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PART TWO
Our Ideal OUR ideal – the ideal of Sri Aurobindo – we may say without much ado, is to
divinise the human, immortalise the mortal, spiritualise the material. Is the
ideal possible? Is it practicable? Our task will be precisely, first of all, to
show that it is possible, next that it is probable and finally that it is
inevitable. Now to
the first question. It is usually contended that
the ideal is an impossibility, a chimera, since it
involves on the face of it a self-contradiction. For, is not divinity the very
opposite of humanity, immortality that of mortality and Matter that of the
Spirit? These pairs, all of them, are formed of two mutually exclusive terms.
This is what Mayavada posits. But need it be
necessarily and inevitably so? What is affirmed is after all a postulate and
one can start from other postulates as well. The truth, of course, is that all
theories or views of existence are centrally formulations of an experience; and
each experience has its own postulate. To begin with, we refuse to
admit or recognise that there is or is bound to be a
contradiction or opposition between Matter and Spirit, between body and soul or
between the human and the divine. We start with an experience, a realisation
which declares the essential unity and identity of the duality. That is the
thing that has to be posited first clear and nett.
The question next arises how the two are one and identical; this demands some
clarification. For, is it meant that they are one and the same in the sense
that Zeus and Jupiter are the same or that water and H2O are the same? Apart from any barren theorising, is it not a universal
and eternal and invariable experience that to attain to the Divine one must
leave behind the human, to become the immortal one must cease to be a mortal
and to live in the Spirit one
Page – 25 has to deny Matter? The real answer, however, is that it is so and it is not
so. The dilemma is not so trenchant as it has been
made out to be. To the regard of one line of
experience, Matter seems opposed to Spirit only so far as the actual and outer
formulation of Matter is concerned: even then the opposition is only apparent
and relative. This is the very crux of the problem. For, to such a regard
Spirit becomes Matter also, it is also Matter – Thus the spiritualisation of
Matter becomes possible simply because Matter and Spirit are not absolutely
different, contradictory or incommensurable entities; they are one and the
same reality, in different modes – even as water or water vapour and ice are in
substance one and identical, although different in appearance. Spirit has
become Matter and Matter at heart is Spirit. Spirit is latent in Matter, as
Matter itself is a possible formulation involved in Spirit. Matter has come out
of Spirit as Spirit pressed upon itself and gradually condensed and
consolidated into the concrete material reality. Spirit has become Matter by a
process of crystallisation, of self-limitation and exclusive concentration. The
movement follows a definite line of self-modification, along a downward
gradient till it is consummated: it is one among an infinite variety of possible
self-modifications, chosen and exclusively developed with a special purpose and
a definite fulfilment In view. A movement of involution through a series of terms – of consciousness – of gradually diminishing facial value has made the Spirit terminate in Matter. If it is so, it stands to reason that a movement of evolution, a return journey would make Matter culminate in Spirit. Thus the very fact of Spirit having become Matter, of Matter being a mode of the Spirit, at once creates the possibility of Matter being transmuted into Spirit. Now even granting such a possibility, it may be argued
Page - 26 yet that the thing achieved is a resolution of Matter into Spirit; it means
the destruction of the characteristic form and consistency that is called Matter.
We know, thanks to modern Science, that Matter can be transmuted into pure
energy, but then it loses its materiality, it is dematerialised. That is what some of the old
spiritual disciplines taught. Even if there is no unbridgeable gulf between
Spirit and Matter, they said, even if they are not incommensurables but form
one reality, Spirit is the reality in essence, Matter is an inferior
formulation. Matter has unrolled itself out of the infinite, it can only be and
it has got to be rolled back again into the Spirit. Here comes the second cardinal
principle in Sri Aurobindo's vision of the reality, viz,
that an "inferior" formulation of the Spirit, an involute
on a "lower" plane is not essentially or truly, even in its outer and
dynamic nature and character, a mere temporary or by-the-way reality, an
"epiphenomenon"; its sole function is not simply to impede, diminish
and obscure the real reality so that it has to be gradually rejected and eliminated
on the way back to the source. As a matter of fact, an inferior formulation has
a double function; in the line of descent it limits, obscures, deviates and in
the end falsifies the higher reality; at the same time, however, it
concretises, energises, incarnates what it obscures.
But in the ascending line, that is to say, in the movement of reversal from the
inferior to the superior, the movement need not be always that of disincarnation and dissolution, it may be that of
purification and illumination and fulfilment. The analogy will not be, then,
that of Matter being dematerialised into pure energy but that of Matter being
transformed into a radiant substance, not losing itself in the process of
radiation, being wholly made of the undying luminous stuff. Such a movement of transforming
evolution is not merely a possibility or a probability: it is a fact of Nature.
Indeed, natural evolution means nothing less than that. First of all, evolution
means the reversibility of Nature; for, it is the backward movement of an involutionary process. We have said that the supreme truth
and reality – sat-cit-ananda, as it is
called – multiplied and concretised itself gradually through various steps and
stages of a diminishing power of expression or an
Page – 27 increasing entropy of self-concealment: the main grades being the Supermind, the
Overmind, the Higher Mind, the Mind, Life and lastly the body or Matter. Having
arrived at the extreme end that Matter represents, – the farthest apparently
from the original source,-the movement turns round and seeks to go up the
ladder through the same gradations it has traversed. But this process of
reversal is not merely a resolution and dissolution,
it is a process of greater fulfilment and synthetisation,
of sublimation as well as of integration. Matter is the starting-point of evolution, it is there merely a physico-chemical entity. But
it undergoes a change, the first of its kind, a transmutation when it is taken
up by life, when it becomes the basis and receptacle of a living organism:
vitalised Matter behaves differently from physico-chemical Matter. A farther
and greater change is brought about in Matter when it is raised still higher
and taken up by the mind, when it answers to the vibrations of a mental
organism: mentalised Matter has yet a third norm of
behaviour. The' transformation of Matter in slow degrees towards a greater
plasticity and spontaneity, a growing sentiency and luminosity is evident as
one proceeds up the rungs of natural evolution. This drive of evolution is a
constant and permanent fact of Nature and she is in travail to bring about
higher and higher stages of material transformation. It may not be easy to
forecast from the present status what the future mode or modes of Matter would
be like, even as it was surely impossible to forecast mentalised
Matter or living Matter, but that does not make the thing less inevitable. The inevitability arises from
the very fact of this evolutionary urge that a stage will come when Matter
will undergo another, more radical and crucial change; it will be taken up by a
higher reality than mind and suffused with a light and power belonging to that
reality: a spiritual consciousness will emerge and with it spiritualised
Matter, even as a mental consciousness emerged and mentalised
(however inadequately) Matter, and yet anterior to that a vital consciousness
emerged and vitalised Matter. There cannot be a limit to the degree of
spiritualisation also; for the degree of the Spirit that Nature manifests in an
earthly body will also be the measure to which the body itself is
spiritualised. A perfectly dynamic spiritual
Page – 28 consciousness will have the power to
perfectly spiritualise the body and life and mind. And this grade and power of
the supreme Spirit Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind. We will try to understand the
nature of sublimation and transformation by analogy and illustration. Mind, for
example, we know, is an instrument which by itself is incapable of attaining to
the knowledge of the Spirit or the consciousness of the Truth. As it is
constituted at present, it is not only not capable of that
knowledge and consciousness, but is an obstacle to them. Its vibrations
and formulations disturb and vitiate the higher rhythm. That is why it is
repeated so often in the Upanishads: Naisa tarkena matirapaneya¹ or Yan manasa na manute² or again Na manasa praptum
sakyah³ and so on. Yet the same mind when it is not independent and master but
subservient and obedient to the higher light becomes a channel for its dynamic
embodiment, a conduit for its canalisation and expression in earthly life.
Therefore the Upanishad says also, Manasaivedamaptavyam 4 A mind that is not rigidly
limited to the ratiocinative process, but has been
remoulded in the light and rhythm of inspiration and intuition and revelation
and other higher sources still beyond becomes at once a transfigured vessel, an
apt instrument to incarnate and dynamise in the
physical and material field truths and realities that normally lie far and
above. Something of the kind, though in a small measure, happens, for example,
in a poet or an artist. A poet who moves by vision and inspiration is not, at
least need not be, devoid of mind: the mind in ills case is not annihilated or
even kept in abeyance, but sublimated, undergoing a reorientation and
reorganisation, acquiring a new magnitude. Even if there is ¹This wisdom is not to be had by reasoning.-Katha, 1. 2.
9 ²That which thinks not by
the mind.-Kena, 1. 4 ³Not with the mind has one the power to obtain
it.-Katha, II. 3. 12 4 By the mind too this has
to be seized.-Ibid, II. 2. 23
Page – 29 a suspension of the ratiocinative
faculty, it would not mean a suspension of the mental power in itself, but
rather an enhancement in a new degree. The same may happen to the other parts
and planes of human consciousness and existence. Of course, if one chooses, one
can sidetrack these intervening ranges of consciousness between the Spirit and
Matter, and strike something like a chord line between the two; but also one
need not follow this bare straight ascetic line of ascension; one can pursue a
wider, a circular or global movement which not only arrives but fulfils. The
latter is Nature's method of activity, Nature being all reality. The exclusive
line is meant for individuals, and even as such it has a value and sense in the
global view, for this too is contributory to the total urge and its total
consummation. We have seen that
spiritualisation of Matter is an inevitable consummation that is being worked
out by evolutionary Nature. We can go now still further and say that it is not
merely a far-off inevitability that will come about some day or other, but a
more or less imminent certainty. For Nature's evolutionary dynamise
s not the only agent at work, it is not the only assurance of the grand finale
envisaged. The Divine himself descends and meets and takes up the evolutionary
force: he comes down as a dynamic conscious force in the terrestrial movement
carrying the truth that is to be established here and now, acts and drives,
first from above and then in and through the level actuality, and thus speeds
up and fulfils within a brief span what Nature left to herself would perhaps
take aeons – Brahmic Yugas – to accomplish. Indeed Nature's evolutionary
crises, where she had to effect a transcendence from one plane of creation to
another, are always worked out swiftly by such a descent which imposes an
inexorable physical pressure as it were upon an earthly material which
otherwise is slow to move and change. Even of this descent of the Divine Consciousness, however, there are varying degrees, in accordance with the nature of the work it has got to do. In the inferior ranges of evolutionary Nature – the lower hemisphere, as it is called, of Mind, Life and Matter-Descent is partial and indirect and relative, the aim being a more or less reconditioning of Matter, not its thorough transformation: this becomes possible when Nature
Page - 30 has risen to Mind and has
prepared herself to take the further, the crucial leap into the higher
hemisphere, the sphere of dynamic spiritual truth. Nature's attempt at the transcendence
of Mind opens the door for a more and more direct and integral descent of the
Divine Consciousness, and in its highest degrees – the degrees of the Supermind
– the Descent means a reversal of the normal values, a swift and total
transfiguration of earthly life into the mould of supernal spiritual realities.
An absolute degree of the Descent, an irruption of the Divine Consciousness in
its supreme purity and fullness becomes inevitable in the end: for that alone
can bring about the fulfilment that Nature ultimately has in view. Matter will
yield completely, and life power too, only to the direct touch and embrace of
the Divine's own self. In this age we stand at some
such critical juncture in Nature's evolutionary history. Its full implications,
the exact degree of the immediate achievement, the form and manner of the
Descent are things that remain veiled till the fact is accomplished. Something
of it is revealed, however, to the eye of vision and
the heart of faith, something of it is seized by those to whom it chooses to
disclose itself Yamevaisa vrnute tena labhyah¹ ¹ Only he whom this Being chooses can win Him. –
Page – 31
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