Cosmic Determinants 1
Life Divine, Book II, Part I
Chapter I
'Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable'
1) A Consciousness-Force is the creator of the worlds.
It is the occult secret of nature.
In the material world and in us, consciousness has a double aspect - knowledge and ignorance.
A total nescience, an inconscience is the base of the creative world-energy. It is its nature.
Universe commences here.
Consciousness and knowledge emerge in little quantities.
Consciousness establishes a precarious light in the darkness.
2) Knowledge thus gained is of the phenomena.
Wherever our consciousness meets a foundation, it is a blank, not related to the superstructure.
The first aspect of cosmic existence is an infinite perceived as an indeterminate.
In this infinite, the universe appears as a 'boundless finite'.
This is mysterious.
We call the energy which produces the appearance nature.
Unless it explains as the nature of things, it is meaningless.
Science has discovered many processes.
It does not explain how out of a blank those aspects emerge.
At the origin there are:
- an infinite containing finites,
- an indivisible full of divisions,
- an immutable of mutations.
This is a cosmic paradox.
3) One can question the need of positing an infinite but the alternative is a void.
Even time or space does not give us a clue.
4) Science sees this infinite as energy.
The original process and the other multitude of processes are inexplicable.We know that electric infinitesimals can cause an occasion, but we fail to discover how they came to be constituted. We know how oxygen and hydrogen produce water but do not know why.
Similarly we see a tree growing out of a seed but do not know how. So also we fail to see how material movements in the brain of Shakespeare or Plato can produce a Hamlet or a Symposium.
Science shows how but does not answer the why.
* 5)
Behind the action of material energy | secret involved consciousness |
Through the action of the frontal energy | means of an evolutionary manifestation |
Boundless finite in the material universe | creation out of itself (infinite) |
Consciousness involves itself | into its opposite of material world substance |
Infinite creation of its powers and truths | manifestation in material disguise |
Forms of vehicles of these truths and powers | basic fundamentals determinations of nature |
*Unaccountable variations which are the particular determinants | the truths and powers these fundamentals bore within them |
The principle of free variation | aspect of inconscient chance |
The principle of truths and powers of the infinite's imperative | mechanical necessity in nature |
Infinite's imperative to fulfill itself in its truths and real powers | a constant experimental skill and an automatism of purpose (mathematical architecture, of design, effective arrangement of numbers, of adaptation of means to the ends, device, invention) |
The appearance of Consciousness out of Inconscience becomes intelligible.
Consciousness - Force
Knowledge - will
|
(design, quantity, number) (quality & property)
Existence -- Consciousness -- Ananda
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Force
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Energy
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Substance
6) Based on that hypothesis,
There must be behind the action of material energy, a secret involved consciousness.
Building up the means of manifestation through the action.
Infinite creation becomes boundless finite in the material universe.
Inconscient material energy is the indispensable condition for the structure of material world substance.
Creation of the infinite out of itself is a manifestation in material disguise of truths and powers of itself.
The forms of vehicles of these truths are the basic fundamental determinations of nature.
(*) Possibilities the truths or powers bore within the fundamentals express as the unaccountable variations emerging from the vague general stuff.
Principle of free variation becomes the inconscient chance.
Principle of truths and powers of the Infinite's imperative becomes the mechanical necessity in nature.
The infinite's imperative to fulfill its truths and powers becomes (the mathematical accuracy) the automatism.
As a result, consciousness appears out of inconscience.
7) There is more to perplex us.
A necessity of immutable sameness at the base, of free and unaccountable variations on the surface is the law. But who determines?
8) A possible explanation is self-organising dynamic chance.
But the insistence of an iron order contradicts this. This can be explained by a mechanical necessity. This cannot justify the free play.
Behind the necessity there may be a law of multiplicity. If so, multiplicity of what?
This will lead us back to chance.
We have also to explain the emergence of consciousness from the inconscient and the role of the mind.
9) There can be other explanations of consciousness creating this world from inconscience. A mind seems to have done the work.
Then, creation is by an extra cosmic divinity.
No doubt, an extra cosmic divinity cannot be seen by us. Even if it is an immanent divinity, it can be seen only at a certain point of evolution, not at all times.
Still, the incomprehensibility of the purpose of creation remains.
A play?
10) If consciousness is creating out of inconscience, behind the material energy there must be a secret consciousness.
Then, inconscience is indispensable for the evolution of consciousness.
In that case, only the truths and powers of the being involved will be evolving.
The principle of free variation to the infinity explains the evolution.
They would be the opposite of mechanical nature out of which they evolve. Thus the appearance of consciousness out of inconscience is explained.
11) By the above hypothesis, all the unexplained processes can be explained.
Energy seems to create substance.
In reality, as existence is inherent in consciousness-force, substance is inherent in energy.
Energy is a manifestation of force.
Substance is a secret manifestation of existence.
But it is spiritual substance.
It could be apprehended by the material sense only when it gives by energy the forms of matter seizable by the sense.
Now we understand how design, quantity and number can be the base for the manifestation of quality and property.
They can be made manifest by a rhythm and process of substance.
The growth of the tree would be accounted for by the Real-Idea.
The infinite's self-perception of the significant form, the living body of its power of existence that has to emerge from its own self-compression in energy-substance would be carried internally in the form of a seed, carried in the occult consciousness involved in that form and evolved out of it.
We can also understand how infinitesimals of a material character like the gene and the chromosomes can carry the psychological elements.
At the bottom, it is the same for objectivity of matter as for subjective experience.
12) So also, the body's physiological functions determine mind's psychological functions because body is not mere unconscious matter. A structure of secretly conscious energy has taken form in it.
Body is occultly conscious.
But it is the vehicle of expression of an overt consciousness that has emerged and is self-aware in our physical energy-substance.
The body 's functionings are a necessary machinery for the movements of this mental inhabitant.
This is necessary for the physical manifestation of the conscious being.
In turn, the body's functionings influence the mind's formations.
The body may even dominate its user, the mind.
All this is possible because the body has the subconscient.
Still, the body determining the mind is a minor truth.
The major truth is mind determines the body.
That a spiritual entity determines the mind and the body is a greater truth.
Thus, the conception of divine mind and will creating the cosmos becomes tenable.
13) An approach from the material end of existence cannot give us this validity.
The veil is so thick that it may not be penetrated.
The prime secret is self-discovered when we move to a point of self- enlightenment.
In life it is clearly hopeless to try to discover the truth. There it is submental or sub consciousness.
In human mind there is the first hope of free comprehension.
Here the possibility of self-knowledge and world-knowledge exists.
At first mind can only observe facts and processes and infer the rest
In order to know the secret of consciousness, it has to know itself, and determine the reality of its own being and process.
In man, the mind-consciousness is involved in the whirl of thoughts.
We do not freely determine our thinking; it is determined by our nature.
14) Only when we follow the yogic process and quieten the mind, self-observation is possible. We discover mind is a subtle substance, a general determinate which mental energy throws into forms of thoughts, and so on
When the energy is quiescent, it lives in either torpor, or immobile silence or peace of self-existence.
Next we see the determination of the mind does not proceed out of itself. It comes from a universal mind.
We perceive an occult subliminal mind from which thought, etc. arise.
We also see higher planes of mind from which superior mind energy works on us.
Finally we see a mental being supporting the mind substance and mind energy.
First the mental being is a silent witness purusha.
If this is all, we have to accept the domination of nature.
The purusha can move to be a knower, a giver of commands.
We see here that all mind determinations arise from the purusha.
A complication arises because our mind is part of the universal mind.
Three questions arise:
1) whether evolution is a phenomenal creation by universal energy presented to the mental being, or
2) it is an activity imposed by the mental purusha's indeterminate existence, or
3) The whole is something predetermined and only manifested on the mind plane.
To know that, we have to enter a cosmic state of being and consciousness.
15) Overmind consciousness is such a principle.
It is even beyond universal mind in the ignorance.
It carries the masterful cognition of cosmic truth.
Maybe the answer is here.
Here we see the individual as well as cosmos is from the transcendent.
Mind and life must be partial self-expressions of the Cosmic Being.
But the expression is decided by the individual himself.
But the original question remains unsolved.
The original questions:
1) whether it is not a creation presented to him by nature.
2) It might be a play of cosmic (illusion) imagination.
3) whether the building of thought is truly a self-expression.
Each view has its own logical support.
Overmind adds to the complexity.
16) Invert dichotomy of silent self and the mighty dynamics.
This contradiction sublimates into the impersonal Brahman.
Impersonal Brahman is the source of all relations and determinations - nirguna, saguna.
If we pursue the nirguna into a farthest possible self-experience, we arrive at a supreme Absolute.
If we enter through saguna similarly, we arrive at the divine Absolute.
The divine Absolute is a personal supreme omnipresent godhead transcendent as well as universal.
This is an infinite master of all relations, he can uphold in his being a million universes and pervade each with a single ray of his self-light and a single degree of his ineffable existence.
The overmind maintains two truths, mutually exclusive alternatives. Behind them there must be a greater transcendence which upholds them both in eternity.
What can that be except an original mystery?
In the last resort, it escapes even the highest mentality.
17) If the supreme Absolute is indeterminable, no manifestation is possible.
But there is a universe.
What then creates it?
As the Absolute is the sole reality, this power must have a relation with it.
If the power is imagination, the sole existence of absolute Parabrahman is not possible.
It is logically impossible that the Supreme Being and the power that issues out of it are opposite.
Brahman is free from all possibility of relations.
But maya is a creative imagination, an originator of all relations which Brahman supports.
This is inadmissible.
It is clear that the Reality is not an indeterminable.
It is perfectly understandable that the Absolute must be indeterminable in the sense that it cannot be limited by any determination but not in the sense it is incapable of self-determination.
18) Overmind then gives no final solution.
We have to seek for it in a supramental cognition.
The supramental is a self-awareness and a power of self-determination.
The first is a foundation and status.
The second is a power of being, the dynamism of self- existence.
All that a timeless eternity of self-awareness sees in itself as truth of being, the conscious power of its being manifests as time-eternity.
To Supermind, the Supreme is not an indeterminable, not an infinite of being complete to itself in its own existence
The infinite of being must also be an infinite of power.
It must also be capable of eternal action and creation.
It must be a creation out of its own self eternal and infinite.
An infinite consciousness must hold endless truths of its self-awareness.
These in action would appear as aspects of its being, to our spiritual senses as powers and movements of its dynamics, to our aesthesis as instruments of its delight.
Creation would then be self-manifestation. It would be an ordered deploying of the infinite possibilities of the Infinite.
Every possibility must have a truth of being behind it.
A fundamental reality of the existent would appear to our cognition as a fundamental spiritual aspect of the divine Absolute.
Out of it would emerge all possible manifestations.
These create non-manifest latency of forms, powers, processes.
Their own being would develop their own becoming swabhava, swarupa.
This then would be a complete process of creation.
In our minds, we do not see the complete process but only possibilities that determine themselves as actualities.
Our mind is an observer of actuals, an inventor of possibilities, not a seer of occult imperative.
The original determinant is veiled from our minds.
For the Supermind it would be apparent.
In the Supermind, the determinant and process and possibilities are one whole.
19) Our cognition of the Absolute is by intuition as existence, consciousness and delight.
In the overmind and mind these three can be exclusively enjoyed. But in Supermind these three are always an inseparable trinity.
Each has its primal aspects of its inherent self-formations.
Delight - Love, Joy, Beauty
Consciousness - Knowledge-Will, Consciousness-Force
Existence - Self, the Divine, the Conscious Being,
Atman, Ishwara, Purusha.
20) Each of these aspects reposes on a triad or trinity:
Knowledge - knower, known, knowledge
Love - Lover, Beloved, Love
Will - Lord of Will, the object of the Will, the executive force.
Joy - Enjoyer, the Enjoyed, the Delight
Self - Self as subject, Self as object, Self-awareness holding together, Self as subject-object.
These are the fundamental spiritual self-determinations of the infinite.
All others are determinants of the fundamental spiritual determinates, significant relations, significant powers, forms of being, consciousness, force, delight - energies, conditions, ways, lines of the truth-process of the consciousness-force of the eternal, imperatives, possibilities, actualities of its manifestations.
All these deploying powers are held together by Supermind in an intimate oneness.
There is no imposition of imagination.
But in the mind of ignorance these impositions appear.
Behind the ignorance, the soul is seeking for the Reality.
This limitation and this awakening are also process of self-determination.
They too bring out the possibility of the infinite.
21) Indeterminability is necessary for conceiving of the Absolute.
The Absolute is not bound by any determination.
It is the source of all determination.
Its indeterminability is natural and necessary to its infinity of being and its infinity of power of being.
This essential indeterminability of the Absolute that translates itself through:
the fundamental negating positives of our spiritual experience | the fundamental affirming positives,
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1. the immobile immutable self 1. the self that becomes all things
2. the nirguna brahman 2. the saguna brahman
3. the ineffable 3. the eternal with infinite qualities
4. the unknowable 4. the one who is the many
5. the infinite person
6. The lord of creation
7. the word
8. the master of works
9. That which being known, all is known.
In the supramental cognition it is not possible to split asunder the two sides of the one existence.
22) Even the separate cognition has its validity.
For the primary aspects of the Absolute are fundamental spiritual determinants answering at the spiritual end or beginning to the material end of the descending and ascending manifestation.
Those that seem to us negative carry in themselves the freedom of the infinite from limitations by its own determinations.
Their realisation disengages the spirit within.
Once we pass into the immutable self, we are no longer bound in the inner status by the determinations of nature.
On the dynamic side, the original freedom enables us to create a world of determinations without being bound by it.
It enables us to withdraw from what it has created and recreate in a higher truth-formula.
It is on this freedom that is based the spirit's power of infinite variation, free from necessity or system.
The individual being can pass from one order of self-formulation to a higher order.
At this stage it has to move from the mental to the Supramental status.
Here one can enter into total nirvana.
A realisation of the pure Self must always precede the clear vision of the spiritual prerogative that gives the free power of ascent and descent.
An independent completeness of identity with each of the primal aspects and powers is a capacity of overmind cognition.
The Supermind keeps always the realisation of the unity.
The overmind still keeps the sense of the underlying unity.
In mind, knowledge of the unity is lost.
Even here, the total reality is behind the absorption and can be recovered as intuition. In the spiritual mind this can be an ever-present experience.
23) All aspects of the omnipresent reality have their fundamental truth in the supreme existence.
Even the power of inconscience corresponds to a truth.
At the heights of spirit it is the trance of superconscience.
At the other end it is the inconscience.
24) It is important to observe the importance of ignorance.
25) Is the supramental the final?
Beyond is Sachidananda.
Here existence would be a pure identity in oneness.
But supramental is inherent here too.
The only difference here would be that the determinations would not be demarcations, they would be interfused, each a boundless finite.
For all is in each, each is in all radically and integrally.
There would be to the utmost,
- a fundamental awareness of the identity
- a mutual inclusion and interpenetration of consciousness
- knowledge as we know would not exist
- all would be a direct action of consciousness in being itself identical, intimate, intrinsically self-aware and all-aware.
It could be said that in Sachidananda itself there could be nothing but self- awareness.
Like all determinations this too could cease to exist in the ineffable Absolute.Our position is there must be inherent truths of the Supreme Being.
Their utmost reality must be pre-existent in the Absolute.
The Absolute is not a mystery.
Nothing can manifest that is not justified by the omnipresent reality.
Summary:
- The consciousness-force that creates the world does not reveal itself to us.
- The scientist looks for the clue in the material movements.
- The hypothesis of consciousness evolving out of inconscience is valid.
- It explains the seed, tree, oxygen, water, chromosomes, and all such.
- Analogous to the subjective experience and objective matter we see mind
determines matter.
- It is ultimately not the human mind but the divine mind.
- It takes us to the universal mind, overmind, cosmic state of being and Supermind.
- The Supermind is the determinant and mind finds the process occult.
- The Absolute reveals as Sachidananda and splits itself into a triad and further trinities.
- Overmind can see the separate faculties but in Supermind they are not two or three, but one.
- The Absolute discloses as fundamental, negative positives and affirming positives such as nirguna and saguna.
- They too are one in Supermind where unity is maintained but are separate in the mind that is absorbed where it can be recovered as intuition.
- It is important to know the importance of ignorance.
- All aspects of the omnipresent reality have their fundamental truths in the Supreme Existence.
- Supermind need not be final. There is Sachidananda of self-awareness.
- Even there Supermind is there and even that awareness is a determination in the Absolute.
- Nothing can manifest that cannot be justified by the Omnipresent Reality.
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