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Life Divine Detailed Summary of Book II Part 2

 

Chapter XV   Reality and Integral Knowledge

Chapter XVI    The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life: Four Theories of Existence

Chapter XVII   The Progress to Knowledge -- God, Man and Nature

Chapter XVIII   The Evolutionary Process -- Ascent and Integration

Chapter XIX   Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the  Sevenfold Knowledge

Chapter XX   The Philosophy of Rebirth

Chapter XXI   The Order of the Worlds

Chapter XXIV   The Evolution of the Spiritual Man

Chapter XXV   The Triple Transformation

Chapter XXVI   The Ascent towards the Supermind

Chapter XXVII    The Gnostic Being

Chapter XXVIII   The Life Divine

Chapter XV   Reality and Integral Knowledge

 

296. Ignorance is limitation of knowledge.

It confines us to the surface.

Knowledge is to return to integrality, disappearance of limitation, breaking down of separativeness and overpassing the boundaries of ignorance.

Integral knowledge is already in the integral Reality.

297. An integral spiritual consciousness carries in it a knowl­edge of all theterms of the being.

At the highest it opens to the superconscient.

At the lowest it perceives the Inconscience.

We can say to mind and speech Brahman is unattainable.

We can also say knowledge itself is an Ignorance.

Both have their validities in spiritual experience, but both together do not exhaust the spiritual possibilities.

298. The absolutist view is based on Upanishad and Vedanta.

Vedanta affirms the Absolute as well as cosmic Divinity.

This is a comprehensive affirmation.

This is our own view.

All affirmations and negations are expressive of the Abso­lute. We can reach it in either way.

299. The Absolute bears in itself some ineffable essentiality and must in some way hold its absoluteness which is a realisable actuality. Manifestation is to actualise it.

300. The Absolute has no need of self-escape which the human reason has and tries to impose on the Absolute.

It is true neither our ignorance nor our knowledge can give us a hold of the Unknowable.

It is so because a distinction is made between the real reality and the partial reality.

301. The One, the Being, the Infinity, the Featureless, the Formless, the Superconscient, the Knowledge, the Existence is the goal. The Many, the finite, the symbols, the form, the inconscient, the ignorance, the Non-Existence have to be given up in favour of the former.

302. Our position rejects this rejection of one and acceptance of the other.

The integral knowledge of Brahman is a consciousness in possession of both together, and the exclusive pursuit of either closes the vision to the one side of the truth of the Omnipresent Reality.

303. To reveal in Time the fact that the apparent inconscient holds all the luminous Superconscient, is the slow and deliberate delight of Nature and the aim of her cycles.

304. There is another view that all exists is a subjective crea­tion of Mind.

This may lead to the affirmation of the One or the Many or the denial of both in an absolute Nirvana.

This view is from considering our surface mind the whole of  consciousness.

It is fully valid if we want to describe the workings of the Mind.

For a deeper self-knowledge and world-knowledge the subjec­tive and objective can be real and intimate as different sides of its identity.

305. If Mind is all, all must disappear with the disappearance of Mind.

If  Mind creates even without a sustaining Void behind, there must be an existence behind.

A Being behind the existence is a logical necessity.

Behind the biune duality of Being and Consciousness, Vedanta supposes one original Being, Sankhya a plurality of beings.

Consciousness presents its structures to this being or beings.

Whether these figures are realities of the one Real Exist­ence or values created by Mind.

306. Mind is clearly a secondary power of existence.

Mind does not know the objects it perceives, nor has it any control over them.

If Mind were the creator, this incapacity would not be there.

The universal Mind is there behind.

Mind knows the fractions; universal Mind may know their sum, not essential knowledge.

Without essential knowledge, there can be no integral knowl­edge.

A consciousness possessing essential knowledge would not be Mind, but Truth-consciousness.

There is no objective reality independent of consciousness.

The reality resides within the object and is independent of mind or its  interpretations.

Mind's interpretation constitutes the mind's subjective image.

The universe is not a mere image.

The universe is the creation of consciousness.

This consciousness is one with the being.

Its substance is the substance of the Being.

The universe, its creation, is of that substance, therefore real.

The world cannot be a subjective creation of Consciousness.

The subjective and objective truth of things are both real.

They are two sides of the same Reality.

307. All things are symbols. We have to approach That through those symbols.

The infinity of unity is a symbol.

The infinity of multiplicity is a symbol.

Each thing in multiplicity points back to infinity, thus becoming a symbol.

Man progresses between the two poles of the Superconscient and the Inconscient.

Still the ineffable Presence does not unveil itself entirely to anything but its own self-light.

308. Mind interpreting the relation between Being and external Becoming leads to this perception.

These symbolic values do not make the things themselves more significant counters.

For forms and happenings are realities significant of Reali­ty.

They are self-expressions of That, movements and powers of the Being.

It is this significance that gives validity to the mind's interpretation.

Mind's capacity to reflect the truth of the Being gives value to mental subjectivity.

Mind is not a creator.

The real creatrix is a Consciousness.

309. The opposite view emphasizes Objective Reality.

It has to justify itself to the physical mind.

This view has no integrality, and leaves much unexplained.

Pushed to the extreme, it gives a stone a greater reality than genius.

The soul, if it exists, is only a circumstance.

On the contrary, it could be held that the objective assumes value only as it has a relation to the soul.

The subjective and objective are two sides of manifested Reality.

The supraphysical cannot be denied existence even by the view of objectivity.

310. Subjectivity and objectivity are depending upon each other.

Being looking at itself as object is subjectivity.

The same Being offering itself to its own consciousness as object to the subject is objectivity.

We have no means of knowing the objective universe except by our subjective consciousness.

On the same plea the supraphysical has an existence; if not, the objective loses validity.

As the subjective cannot be verified by external senses, the supraphysical cannot be referred to the physical senses.

They must be scrutinised by methods applicable to them.

311. There are different orders of reality; the physical is one of them.

I am inwardly real to myself; it is a limitation of the physical mind.

This is an ego-centric attitude, recently idolised.

To depart from the physical, it is said, will lead to error.

But error is present in one's own subjectivity too.

312. To refuse to enquire is like religious obscurantism.

All inner discoveries of spirit cannot be subjected to the tribunal of common mentality.

Even verification of physical truths and facts needs a train­ing.

All experiences must be verified by similar experiences.

It is of supreme importance for the human spirit to be free to sound the depths of the inner, spiritual reality.

That is the only way to liberate oneself from Ignorance.

313. The purna yogi does not push aside any field of existence occult, physical, supraphysical, etc.

Science itself is an occultism.

314. Exclusive concentration on one side of the reality, Spirit or Matter, will not be of use.

315. All that is necessary is to carry the inquiry to the end.

316. The seven ignorances; we cannot afford to entertain any of them.

317. Integral knowledge must give up the sevenfold Ignorance.

This is not an intellectual knowledge to be learned.

By experience and a change of consciousness, one has to acquire it.

 

Chapter XVI    The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life: Four Theories of Existence

 

318. Truth of knowledge must base truth of life and determine the aim of life.

319. The Absolute as the origin and support and secret Reality of things is our basis.

320. The Absolute manifests in the two terms of Being and Becom­ing.

All theories that make the Becoming sufficient to itself are half-truths.

Becoming can know it fully when it knows the Being, knows it as itself.

The soul in the Becoming arrives at self-knowledge and immortality when it knows the Supreme and Absolute and possesses the nature of  the Infinite and Eternal.

That is the aim of our existence.

This truth of our being becomes in the soul a necessity of manifestation, in matter a secret energy, in life a seeking, in mind a will.

To manifest what is from the first occult within it, is the trend of Nature.

We accept the truth of the supracosmic Absolute takes its stand.

321. Next we affirm that to our spiritual perception the Absolute reveals itself as Existence, Consciousness and Bliss.

The secret underlying here is conscious, Bliss and Being evolving out of the Inconscient Non-Being and Insensibility.

The soul has to become aware of itself in the universe but also of the universe in itself and of the Being of the cosmos as its greater self.

322. All views of existence that stop short of Transcendence must be incomplete.

The pantheistic view omits the supracosmic Reality. There­fore it is incomplete.

Every view that affirms the cosmos and dismisses the indi­vidual errs.

323. The Divine Being, Satchidananda, is at once personal and impersonal.

The dualistic and theistic views affirm God but deny the essential unity of God and Soul. Therefore they fall short of the whole truth.

The manifestation of the Being in the universe is an involu­tion which is the starting point of evolution -- Matter below, Spirit above.

324. Seven principles are there in the descent.

The descent culminates in Matter's Inconscience.

325. Our theory admits Mind as a creative principle, not as the sole creative principle.

The view that divorces Spirit and Matter is not acceptable.

326. The Life principle is not the whole foundation and origin of things.

It is true of Mind too. All the three lower principles find their true selves only by transformation.

All lower powers build upon the Inconscient and it is taken as the real origin and creator.

We accept the lower powers but not their supremacy. They overcome their limitations when the greater law of divine consciousness possesses them.

327. At this point we take a further step by making our above position not only a direction for the mind, but a power guiding our life action.

328. The four existing theories are supracosmic, cosmic, terres­trial and synthetic.

We fall under  the last.

In the supracosmic view only the Supreme Reality is real.

The human existence has no real meaning.

Human life is an illusion; it is binding only so long as we rest in error.

The true ideal is self-extinction in the Absolute.

The Buddhist idea of self-extinction is self-finding in Vedantic thought.

The self-finding is possible only if both are interrelated realities.

329. Vedanta accepts Becoming as Brahman.

One defect here may be absence of reality to the individual.

330. A view of terrestrial life can only accept mortality for the human life.

If the welfare of humanity is to be excluded, the individual may endeavour for the greatest possible achievement.

331. Earth has a temporary reality, material cosmos is real is the position of supraterrestrial view.

It perceives behind man's mortality the immortality of the soul.

It means the home of man is beyond.

332. That man was created as a material body and life was breathed into it is now discredited.

333. In all these views there are three essential elements,

1) belief in individual immortality,

2) earth as a temporary passage,

3) ethical, spiritual being as a means of ascension.

Nature takes good care to see the race does not neglect these beliefs.

334. There were epochs when the supraterrestrial view held sway.

335. Sometimes it dawns on us that beyond the terrestrial and the supraterrestrial there must be a supracosmic origin of our existence.

Even this includes an element of insufficiency.

336. Life is split into the spiritual and mundane.

337. A spiritual evolution of which man is the centre is the link needed for the reconciliation of life and spirit.

338. A large relation of unity, an integration restores the balance.

339. In this self-integration, the soul of the individual must awake to universality and to transcendence.

340. A divine plan is working itself out through its contradic­tions leading to the soul's growth.

The individual can see himself aright by seeing the light of the Supreme.

341. Self-veiling leading to self-discovery is a principle of becoming in the universe.

Revelation of Being in the Becoming is the significance for the soul.

 

Chapter XVII   The Progress to Knowledge -- God, Man and Nature

 

342. An involution of spiritual Reality is the starting point of the evolution.

Out of Inconscient, Existence appears as substance of Mat­ter. Consciousness emerges as vital vibrations.

Ignorance is the first formulation of Consciousness in life.

The earlier form of ignorance is material inanimation.

Consciousness seeking to formulate delight succeeds in formulating pain owing to the inadequacy of sensation.

343. Man is to affirm himself, evolve and exceed himself.

Mastering the environment, becoming complete in his being are his goals.

For this he has to discover his individuality and expand it into cosmic self.           

344. This is not done by intellectual knowledge.

This is done by our growing into Satchidananda.

What is evolving in us is the Existence.

We are a being of that Existence.

Our surface being is at variance with this Truth.

The inspired phrases of a half-blind seer who knew not the self of which he spoke, may be turned by us.

To exceed the ego is the concealed sense of our existence.

345. All man's age-long effort is aimed at realising what the ancient seer of Veda meant as knowledge, the Immortality.

346. The Being presents itself to man as God, Man and Nature.

347. Ages of naturalistic atheism were short-lived since the secret urge in man cannot be satisfied by that.

348. Man necessarily has to arrive at a Supreme, by whatever name he calls it.

349. Neither a knowledge of nature nor of the mind can offer a fuller satisfaction since mind needs to find something that links all things together.

350. An acceptance of the unity of all the three categories is essential for Knowledge.

It is through the knowledge of the Self and the world that man arrives at the knowledge of God.

When Man does it through himself alone, he passes into an absorption in the Indefinable.

Arriving through the equal integrality of man and the world, he merges most with the impersonal but possesses God in himself and God in the universe.

351. Man affirms himself in his ignorance before he can affirm himself in knowledge.

352. It is through the individual that the collective develops.

353. The collectivity is a mass, the individual is a diviner truth, the form-maker, the creator.

The individual cannot manifest himself at once as he is closer to the cosmic Inconscience than the Superconscience.

354. Man initially seeks power, only later he turns to knowledge.

355. This is still seeking himself but he has to seek the Purusha inside.

356. To go beyond the ego is imperative, but one cannot go beyond the self except by finding it supremely, universally.

357. In this endeavour he steps out of his practical ignorance towards a perfect possession of a true existence.

358. Thus in our progress of our self-knowledge we discover that by which all is known.

359. He knows her not only as Life-Force but as Consciousness-Force.

360. He discovers that his being and the Being are one and that this is a partial reflection of That.

For that which all our mind-knowledge and sense-knowledge is seeking, is found most integrally in the unity of God, man and Nature.

361. The conscious unity of God, Soul and Nature in his own consciousness is the sure foundation of this perfection.

 

Chapter XVIII   The Evolutionary Process -- Ascent and Integration

 

362. The cosmic Nature is constant in its general law of action, since it depends upon a Truth which is invariable in principle although in detail of application abundantly variable.

An evolutionary self-building of Spirit on a base of Matter must have in the process a triple character of development.

1) An evolution of forms of Matter, subtle, intricate, complex is the necessary physical foundation.

2) An upward evolutionary progress from grade to grade is the emerging curve.

3) Transformation of what ascended and integration of it at the higher level is the third part.

363. An evolution in the Inconscience is the beginning, an evolution in the Ignorance is the middle and an evolution in the knowledge is the final stage. This is the process used so far and will be the one for the future evolution.

An evolutionary process must be a development of a principle of being that holds involved in itself. It must necessarily modify by its own law of nature all that enters into it.

A creative evolution manifests new powers of existence that are not native to the first foundation but introduced into it and accepted into the original substance.

If the new principle is already in the involution, it will have to accept the modification by the nature and the law of the basic substance; but it will also modify the basic substance. Further, if it is aided by the descent of its own principle, the new power may even establish itself as a dominant element and change the consciousness into which it emerges. Its force to modify will depend upon its essential potency by virtue of its being the original Principle of Existence.

364. Matter's substance is transformed into living one and later conscious one.

Matter's evolution contains signs that neither Life nor Mind is the original creative power.

365. What is the creative evolutionary Power.

Certainly it is not the inconscient material Energy.

A secret consciousness greater than Mind or Life must be there.

It must be a power of the spirit.

There is a creative Mind energy and creative Life energy but they are partial.

Mind and Life may modify Matter but its extent is determined by the indwelling Spirit.

An entire transformation is possible only by Supermind.

366. Evolution has to make its account at every step with the fact of involution of consciousness and force in the form and activity of material substance.

The rising to higher grades is not a free transference.

It is not a free emergence. It is partly decided by the material organisation, by the status of emerging force, achieved degree, as well as the accomplished fact of consciousness imposed upon Matter.

The evolving Consciousness passes from one grade to another imperceptibly or by a leap or by an intervention from above.

The evolutionary process itself is slowly becoming conscious of itself.

367. The first foundation is creation of forms in Matter, Life and Mind.

So far, only its physical basis is observed, not its operations of Consciousness in its own nature.

The leap from one grade to another appears immense and no satisfactory evidence is seen so far.

There are missing links even in outward evolution.

Evolution of consciousness seems to be rather a transformation than evolution.

It is because of our inability to penetrate the subconscious, the submental.

It is not a predictable development with well-mastered steps but a miracle of metamorphosis.

368. As we rise the gulf is wider.

The rudiments of life-reactions are identical with plant reaction in its essence.

The reason for the missing links is to be found in the working of the inner force.

From the inside these transitions become intelligible, rather inevitable by the very nature of the evolutionary process and principle.

369. The difference between two grades lies in the consciousness rising to another higher principle of being.

The metal is fixed in an inconscient inanimate principle of matter.

The plant is fixed in the subconscient principle of life.

The animal is fixed in the vital mind and sense-mind.

Man has received into his sense-mind the light of another principle, the intellect.

In each of these forms the universal being has fixed its action of consciousness in a different principle.

It is this stride from one principle to another principle that creates the transition, the sharp lines of distance.

370. The ascent does not abandon the lower grades any more than a status of the lower grade admits of absence of the higher principle.

The rudiments of the higher and lower grades present in each other itself constitutes the indubitable process of evolution.

What is essential is a working that brings the lower to the higher.

At that point a pressure from the superior plane acts to assist the transition.

The form existence as distinguished from the secretly governing consciousness is lost in the physical consciousness; is so absorbed that it appears as a stereotyped self-oblivion unaware of what it is doing. The electron and the atom are the eternal somnambulists. He who is awake in the sleeper, the universal Inhabitant of the Upanishads.

In the meantime, the force of concealed consciousness has so much intensified as to raise itself into a new, higher principle.

It has become vitally responsive to existence.

It has become capable of receiving and turning into these new life values.

This is a thing which the former mere matter cannot do.

Life in the tree takes up the physical existence and gives it a new value -- the life-value.

371. The force of being in the mind is so much intensified as to develop a new principle -- mentality.

The animal receives a wide range of contacts, turns all into vital-mind values. All in it is not a half-conscious instinct; the animal prepares the human intelligence.

372. In man the whole being becomes conscious.

Mind takes up the lower grades and gives to it and their action intelligent values.

The crude thinking of the animal is changed into ideative and reflective faculty in man.

373. Two peculiarities are to be observed.

Man gazes down with power of will and knowledge to raise up the lower and give it higher values.

He lays on them the condition of his consent and for that purpose he could even trample them down.

And that is the inmost aim of ethics.

Not to destroy the lower but to transform them into a higher harmony is the aim.

Ascent is the first necessity but integration is the accompanying aim.

374. This downward eye of knowledge is the secret Spirit's way from the beginning. It is the compulsion of evolutionary Nature to strive to develop upward.

375. Where is the limit of effectuation in self-exceeding?

The physical man is the first mental status but he cannot remain long there.

376. Above physical mind lies the vital mind, a frontal formation of vital Purusha. This is supported by the secret subliminal vital being.

There is an inner life-mind.

The vital man is the man of desires and sensations.

His mental life is often enslaved to his vital life.

377. Above the vital plane is the mind-plane of pure thought.

The philosopher, thinker, the scientist, the intellectual creator belong to this level.

The mental man cannot transform his nature but can control it.

He can consciously develop his mind and to that extent he is a self-creator.           

378. This mind of pure intelligence has the subliminal behind it.

On the inner plane, mind and mind-soul can claim to be entire reality.

These three degrees of mind -- physical mind, vital mind, thinking mind -- are steps in Nature's evolution.

These are evolutionary figures built on the surface mentality.

To do more, she has to use more the hidden, unseen material.

Planes of spiritual mind are in direct contact with the infinite and Satchidananda.

Behind our surface is the inner mind which can open to these heights (of infinite) as well as to the occult spirit within us.

This double opening is the secret of a new evolution.

By breaking the lids, the consciousness rises to a greater ascent and a larger integration.

This, on a parallel to the mentalising evolution of mind, will spiritualise all the powers of nature.

The spiritual man is the acme.

Nature has tried to go higher and deeper and call down from above forces of higher mind and overmind to create the sage, the seer, the mystic.

379. Any attempt to heighten inordinately the mental man will only colossalise the human creature; it cannot transform or divinise man.

Living in the inner being opens up a different possibility of transmuting our nature.

380. The final aim of the mental stage of evolution was to enlarge the bounds of the surface knowledge--Ignorance, to abolish Ignorance, to go inwards and discover the soul and to become united in Consciousness with God and with all existence.

The spiritual change begins by the influence of the inner being over the higher spiritual mind on the surface. But this is not enough for radical change.

We have to dive deeper down, extend our present consciousness and surpass our Nature.

It is evident that we can live thus deeper, receive our inner forces on the physical existence which is the evolutionary process of creating a higher type of being.

All Yoga, all psychic experiences are sign posts of progress of the occult self-unfolding spirit.

381. But the human race will still be weighted by a gravitation towards the physical. It is dominated by the brain-mind, the physical intelligence.

The physical being is capable of skeptical folly, immense indolence, enormous intellectual timidity to outgrow habit.

The constant evidence of life that where it chooses to conquer it can conquer does not overcome its doubting.

The miracles of that inferior power of physical science are a witness to it.

It is the race that should advance, not only the individual.

The secret memory in Nature will call it upward again.

The force of a persistent memory in Nature can pull us upward or downward.

It is not necessary for the whole race to advance but a general admission of the ideal and conscious concentration are necessary.

382. The principle of the process of evolution is a foundation, an ascent from that foundation, a reversal of consciousness in the ascent, an action of change and integration of the whole nature.

The first foundation is that of Matter.

The ascent is that of Nature.

The integration is half conscious automatic change of Nature by Nature.

Matter can no longer be the foundation.

The foundation will be the new spiritual status, the unveiled soul-status within us.

It is a flow of light and knowledge from above and reception from within.

The whole concentration will be shifted from below upwards and from without inwards.

Our higher and inner being now unknown will become ourselves.

The outer world will become part of ourselves.

The old inconscient foundation will be made conscious.

 

Chapter XIX   Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the  Sevenfold Knowledge

 

383. All evolution in essence is a heightening of the force of consciousness in the manifest being to raise it to greater intensity.

In future, the character of evolution and the principle of the evolutionary process will not fundamentally change.

To ascend with all ourself into a higher principle of being than it has yet evolved here is the labour of Nature.

384. Our call must be to live on a new height in all our being.

In order to reach that height, the whole of what we are should rise into the spiritual consciousness and become a manifest and manifold power of that spirit.

By the divine change, the lower parts of the being break into possibilities which in their unspiritualised condition could not be practicable or imaginable.

385. This process of heightening is an ascent out of the sevenfold ignorance and its crux is the constitutional ignorance. It resolves itself into manifold ignorance of the true character of our becoming.

386. Constitutional ignorance of which preoccupation with life and matter is one aspect was essential for man to know fully his physical existence.

The utmost extension of a physical objective knowledge is not the essential gain for us.

That is why physical science can never achieve happiness.

True happiness lies in the growth of the whole being.

Mind is to be liberated in a truer, subtler existence.

Growth into a fuller mental being is the first transitional movement.

387. The more the mind is liberated from the lower control, the more the race becomes truly human.

388. This was the flowering of the Greek culture.

The right use of our material existence cannot be discovered by physical science. Only an outward knowledge is available.

We are not only embodied minds; we are spiritual beings.

We have to heighten and enlarge ourselves universally and infinitely to take up our lower parts for greater ends.

A vague and ecstatic ascent into spirit or a formless exaltation through the touch of its infinities is not enough to integralise our being and becoming.

Then we shall possess the true constitution of our being and conquer Ignorance.

389. Conquest of constitutional ignorance cannot be complete while in psychological ignorance.

Psychological ignorance is due to the limitation to the waking self.

This part is organised by reason and interpreted by our waking intelligence.

In Matter only activity is manifest, not consciousness.

In us consciousness is partly manifest.

This consciousness is hedged in form.

There are insufficient occasional flashes of consciousness.

The higher light is necessary to revolutionize our status.

By an inward plunge we can enter into this status.

To live within is given to a soul that has become sovereign over our nature.

390. The subconscient includes the dumb occult consciousness dynamic but not sensed by us. All the unnoticed movements, sub-human physical vital live in our subconscience.

391. A descent into the subconscient will give us a comatose torpor.

To become totally aware of the subconscient either we should draw into the subliminal or rise to the superconscient.

This subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious.

The animal in us has its lair of retreat in the dense jungle of the subconscience. To bring the light there is indispensable.

392. The intraconscient and circumconscient in us is more powerful. It is the subliminal.

Our surface being is formed by the subliminal.

The subliminal receives the universal influences.

An enlargement beyond it is possible only by rising to the Superconscient.

393. The higher planes of the mental being, the supramental and the pure spiritual being are included in the superconscient.

Without an actual ascent into the superconscient it is possible to get rid of most of the constitutional and psychological ignorance.

An ascent to the beyond is necessary for integralisation.

Such an ascent is now possible in an absorbed (condition) superconscience.

For that to come into our lives, a heightening, widening and a transmutation are necessary.

Ascent, transformation, integration are indispensable.

394. An evolutionary change must reject our temporal ignorance.

Our life is limited between birth and death.

Physical memory of corporeal formation is our base.

Relaxing the limitation to the body, the subliminal reveals our existence in time as well as beyond time.

We have to live in the consciousness of immortality.

A concrete sense of our perpetual being in Time and Eternity is indispensable.

395. Immortality is not a personal survival of bodily death.

The eternity of our self-existence is immortal.

The spirit's timeless existence is true immortality.

There exists a perpetual continuity of experience from life to life.

The knowledge of the self in the Non-birth and Non-becoming and of the changeless spirit within us is immortality.

Time-immortality is the knowledge of the self in the birth and Becoming.

This too is timelessness translated into Time manifestation.

The first realisation is freedom from birth.

By the second realisation we are able to possess freely the experiences of the spirit in its successions of time-eternity.

The first might not include the second.

To possess that inner eternity of being and govern the course and process of the becoming is the spiritual self-possession and mastery.

These changes are possible only by withdrawing into the inner, higher planes of being.

An ascent and a stepping back inward are both essential.

There arises a knowledge of our being as an eternal spirit which uses all the worlds and all lives for various self-experiences, a being determining its own becoming.

396. At the same time we get rid of our egoistic ignorance.

The ego is a falsification of our true individuality by a limiting self-identification of it with life, mind and body.

The ego can no longer survive the heightening and widening of the being. It exists by its limits and perishes by the loss of limits.

The same movement dissolves the cosmic ignorance, giving us the knowledge of the immutable self possessing itself in cosmos and beyond cosmos.

This knowledge is the basis of Divine Play in time, reconciles the one and the many.

It is by this knowledge we can approach the Absolute as the source of all circumstance, possess the world in ourselves and raise it to realise through it the absolute values that converge into the Absolute.

Self-knowledge thus made complete, practical ignorance dissolves.

397. This is the method of conscious spiritual evolution.

The true individual who is universal and transcendent emerges.

SUMMARY, Book II, Chapter XIX

The constitutional Ignorance is the crux.

It cannot be conquered while in psychological Ignorance which is due to the limitation of the waking self.

Plunging inward, entering the subliminal and rising to the Superconscient are necessary.

The best part of constitutional and psychological Ignorances can be got rid of without reaching the superconscient.

Integralisation needs ascent beyond.

Immortality, the knowledge of the self in the Non-birth and Non-becoming is essential.

These changes are possible only by withdrawing into the inner, higher planes of being when the ego dissolves.

The same movement dissolves the cosmic Ignorance.

Self-knowledge, thus complete, dissolves practical Ignorance.

This is a conscious method of spiritual evolution.

Evolutionary pressure issues from the planes of higher beings created by involution.

Our view of a graded universe implies the individual and the desire of his should have pre-existed the world.

Matter's Ignorance precedes Individual's ignorance.

There should be worlds of Mind, Life and Matter and not only worlds of Matter.

Demand for proof is irrational. Examine them on their own laws.

As they originate in Matter, these worlds cannot be insubstantial.

As man goes inward, larger life and consciousness await.

The psychic emerges.

Complete emergence of the soul means direct contact with the Spiritual Reality.

Further transformation is completed by the release of the Supramental principle in the lower nature.

An inner awareness, the emergence of the psychic are the first necessities.

His Purusha becomes conscious master of Prakriti in the universal working of it.

The blind imperative Necessity of Inconscience is met by the luminous necessity of Supermind.

 

Chapter XX   The Philosophy of Rebirth

 

398. Birth is the first mystery of the physical universe; death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth.

In this birth of life there is a strong upsurging of some flame of soul, a first evident vibration of the spirit.

-- All known circumstances of birth presuppose an unknown before; the inconclusiveness of death points to an unknown hereafter. The one depends on the other.

--  The intellect of man has put this question to itself from the beginning.

Obviously the territory is beyond the memory of the intellect.

399. The first question is whether the before and after are purely physical or mental and spiritual.

If Matter were all as Bhrigu found, no further questions arise.

This cannot account for Mind, nor is Matter self-existent.

So, we pass on to other hypotheses.

400. The religious myth of God breathing into bodies created by HIM, holds good by itself; but not for reason

Reason has to account for two things;

1) beings that have a beginning in time and have no end.

2) assumption of ready-made mass of  combined qualities.

-- An exception to this law can be if the spirit descended into Matter.

The persistence of the soul after death shows it has to have a body, at least a psychic body.

401. Seeing a certain stage of development, we presume a past.

If the soul is not a constructed being or figure of being, it must be eternal.

If eternal, it must be a timeless Purusha, a spiritual Person.

A Person can only manifest by birth and death.

-- The immortality or eternity of the soul does not impose itself.

In the Buddhist, the old theory or in the modern view, rebirth is unnecessary.

Mandukya Upanishad's Lord and creator of things is parallel to the modern idea that our consciousness is an impermanent development out of the Inconscient.

In all these three theories, soul is not immortal but is a creation of Maya.

402. In none of these theories of existence is rebirth an absolute necessity or an inevitable result of the theory.

403. However the old theories affirm and modern theories deny rebirth as a part of the universal process.

Modern thought recognises no other world than the material universe.

Two possible alternatives arise.

1) Mind is not fully dependent on the body.

2) A psychic soul would survive death which is created either during this life or earlier.

404. The soul in us may have been evolved in lower life-shapes before man.

Or the evolving Life may be able to create a soul.

The former suggests the animal too survives the dissolution.

The second suggests that the power of survival is given only to man.

If the soul is a persistent evolving entity capable of passing beyond the terrestrial stage, then the Indian idea of passage to other worlds and return to earth becomes possible.

But, it would not be inevitable as there is no compelling reason.

Actual evidence of return to earth would be that compelling reason and would admit of repeated rebirth.

405. A vitalistic theory need not spiritualise itself, and admit the eternity of the soul.

Even here rebirth may be possible, not inevitable.

406. Adwaita of Mayavada accepted the supraphysical planes and a return of the human personality (soul) to earth.

They based on the view that supraphysical consciousness was primary and the physical being secondary.

In the Buddhist view, it was not the rebirth of the spiritual person.

In the view of the later Adwaita, the birth and rebirth of the spiritual reality  was part of the cosmic illusion.

Buddhism denied the existence of the Self.

Rebirth for it is a continuity of the ideas, sensations of the individual.

Adwaitic Mayavada admits Jivatman and even a real self of the individual (which cannot be many).

This is a concession to our normal language and ideas and ends by being apparent. This leaves us with no eternity of the individual and 'You', 'I', bondage, release and all as illusion.

407. In the vitalistic view there is a real universe.

In the Mayavada there is no one bound and no one released.

408. The above is an extreme view and the older Adwaita Vedantism starting from the Upanishads does not go so far.

It admits of an actual and temporal becoming of the Eternal and therefore a real universe.

The individual too admits a sufficient reality, for each individual is in himself the Eternal.

The wheel is kept in motion by the desire of the individual.

That becomes the effective cause of rebirth.

With the cessation of this ignorance, the Eternal in the individual draws away from the mutations.

This reality of  the individual is temporal. It has no reality, not even in Time.

Rebirth is not an inevitable consequence of the relation between the individual and the purpose of the manifestation.

Manifestation seems to have no purpose except the will of the Eternal.

This cosmic will could work without the machinery of rebirth.

409. The Eternal willing to pass from birth to birth is a cycle that would have no original Truth of significance.

There is nothing for which it is necessary. It would be a Lila purely.

But if it is once admitted that the Spirit has involved itself in the Inconscience and is manifesting itself in the individual in an evolutionary gradation, then the whole process acquires meaning and consistence.

Rebirth is an indispensable machinery in the working out of the spiritual evolution.

The obvious dynamic process of such a manifestation in the material universe is rebirth.

410. Our explanation of the evolution in Matter is that the universe is a self-creative process of a supreme Reality whose presence makes spirit the substance of things. All things are there as the spirit's powers and means and forms of manifestation. Satchidananda is the Reality secret behind the universe.

Its divine Supermind arranges the cosmic order.

It is arranged through the subordinate terms of Matter, Life and Mind.

The material universe is the lowest stage and an involution of the manifested being.

Out of this nescience the evolution of the manifested being was inevitable from the beginning.

It was inevitable because what is involved must evolve.

It is an existence, a force hidden in its opposite.

Such a force in its inmost nature will be moved to find itself.

It is the reality of that which conceals it, it is the self which the Nescience has lost and therefore its whole secret meaning.

Hence the constant drift of its action to seek for and recover.

It is through the conscious individual being this recovery is possible.

The increasing consciousness of  the individual is of great importance.

He becomes that important only if the Self as the individual is no less than the Self as Cosmic Being or Spirit and both are powers of the Eternal.

This is the only way by which the self-discovery is explainable.

This makes rebirth not only possible, but inevitable.

411. If no self-finding is there but only eternal enjoyment, then no evolution and rebirth are needed.

Such eternal enjoyment is the nature of certain supreme states of conscious existence.

There has been an involution of unity into the dividing Mind.

This play of difference has found its utmost sense of division by the precipitation of the dividing Mind into a form of body.

The Mind becomes conscious of itself in the body as a separate ego.

The foundation of the body makes the division secure because it imperatively opposes the return to unity.

Body is the exclusive action of consciousness tranced into self-forgetfulness by an abysmal plunge into the absorption of the formative and creative material progress.

In a phenomenal world the separative form becomes the foundation and the starting point of all action.

Therefore the individual Purusha has to base itself on the form, the body, to work out its relations with the One.

That assumption of the body we call birth.

In it only takes place the development of self, the play of relations between the individual and the universal and all other individuals.

The supreme recovery of unity with God and all in God have to take place in the body.

Life in the physical world is a progress of the soul.

It proceeds by birth into the body with that as its fulcrum.

412. Birth is a necessity of the manifestation of the Purusha in the physical plane.

Birth cannot take place in isolation without a past and future.

In a world of involution and evolution such an isolated event cannot take place.

It would be an effect without cause or cause without effect.

The life of the individual must have the same rhythm as the cosmic life.

It must be an abiding instrumentation of cosmic purpose.

It cannot be a one birth of the soul in the human body limited to that one life.

The soul's life is a great slow development needing incalculable space and time.

This ascent can only take place in rebirth in an ascending order.

413. The human soul is not a free wanderer capriciously.

Human birth in this world has two elements.

1) A spiritual Person and  2) a soul personality.

The spiritual person is man's eternal being.

The personality is his cosmic and mutable being.

As the spiritual impersonal person, he is one in his nature and being with the freedom of Satchidananda.

Satchidananda has willed his involution for a certain soul experience which is impossible otherwise.

As a soul of personality he is himself part of that long development of the soul-experience in the forms of Nature.

As a spirit he is one with the Transcendence.

As a soul he is at once with and part of the universality of Satchidananda self-expressed in the world.

His self-expression must go through the cosmic expression.

His soul-experience must follow the revolutions of the wheel of Brahman in the universe.

414. The universal Spirit in things involved in the Nescience of the physical universe evolves its nature-self in Matter, Life and Mind.

This evolutionary development has a universal as well as individual aspect.

The individual must have developed the line of universal movement.

As the One was capable of assuming in its universality these lower forms of the plant and the animal, so must the individual, now human, have been capable of assuming them in his previous stages of existence.

415. To suppose otherwise is to suppose that the spirit is formed by the human mentality and is mortal.

In truth, spirit creates the mind, not the mind the spirit.

If the spirit evolves out of mind, it does not mean mind creates the spirit, but it manifests from the hidden involvement.

416. Let us not say that life and matter came into existence and then the soul descended into it. It is not without truth; but matter was ensouled and without that man could not have appeared.

So, the soul in its long journey, should arrive at human birth.

Humanity once attained, whether the cycle of rebirth continues, is a question.

Can the soul retrace its steps?

It cannot is the rule. There does not seem to be an exception except in theory.

417. Why a succession of human birth? and not one alone.

As the human birth is itself a culmination of several births which is a necessity of spiritual evolution, rebirth is necessary for man.

Neither the American gangster, nor the vitalistic European, nor the Asiatic peasant have exhausted the possibilities of the sense of Satchidananda in the universal Man.

Maybe Plato or Shankara has exhausted it. It is doubtful.

The imperfection of Man is not the last word; and his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit.

418. The above possibility will become a certitude if mind is the peak.

As the Supermind is involved and has to evolve, this will not be the case.

419. Rebirth is an inevitable logical conclusion because of an evolutionary principle in Earth-Nature and an individual soul born into that cycle

 

Chapter XXI   The Order of the Worlds

 

420. If spiritual evolution and human rebirth are conceded, let us ask whether it is a self-contained movement or part of a universal totality.

As involution precedes evolution, there must be planes of higher being  connected with the evolution.

Perhaps their only contribution is an effective pressure for evolution.

It might be possible that they continue to play a role in earth's evolution.

421. An abrupt precipitation or an immediate lapse of the spirit­ual being into the first inconscience can be conceded.

That leaves the Absolute above and inconscient below.

The return too will then be abrupt to the transcendent Silence.

In that case, Matter and Spirit will only be the terms of earth life and no other planes.

This will not hold good.

-- The above may be possible in one of the cosmic organisa­tions.

We may conceive the eternal individual soul by an urge of adventure of      darkness plunged into Nescience and created ignorance. Maybe it was the collective.

The All-Soul may have been drawn by this desire to build a world upon the Inconscient.

Or the eternally omniscient All-Soul itself may have plunged into darkness.

If we are only the creation of an All-consciousness, the creatrix may have conceived of all these individual beings.

Then the soul would be a temporary product of the incon­scient force.

422. On that supposition, there could only be two planes, materi­al and the superconscient.

Or we may conceive of only one plane, the Superconscient.

Should there be other planes, the above will be untenable.

In any case, the cosmos would be the evolution of the Incon­scient.

Our own view is the cosmos is a self-graded evolution out of the  Superconscient Satchidananda.

This way it would be an evolution to dissolve the soul caught in ignorance.

-- Accordingly, the individual and his desire must have been awake   before the world at all existed.

It must have been in some supracosmic Superconscience from which it  comes and to which it returns out of the life of ego.

            We must suppose an original immanence of the Many in the One.

Then we can conceive of an impetus or spiritual will that compelled the creation.

Since the Many are the beings of the Being, the One, this truth must  determine the cosmic existence.

There we see the universal precedes the individual even though its origin is in the Transcendence.

The One, the All-Soul, must first accept the veil of incon­scient Nature before the Individual too can put on the veil of Ignorance in the material universe.

423. Once we accept this Will as the indispensable condition of the existence, it is no longer possible to accept Desire as the creative principle.

A supreme Being exercising its delight of existence, Mat­ter's self-creation, materialistic evolutionary Pantheism will all lead to the conclusion that there are no supraphys­ical worlds, no pressure on an already existing Mind.

424. What then are Mind and Life? They are products of Matter.

Mind & Life are too different from Matter to be its pro­ducts.

If we admit of a cosmic spirit, then life and mind must be independent products of spiritual energy.

The idea of a sole material world becomes untenable.

Spirit must be capable of basing its manifestation on the Mind principle or Life principle and not only on Matter.

Then there should be worlds of Mind and worlds of Life, even worlds founded on subtler principles of Matter.

425. Are there other worlds? Are they interconnected? Are they in the ascending order of Matter to Spirit?

Man has always believed in the other worlds.

It was dismissed as a superstition.

426. Demand for physical valid proof is irrational.

427. The error of the subjective experience cannot be a valid objection against the supraphysical world.

It is a reason rather for finding out its own valid means for verification.

Our subjective being is the basis for our objective experi­ence.

The subliminal consciousness is a witness to the truth of the supraphysical world and its testimony is confirmed again and again even in the physical world. Belief by itself is not evidence of reality.

The supraphysical realities must be examined according to its own law.

428. An examination of such intimations will confirm the exist­ence of these planes.

These domains are not remote and separate from our being.

They penetrate the physical plane and powers of these planes are here.

The experiences are subjective and objective.

Life-intention, life-impulse, life-formation do exist and press on us for realisation.

Only a part that conforms to the terrestrial systems suc­ceeds.

Similarly, mind forces do exist.

These forces of the subliminal self do carry a stamp of supraterrestrial character.

429. Our mind and life open to these fields and find them as worlds.

Experiences there are organised as in our world but under a different plan.

There exist beings made of subtle substance tangible to subtle sense.

They are not directly related to our lives.

They often become agents of cosmic powers.

They may initiate action by themselves.

Their purpose may be good or evil.

Some of these beings are thought of as divine, others Tita­nic.

Contact with the supraphysical world is possible.

Contact with embodied beings that have entered these worlds is possible.

It is possible to enter these worlds and know their secrets.

430. In all ages and climes the experiences are strikingly simi­lar.

It is impossible for anyone to put aside this phenomenon as superstition.

431. If these worlds are described as creations of our conscious­ness, then our own world can also be so described.

We have no proof that mind cannot create such worlds.

Mind is more potent than we imagine.

Mental formations can affect even Matter.

But original creation in void is beyond the power of Mind.

We can hazard the suggestion that mind enters into contact with new ranges of beings.

432. We may suppose these are later creations.

Matter can be conceived as the beginning and foundation of all the worlds.

It might be Life and Mind which have developed these other planes.

In this view, the supraphysical worlds would not be insub­stantial as it is the physical that began.

433. If the supraphysical worlds are a subsequent creation, some All-Soul,unknown to us must have created the world.

Against this assumption stands the fact that it is the earth that is derived from these higher planes and not vice-versa.

434. The pressure of the Life-world, Mind-world, Supramental spiritual worlds that compel us to evolve and can liberate us from the Inconscient.

435. There is a persistent tradition that in the vision of after-death experience, residence in supraphysical worlds is clearly indicated.

In the Life-worlds there are formulations resembling inferi­or movements of earth-existence.

These formations would be the pre-formations of good and evil that must evolve in the earth.

436. These worlds of larger life would hold in themselves both the moreluminous and darker formations of our world's life.

There they could arrive at their independent fullness as that medium would permit that.

There are worlds where there is no distinction between good and evil.

All is mingled in the complex interaction necessary to the field of a many-sided integration.

False and evil have a side of their own truth.

That completely adapts all its circumstances to its princi­ple of existence.

Their own delight of being is obnoxious to our minds.

437. These other worlds are not evolutionary, but typal.

The powers are partially expressed on earth; but they are in full bloom in their own worlds.

438. The other worlds are free from the restrictions of earth.

These imaginary accounts are also informed of intuition and a subliminal experience.

Human mind in its reception does its own translation of it.

Tradition has it that higher mental and spiritual principles are involved in these worlds.

The principle of gradation is therefore justified.

Classifications are there, based on principles they believe in.

The system we have chosen is of greatest importance because it answers to the truth of manifestation and helps us  understand our existence, involution and evolution.

We also see the other worlds are not a thing quite apart from the material universe, but penetrate and envelop it with their influences and have on it a secret incidence which is formative and directive force which is not easily calculable.

439. The existence of other worlds is a fact of primary importance.

If the physical universe is the only reality, we suppose, it evolves without  any aid or pressure from other worlds except that of the secret superconscience. It will also make spirit dependent on Matter for its manifestation.

Neither Life could dominate nor Mind master.

440. The Reality being free, it is not bound to Matter.

The Reality can create a contrary world.

The principle of self-existent Bliss being the first principle and the universal condition, an order where the Spirit would freely realise its own possibilities can be created.

441. There is a possibility of a world-order where Mind functions unfettered by Life or Matter.

So too, Life might have its own world-order where it would be sovereign.

The separate domination of each principle is possible.

-- All our spiritual and psychic experiences inevitably point out the existence of higher worlds.

We are free to accept this evidence and admit the reality of these planes.

There are different harmonies from the harmony of the physical universe. They adopt a different system and ordering of its principles.

For our present inquiry, it is not necessary to examine to what dimension of Time and Space they belong as it is in a more subtle substance and with other movements.

When we enter the subliminal, we see there higher planes are in contact with ours.

A human being can project himself partially into these higher planes even while in the body.

A fortiori, with a stronger reason must he be able to do so when he is out of the body.

The consequence of this relation and the power of transference are of immense importance.

It justifies the tradition of the sojourn of the human conscious being in other worlds.

It opens up the possibility of action of other planes on human existence.

442. These worlds are not created subsequently to earth but prior to it.

Prior, if not in time, in their consequential sequence.

The ascending gradation is a provision of Nature for evolution.

The higher worlds have not come out of a pressure from the physical universe.

Still less, they are the creations of the human soul.           

443. The development of Life, Mind and Spirit out of Matter presupposes their existence.

There is the necessity of the Inconscient to bring out what is latent in it and there is the pressure of the superior principles which may determine the ways of life here.

-- A secret continuous action of the higher planes on the subliminal must have an effect and a significance.

Its first effect is the liberation of Life and Mind out of Matter.

As he goes inward, he finds a larger Life and Consciousness awaiting him.

SUMMARY,  Book II, Chapter XXI

The Order of the Worlds

 

Chapter XXIV   The Evolution of the Spiritual Man

 

444. In the earliest stages of Nature, the secret spiritual entity feeling its way towards the surface was not discernible.

445. The phenomenon of living matter appeared later, but has not disclosed anything. Man's emergence could not have been conceived in that stupendous immensity of inert Matter moving or organised life teeming with energy.

446. But a conscious Witness would have caught sight of the hints of emerging spirit.

447. Two questions arise.

i) The exact nature of transition from mental to spiritual being.

ii) The process and method of evolution of the spirit out of the mind.

-- The spirit is likely to be considered as the fine flower of the mind.

Therefore the distinction between them must be established.

448. As electricity is hidden in the water and cloud, spirit is the origin of Matter.

The effect is in the essence pre-existent to the apparent cause.

This is true throughout the evolutionary Nature:  Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit.

Evolution is an inverse action of involution, the first appearing last.

449. Mind is not separate in the animal; it is involved in its life operations.

So too the soul in man is not separate from mind.

Discovery of the separate soul is the discovery of the Purusha.

When there is complete Silence in the being or a stillness, the Soul is seen.

This is a decisive step in the spiritual evolution of Nature.

450. Evolution becomes evident only through such decisive movements.

Psychic emergence is seen by self-existent  knowledge.

At first it only exerts an indirect pressure, later it acts directly.

451. Spirituality is NOT the exalted ideals of mind or life but an awakening that seeks communion with the greater Reality beyond.

452. The creative Consciousness-Force in our earth existence has to lead forward with a greater stress of the inferior element, a double evolution.

This is dispensable if the aim is cessation of our being, but essential for a comprehensive change.

453. The spiritual emergence is conditional on the inferior powers perfecting themselves.

It is the one thing needful that has to be done by each seeker according to the spiritual capacity developed in his nature.

454. Religion, occultism, spiritual thought, inner spiritual realisation are the four lines man used to open to the Spirit.

455. But all knowledge and endeavour can reach its fruition only when it is turned into realisation and experience.

456. Evolution has to be slow as it has to pull out of the involution.

457. Slowness, resistance, difficulty are the innate characteristics of all human endeavour.

-- Religion has imposed itself on man. Faith too was imposed.

Unquestioning acceptance can be demanded only when perfection is realised, not earlier.

458. Nature herself permits the good corn and the tares and weeds to grow together for a long time.

459. Primitive intuition, occult ritual, mystical knowledge were no doubt crude, but they acquired depth and range to a greater amplitude and significance.

460. Religion, in the end, reached the summits in the sphere of suprarational consciousness and knowledge.

461. The main element of religion would be a calling of small powers and elemental beings to the aid of small life-desires and a rude physical welfare.

462. A spiritual philosophy assumes a strong separate existence in the later stages of religion.

-- The spiritual aspiration of the mystics, casketed in secret formulas, were the heart's core of religion in the mind of early humanity.

463. The risk of untoward results such as dead mass of cult, ceremony and ritual, had to be taken for the expansive movement in evolutionary Nature.

464. Two tendencies arose.

A catholic conservation of original plastic character, and, the other insistent on pure belief, worship and conduct.

465. Religion in India has behaved with the multitudinous variety and freedom of evolutionary Nature herself.

Even her fixed religio-social system was an order, but a growing order.

466. The function of religion, her great indispensable utility, was the holding up of a growing light of guidance on our way through the mind's ignorance towards the Spirit's complete consciousness and self-knowledge.

467. To master and use the power of Nature-force is one province of occultism, but it would be only a small part of it.

This is a vast range of little-explored knowledge.

468. Science exercises an artificial control without the secret knowledge.

This may lead to the extinction of the race.

Tantras, as in Egypt, possessed an ampler version of occult knowledge.

469. Occult science is the knowledge of the subliminal in us as well as the world.

470. Reflective and critical reason is of great importance. In a total knowledge this becomes indispensable.

471. Intellect has its allotted place. Its primary function is understanding, secondarily critical, and finally organising, controlling and formative.

472. For the transformation of Ignorance into knowledge, spiritual intelligence is of importance.

473. Only the spiritual experience of the heart and mind gave birth to the saint, the Rishi, the Yogi, the seer. Only the spiritual manhood endured, not what the religions produced, the priest, the mage.

474. The last rung of the spiritual ladder is occupied by the liberated man who has realised the Self, the Spirit.

The largest liberation is the liberation of the soul, the mind, the body.

Beyond this height and largeness opens the supramental ascent.

475. Modern ideas consider that the spiritual tendency in humanity has come to very little.

476. Spirituality offers no external solutions; its solutions are inner.

477. To discover the spiritual being in himself and to help others to achieve it is his real service.

478. A higher instrumental dynamis than mind is needed to transform totally a nature created by Ignorance.

479. The hard logical and intellectual notion of truth as a single idea is an illegitimate transference from the limited truth of the physical field to the complex field of spirit.

480. In mental formulation, the difference must remain until one can exceed mind altogether and in a highest consciousness integralise, unify and harmonise the many-sided truth of the Spirit.

481. A diversity of oneness is the law of manifestation; these diversities must be harmonised, not abolished.

 

Chapter XXV   The Triple Transformation

 

482. The spiritual man is not the end: the supramental being would evolve.

483. For the supramental being to evolve, the self-affirmation of the spirit and its rising to Supermind through the triple transformation is essential.

484. Psychic entity is imperishable, immaculate and is aware of truth, beauty and good in things while it is untarnished by the ugly of which too it is aware.

485. The intimations of the veiled psychic entity cannot be known either by the vital ego or an overconfident mind. The pro­cess of assimilation of human experience by the psychic is an occult process unobtruded by the surface.

486. The psychic that is in our subliminal emerges to be aware of good, beauty and Truth.

The psychic entity is itself free from stain but what comes up from it is not.

487. The emerging psychic initially even loses contact with its origin but slowly establishes itself, as being lost on the surface is part of its evolution.

488. The inner mental, vital etc., the ghost of after death and other non-conscious (occult) parts of us--due to our igno­rance of our subliminal--can camouflage as the psychic.

489. The surfacing subliminal parts constantly create a chaos in man of which he manages a partial order till the Person deeper than the source of this subliminal imposes its mas­tery over them to establish an order. Truly this Person is the soul, though it is variously understood.

490. Man is a multi-person in whom the insistence of the physi­cal Purusha renders him a person of habits, but he can be re­fined under the influence of the subtle-physical Purusha, where the vital assertion can be put under a reasoning intelligence.

491. Mind being one part of the being, cannot effect a total harmony which only the emerging soul, the psychic, is enti­tled to do; but it can impose a greater harmony of the being than the body or the vital can.

492. Complete emergence of the soul means direct contact on the surface with the spiritual Reality.

493. The soul seeking the experience of the spiritual substance on the surface may seek it through the mind, through intel­lect, insight and intuition becoming the sage of direct experience behind abstract thought.

494. A higher endeavour will be to let the spiritualised mind go upwards, as it normally tends to, and look itself into the Self, the spiritual Silence. But this is not transformation.

Another method of direct contact:

To seek through the heart centre whose consummation comes only when the mind, crossing impersonality, meets the Su­preme Personal Being so that the full power of the bhakta comes out. For us this too is insufficient.

495. Consecration of one's will can also partly bring about this change; but a combined approach of mind, will and heart can prepare the ground for the psychic change.

To seek the spiritual Reality on the surface through mind and heart along with the consecration of the will, the shift to the inner is essential.

496. The space between the surface and the depth is filled by the subliminal and nature-movements which obstruct the movement.

497. The screen between the inner and outer can also be broken by a violent aspiration which is beset with the dangers of the intervening plane of subliminal, subconscious, subtle parts. Purity and sincerity can still overcome it.

498. Separation of Purusha from Prakriti in mind, vital and body is effective to move to the inner, but it is best done by offering the method to the Divine Being.

499. The psychic emerges when the crust between the inner and outer breaks.

Its first result is to harmonise nature throwing its light on its movements.

500. The second result is the experience of Self, Ishwara, illumination of the parts of the being and a direct contact with the Divine.

501. Some of the above changes can come by an opening of the inner mental, etc. which of course is of mixed character.

All this change is partial, till an upward opening to the overmind and supramental nature brings in the full spiritual transformation, breaking open the bright lid of mind when the psychic emergence is mature and full.

502. The opening of the mental lid makes us see Infinity and the eternal Presence but when the ascension comes to be at will, the lower nature too, which soon loses the remembrance, becomes awake.

A permanent ascent and an effectual descent complete the spiritual transformation.

503. A new consciousness of intuition or overmind begins to form in place of the mental consciousness.

504. A light, power and force of the spirit remould mind, life and body consciousness, making immortality and infinity constant experience, uniting manifested existence with what is above it.

505. As the work of the descending Spirit with the lower nature is in detail and arduous, the Power has to come down in intervals so that the frame may not give way or the force may not fall into the hands of the Adversary.

506. The descending Power has to descend into each part of the being successively to make the change integral and enduring.

507. The greatest effectivity of Life and Mind in the material existence and that of Spirit in Mind and Life are short of being dynamically absolute.

508. The intrinsic, automatic action of the Supermind where knowledge and will are identical descending and releasing

the Supramental principle within the lower nature alone can complete the farther transformation of Supramental Transfor­mation.

SUMMARY, Book II, Chapter XXV

Triple Transformation

 

Chapter XXVI   The Ascent towards the Supermind

 

509. Understanding of the Supermind needs another language yet unknown to human mind. At best it can look towards it.

510. A description of the intermediate regions too is not easy.

As the elements of the higher consciousness are here, the transition to Supermind can somewhat be traced even as the transition to the spiritual mind has done; but it is the domain of the mystic.

511. The descent of Supermind into us and its formulation in our being and power is a sine qua non for the transformation.

The transition can take place over long millenniums without the descent.

By a call from below and an intervention from above a swift transformation can take place.

512. An inner awareness, the emergence of the psychic and inner mental being are first necessities.

The growing forms of life have attained in man a conscious working hampered by the rigidities of his nature.

513. Further to this, man can evolve to the point of his Purusha becoming the conscious master of the Prakriti in the universal working of it.

A harmonious world is not impossible in our plane of being, but the authentic free will growing effective is possible only when the psychic and inner mental being come to the front.

514. The freedom of individual will becomes effective either when it submits to the cosmic impersonality or greater still to the Spiritual being both of which the individual will is part.

Submission to the higher is the basis of freedom of the lower.

515. The individuality that so submits would be the instrument of the cosmic and transcendent Realities.

516. This turn is a condition for Supramental transformation.

517. The surrender of the Purusha must be supplemented by the surrender of Prakriti too, for the supramental transformation to become at all possible.

518. The supramental transformation presupposes:

1) a full emergence of the  soul and the inner being;

2) the dominance of the psychic and spiritual will, and

3) a psychic and spiritual remoulding of the whole nature by a    long  working of the psychic and spiritual will.

Another essential condition is to shift the centre from the surface to the inner.

Man has to universalise himself, open up his very body to the communication of universal nature, become a conscious being of light, Power, etc.

Till then the supramental force works indirectly through overmind or intuition.

519. The process of evolution can be speeded up but cannot escape any step.

Shifting the centre to the inner increases the speed and when the conscious Spirit intervenes, the galloping speed resembling a miracle starts.

520. There are successive stages in the mind through which alone one can ascend.

The spiritual touch of the higher mental nature and the opening of the inner gates matter.

The same is done by the occult descent from above.

This may lead to the Soul escaping into Moksha.

Otherwise the planes of consciousness spoken of by the Veda open up.

521. The Principle of evolution calls for integration at a higher level each time Nature ascends. Mind cannot do it in man as other parts are out of its full reach.

Only a higher principle can do it.

522. Even when the higher principle comes down, the lower parts have an inclination to stick to what they are and have to be illumined by spiritual light to the point of their seeking transformation, recognising that they too are of the Spirit.

523. The following are the stages in overcoming the obstinacy of the

lower nature:  

]  opening the doors of the lower nature;

]  bringing forward the psychic;

] calling in the descent of the Supermind.

Then comes the turn towards the ascent to Supermind.

524. The four grades of ascent:

Higher mind, illumined mind, intuition, overmind.

525. The taking up of the lower by the higher is possible because all grades are of the same substance with varying stress of intensities.

The descent from the higher is absorbed by its own greater being and essence.

526. The first decisive step is higher mind which is the last rung of conceptual mind born of spiritual identity.

527. The higher mind initiates into forms an ever present but till now inactive knowledge, a self-revelation.

It need not resort to inferences and deduction.

528. The higher mind works through the idea-force and awaits the will to consent to the idea.

The descending Force has to work in a warping medium of Nescience.

Mind, life and body throw up their ideas, impulses to stifle the higher idea force.

They all insist till fully rejected and later take shelter in the universal plane to recur.

This is the strength of the evolutionary force earlier created to slow down transformation.

529. This resistance will continue to the end.

The psychic control and spiritual transformation can help reduce the resistance but the descending idea-force is insufficient for removing all obstacles.

This can only prepare for a descent of a higher force.

530. The Illumined Mind works not by thought but by light.

Higher mind is deliberative whereas the Illumined one is swift, vehement and violent.

The Illumined Mind works by vision; thought is a concession to mind and is not indispensable.

531. As the higher mind brings in Truth-idea, the Illumined Mind brings in Truth-sight and Truth-light and takes it to emotions, impulses and physical consciousness too.

532. Intuition is a power of consciousness which includes thought and sight.

It comes out either when its consciousness touches the consciousness of the object or when it reaches in its own depths the hidden forces behind appearances.

533. The descending intuition is thwarted by the intermediate planes which are often dangerous.

Till the proper conscious liaison emerges, intuition cannot be fully powerful.

534. Intuition descending completes its own earlier descents.

Reliance on reason or intelligence hampers this fuller transmutation.

535. Truth-seeing, Truth-hearing, Truth-touch, discrimination of the Truth-relation are the fourfold powers of Intuition which transform not only mind but heart, vital and body.

Its integration is incomplete as the basis of Inconscience in us is vast.

536. Overmind being a power of cosmic consciousness, at least the opening of the inner mind is necessary for its descent when all thought, emotion, etc., become universal and cease to be individual.

537. The dead ego gives place to the universal self in the overmind descent.

A new centre may be created for the action of the Infinite.

538. The descending consciousness is universal.

An ordering Power of Gnosis may intervene creating a plastic structure which universalises all that is descending from Intuition, Illumined Mind and Higher Mind.

-- Overmind, the highest power of the lower hemisphere, working still in division and according to the native grain of the possibilities, is incapable of Transcendence.

539. The Overmind transformation leaves a basis of Inconscience untransformed which could reinvade.

The law of new evolutionary nature which takes up all diversities as parts of its unity would still not be there.

540. A power of Gnosis slowly greatens body, life and mind through overmind and its delegated powers until the supramental force takes up fully the transformation of Ignorance.

541. The process of integration in the supramental transformation is not one of a straight line march but a zigzag one which needs retreat too for comprehensive consolidation.

542. The law of gradations that makes possible the descent of a higher power even when the lower powers are still half-organised, is to be fulfilled even in this complexity of higher transformation (first complexity.)

543. The integration generates the resistance of the lower parts and so it has to be attempted in all parts of the being by the descending consciousness.

Still the subconscient and inconscient will remain (second complexity).

544. The third complexity is due to the consciousness being in different states, viz. inner, outer, circumconscient, etc. The different rates of assimilation of the higher consciousness by these parts poses a problem in growth.

545. To establish an insular inner consciousness that evolves (a subjective spirituality) will not meet the demands of the evolving nature towards an integral transformation.

Our being is moulded out of inconscience which dilutes and diminishes the descending light, none of which have the divine power to transform this original power of darkness.

546. The blind imperative Necessity of Inconscience can only be sufficiently met for purposes of transformation by the luminous Necessity of the Supermind.

547. The evolving of a gnostic being, a gnostic Prakriti and a gnostic Nature as a result of the overt establishment of Supramental Consciousness-Force in the terrestrial working will provide for the graded manifestation of the Overmind and spiritual Mind principles down to the spiritual principle in the Inconscience.

SUMMARY, Book II, Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII    The Gnostic Being

 

548. The Supramental nature is a perfect integration of spiritual nature and experience which is beyond the pale of mental understanding.

549. Mind is finite whereas Supermind is infinite.

Therefore a mental description of the Supermind will be beside the point.

At best a general description of the passage between Overmind and Supermind can be constructed.

550. The Supermind does not reveal of a sudden, as in its own plane. It progressively manifests Overmind willing not to know itself on the surface but allowing a lesser manifesta­tion possible.

But in this passage, the veil moves and the Truth-Consciousness emerges for evolutionary purposes.

551. So far the evolution is split into the surface and sublimin­al self.

The surface self is formed by the upsurging of the involved consciousness and the subliminal mainly by the descent and partly by the upsurging. The descending being into the subliminal also helps to form the surface personality.

In the Supramental evolution the division between the sur­face and the subliminal vanishes, wiping off the rule of Ignorance  resulting in the first formation of a Gnostic Consciousness.

552. The creation of a supramental being would also have its grades below it which would change the growth of darkness into light, into a growth of light into greater light.

This cannot impede the evolutionary process as Supermind has the power of withholding or sanctioning the process.

553. The inherent unitarian, integralising supramental conscious­ness makes this possible.

The Overmind follows contradictions and builds its world of Truth walled in from Ignorance whereas Supermind recognises the Truth in the Ignorance and works in such a way as to bring it out.

554. The gnostic race would include a triple status:

l) Individual beings who would ascend beyond a Supermind formulation to the highest height of Supermind to the sum­mits of unitarian self-realisation in the body, the last supreme epiphany of the creation (2) and  3) Overmind and intuitive gnosis with the souls that have realised these degrees of ascending Consciousness.

The gnostic individual would live in his Self of transcen­dence individualising the universe, individualising the divine Transcendence, feeling all life as a Conscious Being and finding world-life as a perfect work of art.

555. The individual, the Cosmic entity and the Reality beyond them would find in the Supramental being their united ful­fillment and their harmony.

556. The Supramental being would not have the conflict in the world which we have, since his ego is dead and he has the knowledge of the world which we do not have.

A large universality of self-expression, a large harmonic universality of world-being would be the very sign of the Supramental Person in his gnostic nature.

557. Delight of the manifestation of the Spirit in its truth of being would be the sense of gnostic life.

558. Spiritual totality of living, acting, movement is the very mark of Supramental Consciousness.

It is an infinite consciousness with its knowledge by identity and for which there is in each differentiation the joy and the experience of the Identical, in each finite is felt the Infinite.

559. The evolution of gnostic consciousness reverses the process of life from outward to inward.

Firstly in the being and later in the world, the inner moulding and guiding the outer expresses.

560. The antimony between the inner and outer will be cured in the Gnostic being who from his inner poise will be able to embrace the beings in ignorance without entering into Igno­rance.

561. The Gnostic being will be in concrete inner contact with the world and individuals and act on them inwardly.

562. The universal inner life of the (Gnostic) individual will extend to the subliminal inner being's natural connection with other planes of being which power of instrumentation will increase its hold on physical nature.

In the Supermind, there is no aim except to be.

Supermind working in manifested existence will have subor­dinate characters.

In the ignorance one is there primarily to grow, where our achievements grow into our meshes.

The spiritual man is one who has discovered his soul.

The gnostic being takes up this new basis and converts ignorant becoming into luminous becoming of knowledge and true power of being.

563. The supramental transformation fulfills mind by uplifting it and giving a new character.

This it does by changing the discovery of the "unknown" into "by the bringing out of the known."

564. Replacement of the intellectual seeking by Supramental identity and gnostic intuition will be the character of each gnostic movement.

A self-illumination, a revelation of light out of light will be the method of cognition.

565. Life seeks growth, power, conquest, possession, satisfac­tion, creation, joy and love.

In the Gnostic life the same will be for the Divine.

Life will be the joy of (identity) an intimate self-revealing diversity of the One.

Creation will be of the significant forms of Eternal Forces, Light, Beauty, Reality.

566. This results in a reversal of consciousness and expresses in a new significance in the relation of spirit and body. The body becomes a fully responsive instrument of the Spirit, instead of an independent instrument having its own law.

567. Reversal of consciousness in the body is to recognise the Spirit in Matter, to care for beauty in the life of Matter.

568. Perfection and fulfillment of the physical being: a supra­mental self-effectuating awareness will restore the obscured instincts of the body to the right rhythm.

The whole being will be flooded with consciousness-Force and harmonise all forces that surround the body.

569. Power of mental spiritual will to control the instruments like vital and body increases with spiritual growth.

At a higher stage, the power to control changes into the power to change pain into Ananda, a power of reversal.

The Gnostic being acquires the fullness of this power to reverse the consciousness.

The inherent aspiration of the being for the Supreme trans­lates itself into happiness, delight, ecstasy in different parts of the being.

The being of Gnosis will be followed by the being of Bliss.

This Bliss would be inherent in the Gnostic consciousness.

570. Ecstasy which is held lower than peace ceases to be differ­ent from peace in the highest ascents.

The Supermind brings out this inherent unity.

Its calm and delight rising to heights of intensity cul­minate in an ecstasy which is bliss which is Infinite.

Such a change shows itself,

in the mind as vision and knowledge;

in the heart as passionate delight of union;    

in action as  energy of delight;

in the body as pure spiritualised existence.

In the universal phenomenon is revealed the Eternal Ananda.

571. If outer action too is to be transformed, the question of personality must be answered and the ethical question in gnostic nature.

In the supermind consciousness, personality and impersonali­ty are not opposites. They are inseparable aspects of the same principle.

Here the reality is not ego but the being.

572. Impersonality in its source is something fundamental.

It is a force and energy.

Each such force or energy is taken by the individual for building his personality.

Impersonality is the pure substance of the nature of the Being.

Love is the nature of the lover.

Courage is the nature of the warrior.

The Impersonal and the Person are each other.

The Gnostic Being is of the nature of the Divine and repeats in himself this natural mystery.

573. A supramental Gnostic individual is a spiritual Person.

In every man there is a formed person and a non-formed flux.

Behind it is the Person of whom personality is a reflection.

The gnostic individual is a presence of light of conscious­ness, a sea of energy but not fixed.

He is the Person, the Purusha.

574. The Gnostic Person is an infinite and universal being re­vealing his eternal self through significant form. But the individuality is only an index, not the whole being.

His consciousness will be infinite Consciousness.

He would be expressing the inherent truth of the being through his natural law.

575. The Gnostic Being is one founded on Truth and expressing Truth.

The human conflict of good and evil, the human need for the bridle of law of good are transcended by him.

All becomes a self-flow of spiritual self-nature.

576. The kernel of difference between human life and life in spirit lies in the former adhering to law and the latter to liberty.

An entire freedom of spirit, self-existent order self-creating, self-effectuating, self-secure is the character of gnostic Supernature.

577. The Gnostic being will be in harmony with the world, other gnostic beings and the Supreme Truth since his actions originate not from separate individuality but from a centre of oneness.

578. The rigid posture mind chooses for its secure functioning will not be there in the Supramental gnostic nature which enjoys the wideness and plasticity of infinite freedom.

579. In the infinite consciousness cosmicity does not conflict with transcendence.

The gnostic being will create his own self-manifestation.

His universality will be aware of the ignorance around him without his being affected by it.

His highest self will be one with Ishwara.

All antinomy of the Purusha and Prakriti, the unbalance between Soul and Nature are removed.

His nature would be an outflowing of the Person and the Person the outflowing of Supreme Nature which is Supramen­tal Power of being of the Ishwara.

580. The supramental gnostic being stands in a consciousness in which knowledge is self-existent and manifests itself ac­cording to the order self-determined by the Will of the Infinite in the supernature, replacing the automatism of Nature and the standard of Mind by the spontaneity of a Truth self-aware, self-active in the very grain of exist­ence.

581. In the gnostic being, knowledge and will; freedom and order are one and are not in conflict. His is a freedom of light, not of darkness.

He is not bound to pass through error to know as the mind needs.

582. A supramental consciousness is a power of Infinite knowing, working out its finites; it is a power of universal knowing working out its oneness in detail and in individualities.

Self-possessed of Truth, it does not need to seek Truth like the mind of Ignorance.

In the functioning of Supramental Consciousness there could be no strife of members.

583. In a gnostic being there would be no conflict between ego and super-ego. His will will be one with the will of the Ishwara. As the person here is the being of the Being, the opposition felt in the mental nature between self-effort and obedience to Higher will is not felt.

584. On this fact that the Divine Knowledge and Force, the su­preme Supernature would act through the gnostic being with his full participation is founded his freedom.

This unity gives him liberty.

Freedom from law, including moral law, is founded on this unity.

All mental standard would disappear.

Selfishness does not arise since all is included in the self.

Action would be pervaded by universal love and oneness.

A harmonic action working out the divine motive, an execu­tion of the imperative truth of things would be the law and natural dynamis of the whole existence.

585. Enriching the instrument is a principle of Supramental life.

A fulfillment of the being in a luminous and blissful inte­gration of its states would be the sense of the gnostic existence.

586. Supramental gnosis is of two-fold; inherent self-knowledge and intimate world knowledge.

587. Gnostic evolution admits of several grades but the common principle will be a harmony.

588. As in the individual so in the collective, a gnostic living is not based on discord but on inherent unity.

589. The gnostic nature would carry all divergences as its own opulence to make a life-whole.

This realisation is the key to perfection.

It is difficult to arrive at in the mental phase but is spontaneous here.

590. The gnostic being has to live with the untransformed part of humanity.

The most evolved part would lay its power of harmony on the lower member.

At the higher end effort to rise to Satchidananda will be there.           

591. Whether the evolution from inconscience would stop is a question?

We can only say that the farther evolution will be in harmo­ny and not in strife.

 

Chapter XXVIII   The Life Divine

 

592. The significance of our life is to know the Reality we are and to become that Reality.

593. Consciousness and life are key words to what evolves because Matter is nothing without them.

Consciousness is Mind. Before Mind there was an unthinking consciousness.

After us there may be Superconsciousness.

Consciousness is to be aware of itself. Its destiny is to evolve to its true nature which is Superconscience. If we are transferred to it, we cannot function.

594. If it is so, that superconscience must be involved in the Inconscient.

When evolved, it reveals as all aware Intelligence which we name a Supermind Gnosis. That is the consciousness of Reality which is secret in us and is evolving.

595. Mind is not the highest power of Being.

What is involved in Matter is not mind but spirit.

The native dynamism of consciousness is not life or mind but Supermind.

Life evolves through growth of consciousness.

Consciousness evolves through greater organisation of life.

If life is to manifest Spirit, it is the manifestation of a spiritual being in us and the perfection of consciousness through the gnostic power  that must be the secret burden of Nature

596. All spiritual life is a growth into divine living.

The interspace between mental and divine life is real and is to be crossed.

With the illumination of mind and life, they reflect the secret greater divine Reality.

This continues till the interspace is crossed.

The change must re-create the whole being, mind, life and body.

Inner growth is by experience of the Divine.

Outer growth is by its power.

Such change must extend from the individual to the collective.

For that the spiritual entity in us must have developed its integralised perfection that develops power in outer life and must have the necessity to action.

597. To achieve inner perfection is the first truth and essence of the matter.

For a  greater dynamic change, change in earth-nature would be the divine issue.

The whole foundation of gnostic life by its very nature is INWARD. Mind, life and body are the instruments of spirit, not the object itself.

For divine life, this is indispensable.

In our life, we find the world creates us.

In spiritual life, we must create the world.

598. But Mind is obscure. It turns either inward or outward, towards individuality or the world.

We should choose the inner perfection as against the others.

599. As the Upanishad says, no spiritual perfection is possible unless it is an inner perfection.

Once this inner life is created, our whole life must be cast into its mould.

600. Imperfect men cannot create a Perfect world.

At best an outer conformity can be achieved.

Soul and mind are powers of being.

They can grow but cannot be made or manufactured.

This is the first truth of Spiritual Perfection in Life attempted.

601. To be or become something is the endeavour of Nature.

Knowledge, action, etc. are not the essence of life.

They are activities of the real power of being which is the soul.

602. The Physical Mind sees things upside down.

Nature's pressure is only to awaken man to the inner reality.

Nature does it by an occult process.

In the spiritual evolution occult process becomes the whole process.

 

 



story | by Dr. Radut