appearance of mind identifying itself with the separate movement and also with each of the forms resulting from it.
  • What, then, is the nature of self-forgetful concentration which is the obscure miracle of the universe?

Chapter XIII   Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance

249. Ignorance can only be a subordinate phenomenon, and cannot originate in Brahman.

  • A concentration of separative active consciousness takes place in Prakriti.
  • The Many is one in conscious being with all.
  • Therefore, ignorance is not natural to the consciousness of the soul.
  • Ignorance arises when the Conscious-Force is absorbed in its works.
  • This action cannot be of the whole being, or the whole force of being.
  • Ignorance is Nature's purposeful oblivion of the Self and the All.

250. Concentration of Consciousness, Tapas, is inherent in the infinity of being.

  • It is a self-held, self-gathered dwelling of the eternal Awareness in itself and on itself or on its object.
  • The concentration may be essential or integral.
  • The essential concentration is either the Superconscience or Inconscience.
  • The integral concentration is Satchidananda, the Supramentalconcentration.
  • There is a third multiple concentration and a fourth separa­tive concentration.
  • The multiple concentration is the overmental awareness.
  • The separative concentration is Ignorance.
  • The supreme integrality of the Absolute holds all the four states together.

251. In the very nature of conscious being concentration of self-held dwelling in itself or on itself as object is there.

  • An exclusive concentration is one form of Tapas.
  • In the exclusive concentration there is the holding back of the rest of the knowledge.
  • Holding back is not Ignorance but a wall between can result in Ignorance.
  • By man we do not mean his inner self.
  • That inner self is not ignorant.
  • A limited, practical self-oblivion, not an essential and binding self-ignorance is the nature of this exclusive concentration.
  • At the root it works as Ignorance.

252. The habit of living in the present to the exclusion of the past is a second absorption.

253. All that he forgets is contained in the all-retaining, integral consciousness within him.

254. The actor who forgets himself in the act is another phenome­non of this separative concentration.

255. This is as far as self-forgetfulness can go in the normal active human psychology.

256. In the larger universal consciousness, this is carried to an absolute point in the inconscient material Nature.

257. Even this inconscience is superficial as there is the All-conscient inside it.

  • Though this is entirely phenomenal, it is a complete phenom­enon.
  • Only by an impulsion of evolutionary consciousness into less imprisoned forms can it come back to itself.
  • Nescience in Nature is the complete self-ignorance.
  • It is an involved consciousness and knowledge evolving back to itself, but it is dynamically effective as an Incon­science and an Ignorance.

258. Without Ignorance, the object of manifestation would be impossible.

  • Man in timeless being could not have thrown himself into Time movement.
  • Living in the superconscient or subliminal self, he could not have worked out the relations with the world.
  • From the universal self, he could not evolve that separate action.
  • He has to live in the mind and not the Supermind; otherwise the protecting walls of ignorance would not be built.

259. Ignorance is assumed by the spirit to trace the cycle of self-oblivion and self-discovery for joy.

  • Cosmic manifestation is still possible without Ignorance.
  • Maybe, in that case, it would be a different manifestation, a typal world or something else.
  • This evolving cycle is not possible.
  • It is to find himself in the opposites of his being that Satchidananda puts on ignorance.
  • Not to return to the origin, but to realise the Ananda of Self in other conditions seems to be the aim.
  • Ignorance is a purposeful descent, a divine opportunity, not a fall.

260. Ignorance is not in the soul, but Prakriti.

  • Where in Prakriti does ignorance develop?
  • Not in the infinite being.
  • Not in the Supermind.
  • It is on the plane of mind this putting back of real self-consciousness becomes possible.
  • For Mind is a power of conscious being with the sense of diversity in the front, unity behind.
  • If Mind withdraws from diversity, it goes back to Supermind.
  • If a veil could fall between them, ignorance arises.
  • The Upanishads say that such a veil exists.
  • The veil is constituted by the action of Mind itself.
  • It is the golden lid in the Overmind.
  • This is the last stage of descent of consciousness.

261. Partial action is not division.

  • In order to remove the veil, the conscious Force of being in us uses areverse action of its power of exclusive concen­tration.
  • It quiets the frontal movement, concentrates on the inner being to disclose it.
  • It need not stay in the opposite exclusiveness.
  • It can resume its integral consciousness which includes Purusha and the action of Prakriti, atmasakti.
  • Then it can embrace manifestation free from the separative limitation, free from the forgetfulness of the indwelling Spirit.
  • This way, mind itself can rise to Supermind.

262. Ignorance is really a power of knowledge.

  • This power of limitation is what we should expect in the Infinite.

263. Ignorance is one of the possible poises of the Absolute in manifestation.

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

264. Limitation The problem of evil occupies the mind of man. of knowledge is understandable, not falsehood and evil.

  • The economy of the universe must have found it necessary.
  • We cannot accept chance occurrence.
  • There must be a significance.

265. There can be no absolute of falsehood. It can only be an intermediateproduct.

266. Mental statements are not Truth bodied, pure and nude, but a draped figure.

  • But knowledge rises by an independent birth from our depths where it has a native existence.

267. We can say good and evil exist by true and wrong conscious­ness.

  • We see evil and good resulting in good and evil too.
  • Even pain and suffering are fundamentally the result of an insufficient consciousness-force.
  • The relationship of good and evil is not a mutual dependence but a contradiction.
  • Falsehood and evil have no fundamentality, no power of infinity.

268. Once good emerges, evil too as a rule emerges.

  • Any affirmation makes the negation conceivable.
  • Because conceivable, it is in some way inevitable.
  • They cannot pre-exist in the timeless being.
  • Even in cosmos they can come into being only by limitation of truth and good.
  • Oneness and mutuality prohibit error of self-ignorance.
  • As soon as separateness enters, evil becomes possible.
  • At what juncture do the opposites enter manifestation.

269. Human mind for long knows of the existence of evil in the supraphysical planes.

270. The first source of good and evil would be supraphysical.

271. Forces of good and evil present themselves as powers of universal Nature and belong to the physical, vital and mental planes.

  • These forces are of superhuman measures.
  • Pain and evil cannot attain to the absoluteness.
  • If it does, either it ends or turns into Ananda.
  • Immensity is all they can reach, not infinity.

272. One may think that they may be cosmic principles.

  • They really do not extend beyond the lower supraphysical life planes.
  • 'Prince of Air' suggests it since air belongs to the mid-world.
  • They are not primal powers of the cosmos, but creations of Life and Mind in life.
  • Matter is the first to emerge. Evil and falsehood do not reside there.
  • It is only with the contacts of conscious being that materi­al objects have good or evil influences.
  • The duality of good and evil is absent from Matter.

273. It begins with conscious life and emerges fully with mind in life.

  • In animal life the evil of suffering is there, not moral evil.
  • Apart from the two extremes, in the middle there exists an awakening to the sense of good and evil.
  • It is indispensable to the process of evolution.

274. Where does this awakening proceed?

  • Apart from several other possibilities, the inward, spiritu­al, psychic give the sanction.
  • Traditionally conscience is the inner witness.
  • It is superficial.

275. The psychic has the perception of good and evil.

  • It will not be the same as the mind's.

276. In the surface there are two determining factors.

  • The first is vital, physical consciousness.
  • Next is the pull of material life.
  • As a result there emerges the self-affirming vital and physical individual.
  • This also develops a vital physical ego.
  • These are the two basic facts of the evolutionary emergence.

277. The first appearance of consciousness has the semblance of a miracle.

  • Knowledge is acquired, not as knowledge, but as an inherited capacity.
  • We may conjecture that consciousness may be original incon­science of a mechanical recording.
  • It does not account for the fact that observation turns into ideation.
  • We may have to accept the involved consciousness.
  • In this concealed consciousness, we observe, there is an underlying knowledge or power of knowledge which emerges.
  • The individual animal has to rely on two sources of knowl­edge.
  • A secret Conscious-Force sends up to the surface an intui­tion.
  • The animal does not have this intuition.
  • Under pressure, this intuition manifests of itself.
  • This takes the form of an automatic instinct.
  • This instinct belongs to the race and is imparted at birth.
  • This intuition is unerring.
  • It errs only when the surface interferes or the needed circumstances are not there.
  • The second source of knowledge is the contact with the world.
  • This contact leads to conscious sensation, sense-perception and later intelligence.
  • If there were not the underlying consciousness, the contact would notproduce any perception.
  • The contact stimulates into a feeling and a surface response the subliminal of a being.
  • Thus a surface awareness begins to form.
  • As consciousness-force is there in a subliminal latency in the subject and object of contact, a surface consciousness develops.
  • From this a vital mind and a thinking intelligence develop.
  • The secret conscious is rendered into surface sensation and perception, the secret force into surface impulse.

278. Subliminal surfacing knowledge would become direct.

  • The secret consciousness-force has to limit itself to imper­fect rendering in developing organs for direct knowledge.
  • This creation of an external knowledge takes place in an indeterminate conscious structure.
  • First, it is a sensational perception, next a life-mind.
  • Mind movements, when they appear, are automatic but involved in these automatisms.
  • They are a subordinate mental notation.
  • Mind at this stage accepts instinct and vital intuition as its support.

279. In the mental man, intuition is more mixed than in the animal.

  • Instinct also is mentalised, that is less sure.
  • Emergence in life immensely increases capacity as well as capacity for error.

280. If the surface fully expressed intuition, error would have no life.

  • Intelligence would be subservient to intuition.
  • Inconscience makes the surface consciousness obscure and unresponsive to the inner light.
  • As Nature is not for rapid development of Truth-Consciousness, the surface cherishes the obscurity.

281. The evolutionary process works between the surface nescience and the all-powerful secret Consciousness-Force inside.

  • On the surface, it is an ignorance labouring to know.
  • It uses the contact with the world as a means, to create a spark of awareness.
  • An evolving consciousness that is half-knowledge struggles to the surface.
  • All that is unknown is met on the basis of the known.
  • This is a double source of error as there is misprision in receptivity and response.

282. Therefore, Error is necessary, indispensable.

  • The evolving consciousness catches a physical image with a vital sensation and creates a mental idea.
  • This process admits different possibilities at each step.
  • To shut out error is impossible without shutting out knowl­edge.
  • Observation, misprision, omission, wrong selection, uncon­scious additions add to the errors.
  • Consciousness proceeds from the known to the unknown.
  • It creates structures and improves them.
  • Errors are increased by misapplication of knowledge.
  • This is enlightened obscurity.
  • Confusion, chaos, imperfection are the characteristics of human knowledge.

283. Error by itself would not admit falsehood.

  • Lack of knowledge admits uncertainties creating more of confusion.
  • Still consciousness grows through it all.

284. Here the second condition of evolution intervenes.

  • This seeking for knowledge is not impersonal.
  • The ego is there bent on vital self-affirmation.
  • The surface mental individuality is ego-centric.
  • The ego looks at events not as they are, but as they affect itself.
  • Mind is incapable of a sheer impersonality even when it aims at it.
  • Mind's reception permits truths and turns to the fact.
  • This acts like an inexhaustible source of distortion of truth, a fruitful seed plot of falsehood.
  • Truth can enter and take its seat, not by its own right, but at mind's pleasure.
  • Sankya gives us three types of mental personality or indi­viduality.
  • The tamasic intelligence has its seat in the physical mind.
  • The rajasic intelligence has it in the vital mind.
  • This limitation of personality by these three types is inevitably a source of error.

285. This is in the field of cognition; the same holds good to will and action.

  • Wrong consciousness gives a wrong dynamic reaction to the contact ofpersons.
  • The surface consciousness learns to ignore the psychic indications or warnings.
  • The surface acts according to the impulsions of the vital ego.
  • The second of the primary conditions of the evolution -- the law of theseparate life-being affirming itself -- rises into prominence.
  • The surface vital personality asserts itself.
  • This is the cause of evil.
  • Vital seeks self-affirmation, not ethical behaviour.
  • If it gets mental consent, its one standard is the boosting of the ego.
  • The life individual, the ego, needs place, expansion, pos­session of its world, dominance, and control of things and room. It needs life-room, a space in the sun, self-assertion, survival.
  • It needs them for its ego and collective ego.
  • It needs them for its ideas, creeds, ideals, interests, imaginations.
  • If it is not strong enough to do that, it needs at least to defend itself.
  • It may do it by methods that are right for it or by naked use of violence, ruse, falsehood.
  • It brings in hatred and dislike of all that stands in the way.
  • It develops as a means of the life-nature cruelty, treachery and all kinds of evil.
  • Its satisfaction takes no account of right or wrong.
  • For this it is ready to face even suffering.
  • Nature pushes it not only for self-preservation but life-affirmation.

286. This does not prove that evil is the very nature of vital personality.

  • It is not concerned with truth and good.
  • As it has a passion for joy and beauty, it can have a pas­sion for truth and good.
  • In all that is developed by the life force, there is a secret delight, a delight in good and a delight in evil.
  • The force of life-affirmation affirms alike the good and the evil.
  • In subhuman life, good and evil are terms, but not mains­prings.
  • Self-affirmation is the chief aim of Nature's effectuation.
  • Only if the inner or true vital being replaces the drive of vital ego, and the life force becomes the servant of the soul, life-affirmation can be overcome in favour of the emergence of the psychic.

287. This is the origin of evil, error, falsehood, wrong, etc.

  • A limited consciousness growing out of nescience is the source of error.
  • A personal attachment to the limitation is the source of falsity.
  • A wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego is the source of evil.
  • It is a phenomenon thrown up by the cosmic Force in its evolutionary self-expression.
  • Its significance lies there.
  • The principle of life-affirmation of the ego is necessary for the emergence of the conscious being.
  • The ego is a false substitute to the true self.
  • It is separated by ignorance from the other-self and inner Divinity.
  • It is still pushed secretly towards an evolutionary unifica­tion in diversity.
  • It has behind itself, though finite, the impulse of the infinite.
  • In terms of ignorant consciousness, it tries to expand into boundless finite.

288. Because it does things as ego, not for mutuality, discord arises.

  • This is necessary for the growth of the divided being.
  • The ignorant delight takes joy in division.
  • Evolution uses evil as much as good.
  • It uses available material. Hence good and evil come out of each other.
  • To Nature, good and evil are acceptable.
  • It is the same Nature that has given man the sense of good and evil.
  • Therefore it has an evolutionary purpose.
  • It too must be necessary.

289. Human mind resorts to the method of selection and rejection.

  • Selection is based on things like religious sanction, etc. that does not touch the root of the problem.
  • That is to deal with the symptoms, not the cause.
  • This being mental control, it would not be a solution.

290. The human mind's selection is good, but not final.

  • The true call upon us is the call of the Infinite, the Supreme.
  • Religious injunction solves the problem for the individual, not for the whole.
  • The ancients had a clearer perception, the realisation of the Infinite, shedding ideas of sin and virtue.
  • The perception of a relative good was to them, to lead to the realisation of the Good.
  • These do not lead us beyond mind.

291. Humanity has not found a way out yet.

  • The tree of knowledge is rooted in inconscience and will always put forth fruits of dual nature.
  • The only solution is to convert inconscience into greater conscience.

292. The root is in split nature; solution must be in integration.

  • Dealing with the ego, using altruism, developing sattwic part are palliatives.

293. The true solution lies in spiritual growth.

294. Three steps are there in the spiritual knowledge.

  • First is the psychic emergence.
  • Next is to be aware of the eternal self in us.
  • Third is to know the Divine Being as our supreme transcend­ent Self, the Cosmic Being, of which our psychic is a por­tion.
  • The division of our being from the beings of others will be healed only by removing the veil between our becoming and our self-being.

295. The last separation is that which stands between Nature and Supernature.

  • Before the Knowledge-Ignorance is removed, our nature must merge with the Divine Nature.

SUMMARY

  • Knowledge emerging in concealed consciousness creates error.
  • Vital self-affirmation of ego, en evolutionary process, distorts emerging knowledge.
  • Life affirms good as well as evil.
  • A wrong ego consciousness helps evil expand.
  • Discord created by ego is necessary for the growth of divided being.
  • Ethics controlling through mind will not solve the problem.
  • As split nature creates evil, integration alone can solve it.
  • Spiritual growth into divine nature eliminates evil.

 

 



story | by Dr. Radut