{"id":147,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=147"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:13","slug":"15-the-significance-of-rebirth-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\/15-the-significance-of-rebirth-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-15_The Significance of Rebirth.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:center;margin-top:0;line-height:150%\">\n\t\t<b><br \/>\n\t\t<span><font size=\"4\">The<br \/>\nSignificance of Rebirth<\/font><font size=\"4\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\">\n<b><br \/>\n<span><span>&nbsp;<\/span><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>T<\/span><\/b><span>HE one question which<br \/>\nthrough all its complexities is the sum of philosophy and to which all human<br \/>\nenquiry comes round in the end, is the problem of ourselves, &#8211; why we are here<br \/>\nand what we are, and what is behind and before and around us, and what we are to<br \/>\ndo with ourselves, our inner significances and our outer environment. In the<br \/>\nidea of evolutionary rebirth, if we can once find it to be a truth and recognise<br \/>\nits antecedents and consequences, we have a very sufficient clue for an answer<br \/>\nto all these connected sides of the one perpetual question. A spiritual<br \/>\nevolution of which our universe is the scene and earth its ground and stage,<br \/>\nthough its plan is still kept back above from our yet limited knowledge, &#8211; this<br \/>\nway of seeing existence is a luminous key which we can fit into many doors of<br \/>\nobscurity. But we have to look at it in the right focus, to get its true<br \/>\nproportions and, especially, to see it in its spiritual significance more than<br \/>\nin its mechanical process. The failure to do that rightly will involve us in<br \/>\nmuch philosophical finessing, drive on this side or the other to exaggerated<br \/>\nnegations and leave our statement of it, however perfect may be its logic, yet<br \/>\nunsatisfying and unconvincing to the total intelligence and the complex soul of<br \/>\nhumanity.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>&nbsp;<br \/>\n <span>&nbsp;<\/span><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>The bare idea of repeated births as the process of our soul existence<br \/>\ndoes not carry us much farther than the simple material reality of this single<br \/>\nlife in the body, that first fact of our conscious sensation and memory which is<br \/>\nthe occasion of all our speculations. Behind our present starting-point and<br \/>\npreceding this one lappet of our race in the fields of being rebirth reminds us<br \/>\nindeed of a past, of pregnant anterior courses, a soul-existence in many<br \/>\nprevious bodies which have immediately created what we know are. But to what use<br \/>\nor advantage if there is no progressive significance in our pre-existence and<br \/>\nour persevering continuity? In front of us it rolls far back from our vision the<br \/>\nobstruction of the near blank wall of death; our journeying upon earth<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:center;margin-top:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 113<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"left\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>becomes<br \/>\nless of a long or brief unretraceable road ending abruptly and perplexingly in a<br \/>\ncul-de-sac; our physical dissolution is robbed of the cruellest poison of its<br \/>\nsting. For the burden of death to man the thinking, willing, feeling creature is<br \/>\nnot the loss of this poor case or chariot of body, but it is the blind psychical<br \/>\nfinality death suggests, the stupid material end of our will and thought and<br \/>\naspiration and endeavour, the brute breaking off of the heart&#8217;s kind and sweet<br \/>\nrelations and affections, the futile convicting discontinuity of that marvellous<br \/>\nand all-supporting soul-sense which gives us our radiant glimpses of the glory<br \/>\nand delight of existence, &#8211; that is the discord and harsh inconsequence against<br \/>\nwhich the thinking living creature revolts as incredible and inadmissible. The<br \/>\nfiery straining to immortality of our life, mind, psyche, which can assent to<br \/>\ncessation only by turning in enmity upon their own flame of nature, and the<br \/>\ndenial of it which the dull acquiescence of a body consenting inertly to death<br \/>\nas to life brings in on us, is the whole painful irreconcilable contradiction of<br \/>\nour double nature. Rebirth takes the difficulty and solves it in the sense of a<br \/>\nsoul continuity with a beat of physical repetition. Like other non-materialistic<br \/>\nsolutions it gives the right to the soul&#8217;s suggestion as against the body&#8217;s and<br \/>\nsanctions the demand for survival, but unlike some others it justifies the<br \/>\nbodily life by its utility to the soul&#8217;s continued self-experience; our too<br \/>\nswift act in the body ceases to be an isolated accident or an abrupt interlude,<br \/>\nit gets the justification of a fulfilling future as well as a creating past for<br \/>\nits otherwise haphazard actions and relations. But simple persistence,<br \/>\nmechanical continuity is not enough; that is not all our psychical being<br \/>\nsignifies, not the whole luminous meaning of survival and continuity; without<br \/>\nascension, without expansion, without some growing up straight into light in the<br \/>\nstrength of our Spirit our higher members toil here uncompleted, our birth in<br \/>\nmatter is not justified by any adequate meaning. We are very little better off<br \/>\nthan if death remained our ending; for our life in the end becomes then an<br \/>\nindefinitely continued and renewed and temporarily consequent in place of an<br \/>\ninconsequent, abruptly ended and soon convicted futility.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>&nbsp;<br \/>\n <span>&nbsp;<\/span><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>By rebirth, too, this world around us, our environment,<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:center;margin-top:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 114<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"left\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>its<br \/>\nsuggestions, its opportunities are no longer left as the field of an ephemeral<br \/>\nphysical flowering or as a Life which cares very little for and means very<br \/>\nlittle to the individual, though it may offer much perhaps during its uncertain<br \/>\nlonger time to the species. The world grows to us a field of soul-experience, a<br \/>\nsystem of soul recurrences, a means of self-effectuation, perhaps a<br \/>\ncrystallising of the conscious being&#8217;s -effective self-reflections. But to what<br \/>\nend if our recurrence is only a repetition or a hesitating fluctuation within a<br \/>\nfew set types with a very limited, always uncompleted circle of accomplishment?<br \/>\nFor that is what it comes to, if there is no upward outlet, no infinite<br \/>\nprogression or no escape or enlarging into the soul&#8217;s infinities. Rebirth tells<br \/>\nus that what we are is a soul performing constantly the miracle of<br \/>\nself-embodiment; but why this embodiment, what this soul has to do here with<br \/>\nitself and what use it is to make of this world which is given to it for its<br \/>\ngrandiose scene, its difficult, plastic material and its besieging battery of<br \/>\nmultiform stimulus and suggestion, is hardly at all clearer than before. But the<br \/>\nperception of rebirth as an occasion and means for a spiritual evolution fills<br \/>\nin every hiatus. It makes life a significant ascension and not a mechanical<br \/>\nrecurrence; it opens to us the divine vistas of a growing soul; it makes the<br \/>\nworlds a nexus of spiritual self-expansion; it sets us seeking, and with a sure<br \/>\npromise to all of a great finding now or hereafter, for the self-knowledge of<br \/>\nour Spirit and the self-fulfilment of a wise and divine intention in our<br \/>\nexistence.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nThe<br \/>\noppressing sense of a circle of mechanical recurrence and the passionate seeking<br \/>\nfor an outlet of absolute escape haunted the earlier statements of the truth of<br \/>\nrebirth and have left upon them in spite of the depths they fathomed a certain<br \/>\nstamp of unsatisfactory inadequacy, &#8211; not illogical, for they are logical<br \/>\nenough, once their premisses are admitted, but unsatisfying, because they do not<br \/>\njustify to us our being. For, missing the divine utility of the cosmic workings,<br \/>\nthey fail to explain to us with a sufficiently large, patient, steadfast<br \/>\nwholeness God and ourselves and existence, negate too much, miss the positive<br \/>\nsense of our strain and leave sounding an immense note of spiritual futility and<br \/>\ncosmic discord. No statement of the sense of out<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:center;margin-top:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 115<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"left\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>being<br \/>\nor our non-being has laid a more insistent stress on rebirth than did the<br \/>\nBuddhistic; but it affirms strongly only the more strongly to negate. It views<br \/>\nthe recurrence of birth as a prolonged mechanical chain; it sees, with a sense<br \/>\nof suffering and distaste, the eternal revolving of an immense cosmic wheel of<br \/>\nenergy with no divine sense in its revolutions, its beginning an affirmation of<br \/>\nignorant desire, its end a nullifying bliss of escape. The wheel turns uselessly<br \/>\nfor ever disturbing the peace of Non-being and creating souls whose one<br \/>\ndifficult chance and whole ideal business is to cease. That conception of being<br \/>\nis only an extension from our first matter-governed sense of the universe, of<br \/>\nour creation in it and of our decisive cessation. It takes up at every point our<br \/>\nfirst obvious view of the bodily life and restates all its circumstances in the<br \/>\nterms of a more psychical and spiritual idea of our existence.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nWhat<br \/>\nwe see in the material universe is a stupendous system of mechanical<br \/>\nrecurrences. A huge mechanical recurrence rules that which is long-enduring and<br \/>\nvast; a similar but frailer mechanical recurrence sways all that is ephemeral<br \/>\nand small. The suns leap up into being, flame wheeling in space, squander force<br \/>\nby motion and fade and are extinct, again perhaps to blaze into being and repeat<br \/>\ntheir course, or else other suns take their place and fulfil their round. The<br \/>\nseasons of Time repeat their unending and unchanging cycle. Always the tree of<br \/>\nlife puts forth its various flowers and sheds them and breaks into the same<br \/>\nflowers in their recurring season. The body of man is born and grows and decays<br \/>\nand perishes, but it gives birth to other bodies which maintain the one same<br \/>\nfutile cycle. What baffles the intelligence in all this intent and persistent<br \/>\nprocess is that it seems to have in it no soul of meaning, no significance<br \/>\nexcept the simple fact of causeless and purposeless existence dogged or relieved<br \/>\nby the annulling or the compensating fact of individual cessation. And this is<br \/>\nbecause we perceive the mechanism, but do not see the Power that uses the<br \/>\nmechanism and the intention in its use. But the moment we know that there is a<br \/>\nconscious Spirit self-wise and infinite brooding upon the universe and a secret<br \/>\nslowly self-finding soul in things, we get to the necessity of an idea in its<br \/>\nconsciousness, a thing conceived, willed, set in motion and securely<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:center;margin-top:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 116<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"left\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>to<br \/>\nbe done, progressively to be fulfilled by these great deliberate workings.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nBut<br \/>\nthe Buddhistic statement admits no self, spirit or eternal Being in its<br \/>\nrigorously mechanical economy of existence. It takes only the phenomenon of a<br \/>\nconstant becoming and elevates that from the physical to the psychical level. As<br \/>\nthere is evident to our physical mind an Energy, action, motion, capable of<br \/>\ncreating by its material forces the forms and powers of the material universe,<br \/>\nso there is for the Buddhistic vision of things an Energy, action, Karma,<br \/>\ncreating by its psychic powers of idea and association this embodied soul-life<br \/>\nwith its continuity of recurrences. As the body is a dissoluble construction, a<br \/>\ncomposite and combination, so the soul too is a dissoluble construction and<br \/>\ncombination; the soul-life like the physical life sustains itself by a<br \/>\ncontinuous flux and repetition of the same workings and movements. As this<br \/>\nconstant hereditary succession of lives is a prolongation of the one universal<br \/>\nprinciple of life by a continued creation of similar bodies, a mechanical<br \/>\nrecurrence, so the system of soul rebirth too is a constant prolongation of the<br \/>\nprinciple of the soul-life by a continued creation through Karma of similar<br \/>\nembodied associations and experiences, a mechanical recurrence. As the cause of<br \/>\nall this physical birth and long hereditary continuation is an obscure will to<br \/>\nlife in Matter, so the cause of continued soul birth is an ignorant desire or<br \/>\nwill to be in the universal energy of Karma. As the constant wheelings of the<br \/>\nuniverse and the motions of its forces generate individual existences who escape<br \/>\nfrom or end in being by an individual dissolution, so there is this constant<br \/>\nwheel of becoming and motion of Karma which forms into individualised soul-lives<br \/>\nthat must escape from their continuity by a dissolving cessation. An extinction<br \/>\nof the embodied consciousness is our apparent material end; for soul too the end<br \/>\nis extinction, the blank satisfaction of Nothingness or some ineffable bliss of<br \/>\na superconscient Non-Being. The affirmation of the mechanical occurrence or<br \/>\nrecurrence of birth is the essence of this view; but while the bodily life<br \/>\nsuffers an enforced end and dissolution, the soul-life ceases by a willed<br \/>\nself-extinction.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;text-indent:.5in;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>&nbsp;<br \/>\n The<br \/>\nBuddhistic theory adds nothing to the first obvious significance of life except<br \/>\nan indefinite prolongation by rebirth<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:center;margin-top:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 117<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr size=\"2\" width=\"100%\" align=\"left\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:justify;line-height:150%;margin-top:0\"><span>which<br \/>\nis a burden, not a gain, and the spiritual greatness of the discipline of<br \/>\nself-extinction, &#8211; the latter, no doubt, a thing of great value. The illusionist<br \/>\nsolution adds something, but does not differ very greatly in its motive from the<br \/>\nBuddhistic. It sets against the futile cosmic repetition an eternity of our own<br \/>\nabsolute being; from the ignorance which creates the illusory mechanism of a<br \/>\nrecurrence of rebirth, it escapes into the self-knowledge of our ineffable<br \/>\nexistence. That seems to bring in a positive strain and to give to our being an<br \/>\ninitial, a supporting and an eventual reality. But the hiatus here is the<br \/>\nabsence of all true and valid relation between this real being of ours and all<br \/>\nour birth and becoming. The last event and end of our births is not represented<br \/>\nas any absolute fulfilment of what we are, &#8211; that would be a great, fruitful and<br \/>\nmagnificently positive philosophy, nor as the final affirmation of a progressive<br \/>\nself-finding, &#8211; that too would give a noble meaning to our existence; it is a<br \/>\nturning away from the demand of the universal Spirit, a refusal of all these<br \/>\ncosmic ideas, imaginations, aspirations, action and effectuation. The way to<br \/>\nfind our being given us is an absolute denial of all our becoming. We rise to<br \/>\nself by a liberating negation of ourselves, and in the result the Idea in the<br \/>\nuniverse pursues its monstrous and aimless road, but the individual ceases and<br \/>\nis blest in the cessation. The motive of this way of thought is the same<br \/>\noppressive sense of an ignorant mechanical cosmic recurrence as in the<br \/>\nBuddhistic and the same high impatient passion of escape. There is recognition<br \/>\nof a divine source of life, but a non-recognition of any divine meaning in life.<br \/>\nAnd as for rebirth it is reduced in its significance to a constant mechanism of<br \/>\nself-deception, and the will not to live is shown us as the last acquisition,<br \/>\nthe highest good and the one desirable result of living. The satisfaction which<br \/>\nIllusionism gives, &#8211; for it does give a certain high austere kind of<br \/>\nsatisfaction to the intellect and to one turn of spiritual tendency, &#8211; is the<br \/>\npressing to a last point of the obvious antinomy between this great burdensome<br \/>\nand tyrannous mechanism, the universe, and the spirit which feels itself of<br \/>\nanother and a diviner nature, the great relief to a soul passioning for freedom,<br \/>\nbut compelled to labour on as a spring of the dull machine, of being able to<br \/>\ncast a way the cosmic burden, and finally the free<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-bottom:0;text-align:center;margin-top:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 118 <\/font><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>and<br \/>\nbare absoluteness of this spiritual conclusion. But it gives no real, because no<br \/>\nfruitful answer to the problem of God and man and the significance of life; it<br \/>\nonly gets away from them by a skilful evasion and takes away from them all<br \/>\nsignificance, so that any question of the sense and will in all this tremendous<br \/>\nlabour and throb and seeking loses meaning. But the challenge of God&#8217;s universe<br \/>\nto the knowledge and strength of the human spirit cannot in the end be met by<br \/>\nman with a refusal or solved by an evasion, even though an individual soul may<br \/>\ntake refuge from the demand, as a man may from the burden of action and pain in<br \/>\nunconsciousness, in spiritual trance or sleep or escape through its blank doors<br \/>\ninto the Absolute. Something the Spirit of the universe means by our labour in<br \/>\nexistence, some sense it has in these grandiose rhythms, and it has not<br \/>\nundertaken them in an eternally enduring error or made them in a jest (The<br \/>\nmagnificent and pregnant phrase of the Koran, &quot;Thinkest thou that I have<br \/>\nmade the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in a jest ?\u201d)<br \/>\nTo know that and possess it, to find and fulfil consciously the universal<br \/>\nbeing&#8217;s hidden significances is the task given to the human spirit.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nThere<br \/>\nare other statements or colourings of the idea of rebirth which admit a more<br \/>\npositive sense for existence and nourish a robuster confidence in the power and<br \/>\ndelight of being which are its secret fountains; but they all stumble in the end<br \/>\nover the limitations of humanity and an inability to see any outlet from their<br \/>\nbondage in the order of the universe, because they suppose this to be a thing<br \/>\nfixed from of years sempiternal \u2013 s<\/span>\u00e3<span>svatibhyah<br \/>\nsam<\/span>\u00e3<span>bhyah, not an eternally<br \/>\ndeveloping and creative, but an immutable cycle. The Vaishnava idea of the play<br \/>\nof God, striking as it does into the secret of the hidden delight at the core of<br \/>\nthings, is a luminous ray shot into the very heart of the mystery; but isolated,<br \/>\nit cannot solve all its enigma. There is more here in the world than a play of<br \/>\nsecret delight; there is knowledge, there is power, there is a will and a mighty<br \/>\nlabour. Rebirth so looked at becomes too much of a divine caprice with no object<br \/>\nbut its playing, and ours is too great and strenuous a world to be so accounted<br \/>\nfor. Such chequered delight as is given to our becoming, is a game of disguises<br \/>\nand seekings with no promise here of any divine completeness; its circles seem<br \/>\nin the end not worth<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 119<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr align=\"left\" SIZE=\"2\" width=\"100%\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>following<br \/>\nout and the soul turns gladly to its release from the game&#8217;s unsatisfying mazes.<br \/>\nThe Tantric solution shows us a supreme superconscient Energy which casts itself<br \/>\nout here into teeming worlds and multitudinous beings and in its order the soul<br \/>\nrises from birth to birth and follows its million forms, till in a last human<br \/>\nseries it opens to the consciousness and powers of its own divinity and returns<br \/>\nthrough them by a rapid illumination to the eternal superconscience. We find at<br \/>\nlast the commencement of a satisfying synthesis, some justification of<br \/>\nexistence, a meaningful consequence in rebirth, a use and a sufficient though<br \/>\nonly temporary significance for the great motion of the cosmos. On lines<br \/>\nvery.1ike these the modem mind, when it is disposed to accept rebirth, is<br \/>\ninclined to view it. But there is a too minor stress on the soul&#8217;s divine<br \/>\npotentialities, a haste of insistence on the escape into superconscience; the<br \/>\nsupreme Energy constructs too long and stupendous a preparation for so brief and<br \/>\nso insufficient a flowering. There is a lacuna here, some secret is still<br \/>\nmissing.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nThere<br \/>\nare certain limitations of our own thought over which all these solutions<br \/>\nstumble, and the chief of these obstacles are our sense of the mechanical nature<br \/>\nof the universe and our inability to see forward to a greater than our present<br \/>\ntype of humanity. We see the superconscient Spirit in its effulgence and freedom<br \/>\nand we see the universe in its inconscient bondage to the cycle of its<br \/>\nmechanical recurrences, or we see existence as an abstract entity and Nature as<br \/>\na mechanical force; the conscient soul stands between as a link between these<br \/>\nopposites, but it is itself so incomplete that we cannot find in this link the<br \/>\nsecret or make of it a strong master of reconciliation. Then we pronounce birth<br \/>\nto be an error of the soul and see our one chance of liberation in a shaking off<br \/>\nof these natal shackles and a violent reversion to supracosmic consciousness or<br \/>\nthe freedom of abstract being. But what if rebirth were in truth no long<br \/>\ndragging chain, but rather at first a ladder of the soul&#8217;s ascension and at last<br \/>\na succession of mighty spiritual opportunities? It will be so if the infinite<br \/>\nexistence is not what it seems to the logical intellect, an abstract entity, but<br \/>\nwhat it is to intuition and in deeper soul experience, a conscious spiritual<br \/>\nReality, and that Reality as real<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 120<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr align=\"left\" SIZE=\"2\" width=\"100%\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>here<br \/>\nas in any far-off absolute Superconscience. For then universal Nature would be<br \/>\nno longer a mechanism with no secret but its own inconscient mechanics and no<br \/>\nintention but the mere recurrent working; it would be the conscient energy of<br \/>\nthe universal Spirit hidden in the greatness of its processes, mahimanam asya.<br \/>\nAnd the soul ascending from the sleep of matter through plant and animal life to<br \/>\nthe human degree of the power of life and there battling with ignorance and<br \/>\nlimit to take possession of its royal and infinite kingdom would be the mediator<br \/>\nappointed to unfold in Nature the spirit who is hidden in her subtleties and her<br \/>\nvastnesses. That is the significance of life and the world which the idea of<br \/>\nevolutionary rebirth opens to us; life becomes at once a progressive ascending<br \/>\nseries for the unfolding of the Spirit. It acquires a supreme significance: the<br \/>\nway of the Spirit in its power is justified, no longer a foolish and empty<br \/>\ndream, an eternal delirium, great mechanical toil or termless futility, but the<br \/>\nsum of works of a large spiritual Will and Wisdom: the human soul and the cosmic<br \/>\nspirit look into each other&#8217;s eyes with a noble and divine meaning.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nThe<br \/>\nquestions which surround our existence elucidate themselves at once with a<br \/>\ncertain satisfactory fullness. What we are is a soul of the transcendent Spirit<br \/>\nand Self unfolding itself in the cosmos in a constant evolutionary embodiment of<br \/>\nwhich the physical side is only a pedestal of form corresponding in its<br \/>\nevolution to the ascending degrees of the spirit, but the spiritual growth is<br \/>\nthe real sense and motive. What is behind us is the past terms of the spiritual<br \/>\nevolution, the upward gradations of the spirit already climbed, by which through<br \/>\nconstant rebirth we have developed what we are, and are still developing this<br \/>\npresent and middle human term of the ascension. What is around us is the<br \/>\nconstant process of the unfolding in its universal aspect: the past terms are<br \/>\nthere contained in it, fulfilled, overpassed by us, but in general and various<br \/>\ntype still repeated as a support and background; the present terms are there not<br \/>\nas an unprofitable recurrence, but in active pregnant gestation of all that is<br \/>\nyet to be unfolded by the spirit, no irrational decimal recurrence helplessly<br \/>\nrepeating for ever its figures, but an expanding series of powers of the<br \/>\nInfinite. What is in front of us is the greater potentialities,<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 121<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr align=\"left\" SIZE=\"2\" width=\"100%\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>the<br \/>\nsteps yet unclimbed, the intended :mightier manifestations. Why we are here is<br \/>\nto be this means of the spirit&#8217;s upward self-unfolding. What we have to do with<br \/>\nourselves and our significances is to grow and open them to greater<br \/>\nsignificances of divine being, divine consciousness, divine power, divine<br \/>\ndelight and multiplied unity, and what we have to do with our environment is to<br \/>\nuse it consciously for increasing spiritual purposes and make it more and more a<br \/>\nmould for the ideal unfolding of the perfect nature and self-conception of the<br \/>\nDivine in the cosmos. This is surely the Will in things which moves, great and<br \/>\ndeliberate, unhasting, unresting, through whatever cycles, towards a greater and<br \/>\ngreater informing of its own finite figures with its own infinite Reality.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nAll<br \/>\nthis is to the mind that lives in the figures of the present, as it must be to<br \/>\nthe careful sceptical mind of positive inquiry, no more than a hypothesis; for<br \/>\nif evolution is an acknowledged idea, rebirth itself is only a supposition. Take<br \/>\nit so, but still it is a better hypothesis than the naive and childlike<br \/>\nreligious solutions which make the world an arbitrary caprice and man the<br \/>\nbreathing clay-puppet of an almighty human-minded Creator, and at least as good<br \/>\na hypothesis as the idea of a material inconscient Force somehow stumbling into<br \/>\na precarious, ephemeral, yet always continued phenomenon of consciousness, or a<br \/>\ncreative Life labouring in the Bergsonian formula oppressed but constant in the<br \/>\nmidst of a universal death, as good too as the idea of a mechanical working of<br \/>\nPrakriti, Maya, Shakti into which or in which a real or unreal individual<br \/>\nstumbles and wanders, dandramya- m<\/span>\u00e3<span>nah<br \/>\nandhena niyam<\/span>\u00e3<span>no yath<\/span>\u00e3<span>ndhah,<br \/>\n(*Beating<br \/>\nabout, like the blind led by the blind&quot;.)<br \/>\nuntil he can get out of it by a spiritual liberation. To a large philosophical<br \/>\nquestioning it will not seem in disagreement with the known lines of existence<br \/>\nor out of tune with the facts and necessities of being or the demands of reason<br \/>\nand intuition, even though it admits a yet unrealised factor, things yet to be;<br \/>\nfor that is implied in the very idea of evolution. It may modify, but does not<br \/>\nradically contradict any religious experience or aspiration, &#8211; for it is not<br \/>\ninconsistent either with a union with Superconscience or bliss in heavens beyond<br \/>\nor any personal or impersonal relation with the Divine,<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 122<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr align=\"left\" SIZE=\"2\" width=\"100%\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>since<br \/>\nthese may well be heights of the spiritual unfolding. Its truth will depend on<br \/>\nspiritual experience and effectuation; but chiefly on this momentous issue,<br \/>\nwhether there is anything in the soul-powers of man which promises a greater<br \/>\nterm of being than his present mentality and whether that greater term can be<br \/>\nmade effective for his embodied existence? That is the question which remains<br \/>\nover to be tested by psychological inquiry and the problem to be resolved in the<br \/>\ncourse of the spiritual evolution of man.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nThere<br \/>\nare transcendental questions of the metaphysical necessity, possibility, final<br \/>\nreality of an evolutionary manifestation of this kind, but they do not need to<br \/>\nbe brought in now and here; for the time we are concerned only with its reality<br \/>\nto experience and with the processional significance of rebirth, with the patent<br \/>\nfact that we are a part of some kind of manifestation and move forward in the<br \/>\npress of some kind of evolution. We see a Power at work and seek whether in that<br \/>\npower there is a conscious Will, an ordered development and have first to<br \/>\ndiscover whether it is the blind result of an organised Chance or inconscient<br \/>\nself-compelled Law or the plan of a universal Intelligence or Wisdom. Once we<br \/>\nfind that there is a conscious Spirit of which this movement is one expression,<br \/>\nor even admit that as our working hypothesis, we are bound to go on and ask<br \/>\nwhether this developing order ceases with what man now is or is laden with<br \/>\nsomething more towards which it and he have to grow, an unfinished expression, a<br \/>\ngreater unfound term, and in that case it is evidently towards that greater<br \/>\nthing that man must be growing; to prepare it and to realise it must be the<br \/>\nstage beyond in his destiny. Towards that new step in the evolution his history<br \/>\nas a race must be subconsciently tending and the powers of the highest<br \/>\nindividuals half-consciently striving to be delivered of this greater birth; and<br \/>\nsince the ascending order of rebirth follows always the degrees of the<br \/>\nevolution, that too cannot be meant to stop short or shoot off abruptly into the<br \/>\nsuperconscient without any regard to the intended step. The relation of our<br \/>\nbirth to life on other levels of consciousness and to whatever transcendent<br \/>\nSuper-conscience there may be, are important problems, but their solution must<br \/>\nbe something in harmony with the intention of the Spirit in the universe; all<br \/>\nmust be part of a unity, and not an<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 123<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<hr align=\"left\" SIZE=\"2\" width=\"100%\">\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"line-height:150%;margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\"><span>imbroglio<br \/>\nof spiritual incoherences and contradictions. Our first bridge from the known to<br \/>\nthe unknown on this line of thought must be to discover how far the yet<br \/>\nunfinished ladder of evolution can mount in the earth series. The whole<br \/>\nprocessional significance of rebirth may be wrapped up in that one yet<br \/>\nunattempted discovery.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"margin-top:0;margin-bottom:0\">\n<span><font size=\"2\">Page<br \/>\n\u2013 124<\/font><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Significance of Rebirth &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; THE one question which through all its complexities is the sum of philosophy and to which all human enquiry&#8230;<\/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-147","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\/147","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=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}