{"id":121,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=121"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:03","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:03","slug":"25-the-higher-lines-of-truth-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/25-the-higher-lines-of-truth-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-25_The Higher Lines of Truth.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nThe
\nHigher Lines of Truth<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/h1>\n

\n
\n                     
\n<\/span>T<\/span><\/b>HERE
\ncan be no greater error than to sup- pose, misled by this absolute insistence of
\nthe ethical being, that the ethical is the single or the supreme demand of the
\nInfinite upon us or the one law and line of the higher Karma, and that in
\ncomparison with it nothing else matters. The German thinker\u2019s idea that there
\nis a categorical imperative laid upon man to seek after the right and good, an
\ninsistent law of right conduct, but no categorical imperative of the Oversoul
\ncompelling him to seek after the beautiful or the true, after a law of right
\nbeauty and harmony and right knowledge, is a singular misprision. It is a false
\ndeduction born of too much preoccupation with the transitional movement of man’s
\nmind and, there too, only with one side of its complex phenomena. The Indian
\nthinkers had a wiser sight who, while conceding right ethical being and conduct
\nas a first need, still considered knowledge to be the greater ultimate demand,
\nthe indispensable condition, and much nearer to a full seeing came that larger
\nexperience of theirs that either through an urge towards absolute knowledge or a
\npure impersonality of the will or an ecstasy of divine love and absolute
\ndelight,<\/span> \u2014 and even through an
\nabsorbing concentration of the psychical and the vital and physical being, <\/span>\u2014
\nthe soul turns towards the Supreme and that on each part of our self and nature
\nand consciousness there can come a call and irresistible attraction of the
\nDivine. Indeed, an uplift of all these, an imperative of the Divine upon all the
\nways of our being, is the impetus of self-enlargement to a complete, an
\nintegralising possession of God, freedom and immortality, and that therefore is
\nthe highest law of our nature.
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The fundamental movement of life knows nothing of an absolute ethical
\ninsistence, its only categorical imperative is the imperative of Nature herself
\ncompelling each being to affirm its life as it must or as best it can according
\nto its own inborn self and way of expression of her Swabhava. In the
\ntransitional<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-214<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

movement
\nof life informed by mind there is indeed a moral instinct developing into a
\nmoral sense and idea,<\/span> \u2014 not
\ncomplete for it leaves large ranges of conduct in which there is a lacuna or
\ninconscience of the moral sense, a satisfied fulfilment of the egoistic desires
\nat the expense of others, and not imperative since it is easily combated and
\noverthrown by the earlier imposed, more naturally dominant law of the vital
\nbeing. What the natural egoistic man obeys most rigorously is the collective or
\nsocial rule of conduct impressed on his mind by law and tradition, jus,
\nmores, <\/i>and outside its conventional circle he allows himself an easy
\nlatitude. The reason generalises the idea of a moral law carrying with it an
\nobligation man should heed and obey but may disregard at this outer or that
\ninner peril, and it insists first and most on a moral law, an obligation of
\nself-control, justice, righteousness, conduct, rather than a law of truth,
\nbeauty and harmony, love, mastery, because the regulation of his desires and
\ninstincts and his outward vital action is his first necessary preoccupation and
\nhe has to find his poise here and a settled and sanctioned order before he
\ncommences securely to go deeper and develop more in the direction of his inner
\nbeing. It is the ideal mind that brings into this superficial moral sense, this
\nrelative obligation, the intuition of an inner and absolute ethical imperative,
\nand if it tends to give to ethics the first and most important and in some minds
\nthe whole place, it is still because the priority of action, long given to it in
\nthe evolution of mind on earth, moves man to apply first his idealism to action
\nand his relations with other beings. But as there is the moral instinct in the
\nmind seeking for good, so too there is the aesthetic instinct, the emotional and
\nthe dynamic and the instinct in man that seeks after knowledge, and the
\ndeveloping reason is as much concerned to evolve in all these directions as in
\nthe ethical and to find out their right law; for truth, beauty, love, strength
\nand power are after all as necessary for the true growth of mind and of life and
\neven for the fullness of the action as righteousness, purity and justice.
\nArriving on the high ideal plane these too become, no less than the ethical
\nmotive, no longer a seeking and necessity of this relative nature and
\nimportance, but a law and call to spiritual perfection, an inner and absolute
\ndivine imperative.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-215<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The
\nhigher mind of man seeks not only after good, but after truth, after knowledge.
\nHe has an intellectual as well as an ethical being and the impulse that moves
\nit, the will to know, the thirst for truth is not less divine in its upward
\norientation than the will to good, not less too in its earlier workings, but
\neven more, a necessity of the growth of our consciousness and being and the
\nright ordering of our action, not less an imperative need laid upon man by the
\nwill of the spirit in the universe. And in the pursuit of knowledge as in the
\npursuit of good we see the same lines and stages of the evolution of energy. At
\nfirst as its basis there is simply a life-consciousness seeking for its self,
\nbe- coming more and more aware of its movements, actions and reactions, its
\nenvironment, its habits, its fixed laws, gaining and enlarging and learning
\nalways to profit by self-experience. This is indeed the fundamental purpose of
\nconsciousness and use of intelligence, and intelligence with the thinking will
\nin it is man\u2019s master faculty and supports and embraces, changes with its
\nchange and widens with its widening and increasingly perfects all the others.
\nMind in its first action pursues knowledge with a certain curiosity, but turns
\nit mainly to practical experience, to a help that enables it to fulfil better
\nand to increase more assuredly the first uses and purposes of life. Afterwards
\nit evolves a freer use of the intelligence, but there is still a dominant turn
\ntowards the vital purpose. And we may observe that as a power for the returns of
\nlife the world energy seems to attach a more direct importance and give more
\ntangible results to knowledge, to the right practical workings of the
\nintelligence than it yields to moral right. In this material world it is at
\nleast doubtful how far moral good is repaid by vital good and moral evil
\npunished by a recoil, but it is certain that we do pay very usually for our
\nerrors, for stupidity, for ignorance of the right way of action, for any
\nignoring or misapplication of the laws that govern our psychical, vital and
\nphysical being; it is certain that knowledge is a power for life efficiency and
\nsuccess. Intelligence pays its way in the material world, guards itself against
\nvital and physical suffering, secures its vital rewards more surely than moral
\nright and ethical purpose.<\/p>\n

     <\/span>    
\nBut the higher mind of humanity is no more content with a<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-216<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

utilitarian
\nuse of knowledge as its last word in the seeking of the intelligence than with a
\nvitalistic and utilitarian turn and demand of the ethical being. As in the
\nethical, so in the intellectual being of man there emerges a necessity of
\nknowledge which is no longer its utility for life, its need of knowing rightly
\nin order to act rightly, to deal successfully and intelligently with the world
\naround it, but a necessity of the soul, an imperative demand of the inner being.
\nThe pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge is the true, the intrinsic
\nDharma of the intellect and not for the sake primarily or even necessarily at
\nall for the securing or the enlargement of the means of life and success in
\naction. The vital kinetic man tends indeed to regard this passion of the
\nintellect as a respectable but still rather unpractical and often trivial
\ncuriosity: as he values ethics for its social effects or for its rewards in
\nlife, so he values knowledge for its external helpfulness; science is great in
\nhis eyes because of its inventions, its increase of comforts and means and
\nappliances: his standard in all things is vital efficiency. But, in fact, Nature
\nsees and stirs from the first to a larger and more inward Will and is moved with
\na greater purpose, and all seeking for knowledge springs from a necessity of the
\nmind, a necessity of its nature, and that means a necessity of the soul that is
\nhere in nature. Its need to know is one with its need to grow, and from the
\neager curiosity of the child upward to the serious stress of mind of the
\nthinker, scholar, scientist, philosopher the fundamental purpose of Nature, the
\nconstant in it, is the same. All the time that she seems busy only with the
\nmaintenance of her works, with life, with the out- ward, her secret underlying
\npurpose is other,<\/span> \u2014 it is the
\nevolution of that which is hidden within her: for if her first dynamic word is
\nlife, her greater revealing word is consciousness and the evolution of life and
\naction only the means of the evolution of the consciousness involved in life,
\nthe imprisoned soul, the Jiva. Action is a means, but knowledge is the sign and
\nthe growth of the conscious soul is the purpose. Man\u2019s use of the intelligence
\nfor the pursuit of knowledge is therefore that which distinguishes him most from
\nother beings and gives him his high peculiar place in the scale of existence.
\nHis passion for knowledge, first world- knowledge, but afterwards self-knowledge
\nand that in which both<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-217<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

meet
\nand find their common secret, God-knowledge, is the central drift of his ideal
\nmind and a greater imperative of his being than that of action, though later in
\nlaying its complete hold on him, greater in the wideness of its reach and
\ngreater too in its effectiveness upon action, in the returns of the world energy
\nto his power of the truth within him.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>It is in the third movement of highest mind when it is preparing to
\ndisengage itself, its pure self of will and intelligence, the radiant head of
\nits endeavour from subjection to the vital motive that this imperative of
\nnature, this intrinsic need that creates in the mind of man the urge towards
\nknowledge, becomes something much greater, becomes instead more and more plainly
\nthe ideal absolute imperative of the soul emerging from the husks and sheaths of
\nignorance and pushing towards the truth, towards the light as the condition of
\nits fulfilment and the very call of the Divine upon its being. The lure of an
\nexternal utility ceases to be at all needed as an incentive towards knowledge,
\njust as the lure of a vital reward offered now or hereafter ceases on the same
\nhigh level of our ascent to be needed as an incentive to virtue, and to attach
\nimportance to it under whatever specious colour is even felt to be a degradation
\nof the disinterestedness, a fall from the high purity of the soul motive.
\nAlready even in the more outward forms of intellectual seeking something of this
\nabsoluteness begins to be felt and to reign. The scientist pursues his
\ndiscoveries in order that he may know the law and truth of the process of the
\nuniverse and their practical results are only a secondary motive of the
\nenquiring mind and no motive at all to the higher scientific intelligence. The
\nphilosopher is driven from within to search for the ultimate truth of things for
\nthe one sake of Truth only and all else but to see the very face of Truth
\nbecomes to him, to his absorbing mind and soul of knowledge, secondary or of no
\nimportance; nothing can be allowed to interfere with that one imperative. And
\nthere is the tendency to the same kind of exclusiveness in the interest and the
\nprocess of this absolute. The thinker is concerned to seek out and enforce the
\ntruth on himself and the world regardless of any effect it may have in
\ndisturbing the established bases of life, religion, ethics, society, regardless
\nof any other considera-<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-218<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

tion
\nwhatsoever; he must express the word of the Truth whatever its dynamic results
\non life. And this absolute becomes most absolute, this imperative most
\nimperative when the inner action surpasses the strong coldness of intellectual
\nsearch and becomes a fiery striving for truth experience, a luminous inner truth
\nliving, a birth into a new truth consciousness. The enamoured of light, the
\nsage, the Yogin of knowledge, the seer, the Rishi live for knowledge and in
\nknowledge, because it is the absolute of light and truth that they seek after
\nand its claim on them is single and absolute.
\n 
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span>At the same time this also is a line of the world energy,<\/span> \u2014
\nfor the world Shakti is a Shakti of consciousness and knowledge and not only a
\nPower of force and action,<\/span> \u2014 and
\nthe output of the energy of knowledge brings its results as surely as the energy
\nof the will seeking after success in action or after right ethical conduct. But
\nthe result that it brings on this higher plane of the seeking in mind is simply
\nand purely the upward growth of the soul in light and truth; that and whatever
\nhappiness it brings is the one supreme reward demanded by the soul of knowledge
\nand the darkening of the light within, the pain of the fall from truth, the pain
\nof the imperfection of not living only by its law and wholly in the light is its
\none penalty of suffering. The outward rewards and the sufferings of life are
\nsmall things to the higher soul of knowledge in map: even his high mind of know-
\nledge will often face all that the world can do to afflict it, just as it is
\nready to make all manner of sacrifices in the pursuit and the affirmation of the
\ntruth it knows and lives for. Bruno burning in the Roman fire, the martyrs of
\nall religions suffering and welcoming as witnesses to the light within them
\ntorture and persecution, Buddha leaving all to discover the dark cause of
\nuniversal suffering in this world of the impermanence and the way of escape <\/span>into
\nthe supreme Permanence, the ascetic casting<\/span> away<\/span>
\nas an illu<\/span>sion
\nlife in the world and its activities, enjoyments, attractions with the one will
\nto enter into the absolute truth and the supreme consciousness are witnesses to
\nthis imperative of knowledge, its extreme examples and exponents.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

 
\n           
\n<\/span>The intention of Nature, the spiritual justification of her ways appears
\nat last in this turn of her energies leading the con-<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-219<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

scious
\nsoul along the lines of truth and knowledge. At first she is physical Nature
\nbuilding her firm field according<\/span> to<\/span>
\na base of settled truth and law but
\ndetermined by a subconscient knowledge she does not yet share with her
\ncreatures. Next she is Life growing slowly self-conscious, seeking out knowledge
\nthat she may move seeingly in them along her ways and increase at once the
\ncomplexity and the efficacy of her movements, but developing slowly too the
\nconsciousness that knowledge must be pursued for a higher and purer end, for
\ntruth, for the satisfaction, as the life expression and as the spiritual
\nself-finding, of the soul of knowledge. But, last, it is that soul itself
\ngrowing in the truth and light, growing into the absolute truth of itself which
\nis its perfection, that becomes the law and high end of her energies. And at
\neach stage she gives returns according to the development of the aim and
\nconsciousness of the being. At first there is the return of skill and effectual
\nintelligence,<\/span> \u2014 and her own
\nneed explains sufficiently why she gives the rewards of life not, as the ethical
\nmind in us would have it, to the just, not chiefly to moral good, but to the
\nskilful and to the strong, to will and force and intelligence, <\/span>\u2014
\nand then, more and more clearly disengaged, the return of enlightenment and the
\nsatisfaction of the mind and the soul in the conscious use and wise direction of
\nits powers and capacities and, last of all, the one supreme return, the increase
\nof the soul in light, the satisfaction of its perfection in knowledge, its birth
\ninto the highest consciousness and the pure fulfilment of its own innate
\nimperative. It is that growth, a divine birth or spiritual self-exceeding its
\nsupreme reward, which for the Eastern mind has been always the highest gain,<\/span>
\n\u2014 the growth out of human ignorance
\ninto divine self-knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-220<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Higher Lines of Truth                       THERE can be no greater error than to sup- pose, misled by this absolute insistence of the ethical being,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","wpcat-5-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}