{"id":128,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:06","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=128"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:06","slug":"17-karma-and-freedom-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/17-karma-and-freedom-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-17_Karma and Freedom.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nKarma
\nand Freedom<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/span>                      
\n<\/span><\/span>T<\/span><\/b>HE
\nuniverse in which we live presents itself to our mentality as a web of opposites
\nand contraries, not to say contradictions, and yet it is a question whether
\nthere can be in the universe any such thing as an entire opposite or a real
\ncontradiction. Good and evil seem to be as opposite powers as well can be and we
\nare apt by the nature of our ethical mind to see the world, at any rate in its
\nmoral aspect, as a struggle and tug-of-war between these eternal opposites, God
\nand Devil, Deva and Asura, Ahuramazda, Angrya Mainyu: We hope always that on
\nsome as yet hardly conceivable day the one will perish and the other triumph and
\nbe convinced of eternity; but actually they are so intertangled that some
\nbelieve they are here always together like light and shadow and, if at all, then
\nonly somewhere beyond this world of action, in some restful and silent eternity
\nis there a release from the anguish of the knot of their intertwining, their
\nbitter constant embrace and struggle. Good comes out of evil and again good
\nitself seems often to turn to evil; the bodies of the wrestling combatants get
\nso mixed and confounded together that to distinguish them the minds of the sages
\neven are perplexed and bewildered. And it would seem sometimes as if this
\ndistinction hardly existed except for man and the spirits who urge him, perhaps
\nsince he ate of that tree of dual knowledge in the garden; for Matter knows it
\nnot and life below man troubles itself but little, if at all, with moral
\ndifferences. And it is said too that on the other side of human being and beyond
\nits struggles is a serenity of the high and universal spirit where the soul
\ntranscends sin, but transcends also virtue, and neither sorrows nor repents nor
\nasks, "Why have I not done the good and wherefore have I done this which is
\nevil?"* (*Taittiriya
\nUpanishad.) because in it all
\nthings are perfect and to it all things are pure.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nBut
\nthere is a yet more radical instance of the eventual unreality of opposites. For
\nthe sages make too an opposition of the<\/p>\n

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

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\n\u2013 133<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

Knowledge
\nand the Ignorance, – vidy<\/span>\u00e3
\navidy<\/span>\u00e3, citti acitti,- on which
\nthis question of good and evil seems very intimately to hang. Evil runs behind
\nan ignorant urge of the soul in Nature, is itself an ignorant perversion of its
\nwill, and the partiality of good is equally an affliction of the Ignorance. But
\nwhen we look closely into the essence of these two things, we find that on one
\nside ignorance seems to be nothing else than an involved or a partial knowledge;
\nit is knowledge wrapped up in an inconscient action or it is knowledge feeling
\nout for itself with the tentacles of mind; and again on the other side knowledge
\nitself appears to be at best a partial knowing and always to have something
\nbeyond of which it is ignorant, even its highest and widest splendour a golden
\noutbreak of solar effulgence against the mass of blue-black light of infinity
\nthrough which we look beyond it to the Ineffable.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nOur
\nmind is compelled to think always by oppositions, from the practical validity of
\nwhich we cannot escape, but which yet seem always in some sort questionable. We
\nget a perception of a law of Karma, the constant unavoidable successions of the
\nacts of energy and its insistent stream of consequences and reactions, the chain
\nof causality, the great mass of past causes behind us from which all future
\nconsequence ought infallibly to unroll itself, and by this we try to explain the
\nuniverse; but then immediately there arises the opposite idea and the
\nchallenging problem of liberty. Whence comes this notion of liberty, this divine
\nor this titanic thirst in man for freedom, born perhaps of something in him by
\nwhich, however finite be his mind and life and body, he participates in the
\nnature of infinity? For when we look round on the world as it is, everything
\nseems to be by necessity and to move under a leaden constraint and compulsion.
\nThis is the aspect of the unthinking world of Force and Matter in which we live;
\nand even in ourselves, in man the thinker, how little is free from some kind of
\npresent constraint and of compelling previous necessity! So much of what we are
\nand do is determined by our environment, so much has been shaped by our
\neducation and upbringing, – we are made by life and by the hands of others, are
\nclay for many potters: and, as for what is left, was it not determined, even
\nthat which is most ourselves, by our individual, our<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

racial,
\nour human heredity or in the last resort by universal Nature who has shaped man
\nand each man to what he is for her blind or her conscient uses?<\/p>\n

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

         
\nBut
\nwe insist and say that we have a will which is aware of a however heavily
\nburdened freedom and can shape to its own purpose and change by its effort
\nenvironment and upbringing and the formations of heredity and even our
\napparently immutable common nature. But this will and its effort, is it not
\nitself an instrument, even a mechanical engine of Nature, the active universal
\nenergy, and is not its freedom an arbitrary illusion of our mentality which
\nlives in each moment of the present and separates it by ignorance, by an
\nabstraction of the mind from its determining past, so that I seem at every
\ncritical moment to exercise a free and virgin choice, while all the time my
\nchoice is dominated by its own previous formation and by all that obscure past
\nwhich I ignore? Granted that Nature works through our will and can create and
\nchange, can, that is to say, produce a new formation out of the stuff she has
\nprovided for her workings, is it not by a past impulsion and a continuous energy
\nfrom it that the thing is done? That is the first idea of Karma. Certainly, our
\npresent will must come in as one though not by any means the sole element of the
\nact and formation, but in this view it is not a free ever-new will, but in the
\nfirst place a child and birth of all the past nature, our action, our present
\nKarma the result of an already formed shape of the force of that nature,
\nSwabhava. And in the second place our will is an instrument constantly shaped
\nand used by something greater than ourselves. Only if there is a soul or self
\nwhich is not a creation, but a master of Nature, not a formation of the stream
\nof universal energy, but itself the former and creator of its own Karma, are we
\njustified in our claim of an actual freedom or at least in our aspiration to a
\nreal liberty. There is the whole heart of the debate, the nodus and escape of
\nthis perplexed issue.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n But
\nhere the critical negative analytic thinker, ancient nihilistic Buddhist or
\nmodern materialist, comes in to take away the basis of any actual freedom in our
\nearthly or in any possible heavenly existence. The Buddhist denied the existence
\nof a Self free and infinite; that, he thought, was only a sublimation<\/p>\n

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

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\n\u2013 135<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

of
\nthe idea of ego, an imposition, adhy<\/span>\u00e3ropa,
\nor gigantic magnified shadow thrown by the falsehood of our personality on
\neternal Non-Existence. But as for the soul, there is no soul, but only a stream
\nof forms, ideas and sensations, and as the idea of a chariot is only a name for
\nthe combination of planks and poles and wheels and axles, so is the idea of
\nindividual soul or ego only a name for the combination or continuity of these
\nthings. Nor is the universe itself anything other than such a combination,
\nsamhata, formed and maintained in its continuity by the successions of Karma, by
\nthe action of Energy. In this mechanical existence there can be no freedom from
\nKarma, no possible liberty; but there is yet a possible liberation, because that
\nwhich exists by combination and bondage to its combinations can be liberated
\nfrom itself by dissolution. The motive power which keeps Karma in motion is
\ndesire and attachment to its works, and by the conviction of impermanence and
\nthe cessation of desire there can come about an extinction of the continuity of
\nthe idea in the successions of Time.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nBut
\nif this extinction may be called a liberation, it is yet not a status of
\nfreedom; for that can only repose upon an affirmation, a permanence, not upon a
\nnegative and extinction of all affirmations, and needs too, one would imagine, a
\nsomeone or something that is free. The Buddha himself, it may be remarked, seems
\nto have conceived of Nirvana as a status of absolute bliss of freedom, a
\nnegation of Karmic existence in some incognisable Absolute which he refused
\nsteadfastly to describe or define by any positive or any negative, – as indeed
\ndefinition by any exclusive positive or widest sum of positives or any negative
\nor complete sum of negatives would seem by the very fact of its bringing in a
\ndefinition and thereby a limitation to be inapplicable to the Absolute. The
\nIllusionist’s Maya is a more mystic thing and more obscure to the intelligence;
\nbut we have at least here a Self, a positive Infinite which is capable therefore
\nof an eternal freedom, but only in inaction, by cessation from Karma. For the
\nself as the individual, the soul in action of Karma is bound always by
\nignorance, and only by rejection of individuality and of the cosmic illusion can
\nwe return to the liberty of the Absolute. What we see in both these systems is
\nthat spiritual freedom and<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

the
\ncosmic compulsion are equally admitted, but in a total separation and an
\nexclusion from each other’s own proper field, – still as absolute opposites and
\ncontraries. Compulsion of ignorance or Karma is absolute in the world of birth;
\nfreedom of the spirit is absolute in a withdrawal from birth and cosmos and
\nKarma.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nBut
\nthese trenchant systems, however satisfactory to the logical reason, are suspect
\nto a synthetic intelligence; and at any rate, as we find that knowledge and
\nignorance are not in their essence absolute contraries but ignorance and
\ninconscience itself the veil of a secret knowledge, so it may be at least
\npossible that liberty and the compulsion of Karma are not such unbridgeable
\nopposites, but that behind and even in Karma itself there is all the time a
\nsecret liberty of the indwelling Spirit. Buddhism and Illusionism too do not
\nassert any external or internal predestination, but only a self-imposed bondage.
\nAnd very insistently they demand of man a choice between the right and the wrong
\nway, between the will to an impermanent existence and the will to Nirvana,
\nbetween a will to cosmic existence and the will to an absolute spiritual being.
\nNor do they demand this choice of the Absolute or of the universal Being or
\nPower, who indeed cares nothing for their claim and goes on very tranquilly and
\nsecurely with his mighty eternal action, but they ask it of the individual, of
\nthe soul of man halting perplexed between the oppositions of his mentality. It
\nwould seem then that there is something in our individual being which has some
\nreal freedom of will, some power of choice of a great consequence and magnitude,
\nand what is it then that thus chooses, and what are the limits, where the
\nbeginning or the end of its actual or its possible liberty?<\/p>\n

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

 
\n Difficult
\nalso is it to understand how unsubstantial Impermanence can have such a giant
\nhold or present this power of eternal continuity in Time, – there must surely,
\none thinks, be a Permanent which expresses itself in this continuity, dhruvam
\nadhruvesu; or how an Illusion, – for what is illusion but an inconsequent dream
\nor unsubstantial hallucination? – can build up this mighty world of just
\nsequence and firm law and linked Necessity; some secret self-knowledge and
\nwisdom there must be which guides the Energy of Karma in its idea and has
\nappointed<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

for
\nher the paths she must hew in Time. It is because of their persistence of
\nprinciple in all the transiences of particular form that things have such a hold
\non our mind and will. It is because the world is so real that we feel so
\npotently its grasp on us and our spirits turn on it with this grip of the
\nwrestler. It is often indeed too fiercely real for us and we seek for liberty in
\nthe realm of dream or planes of the ideal and, not finding it sufficiently
\nthere, because we have not the freedom nor can develop the mastery to impose our
\nideal on this active reality, we seek it beyond in the remote and infinite
\ngreatness of the Absolute. We shall do better then to fix on that other more
\ngenerally admissible distinction, namely, of the world of Karma as a practical
\nor relative reality and the being of the Spirit constant behind it or brooding
\nabove it as a greater supreme reality. And then we have to find whether in the
\nlatter alone is any touch of freedom or whether, as must surely be if it is the
\nSpirit that presides over the Energy at work and over its action, there is here
\ntoo some element or some beginning at least of liberty, and whether, even if it
\nbe small and quite relative, we cannot in these steps of Time, in these
\nrelations of Karma make this freedom great and real by dwelling consciously in
\nthe greatness of the Spirit. May not that be the sovereignty we shall find here
\nwhen we rise to the top of the soul’s evolution? <\/p>\n

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

         
\nOne
\nthing we will note that this urge towards control and this impression of freedom
\nare an orientation and an atmosphere which cling about the action of mind, and
\nthey grow in Nature as she rises towards mentality. The world of Matter seems to
\nknow nothing about freedom; everything there appears as if written in sibyllic
\nlaws upon tablets of stone, laws which have a process, but no initial reason,
\nserve a harmony of purposes or at least produce a cosmos of fixed results, but
\ndo not appear to be shaped with an eye to them by any discoverable Intelligence.
\nWe can think of no presence of soul in natural things, because we can see in
\nthem no conscious action of mind and a conscious active mental intelligence is
\nto our notions the very basis and standing-ground, if not the whole stuff of
\nsoul-existence. If Matter is all, then we may very easily conclude that all is a
\nKarma of material energy which is governed by some inherent incomprehensible
\nmechanically legislating Necessity. But then we see that Life<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

seems
\nto be made of a different stuff; here various possibility develops, here
\ncreation becomes eager, pressing, flexible, protean; here we are conscious of a
\nsearching and a selection, many potentialities and a choice of actualities, of a
\nsubconscient idea which is feeling around for its vital self-expression and
\nshaping an instinctive action, – often, though in certain limits, with an
\nunerring intuitive guidance of life to its immediate objective or to some yet
\ndistant purpose, – of a subconscient will too in the fibre of all this vast
\nseeking and mutable impulsion. But yet this too works within limits, under
\nfetters, in a given range of processes.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nBut
\nwhen we get out into mind, Nature becomes there much more widely conscious of
\npossibility and of choice; mind is aware of potentialities and of determinations
\nin idea which are other than those of the immediate actuality or of the fixedly
\nnecessary consequence of the sum of past and present actualities; it is aware of
\nnumberless "may-be"s and "might-have-been"s and these last
\nare not entirely dead rejected things, but call return through the power of the
\nIdea and effect future determinations and can fulfil themselves at last in the
\ninner reality of their idea though, it may well be, in other forms and
\ncircumstances. Moreover, mind can and does go still further; it can conceive of
\nan infinite possibility behind the self-limitations of actual existence. And
\nfrom this seeing there arises the idea of a free and infinite Will, a Will of
\nillimitable potentiality which determines all these innumerable marvels of its
\nown universal becoming or creation in Space and Time. That means the absolute
\nfreedom of a Spirit and Power which is not determined by Karma, but determines
\nKarma. Apparent Necessity is the child of the Spirit’s free self-determination.
\nWhat affects us as Necessity, is a Will which works in sequence and not a blind
\nForce driven by its own mechanism.<\/p>\n

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

       
\nThis
\nis not, however, a binding inference and always there remain on this head
\narguable by the reason three main conceptions which we can form of existence.
\nFirst, there is the idea, facile to our reason, of a blind mechanical Necessity
\nof some kind, – and against or behind that nothing or some absolute
\nnon-existence. The nature of this Necessity would be that of a<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

fixed
\nprocessus bound to certain initial and general determinations of which all the
\nrest is the consequence. But that is only a first appearance of universal
\nthings, the stamp of phenomenal impression which we get from the aspect of the
\nmaterial universe. Then, there is the idea of a free infinite Being, God or
\nAbsolute, who somehow or other creates out of something or out of nothing, in
\nreality or only in conception, or brings out of himself into manifestation a
\nworld of the necessity of his will or Maya or Karma in which all things, all
\ncreatures are bound as the victims of a necessity, not mechanical or external,
\nbut spiritual and internal, a force of Ignorance or a force of Karma or else
\nsome kind of arbitrary predestination. And, finally, there is the idea of an
\nabsolute free Existence which supports, develops and informs a universe of
\nrelations, of that Power as the universal Spirit of our existence, of the world
\nas the evolution of these relations, of beings in the universe as souls who work
\nthem out with some freedom of the Spirit as its basis, – for that they inwardly
\nare, – but with an observation of the law of the relations as their natural
\ncondition.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nThis
\nlaw would be in phenomenon or as seen in a superficial view of its sole outward
\nmachinery an apparent chain of necessity, but in fact it would be a free
\nself-determination of the Spirit in existence. The free Self and Spirit would be
\nthere informing all the action of material energy, secretly conscient in its
\ninconscience; his would be the movement of life and its inner spirit of
\nguidance; but in mind would be something of the first open light of his
\npresence. The soul evolving in Nature, prakrtir jivabhuta, would be an immortal
\nclouded Power of him growing into the light of the Spirit and therefore towards
\nthe consciousness and reality of freedom. It would be bound at first in Nature
\nand obey helplessly in all its action the urge of Karma, because on the surface
\nthe action of energy would be the whole truth of its kinetic being; the rest,
\nthe freedom, the origination is there, but concealed below, subliminal and
\ntherefore not at all manifest in the action. Even in mentality the action of
\nKarma would be the main fact; everything would be determined by the nature of
\nforce of our active being working upon and responding to the influences of the
\nenvironment and<\/p>\n

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\n

by
\nthe nature of quality of our active being which would colour and shape the
\ncharacter of these outputtings and responses. But that force is the force, that
\nquality the quality of the soul; and as the soul grew aware of itself, the
\nconsciousness of Freedom would emerge, assert itself, insist, strive to grow
\ninto a firmly felt and possessed reality. Free in the Spirit within, conditioned
\nand determined in Nature, striving in his soul to bring out the spiritual light,
\nmastery and freedom to work upon the obscurity and embarrassment of his first
\nnatural conditions and their narrow determinations, this would be the nature of
\nman the mental being.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nOn
\nthis basis it becomes possible to come at some clear and not wholly antinomous
\nrelation between man’s necessity and man’s freedom, between his earthly human
\nnature at whirl in the machinery of mind, life and body and the master Soul, the
\nGodhead, the real Man behind whose consent supports or whose bidding governs its
\nmotions. The soul of man is a power of the self-existence which manifests the
\nuniverse and not the creature and slave of a mechanical Nature; and it is only
\nthe natural instruments of his being, it is mind, life and body and their
\nfunctions and members which are helpless apparatus and gear of the machinery.
\nThese things are subject to the action of Karma, but man in himself, the real
\nman within is not its subject, na karma lipyate nare<\/i>. Rather is Karma his
\ninstrument and its developments the material he uses, and he is using it always
\nfrom life to life for the shaping of a limited and individual, which may be one
\nday a divine and cosmic personality. For the eternal Spirit enjoys an absolute
\nfreedom. This freedom appears to us no doubt in a certain status, origin or
\nbackground of all being as an unconditioned infinite of existence, but also it
\nis in relation to the universe the freedom of an existence which displays an
\ninfinite of possibilities and has a power of shaping at will out of its own
\npotentiality the harmonies of the cosmos. Man, too, may well be capable of a
\nrelease, moksa<\/i>, into the unconditioned Infinite by cessation of all
\naction, mind and personality. But that is not the whole of the Spirit’s absolute
\nfreedom; it is rather an incomplete liberty, since it endures only by its
\ninaction. But the freedom of the Spirit is not so dependent;<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

it
\ncan remain unimpaired in all this action of Karma and is not diminished or
\nabrogated by the pouring of its energies into the whirl of the universe. And one
\nmay say that man cannot enjoy the double freedom because as man he is an
\nindividual being and therefore a thing in Nature, subject to Ignorance, to
\nKarma. To be free he must get away from individuality, nature and Karma, and
\nthen man no longer exists, there is only the unconditioned Infinite. But this is
\nto assume that there is no power of spiritual individuality, but only a power of
\nindividuation in Nature. All is then a formation of a nodus of mental, vital and
\nphysical Karma with which the one self for a long time mistakenly identifies its
\nbeing by the delusion of ego. But, if on the contrary, there is any such thing
\nas an individual power of spirit, it must, in whatever degree of actuality,
\nshare in the united force and freedom of the self-existent Divinity; for it is
\nbeing of his being.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nFreedom
\nsomewhere there is in our being and action, and we have only to see how and why
\nit is limited in our outward nature, why here I am at all under any dominion of
\nKarma. I appear to be bound by the law of an outward and imposed energy only
\nbecause there is separation between my outward nature and my inmost spiritual
\nself and I do not live in that outwardness with my whole being, but with a
\nshape, turn and mental formation of myself which I call my ego or my
\npersonality. The cosmic Spirit in matter seems itself to be so bound, for the
\nsame reason. It has started an outward compressed action, a law and disposition
\nof material energy which must be allowed to unroll its consequences; itself
\nholds back behind and conceals its shaping touch; but still its supporting
\nassent and impulse are there and these come out more into the open as Nature
\nraises herself in the scales of life and mind. Nevertheless, I have to note that
\neven in mind and even in its phenomenon of a conscious will Karma is the first
\nlaw and there cannot be for me there a complete freedom; there is no such thing
\nas a mental will which is absolutely free. And this is because mind is part of
\nthe action of the outward Ignorance, an action which seeks for knowledge but
\ndoes not possess its full light and power, which can conceive of Self and Spirit
\nand infinity and reflect<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

them,
\nbut not altogether live in them, which can quiver with infinite possibility but
\ncan only deal in a limited half-effective fashion with restricted possibilities.
\nAn Ignorance cannot be permitted to have, even if in its nature it could have,
\nfree mastery. It would never do for an ignorant mind and will to be given a wide
\nand real freedom; for it would upset the right order of the energy which the
\nSpirit has set at work and produce a most unholy confusion. It must be forced to
\nobey or, if it resists, to bear the reaction of the Law; its partial freedom of
\na clouded and stumbling knowledge must be constantly overruled both in its
\naction and its result by the law of universal Nature and the will of the seeing
\nuniversal Spirit who governs the dispositions and consequences of Karma. This
\nconstrained overruled action is in patent fact the character of our mental being
\nand action.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nBut
\nstill there is here something which we may call a relative freedom. It does not
\nreally belong to our outward mind and will or that shadow of myself which I have
\nput forth in my mental ego; for these things are instruments and they work in
\nthe roads of the successions of Karma. But they still feel a power constantly
\ncoming forth and either assenting to or intervening in the action of the nature,
\nand that power they attribute to themselves. They are aware of a relative
\nfreedom in their disposition of action and of at least a potential absolute
\nfreedom behind it, and mixing these two things confusedly together mind, will
\nand ego cry out in unison "I am free". But this freedom and power are
\ninfluences from the soul. To use a familiar metaphysical language, they type the
\nassent and will of the Purusha without which the Prakriti cannot move on her
\nway. The first and the greater part of this soul-influence is in the form of an
\nassent to Nature, an acquiescence; and for good reason. For I start with the
\naction of the universal Energy which the Spirit has set in motion and as I rise
\nfrom the ignorance towards knowledge, the first thing demanded from me is to
\ngather experience of its law and of my relations to the law and partly therefore
\nto acquiesce, to allow myself to be moved, to see and to come to know the nature
\nof the motions, to suffer and obey the law, to understand and know Karma. This
\nobidience is forcibly imposed on the lower ignorant creation. But thinking<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

man
\nwho experiences increasingly from generation to generation and from life to life
\nthe nature of things and develops reflective knowledge and the sense of his soul
\nin Nature, delivers in her a power of initiating will. He is not bound to her
\nset actualities; he can refuse assent, and the thing in Nature to which it is
\nrefused goes on indeed for a time and produces its results by impetus of Karma,
\nbut as it runs, it loses power and falls into impotence and desuetude. He can do
\nmore, he can command a new action and orientation of his nature. The assent was
\na manifestation of the power of the soul as giver of the sanction, anumanta<\/i>,
\nbut this is a power of the soul as active lord of the nature, isvara<\/i>.
\nThen Nature still insists more or less on her old habitual way by reason of her
\npast impetus or the right of previous sanctions and may even, in proportion as
\nshe is unaccustomed to control, resist and call in hostile powers, our own
\ncreations, the children of our past willings; then is there a battle in the
\nhouse of our being between the lord and his spouse or between old and new nature
\nand a defeat of the soul or its victory. And this is certainly a freedom, but
\nonly a relative freedom, and even the greatest mental self-mastery a relative
\nand precarious thing at the best. This liberty when we look down at it from a
\nhigher station, is not well distinguishable from a lightened bondage.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nThe
\nmental being in us can be a learner in the school of freedom, not a perfect
\nadept. A real freedom comes when we get away from the mind into the life of the
\nSpirit, from personality to the Person, from Nature to the lord of Nature.
\nThere, again, the first liberty is a passive power; it is of the nature of an
\nassent; it is an observing and essential liberty in which the active part of the
\nbeing is an instrument of the supreme Spirit and its universal action. But the
\nassent is to the will of the Spirit and not to the mechanical force of Nature,
\nand there is thrown on the mind the freedom of the Spirit’s light and purity and
\na right knowledge of relations and a clear detached assent to the divine
\nworkings. But if man would have too a freedom of power, of participation, of
\ncompanionship as the son of God in a greater divine control, he must then not
\nonly get back from mind, but must stand, in his thought and will<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 144<\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

even,
\nabove the levels of mentality and find there a station of leverage, a spiritual pou
\nsto,<\/i> (A
\n"where to stand," the station of leverage from which Archimedes, could
\nhe only have found it, undertook to move the world.<\/span>) whence he can sovereignly move the world of his being. Such a station
\nof consciousness there is in our supramental ranges. When the soul is one with
\nthe Supreme and with the universal not only in essence of consciousness and
\nspiritual truth of being, but in expressive act too of consciousness and being,
\nwhen it enjoys an initiating and relating truth of spiritual will and knowledge
\nand the soul’s overflowing delight in God and existence, when it is admitted to
\nthe Spirit’s fullness of assent to self and its creative liberty, its strain of
\nan eternal joy in self-existence and self-manifestation, Karma itself becomes a
\nrhythm of freedom and birth a strain of immortality. <\/span>
\n(sambh<\/span>ū<\/font>ty<\/span>ā<\/font>
\namrtam a<\/span>ś<\/font>nute "by birth he enjoys immortality.")<\/span>   <\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 145<\/p>\n

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

Karma and Freedom                           THE universe in which we live presents itself to our mentality as a web of opposites and contraries, not to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","wpcat-5-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","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=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}