{"id":1557,"date":"2013-07-13T01:35:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1557"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:35:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:35:40","slug":"38-the-significance-of-rebirth-vol-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga\/38-the-significance-of-rebirth-vol-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-38_The Significance of Rebirth.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\tThe Significance of Rebirth<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE ONE<\/b> question which through all its complexities is the sum of
\n\t\t\tphilosophy and to which all human enquiry \t\t\tcomes round in the end, is the problem of ourselves,
\n\t\t\t\u2014why we are
\n\t\t\there and what we are, and what is behind and \t\t\tbefore and around us, and what we are to do with ourselves, our
\n\t\t\tinner significances and our outer environment In the idea \t\t\tof evolutionary rebirth, if we can once find it to be a truth and recognise its antecedents and consequences, we have a very sufficient
\n\t\t\tclue for an answer to all these connected sides of the one perpetual
\n\t\t\tquestion A spiritual evolution of which our universe is the scene
\n\t\t\tand earth its ground and stage, though its plan is still kept back
\n\t\t\tabove from our yet limited knowledge, \u2014this way of seeing existence
\n\t\t\tis a luminous key which we can fit into many doors of obscurity But
\n\t\t\twe have to look at it in the right focus, to get its true
\n\t\t\tproportions and, especially, to see it in its spiritual significance
\n\t\t\tmore than in its mechanical process The failure to do that rightly
\n\t\t\twill involve us in much philosophical finessing, drive on this side
\n\t\t\tor the other to exaggerated negations and leave our statement of it,
\n\t\t\thowever perfect may be its logic, yet unsatisfying and unconvincing
\n\t\t\tto the total intelligence and the complex soul of humanity.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe bare
\n\t\t\tidea of repeated births as the process of our soul existence does
\n\t\t\tnot carry us much farther than the simple material reality of this
\n\t\t\tsingle life in the body, that first fact of our conscious sensation and memory which is the occasion of all our
\n\t\t\tspeculations Behind our present starting-point and preceding \t\t\tthis one lappet of our race in the fields of being rebirth reminds
\n\t\t\tus indeed of a past, of pregnant anterior courses, a soul-existence
\n\t\t\tin \t\t\tmany previous bodies which have immediately created what we now are
\n\t\t\tBut to what use or advantage if there is no progressive \t\t\tsignificance in our pre-existence and our persevering continuity?   296<\/i>
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\n\t\t\tIn front of us it rolls far back from our vision the obstruction of
\n\t\t\tthe near blank wall of death; our journeying upon earth becomes \t\t\tless of a long or brief unretraceable road ending abruptly and
\n\t\t\tperplexingly in a cul-de-sac; our physical dissolution is robbed of \t\t\tthe cruellest poison of its sting For the burden of death to man
\n\t\t\tthe thinking, willing, feeling creature is not the loss of this poor \t\t\tcase or chariot of body, but it is the blind psychical finality
\n\t\t\tdeath suggests, the stupid material end of our will and thought and \t\t\taspiration and endeavour, the brute breaking off of the heart’s kind
\n\t\t\tand sweet relations and affections, the futile convicting \t\t\tdiscontinuity of that marvellous and all-supporting soul-sense which
\n\t\t\tgives us our radiant glimpses of the glory and delight of \t\t\texistence,
\n\t\t\t\u2014that is the discord and harsh inconsequence against
\n\t\t\twhich the thinking living creature revolts as incredible and inadmissible The fiery straining to immortality of our life, mind,
\n\t\t\tpsyche, which can assent to cessation only by turning in enmity \t\t\tupon their own flame of nature, and the denial of it which the dull
\n\t\t\tacquiescence of a body consenting inertly to death as to life \t\t\tbrings in on us, is the whole painful irreconcilable contradiction
\n\t\t\tof our double nature Rebirth takes the difficulty and solves it \t\t\tin the sense of a soul continuity with a beat of physical
\n\t\t\trepetition Like other non-materialistic solutions it gives the
\n\t\t\tright \t\t\tto the soul’s suggestion as against the body’s and sanctions the
\n\t\t\tdemand for survival, but unlike some others it justifies the bodily \t\t\tlife by its utility to the soul’s continued self-experience; our too
\n\t\t\tswift act in the body ceases to be an isolated accident or an \t\t\tabrupt interlude, it gets the justification of a fulfilling future
\n\t\t\tas well as a creating past for its otherwise haphazard actions \t\t\tand relations But simple persistence, mechanical continuity is not
\n\t\t\tenough; that is not all our psychical being signifies, not the \t\t\twhole luminous meaning of survival and continuity; without
\n\t\t\tascension, without expansion, without some growing up straight \t\t\tinto light in the strength of our spirit our higher members toil
\n\t\t\there uncompleted, our birth in matter is not justified by any \t\t\tadequate meaning We are very little better off than if death
\n\t\t\tremained our ending; for our life in the end becomes then an \t\t\tindefinitely continued and renewed and temporarily consequent  
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\n\t\t\tin place of an inconsequent, abruptly ended and soon convicted
\n\t\t\tfutility.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBy rebirth, too, this world around us, our environment, its
\n\t\t\tsuggestions, its opportunities are no longer left as the field of an \t\t\tephemeral physical flowering or as a Life which cares very little
\n\t\t\tfor and means very little to the individual, though it may offer \t\t\tmuch perhaps during its uncertain longer time to the species The
\n\t\t\tworld grows to us a field of soul-experience, a system of
\n\t\t\tsoul-recurrences, a means of self-effectuation, perhaps a crystallising
\n\t\t\tof the conscious being’s effective self-reflections But to what end \t\t\tif our recurrence is only a repetition or a hesitating fluctuation
\n\t\t\twithin a few set types with a very limited, always uncompleted \t\t\tcircle of accomplishment? For that is what it comes to, if there is
\n\t\t\tno upward outlet, no infinite progression or no escape or enlarging into the soul’s infinities Rebirth tells us that what we are is
\n\t\t\ta soul performing constantly the miracle of self-embodiment; but \t\t\twhy this embodiment, what this soul has to do here with itself and
\n\t\t\twhat use it is to make of this world which is given to it for \t\t\tits grandiose scene, its difficult, plastic material and its
\n\t\t\tbesieging battery of multiform stimulus and suggestions, is hardly
\n\t\t\tat all \t\t\tclearer than before But the perception of rebirth as an occasion
\n\t\t\tand means for a spiritual evolution fills in every hiatus It makes \t\t\tlife a significant ascension and not a mechanical recurrence; it
\n\t\t\topens to us the divine vistas of a growing soul; it makes the \t\t\tworlds a nexus of spiritual self-expansion; it sets us seeking, and
\n\t\t\twith a sure promise to all of a great finding now or hereafter, \t\t\tfor the self-knowledge of our spirit and the self-fulfilment of a
\n\t\t\twise and divine intention in our existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe oppressing sense of a circle of mechanical recurrence and the
\n\t\t\tpassionate seeking for an outlet of absolute escape \t\t\thaunted the earlier statements of the truth of rebirth and have left
\n\t\t\tupon them in spite of the depths they fathomed a certain \t\t\tstamp of unsatisfactory inadequacy,
\n\t\t\t\u2014not illogical, for they are
\n\t\t\tlogical enough, once their premisses are admitted, but unsatisfying, because they do not justify to us our being For, missing the
\n\t\t\tdivine utility of the cosmic workings, they fail to explain \t\t\tto us with a sufficiently large, patient, steadfast wholeness God  
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\n\t\t\tand ourselves and existence, negate too much, miss the positive
\n\t\t\tsense of our strain and leave sounding an immense note of spiritual futility and cosmic discord No statement of the sense of our
\n\t\t\tbeing or our non-being has laid a more insistent stress on \t\t\trebirth than did the Buddhistic; but it affirms strongly only the
\n\t\t\tmore strongly to negate It views the recurrence of birth as a \t\t\tprolonged mechanical chain; it sees, with a sense of suffering and
\n\t\t\tdistaste, the eternal revolving of an immense cosmic wheel \t\t\tof energy with no divine sense in its revolutions, its beginning an
\n\t\t\taffirmation of ignorant desire, its end a nullifying bliss of \t\t\tescape The wheel turns uselessly for ever disturbing the peace of
\n\t\t\tNon-being and creating souls whose one difficult chance and \t\t\twhole ideal business is to cease That conception of being is only
\n\t\t\tan extension from our first matter-governed sense of the \t\t\tuniverse, of our creation in it and of our decisive cessation It
\n\t\t\ttakes up at every point our first obvious view of the bodily life \t\t\tand restates all its circumstances in the terms of a more psychical
\n\t\t\tand spiritual idea of our existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat we see in the material universe is a stupendous system of
\n\t\t\tmechanical recurrences A huge mechanical recurrence \t\t\trules that which is long-enduring and vast; a similar but frailer
\n\t\t\tmechanical recurrence sways all that is ephemeral and small \t\t\tThe suns leap up into being, flame wheeling in space, squander force
\n\t\t\tby motion and fade and are extinct, again perhaps to blaze \t\t\tinto being and repeat their course, or else other suns take their
\n\t\t\tplace and fulfil their round The seasons of Time repeat their \t\t\tunending and unchanging cycle Always the tree of life puts forth
\n\t\t\tits various flowers and sheds them and breaks into the \t\t\tsame flowers in their recurring season The body of man is born and
\n\t\t\tgrows and decays and perishes, but it gives birth to other \t\t\tbodies which maintain the one same futile cycle What baffles the
\n\t\t\tintelligence in all this intent and persistent process is that it \t\t\tseems to have in it no soul of meaning, no significance except the
\n\t\t\tsimple fact of causeless and purposeless existence dogged or \t\t\trelieved by the annulling or the compensating fact of individual
\n\t\t\tcessation And this is because we perceive the mechanism, but \t\t\tdo not see the Power that uses the mechanism and the intention  
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\n\t\t\tin its use But the moment we know that there is a conscious Spirit
\n\t\t\tself-wise and infinite brooding upon the universe and a \t\t\tsecret slowly self-finding soul in things, we get to the necessity
\n\t\t\tof an idea in its consciousness, a thing conceived, willed, set in \t\t\tmotion and securely to be done, progressively to be fulfilled by
\n\t\t\tthese great deliberate workings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut the Buddhistic statement admits no self, spirit or eternal Being
\n\t\t\tin its rigorously mechanical economy of existence It takes \t\t\tonly the phenomenon of a constant becoming and elevates that from
\n\t\t\tthe physical to the psychical level As there is evident to our \t\t\tphysical mind an Energy, action, motion, capable of creating by its
\n\t\t\tmaterial forces the forms and powers of the material universe, \t\t\tso there is for the Buddhistic vision of things an Energy, action,
\n\t\t\tKarma, creating by its psychic powers of idea and association \t\t\tthis embodied soul life with its continuity of recurrences As the
\n\t\t\tbody is a dissoluble construction, a composite and combination, \t\t\tso the soul too is a dissoluble construction and combination; the
\n\t\t\tsoul life like the physical life sustains itself by a continuous
\n\t\t\tflux \t\t\tand repetition of the same workings and movements As this constant
\n\t\t\thereditary succession of lives is a prolongation of the \t\t\tone universal principle of life by a continued creation of similar
\n\t\t\tbodies, a mechanical recurrence, so the system of soul rebirth \t\t\ttoo is a constant prolongation of the principle of the soul life by
\n\t\t\ta continued creation through Karma of similar embodied \t\t\tassociations and experiences, a mechanical recurrence As the cause
\n\t\t\tof all this physical birth and long hereditary continuation \t\t\tis an obscure will to life in Matter, so the cause of continued soul
\n\t\t\tbirth is an ignorant desire or will to be in the universal energy \t\t\tof Karma As the constant wheelings of the universe and the motions
\n\t\t\tof its forces generate individual existences who escape \t\t\tfrom or end in being by an individual dissolution, so there is this
\n\t\t\tconstant wheel of becoming and motion of Karma which \t\t\tforms into individualised soul-lives that must escape from their
\n\t\t\tcontinuity by a dissolving cessation An extinction of the embodied consciousness is our apparent material end; for soul too the end
\n\t\t\tis extinction, the blank satisfaction of Nothingness or some \t\t\tineffable bliss of a superconscient Non-Being The affirmation of  
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\n\t\t\tthe mechanical occurrence or recurrence of birth is the essence of
\n\t\t\tthis view; but while the bodily life suffers an enforced end \t\t\tand dissolution, the soul life ceases by a willed self-extinction.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Buddhistic theory adds nothing to the first obvious \t\t\tsignificance of life except an indefinite prolongation by rebirth
\n\t\t\twhich is a burden, not a gain, and the spiritual greatness of the \t\t\tdiscipline of self-extinction,
\n\t\t\t\u2014the latter, no doubt, a thing of
\n\t\t\tgreat value The illusionist solution adds something, but does \t\t\tnot differ very greatly in its motive from the Buddhistic It sets
\n\t\t\tagainst the futile cosmic repetition an eternity of our own \t\t\tabsolute being; from the ignorance which creates the illusory
\n\t\t\tmechanism of a recurrence of rebirth, it escapes into the
\n\t\t\tself-knowledge of our ineffable existence That seems to bring in a
\n\t\t\tpositive strain and to give to our being an initial, a supporting \t\t\tand an eventual reality But the hiatus here is the absence of all
\n\t\t\ttrue and valid relation between this real being of ours and all our \t\t\tbirth and becoming The last event and end of our births is not
\n\t\t\trepresented as any absolute fulfilment of what we are, \u2014that \t\t\twould be a great, fruitful and magnificently positive philosophy,
\n\t\t\tnor as the final affirmation of a progressive self-finding, \u2014that \t\t\ttoo would give a noble meaning to our existence; it is a turning
\n\t\t\taway from the demand of the universal Spirit, a refusal of all \t\t\tthese cosmic ideas, imaginations, aspirations, action and
\n\t\t\teffectuation The way to find our being given us is an absolute
\n\t\t\tdenial \t\t\tof all our becoming We rise to self by a liberating negation of
\n\t\t\tourselves, and in the result the Idea in the universe pursues \t\t\tits monstrous and aimless road, but the individual ceases and is
\n\t\t\tblest in the cessation The motive of this way of thought is \t\t\tthe same oppressive sense of an ignorant mechanical cosmic
\n\t\t\trecurrence as in the Buddhistic and the same high impatient \t\t\tpassion of escape There is recognition of a divine source of life,
\n\t\t\tbut a non-recognition of any divine meaning in life And as for \t\t\trebirth it is reduced in its significance to a constant mechanism of
\n\t\t\tself-deception, and the will not to live is shown us as the \t\t\tlast acquisition, the highest good and the one desirable result of
\n\t\t\tliving The satisfaction which Illusionism gives, \u2014for it does \t\t\tgive a certain high austere kind of satisfaction to the intellect  
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\n\t\t\tand to one turn of spiritual tendency,
\n\t\t\t\u2014is the pressing to a last
\n\t\t\tpoint of the obvious antinomy between this great burdensome \t\t\tand tyrannous mechanism, the universe, and the spirit which feels
\n\t\t\titself of another and a diviner nature, the great relief to \t\t\ta soul passioning for freedom, but compelled to labour on as a
\n\t\t\tspring of the dull machine, of being able to cast away the \t\t\tcosmic burden, and finally the free and bare absoluteness of this
\n\t\t\tspiritual conclusion But it gives no real, because no fruitful \t\t\tanswer to the problem of God and man and the significance of life;
\n\t\t\tit only gets away from them by a skilful evasion and \t\t\ttakes away from them all significance, so that any question of the
\n\t\t\tsense and will in all this tremendous labour and throb and \t\t\tseeking loses meaning But the challenge of God’s universe to the
\n\t\t\tknowledge and strength of the human spirit cannot in the end be \t\t\tmet by man with a refusal or solved by an evasion, even though an
\n\t\t\tindividual soul may take refuge from the demand, as a man \t\t\tmay from the burden of action and pain in unconsciousness, in
\n\t\t\tspiritual trance or sleep or escape through its blank doors into \t\t\tthe Absolute Something the Spirit of the universe means by our
\n\t\t\tlabour in existence, some sense it has in these grandiose rhythms, \t\t\tand it has not undertaken them in an eternally enduring error or
\n\t\t\tmade them in a jest1<\/font><\/sup> To know that and possess it, to find and fulfil consciously the universal being’s hidden significances is the
\n\t\t\ttask given to the human spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere are other statements or colourings of the idea of rebirth
\n\t\t\twhich admit a more positive sense for existence and \t\t\tnourish a robuster confidence in the power and delight of being
\n\t\t\twhich are its secret fountains; but they all stumble in the end \t\t\tover the limitations of humanity and an inability to see any outlet
\n\t\t\tfrom their bondage in the order of the universe, because \t\t\tthey suppose this to be a thing fixed from of years sempiternal
\n\t\t\t  <\/i>  \u2014śāś<\/font>vatī<\/font>bhyah<\/font> samā<\/font>bhyah<\/font><\/i>, not an eternally developing and   \t\t\tcreative, but an immutable cycle The Vaishnava idea of the play of
\n\t\t\tGod, striking as it does into the secret of the hidden delight
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\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t1 The magnificent and pregnant phrase of the Koran, "Thinkest thou
\n\t\t\tthat I have made \t\t\tthe heavens and the earth and all that is between them in a jest?"  
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\n\t\t\tat the core of things, is a luminous ray shot into the very heart of
\n\t\t\tthe mystery; but isolated it cannot solve all its enigma There \t\t\tis more here in the world than a play of secret delight; there is
\n\t\t\tknowledge, there is power, there is a will and a mighty labour \t\t\tRebirth so looked at becomes too much of a divine caprice with no
\n\t\t\tobject but its playing, and ours is too great and strenuous \t\t\ta world to be so accounted for Such chequered delight as is given
\n\t\t\tto our becoming, is a game of disguises and seekings with \t\t\tno promise here of any divine completeness; its circles seem in the
\n\t\t\tend not worth following out and the soul turns gladly to its \t\t\trelease from the game’s unsatisfying mazes The Tantric solution
\n\t\t\tshows us a supreme superconscient Energy which casts itself out \t\t\there into teeming worlds and multitudinous beings and in its order
\n\t\t\tthe soul rises from birth to birth and follows its million \t\t\tforms, till in a last human series it opens to the consciousness and
\n\t\t\tpowers of its own divinity and returns through them by a rapid \t\t\tillumination to the eternal superconscience We find at last the
\n\t\t\tcommencement of a satisfying synthesis, some justification of \t\t\texistence, a meaningful consequence in rebirth, a use and a
\n\t\t\tsufficient though only temporary significance for the great motion \t\t\tof the cosmos On lines very like these the modern mind, when it is
\n\t\t\tdisposed to accept rebirth, is inclined to view it But there \t\t\tis a too minor stress on the soul’s divine potentialities, a haste
\n\t\t\tof insistence on the escape into superconscience; the supreme \t\t\tEnergy constructs too long and stupendous a preparation for so brief
\n\t\t\tand so insufficient a flowering.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is a lacuna here, \t\t\tsome secret is still missing There are certain limitations of our
\n\t\t\town thought over which \t\t\tall these solutions stumble, and the chief of these obstacles are
\n\t\t\tour sense of the mechanical nature of the universe and our \t\t\tinability to see forward to a greater than our present type of
\n\t\t\thumanity We see the superconscient Spirit in its effulgence and \t\t\tfreedom and we see the universe in its inconscient bondage to the
\n\t\t\tcycle of its mechanical recurrences, or we see existence as \t\t\tan abstract entity and Nature as a mechanical force; the conscient
\n\t\t\tsoul stands between as a link between these opposites, \t\t\tbut it is itself so incomplete that we cannot find in this link  
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\n\t\t\tthe secret or make of it a strong master of reconciliation Then we
\n\t\t\tpronounce birth to be an error of the soul and see our one \t\t\tchance of liberation in a shaking off of these natal shackles and a
\n\t\t\tviolent reversion to supracosmic consciousness or the freedom \t\t\tof abstract being But what if rebirth were in truth no long
\n\t\t\tdragging chain, but rather at first a ladder of the soul’s ascension \t\t\tand at last a succession of mighty spiritual opportunities? It will
\n\t\t\tbe so if the infinite existence is not what it seems to the logical \t\t\tintellect, an abstract entity, but what it is to intuition and in
\n\t\t\tdeeper soul experience, a conscious spiritual Reality, and that \t\t\tReality as real here as in any far off absolute Superconscience For
\n\t\t\tthen universal Nature would be no longer a mechanism with \t\t\tno secret but its own inconscient mechanics and no intention but the
\n\t\t\tmere recurrent working; it would be the conscient energy \t\t\tof the universal Spirit hidden in the greatness of its processes,  mahimanam asya<\/i> And the soul ascending from the sleep of matter through
\n\t\t\tplant and animal life to the human degree of \t\t\tthe power of life and there battling with ignorance and limit to
\n\t\t\ttake possession of its royal and infinite kingdom would be the \t\t\tmediator appointed to unfold in Nature the spirit who is hidden in
\n\t\t\ther subtleties and her vastnesses That is the significance of \t\t\tlife and the world which the idea of evolutionary rebirth opens to
\n\t\t\tus; life becomes at once a progressive ascending series for the \t\t\tunfolding of the Spirit It acquires a supreme significance: the way
\n\t\t\tof the Spirit in its power is justified, no longer a foolish \t\t\tand empty dream, an eternal delirium, great mechanical toil or
\n\t\t\ttermless futility, but the sum of works of a large spiritual Will \t\t\tand Wisdom: the human soul and the cosmic spirit look into each
\n\t\t\tother’s eyes with a noble and divine meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe questions which surround our existence elucidate themselves at
\n\t\t\tonce with a certain satisfactory fullness What we are \t\t\tis a soul of the transcendent Spirit and Self unfolding itself in
\n\t\t\tthe cosmos in a constant evolutionary embodiment of which \t\t\tthe physical side is only a pedestal of form corresponding in its
\n\t\t\tevolution to the ascending degrees of the spirit, but the spiritual \t\t\tgrowth is the real sense and motive What is behind us is the past
\n\t\t\tterms of the spiritual evolution, the upward gradations of  
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\n\t\t\tthe spirit already climbed, by which through constant rebirth we
\n\t\t\thave developed what we are, and are still developing this present \t\t\tand middle human term of the ascension What is around us is the
\n\t\t\tconstant process of the unfolding in its universal aspect: the \t\t\tpast terms are there contained in it, fulfilled, overpassed by us,
\n\t\t\tbut in general and various type still repeated as a support and \t\t\tbackground; the present terms are there not as an unprofitable
\n\t\t\trecurrence, but in active pregnant gestation of all that is yet \t\t\tto be unfolded by the spirit, no irrational decimal recurrence
\n\t\t\thelplessly repeating for ever its figures, but an expanding series \t\t\tof powers of the Infinite What is in front of us is the greater
\n\t\t\tpotentialities, the steps yet unclimbed, the intended mightier \t\t\tmanifestations Why we are here is to be this means of the spirit’s
\n\t\t\tupward self-unfolding What we have to do with ourselves and our significances is to grow and open them to greater
\n\t\t\tsignificances of divine being, divine consciousness, divine power, \t\t\tdivine delight and multiplied unity, and what we have to do with our
\n\t\t\tenvironment is to use it consciously for increasing spiritual \t\t\tpurposes and make it more and more a mould for the ideal unfolding
\n\t\t\tof the perfect nature and self-conception of the Divine in \t\t\tthe cosmos This is surely the Will in things which moves, great and
\n\t\t\tdeliberate, unhasting, unresting, through whatever cycles, \t\t\ttowards a greater and greater informing of its own finite figures
\n\t\t\twith its own infinite Reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll this is to the mind that lives in the figures of the present, as
\n\t\t\tit must be to the careful sceptical mind of positive inquiry, no
\n\t\t\tmore than a hypothesis; for if evolution is an acknowledged idea,
\n\t\t\trebirth itself is only a supposition Take it so, but still it is a
\n\t\t\tbetter hypothesis than the naive and childlike religious solutions
\n\t\t\twhich make the world an arbitrary caprice and man the breathing clay puppet of an almighty human-minded Creator, and at least as
\n\t\t\tgood a hypothesis as the idea of a material inconscient \t\t\tForce somehow stumbling into a precarious, ephemeral, yet always
\n\t\t\tcontinued phenomenon of consciousness, or a creative Life \t\t\tlabouring in the Bergsonian formula oppressed but constant in the
\n\t\t\tmidst of a universal death, as good too as the idea of a \t\t\tmechanical working of Prakriti, Maya, Shakti into which or in  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\twhich a real or unreal individual stumbles and wanders,
\n\t\t\tdandramyamāno andhena nīyamāno yathā<\/font>ndhah<\/font><\/i>,2
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/sup>until he can get      out of it by a spiritual liberation To a large philosophical questioning it will not seem in disagreement with the known lines of
\n\t\t\texistence or out of tune with the facts and necessities of being \t\t\tor the demands of reason and intuition, even though it admits a yet
\n\t\t\tunrealised factor, things yet to be; for that is implied in \t\t\tthe very idea of evolution It may modify, but does not radically
\n\t\t\tcontradict any religious experience or aspiration, \u2014for it is not \t\t\tinconsistent either with a union with Superconscience or bliss in
\n\t\t\theavens beyond or any personal or impersonal relation with the \t\t\tDivine, since these may well be heights of the spiritual unfolding
\n\t\t\tIts truth will depend on spiritual experience and effectuation; but \t\t\tchiefly on this momentous issue, whether there is anything in the
\n\t\t\tsoul-powers of man which promises a greater term of being \t\t\tthan his present mentality and whether that greater term can be made
\n\t\t\teffective for his embodied existence That is the question \t\t\twhich remains over to be tested by psychological inquiry and the
\n\t\t\tproblem to be resolved in the course of the spiritual evolution \t\t\tof man
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere are transcendental questions of the metaphysical necessity, possibility, final reality of an evolutionary manifestation
\n\t\t\tof this kind, but they do not need to be brought in now and here; \t\t\tfor the time we are concerned only with its reality to experience
\n\t\t\tand with the processional significance of rebirth, with the patent \t\t\tfact that we are a part of some kind of manifestation and move
\n\t\t\tforward in the press of some kind of evolution We see a Power \t\t\tat work and seek whether in that power there is a conscious Will, an
\n\t\t\tordered development and have first to discover whether \t\t\tit is the blind result of an organised Chance or inconscient
\n\t\t\tself-compelled Law or the plan of a universal Intelligence or \t\t\tWisdom Once we find that there is a conscious Spirit of which this
\n\t\t\tmovement is one expression, or even admit that as our \t\t\tworking hypothesis, we are bound to go on and ask whether this
\n\t\t\tdeveloping order ceases with what man now is or is laden
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t2 "Beating about like the blind led by the blind"  
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\twith something more towards which it and he have to grow, an
\n\t\t\tunfinished expression, a greater unfound term, and in that \t\t\tcase it is evidently towards that greater thing that man must be
\n\t\t\tgrowing; to prepare it and to realise it must be the stage \t\t\tbeyond in his destiny Towards that new step in the evolution his
\n\t\t\thistory as a race must be subconsciently tending and the \t\t\tpowers of the highest individuals half consciently striving to be
\n\t\t\tdelivered of this greater birth; and since the ascending order \t\t\tof rebirth follows always the degrees of the evolution, that too
\n\t\t\tcannot be meant to stop short or shoot off abruptly into the \t\t\tsuperconscient without any regard to the intended step The relation
\n\t\t\tof our birth to life on other levels of consciousness \t\t\tand to whatever transcendent Superconscience there may be, are
\n\t\t\timportant problems, but their solution must be something \t\t\tin harmony with the intention of the Spirit in the universe; all
\n\t\t\tmust be part of a unity, and not an imbroglio of spiritual incoherences and contradictions Our first bridge from the known to the
\n\t\t\tunknown on this line of thought must be to discover how \t\t\tfar the yet unfinished ladder of evolution can mount in the earth
\n\t\t\tseries The whole processional significance of rebirth may be \t\t\twrapped up in that one yet unattempted discovery<\/span><\/p>\n

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

The Significance of Rebirth   THE ONE question which through all its complexities is the sum of philosophy and to which all human enquiry comes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","wpcat-36-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557","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=1557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}