{"id":156,"date":"2013-07-13T01:26:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=156"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:26:16","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:26:16","slug":"19-rebirth-and-karma-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/19-rebirth-and-karma-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-19_Rebirth and Karma.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nRebirth
\nand Karma<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/span>                      
\n<\/span><\/span>    T<\/span><\/b>HE
\nancient idea of Karma was inseparably connected with a belief in the soul’s
\ncontinual rebirth in new bodies. And this close association was not a mere
\naccident, but a perfectly intelligible and indeed inevitable union of two
\nrelated truths which are needed for each other’s completeness and can with
\ndifficulty exist in separation. These two things are the soul side and the
\nnature side of one and the same cosmic sequence. Rebirth is meaningless without
\nKarma, and Karma has no fount of inevitable origin and no rational and no moral
\njustification if it is not an instrumentality for the sequences of the soul’s
\ncontinuous experience. If we believe that the soul is repeatedly reborn in the
\nbody, we must believe also that there is some link between the lives that
\npreceded and the lives that follow and that the past of the soul has an effect
\non its future; and that is the spiritual essence of the law of Karma. To deny it
\nwould be to establish a reign of the most chaotic incoherence, such as we find
\nonly in the leaps and turns of the mind in dream or in the thoughts of madness,
\nand hardly even there. And if this existence were, as the cosmic pessimist
\nimagines, a dream or an illusion or, worse, as Schopenhauer would have it, a
\ndelirium and insanity of the soul, we might accept some such law of inconsequent
\nconsequence. But, taken even at its worst, this world of life differs from
\ndream, illusion and madness by its plan of fine, complex and subtle sequences,
\nthe hanging together and utility even of its discords, the general and
\nparticular harmony of its relations, which, if they are not the harmony we would
\nhave, not our longed-for ideal harmony, has still at every point the stamp of a
\nWisdom and an Idea at work; it is not the act of a Mind in tatters or a machine
\nin dislocation. The continuous existence of the soul in rebirth must signify an
\nevolution if not of the self, for that is said to be immutable, yet of its more
\noutward active soul or self of experience. This evolution is not possible if
\nthere is not a connected sequence from life to life, a result of action<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 153<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and
\nexperience, an evolutionary consequence to the soul, a law of Karma.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nAnd
\non the side of Karma, if we give to that its integral and not a truncated
\nmeaning, we must admit rebirth for the sufficient field of its action. For Karma
\nis not quite the same thing as a material or substantial law of cause and
\neffect, the antecedent and its mechanical consequence. That would perfectly
\nadmit of a Karma which could be carried on in time and the results come with
\ncertainty in their proper place, their just degree by a working out of the
\nbalance of forces, but need not in any way touch the human originator who might
\nhave passed away from the scene by the time the result of his acts got into
\nmanifestation. A mechanical Nature could well visit the sins of the fathers not
\non them, but on their fourth or their four-hundredth generation, as indeed this
\nphysical Nature does, and no objection of injustice or any other mental or moral
\nobjection could rise, for the only justice or reason of a mechanism is that it
\nshall work according to the law of its structure and the fixed eventuality of
\nits force in action. We cannot demand from it a mind or a moral equity or any
\nkind of supraphysical responsibility. The universal energy grinds out
\ninconsciently its effects and individuals are only fortuitous or subordinate
\nmeans of its workings; the soul itself, if there is a soul, makes only a part of
\nthe mechanism of Nature, exists not for itself, but as a utility for her
\nbusiness. But Karma is more than a mechanical law of antecedent and consequence.
\nKarma is action, there is a thing done and a doer and an active consequence;
\nthese three are the three joints, the three locks, the three sandhis<\/i> of
\nthe connexus of Karma. And it is a complex mental, moral and physical working;
\nfor the law of it is not less true of the mental and moral than of the physical
\nconsequence of the act to the doer. The will and the idea are the driving force
\nof the action, and the momentum does not come from some commotion in my chemical
\natoms or some working of ion and electron or some weird biological
\neffervescence. Therefore the act and consequence must have some relation to the
\nwill and the idea and there must be a mental and moral consequence to the soul
\nwhich has the will and idea. That, if we admit the individual as a real being,
\nsignifies<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 154<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

a
\ncontinuity of act and consequence to him and therefore rebirth for a field of
\nthis working. It is evident that in one life we do not and cannot labour out and
\nexhaust all the values and powers of that life, but only carryon a past thread,
\nweave out something in the present, prepare infinitely more for the future.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nThis
\nconsequence of rebirth would not follow from the very nature of Karma if there
\nwere only an All-Soul of the universe. For then it would be that which is
\ncarrying on in myriads of forms its past, working out some present result,
\nspinning yarn of Karma for a future weft of consequence. It is the All-Soul
\nwhich would be the originator, would upbear the force of the act, would receive
\nand exhaust or again take up for farther uses the returning force of the
\nconsequence. Nothing essential would depend on its doing all these things
\nthrough the same individual mask of its being. For the individual would only be
\na prolonged moment of the All-Soul, and what it originated in this moment of its
\nbeing which I call myself, might very well produce its result on some other
\nmoment of the same being which from the point of view of my ego would be
\nsomebody quite different from and unconnected with myself. There would be no
\ninjustice, no unreason in such an apparently vicarious reaping of the fruit or
\nsuffering of the consequence; for what has a mask, though it be a living and
\nsuffering mask, to do with these things? And, in fact, in the nature of life in
\nthe material universe a working out of the result of the action of one in the
\nlives of many others, an effect of the individual’s action on the group or the
\nwhole is everywhere the law. What I sow in this hour, is reaped by my posterity
\nfor several generations and we can then call it the Karma of the family. What
\nthe men of today as community or people resolve upon and execute, comes back
\nwith a blessing or a sword upon the future of their race when they themselves
\nhave passed away and are no longer there to rejoice or to suffer; and that we
\ncan speak of as the Karma of the nation. Mankind as a whole too has a Karma;
\nwhat it wrought in its past, will shape its future destiny; individuals seem
\nonly to be temporary units of human thought, will, nature who act according to
\nthe compulsion of the soul in humanity and disappear; but the Karma of the race
\nwhich they<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 155<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

 have
\nhelped to form continues through the centuries; the, millenniums, the cycles.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nBut
\nwe can see, when we look into ourselves, that this relation of the individual to
\nthe whole has a different significance; it does not mean that I have no
\nexistence except as a more or less protracted moment in the cosmic becoming of
\nthe All-Soul: that too is only a superficial appearance and much subtler and
\ngreater is the truth of my being. For the original and eternal Reality, the
\nAlpha and Omega, the Godhead is neither separate in the individual nor is he
\nonly and solely a Pantheos, a cosmic spirit. He is at once the eternal
\nindividual and the eternal All- Soul of this and many universes, and at the same
\ntime he is much more than these things. This universe might end, but he would
\nstill be; and I too, though the universe might end, could still exist in him;
\nand all these eternal souls would still exist in him. But as his being is for
\never, so the succession of his creations too is for ever; if one creation were
\nto come to an end, it would be only that another might begin and the new would
\ncarry on with a fresh commencement and initiation the possibility that had not
\nbeen worked out in the old, for there can be no end to the self- manifestation
\nof the Infinite. N<\/i><\/span>\u00e3sti
\nanto vistarasya me<\/span><\/i>. The
\nuniverse finds itself in me, even as I find myself in the universe, because we
\nare this face and that face of the one eternal Reality, and individual being is
\nas much needed as universal being to work out this manifestation. The individual
\nvision of things is as true as the universal vision, both are ways of the
\nself-seeing of the Eternal. I may now see myself as a creature contained in the
\nuniverse; but when I come to self-knowledge, I see too the universe to be a
\nthing contained in myself, subtly by implication in my individuality, amply in
\nthe great universalised self I then become. These are data of an ancient
\nexperience, things known and voiced of old, though they may seem shadowy and
\ntranscendental to the positive modern mind which has long pored so minutely on
\noutward things that it has become dazed and blind to any greater light and is
\nonly slowly recovering the power to see through its folds; but they are for all
\nthat always valid and can be experienced today by anyone of us who chooses to
\nturn to the deepest way of the inner experience. Modem thought and science, if
\nwe<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 156<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

look
\nat the new knowledge given us in its whole, do not contradict them, but only
\ntrace for us the outward effect and workings of these realities; for always we
\nfind in the end that truth of self is not contradicted, but reproduced and made
\neffectual here by law of Energy and law of Matter.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nThe
\nnecessity of rebirth, if we look at it from the outward side, from the side of
\nenergy and process, stands upon a persistent and insistent fact which supervenes
\nalways upon the generality of common law and kind and constitutes the most
\nintimate secret of the wonder of existence, the uniqueness of the individual.
\nAnd this uniqueness is everywhere, but appears as a subordinate factor only in
\nthe lower ranges of existence. It becomes more and more important and pronounced
\nas we rise in the scale, enlarges in mind, gets to enormous proportions when we
\ncome to the things of the spirit. That would seem to indicate that the cause of
\nthis significant uniqueness is something bound up with the very nature of
\nSpirit; it is something it held in itself and is bringing out more and more as
\nit emerges out of material Nature into self-conscience. The laws of being are at
\nbottom one for all of us, because all existence is one existence; one Spirit,
\none self, one mind, one life, one energy of process is at work; one will and
\nwisdom has planned or has evolved from itself the whole business of creation.
\nAnd yet in this oneness there is a persistent variety, which we see first in the
\nform of a communal variation. There is everywhere a group-energy, group-life,
\ngroup-mind, and if soul is, then we have reason to believe that however elusive
\nit may be to our seizing, there is a group-soul which is the support and
\nfoundation – some would call it the result – of this communal variety. That
\ngives us a ground for a group-karma. For the group or collective soul renews and
\nprolongs itself and in man at least develops its nature and experience from
\ngeneration to generation. And who knows whether, when one form of it is
\ndisintegrated, community or nation, it may not wait for and assume other forms
\nin which its will of being, its type of nature and mentality, its attempt of
\nexperience is carried forward, migrates, one might almost say, into new-born
\ncollective bodies, in other ages or cycles? Mankind itself has this separate
\ncollective soul and collective existence. And on that community the community of
\nKarma is founded;<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 157<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

the
\naction and development of the whole produces consequence of Karma and experience
\nfor the individual and the totality even as the action and development of the
\nindividual produces consequences and experience for others, for the group, for
\nthe whole. And the individual is there; you cannot reduce him to a nullity or an
\nillusion; he is real, alive, unique. The communal soul-variation mounts up from
\nthe rest, exceeds, brings in or brings out something more, something new, adds
\nnovel powers in the evolution. The individual mounts and exceeds in the same way
\nfrom the community. It is in him, on his highest heights that we get the
\nflame-crest of self-manifestation by which the One finds himself in Nature.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nAnd
\nthe question is how does that come about at all? I enter into birth, not in a
\nseparate being, but in the life of the whole, and therefore I inherit the life
\nof the whole. I am born physically by a generation which is a carrying on of its
\nunbroken history; the body, life, physical mentality of all past being prolongs
\nitself in me and I must therefore undergo the law of heredity; the parent, says
\nthe Upanishad, re-creates himself by the energy in his seed and is reborn in the
\nchild. But as soon as I begin to develop, a new, an independent and overbearing
\nfactor comes in, which is not my parents nor my ancestry, nor past mankind, but
\nI, my own self. And this is the really important, crowning, central factor. What
\nmatters most in my life, is not my heredity; that only gives me my opportunity
\nor my obstacle, my good or my bad material, and it has not by any means been
\nshown that I draw all from that source. What matters supremely is what I make of
\nmy heredity and not what my heredity makes of me. The past of the world, bygone
\nhumanity, my ancestors are there in me; but still I myself am the artist of my
\nself, my life, my actions. And there is the present of the world, of humanity,
\nthere are my contemporaries as well as my ancestors; the life of my environment
\ntoo enters into me, offers me a new material, shapes me by its influence, lays
\nits direct or its indirect touch on my being. I am invaded, changed, partly
\nre-created by the environing being and action in which I am and act. But here,
\nagain, the individual comes in subtly and centrally as the decisive power. What
\nis supremely important is what I make of all<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 158<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

this
\nsurrounding and invading present and not what it makes of me. And in the
\ninteraction of individual and general Karma in which others are causes and
\nproduce an effect in my existence and I am a cause and produce an effect on
\nthem, I live for others, whether I would have it so or no, and others live for
\nme and for all. Still the central power of my psychology takes its colour from
\nthis seeing that I live for my self, and for others or for the world only as an
\nextension of my self, as a thing with which I am bound up in some kind of
\noneness. I seem to be a soul, self or spirit who constantly with the assistance
\nof all create out of my past and present my future being and myself too help in
\nthe surrounding creative evolution.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nWhat
\nthen is this all-important and independent power in me and what is the beginning
\nand the end of its self-creation? Has it, even though it is something
\nindependent of the physical and vital present and past which gives to it so much
\nof its material, itself no past and no future? Is it something which suddenly
\nemerges from the All-Soul at my birth and ceases at my death? Is its insistence
\non self-creation, on making something of itself for itself, for its own future
\nand not only for its fleeting present and the future of the race, a vain
\npreoccupation, a gross parasitical error? That would contradict all that we see
\nof the law of the world-being; it would not reduce our life to a greater
\nconsistency with the frame of things, but would bring in a freak element and an
\ninconsistency with the pervading principle. It is reasonable to suppose that
\nthis powerful independent element which supervenes and works upon the physical
\nand vital evolution, was in the past and will be in the future. It is reasonable
\nalso to suppose that it did not come in suddenly from some unconnected existence
\nand does not pass out after one brief intervention; its close connection with
\nthe life of the world is rather a continuation of a long past connection. And
\nthis brings in at once the whole necessity of past birth and Karma. I am a
\npersis- tent being who pursue my evolution within the persistent being of the
\nworld. I have evolved my human birth and I help constantly in the human
\nevolution. I have created by my past Karma my own conditions and my relations
\nwith the life of others and the general Karma. That shapes my heredity, my
\nenvironment,<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 159<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

my
\naffinities, my connections, my material, my opportunities and obstacles, a part
\nof my predestined powers and results, not arbitrarily predestined but
\npredetrmined by my own stage of nature and past action, and on this groundwork I
\nbuild new Karma and farther strengthen or subtilise my power of natural being,
\nenlarge experience, go on with my soul evolution. This process is woven in with
\nthe universal evolution and all its lines are included in the web of being, but
\nit is not merely a jutting point or moment of it or a brief tag shot into the
\ntissue. That is what rebirth means in the history of my manifested self and of
\nuniversal being.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nThe
\nold idea of rebirth errs on the contrary by an excessive individualism. Too
\nself-concentrated, it treated one’s rebirth and Karma as too much one’s own
\nsingle affair, a sharply separate movement in the whole, leaned too much on
\none’s own concern with one’s self and even while it admitted universal relations
\nand a unity with the whole, yet taught the human being to see in life
\nprincipally a condition and means of his own spiritual benefit and separate
\nsalvation. That came from the view of the universe as a movement which proceeds
\nout of something beyond, something from which each being enters into life and
\nreturns out of it to its source, and the absorbing idea of that return as the
\none thing that at all matters. Our being in the world, so treated, came in the
\nend to be regarded as an episode and in sum and essence an unhappy and
\ndiscreditable episode in the changeless eternity of the Spirit. But this was too
\nsummary a view of the will and the ways of the Spirit in existence. Certain it
\nis that while we are here, our rebirth or Karma, even while it runs on its own
\nlines, is intimately one with the same lines in the universal existence. But my
\nself-knowledge and self-finding too do not abolish my oneness with other life
\nand other beings. An intimate universality is part of the glory of spiritual
\nperfection. This idea of universality, of oneness not only with God or the
\neternal Self in me, but with all humanity and other beings, is growing to be the
\nmost prominent strain in our minds and it has to be taken more largely into
\naccount in any future" idea or computation of the significance of rebirth
\nand Karma. It was admitted in old time; the Buddhist law of compassion was a
\nrecognition of its<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 160<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\n<\/div>\n

importance;
\nbut it has to be given a still more pervading power in the general significance.<\/p>\n

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

         
\nThe
\nself-effectuation of the Spirit in the world is the truth on which we take our
\nfoundation, a great, a long self-weaving in time. Rebirth is the continuity of
\nthat self-effectuation in the individual, the persistence of the thread; Karma
\nis the process, a force, a work of energy and consequence in the material world,
\nan inner and an outer will, an action and mental, moral, dynamic consequence in
\nthe soul evolution of which the material world is a constant scene. That is the
\nconception; the rest is a question of the general and particular laws, the way
\nin which Karma works out and helps the purpose of the Spirit in birth and life.
\nAnd whatever those laws and ways may be, they must be subservient to this
\nspiritual self-effectuation and take from it all their meaning and value. The
\nlaw is a means, a line of working for the Spirit, and does not exist for its own
\nsake or for the service of any abstract idea. Idea and law of working are only
\ndirection and road for the soul’s progress in the steps of its existence.<\/p>\n

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

\nPage
\n\u2013 161<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rebirth and Karma                               THE ancient idea of Karma was inseparably connected with a belief in the soul’s continual rebirth in new bodies….<\/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-156","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\/156","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=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}