July 26, 2002
Karmayogi
This article is at
pains to explain the knotty points in The Life
Divine through a discussion. It is meant for those who are familiar with the Book.
Below is a sketchy summary of the BOOK, The
Life Divine and the aim of the discussion in life, especially the family and the
school.
The Rishis of ancient India discovered God is not a person but an Eternal Infinite
known as Brahman (the Absolute of the West), which reveals to us as Sachchidananda as well
as its opposite, Asat. This is beyond the reach of Man, as when he attains to it, he does
not return. For the same reason, it is ineffable. Man can reach it only in Samadhi and
when he returns from there, he does not bring back with him any memory. If he does, it
refuses to go into words. On the other hand, there is the world full of its woes. They
knew this whole world is Brahman, but never knew how the one emerged out of the other. As
God and the world are facts of experience, we have to accept the existence of both. Both
being irreconcilable opposites, we can choose either of them, not both. Man chooses life,
the Rishi chooses God. The Rishi has perfected his science of yoga so perfectly in
innumerable lives that on any line one reaches God, which is known as moksha. He separates
the soul from the being of four parts – body, life, mind, spirit – and takes it
to its origin.
The ordinary man chooses life and passes through the four asramas at the end of which he seeks sannyasa.
While in life his religion and philosophy have taught him about karma, values, duties, and
dharma so that he may one day prepare to be a sannyasi. He finds the philosophic teachings
and his practical life agree at many points but are at variance at many other points. Each man, community and nationality works out a
practical philosophy as a working hypothesis. Those can be stated in detail in about
100 statements or briefly in 15 or 20 statements.
Sri Aurobindo who took to yoga to win India's freedom was in Jail in 1910. Swami
Vivekananda appeared before him for fifteen days and insisted that the thing Sri Aurobindo
was seeking was not the true one and showed the Supramental world – Vignanamayaloka
– to be true. Working on those lines, Sri Aurobindo attained to Supermind and saw
that world moving down to earth to transform it. It is a world of Truth consciousness,
Light, Power, and Love devoid of the distortions of pain, suffering, desire and death of
our human world. He understood that twelve yogis who could reach the Supermind would be
able to make it descend on earth. In the absence of it, HE and later SHE withdrew to work from the subtle plane. Should
the Supermind descend on earth, death will be abolished along with all types of suffering,
pain, evil, and darkness. Man will evolve to a Supramental Being who will have the form of
man but not the internal organs of heart, liver, stomach, lungs, etc. as he would not eat
or breathe. His energy will be drawn from the universe. His thought will have instantaneous effectivity. Sri
Aurobindo tried to accomplish this in thirty years which would normally take 30,000 years.
The Life of the Supramental Being HE calls
'Divine Life' and it is explained in the book The
Life Divine. To evolve into the Supramental Being is the end of the goal of which the
beginning is what I call Mother's Life.
The development of
products occurs on two lines. 1) the vehicle starts from the horse, the bullock cart and
goes up to the plane. Here the quality vastly changes at every step of change; 2) A super
computer has its smaller versions and comes down to the PC and a calculator. Here the
quality of the computer remains intact all along the line but its use, scope, size, and
price vary. Yogic life or Mother's Life is such a
miniature of Divine Life. At the human level Mother's life draws upon the Supramental
Force that has descended into the subtle plane of the earth in 1956. One who follows the
principles of Mother draws upon that infinite force so that the finite human life will
flower into infinite Mother's life. Its least character is Luck that has no failure and at
most it makes the incidence of grace frequent. Below I give the tenets of human life and
Mother's life followed by the traditional spiritual beliefs accompanied in block letters
of what Sri Aurobindo offers. As the principles of life are based on the theory of yoga,
the latter is important. In the main body of the article, the principles are explained in
a discussion. A special attempt is made to make those theories relevant to family and
school. The cardinal aspects of it are freedom, freshness, self-discipline, inner life,
personal growth, unfailing success in place of the traditional authority, dullness,
external discipline, outer life, alternating success and failure.
1. Anything in life is
limited – resources, energy, material etc. The most characteristic of it is the
longevity.
In Mother's life,
nothing is limited unless we put a limit on it. One can decide the length of his own life.
2. The ruling power of
life is falsehood.
Truth rules, truth
alone rules.
3. Man is subjected to
his past Karma
No Karma need bind
him if he is willing to give up those habits through which Karma has a hold on man.
4. Status, wealth, Power
matter.
What matters is
consciousness and that alone.
5. External social life,
movements of Nature are beyond the control of man.
The outer reflects
the inner. All life outside is under man's control.
6. A certain amount of
violence, cruelty, and injustice is inevitable.
Mother's life is
full of compassion and justice.
7. Waste of material,
energy, and Time is a part of life.
There is no waste,
real waste as Nature accomplishes several things at one stroke giving the appearance of
waste.
8. Blood is thicker than
water.
There is something
thicker than blood.
9. Success and failure
alternate.
This is a life of
unfailing success.
10. Human nature will not
change.
To transcend nature
is our aim.
11. Money, property, women
lead to crime.
They lead to
stronger affinities.
12. Scarcity of one thing
or other is inescapable.
Abundance is the
rule. Scarcity is what we create.
13. Man is selfish and
mean.
Self-giving and
generosity are the rule.
14. Destiny rules.
Man fixes his life.
15. Love, romance,
friendship, loyalty are ephemeral.
They are the only
lasting values of life.
16. Ideals are not
practical.
The greater the
ideal, the more practical it is.
17. A sound mind in a
sound body.
Mind rules the body.
18. Education means
degree.
Neither degree nor
knowledge is complete education. Education is the experience of the mind.
19. We have to do as
others in the society do.
It is not the
society, nor even conscience that we have to follow. We must follow the soul.
20. Every man born should
work with his hands and body.
Work must be done by
the mind or the soul through the body.
Though
an endless list of common beliefs can be written, the central idea is human life is
warped, distorted, and suffering is an essential part of it. Mother's life is fresh, LIVE,
and expansive, delight and cheerfulness are part of it, while suffering and failure are
not. The theoretical basis of these conclusions is the yogic principles of Sri Aurobindo
whose main ideas are given below against the traditional spiritual experience.
1) Attaining
moksha is the highest human goal.
Not moksha but
transformation is the goal.
2) Asana,
pranayama, dhyana, samadhi
are the instruments
Physical methods
will not be of use. Only surrender is the method.
3) Jivatma
should reach Paramatma.
Jivatma is itself
Paramatma.
4) Time
is exceeded by Timelessness.
Both are exceeded by
the simultaneous integrality of Time-eternity and Timeless-eternity.
5) Our
soul is immutable. It is Jivatma.
Our soul evolves
into Brahman. It is the psychic being. The psychic being is the evolving deputy of
Jivatma.
6) Man
is ruled by Time that is past, present and future.
Man is greater than
Time. His Time is ever present.
7) Man
is the highest creation of God.
Man is not final.
Supramental Being is the next species.
8) Mind
has created the world. Or ego has created the world.
Supermind has
created the world, not mind or ego.
9) Contradictions
are a feature of life.
Contradictions are
complementaries.
10) Spirit
is different from Matter.
They are one.
11) God
has created the universe as His Lila.
God seeks Delight in
Self-discovery in creation in which HE has hidden himself.
12) To
know God is knowledge. To know the world is Ignorance.
Knowledge becomes
Ignorance, the highest product of creation.
13) We
cannot know how the One became the Many.
We can know it. One
and the Many are part of Brahman.
14) Life
is evil.
Life is a creative
specialisation of the Force.
15) We
cannot know the process of creation.
Self-creation by the
Infinite Being creating form out of its force is the process of creation.
16) Sat
is different from Chit is different from Ananda.
All of them are one.
The world and Sachchidananda are one.
17) The
tradition does not define Spirit, Supermind, Mind, Life or Matter.
Sri Aurobindo
defines all of them.
18) Evil
is the opposite of good and we have to live with it.
There is a
self-existent Good against which no evil exists.
19) Rebirth
is there for man to overcome his Karma.
Rebirth
is necessary for the evolution of the soul.
20) Life
is to be shunned to attain to Spirit.
Life is to evolve
into Spirit. It must not be shunned.
21) Any
work has its own Time. Time has to come.
We can make Time
Come. No time is required for work.
22) The
Spirit is inside.
The whole universe and
the Transcendent are inside.
23) Matter
moves Spirit.
Spirit moves Matter.
v We assume God as
Eternal, Infinite, and Omnipresent Reality.
v There HE is the One without a second.
v HE seeks Delight.
v Discovery is
Delight.
v The greatest of
Delights is the delight of Self-discovery.
v Self-discovery is at
its height when one forgets oneself.
v In pursuit of that
Self-discovery, God the Eternal and Infinite has hidden Himself in Himself, that is, he
became the very opposite of what HE is, the finite, Time, in an inconscient form.
v This process is
involution.
v His Self-discovery
is evolution.
v God is known as
Brahman in India and the Absolute in Europe.
v So creation which is
involution is the Absolute becoming Existence.
v The very first step
in creation is the Absolute becoming Existence.
v The Absolute is a
whole, characterised by unity.
v The Absolute is
absolute, not capable of qualities.
v The Absolute
becoming the relative creates dualities such as Existence and Non-Existence.
v The Absolute, when
it becomes the relative, does not cease to be the Absolute at all. It remains the Absolute
throughout. Never for a moment is it other than what it is. Only in appearance is it
relative, dual, divided.
v At each stage of
involution, it is absolute in its primal stage but relative in its further involution
which is extension. For example, Existence is Absolute Existence but it puts out four
extensions. In its absolute state, Existence is called Transcendent.
v It extends as
Sat-Chit-Ananda,
again it objectively
extends as Truth
and its third
extension it is Time and Space.
While it splits into
three aspects of Atma, Purusha, Ishwara.
(Atma is also called
Brahman)
v Each of them divides
into lower and higher parts as Supreme Brahman, and Brahman; Purushothama and Purusha;
Parameswara and Ishwara.
v Their three powers
are known as Maya, Prakriti and Ishwara.
v Man seeing from mind
sees Atma, from Overmind Purusha, and from Supermind Ishwara.
v Maya is conceptively
creative, Prakriti is dynamically executive, and Ishwara is both conceptively creative and
dynamically executive.
v When Sat (Existence)
objectivises itself it splits into subjective Sat and objective Satyam (Truth). That
experience of Sat is Spirit. It is the substance, the Spiritual substance, the only
substance by which the Cosmos, Universe and the world are made.
v Sat extends and each
stage of involution extends. Often the extended stage is called Nature. Sat is Existence
as well as Existent, a Being.
v Sat – Chit
– Ananda are the subjective states of which Satyam – Jnanam – Anantam are
objective states. (Truth – Knowledge – Infinity)
v These objective
states together are also called Truth-Consciousness as well as Supermind.
v Sat and Asat are
Existence and Non-Existence.
Chit and achit are
Consciousness and Inconscience.
Ananda and Nirananda
are Bliss and Insensibility.
v The three powers of
creation are Self-Conception, Self-limitation, Self-absorption.
v The Consciousness of
the Absolute is Maya.
v Supermind is the
creator.
v Sat creates the
Cosmos by a vibration of itself known as Real–Idea. Real–Idea is a vibration of
the Being Sat.
v The plane of
Sat–Chit–Ananda has its manifest and unmanifest parts.
v Sat creates in
Supermind through Real–Idea in the planes of Time and Space.
v Supermind has two
halves -- comprehending Supermind and Apprehending Supermind. They split. Mind is created
in between.
v Comprehending
Supermind is Timeless, Spaceless unmanifest. Apprehending Supermind is in manifestation,
in Time and Space.
v Mind which is the
result of a cleavage of Supermind is an instrument of division. It divides continuously
until the atomic stage is arrived at. Mind divides NOT
the Being, but the Force that issued out of
it.
v The Force issues out
of the consciousness (Chit) and is known as Consciousness – Force. This is the point
of Mother's birth.
v Mind, a dividing
instrument, looks at the Spiritual substance through its own senses.
v Mind has
consciousness and will.
v Consciousness
working on will releases Energy.
v That plane of Energy
is known as Life.
v Life is created by
the consciousness working on will during which process some of the consciousness is lost.
When all consciousness is lost, life becomes matter.
v Matter is life and
mind involved as well as Supermind.
v The involved forces
must evolve.
v Matter is form
containing the energy of life – the force.
v Involution is a
process of inversion in which