{"id":145,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=145"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:12","slug":"14-rebirth-and-soul-evolution-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\/14-rebirth-and-soul-evolution-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-14_Rebirth and Soul Evolution.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nRebirth
\nand Soul Evolution<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/span>                  
\n<\/span>T<\/span><\/b>HE ideas that men
\ncurrently form about life and things are for the most part pragmatic
\nconstructions. They are forms of a reason which is concerned with giving only
\nsuch a serviceable account to itself of its surroundings as shall make a
\nsufficient clue to our immediate business of the growth, action, satisfaction of
\nthe personality, something feasible, livable, effective for our journeying in
\nTime, something viable, in the two-fold French sense of the word. Whether it
\ncorresponds to or is directly in touch with any real reality of things seems to
\nbe very much a matter of accident. It seems to be sufficient if we can persuade
\nour facile and complaisant reason of its truth and find it serviceable and
\nfruitful in consequences for thought, action and life-experience. It is true
\nthat there is another unpragmatic reason in us which labours to get rid of this
\ndemand of the intellectual and vital personality; it wants to look at the real
\ntruth of things without veils and without any object, to mirror the very image
\nof Truth in the still waters of a dispassionate, clear and pure mentality. But
\nthe workings of this calmer greater reason are hampered by two tremendous
\ndifficulties. First, it seems next to impossible to disengage it entirely from
\nthe rest of ourselves, from the normal intellectuality, from the will to
\nbelieve, from that instinct of the intelligence which helps the survival, by a
\nsort of subtle principle of preference and selection, of the way of thinking
\nthat suits our personal bent or the accomplished frame of our nature. And again,
\nwhat is the Truth that our reason mirrors? It is after all some indirect image
\nof Truth, not her very self and body seen face to face; it is an image moulded
\nfrom such data, symbol, process of Reality, – if any real Reality there is, – as
\nwe can gather from the very limited experience of self and existing things open
\nto human mind. So that unless there be some means by which knowledge can burst
\nthrough all veils to the experience of the very Reality itself, or unless there
\nbe some universal Logos, divine Mind or Supermind, which knows itself and all
\nthings and<\/p>\n

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\n
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our
\nconsciousness can reflect or get into touch with that, a pursuing insufficiency
\nand uncertainty must always keep its baffling grasp upon even the highest power
\nand largest walk of our reason and beset all the labour of human knowledge.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Nowhere are these disabilities more embarrassing than in those
\nfundamental questions of the nature of the world and of our own existence which
\nyet most passionately interest thinking humanity because this is in the end the
\nthing of utmost importance to us, since everything else, except some rough
\nimmediate practicality of the moment, depends on its solution. And even that,
\nuntil this great question is settled, is only a stumbling forward upon a journey
\nof which we know not the goal or the purpose, the meaning or the necessity. The
\nreligions profess to solve these grand problems with an inspired or revealed
\ncertainty; but the enormity of their differences shows that in them too there is
\na selection of ideas, separate aspects of the Truth, – the sceptic would say,
\nshows of imagination and falsehood, – and a construction from a limited
\nspiritual experience. In them too there is an element of chosen and willed
\nbelieving and some high pragmatic aim and utility, whether that be the soul’s
\nescape from the sorrow or unreality of existence or celestial bliss or a
\nreligioethical sanction and guidance. The philosophical systems are very
\nobviously only feasible selective constructions of great reflective ideas. More
\noften these are possibilities of the reason much rather than assured
\ncertainties, or, if founded on spiritual experience, they are still selective
\nconstructions, a sort of great architectural approach to some gate into
\nunknowable Divine or ineffable Infinite. The modem scientific mind professed to
\nrid us of all mere intellectual constructions and put us face to face with truth
\nand with assured truth only; it claimed the right to rid man of the fantastic
\nencumbrance of religion and the nebulous futilities of metaphysical philosophy.
\nBut religion and philosophy have now turned upon science and convicted her, on
\nher own statement of facts, of an equal liability to the two universal
\ndifficulties of human reason. The system of science seems to be itself only
\nanother feasible and fruitful construction of the reason giving a serviceable
\naccount to itself of the physical world and our relations to it, and it seems to
\nbe nothing more. And its<\/p>\n

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knowledge
\nis fatally bound by the limitation of its data and its outlook. Science too
\ncreates only a partial image of Truth stamped with a character of much
\nuncertainty and still more clearly imprinted with the perverse hall-mark of
\ninsufficiency.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>We have to recognise that human reason, moving as it does from a
\nstarting-point of ignorance and in a great environing circle of ignorance, must
\nproceed by hypothesis, assumption and theory subject to verification of some
\nkind convincing to our reason and experience. But there is this difference that
\nthe religious mind accepts the theory or assumption, – to which it does not at
\nall give these names, for they are to it things felt, – with faith, with a will
\nof belief, with an emotional certainty, and finds its verification in an
\nincreasing spiritual intuition and experience. The philosophic mind accepts it
\ncalmly and discerningly for its coherent agreement with the facts and
\nnecessities of being; it verifies by a pervading and unfailing harmony with all
\nthe demands of reason and intellectualised intuition. But the sceptical mind, –
\nnot the mind of mere doubt or dogmatic denial which usually arrogates that name,
\nbut the open and balanced mind of careful, impartial and reserved inquiry, –
\ngives a certain provisional character to its hypotheses, and it verifies by the
\njustification of whatever order or category of ascertainable facts it takes for
\nits standard of proof and invests with a character of decisive authority or
\nreality. There is room enough for all three methods and there is no reason why
\nour complex modern mind should not proceed simultaneously by all of them at
\nonce. For if the sceptical or provisional attitude makes us more ready to modify
\nour image of Truth in the light of new material of thought and knowledge, the
\nreligious mind also, provided it keeps a certain firm and profound openness to
\nnew spiritual experience, can proceed faster to a larger and larger light, and
\nmeanwhile we can walk by it with an assured step and go securely about our
\nprincipal business of the growth and perfection of our being. The philosophic
\nmind has the use of giving a needed largeness and openness to our mentality, –
\nif it too does not narrow itself by a closed circle of metaphysical dogma, – and
\nsupports besides the harmony of our other action by the orderly assent of the
\nhigher reason.<\/p>\n

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In
\nthis matter of the soul and rebirth the initial hypothesis now lies quite open
\nto us; the barrier has fallen. For if there is one thing now certain it is that
\nphysical science may give clues of process, but cannot lay hold on the reality
\nof things. That means that the physical is not the whole secret of world and
\nexistence, and that in ourselves too the body is not the whole of our being. It
\nis then through something supraphysical in Nature and ourselves which we may
\ncall the soul, whatever the exact substance of soul may be, that we are likely
\nto get that greater truth and subtler experience which will enlarge the narrow
\nrigid circle traced by physical science and bring us nearer to the Reality.
\nThere is nothing now to bar the most rational mind, – for true rationalism, real
\nfree thought need no longer be identified, as it was for some time too hastily
\nand intolerantly, with a denial of the soul and a scouting of the truths of
\nspiritual philosophy and religion, – there is nothing to prevent us from
\nproceeding firmly upon whatever certitudes of spiritual experience have become
\nto us the soil of our inner growth or the pillars on our road to self-knowledge.
\nThese are soul realities. But the exact frame we shall give to that knowledge,
\nwill best be built by farther spiritual experience aided by new enlarged
\nintuitions, confirmed in the suggestions of a wide philosophic reason and
\nfruitfully using whatever helpful facts we may get from the physical and the
\npsychic sciences. These are truths of soul process; their full light must come
\nby experimental knowledge and observation of the world without us and the world
\nwithin.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>The admission of the soul’s existence does not of itself lead, by its own
\nnecessity, by any indispensable next step, to the acceptance of rebirth. It will
\nonly bring in this indispensable consequence if there is such a thing as a soul
\nevolution which enforces itself always and is a constant part of the order of
\nexistence and the law of the time process. Moreover, some kind of admission of
\nan individual soul is a first condition of the truth of rebirth. For there is a
\nplausible theory of existence which admits an All-Soul, a universal being and
\nbecoming of which the material world is some sensible result, but does not admit
\nany at all abiding truth of our spiritual individuality. The All-Soul may
\ncontinually develop, may slowly yet urgently evolve its becoming; but each<\/p>\n

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individual
\nman or apparent individual being is to this way of thinking only a moment of the
\nAll-Soul and its evolution; out of that it rises by the formation which we call
\nbirth and it sinks back into it by the dissolution which we call death. But this
\nlimiting idea can only stand if we credit a creative biological evolution and
\nits instrument of physical heredity with the whole causation of all our mental
\nand spiritual being; but, in that case, we have no real soul or spirit, our soul
\npersonality or spiritual becoming is a fruit of our life and body. Now the
\nquestion of rebirth turns almost entirely upon the one fundamental question of
\nthe past of the individual being and its future. If the creation of the whole
\nnature is to be credited to the physical birth, then the body, life and soul of
\nthe individual are only a continuation of the body, life and soul of his
\nancestry, and there is no room anywhere for soul rebirth. The individual man has
\nno past being independent of them and can have no independent future; he can
\nprolong himself in his progeny, – the child may be his second or continued self,
\nas the Upanishad puts it, – but there is no other rebirth for him. No continued
\nstream of individuality presided over by any mental or spiritual person
\nvictoriously survives the dissolution of the body. On the other hand, if there
\nis any element in us, still more the most important of all, which cannot be so
\naccounted for, but presupposes a past or admits a future evolution other than
\nthat of the race mind and the physical ancestry, then some kind of soul birth
\nbecomes a logical necessity.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>Now it is just here that the claims of physical and vital evolution and
\nheredity seem to fail, – as a cause of our whole mental and spiritual being.
\nCertainly it has been shown that our body and the most physical part of our life
\naction are very largely the results of heredity, but not in such a way as to
\nexclude an assisting and perhaps really predominant psychical cause other than
\nthe ancestral contribution. It has been shown if you will than our conscious
\nvitality and those parts of mind which depend upon it, something of temperament,
\nsomething of character, certain impulses and predispositions, are to a great
\nextent shaped – or is it only influenced? – by evolutionary heredity; but not
\nthat they are entirely due to this force, not that there is no soul, no
\nspiritual entity which accepts and makes use of this instrumen-<\/p>\n

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tation,
\nbut is not its created result or helplessly subject to it in its becoming. Still
\nmore are the higher parts of our mind marked with a certain stamp of spiritual
\nindependence. They are not altogether helpless formations of evolutionary
\nheredity. But still all these things are evidently very much under the influence
\nof environment and its pressures and opportunities. And we may draw from that,
\nif we choose, a limiting conclusion; we may say that they are a phase of the
\nuniversal soul, a part of the process of its evolution by selection; the race,
\nnot the individual, is the continuous factor and all our individual effort and
\nacquisition, only in appearance, not really independent, ceases with death,
\nexcept so much of our gain as is chosen to be carried on in the race by some
\nsecret will or conscious necessity in the universal being or the persistent
\nbecoming.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>But when we come to our highest spiritual elements, we find that here we
\ndo arrive at a very clear and sovereign independence. We can carryon far beyond
\nany determination by environment or the pressure of the race-soul our own soul
\nevolution by the governing force of our spiritual nature. Quite apart from any
\nevidence of an after-life on other planes or any memory of past births, this is
\nsufficient warrant for a refusal to accept as sufficient any theory of the
\nephemeral being of the individual and the sole truth of the evolutionary
\nUniversal. Certainly, the individual being is not thereby shown to be
\nindependent of the All-Soul; it may be nothing but a form of it in time. But it
\nis sufficient for our purpose that it is a persistent soul form, not determined
\nby the life of the body and ceasing with its dissolution, but persisting
\nindependently beyond. For if it is thus independent of the physical race
\ncontinuity in the future, if it thus shows itself capable of determining its own
\nfuture soul evolution in time, it must have had secretly such an independent
\nexistence all through and it must have been determining in reality, though no
\ndoubt by some other and indirect insistence, its past soul evolution too in
\ntime. Possibly it may exist in the All-Soul only during the universal
\ncontinuity, may have arisen from it in that, may pass into it eventually. Or, on
\nthe contrary, it may exist in it prior to, or it is better to say, independent
\nof the universal continuity, and there may be some kind of eternal individual.
\nBut it is sufficient for the<\/p>\n

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theory
\nof rebirth that. a secret soul continuity of the individual does exist and not
\nalone a brute succession of bodies informed by the All-Soul with a quite
\nephemeral illusion of mental or spiritual individuality.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>There are theories of existence which accept the individual soul, but not
\nsoul evolution. There is, for instance, that singular dogma of a soul without a
\npast but with a future, created by the birth of the body but indestructible by
\nthe death of the body. But this is a violent and irrational assumption, an
\nimagination unverified and without verisimilitude. It involves the difficulty of
\na creature beginning in time but enduring through all eternity, an immortal
\nbeing dependent for its existence on an act of physical generation, yet itself
\nalways and entirely unphysical and independent of the body which results from
\nthe generation. These are objections insuperable to the reason. But there is too
\nthe difficulty that this soul inherits a past for which it is in no way
\nresponsible, or is burdened with mastering propensities imposed on it not by its
\nown act, and is yet responsible for its future which is treated as if it were in
\nno way determined by that often deplorable inheritance, damnosa hereditas<\/i>,
\nor that unfair creation, and were entirely of its own making. We are made
\nhelplessly what we are and are yet responsible for what we are, – or at least
\nfor what we shall be hereafter, which is inevitably determined to a large extent
\nby what we are originally. And we have only this one chance. Plato and the
\nHottentot, the fortunate child of saints or Rishis and the born and trained
\ncriminal plunged from beginning to end in the lowest fetid corruption of a great
\nmodern city have equally to create by the action or belief of this one unequal
\nlife all their eternal future. This is a paradox which offends both the soul and
\nthe reason, the ethical sense and the spiritual intuition.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>There is too the kindred idea, behind which a truth obscurely glimmers,
\nthat the soul of man is something high, pure and great which has fallen into the
\nmaterial existence and by its use of its nature and its acts in the body must
\nredeem itself, must return to its own celestial nature. But it is evident that
\nthis one earthly life is not sufficient for all to effect that difficult return,
\nbut rather most may and do miss it entirely; and we have<\/p>\n

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then
\neither to suppose that an immortal soul can perish or be doomed to eternal
\nperdition or else that it has more existences than this poor precarious one
\napparently given to it, lives or states of being which intervene between its
\nfall and the final working out of a sure redemption. But the first supposition
\nis subject to all the difficulties of that other paradox. Apart from the problem
\nof the reason of the descent, it is difficult to see how straight from celestial
\nbeing these different souls should have lapsed immediately to such immense
\ndifferences of gradation in their fall and in such a way that each is
\nresponsible for the otherwise cruel and unequal conditions under which he has to
\ndetermine so summarily his eternal future. Each must surely have had a past
\nwhich made him responsible for his present conditions, if he is to be held thus
\nstrictly to account for all their results and the use he makes of his often too
\nscanty, grudging and sometimes quite hopeless opportunity. The very nature of
\nour humanity supposes a varying constituent past for the soul as well as a
\nresultant future.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>More reasonable therefore is a recent theory which suggests that a spirit
\nor mental being has descended from another and greater plane and taken up the
\nmaterial existence when the physical and the animal evolution had proceeded far
\nenough for a human embodiment upon earth to be possible. He looks back to a long
\nseries of human lives, beginning from that point., which has brought each of us
\nto his present condition, and forward to a still continuing series which will
\ncarry all by their own degrees and in their own time to whatever completion,
\ntransfiguration, return awaits the self-embodying human soul and is the crown of
\nits long endeavour. But here again, what is it that brings about this connection
\nof a spiritual being and higher mental nature and a physical being and lower
\nanimal nature? what necessitates this taking up of the lower life by the spirit
\nwhich here becomes man? It would seem surely that there must have been some
\nprevious connection; the possessing mental or spiritual being must all the time
\nhave been preparing this lower life it thus occupies for a human manifestation.
\nThe whole evolution would then be an ordered continuity from the beginning and
\nthe intervention of mind and spirit would be no sudden inexplicable miracle, but
\na<\/p>\n

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coming
\nforward of that which was always there behind, an open taking up of the
\nmanifested life by a power which was always secretly presiding over the life
\nevolution.<\/p>\n

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

 
\n  <\/span>          
\n<\/span>What this theory of rebirth supposes is an evolution of being in the
\nmaterial world from matter to embodied mind and a universal Spirit which ensouls
\nthis evolution, while our individual Spirits exist in the universal and follow
\ntheir upward course to whatever purposed consummation or liberation or both may
\nbeckon to us at its end. Much more than this it may mean, but this at least; a
\nsoul evolution the real fact, an assumption of higher and higher forms the first
\nappearance. We might indeed allow a past and future for the human soul, but
\nplace them below and above this terrestrial plane and admit only one casual or
\npurposeful existence upon earth. But this would mean two orders of progressive
\nexistence unconnected and yet meeting for a brief moment. There would be an
\nerrant individual human soul intervening in the ordered terrestrial evolution
\nand almost immediately passing out without any connecting cause or necessity.
\nBut, especially, it leaves insufficiently explained the phenomenon of the
\nlargely terrestrial animal being and nature of this spiritual and
\nsupra-terrestrial entity, this soul, its struggle for liberation, and the
\ninfinitely varying degrees in which in different bodies it has succeeded in
\ndominating the lower nature. A past terrestrial soul evolution sufficiently
\naccounting for these variations and degrees of our mixed being and a future soul
\nevolution that helps us progressively to liberate the godhead of the Spirit,
\nseem the only just and reasonable explanation of this labour of a
\nmatter-shackled soul which has attained a variable degree of humanity in the
\nmidst of a general progressive appearance of the life, mind and spirit in a
\nmaterial universe. Rebirth is the only possible machinery for such a
\nsoul-evolution.<\/p>\n

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

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

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