{"id":129,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:06","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=129"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:06","slug":"24-the-higher-lines-of-karma-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\/24-the-higher-lines-of-karma-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-24_The Higher Lines of Karma.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nThe
\nHigher Lines of Karma<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/h3>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n                                   
\n<\/span>T<\/span><\/b>HE
\nthird movement of mind labours to bring the soul of man out of the tangle of the
\nvital and mental forces and opens to him a field in which the mind raises
\nitself, raises at least the head of its thought and will, above the vital
\ndemands and standards and there at that top of its activities, whatever its
\nother concessions to the lower Karma, lives for the sake of the true values, the
\ntrue demands of a mental being, even though one imprisoned in a body and set to
\nwrestle with the conditions of life in a material universe. The innate demand of
\nthe mental being is for mental experience, for the mind’s manifold strengths,
\nits capacities, joys, growth, perfections, and for these things for their own
\nsake because of the inevitable satisfaction they give to his nature,<\/span> \u2014 the demand of the intellect for truth and knowledge, the demand of the
\nethical mind for right and good, the demand of the aesthetic mind for beauty and
\ndelight of beauty, the demand of the emotional mind for love and the joy of
\nrelation with our fellow-beings, the demand of the will for self-mastery and
\nmastery of things and the world and our existence. And the values which the
\nmental being holds for supreme and effective are the values of truth and
\nknowledge, of right and good, of beauty and aesthetic delight, of love and
\nemotional joy, of mastery and inner lordship. It is these things that he seeks
\nto know and follow, to possess, discover, enjoy, increase. It is for this great
\nadventure that he came into the world, to walk hardily through the endless
\nfields they offer to him, to experiment, to dare, to test the utmost limit of
\neach capacity and follow each possibility and its clue to the end as well as to
\nobserve in each its at present discovered law and measure. Here as in the other
\nfields, as in the vital and physical, so in his mental provinces, it is the
\nappointed work of his intelligence and will to know and master through an always
\nenlarging experience the conditions of an increasing light and power and right
\nand truth and joy and beauty and wideness, and not only to discover the<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-207<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Truth
\nand the Law and set up a system and an order, but to enlarge continually its
\nlines and boundaries. And therefore in these fields, as in life, man, the mental
\nbeing, cannot stop short too long in the partial truth of an established system
\nand a temporary mistaken for an eternal order <\/span>\u2014
\nhere least, because as he advances he is always tempted still farther forward
\nuntil he realises that he is a seeker of the infinite and a power of the
\nabsolute. His base here plunges into the obscure infinite of life and matter;
\nbut his head rises towards the luminous infinite of the Spirit.<\/p>\n

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

     <\/span>    
\nThe
\nthird movement of the mental energy carries it therefore into its own native
\nfield and kingdom above the pressing subjection to the lowering and limiting
\nclaim of a vital and physical Karma. It is true that his lower being remains
\nsubject to the law of life and of the body, and it is true also that he must
\nstrive either to find in life or to bring into the world around him some law of
\ntruth, of right and good, of beauty, of love and joy, of the mind\u2019s will and
\nmastery, for it is by that effort that he is man and not the animal and without
\nit he cannot find his true satisfaction in living. But two things he has more
\nand more to feel and to realise first, that life and matter follow their own law
\nand not, in man’s sense of it at least, a moral, a rational, a mentally
\ndetermined aesthetic or other mind order, and if he wishes to introduce any such
\nthing into them, he must himself here create it, transcending the physical and
\nthe vital law and discovering another and a better, and secondly, that the more
\nhe follows these things for their own sake, the more he discovers their true
\nform, swar<\/i><\/span>\u00fbpa, <\/span><\/i>and
\ndevelops their force to prevail upon and lift up life into an air of higher
\nnature. In other words, he passes from the practical pursuit of a serviceable
\nknowledge, morality, aesthesis, force of emotion and will-power, <\/span>\u2014 serviceable
\nfor his vital aims, for life as it <\/span>first is, \u2014 to an ideal pursuit of
\nthese things and the transformation of
\nlife into the image of his ideal. This he is unable indeed as yet to realise and
\nis obliged to rest on balance and compromise, because he has not found the whole
\nreconciling secret of that which lies beyond his ideals. But it is as he pursues
\nthem in their purity, for their own imperative innate demand and attraction, on
\nthe line of their trend to their own infinite and absolute that<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-208<\/font><\/span><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

he
\ngets nearer in his total experience to the secret. There is so a chance of his
\ndiscovering that as the beauty and irrefragable order of life and matter are due
\nto the joy of the Infinite in life and in matter and the fidelity of the Force
\nhere at work to the hidden knowledge and will and idea of the Self and Spirit in
\nthem, so there is within his own hidden self, his own vast and covert spirit a
\nsecret of the Infinite\u2019s self-knowledge, will, joy, love and delight, mastery,
\nright and truth of joy and action by which his own greater life rising above the
\nvital and mental limitations can discover an infinite perfection and beauty and
\ndelight in itself and spontaneous irrefragable order.<\/p>\n

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

     <\/span>    
\nMeanwhile
\nhis third movement of mind discovers a law of the return of mental energies,
\npure in its kind and as certain as the vital and the physical, as faithful to
\nitself, to the self of mind and to mind nature, a law not of vital returns to
\nmental dynamis, but of progression of the soul in the being and force of good
\nand beauty and power <\/span>\u2014 of
\nmind-power and soul-power <\/span>\u2014
\nand greatness and love and joy and knowledge. Mounting here the ethical mind no
\nlonger follows good for a reward now on earth or in another existence, but for
\nthe sake of good, and no longer shuns evil for fear of punishment on earth later
\non in this life or else in another life or in hell, but because to follow evil
\nis a degradation and affliction of its being and a fall from its innate and
\nimperative endeavour. This is to it a necessity of its moral nature, a truly
\ncategorical imperative, a call that in the total more complex nature of man may
\nbe dulled or suppressed or excluded by the claim of its other parts and their
\nneeds, but to the ethical mind is binding and absolute. The virtue that demands
\na reward for acting well and needs a penalty to keep it walking in the straight
\nway, is no real portion, no true law of the ethical being, but rather a mixed
\ncreation, a rule of his practical reason that seeks always after utility and
\nholds that to be right which is helpful and expedient, a rule that looks first
\nnot at the growth of the soul but at the mechanical securing of a regulated
\noutward conduct and to secure it bribes and terrifies the vital being into
\nacquiescence and a reluctant subordination of its own instincts and natural
\nventures. The virtue so created is an expediency, a social decency, a prudent
\nlimitation of egoism, a commercial<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-209<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

substitute
\nfor the true thing; or, at best, it is a habit of the mind and not a truth of
\nthe soul, and in the mind a fabrication, mixed and of inferior stuff, a
\nconventional virtue, insecure, destructible by the wear and tear of life, easily
\nconfused with other expediencies or purchasable or conquerable by them,<\/span>
\n\u2014 it is not a high and clear
\nupbuilding, an enduring and inwardly living self-creation of the soul. Whatever
\nits practical utility or service as a step of the transition, the mental habit
\nof confusion and vitalistic compromise it fosters and the more questionable
\nconfusions and compromises that habit favours, have made conventional morality
\none of the chief of the forces that hold back human life from progressing to a
\ntrue ethical order. If humaniy has made any lasting and true advance, it has
\nbeen not through the virtue created by reward and punishment or any of the
\nsanctions powerful on the little vital ego, but by an insistence from the higher
\nmind on the lower, an insistence on right for its own sake, on imperative moral
\nvalues, on an absolute law and truth of ethical being and ethical conduct that
\nmust be obeyed whatever the recalcitrances of the lower mind, whatever the pains
\nof the vital problem, whatever the external result, the inferior issue.<\/p>\n

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

     <\/span>    
\nThis
\nhigher mind holds its pure and complete sway only on a few high souls, in others
\nit acts upon the lower and outer mind but amidst much misprision, confusion and
\ndistortion of thought and will and perverting or abating mixture; on the mass of
\nmen governed by the lower egoistic, vital and conventional standards of conduct
\nits influence is indirect and little. None-the-less it gives the clue we have to
\nfollow in order to pursue the spiral ascent of the lines of Karma. And first we
\nobserve that the just man follows the ethical law for its own sake and not for
\nany other purpose whatsoever, is just for the sake of justice, righteous for the
\nsake of righteousness, compassionate for the sake of compassion, true for the
\nsake of truth alone. Harishchandra sacrificing self and wife and child and
\nkingdom and subjects in an unswerving fidelity to the truth of the spoken word,
\nShivi giving his flesh to the hawk rather than fall from his kingly duty of
\nprotection to the fugitive, the Bodhisattwa laying his body before the famished
\ntiger, images in which sacred or epic legend has consecrated this greater kind
\nof virtue, illuminate an elevation of the ethical will<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-210<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

and
\na law of moral energy that asks for no return from man or living thing or from
\nthe gods of Karma, lays down no conditions, makes no calculation of consequence,
\nof less or more or of the greatest good of the greatest number, admits neither
\nthe hedonistic nor the utilitarian measure, but does simply the act as the thing
\nto be done because it is right and virtue and therefore the very law of being of
\nthe ethical man, the categorical imperative of his nature.<\/p>\n

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

     <\/span>    
\nThis
\nkind of high absoluteness in the ethical demand is appalling to the flesh and
\nthe ego, for it admits of no comfortable indulgence and compromise, no abating
\nreserves or conditions, no profitable compact between the egoistic life and
\nvirtue. It is offensive too to the practical reason, for it ignores the
\ncomplexity of the world and of human nature and seems to savour of an extremism
\nand exclusive exaggeration as dangerous to life as it is exalted in ideal
\npurpose. Fiat justitia ruat coelum, <\/i>let justice and right be done though
\nthe heavens fall, is a rule of conduct that only the ideal mind can accept with
\nequanimity or the ideal life tolerate in practice. And even to the larger ideal
\nmind this absoluteness becomes untrustworthy if it is an obedience not to the
\nhigher law of the soul, but to an outward moral law, a code of conduct. For then
\nin place of a lifting enthusiasm we have the rigidity of the Pharisee, a puritan
\nfierceness or narrowness or the life-killing tyranny of a single insufficient
\nside of the nature. This is not yet that higher mental movement, but a straining
\nto- wards it, an attempt to rise above the transitional law and the vitalistic
\ncompromise. And it brings with it an artificiality, a tension, a coercion, often
\na repellent austerity which, disregarding as it does sanity and large wisdom and
\nthe simple naturalness of the true ethical mind and the flexibilities of life,
\ntyrannising over but not transforming it, is not the higher perfection of our
\nnature. But still even here there is the feeling out after a great return to the
\noutput of moral energy, an attempt well worth making, if the aim can indeed so
\nbe accomplished, to build up by the insistence on a rigid obedience to a law of
\nmoral action that which is yet non-existent or imperfectly existent in us but
\nwhich alone can make the law of our conduct a thing true and living, <\/span>\u2014
\nan ethical being with an inalienably ethical nature. No rule imposed on<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-211<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

him
\nfrom outside, whether in the name of a supposed mechanical or impersonal law or
\nof God or prophet, can be, as such, true or right or binding on man: it becomes
\nthat only when it answers to some demand or aids some evolution of his inner
\nbeing. And when that inner being is revealed, evolved, at each moment naturally
\nactive, simply and spontaneously imperative, then we get the true, the inner and
\nintuitive Law in its light of self- knowledge, its beauty of self-fulfilment,
\nits intimate life significance. An act of justice, truth, love, compassion,
\npurity, sacrifice becomes then the faultless expression, the natural out
\nflowering of our soul of justice, our soul of truth, our soul of love and
\ncompassion, our soul of purity or sacrifice. And before the greatness of its
\nimperative mandate to the outer nature the vital being and the practical reason
\nand surface seeking intelligence must and do bow down as before something
\ngreater than themselves, something thing that belongs directly to the divine and
\nthe infinite.<\/p>\n

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

     <\/span>    
\nMeanwhile
\nwe get the clue to the higher law of Karma, of the output and returns of energy,
\nand see it immediately and directly to be, what all law of Karma, really and
\nultimately, if at first covertly, is for man, a law of his spiritual evolution.
\nThe true return to the act of virtue, to the ethically right output of his
\nenergy, <\/span>\u2014 his reward, if you
\nwill, and the sole recompense on which he has a right to insist,<\/span> \u2014 is
\nits return upon him in a growth of the moral strength within him, an upbuilding
\nof his ethical being, a flowering of the soul of right, justice, love,
\ncompassion, purity, truth, strength, courage, self giving that he seeks to be.
\nThe true return to the act of evil, to the ethically wrong output of energy,<\/span>
\n\u2014 his punishment, if you will, and
\nthe sole penalty he has any need or right to fear, <\/span>\u2014
\nis its return upon him in a retardation of the growth, a demolition of the
\nupbuilding, an obscuration, tarnishing, impoverishing of the soul, of the pure,
\nstrong and luminous being that he is striving to be. An inner happiness he may
\ngain by his act, the calm, peace, satisfaction of the soul fulfilled in right,
\nor an inner calamity, the suffering, disturbance, unease and malady of its
\ndescent or failure, but he can demand from God or moral Law no other. The
\nethical soul,<\/span> \u2014 not the
\ncounterfeit but the real, <\/span>\u2014
\naccepts the pains and sufferings and difficulties and fierce intimidations of
\nlife,<\/span> not as a pu-<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-212<\/font><\/span>
\n 
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

nishment
\nfor its sins, but as an opportunity and trial, an opportunity for its growth, a
\ntrial of its built or native strength, and good fortune and all outer success
\nnot as a coveted reward of virtue, but as an opportunity also and an even
\ngreater more difficult trial. What to this high seeker of Right can mean the
\nvital law of Karma or what can its gods do to him that he can fear or long for?
\nThe ethical-vitalistic explanation of the world and its meaning and measures has
\nfor such a soul, for man at this height of his evolution no significance. He has
\ntravelled beyond the jurisdiction of the Powers of the middle air, the head of
\nhis spirit’s endeavour is lifted above the dull grey-white belt that is their
\nempire.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-213<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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