{"id":1254,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1254"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:36","slug":"09-the-order-of-the-worlds-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\/09-the-order-of-the-worlds-vol-19-the-life-divine-volume-19","title":{"rendered":"-09_The Order of the Worlds.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

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

 <\/font>The Order of the Worlds<\/font> <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nSeven
\nare these worlds in which move the life-forces that are<\/span><\/p>\n

\n hidden within the
\nsecret heart as their dwelling-place seven
\nby <\/span><\/p>\n

\nseven.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nMundaka<\/span><\/span> Upanishad.\u00b9 II. 1. 8.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

May the Peoples of the five Births
\naccept my sacrifice, those who <\/span><\/p>\n

\nare born of the Light and worthy of worship; may
\nEarth protect<\/span><\/p>\n

\n us from earthly evil and the Mid-Region from calamity from the<\/span><\/p>\n

\n gods. Follow the shining thread spun out across the mid-world, <\/span><\/p>\n

\nprotect the
\nluminous paths built by the thought; weave an in-<\/span><\/p>\n

\nviolate work, become the human
\nbeing, create the divine race….  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\nSeers
\nof truth are you, sharpen the shining spears with which you <\/span><\/p>\n

\ncut the way to that
\nwhich is Immortal; knowers<\/span> of the secret<\/span><\/p>\n

\n planes, form
\nthem, the steps by which the gods attained to immortality<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRig Veda.\u00ad\u00ad\u00ad<\/sub>2
\n<\/sup>X. 53. 5, 6, 10.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

This is the eternal Tree with its root above and its
\nbranches down-<\/span><\/p>\n

\nward; this is Brahman, this is the Immortal; in it are lodged all<\/span><\/p>\n

\n the worlds and none goes beyond it. This and That are one.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nKatha<\/span><\/span> Upanishad.3  <\/span><\/sup>II. 3. 1.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

      I<\/font><\/b>f a spiritual evolution of
\nconsciousness in the material world and a constant or repeated rebirth of the
\nindividual into an earthly body are admitted, the next question that arises is
\nwhether this evolutionary movement is something separate and complete in itself
\nor part of a larger universal totality of which the material world is only one
\nprovince. This question has already its answer implied in the gradations of the
\ninvolution which precede the evolution and make it possible; for, if that precedence
\nis a fact, there must be worlds or at least planes of higher being and they
\nmust have some connection with the evolution which has been made possible by
\ntheir existence. It may be that all they do for us is by their effective
\npresence or pressure on the earth-consciousness to liberate the involved
\nprinciples of life and mind and spirit and enable them to manifest and assert
\ntheir reign in material Nature. But it would be in the highest degree
\nimprobable that the connection and intervention should cease<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n         1<\/span><\/sup> II. 1. 8. 2<\/sup> X. 53. 5, 6, 10. 3<\/sup> II3.
\n1.<\/span> <\/p>\n

 Page 765<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

there; there is likely to be a
\nsustained, if veiled, commerce between material life and the life of the other
\nplanes of existence. It is necessary now to look more closely into this
\nproblem, regard it in itself and determine the nature and limits of this connection
\nand intercommunication, in so far as it affects the theory of evolution and
\nrebirth in material Nature.
\n <\/p>\n

The descent of
\nthe Soul into the Ignorance can be thought of as an abrupt precipitation or immediate
\nlapse of a pure spiritual being out of the superconscient<\/span>
\nspiritual Reality into the first inconscience<\/span> and the
\nsubsequent evolving phenomenal life of material Nature. If that were so, there
\nmight be the Absolute above and the Inconscient<\/span> below,
\nwith the material world created out of it, and the issue, the return back would
\nthen be a similar abrupt or precipitous transit from a material embodied
\nworld-being into the transcendent Silence. There would be no intermediate
\npowers or realities other than Matter and Spirit, no other planes than the
\nmaterial, no other worlds than the world of Matter. But this idea is too
\ntrenchant and simple a construction and cannot outlive a wider view of the
\ncomplex nature of existence. <\/p>\n

There are, no
\ndoubt, several possible originations of cosmic existence by which such an
\nextreme and rigid world-balancement<\/span> could have
\nconceivably come into being. There could have been a conception of this kind
\nand a fiat in an All-Will, or an idea, a movement of the soul towards an
\negoistic material life of the Ignorance. The eternal individual soul urged by
\nsome inexplicable desire arising within it can be supposed to have sought the
\nadventure of the darkness and taken a plunge from its native Light into the
\ndepths of a Nescience out of which arose this world of Ignorance; or a
\ncollectivity of souls may have been so moved, the Many: for an individual being
\ncannot constitute a cosmos; a cosmos must be either impersonal or multipersonal<\/span> or the creation or self-expression of a
\nuniversal or infinite Being. This desire may have drawn down an All-Soul with
\nit to build a world based upon the power of the Inconscient<\/span>.
\nIf not that, then the eternally omniscient All-Soul itself may have abruptly
\nplunged its self-knowledge into this darkness of the Inconscience<\/span>,
\ncarrying the individual souls within it to begin their upward evolution<\/p>\n

\nPage 766<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

through an ascending scale of
\nlife and consciousness. Or, if the individual is not pre-existent, if we are
\nonly a creation of the All-consciousness or a fiction of the phenomenal
\nIgnorance, either creatrix<\/span> may have conceived all
\nthese myriads of individual beings by the evolution of names and forms out of
\nan original indiscriminate Prakriti<\/span>; the soul would
\nbe a temporary product of the indiscriminate stuff of inconscient<\/span>
\nforce-substance which is the first appearance of things in the material
\nuniverse. <\/p>\n

On that
\nsupposition, or on any of them, there could be only two planes of existence: on
\none side there is the material universe created out of the Inconscient<\/span>
\nby the blind nescience of Force or Nature obedient perhaps to some inner unfelt
\nSelf which governs its somnambulist activities; on the other side there is the superconscient<\/span> One to which we return out of the Inconscience<\/span> and Ignorance. Or else we may imagine that
\nthere is one plane only, the material existence; there is no superconscient<\/span> apart from the Soul of the material
\nuniverse. If we find that there are other planes of conscious being and that
\nthere already exist other worlds than the material universe, these ideas might
\nbecome difficult to substantiate; but we can escape from that annulment if we
\nsuppose that these worlds have been subsequently created by or for the evolving
\nSoul in the course of its ascent out of the Inconscience<\/span>.
\nIn any of these views the whole cosmos would be an evolution out of the Inconscient<\/span>, either with the material universe as its sole
\nand sufficient stage and scene or else with an ascending scale of worlds, one
\nevolving out of the other, helping to grade our return to the original Reality.
\nOur own view has been that the cosmos is a self-graded evolution out of the superconscient<\/span> Sachchidananda<\/span>;
\nbut in this idea it would be nothing but an evolution of the Inconscience<\/span> towards some kind of knowledge sufficient to
\nallow, by the annihilation of some primal ignorance or some originating desire,
\nthe extinction of a misbegotten soul or an escape out of a mistaken
\nworld-adventure. <\/p>\n

But such
\ntheories either imply a premier importance and originating power of mind or a premier
\nimportance of the individual being; both have indeed a great place, but the one
\neternal Spirit is the original power and the original existence. Idea, conceptively<\/span> creative,\u2014not the Real-Idea which is Being
\naware <\/p>\n

\nPage 767<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

of what is in itself and automatically
\nself-creative by the force of that Truth-awareness,\u2014is a movement of the mind;
\ndesire is a movement of life in mind; life and mind then must be pre-existent
\npowers and must have been the determinants of the creation of the material
\nworld, and in that case they can equally create worlds of their own supraphysical<\/span> nature. Or else we must suppose that what
\nacted was not desire in an individual or a universal Mind or Life, but a will
\nin the Spirit,\u2014a will of Being deploying something of itself or of its
\nConsciousness, realising<\/span> a creative idea or a
\nself-knowledge or an urge of its self-active Force or a turn to a certain
\nformulation of its delight of existence. But if the world has been created, not
\nby the universal Delight of existence, but for the desire of the individual
\nsoul, its caprice of an ignorant egoistic enjoyment, then the mental Individual
\nand not the Cosmic Being or a Transcendent Divinity should be the creator and
\nwitness of the universe. In the past trend of human thought the individual
\nbeing has always loomed enormously large in the front plan of things and in the
\npremier dimensions of importance; if these proportions could still be
\nmaintained, this origination might conceivably be admitted: for a will towards
\nthe life of the Ignorance or an assent to it in the individual Purusha<\/span> must indeed be part of the operative movement of
\nConsciousness in the involutionary<\/span> descent of the
\nSpirit into material Nature. But the world cannot be a creation of the
\nindividual mind or a theatre erected by it for its own play of consciousness;
\nnor can it have been created solely for the play and the satisfaction or
\nfrustration of the ego. As we awake to a sense of the premier importance of the
\nuniversal and the dependence of the individual upon it, a theory of this kind
\nbecomes an impossibility to our intelligence. The world is too vast in its
\nmovement for such an account of its working to be credible; only a cosmic Power
\nor a cosmic Being can be the creator and the upholder of the cosmos and it must
\nhave too a cosmic and not only an individual reality, significance or purpose. <\/p>\n

Accordingly,
\nthis world-creating or participating Individual and its desire or assent to the
\nIgnorance must have been awake before the world at all existed; it must have
\nbeen there as an element in some supracosmic<\/span> Superconscient<\/span> from which it <\/p>\n

\nPage 768<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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comes and to which it returns out
\nof the life of the ego: we must suppose an original immanence of the Many in
\nthe One. It becomes then conceivable that a will or an impetus or a spiritual
\nnecessity may have stirred, in some transmundane<\/span>
\nInfinite, in some of the Many which precipitated them downward and compelled
\nthe creation of this world of the Ignorance. But since the One is the premier
\nfact of existence, since the Many depend upon the One, are souls of the One,
\nbeings of the Being, this truth must determine also the fundamental principle
\nof the cosmic existence. There we see that the universal precedes the
\nindividual, gives it its field, is that in which it exists cosmically even
\nthough its origin is in the Transcendence. The individual soul lives here by
\nthe All-Soul and depends upon it; the All-Soul very evidently does not exist by
\nthe individual or depend upon it: it is not a sum of individual beings, a
\npluralistic totality created by the conscious life of individuals; if an All-Soul
\nexists, it must be the one Cosmic Spirit supporting the one cosmic Force in its
\nworks, and it repeats here, modified in the terms of cosmic existence, the
\nprimary relation of the dependence of the Many on the One. It is inconceivable
\nthat the Many should have independently or by a departure from the One Will
\ndesired cosmic existence and forced by their desire the supreme Sachchidananda<\/span> to descend unwillingly or tolerantly into
\nthe Nescience; that would be to reverse altogether the true dependence of
\nthings. If the world was directly originated by the will or the spiritual
\nimpetus of the Many, which is possible and even probable in a certain sense,
\nthere must still have been first a Will in Sachchidananda<\/span>
\nto that end; otherwise the impetus,\u2014translating here the All-Will into desire,
\nfor what becomes desire in the ego is Will in the Spirit,\u2014could not have arisen
\nanywhere. The One, the All-Soul, by whom alone the consciousness of the
\nIndividual is determined, must first accept the veil of inconscient<\/span>
\nNature before the Individual too can put on the veil of the Ignorance in the
\nmaterial universe. <\/p>\n

But once we
\nadmit this Will of the supreme and cosmic Being as the indispensable condition
\nof the existence of the material universe, it is no longer possible to accept
\nDesire as the creative principle; for desire has no place in the Supreme or in <\/p>\n

\nPage 769<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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the All-being. It can have
\nnothing to desire; desire is the result of incompleteness, of insufficiency, of
\nsomething that is not possessed or enjoyed and which the being seeks for
\npossession or enjoyment. A supreme and universal Being can have the delight of
\nits all-existence, but to that delight desire must be foreign,\u2014it can only be
\nthe appanage<\/span> of the incomplete evolutionary ego which
\nis a product of the cosmic action. Moreover, if the All-consciousness of the
\nSpirit has willed to plunge into the inconscience<\/span> of
\nMatter, it must be because that was a possibility of its self-creation or
\nmanifestation. But a sole material universe and an evolution there out of inconscience<\/span> into spiritual consciousness cannot be the one
\nsolitary and limited possibility of manifestation of the All-being. That could
\nonly be if Matter were the original power and form of manifested being and the
\nspirit had no other choice, could not manifest except through Inconscience<\/span> into Matter as a basis. This would bring us to
\na materialistic evolutionary Pantheism; we would have to regard the beings who
\npeople the universe as souls of the One, souls born here in It and evolving
\nupward through inanimate, animate and mentally developed forms till the
\nrecovery of their complete and undivided life in the superconscient<\/span>
\nPantheos<\/span> and its cosmic Oneness would intervene as the
\nend and goal of their evolution. In that case, everything has evolved here;
\nlife, mind, soul have arisen out of the One in the material universe by the
\nforce of its hidden being, and everything will fulfil<\/span>
\nitself here in the material universe. There is then no separate plane of the Superconscience<\/span>, for the Superconscient<\/span>
\nis here only, not elsewhere; there are no supraphysical<\/span>
\nworlds; there is no action of supraphysical<\/span>
\nprinciples exterior to Matter, no pressure of an already existent Mind and Life
\nupon the material plane. <\/p>\n

It has then to
\nbe asked what are Mind and Life, and it may be answered that they are products
\nof Matter or of the Energy in Matter. Or else they are forms of consciousness
\nthat arise as results of an evolution from Inconscience<\/span>
\nto Superconscience<\/span>: consciousness itself is only a
\nbridge of transition; it is spirit becoming partially aware of itself before plunging
\ninto its normal trance of luminous superconscience<\/span>.
\nEven if there proved to be planes of larger Life and Mind, they would only be
\nsubjective <\/p>\n

\nPage 770<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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constructions of this
\nintermediary consciousness erected on the way to that spiritual culmination.
\nBut the difficulty here is that Mind and Life are too different from Matter to
\nbe products of Matter; Matter itself is a product of Energy, and mind and life
\nmust be regarded as superior products of the same Energy. If we admit the
\nexistence of a cosmic Spirit, the Energy must be spiritual; life and mind must
\nbe independent products of a spiritual energy and themselves powers of
\nmanifestation of the Spirit. It then becomes irrational to suppose that Spirit
\nand Matter alone exist, that they are the two confronting realities and that
\nMatter is the sole possible basis of the manifestation of Spirit; the idea of a
\nsole material world becomes immediately untenable. Spirit must be capable of
\nbasing its manifestation on the Mind principle or on the Life principle and not
\nonly on the principle of Matter; there can then be and logically there should
\nbe worlds of Mind and worlds of Life; there may even be worlds founded on a
\nsubtler and more plastic, more conscious principle of Matter. <\/p>\n

Three questions
\nthen arise, interrelated or interdependent: whether there is any evidence or
\nany true intimation of the existence of such other worlds; whether, if they
\nexist, they are of the nature we have indicated, arising or descending in the order
\nand within the rationale of a hierarchical series between Matter and Spirit; if
\nthat is their scale of being, are they otherwise quite independent and
\nunconnected, or is there a relation and interaction of the higher worlds on the
\nworld of Matter? It is a fact that mankind almost from the beginning of its
\nexistence or so far back as history or tradition can go, has believed in the
\nexistence of other worlds and in the possibility of communication between their
\npowers and beings and the human race. In the last rationalistic period of human
\nthought from which we are emerging, this belief has been swept aside as an
\nage-long superstition; all evidence or intimations of its truth have been
\nrejected a priori as fundamentally false and undeserving of inquiry because
\nincompatible with the axiomatic truth that only Matter and the material world
\nand its experiences are real; all other experience purporting to be real must
\nbe either a hallucination or an imposture or a subjective result of
\nsuperstitious <\/p>\n

\nPage 771<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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credulity and imagination or
\nelse, if a fact, then other than what it purported to be and explicable by a
\nphysical cause: no evidence could be accepted of such a fact unless it is
\nobjective and physical in its character; even if the fact be very apparently supraphysical<\/span>, it cannot be accepted as such unless it is
\ntotally unexplainable by any other imaginable hypothesis or conceivable
\nconjecture. <\/p>\n

It should be
\nevident that this demand for physical valid proof of a supraphysical<\/span>
\nfact is irrational and illogical; it is an irrelevant attitude of the physical
\nmind which assumes that only the objective and physical is fundamentally real
\nand puts aside all else as merely subjective. A supraphysical<\/span>
\nfact may impinge on the physical world and produce physical results; it may
\neven produce an effect on our physical senses and become manifest to them, but
\nthat cannot be its invariable action and most normal character or process.
\nOrdinarily, it must produce a direct effect or a tangible impression on our
\nmind and our life-being, which are the parts of us that are of the same order
\nas itself, and can only indirectly and through them, if at all, influence the
\nphysical world and physical life. If it objectivises<\/span>
\nitself, it must be to a subtler sense in us and only derivatively to the
\noutward physical sense. This derivative objectivisation<\/span>
\nis certainly possible; if there is an association of the action of the subtle
\nbody and its sense-organisation<\/span> with the action of
\nthe material body and its physical organs, then the supraphysical<\/span>
\ncan become outwardly sensible to us. This is what happens, for example, with
\nthe faculty called second sight; it is the process of all those psychic
\nphenomena which seem to be seen and heard by the outer senses and are not
\nsensed inwardly through representative or interpretative or symbolic images
\nwhich bear the stamp of an inner experience or have an evident character of
\nformations in a subtle substance. There can, then, be various kinds of evidence
\nof the existence of other planes of being and communication with them; objectivisation<\/span> to the outer sense, subtle-sense contacts,
\nmind contacts, life contacts, contacts through the subliminal in special states
\nof consciousness exceeding our ordinary range. Our physical mind is not the
\nwhole of us nor, even though it dominates almost the whole of our surface
\nconsciousness, the <\/p>\n

\nPage 772<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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best or greatest part of us;
\nreality cannot be restricted to a sole field of this narrowness or to the
\ndimensions known within its rigid circle. <\/p>\n

If it be said
\nthat subjective experience or subtle-sense images can easily be deceptive,
\nsince we have no recognized method or standard of verification and a too great
\ntendency to admit the extraordinary and miraculous or supernatural at its face-value,
\nthis may be admitted: but error is not the prerogative of the inner subjective
\nor subliminal parts of us, it is also an appanage<\/span> of
\nthe physical mind and its objective methods and standards, and such liability
\nto error cannot be a reason for shutting out a large and important domain of
\nexperience; it is a reason rather for scrutinising<\/span> it
\nand finding out in it its own true standards and its characteristic appropriate
\nand valid means of verification. Our subjective being is the basis of our objective
\nexperience, and it is not probable that only its physical objectivisations<\/span>
\nare true and the rest unreliable. The subliminal consciousness, when rightly
\ninterrogated, is a witness to truth and its testimony is confirmed again and
\nagain even in the physical and the objective field; that testimony cannot,
\nthen, be disregarded when it calls our attention to things within us or to
\nthings that belong to planes or worlds of a supraphysical<\/span>
\nexperience. At the same time belief by itself is not evidence of reality; it
\nmust base itself on something more valid before one can accept it. It is
\nevident that the beliefs of the past are not a sufficient basis for knowledge,
\neven though they cannot be entirely neglected: for a belief is a mental construction
\nand may be a wrong building; it may often answer to some inner intimation and
\nthen it has a value, but, as often as not, it disfigures the intimation,
\nusually by a translation into terms familiar to our physical and objective experience,
\nsuch as that which converted the hierarchy of the planes into a physical
\nhierarchy or geographical space-extension, turned the rarer heights of subtle
\nsubstance into material heights and placed the abodes of the gods on the
\nsummits of physical mountains. All truth supraphysical<\/span>
\nor physical must be founded not on mental belief alone, but on experience,\u2014but
\nin each case experience must be of the kind, physical, subliminal or spiritual,
\nwhich is appropriate <\/p>\n

\nPage 773<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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to the order of the truths into
\nwhich we are empowered to enter; their validity and significance must be scrutinised<\/span>, but according to their own law and by a
\nconsciousness which can enter into them and not according to the law of another
\ndomain or by a consciousness which is capable only of truths of another order;
\nso alone can we be sure of our steps and enlarge firmly our sphere of
\nknowledge. <\/p>\n

            <\/span>If
\nwe scrutinise<\/span> the intimations of supraphysical<\/span>
\nworld-realities which we receive in our inner experience and compare with it
\nthe account of such intimations that has continued to come down to us from the
\nbeginnings of human knowledge, and if we attempt an interpretation and a summarised<\/span> order, we shall find that what this inner
\nexperience most intimately conveys to us is the existence and action upon us of
\nlarger planes of being and consciousness than the purely material plane, with
\nits restricted existence and action, of which we are aware in our narrow
\nterrestrial formula. These domains of larger being are not altogether remote
\nand separate from our own being and consciousness; for, though they subsist in
\nthemselves and have their own play and process and formulations of existence
\nand experience, yet at the same time they penetrate and envelop the physical
\nplane with their invisible presence and influences, and their powers seem to be
\nhere in the material world itself behind its action and objects. There are two
\nmain orders of experience in our contact with them; one is purely subjective,
\nthough in its subjectivity sufficiently vivid and palpable, the other is more
\nobjective. In the subjective order, we find that what shapes itself to us as a
\nlife-intention, life-impulse, life-formulation here, already exists in a
\nlarger, more subtle, more plastic range of possibilities, and these
\npre-existent forces and formations are pressing upon us to realise<\/span>
\nthemselves in the physical world also; but only a part succeeds in getting
\nthrough and even that emerges partially in a form and circumstance more proper
\nto the system of terrestrial law and sequence. This precipitation takes place,
\nnormally, without our knowledge; we are not aware of the action of these
\npowers, forces and influences upon us, but take them as formations of our own
\nlife and mind, even when our reason or will repudiates them and strives not to
\nbe mastered:
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage 774<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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but when we go inwards away from
\nthe restricted surface consciousness and develop a subtler sense and deeper awareness,
\nwe begin to get an intimation of the origin of these movements and are able to
\nwatch their action and process, to accept or reject or modify, to allow them
\npassage and use of our mind and will and our life and members or refuse it. In
\nthe same way we become aware of larger domains of mind, a play, experience,
\nformation of a greater plasticity, a teeming profusion of all possible mental
\nformulations, and we feel their contacts with us and their powers and
\ninfluences acting upon our parts of mind in the same occult manner as those
\nothers that act upon our parts of life. This kind of experience is, primarily,
\nof a purely subjective character, a pressure of ideas, suggestions, emotional
\nformations, impulsions to sensation, action, dynamic experience. However large
\na part of this pressure may be traced to our own subliminal self or to the
\nsiege of universal Mind-forces or Life-forces belonging to our own world, there
\nis an element which bears the stamp of another origin, an insistent supraterrestrial<\/span> character. <\/p>\n

            <\/span>But
\nthe contacts do not stop here: for there is also an opening of our mind and
\nlife parts to a great range of subjective-objective experiences in which these
\nplanes present themselves no longer as extensions of subjective being and consciousness,
\nbut as worlds; for the experiences there are organised<\/span>
\nas they are in our own world, but on a different plan, with a different process
\nand law of action and in a substance which belongs to a supraphysical<\/span>
\nNature. This organization includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings
\nwho have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an
\nembodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance
\ntangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical<\/span> form-matter.
\nThese worlds and beings may have nothing to do with ourselves and our life,
\nthey may exercise no action upon us; but often also they enter into secret
\ncommunication with earth-existence, obey or embody and are the intermediaries
\nand instruments of the cosmic powers and influences of which we have a
\nsubjective experience, or themselves act by their own initiation upon the
\nterrestrial world’s life and motives and happenings. It is possible to <\/p>\n

\nPage 775<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

receive help or guidance or harm
\nor misguidance from these beings; it is possible even to become subject to
\ntheir influence, to be possessed by their invasion or domination, to be instrumentalised<\/span> by them for their good or evil purpose. At
\ntimes the progress of earthly life seems to be a vast field of battle between supraphysical<\/span> Forces of either character, those that strive
\nto uplift, encourage and illumine and those that strive to deflect, depress or
\nprevent or even shatter our upward evolution or the soul’s self-expression in
\nthe material universe. Some of these Beings, Powers or Forces are such that we
\nthink of them as divine; they are luminous, benignant or powerfully helpful:
\nthere are others that are Titanic, gigantic or demoniac, inordinate Influences,
\ninstigators or creators often of vast and formidable inner upheavals or of
\nactions that overpass the normal human measure. There may also be an awareness
\nof influences, presences, beings that do not seem to belong to other worlds
\nbeyond us but are here as a hidden element behind the veil in terrestrial
\nnature. As contact with the supraphysical<\/span> is
\npossible, a contact can also take place subjective or objective, \u2014 or at least objectivised<\/span>, \u2014 between our own consciousness and the
\nconsciousness of other once embodied beings who have passed into a supraphysical<\/span> status in these other regions of existence.
\nIt is possible also to pass beyond a subjective contact or a subtle-sense
\nperception and, in certain subliminal states of consciousness, to enter
\nactually into other worlds and know something of their secrets. It is the more objective
\norder of other-worldly experience that seized most the imagination of mankind
\nin the past, but it was put by popular belief into a gross-objective statement
\nwhich unduly assimilated these phenomena to those of the physical world with
\nwhich we are familiar; for it is the normal tendency of our mind to turn
\neverything into forms or symbols proper to its own kind and terms of
\nexperience. <\/p>\n

This has always
\nbeen, put into its most generalised<\/span> terms, the normal
\nrange and character of other-worldly belief and experience in all periods of
\nthe past of the race; names and forms differ, but the general features have
\nbeen strikingly similar in all countries and ages. What exact value are we to
\nput upon these persistent beliefs or upon this mass of
\n <\/p>\n

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\n

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supernormal experience? It is not
\npossible for anyone who has had these contacts with any intimacy and not only
\nby scattered abnormal accidents, to put them aside as mere superstition or
\nhallucination; for they are too insistent, real, effective, organic in their
\npressure, too constantly confirmed by their action and results to be so flung
\naside: an appreciation, an interpretation, a mental organisation<\/span>
\nof this side of our capacity of experience is indispensable. <\/p>\n

One explanation
\nwhich can be put forward is that man himself creates the supraphysical<\/span>
\nworlds which he inhabits or thinks he inhabits after death, creates the gods,
\nas ran the ancient phrase,\u2014it is claimed even that God himself was created by
\nman, was a myth of his consciousness, and has now been abolished by man! All
\nthese things then may be a sort of myth of the developing consciousness in
\nwhich it is able to dwell, a captive in its own buildings, and by a kind of realizing
\ndynamisation<\/span> maintain itself in its own imaginations.
\nBut pure imaginations they are not, they can only be so treated by us so long
\nas the things they represent, however incorrectly, are not part of our own
\nexperience. Yet there may conceivably be myths and imaginations that are used
\nby the power of the creative Consciousness-Force to materialise<\/span>
\nits own idea-forces; these potent images may take form and body, endure in some
\nsubtly materialised<\/span> world of thought and react on
\ntheir creator: if so, we might suppose that the other worlds are buildings of
\nthis character. But if that were so, if a subjective consciousness can thus
\ncreate worlds and beings, it might well be that the objective world also is a
\nmyth of Consciousness or even of our consciousness, or that Consciousness
\nitself is a myth of the original Nescience. Thus, on this line of thinking, we
\nswing back towards a view of the universe in which all things assume a certain
\nhue of unreality except the all-productive Inconscience<\/span>
\nout of which they are created, the Ignorance which creates them and, it may be,
\na superconscient<\/span> or inconscient<\/span>
\nimpersonal Being into whose indifference all finally disappears or goes back
\nand ceases there.
\n <\/p>\n

But we have no
\nproof and there is no likelihood that man’s mind can create in this way a world
\nwhere none was <\/p>\n

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\n

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before, create in vacuo<\/span> without a substance to build in or build on, though
\nit may well be that it can add something to a world already made. Mind is
\nindeed a potent agency, more potent than we readily imagine; it can make
\nformations which effectuate themselves in our own or others’ consciousness and
\nlives and even have an effect on inconscient<\/span> Matter;
\nbut an entirely original creation in the void is beyond its possibilities. What
\nwe can rather hazard is that as it grows, man’s mind enters into relation with
\nnew ranges of being and consciousness not at all created by him, new to him,
\nalready pre-existent in the All-Existence. In his increasing inner experience
\nhe opens up new planes of being in himself; as the secret centres<\/span>
\nof his consciousness dissolve their knots, he becomes able through them to
\nconceive of those larger realms, to receive direct influences from them, to
\nenter into them, to image them in his terrestrial mind and inner sense. He does
\ncreate images, symbol-forms, reflective shapes of them with which his mind can
\ndeal; in this sense only he creates the Divine Image that he worships, creates
\nthe forms of the gods, creates new planes and worlds within him, and through
\nthese images the real worlds and powers that overtop our existence are able to
\ntake possession of the consciousness in the physical world, to pour into it
\ntheir potencies, to transform it with the light of their higher being. But all
\nthis is not a creation of the higher worlds of being; it is a revelation of
\nthem to the consciousness of the soul on the material plane as it develops out
\nof the Nescience. It is a creation of their forms here by a reception of their
\npowers; there is an enlargement of our subjective life on this plane by the
\ndiscovery of its true relation with higher planes of its own being from which
\nit was separated by the veil of the material Nescience. This veil exists
\nbecause the soul in the body has put behind it these greater possibilities in
\norder that it might concentrate exclusively its consciousness and force upon
\nits primary work in this physical world of being; but that primary work can
\nhave a sequel only by the veil being at least partially lifted or else made
\npenetrable so that the higher planes of Mind, Life and Spirit may pour their
\nsignificances into human existence.<\/p>\n

\n

It is possible
\nto suppose that these higher planes and worlds <\/p>\n

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\n

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have been created subsequently to
\nthe manifestation of the material cosmos, to aid the evolution or in some sense
\nas a result of it. This is a notion which the physical mind, starting in all
\nits ideas from the material universe as the one thing which it knows, has analysed<\/span> and can deal with in a beginning of mastery, might
\neasily tend to accept, if obliged to admit a supraphysical<\/span>
\nexistence; it could then keep the material, the Inconscience<\/span>,
\nas the starting-point and support of all being, as it is undoubtedly the
\nstarting-point for us of the evolutionary movement of which the material world
\nis the scene. Our mind could still keep matter and material force as the first existence,\u2014so
\naccepted and cherished by it because it is the first thing that it knows, the
\none thing that is always securely present and knowable,\u2014and maintain the
\nspiritual and the supraphysical<\/span> in a dependence upon
\nthe assured foundation in Matter.1<\/sup> But how then were these other
\nworlds created, by what force, by what instrumentality? It might be the Life
\nand Mind developing out of the Inconscient<\/span> which have
\nat the same time developed these other worlds or planes in the subliminal consciousness
\nof the living beings who appear in it. To the subliminal being in life and
\nafter death,\u2014for it is the inner being that survives the death of the
\nbody,\u2014these worlds might be real because sensible to its wider range of
\nconsciousness; it would move in them with that sense of reality, derivative
\nperhaps but convincing, and it would send up its experience of them as belief
\nand imagination to the surface being. This is a possible account, if we accept
\nConsciousness as the real creative Power or agent and all things as formations
\nof consciousness; but it would not give to the supraphysical<\/span>
\nplanes of being the unsubstantiality<\/span> or less palpable
\nreality which the physical mind would like to attach to them; they would have
\nthe same reality in themselves as the physical world or plane of physical experience
\nhas in its own order. <\/p>\n

If in this or
\nsome other way the higher worlds were developed subsequently to the creation of
\nthe material world,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n1<\/sup> There are certain expressions in the Rig Veda
\nwhich seem to embody this view. Earth (the material principle) is spoken of as
\nthe foundation of all the worlds or the seven worlds are described as the seven
\nplanes of Earth.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 779<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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the primary creation, by a larger
\nsecret evolution out of the Inconscient<\/span>, it must have
\nbeen done by some All-Soul in its emergence, by a process of which we can have
\nno knowledge and for the purpose of the evolution here, as adjuncts to it or as
\nits larger consequences, so that life and mind and spirit might be able to move
\nin fields of a freer scope with a repercussion of these greater powers and
\nexperiences on the material self-expression. But against this hypothesis there stands
\nthe fact that we find these higher worlds in our vision and experience of them
\nto be in no way based upon the material universe, in no way its results, but
\nrather greater terms of being, larger and freer ranges of consciousness, and
\nall the action of the material plane looks more like the result and not the
\norigin of these greater terms, derivatory<\/span> from them, even
\npartly dependent on them in its evolutionary endeavour<\/span>.
\nImmense ranges of powers, influences, phenomena descend covertly upon us from
\nthe Overmind<\/span> and the higher mental and vital ranges,
\nbut of these only a part, a selection, as it were, or restricted number can
\nstage and realise<\/span> themselves in the order of the
\nphysical world; the rest await their time and proper circumstance for
\nrevelation in physical term and form, for their part in the terrestrial1 <\/sup>evolution
\nwhich is at the same time an evolution of all the powers of the Spirit. <\/p>\n

            <\/span>This
\ncharacter of the other worlds defeats all our attempts to give the premier
\nimportance to our own plane of being and to our own part in the mundane
\nmanifestation. We do not create God as a myth of our consciousness, but are instruments
\nfor a progressive manifestation of the Divine in the material being. We do not
\ncreate the gods, his powers, but rather such divinity as we manifest is the
\npartial reflection and the shaping here of eternal godheads. We do not create
\nthe higher planes, but are intermediaries by which they reveal their light,
\npower, beauty in whatever form and scope can be given to them by Nature-force
\non the material plane. It is the pressure of the Life-world which enables life
\nto evolve and develop here in<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/span><\/sup> Necessarily, by terrestrial we do not mean this one
\nearth and its period of duration, but use earth in the wider root-sense of the Vedantic<\/span> Prithivi<\/span>, the
\nearth-principle creating habitations of physical form for the soul.<\/span> <\/p>\n

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the forms we already know; it is
\nthat increasing pressure which drives it to aspire in us to a greater
\nrevelation of itself and will one day deliver the mortal from his subjection to
\nthe narrow limitations of his present incompetent and restricting physicality.
\nIt is the pressure of the Mind-world which evolves and develops mind here and
\nhelps us to find a leverage for our mental self-uplifting and expansion, so
\nthat we may hope to enlarge continually our self of intelligence and even to
\nbreak the prison-walls of our matter-bound physical mentality. It is the
\npressure of the supramental<\/span> and spiritual worlds
\nwhich is preparing to develop here the manifest power of the Spirit and by it
\nopen our being on the physical plane into the freedom and infinity of the superconscient<\/span> Divine; that contact, that pressure can
\nalone liberate from the apparent Inconscience<\/span>, which
\nwas our starting-point, the all-conscient<\/span> Godhead
\nconcealed in us. In this order of things our human consciousness is the
\ninstrument, the intermediary; it is the point in the development of light and
\npower out of the Inconscience<\/span> at which liberation
\nbecomes possible: a greater role than this we cannot attribute to it, but this
\nis great enough, for it makes our humanity all-important for the supreme
\npurpose of evolutionary Nature. <\/p>\n

         <\/span>At
\nthe same time there are some elements in our subliminal experience which raise
\na point of question against any invariable priority of the other worlds to the
\nmaterial existence. One such indication is that in the vision of after-death experience
\nthere is a persistent tradition of residence in conditions which seem to be a supraphysical<\/span> prolongation of earth-conditions,
\nearth-nature, earth-experience. Another is that, in the Life-worlds especially,
\nwe find formulations which seem to resemble the inferior movements of
\nearth-existence; here are already embodied the principles of darkness, falsehood,
\nincapacity and evil which we have supposed to be consequent upon the evolution
\nout of the material Inconscience<\/span>. It seems even to be
\nthe fact that the vital worlds are the natural home of the Powers that most
\ndisturb human life; this is indeed logical, for it is through our vital being
\nthat they sway us and they must therefore be powers of a larger and more
\npowerful life-existence. The descent of Mind and Life into evolution need not
\nhave created any such untoward developments of the
\n <\/p>\n

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\n

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limitation of being and
\nconsciousness: for this descent is in its nature a limitation of knowledge;
\nexistence and cognition and delight of being confine themselves in a lesser
\ntruth and good and beauty and its inferior harmony, and move according to that
\nlaw of a narrower light, but in such a movement darkness and suffering and evil
\nare not obligatory phenomena. If we find them existing in these worlds of other
\nmind and other life, even though not pervading it but only occupying their
\nseparate province, we must either conclude that they have come into existence
\nby a projection out of the inferior evolution, upward from below, by something
\nin the subliminal parts of Nature bursting there into a larger formation of the
\nevil created here, or that they were already created as part of a parallel
\ngradation to the involutionary<\/span> descent, a gradation
\nforming a stair for evolutionary ascension towards Spirit just as the involutionary<\/span> was a stair of the descent of the Spirit. In
\nthe latter hypothesis the ascending gradation might have a double purpose. For
\nit would contain pre-formations of the good and evil that must evolve in the
\nearth as part of the struggle necessary for the evolutionary growth of the Soul
\nin Nature; these would be formations existing for themselves, for their own
\nindependent satisfaction, formations that would present the full type of these
\nthings, each in its separate nature, and at the same time they would exercise
\non evolutionary beings their characteristic influence.<\/p>\n

These worlds of
\na larger Life would then hold in themselves both the more luminous and the
\ndarker formations of our world’s life in a medium in which they could arrive
\nfreely at their independent expression, their own type’s full freedom and natural
\ncompleteness and harmony for good or for evil,\u2014if indeed that distinction
\napplies in these ranges,\u2014a completeness and independence impossible here in our
\nexistence where all is mingled in the complex interaction necessary to the
\nfield of a many-sided evolution leading towards a final integration. For we
\nfind what we call false, dark or evil seems there to have a truth of its own
\nand to be entirely content with its own type because it possesses that in a
\nfull expression which creates in it a sense of a satisfied power of its own
\nbeing, an accord, a complete adaptation of all its circumstances to its
\nprinciple of existence; it enjoys there its <\/p>\n

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\n

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own consciousness, its own
\nself-power, its own delight of being, obnoxious to our minds but to itself full
\nof the joy of satisfied desire. Those life impulses which are to earth-nature
\ninordinate and out of measure and appear here as perverse and abnormal, find in
\ntheir own province of being an independent fulfilment<\/span>
\nand an unrestricted play of their type and principle. What is to us divine or
\ntitanic, Rakshasic<\/span>, demoniac and therefore
\nsupernatural, is, each in its own domain, normal to itself and gives to the
\nbeings that embody these things the feeling of self-nature and the harmony of
\ntheir own principle. Discord itself, struggle, incapacity, suffering enter into
\na certain kind of life-satisfaction which would feel itself baulked or deficient
\nwithout them. When these powers are seen in their isolated working, building
\ntheir own life-edifices, as they do in those secret worlds where they dominate,
\nwe perceive more clearly their origin and reason of existence and the reason
\nalso for the hold they have on human life and the attachment of man to his own
\nimperfections, to his life-drama of victory and failure, happiness and
\nsuffering, laughter and tears, sin and virtue. Here on earth these things exist
\nin an unsatisfied and therefore unsatisfactory and obscure state of struggle
\nand mixture, but there reveal their secret and their motive of being because
\nthey are there established in their native power and full form of nature in
\ntheir own world and their own exclusive atmosphere. Man’s heavens and hells or
\nworlds of light and worlds of darkness, however imaginative in their building, proceed
\nfrom a perception of these powers existing in their own principle and throwing
\ntheir influences on him in life from a beyond-life which provides the elements
\nof his evolutionary existence.
\n <\/p>\n

In the same way
\nas the powers of Life are self-founded, perfect and full in a greater Life
\nbeyond us, so too the powers of Mind, its ideas and principles that influence
\nour earth-being, are found to have in the greater Mind-world their own field of
\nfullness of self-nature, while here in human existence they throw out only
\npartial formations which have much difficulty in establishing themselves
\nbecause of their meeting and mixture with other powers and principles; this
\nmeeting, this mixture curbs their completeness, alloys their purity, disputes
\nand defeats their
\n <\/p>\n

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\n

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influence. These other worlds,
\nthen, are not evolutionary, but typal<\/span>; but it is one
\nthough not the sole reason of their existence that they provide things that
\nmust arise in the involutionary<\/span> manifestation as well
\nas things thrown up in the evolution with a field of satisfaction of their own
\nsignificance where they can exist in their own right; this established
\ncondition is a base from which their functions and workings can be cast as
\nelements into the complex process of evolutionary Nature. <\/p>\n

If we look from
\nthis point of view at man’s traditional accounts of other-worldly existence, we
\nshall find that mostly they point to worlds of a larger Life liberated from the
\nrestrictions and imperfections or incompletenesses<\/span> of
\nLife in earth-  <\/span>nature. These accounts
\nare evidently built largely by imagination, but there is an element also of
\nintuition and divination, a feeling of what Life can be and surely is in some
\ndomain of its manifested or its realisable<\/span> nature;
\nthere is also an element of true subliminal contact and experience. But the
\nmind of man translates what he sees or receives or contacts from other-nature into
\nfigures proper to his own consciousness; they are his translations of supraphysical<\/span> realities into his own significant forms and
\nimages and through these forms and images he enters into communication with the
\nrealities and can make them to a certain degree present and effective. The
\nexperience of an after-death continuance of a modified earth-life may be explained
\nas due to this kind of translation; but it is also explainable partly as the
\ncreation of a subjective post-mortal state in which he still lives in figures
\nof habitual experience before he enters into other-worldly realities, partly as
\na passage through Life-worlds where the type of things expresses itself in
\nformations originative of those to which he was attached in his earthly body or
\nakin to them and therefore exercises a natural attraction on the vital being
\nafter its exit from the body. But, apart from these subtler Life-states, the
\ntraditional accounts of other-worldly existence contain, though as a rarer more
\nelevated element not included in the popular notion of these things, a higher
\ngrade of states of existence which are clearly of a mental and not a vital
\ncharacter and others founded on some spiritual-mental principle; these higher
\nprinciples are formulated in states of being into which our inner experience
\ncan rise or the
\n <\/p>\n

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\n

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soul enter. The principle of
\ngradation we have accepted is therefore justified provided we recognise<\/span> that it is one way of organising<\/span>
\nour experience and that other ways proceeding from other viewpoints are
\npossible. For a classification can always be valid from the principle and
\nviewpoint adopted by it while from other principles and viewpoints another classification
\nof the same things can be equally valid. But for our purpose the system we have
\nchosen is of the greatest value because it is fundamental and answers to a
\ntruth of the manifestation which is of the utmost practical importance; it helps
\nus to understand our own constituted existence and the course of the involution
\nand the evolutionary motion of Nature. At the same time we see that the other
\nworlds are not things quite apart from the material universe and earth-nature,
\nbut penetrate and envelop it with their influences and have on it a secret
\nincidence of formative and directive force which is not easily calculable. This
\norganisation<\/span> of our other-worldly knowledge and
\nexperience supplies us with the clue to the nature and lines of action of this
\nincidence. <\/p>\n

            <\/span>The
\nexistence and influence of other worlds are a fact of primary importance for
\nthe possibilities and for the scope of our evolution in terrestrial Nature. For
\nif the physical universe were the only field of manifestation of the infinite
\nReality and at the same time the field of its whole manifestation, we should
\nhave to suppose that, since all the principles of its being from Matter to
\nSpirit are entirely involved in the apparently inconscient<\/span>
\nForce which is the basis of the first workings of this universe, they are being
\nevolved by it here completely and here solely, without any other aid or
\npressure except that of the secret Superconscience<\/span>
\nwithin it. There would then be a system of things in which the principle of
\nMatter must always remain the first principle, the essential and original
\ndetermining condition of manifested existence. Spirit might indeed in the end
\narrive to a limited extent at its natural domination; it might make its basis
\nof physical matter a more elastic instrument not altogether prohibitive of the
\naction of its own highest law and nature or opposed to that action, as it now
\nis in its inelastic resistance. But Spirit would always be dependent upon
\nMatter for its field and its manifestation; it could have no other field: it
\ncould not get outside it to another
\n <\/p>\n

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kind of manifestation; and within
\nit also it could not very well liberate any other principle of its being into
\nsovereignty over the material foundation; Matter would remain the one
\npersistent determinant of its manifestation. Life could not become dominant and
\ndeterminative, Mind could not become the master and creator; their boundaries
\nof capacity would be fixed by the capacities of Matter, which they might
\nenlarge or modify but would not be able to transform radically or liberate.
\nThere would be no place for any free and full manifestation of any power of the
\nbeing, all would be limited for ever by the conditions of an obscuring material
\nformation. Spirit, Mind, Life would have no native field or complete scope of
\ntheir own characteristic power and principle. It is not easy to believe in the
\ninevitability of this self-limitation if Spirit is the creator and these
\nprinciples have an independent existence and are not products, results or
\nphenomena of the energy of Matter. <\/p>\n

        <\/span>But,
\ngiven the fact that the infinite Reality is free in the play of its
\nconsciousness, it is not bound to involve itself in the nescience of Matter
\nbefore it can at all manifest. It is possible for it to create just the
\ncontrary order of things, a world in which the unity of spiritual being is the
\nmatrix and first condition of any formation or action, the Energy at work is a self-aware
\nspiritual existence in movement, and all its names and forms are a
\nself-conscious play of the spiritual unity. Or it might be an order in which
\nthe Spirit’s innate power of conscious Force or Will would realise<\/span>
\nfreely and directly its own possibilities in itself and not, as here, through
\nthe restricting medium of the Life-Force in matter; that realisation<\/span>
\nwould be at once the first principle of the manifestation and the object of all
\nits free and blissful action. It might be an order, again, in which the free
\nplay of an infinite mutual self-delight in a multiplicity of beings conscious
\nnot only of their concealed or underlying eternal unity but of their present
\njoy of oneness would be the object; in such a system the action of the
\nprinciple of self-existent Bliss would be the first principle and the universal
\ncondition. Again, it might be a world-order in which the Supermind<\/span>
\nwould be the dominant principle from the beginning; the nature of the
\nmanifestation would then be a multiplicity of beings finding through the free
\nand luminous <\/p>\n

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\n

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play of their divine
\nindividuality all the manifold joy of their difference in oneness. <\/p>\n

Nor need the
\nseries stop here: for we observe that with us Mind is hampered by Life in
\nMatter and finds all the difficulty possible in dominating the resistance of
\nthese two different powers and that Life itself is similarly restricted by the mortality,
\nthe inertia and the instability of Matter; but evidently there can be a
\nworld-order in which neither of these two disabilities forms part of the first
\nconditions of existence. There is the possibility of a world in which Mind
\nwould be from the first dominant, free to work upon its own substance or matter
\nas a quite plastic material, or where Matter would be quite evidently the
\nresult of the universal Mind-Force working itself out in life. It is that even
\nhere in reality; but here the Mind-Force is involved from the beginning, for a
\nlong time subconscient<\/span>, and, even when it has
\nemerged, never in free possession of itself, but subject to its encasing
\nmaterial, while there it would be in possession of itself and master of its material,
\nwhich would be much more subtle and elastic than in a predominantly physical
\nuniverse. So too Life might have its own world-order where it would be
\nsovereign, able to deploy its own more elastic and freely variable desires and tendencies,
\nnot menaced at every moment by disintegrating forces and therefore occupied
\nchiefly with the care of self-preservation and restricted in its play by this
\nstate of precarious tension which limits its instincts of free formation, free self-gratification
\nand free adventure. The separate dominance of each principle of being is an
\neternal possibility in the manifestation of being,\u2014given always that they are
\nprinciples distinct in their dynamic power and mode of working, even though one
\nin original substance. <\/p>\n

That could make
\nno difference if all this were only a philosophical possibility or a
\npotentiality in the being of Sachchidananda<\/span> which it
\nnever realises<\/span> or has not yet realised<\/span>,
\nor, if realised<\/span>, has not brought within the scope of
\nthe consciousness of beings living in the physical universe. But all our
\nspiritual and psychic experience bears affirmative witness, brings us always a
\nconstant and, in its main principles, an invariable evidence of the existence
\nof higher worlds, freer planes of existence. Not having <\/p>\n

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bound ourselves down, like so
\nmuch of modern thought, to the dogma that only physical experience or
\nexperience based upon the physical sense is true, the analysis of physical
\nexperience by the reason alone verifiable, and all else only result of physical
\nexperience and physical existence and anything beyond this an error,
\nself-delusion and hallucination, we are free to accept this evidence and to
\nadmit the reality of these planes. We see that they are, practically, different
\nharmonies from the harmony of the physical universe; they occupy, as the word
\n\u201cplane\u201d suggests, a different level in the scale of being and adopt a different
\nsystem and ordering of its principles. We need not inquire, for our present
\npurpose, whether they coincide in time and space with our own world or move in
\na different field of space and in another stream of time,\u2014in either case it is
\nin a more subtle substance and with other movements. All that directly concerns
\nus is to know whether they are different universes, each complete in itself and
\nin no way meeting, intercrossing or affecting the others, or are rather
\ndifferent scales of one graded and interwoven system of being, parts therefore
\nof one complex universal system. The fact that they can enter into the field of
\nour mental consciousness would naturally suggest the validity of the second
\nalternative, but it would not by itself be altogether conclusive. But what we
\nfind is that these higher planes are actually at every moment acting upon and
\nin communication with our own plane of being, although this action is naturally
\nnot present to our ordinary waking or outer consciousness, because that is for
\nthe most part limited to a reception and utilisation<\/span>
\nof the contacts of the physical world: but the moment we either go back into
\nour subliminal being or enlarge our waking consciousness beyond the scope of the
\nphysical contacts, we become aware of something of this higher action. We find
\neven that the human being can project himself partially into these higher
\nplanes under certain conditions, even while in the body; a fortiori must he be
\nable to do it when out of the body, and to do it then completely, since there
\nis no longer the disabling condition of the physical life bound down to the
\nbody. The consequences of this relation and this power of transference are of
\nimmense importance. On the one side they immediately justify, at any rate as an
\nactual possibility, <\/p>\n

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\n

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the ancient tradition of at least
\na temporary sojourn of the human conscious being in other worlds than the
\nphysical after the dissolution of the physical body. On the other side they
\nopen to us the possibility of an action of the higher planes on the material
\nexistence which can liberate the powers they represent, the powers of life,
\nmind and spirit for the evolutionary intention inherent within Nature by the
\nvery fact of their embodiment in Matter. <\/p>\n

            <\/span>These
\nworlds are not in their original creation subsequent in order to the physical
\nuniverse but prior to it,\u2014prior, if not in time, in their consequential
\nsequence. For even if there is an ascending as well as a descending gradation,
\nthis ascending gradation must be in its first nature a provision for the
\nevolutionary emergence in Matter, a formative power for its endeavour<\/span>,
\ncontributing to it helpful and adverse elements, and not a mere consequence of
\nthe terrestrial evolution; for that is neither a rational probability nor has
\nit a spiritual or dynamic and pragmatic sense. In other words, the higher
\nworlds have not come into being by a pressure from the lower physical
\nuniverse,\u2014let us say, from Sachchidananda<\/span> in the
\nphysical Inconscience<\/span>, or else by the urge of his
\nbeing as it emerges from the Inconscience<\/span> into Life
\nand Mind and Spirit and experiences the necessity of creating worlds or planes
\nin which those principles shall have a freer play and in which the human soul
\nmay strengthen its vital, mental or spiritual tendencies. Still less are they
\nthe creations of the human soul itself, whether its dreams or the result of the
\nconstant self-projections of mankind in its dynamic and creative being beyond
\nthe limits of the physical consciousness. The only thing that man clearly
\ncreates in this direction is the reflex images of these planes in his own
\nembodied consciousness and the fitness of his own soul to respond to them, to
\nbecome aware of them, to participate consciously in the interweaving of their
\ninfluences with the action of the physical plane. He may indeed contribute the
\nresults or projections of his own higher vital and mental action to the action
\nof these planes: but, if so, these projections are, after all, only a return of
\nthe higher planes upon themselves, a return from the earth of their powers
\nwhich have come down from them to the earth-mind, since this higher <\/p>\n

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vital and mental action is itself
\nthe result of influences transmitted from above. It is possible also that he can
\ncreate a certain kind of subjective annexe<\/span> to these supraphysical<\/span> planes, or at least to the lower of them,
\nenvironments of a half-unreal character which are rather self-created envelopes
\nof his conscious mind and life than true worlds; they are the reflections of his
\nown being, an artificial environment corresponding to his attempt during life
\nto image these other worlds,\u2014heavens and hells projected by the image-creating
\nfaculty in his human power of conscious being. But neither of these two
\ncontributions at all means a total creation of a real plane of being founded
\nand acting on its own separate principle. <\/p>\n

         <\/span>These
\nplanes or systems are then at least coeval and co-existent with that which
\npresents itself to us as the physical universe. We have been led to conclude
\nthat the development of Life, Mind and Spirit in the physical being presupposes
\ntheir existence; for these powers are developed here by two co-operating
\nforces, an upward-tending force from below, an upward-drawing and
\ndownward-pressing force from above. For there is the necessity in the Inconscient<\/span> of bringing out what is latent within it, and
\nthere is the pressure of the superior principles in the higher planes which not
\nonly aids this general necessity to realise<\/span> itself,
\nbut may very largely determine the special ways in which it is eventually realised<\/span>. It is this upward-drawing action and this
\npressure, this insistence from above, which explain the constant influence of
\nthe spiritual, mental and vital worlds upon the physical plane. It is evident
\nthat, given a complex universe and seven principles interwoven in every part of
\nits system and naturally therefore drawn to act upon and respond to each other
\nwherever they can at all get at one another, such an action, such a constant
\npressure and influence, is an inevitable consequence, must be inherent in the very
\nnature of the manifested universe.
\n <\/p>\n

A secret
\ncontinuous action of the higher powers and principles from their own planes
\nupon terrestrial being and nature through the subliminal self, which is itself
\na projection from those planes into the world born of the Inconscience<\/span>,
\nmust have an effect and a significance. Its first effect has been the
\nliberation <\/p>\n

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\n

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of Life and Mind out of Matter;
\nits last effect has been to assist the emergence of a spiritual consciousness,
\na spiritual will and spiritual sense of existence in the terrestrial being so
\nthat he is no longer solely preoccupied with his outermost life or with that
\nand mental pursuits and interests, but has learned to look within, to discover
\nhis inner being, his spiritual self, to aspire to overpass earth and her
\nlimitations. As he grows more and more inward, his boundaries mental, vital,
\nspiritual begin to broaden, the bonds that held Life, Mind, Soul to their first
\nlimitations loosen or snap, and man the mental being begins to have a glimpse
\nof a larger kingdom of self and world closed to the first earth-life. No doubt,
\nso long as he lives mainly on his surface, he can only build a sort of
\nsuperstructure ideal and imaginative and ideative<\/span>
\nupon the ground of his normal narrow  <\/span>existence.
\nBut if he makes the inward movement which his own highest vision has held up
\nbefore him as his greatest spiritual necessity, then he will find there in his
\ninner being a larger Consciousness, a larger Life. An action from within and an
\naction from above can overcome the predominance of the material formula,
\ndiminish and finally put an end to the power of the Inconscience<\/span>,
\nreverse the order of the consciousness, substitute the Spirit for Matter as his
\nconscious foundation of being and liberate its higher powers to their complete
\nand characteristic expression in the life of the soul embodied in Nature. <\/p>\n

\nPage 791<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XXI  The Order of the Worlds    Seven are these worlds in which move the life-forces that are  hidden within the secret heart as…<\/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-1254","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\/1254","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=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}