{"id":1241,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:30","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:30","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:30","slug":"08-the-philosophy-of-rebirth-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/19-the-life-divine-volume-19\/08-the-philosophy-of-rebirth-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","title":{"rendered":"-08_The Philosophy of Rebirth .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font>
\nXX <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe Philosophy of Rebirth <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nAn end have these bodies of an embodied soul that is eternal;… it<\/span><\/p>\n

\n is not born nor dies nor is it that having
\nbeen it will not be again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n It is unborn, ancient, everlasting; it is
\nnot slain with the slaying<\/span><\/p>\n

\n of the body. As a man casts from him his
\nworn-out garments and<\/span><\/p>\n

\n takes others that are new, so the embodied
\nbeing casts off its bodies<\/span><\/p>\n

\n and joins itself to others that are new.
\nCertain is the death of <\/span><\/p>\n

\nthat which is born and certain is the birth of
\nthat which dies…<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tGita.\u00b9 <\/span><\/p>\n


\nThere is a birth and growth of the self. According to his actions <\/span><\/p>\n

\nthe embodied being assumes forms successively in
\nmany places;<\/span><\/p>\n

\n many forms gross and subtle he assumes by
\nforce of his own <\/span><\/p>\n

\nqualities of nature….<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\tSwetaswatara<\/span>
\n\t\tUpanishad.\u00b2 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t <\/p>\n

\n     
\n B<\/span>IRTH <\/font>is the first spiritual mystery of the
\nphysical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of
\nperplexity to the mystery of birth; for life, which would otherwise be a
\nself-evident fact of existence, becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two
\nwhich seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray
\nthemselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an
\noccult processus<\/span> of life. At first sight birth might
\nseem to be a constant outburst of life in a general death, a persistent
\ncircumstance in the universal lifelessness of Matter. On a closer examination it
\nbegins to be more probable that life is something involved in Matter or even an
\ninherent power of the Energy that creates Matter, but able to appear only when
\nit gets the necessary conditions for the affirmation of its characteristic
\nphenomena and for an appropriate self-organisation<\/span>.
\nBut in the birth of life there is something more that participates in the
\nemergence,\u2014there is an element which is no longer material, a strong
\nupsurging<\/span> of some flame of soul, a first evident vibration of the
\nspirit. <\/p>\n

\n

       All the
\nknown circumstances and results of birth presuppose an unknown before, and there
\nis a suggestion of universality, a will of persistence of life, an
\ninconclusiveness in death which seem<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

        
\n<\/span> \u00b9 II. 18, 20, 22, 27.        
\n\u00b2  V. 11, 12.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-742 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

to point to an unknown hereafter. What
\nwere we before birth and what are we after death, are the questions, the answer
\nof the one depending upon that of the other, which the intellect of man has put
\nto itself from the beginning without even now resting in any final solution. The
\nintellect indeed can hardly give the final answer: for that must in its very
\nnature lie beyond the data of the physical consciousness and memory, whether of
\nthe race or the individual, yet these are the sole data which the intellect is
\nin the habit of consulting with something like confidence. In this poverty of
\nmaterials and this incertitude it wheels from one hypothesis to another and
\ncalls each in turn a conclusion. Moreover, the solution depends upon the nature,
\nsource and object of the cosmic movement, and as we determine these, so we shall
\nhave to conclude about birth and life and death, the before and the hereafter. <\/p>\n

     The first
\nquestion is whether the before and the after are purely physical and vital or in
\nsome way, and more predominantly, mental and spiritual. If Matter were the
\nprinciple of the universe, as the materialist alleges, if the truth of things
\nwere to be found in the first formula arrived at by Bhrigu<\/span>,
\nson of Varuna<\/span>, when he meditated upon the eternal
\nBrahman, \u201cMatter is the Eternal, for from Matter all beings are born and by
\nMatter all beings exist and to Matter all beings depart and return\u201d, then no
\nfarther questioning would be possible. The before of our bodies would be a
\ngathering of their constituents out of various physical elements through the
\ninstrumentality of the seed and food and under the influence perhaps of occult
\nbut always material energies, and the before of our conscious being a
\npreparation by heredity or by some other physically vital or physically mental
\noperation in universal Matter specialising<\/span> its
\naction and building the individual through the bodies of our parents, through
\nseed and gene and chromosome. The after of the body would be a dissolution into
\nthe material elements and the after of the conscious being a relapse into Matter
\nwith some survival of the effects of its activity in the general mind and life
\nof humanity: this last quite illusory survival would be our only chance of
\nimmortality. But since the universality of Matter can no longer be held as
\ngiving any sufficient explanation of the existence of Mind, <\/p>\n

\nPage-743 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

\u2014and indeed Matter itself can no longer
\nbe explained by Matter alone, for it does not appear to be self-existent,\u2014we are
\nthrown back from this easy and obvious solution to other hypotheses. <\/p>\n

     One of these is
\nthe old religious myth and dogmatic mystery of a God who creates constantly
\nimmortal souls out of his own being or else by his \u201cbreath\u201d or life-power
\nentering, it is to be presumed, into material Nature or rather into the bodies
\nhe creates in it and vivifying them internally with a spiritual principle. As a
\nmystery of faith this can hold and need not be examined, for the mysteries of
\nfaith are intended to be beyond question and scrutiny; but for reason and
\nphilosophy it lacks convincingness and does not fit into the known order of
\nthings. For it involves two paradoxes which need more justification before they
\ncan even be accorded any consideration; first, the hourly creation of beings who
\nhave a beginning in time but no end in time, and are, moreover, born by the
\nbirth of the body but do not end by the death of the body; secondly, their
\nassumption of a ready-made mass of combined qualities, virtues, vices,
\ncapacities, defects, temperamental and other advantages and handicaps, not made
\nby them at all through growth, but made for them by arbitrary fiat,\u2014if not by
\nlaw of heredity,\u2014yet for which and for the perfect use of which they are held
\nresponsible by their Creator.<\/p>\n

      We may
\nmaintain,\u2014provisionally, at least,\u2014certain things as legitimate presumptions of
\nthe philosophic reason and fairly throw the burden of disproving them on their
\ndenier. Among these postulates is the principle that that which has no end must
\nnecessarily have had no beginning; all that begins or is created has an end by
\ncessation of the process that created and maintains it or the dissolution of the
\nmaterials of which it is compounded or the end of the function for which it came
\ninto being. If there is an exception to this law, it must be by a descent of
\nspirit into matter animating matter with divinity or giving matter its own
\nimmortality; but the spirit itself which so descends is immortal, not made or
\ncreated. If the soul was created to animate the body, if it depended on the body
\nfor its coming into existence, it can have no reason or basis for existence
\nafter the disappearance of the body. It is naturally to be supposed that the
\nbreath or power<\/p>\n

\n Page-744 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

given for the animation of the body
\nwould return at its final dissolution to its Maker. If, on the contrary, it
\nstill persists as an immortal embodied being, there must be a subtle or psychic
\nbody in which it continues, and it is fairly certain that this psychic body and
\nits inhabitant must be pre-existent to the material vehicle: it is irrational to
\nsuppose that they were created originally to inhabit that brief and perishable
\nform; an immortal being cannot be the outcome of so ephemeral an incident in
\ncreation. If the soul remains but in a disembodied condition, then it can have
\nhad no original dependence on a body for its existence; it must have subsisted
\nas an unembodied<\/span>
\nspirit before birth even as it persists in its disembodied spiritual entity
\nafter death. <\/p>\n

     Again, we can
\nassume that where we see in Time a certain stage of development, there must have
\nbeen a past to that development. Therefore, if the soul enters this life with a
\ncertain development of personality, it must have prepared it in other precedent
\nlives here or elsewhere. Or, if it only takes up a ready-made life and
\npersonality not prepared by it, prepared perhaps by a physical, vital and mental
\nheredity, it must itself be something quite independent of that life and
\npersonality, something which is only fortuitously connected with the mind and
\nbody and cannot therefore be really affected by what is done or developed in
\nthis mental and bodily living. If the soul is real and immortal, not a
\nconstructed being or figure of being, it must also be eternal,
\nbeginningless<\/span> in the past even as endless in the future; but, if eternal,
\nit must be either a changeless self unaffected by life and its terms or a
\ntimeless Purusha<\/span>, an eternal and spiritual Person
\nmanifesting or causing in time a stream of changing personality. If it is such a
\nPerson, it can only manifest this stream of personality in a world of birth and
\ndeath by the assumption of successive bodies,\u2014in a word, by constant or by
\nrepeated rebirth into the forms of Nature.\n<\/p>\n

     But the
\nimmortality or eternity of the soul does not at once impose itself, even if we
\nreject the explanation of all things by eternal Matter. For we have also the
\nhypothesis of the creation of a temporary or apparent soul by some power of the
\noriginal Unity from which all things began, by which they live and into which
\nthey cease. On one side, we can erect upon the foundation <\/p>\n

\nPage-745 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

of certain modern ideas or discoveries
\nthe theory of a cosmic Inconscient<\/span> creating a
\ntemporary soul, a consciousness which after a brief play is extinguished and
\ngoes back into the Inconscient<\/span>. Or there may be an
\neternal Becoming, which manifests itself in a cosmic Life-force with the
\nappearance of Matter as one objective end of its operations and the appearance
\nof Mind as the other subjective end, the interaction of these two phenomena of
\nLife-force creating our human existence. On the other side, we have the old
\ntheory of a sole-existing Superconscient<\/span>, an eternal
\nunmodifiable<\/span> Being which admits or creates by Maya an illusion of
\nindividual soul-life in this world of phenomenal Mind and Matter, both of them
\nultimately unreal,\u2014even if they have or assume a temporary and phenomenal
\nreality,\u2014since one unmodifiable<\/span> and eternal Self or
\nSpirit is the only entity. Or we have the Buddhist theory of a
\nNihil<\/span> or Nirvana and, somehow imposed upon that, an eternal action or
\nenergy of successive becoming, Karma, which creates the illusion of a persistent
\nself or soul by a constant continuity of associations, ideas, memories,
\nsensations, images. In their effect upon the life-problem all these three
\nexplanations are practically one; for even the
\nSuperconscient<\/span>
\nis for the purposes of the universal action an equivalent of the
\nInconscient<\/span>; it can be aware only of its own
\nunmodifiable<\/span> self-existence: the creation of a world of individual beings
\nby Maya is an imposition on this self-existence; it takes place, perhaps, in a
\nsort of self-absorbed sleep of consciousness, susupti<\/i>,\u00b9out of which yet
\nall active consciousness and modification of phenomenal becoming emerge, just as
\nin the modern theory our consciousness is an impermanent development out of the
\nInconscient<\/span>. In all three theories the apparent soul or spiritual
\nindividuality of the creature is not immortal in the sense of eternity, but has
\na beginning and an end in Time, is a creation by Maya or by Nature-Force or
\ncosmic Action out of the Inconscient<\/span> or
\nSuperconscient<\/span>, and is therefore impermanent in its existence. In all
\nthree rebirth is either unnecessary or else illusory; it is either the
\nprolongation by repetition of an illusion, or it is an additional revolving
\nwheel among the many wheels of <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

     
\n\u00b9 Prajna<\/span> of the Mandukya<\/span>
\nUpanishad, the Self situated in deep sleep, is the lord and creator of things. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-746<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

the complex machinery of the Becoming,
\nor it is excluded since a single birth is all that can be asked for by a
\nconscious being fortuitously engendered as part of an
\ninconscient<\/span> creation. <\/p>\n

     In these views,
\nwhether we suppose the one Eternal Existence to be a vital Becoming or an
\nimmutable and unmodifiable<\/span>
\nspiritual Being or a nameless and formless Non-being, that which we call the
\nsoul can be only a changing mass or stream of phenomena of consciousness which
\nhas come into existence in the sea of real or illusory becoming and will cease
\nto exist there,\u2014or, it may be, it is a temporary spiritual substratum, a
\nconscious reflection of the Superconscient<\/span> Eternal
\nwhich by its presence supports the mass of phenomena. It is not eternal, and its
\nonly immortality is a greater or less continuity in the Becoming. It is not a
\nreal and always existent Person who maintains and experiences the stream or mass
\nof phenomena. That which supports them, that which really and always exists, is
\neither the one eternal Becoming or the one eternal and impersonal Being or the
\ncontinual stream of Energy in its workings. For a theory of this kind it is not
\nindispensable that a psychic entity always the same should persist and assume
\nbody after body, form after form, until it is dissolved at last by some process
\nannulling altogether the original impetus which created this cycle. It is quite
\npossible that as each form is developed, a consciousness develops corresponding
\nto the form, and as the form dissolves, the corresponding consciousness
\ndissolves with it; the One which forms all, alone endures for ever. Or, as the
\nbody is gathered out of the general elements of Matter and begins its life with
\nbirth and ends with death, so the consciousness may be developed out of the
\ngeneral elements of mind and equally begin with birth and end with death. Here
\ntoo, the One who supplies by Maya or otherwise the force which creates the
\nelements, is the sole reality that endures. In none of these theories of
\nexistence is rebirth an absolute necessity or an inevitable result of the
\ntheory.\u00b9 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    
\n\u00b9 In the Buddhist theory rebirth is imperative because Karma compels it; not a
\nsoul, but Karma is the link of an apparently continuing consciousness,\u2014for the
\nconsciousness changes from moment to moment: there is this apparent continuity
\nof consciousness, but there is no real immortal soul taking birth and passing
\nthrough the death of the body to be reborn in another body. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-747<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

      As a
\nmatter of fact, however, we find a great difference; for the old theories
\naffirm, the modern denies rebirth as a part of the universal process. Modern
\nthought starts from the physical body as the basis of our existence and
\nrecognises<\/span> the reality of no other world except this material universe.
\nWhat it sees here is a mental consciousness associated with the life of the
\nbody, giving in its birth no sign of previous individual existence and leaving
\nin its end no sign of subsequent individual existence. What was before birth is
\nthe material energy with its seed of life, or at best an energy of life-force,
\nwhich persists in the seed transmitted by the parents and gives, by its
\nmysterious infusion of past developments into that trifling vehicle, a
\nparticular mental and physical stamp to the new individual mind and body thus
\nstrangely created. What remains after death is the same material energy or
\nlife-force persisting in the seed transmitted to the children and active for the
\nfarther development of the mental and physical life carried with it. Nothing is
\nleft of us except what we so transmit to others or what the Energy which shaped
\nthe individual by its pre-existent and its surrounding action, by birth and by
\nenvironment, may take as the result of his life and works into its subsequent
\naction; whatever may help by chance or by physical law to build the mental and
\nvital constituents and environment of other individuals, that alone can have any
\nsurvival. Behind both the mental and the physical phenomena there is perhaps a
\nuniversal Life of which we are individualised<\/span>,
\nevolutionary and phenomenal
\nbecomings<\/span>. This universal Life creates a real world
\nand real beings, but the conscious personality in these beings is not, or at
\nleast it need not be, the sign or the shape of consciousness of an eternal nor
\neven of a persistent soul or supraphysical<\/span> Person:
\nthere is nothing in this formula of existence compelling us to believe in a
\npsychic entity that outlasts the death of the body. There is here no reason and
\nlittle room for the admission of rebirth as a part of the scheme of things.<\/p>\n

      But what
\nif it were found with the increase of our knowledge, as certain researches and
\ndiscoveries seem to presage, that the dependence of the mental being or the
\npsychic entity in us on the body is not so complete as we at first naturally
\nconclude it to be <\/p>\n

\nPage-748 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

from the study of the data of physical
\nexistence and the physical universe alone? What if it were found that the human
\npersonality survives the death of the body and moves between other planes and
\nthis material universe? The prevalent modern idea of a temporary conscious
\nexistence would then have to broaden itself and admit a Life that has a wider
\nrange than the physical universe and admit too a personal individuality not
\ndependent on the material body. It might have practically to readopt the ancient
\nidea of a subtle form or body inhabited by a psychic entity. A psychic or soul
\nentity, carrying with it the mental consciousness, or, if there be no such
\noriginal soul, then the evolved and persistent mental individual would continue
\nafter death in this subtle persistent form, which must have been either created
\nfor it before this birth or by the birth itself or during the life. For either a
\npsychic entity pre-exists in other worlds in a subtle form and comes from there
\nwith it to its brief earthly sojourn, or the soul develops here in the material
\nworld itself, and with it a psychic body is developed in the course of Nature
\nand persists after death in other worlds or by reincarnation here. These would
\nbe the two possible alternatives. <\/p>\n

     An evolving
\nuniversal Life may have developed on earth the growing personality that has now
\nbecome ourselves, before it entered a human body at all; the soul in us may have
\nevolved in lower life-shapes before man was created. In that case, our
\npersonality has previously inhabited animal forms, and the subtle body would be
\na plastic formation carried from birth to birth but adapting itself to whatever
\nphysical shape the soul inhabits. Or the evolving Life may be able to build a
\npersonality capable of survival, but only in the human form when that is
\ncreated. This would happen by the force of a sudden growth of mental
\nconsciousness, and at the same time a sheath of subtle mind-substance might
\ndevelop and help to individualise<\/span>
\nthis mental consciousness and would then function as an inner body, just as the
\ngross physical form by its organisation<\/span> at once
\nindividualises<\/span> and houses the animal mind and life. On the former
\nsupposition, we must admit that the animal too survives the dissolution of the
\nphysical body and has some kind of soul formation which after death occupies
\nother animal forms on earth <\/p>\n

\nPage-749<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and finally a human body. For there is
\nlittle likelihood that the animal soul passes beyond earth and enters other
\nplanes of life than the physical and constantly returns here until it is ready
\nfor the human incarnation; the animal’s conscious
\nindividualisation<\/span> does not seem sufficient to bear such a transfer or to
\nadapt itself to an other-worldly existence. On the second supposition, the power
\nthus to survive the death of the physical body in other states of existence
\nwould only arrive with the human stage of the evolution. If, indeed, the soul is
\nnot such a constructed personality evolved by Life, but a persistent
\nunevolving<\/span>
\nreality with a terrestrial life and body as its necessary field, the theory of
\nrebirth in the sense of Pythagorean transmigration would have to be admitted.
\nBut if it is a persistent evolving entity capable of passing beyond the
\nterrestrial stage, then the Indian idea of a passage to other worlds and a
\nreturn to terrestrial birth would become possible and highly probable. But it
\nwould not be inevitable; for it might be supposed that the human personality,
\nonce capable of attaining to other planes, need not return from them: it would
\nnaturally, in the absence of some greater compelling reason, pursue its
\nexistence upon the higher plane to which it had arisen; it would have finished
\nwith the terrestrial life-evolution. Only if faced with actual evidence of a
\nreturn to earth, would a larger supposition be compulsory and the admission of a
\nrepeated rebirth in human forms become inevitable.<\/p>\n

      But even
\nthen the developing vitalistic<\/span> theory need not
\nspiritualise<\/span>
\nitself, need not admit the real existence of a soul or its immortality or
\neternity. It might regard the personality still as a phenomenal creation of the
\nuniversal Life by the interaction of life-consciousness and physical form and
\nforce, but with a wider, more variable and subtler action of both upon each
\nother and another history than it had at first seen to be possible. It might
\neven arrive at a sort of vitalistic<\/span> Buddhism,
\nadmitting Karma, but admitting it only as the action of a universal Life-force;
\nit would admit as one of its results the continuity of the stream of personality
\nin rebirth by mental association, but might deny any real self for the
\nindividual or any eternal being other than this ever-active vital Becoming. On
\nthe other hand, it might, <\/p>\n

\nPage-750 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

obeying a turn of
\nthought which is now beginning to gain a little in strength, admit a universal
\nSelf or cosmic Spirit as the primal reality and Life as its power or agent and
\nso arrive at a form of spiritualised<\/span> vital Monism.
\nIn this theory too a law of rebirth  <\/span>ould<\/span>
\nbe possible but not inevitable; it might be a phenomenal fact, an actual law of
\nlife, but it would not be a logical result of the theory of being and its
\ninevitable consequence. <\/p>\n


\nAdwaita<\/span>
\nof the Mayavada<\/span>, like Buddhism, started with the
\nalready accepted belief,\u2014part of the received stock of an antique knowledge,\u2014of
\nsupraphysical<\/span> planes and worlds and a commerce
\nbetween them and ours which determined a passage from earth and, though this
\nseems to have been a less primitive discovery, a return to earth of the human
\npersonality. At any rate their thought had behind it an ancient perception and
\neven experience, or at least an age-long tradition, of a before and after for
\nthe personality which was not confined to the experience of the physical
\nuniverse; for they based themselves on a view of self and world which already
\nregarded a supraphysical<\/span> consciousness as the
\nprimary phenomenon and physical being as only a secondary and dependent
\nphenomenon. It was around these data that they had to determine the nature of
\nthe eternal Reality and the origin of the phenomenal becoming. Therefore they
\nadmitted the passage of the personality from this to other worlds and its return
\ninto form of life upon earth; but the rebirth thus admitted was not in the
\nBuddhistic<\/span> view a real rebirth of a real spiritual Person into the forms
\nof material existence. In the later Adwaita<\/span>
\nview the spiritual reality was there, but its apparent individuality and
\ntherefore its birth and rebirth were part of a cosmic illusion, a deceptive but
\neffective construction of universal Maya.<\/p>\n

\nIn Buddhistic<\/span>
\nthought the existence of the Self was denied, and rebirth could only mean a
\ncontinuity of the ideas, sensations and actions which constituted a fictitious
\nindividual moving between different worlds,\u2014let us say, between differently
\norganised<\/span> planes of idea and sensation; for, in fact, it is only the
\nconscious continuity of the flux that creates a phenomenon of self and a
\nphenomenon of personality. In the Adwaitic<\/span>
\nMayavada<\/span> there was the admission of a Jivatman<\/span>,
\nan individual self,<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 751<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and even of a real
\nself of the individual;1<\/sup>
\nbut this concession to our normal language and ideas ends by being only
\napparent. For it turns out that there is no real and eternal individual, no \u201cI\u201d
\nor \u201cyou\u201d, and therefore there can be no real self of the individual, even no
\ntrue universal self, but only a Self apart from the universe, ever unborn, ever
\nunmodified, ever unaffected by the mutations of phenomena. Birth, life, death,
\nthe whole mass of individual and cosmic experience, become in the last resort no
\nmore than an illusion or a temporary phenomenon; even bondage and release can be
\nonly such an illusion, a part of temporal phenomena: they amount only to the
\nconscious continuity of the illusory experiences of the ego, itself a creation
\nof the great Illusion, and the cessation of the continuity and the consciousness
\ninto the superconsciousness<\/span> of That which alone was,
\nis and ever will be, or rather which has nothing to do with Time, is for ever
\nunborn, timeless and ineffable. <\/p>\n

\nThus while in the vitalistic<\/span> view of things there is
\na real universe and a real though brief temporary becoming of individual life
\nwhich, even though there is no ever-enduring Purusha<\/span>,
\nyet gives a considerable importance to our individual experience and
\nactions,\u2014for these are truly effective in a real becoming,\u2014in the
\nMayavada<\/span>
\ntheory these things have no real importance or true effect, but only something
\nlike a dream-consequence. For even release takes place only in the cosmic dream
\nor hallucination by the recognition of the illusion and the cessation of the
\nindividualised<\/span> mind and body; in reality, there is no one bound and no
\none released, for the sole-existent Self is untouched by these illusions of the
\nego. To escape from the all-destroying sterility which would be the logical
\nresult, we have to lend a practical reality, however false it may be eventually,
\nto this dream-consequence and an immense importance to our bondage and
\nindividual release, even though the life of the individual is phenomenal only
\nand to the one real Self both the bondage and the release are and cannot but be
\nnon-existent. In this compulsory concession to the tyrannous falsehood of Maya
\nthe sole <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>The Self in this view is one, it
\ncannot be many or multiply itself; there cannot therefore be any true
\nindividual, only at most a one Self omnipresent and animating each mind and body
\nwith the idea of an \u201cI\u201d.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 752<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

true importance of
\nlife and experience must lie in the measure in which they prepare for the
\nnegation of life, for the self-elimination of the individual, for the end of the
\ncosmic illusion.
\n <\/p>\n

\nThis, however, is an extreme view and consequence of the monistic thesis, and
\nthe older Adwaita<\/span> Vedantism<\/span>
\nstarting from the Upanishads does not go so far. It admits an actual and
\ntemporal becoming of the Eternal and therefore a real universe; the individual
\ntoo assumes a sufficient reality, for each individual is in himself the Eternal
\nwho has assumed name and form and supports through him the experiences of life
\nturning on an ever-circling wheel of birth in the manifestation. The wheel is
\nkept in motion by the desire of the individual, which becomes the effective
\ncause of rebirth and by the mind’s turning away from the knowledge of the
\neternal self to the preoccupations of the temporal becoming. With the cessation
\nof this desire and of this ignorance, the Eternal in the individual draws away
\nfrom the mutations of individual personality and experience into his timeless,
\nimpersonal and immutable being.
\n <\/p>\n

\nBut this reality of the individual is quite temporal; it has no enduring
\nfoundation, not even a perpetual recurrence in Time. Rebirth, though a very
\nimportant actuality in this account of the universe, is not an inevitable
\nconsequence of the relation between individuality and the purpose of the
\nmanifestation. For the manifestation seems to have no purpose except the will of
\nthe Eternal towards world-creation and it can end only by that will’s
\nwithdrawal: this cosmic will could work itself out without any machinery of
\nrebirth and the individual’s desire maintaining it; for his desire can be only a
\nspring of the machinery, it could not be the cause or the necessary condition of
\ncosmic existence, since he is himself in this view a result of the creation and
\nnot in existence prior to the Becoming. The will to creation could then
\naccomplish itself through a temporary assumption of individuality in each name
\nand form, a single life of many impermanent individuals. There would be a
\nself-shaping of the one consciousness in correspondence with the type of each
\ncreated being, but it could very well begin in each individual body with the
\nappearance of the physical form and end with its cessation. Individual would
\nfollow individual as wave follows wave, the sea
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 753<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

remaining always the
\nsame;1<\/sup> each formation of conscious being would surge up from the
\nuniversal, roll for its allotted time and then sink back into the Silence. The
\nnecessity for this purpose of an individualised<\/span>
\nconsciousness persistently continuous, assuming name after name and form after
\nform and moving between different planes backward and forward, is not apparent
\nand, even as a possibility, does not strongly impose itself; still less is there
\nany room for an evolutionary progress inevitably pursued from form to higher
\nform such as must be supposed by a theory of rebirth that affirms the involution
\nand evolution of the Spirit in Matter as the significant formula of our
\nterrestrial existence. <\/p>\n

\nIt is conceivable that so the Eternal may have actually chosen to manifest or
\nrather to conceal himself in the body; he may have willed to become or to appear
\nas an individual passing from birth to death and from death to new life in a
\ncycle of persistent and recurrent human and animal existence. The One Being
\npersonalised<\/span> would pass through various forms of becoming at fancy or
\naccording to some law of the consequences of action, till the close came by an
\nenlightenment, a return to Oneness, a withdrawal of the Sole and Identical from
\nthat particular individualisation<\/span>. But such a cycle
\nwould have no original or final determining Truth which would give it any
\nsignificance. There is nothing for which it would be necessary; it would be
\npurely a play, a Lila. But if it is once admitted that the Spirit has involved
\nitself in the Inconscience<\/span> and is manifesting itself
\nin the individual being by an evolutionary gradation, then the whole process
\nassumes meaning and consistence; the progressive ascent of the individual
\nbecomes a key-note of this cosmic significance, and the rebirth of the soul in
\nthe body becomes a natural and unavoidable consequence of the truth of the
\nBecoming and its inherent law. Rebirth is an indispensable machinery for the <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/span><\/sup>Dr. Schweitzer in his book on
\nIndian thought asserts that this was the real sense of the
\nUpanishadic<\/span> teachings and rebirth was a later invention. But there are
\nnumerous important passages in almost all the Upanishads positively affirming
\nrebirth and, in any case, the Upanishads admit the survival of the personality
\nafter death and its passage into other worlds which is incompatible with this
\ninterpretation. If there is survival in other worlds and also a final destiny of
\nliberation into the Brahman for souls embodied here, rebirth imposes itself, and
\nthere is no reason to suppose that it was a later theory. The writer has
\nevidently been moved by the associations of Western philosophy to read a merely
\npantheistic sense into the more subtle and complex thought of the ancient
\nVedanta. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 754<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

working out of a
\nspiritual evolution; it is the only possible effective condition, the obvious
\ndynamic process of such a manifestation in the material universe. <\/p>\n

\nOur explanation of the evolution in Matter is that the universe is a
\nself-creative process of a supreme Reality whose presence makes spirit the
\nsubstance of things,\u2014all things are there as the spirit’s powers and means and
\nforms of manifestation. An infinite existence, an infinite consciousness, an
\ninfinite force and will, an infinite delight of being is the Reality secret
\nbehind the appearances of the universe; its divine
\nSupermind<\/span> or Gnosis has arranged the cosmic order, but arranged it
\nindirectly through the three subordinate and limiting terms of which we are
\nconscious here, Mind, Life and Matter. The material universe is the lowest stage
\nof a downward plunge of the manifestation, an involution of the manifested being
\nof this triune Reality into an apparent nescience of itself, that which we now
\ncall the Inconscient<\/span>; but out of this nescience the
\nevolution of that manifested being into a recovered self-awareness was from the
\nvery first inevitable. It was inevitable because that which is involved must
\nevolve; for it is not only there as an existence, a force hidden in its apparent
\nopposite, and every such force must in its inmost nature be moved to find
\nitself, to realise<\/span> itself, to release itself into
\nplay, but it is the reality of that which conceals it, it is the self which the
\nNescience has lost and which therefore it must be the whole secret meaning, the
\nconstant drift of its action to seek for and recover. It is through the
\nconscious individual being that this recovery is possible; it is in him that the
\nevolving consciousness becomes organised<\/span> and capable
\nof awaking to its own Reality. The immense importance of the individual being,
\nwhich increases as he rises in the scale, is the most remarkable and significant
\nfact of a universe which started without consciousness and without individuality
\nin an undifferentiated Nescience. This importance can only be justified if the
\nSelf as individual is no less real than the Self as cosmic Being or Spirit and
\nboth are powers of the Eternal. It is only so that can be explained the
\nnecessity for the growth of the individual and his discovery of himself as a
\ncondition for the discovery of the cosmic Self and Consciousness and of the
\nsupreme Reality. If we adopt this solution, this is the first result, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 755<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

the reality of the
\npersistent individual; but from that first consequence the other result follows,
\nthat rebirth of some kind is no longer a possible machinery which may or may not
\nbe accepted, it becomes a necessity, an inevitable outcome of the root nature of
\nour existence.
\n <\/p>\n

\nFor it is no longer sufficient to suppose an illusory or temporary individual,
\ncreated in each form by the play of consciousness; individuality can no longer
\nbe conceived as an accompaniment of play of consciousness in figure of body
\nwhich may or may not survive the form, may or may not prolong its false
\ncontinuity of self from form to form, from life to life, but which certainly
\nneed not do it. In this world what we seem at first to see is individual
\nreplacing individual without any continuity, the form dissolving, the false or
\ntransient individuality dissolving with it, while the universal Energy or some
\nuniversal Being alone remains for ever; that might very well be the whole
\nprinciple of cosmic manifestation. But if the individual is a persistent
\nreality, an eternal portion or power of the Eternal, if his growth of
\nconsciousness is the means by which the Spirit in things discloses its being,
\nthe cosmos reveals itself as a conditioned manifestation of the play of the
\neternal One in the being of Sachchidananda<\/span> with the
\neternal Many. Then, secure behind all the changings<\/span>
\nof our personality, upholding the stream of its mutations, there must be a true
\nPerson, a real spiritual Individual, a true Purusha<\/span>.
\nThe One extended in universality exists in each being and affirms himself in
\nthis individuality of himself. In the individual he discloses his total
\nexistence by oneness with all in the universality. In the individual he
\ndiscloses too his transcendence as the Eternal in whom all the universal unity
\nis founded. This trinity of self-manifestation, this prodigious Lila of the
\nmanifold Identity, this magic of Maya or protean miracle of the conscious truth
\nof being of the Infinite, is the luminous revelation which emerges by a slow
\nevolution from the original Inconscience.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIf there were no need of self-finding but only an eternal enjoyment of this play
\nof the being of Sachchidananda<\/span>,\u2014and such an eternal
\nenjoyment is the nature of certain supreme states of conscious existence,\u2014then
\nevolution and rebirth need not have come into operation. But there has been an
\ninvolution of
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 756<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

this unity into the
\ndividing Mind, a plunge into self-oblivion by which the ever-present sense of
\nthe complete oneness is lost, and the play of separative<\/span>
\ndifference,\u2014phenomenal, because the real unity in difference remains unabridged
\nbehind,\u2014comes into the forefront as a dominant reality. This play of difference
\nhas found its utmost term of the sense of division by the precipitation of the
\ndividing Mind into a form of body in which it becomes conscious of itself as a
\nseparate ego. A dense and solid basis has been laid for this play of division in
\na world of separative<\/span> forms of Matter by an
\ninvolution of the active self-conscience of Sachchidananda<\/span>
\ninto a phenomenal Nescience. It is this foundation in Nescience that makes the
\ndivision secure because it imperatively opposes a return to the consciousness of
\nunity; but still, though effectively obstructive, it is phenomenal and
\nterminable because within it, above it, supporting it is the all-conscient<\/span>
\nSpirit and the apparent Nescience turns out to be only a concentration, an
\nexclusive action of consciousness tranced<\/span>
\ninto self-forgetfulness by an abysmal plunge into the absorption of the
\nformative and creative material process. In a phenomenal universe so created,
\nthe separative<\/span> form becomes the foundation and the
\nstarting-point of all its life-action; therefore the individual
\nPurusha<\/span> in working out its cosmic relations with the One has in this
\nphysical world to base himself upon the form, to assume a body; it is the body
\nthat he must make his own foundation and the starting-point for his development
\nof the life and mind and spirit in the physical existence. That assumption of
\nbody we call birth, and in it only can take place here the development of self
\nand the play of relations between the individual and the universal and all other
\nindividuals; in it only can there be the growth by a progressive development of
\nour conscious being towards a supreme recovery of unity with God and with all in
\nGod: all the sum of what we call Life in the physical world is a progress of the
\nsoul and proceeds by birth into the body and has that for its fulcrum, its
\ncondition of action and its condition of evolutionary persistence.
\n <\/p>\n

\nBirth then is a necessity of the manifestation of the
\nPurusha<\/span>
\non the physical plane; but his birth, whether the human or any other, cannot be
\nin this world-order an isolated accident or a
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 757<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

sudden excursion of
\na soul into physicality without any preparing past to it or any fulfilling
\nhereafter. In a world of involution and evolution, not of physical form only,
\nbut of conscious being through life and mind to spirit, such an isolated
\nassumption of life in the human body could not be the rule of the individual
\nsoul’s existence; it would be a quite meaningless and inconsequential
\narrangement, a freak for which the nature and system of things here have no
\nplace, a contrary violence which would break the rhythm of the Spirit’s
\nself-manifestation. The intrusion of such a rule of individual soul-life into an
\nevolutionary spiritual progression would make it an effect without cause and a
\ncause without effect; it would be a fragmentary present without a past or a
\nfuture. The life of the individual must have the same rhythm of significance,
\nthe same law of progression as the cosmic life; its place in that rhythm cannot
\nbe a stray purposeless intervention, it must be an abiding instrumentation of
\nthe cosmic purpose. Neither in such an order can we explain an isolated advent,
\na one birth of the soul in the human body which would be its first and last
\nexperience of the kind, by a previous existence in other worlds with a future
\nbefore it in yet other fields of experience. For here life upon earth, life in
\nthe physical universe is not and cannot be a casual perch for the wanderings of
\nthe soul from world to world; it is a great and slow development needing, as we
\nnow know, incalculable spaces of Time for its evolution. Human life is itself
\nonly a term in a graded series, through which the secret Spirit in the universe
\ndevelops gradually his purpose and works it out finally through the enlarging
\nand ascending individual soul-consciousness in the body. This ascent can only
\ntake place by rebirth within the ascending order; an individual visit coming
\nacross it and progressing on some other line elsewhere could not fit into the
\nsystem of this evolutionary existence.<\/p>\n

\nNor is the human soul, the human individual, a free wanderer capriciously or
\nlightly hastening from field to field according to its unfettered choice or
\naccording to its free and spontaneously variable action and result of action.
\nThat is a radiant thought of pure spiritual liberty which may have its truth in
\nplanes beyond or in an eventual release, but is not true at first <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 758<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

of the earth-life,
\nof life in the physical universe. The human birth in this world is on its
\nspiritual side a complex of two elements, a spiritual Person and a soul of
\npersonality; the former is man’s eternal being, the latter is his cosmic and
\nmutable being. As the spiritual impersonal person he is one in his nature and
\nbeing with the freedom of Sachchidananda<\/span> who has
\nhere consented to or willed his involution in the Nescience for a certain round
\nof soul-experience, impossible otherwise, and presides secretly over its
\nevolution. As the soul of personality he is himself part of that long
\ndevelopment of the soul-experience in the forms of Nature; his own evolution
\nmust follow the laws and the lines of the universal evolution. As a spirit he is
\none with the Transcendence which is immanent in the world and comprehensive of
\nit; as a soul he is at once one with and part of the universality of
\nSachchidananda<\/span> self-expressed in the world: his self-expression must go
\nthrough the stages of the cosmic expression, his soul-experience follow the
\nrevolutions of the wheel of Brahman in the universe.
\n <\/p>\n

\nThe universal Spirit in things involved in the Nescience of the physical
\nuniverse evolves its nature-self in a succession of physical forms up the graded
\nseries of Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit. It emerges first as a secret soul in
\nmaterial forms quite subject on the surface to the nescience; it develops as a
\nsoul still secret but about to emerge in vital forms that stand on the borders
\nbetween nescience and the partial light of consciousness which is our ignorance;
\nit develops still farther as the initially conscient<\/span>
\nsoul in the animal mind and, finally, as the more outwardly conscious, but not
\nyet fully conscient<\/span> soul in man: the consciousness
\nis there throughout in our occult parts of being, the development is in the
\nmanifesting Nature. This evolutionary development has a universal as well as an
\nindividual aspect: the Universal develops the grades of its being and the
\nordered variation of the universality of itself in the series of its evolved
\nforms of being; the individual soul follows the line of this cosmic series and
\nmanifests what is prepared in the universality of the Spirit. The universal Man,
\nthe cosmic Purusha<\/span> in humanity, is developing in the
\nhuman race the power that has grown into humanity from below it and shall yet
\ngrow to Supermind<\/span> and
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 759<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n


\nSpirit and become the Godhead in man who is aware of his true and integral self
\nand the divine universality of his <\/span>nature. The individual must have
\nfollowed this line of development; he must have presided over a soul-experience
\nin the lower forms of life before he took up the human evolution: as the One was
\ncapable of assuming in its universality these lower forms of the plant and
\nanimal, so must the individual, now human, have been capable of assuming them in
\nhis previous stages of existence. He now appears as a human soul, the Spirit
\naccepting the inner and outer form of humanity, but he is not limited by this
\nform any more than he was limited by the plant or animal forms previously
\nassumed by him; he can pass on from it to a greater self-expression in a higher
\nscale of Nature.
\n <\/p>\n

\nTo suppose otherwise would be to suppose that the spirit which now presides over
\nthe human soul-experience was originally formed by a human mentality and the
\nhuman body, exists by that and cannot exist apart from it, cannot ever go below
\nor above it. In fact, it would then be reasonable to suppose that it is not
\nimmortal but has come into existence by the appearance of the human mind and
\nbody in the evolution and would disappear by their disappearance. But body and
\nmind are not the creators of the spirit, the spirit is the creator of the mind
\nand body; it develops these principles out of its being, it is not developed
\ninto being out of them, it is not a compound of their elements or a resultant of
\ntheir meeting. If it appears to evolve out of mind and body, that is because it
\ngradually manifests itself in them and not because it is created by them or
\nexists by them; as it manifests, they are revealed as subordinate terms of its
\nbeing and are to be finally taken up out of their present imperfection and
\ntransformed into visible forms and instruments of the spirit. Our conception of
\nthe spirit is of something which is not constituted by name and form, but
\nassumes various forms of body and mind according to the various manifestations
\nof its soul-being. This it does here by a successive evolution; it evolves
\nsuccessive forms and successive strata of consciousness: for it is not bound
\nalways to assume one form and no other or to possess one kind of mentality which
\nis its sole possible subjective manifestation. The soul is not bound by the
\nformula of mental humanity: it
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 760<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

did not begin with
\nthat and will not end with it; it had a prehuman<\/span>
\npast, it has a superhuman future.
\n <\/p>\n

\nWhat we see of Nature and of human nature justifies this view of a birth of the
\nindividual soul from form to form until it reaches the human level of manifested
\nconsciousness which is its instrument for rising to yet higher levels. We see
\nthat Nature develops from stage to stage and in each stage takes up its past and
\ntransforms it into stuff of its new development. We see too that human nature is
\nof the same make; all the earth-past is there in it. It has an element of matter
\ntaken up by life, an element of life taken up by mind, an element of mind which
\nis being taken up by spirit: the animal is still present in its humanity; the
\nvery nature of the human being presupposes a material and a vital stage which
\nprepared his emergence into mind and an animal past which
\nmoulded<\/span> a first element of his complex humanity. And let us not say that
\nthis is because material Nature developed by evolution his life and his body and
\nhis animal mind, and only afterwards did a soul descend into the form so
\ncreated: there is a certain truth behind this idea, but not the truth which that
\nformula would suggest. For that supposes a gulf between soul and body, between
\nsoul and life, between soul and mind, which does not exist; there is no body
\nwithout soul, no body that is not itself a form of soul: Matter itself is
\nsubstance and power of spirit and could not exist if it were anything else, for
\nnothing can exist which is not substance and power of Brahman; and if Matter,
\nthen still more clearly and certainly Life and Mind must be that and
\nensouled<\/span> by the presence of the Spirit. If Matter and Life had not
\nalready been ensouled<\/span>, man could not have appeared
\nor only as an intervention or an accident, not as a part of the evolutionary
\norder.
\n <\/p>\n

\nWe arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at
\nwhich the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had
\nfor its previous and preparatory terms in the succession the lower forms of life
\nupon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the
\nphysical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle. Then the
\nfarther question arises whether, humanity once attained, this succession of
\nrebirths still continues and, if so, how, by what <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 761<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

series or by what
\nalternations. And, first, we have to ask whether the soul, having once arrived
\nat humanity, can go back to the animal life and body, a retrogression which the
\nold popular theories of transmigration have supposed to be an ordinary movement.
\nIt seems impossible that it should so go back with any entirety, and for this
\nreason that the transit from animal to human life means a decisive conversion of
\nconsciousness, quite as decisive as the conversion of the vital consciousness of
\nthe plant into the mental consciousness of the animal. It is surely impossible
\nthat a conversion so decisive made by Nature should be reversed by the soul and
\nthe decision of the spirit within her come, as it were, to naught. It could only
\nbe possible for human souls, supposing such to exist, in whom the conversion was
\nnot decisive, souls that had developed far enough to make, occupy or assume a
\nhuman body, but not enough to ensure the safety of this assumption, not enough
\nto remain secure in its achievement and faithful to the human type of
\nconsciousness. Or at most there might be, supposing certain animal propensities
\nto be vehement enough to demand a separate satisfaction quite of their own kind,
\na sort of partial rebirth, a loose holding of an animal form by a human soul,
\nwith an immediate subsequent reversion to its normal progression. The movement
\nof Nature is always sufficiently complex for us not to deny dogmatically such a
\npossibility, and, if it be a fact, then there may exist this modicum of truth
\nbehind the exaggerated popular belief which assumes an animal rebirth of the
\nsoul once lodged in man to be quite as normal and possible as a human
\nreincarnation. But whether the animal reversion is possible or not, the normal
\nlaw must be the recurrence of birth in new human forms for a soul that has once
\nbecome capable of humanity. <\/p>\n

\nBut why a succession of human births and not one alone? For the same reason that
\nhas made the human birth itself a culminating point of the past succession, the
\nprevious upward series,\u2014it must be so by the very necessity of the spiritual
\nevolution. For the soul has not finished what it has to do by merely developing
\ninto humanity; it has still to develop that humanity into its higher
\npossibilities. Obviously, the soul that lodges in a
\nCaribbee<\/span>
\nor an untaught primitive or an Apache of Paris or
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 762<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

an American
\ngangster, has not yet exhausted the necessity of human birth, has not developed
\nall its possibilities or the whole meaning of humanity, has not worked out all
\nthe sense of Sachchidananda<\/span> in the universal Man;
\nneither has the soul lodged in a vitalistic<\/span> European
\noccupied with dynamic production and vital pleasure or in an Asiatic peasant
\nengrossed in the ignorant round of the domestic and economic life. We may
\nreasonably doubt whether even a Plato or a Shankara<\/span>
\nmarks the crown and therefore the end of the outflowering<\/span>
\nof the spirit in man. We are apt to suppose that these may be the limit, because
\nthese and others like them seem to us the highest point which the mind and soul
\nof man can reach, but that may be the illusion of our present possibility. There
\nmay be a higher or at least a larger possibility which the Divine intends yet to
\nrealise<\/span> in man, and, if so, it is the steps built by these highest souls
\nwhich were needed to compose the way up to it and to open the gates. At any rate
\nthis present highest point at least must be reached before we can write finis on
\nthe recurrence of the human birth for the individual. Man is there to move from
\nthe ignorance and from the little life which he is in his mind and body to the
\nknowledge and the large divine life which he can compass by the unfolding of the
\nspirit. At least the opening out of the spirit in him, the knowledge of his real
\nself and the leading of the spiritual life must be attained before he can go
\ndefinitively and for ever otherwhere<\/span>. There may too
\nbe beyond this initial culmination a greater flowering of the spirit in the
\nhuman life of which we have as yet only the first intimations; the imperfection
\nof Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last
\npeak of the Spirit. <\/p>\n

\nThis possibility becomes a certitude if the present leading principle of the
\nmind as man has developed it, the intellect, is not its highest principle. If
\nmind itself has other powers as yet only imperfectly possessed by the highest
\ntypes of the human individual, then a prolongation of the line of evolution and
\nconsequently of the ascending line of rebirth to embody them is inevitable. If
\nSupermind<\/span> also is a power of consciousness concealed here in the
\nevolution, the line of rebirth cannot stop even there; it cannot cease in its
\nascent before the mental has been replaced by the
\nsupramental<\/span>
\nnature and an embodied <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 763<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n


\nsupramental<\/span> being becomes the leader of terrestrial existence. <\/p>\n

\nThis then is the rational and philosophical foundation for a belief in rebirth;
\nit is an inevitable logical conclusion if there exists at the same time an
\nevolutionary principle in the Earth-Nature and a reality of the individual soul
\nborn into evolutionary Nature. If there is no soul, then there can be a
\nmechanical evolution without necessity or significance and birth is only part of
\nthis curious but senseless machinery. If the individual is only a temporary
\nformation beginning and ending with the body, then evolution can be a play of
\nthe All-Soul or Cosmic Existence mounting through a progression of higher and
\nhigher species towards its own utmost possibility in this Becoming or to its
\nhighest conscious principle; rebirth does not exist and is not needed as a
\nmechanism of that evolution. Or, if the All-Existence expresses itself in a
\npersistent but illusory individuality, rebirth becomes a possibility or an
\nillusory fact, but it has no evolutionary necessity and is not a spiritual
\nnecessity; it is only a means of accentuating and prolonging the illusion up to
\nits utmost time-limit. If there is an individual soul or
\nPurusha<\/span>
\nnot dependent on the body but inhabiting and using it for its purpose, then
\nrebirth begins to be possible, but it is not a necessity if there is no
\nevolution of the soul in Nature: the presence of the individual soul in an
\nindividual body may be a passing phenomenon, a single experience without a past
\nhere or a future; its past and its future may be elsewhere. But if there is an
\nevolution of consciousness in an evolutionary body and a soul inhabiting the
\nbody, a real and conscious individual, then it is evident that it is the
\nprogressive experience of that soul in Nature which takes the form of this
\nevolution of consciousness: rebirth is self-evidently a necessary part, the sole
\npossible machinery of such an evolution. It is as necessary as birth itself; for
\nwithout it birth would be an initial step without a sequel, the starting of a
\njourney without its farther steps and arrival. It is rebirth that gives to the
\nbirth of an incomplete being in a body its promise of completeness and its
\nspiritual significance. <\/p>\n

\nPage 764<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XX The Philosophy of Rebirth   An end have these bodies of an embodied soul that is eternal;… it  is not born nor dies…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","wpcat-27-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","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=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}