{"id":1614,"date":"2013-07-13T01:36:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1614"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:36:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:36:01","slug":"50-appendix-i-the-tangle-of-karma-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\/50-appendix-i-the-tangle-of-karma-vol-13-essays-in-philosophy-and-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-50_APPENDIX I The Tangle of Karma.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\nThe Tangle of Karma <\/font> <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nO<\/font>BVIOUSLY<\/b> we must leave far behind us the current
\ntheory of Karma and its shallow attempt to justify the ways of the Cosmic Spirit by forcing on them a
\ncrude identity with the summary notions of law and justice, the crude and often savagely primitive methods of reward and
\npunishment, lure and deterrent dear to the surface human mind There is here a more authentic and spiritual truth at the base
\nof Nature’s action and a far less mechanically calculable movement Here is no rigid and narrow ethical law bound down
\nto a petty human significance, no teaching of a child soul by a mixed system of blows and lollipops, no unprofitable wheel
\nof a brutal cosmic justice automatically moved in the traces of man’s ignorant judgments and earthy desires and instincts
\nLife and rebirth do not follow these artificial constructions, but a movement spiritual and intimate to the deepest intention of
\nNature A cosmic Will and Wisdom observant of the ascending march of the soul’s consciousness and experience as it emerges
\nout of subconscient Matter and climbs to its own luminous divinity fixes the norm and constantly enlarges the lines of the
\nlaw —or, let us say, since law is a too mechanical conception, —the truth of Karma.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nFor what we understand by law is a single immutably habitual movement or recurrence in Nature fruitful of a determined
\nsequence of things and that sequence must be clear, precise, limited to its formula, invariable If it is not that, if there is too
\nmuch flexibility of movement, if there intervenes too embarrassing a variety or criss-cross of action and reaction, a too rich
\ncomplex of forces, the narrow uncompromising incompetence of our logical intelligence finds there not law but an incertitude
\nand a chaos Our reason must be allowed to cut and hew and arbitrarily select its suitable circumstances, isolate its immutable
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\ndata, skeletonise or mechanise life; otherwise it stands
\nopen-mouthed at a loss unable to think with precision or act with
\neffect in a field of subtle and indefinite measures It must be allowed to deal with mighty Nature as it deals with human
\nsociety, politics, ethics, conduct; for it can understand and do good work only where it is licensed to build and map out its
\nown artificial laws, erect a clear, precise, rigid, infallible system and leave as little room as possible for the endless flexibility and
\nvariety and complexity that presses from the Infinite upon our mind and life Moved by this need we endeavour to forge for
\nour own souls and for the cosmic Spirit even such a single and inflexible law of Karma as we would ourselves have made, had
\nthe rule of the world been left to us Not this mysterious universe would we have made, but the pattern of a rational cosmos fitted
\nto our call for a simple definite guidance in action and for a well-marked thumb rule facile and clear to our limited intelligence
\nBut this force we call Karma turns out to be no such precise and invariable mechanism as we hoped; it is rather a thing of
\nmany planes that changes its face and walk and very substance as it mounts from level to higher level, and on each plane even
\nit is not one movement but an indefinite complex of many spiral movements hard enough for us to harmonise together or to find
\nout whatever secret harmony unknown to us and incalculable these complexities are weaving out in this mighty field of the
\ndealings of the soul with Nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nLet us then call Karma no longer a Law, but rather the
\nmany-sided dynamic truth of all action and life, the organic movement here of the Infinite That was what the ancient thinkers saw in
\nit before it was cut and shredded by lesser minds and turned into an easy and misleading popular formula Action of Karma
\nfollows and takes up many potential lines of the spirit into its multitudinous surge, many waves and streams of combining
\nand disputing world-forces; it is the processus of the creative Infinite; it is the long and multiform way of the progression of
\nthe individual and the cosmic soul in Nature Its complexities cannot be unravelled by our physical mind ever bound up in the
\nsuperficial appearance, nor by our vital mind of desire stumbling   <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tforward in the cloud of its own instincts and longings and rash determinations through the maze of these myriad favouring and
\nopposing forces that surround and urge and drive and hamper us from the visible and invisible worlds Nor can it be perfectly
\nclassified, accounted for, tied up in bundles by the precisions of our logical intelligence in its inveterate search for clear-cut
\ndogmas On that day only shall we perfectly decipher what is now to us Nature’s obscure hieroglyph of Karma when there
\nrises in our enlarged consciousness the supramental way of knowledge The supramental eye can see a hundred meeting and
\ndiverging motions in one glance and envelop in the largeness of its harmonising vision of Truth all that to our minds is clash and
\nopposition and the collision and interlocked strife of numberless contending truths and powers Truth to the supramental sight is
\nat once single and infinite and the complexities of its play serve to bring out with an abundant ease the rich significance of the
\nEternal’s many-sided oneness.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe complexity of the lines of Karma is much greater than
\nwe have yet seen in the steps of thought that we have been obliged to cut in order to climb to the summits where they
\nconverge For the convenience of the mind we have chosen to speak as if there were four quite separate planes each with its
\nseparate lines of Karma, —the physical with its fixed law and very easily perceptible return to our energies, the life plane,
\ncomplex, full of doubtful rewards and dangerous rebounds, rich promise and dark menace, the mind plane with its high
\ntrenchant unattainable absolutes each in its separateness so difficult to embody and all so hard to reconcile and combine and
\nthe supramental where Nature’s absolutes are reached, her relativities ordered to their place and all these lower movements
\ndelivered and harmonised because they have found luminously their inner spiritual reason for existence That division is not
\nfalse in itself, but its truth is subject to two capital provisos which at once give them a complexity not apparent in the first
\nformula There are above and behind our human existence the four levels but there each plane contains in itself the others,
\nalthough in each these others are subject to the dominant law   <\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nof the plane, —life for instance obeys on the mental level the law of mind and turns its movements into an instrumentation of
\nthe free intelligence Again man exists here in the body and the physical world; he is open more or less to the vast movements
\nof a life plane and the free movements of a mental world that are far vaster and freer in their potentialities than anything that
\nwe call here life and mind, but he does not live in that free mental light or in that vast vital force His business is to bring
\ndown and embody here as much of that greater life and greater mind as can be precipitated into matter and equipped with a
\nform and organised in the physical formula In proportion as he ascends he does indeed rise above the physical and vital into the
\nhigher mental lines of Karma, but he cannot leave them entirely behind him The saint, the intellectual man, scientist, thinker
\nor creator, the seeker after beauty, the seeker after any mental absolute is not that alone; he is also, even if less exclusively
\nthan others, the vital and physical man; subject to the urgings of the life and the body, he participates in the vital and physical
\nmotives of Karma and receives the perplexed and intertwined return of these energies It is not intended in his birth that
\nhe shall live entirely in mind, for he is here to deal with life and Matter as well and to bring as best he can a higher law
\ninto life and Matter And since he is not a mental being in a mental world, it is not easy and in the end, we may suspect,
\nnot possible for him to impose entirely and perfectly the law of the mental absolutes, a mental good, beauty, love, truth and
\npower on his lower parts He has to take this other difficult truth into account that life and Matter have absolutes of their
\nown armed with an equal right to formulation and persistence and he has to find some light, some truth, some spiritual and
\nsupramental power that can take up these imperatives also no less than the mind’s imperatives and harmonise all in a grand
\nand integral transformation But the difficulty is again that if he is not open to the world of free intelligence, he is still less open
\nto the deeper and vaster spiritual and supramental levels There can indeed be great descents of spiritual light, purity, power,
\nlove, delight into the earth consciousness in its human formula;  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tbut man as he is now can hold only a little of these things and he can give them no adequate organisation and shape and
\nbody in his mental movements or his life-action or his physical and material consciousness and dynamis The moment he tries
\nto get at the absolute of the spirit, he feels himself obliged to reject body, to silence mind, and to draw back from life It is
\nthat urgent necessity, that inability of mind and life and body to hold and answer to the spirit that is the secret of asceticism, the
\nphilosophical justification of the illusionist, the compulsion that moves the eremite and the recluse If on the other hand he tries
\nto spiritualise mind and life and the body he finds in the end that he has only brought down the spirit to a lower formulation that
\ncannot give all its truth and purity and power He has to some extent spiritualised mind, but much more has he mentalised the
\nspiritual and to mentalise the spiritual is to falsify and obscure it or at the very least to dilute its truth, to imprison its force,
\nto limit and alter its potentialities He has perhaps to a much less extent spiritualised his life, but much more has he vitalised
\nthe spiritual and to vitalise the spiritual is to degrade it He has never yet spiritualised the body, at most he has minimised the
\nphysical by a spiritual refusal and abstinence or brought down some mental and vital powers mistaken for spiritual into his
\nphysical force and physical frame More has not been done in the human past so far as we can discover, or if anything greater
\nwas done it was a transitory gain from the superconscient and has returned again into our superconscience.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe secret reason of man’s failure to rise truly beyond himself is a fundamental incapacity in the mind, the life and the body
\nto organise the highest integral truth and power of the spirit And this incapacity exists because mind and life and matter are in
\ntheir nature depressed and imperfect powers of the Infinite that need to be transformed into something greater than themselves
\nbefore they can escape from their depression and imperfection; in their very nature they are a system of partial and separated
\nvalues and cannot adequately express or embody the integral and the one, a movement of many divergent and mutually
\n\t\t\tnon-understanding or misunderstanding lines they cannot arrive  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n\t\t\tPage –
\n\t\t\t\t431<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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\nof themselves at any but a provisional, limited and imperfect harmony and order There is no doubt a material Infinite, a
\nvital Infinite, a mental Infinite in which we feel a perfection, a delight, an essential harmony, an inexpressible completeness
\nwhich, when we experience it, makes us disregard the discords and imperfections and obscurities we see and even perceive them
\nas elements of the infinite perfection In other words the Spirit, the Infinite supports these depressed values and elicits from them
\na certain joy of his manifestation that is complete and illimitable enough in its own manner But there is more behind and above,
\nthere are greater more unmistakably harmonious values, greater truly perfect powers of the Spirit than mind, life and matter and
\nthese wait for their expression and only when they are expressed can we escape from this system of harmony through discords
\nand of a perfection on the whole that subsists by imperfection in the detail And as we open to a greater knowledge, we find that
\neven for such harmonies, stabilities, perfections as the energies of Mind, Life and Matter can realise, they depend really not
\non their own delegated and inferior power which is at best a more or less ignorant instrument but on a greater deeper organising force and knowledge of which they are the inadequate derivations That force and knowledge is the self-possessed
\nsupramental power and will and the perfect and untrammelled supramental gnosis of the Infinite It is that which has fixed
\nthe precise measures of Matter, regulates the motive instincts and impulsions of Life, holds together the myriad seekings of
\nMind; but none of these things are that power and gnosis and nothing therefore mental, vital or physical is final or can even
\nfind its own integral truth and harmony nor all these together their reconciliation until they are taken up and transformed in a
\nsupramental manifestation For this supermind or gnosis is the entire organising will and knowledge of the spiritual, it is the
\nTruth Consciousness, the Truth Force, the organic instrumentation of divine Law, the all-seeing eye of the divine Vision, the
\nfreely selecting and generating harmony of the eternal Ananda.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

APPENDIX I   The Tangle of Karma   OBVIOUSLY we must leave far behind us the current theory of Karma and its shallow attempt to…<\/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-1614","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\/1614","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=1614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}