Skip to Content

02. ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம் - லைப் டிவைன்

ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம்

லைப் டிவைன்

(சென்ற இதழின் தொடர்ச்சி....)

கர்மயோகி

 

XXIV. Matter

Life is not an impossible evil as the tradition believes. Nor is it an inexplicable dream. Our analysis gives a rational assurance to this effect. Others believe it is a deplorable fact. In truth, we now know it is a mighty vibration. It is of the divine All-Existence. Now we see something of its foundation and principle. It has a high potentiality which makes us look up towards it. It has the divine out-flowering ultimately. There is one principle below Mind and Life. We have not yet sufficiently considered it. It is the principle of Matter. Life stands upon it as upon a pedestal. Out of that it evolves like the form of a many branching tree. The tree emerges out of its encasing seed. And life evolves out of Matter. The mind, life and body of man depend upon this physical principle. The out-flowering of Life is the result of Consciousness emerging into Mind. It expands, elevates itself in search of its own truth. It does so in the largeness of the supramental existence. Yet, it seems also conditional. It is conditioned by this case of body. And it is the foundation of Matter. The importance is obvious. It is because he has developed a body.Or he has been given a body and brain. They are capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination. It is an illumination of man who has risen above the animal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body that he will rise above himself and realise a divine manhood. It must at least be a functioning of the physical instrument that he develops. He rises not merely in thought and in his internal being, but in life. He rises perfectly to a divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled or man is not the divine instrument. By cancelling Life, its meaning is annulled. And earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda. It must be by abolishing itself. It means shedding from it mind, life and body. Thus it returns to the pure Infinite. It means there is a destined limit to his consciously progressive power. This power distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences. It is he who has replaced them in the front of things. Now another must replace him and assume his heritage.

Body is the greatest difficulty. It was felt so from the beginning. It is a stumbling block. It is a rock, rock of offence. Therefore the seekers hurled their ban on the body. The intensity of spiritual fulfillment raises the eagerness. The greater the eagerness, the greater is the ban. The seeker has a world disgust. His disgust selects a world principle. It ended in the loathing of the body. The body has become an object of special loathing. The body is an obscure burden. Man cannot bear it. The body is materially gross. It is obstinate. The seeker's life is a life of the ascetic. He sought deliverance from it. It became an obsession in him. He was eager to get rid of it. Therefore he denied its existence. He refused to accept the reality of the material universe. Religions curse Matter. Most of them do so. To them religious truth is important. Spirituality is important. They temporarily endure the body. So refusal of the body became the test of spirituality. The older creeds were more patient. They were profound. We live in the Iron Age. It is feverish in its impatience. It is the impatience of the soul. Its fever was a torture. The Iron Age is a burden. The later creeds made this formidable division. It was a division of the soul from the body. The older creeds did not so divide Life. To them, Earth was the Mother. Heaven was the Father. They accorded both equal love and reverence. They were the ancient mysteries. To us they are obscure. It is unfathomable to our gaze. It is so with the materialist as well as the spiritual seeker. They are content to cut the Gordian knot. The problem of existence is the knot. It is cut with one blow. That leads to an escape into an eternal bliss. Or it ends in annihilation or an eternal quietude.

Our awakening to our spiritual possibilities reveals this quarrel. But this is not the true beginning. It begins with the appearance of life itself. Life struggles to establish its activities and form against the forces of inertia and forces of inconscience. Also it is against atomic disaggregation. They are the knot in the material principle. The knot is the great Denial. Life struggles against all these. Life is constantly at war with Matter. The battle always ends in the defeat of Life. The defeat is not real but only apparent. Life collapses downward to the material principle, death. Mind appears. The discord deepens. Mind has its own quarrel. It does so with Life and Matter. Life and Matter are limited. Mind constantly battles against those limitations. It is in constant subjection to their grossness. Mind revolts against it. The revolt is against the inertia of Matter. Also it is against the passions of Life. Passions accompany sufferings. The battle turns. It is a partial, costly victory to Mind. Mind conquers and represses. It even slays the vital cravings. Mind imparts the physical force. It distorts the balance of the body. The interests of the greater mental activity require it. A higher moral being needs them. This struggle generates the impatience of life. It creates the disgust of the body. There is a recoil from both. They rise towards a mental and moral existence. Man awakens to an existence greater than Mind. This principle of discord, then, is carried further. Mind, body, and life are condemned. They are the trinity of the world, the flesh and the devil. Mind too is banned as the source of all our malady. War is declared on the spirit and its instruments. The victory of the spiritual Inhabitant is sought for. It is an evasion from its narrow residence. It results in the rejection of mind, life and body. Finally, the spirit withdraws into the infinitude. The world is a discord. The solution is sought in increasing the discord. It is carried to its extreme possibility. It is a cutting away and a final severance.

There are defects and victories. They are only apparent. This is not a solution. It is an escape from the problem. Life is not really defeated by Matter. It makes a compromise. It uses death to continue life. Mind is not victorious over Life and Matter. But it has only achieved an imperfect development. It is of some of its potentialities at the cost of others. They are bound up with other possibilities. They are unrealized or rejected possibilities. They are the possibilities of its better use of life and body. There is the lower triplicity. The individual soul has not conquered it. It has only rejected its claims upon it.

The spirit cast itself into form of universe. Then the spirit has undertaken some duties. The soul has rejected them. The labour of the Divine in the universe continues. It is so because the problem continues. But there is no satisfying solution of the problem. There is no victorious accomplishment of its labour. We have a standpoint. It is that Sachchidananda is the beginning, middle and end. Therefore our struggle and discord cannot be eternal. It is not the fundamental principle in His being. Their very existence implies something. It is a labour towards a perfect solution. It is a complete victory. Therefore we must seek a solution. It is in real victory of Life over Matter. It is through the perfect use of the body by Life. It is in a real victory of Mind over Life and Matter. It must be through a free and perfect use of life-force. It uses a form by Mind. It is a real victory of Spirit. It is a victory over the lower triplicity. It is through a perfect occupation of mind, life and body. It is the conscious Spirit that uses it. This is the view we have worked out by this last conquest. It can alone make the other really possible. We may see how these conquests can be possible. Or wholly possible. We must find out the reality of Matter. Earlier we found out the reality of Mind and soul and life. So we must again seek this fundamental knowledge of Matter.

Matter is unreal and non-existent. It is only in one sense. Our present knowledge is not the truth of Matter. Our idea and experience of Matter is not true. It is a phenomenon. Our senses have a relation with all-existence. We move in that relation. It does not have the truth of Matter. Science has a discovery. It sees Matter resolves into forms of energy. It is a universal and fundamental truth. Science has got a hold of it. Philosophy has another truth. To it, Matter only exists as an appearance. It is an appearance to the consciousness. There is one reality. It is Spirit. It is the conscious Being. This too is a fundamental truth. This is a greater and completer truth. Science has got a hold of it. Still, there is a question to be answered. Why should Energy become Matter? It can become force-currents. Matter is Spirit. It can as well remain as Spirit. It can enjoy its velleities, joys. What is the necessity of admitting the appearance of Matter? This, they say, is the work of Mind. Or else, it is something else. Thought does not directly create. Thought does not even perceive material things. Therefore, they say, it is really the work of Sense. The sense-mind creates forms. It seems to perceive those forms. And thought-mind works on those forms. Sense mind presents those forms to the thought-mind. But, it is evident, the individual mind is not the creator. The phenomenon of Matter is not created by the individual Mind. Human mind is the result of earth-existence. We cannot make it the result of human Mind. We can, of course, say the world exists only in our minds. It is a non-fact. It confuses. The material world existed before Man came on earth. It will continue after Man's disappearance. Our individual mind may abolish itself in the Infinite. But Matter will remain. We must conclude that it is a universal Mind. It will be subconscious to us. It will be in the form of a universe. Or it will be superconscious in its Spirit. It is the spirit that has created that habitation. Of course, the creator must precede the creation. This implies a superconscient Mind. It creates by the instrumentality of a universal sense. It creates in itself the relation of form with form. It constitutes the rhythm of the material universe. Even this is no complete solution. It tells us that Matter is a creation of Consciousness. Matter is the basis of cosmic workings. This solution does not tell us how Consciousness came to create Matter for this purpose.

We can go back at once to the original principle of things. That way we can understand better. Existence is in its activity a Conscious-Force. It presents the working of its force to its consciousness. They are the forms of its own being. The one sole-existing thing is Conscious-Being. Force is only its action. Its results are but forms of that Conscious-Being. Substance is Matter. Matter then is only a form of Spirit. This form of Spirit assumes an appearance to our senses. It is due to the dividing action of Mind. We were able to deduce from it the entire universe. We did so consistently. We thus understood the entire phenomenon of the universe. We know now Life is an action of conscious-Force. Material forms are its result. Life is involved in those forms. They appear in them first as inconscient force. It evolves and brings back into manifestation Mind. Mind comes as the consciousness of the real self of force. It never ceased to exist in it. It never ceased even when Unmanifest. The original conscious knowledge is Supermind. Mind is an inferior power. Life acts as an instrumental energy to Mind. It descends through Supermind. Consciousness is Chit. It represents itself as Mind. It separates from its own higher reality in Supermind. It gives Life the appearance of division. It involves further in its own Life-Force. Thus it becomes subconscious in Life. Thus it gives an outward appearance of inconscient force. It does so in its material workings. Therefore, the inconscience, the inertia, the atomic disaggregation of Matter have a source. It is in this all-dividing action of Mind. It is self-involving. By that our universe came into being. Mind is only the final action of Supermind. It is so in the descent towards creation. So Life is an action of Conscious-Force. It works in the conditions of the ignorance. It is created by the descent of Mind. So, Matter is the final action by conscious-being. It is phenomenally divided within itself. It is by the action of a universal Mind. It is a division which the individual mind repeats. It dwells in it. But it does not abrogate. It does not at all diminish the unity of the Spirit. It is the unity of Energy. Or it is the real unity of Matter.

This is phenomenal division. It is pragmatic. The origin is an indivisible Existence. We do not know why. It is because of Mind. It has the principle of multiplicity. It has to carry it to its extreme potential. It can be done only by division and separativeness. For that, it has to precipitate itself into Life. There it has to create forms of the Multiple. Being is a universal principle. It must give it the appearance of substance. It is a gross material substance. It is not a pure subtle substance. It must give it the appearance of substance. The substance must offer itself to the contact of Mind. The contact must be of a stable thing. Or, it must be an object in an abiding multiplicity of objects. It cannot be the substance which offers itself to the contact of pure consciousness. It would be something of its own pure eternal existence. That pure existence is reality. Or, it must not be to the subtle sense a plastic form. It will freely express the conscious being. The contact of mind with its objects is sense. Here it has to be an obscure sense. It must also be an externalized sense. It contacts objects. It must be assured of the reality of those objects. Supermind lets the descent of Sachchidananda into mind and life. It is followed by the descent of pure substance. It descends into material substance. The will has to make multiplicity of being. It has to create an awareness of things from separate centres of consciousness. It is a necessary result of the will. This is the first method of this lower experience of existence. We can go back to the spiritual basis of things. Here substance is in utter purity. It resolves into pure conscious being. It is self-existence. It is inherently self-aware by identity. But it has not yet turned its consciousness upon itself as an object. Supermind preserves this self-awareness. It does so by identity. It is identity as its substance of self-knowledge. It is its light of self-creation. For that, creation presents Being to itself. It does so as subject-object. It is one and multiple of its own active consciousness. Being as object is held there in a supreme knowledge. It can, by comprehension, see itself as object as well as subject. It is object of cognition within itself. It is subjectively seen as itself. It can also simultaneously project itself as an object by apprehension. It is an object of cognition within the circumference of its consciousness. It is not other than itself. It is a part of its being. But, it is a part put away from itself. That is to say, put away from the centre of vision. There Being concentrates itself as the knower, Witness or Purusha. Mind arises from this apprehending consciousness. We have seen this. It is a movement by which the individual knower sees. He regards a form of his own universal being as if other than himself. There is the divine Mind. There is immediately another movement. It is simultaneous. Or, it is the reverse side of the same movement. It is an act of union in being. It heals the phenomenal division. It prevents it from becoming real to the knower. It does not allow it even for a moment. It is not permitted to be solely real to the knower.

This is an act of conscious union. This is represented in the dividing Mind. It is represented obtusely, ignorantly, quite externally. It is represented as contact in consciousness. It is a contact between divided beings and separate objects. This contact in divided consciousness is sense with us. Rather it is primarily represented as sense. It is the principle of sense. Thought-mind prepares to return to a higher principle of union. In it division is made subject to unity and subordinate. Substance is material substance. It is the form in which Mind acts through sense contacts. It thus contacts the conscious Being. Mind is itself a movement of knowledge.

Mind has a nature. It tends to know and sense substance of conscious-being. It does not do it in its unity or totally. It senses by the principle of division. Mind sees it, as it were, in infinitesimal points.

In order to arrive at a totality it associates the points together. Cosmic Mind dwells in these viewpoints. They are associations. Mind is the agent of Real-Idea. It is creative by its inherent force. Its nature is to convert all its perceptions into energy of life. So does the All-Existence convert all His self-aspectings. They are converted into various energy of His creative Force of consciousness. Cosmic Mind turns these multiple viewpoints of universal existence into standpoints of universal Life. It turns them in Matter into forms of atomic being. They are instinct with the life that forms them. They are governed by mind, and will. They actuate the formation. The atomic existence thus formed must be the very law of their being. They tend to associate themselves to aggregate. Each of these aggregates bears with it a fiction of separated individual existence. They are instinct with the hidden life that forms. The hidden mind and will actuate them. Each such individual object or existence is supported by its mechanical ego of force. In it the will to be is dumb. It is imprisoned. Nonetheless, it is powerful. By its self-aware mental ego it is liberated. It is conscious and separately active. It is, according as the mind in it, implicit or explicit, manifest or unmanifest.

This is the cause of atomic existence. It is not from any eternal original Matter. Nor is it from any eternal and original law of that Matter. But it is due to the nature of the action of cosmic Mind. Matter is a creation. For its creation, the infinitesimal was needed. It serves as a starting-point or a basis. The infinitesimal is an extreme fragmentation of the Infinite. Ether may and does exist. It is intangible. It is almost spiritual support of Matter. But it is a phenomenon. To our present knowledge, at least, it does not seem materially detectable. The formal atom is a visible aggregate. Subdivide it into essential atoms. Break it up. Let it become the most infinitesimal dust of being. We shall still arrive at some utmost atomic existence. It is because of the nature of Mind and Life. It is they who formed it. It is unstable. Perhaps always reconstituting itself. It does so phenomenally. It does so in the eternal flux of force. It is not at a mere unatomic extension. It is incapable of contents. Unatomic extension of substance is the reality of pure existence. It is an extension which is not an aggregation. It is a coexistence otherwise than by distribution in space. It is also the reality of pure substance. They are a knowledge of Supermind. It is a principle of its dynamism. It is not a creative concept of the dividing Mind. Mind can become aware of them behind its workings. They are the reality underlying Matter. But it is not the phenomenon underlying Matter. Mind, Life, Matter itself can be one with that pure existence. It is a conscious extension in their static reality. But it does not operate by that oneness in their dynamic action. Nor in its self-perception and self-formation.

We have now arrived at the truth of Matter. There is a conceptive self-extension of being. It works itself out in the universe as substance. Or, it is object of consciousness. It is represented by cosmic Mind and Life. Their action is creative. There is atomic division and aggregation. The result is the thing we call Matter. But, this Matter is like Mind and Life. It is being. It is Brahman in its self-creative action. It is a form of the force of conscious Being. It is a form given by Mind. It is realised by Life. It holds within itself its own reality. Consciousness is that reality. It is concealed from itself. It is involved and absorbed in the result of its own self-formation. And therefore it is self-oblivious. It is brute and void of sense. It seems so to us. Its consciousness is hidden within it. It has a secret experience. It is delight of being. It offers itself to this secret consciousness. It offers as an object of sensation. This it does to tempt the hidden godhead. It is tempted out of its secrecy. Matter is Being manifest as substance. It is force of Being cast into form. It is a figured self-representation. It is a representation of the secret self-consciousness. It is delight offering itself to its own consciousness as an object. What is Matter if it is not Sachchidananda? Matter is Sachchidananda. He is represented to His own mental experience. It is as a formal basis of objective knowledge. It is action and delight of existence.

 

******



book | by Dr. Radut