{"id":2097,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2097"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:25","slug":"24-matter-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/21-22-the-life-divine\/24-matter-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","title":{"rendered":"-24_Matter.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tChapter XXIV
\n<\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tMatter <\/font>
\n\t\t\t<\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHe arrived at the knowledge that Matter is Brahman.
\n\t\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tTaittiriya Upanishad.<\/i>1<\/sup>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tW<\/font>E HAVE<\/b> now the rational assurance that Life is neither an inexplicable dream nor an impossible evil that has
\nyet become a dolorous fact, but a mighty pulsation of the divine All-Existence. We see something of its foundation
\nand its principle, we look upward to its high potentiality and ultimate divine out-flowering. But there is one principle below
\nall the others which we have not yet sufficiently considered, the principle of Matter upon which Life stands as upon a pedestal
\nor out of which it evolves like the form of a many-branching tree out of its encasing seed. The mind, life and body of man depend
\nupon this physical principle, and if the out-flowering of Life is the result of Consciousness emerging into Mind, expanding,
\nelevating itself in search of its own truth in the largeness of the supramental existence, yet it seems also to be conditioned by
\nthis case of body and by this foundation of Matter. The importance of the body is obvious; it is because he has developed or
\nbeen given a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive mental illumination that man has risen above the
\nanimal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and
\nserving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but
\nin life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled, its meaning annulled and earthly being can
\nonly realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t1<\/sup>
\nIII.<\/span> 2.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 245<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tfrom it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or
\nelse man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from
\nall other terrestrial existences and, as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and
\nassume his heritage.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt seems indeed that the body is from the beginning the
\nsoul’s great difficulty, its continual stumbling-block and rock of offence. Therefore the eager seeker of spiritual fulfilment has
\nhurled his ban against the body and his world-disgust selects this world-principle above all other things as an especial object of
\nloathing. The body is the obscure burden that he cannot bear; its obstinate material grossness is the obsession that drives him for
\ndeliverance to the life of the ascetic. To get rid of it he has even gone so far as to deny its existence and the reality of the material
\nuniverse. Most of the religions have put their curse upon Matter and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary endurance
\nof the physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality. The older creeds, more patient, more broodingly profound, not
\ntouched with the torture and the feverish impatience of the soul under the burden of the Iron Age, did not make this formidable
\ndivision; they acknowledged Earth the Mother and Heaven the Father and accorded to them an equal love and reverence; but
\ntheir ancient mysteries are obscure and unfathomable to our gaze who, whether our view of things be materialistic or spiritual, are
\nalike content to cut the Gordian knot of the problem of existence with one decisive blow and to accept an escape into an eternal
\nbliss or an end in an eternal annihilation or an eternal quietude.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe quarrel does not really commence with our awakening
\nto our spiritual possibilities; it begins from the appearance of life itself and its struggle to establish its activities and its permanent
\naggregations of living form against the force of inertia, against the force of inconscience, against the force of atomic disaggregation which are in the material principle the knot of the great Denial. Life is at constant war with Matter and the battle seems
\nalways to end in the apparent defeat of Life and in that collapse downward to the material principle which we call death. The<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 246<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tdiscord deepens with the appearance of Mind; for Mind has
\nits own quarrel with both Life and Matter: it is at constant war with their limitations, in constant subjection to and revolt
\nagainst the grossness and inertia of the one and the passions and sufferings of the other; and the battle seems to turn eventually,
\nthough not very surely, towards a partial and costly victory for the Mind in which it conquers, represses or even slays the vital
\ncravings, impairs the physical force and disturbs the balance of the body in the interests of a greater mental activity and a higher
\nmoral being. It is in this struggle that the impatience of Life, the disgust of the body and the recoil from both towards a pure
\nmental and moral existence take their rise. When man awakens to an existence beyond Mind, he carries yet farther this principle
\nof discord. Mind, Body and Life are condemned as the trinity of the world, the flesh and the devil. Mind too is banned as
\nthe source of all our malady; war is declared between the spirit and its instruments and the victory of the spiritual Inhabitant is
\nsought for in an evasion from its narrow residence, a rejection of mind, life and body and a withdrawal into its own infinitudes.
\nThe world is a discord and we shall best solve its perplexities by carrying the principle of discord itself to its extreme possibility,
\na cutting away and a final severance.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut these defeats and victories are only apparent, this solution is not a solution but an escape from the problem. Life is not really defeated by Matter; it makes a compromise by using death
\nfor the continuance of life. Mind is not really victorious over Life and Matter, but has only achieved an imperfect development of
\nsome of its potentialities at the cost of others which are bound up with the unrealised or rejected possibilities of its better use of
\nlife and body. The individual soul has not conquered the lower triplicity, but only rejected their claim upon it and fled from the
\nwork which spirit had undertaken when it first cast itself into form of universe. The problem continues because the labour of
\nthe Divine in the universe continues, but without any satisfying solution of the problem or any victorious accomplishment of
\nthe labour. Therefore, since our own standpoint is that Sachchidananda is the beginning and the middle and the end and<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 247<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthat struggle and discord cannot be eternal and fundamental
\nprinciples in His being but by their very existence imply labour towards a perfect solution and a complete victory, we must seek
\nthat solution in a real victory of Life over Matter through the free and perfect use of body by Life, in a real victory of Mind
\nover Life and Matter through a free and perfect use of life-force and form by Mind and in a real victory of Spirit over the triplicity through a free and perfect occupation of mind, life and body by conscious spirit; in the view we have worked out this
\nlast conquest can alone make the others really possible. To the end, then, that we may see how these conquests can be at all
\nor wholly possible, we must find out the reality of Matter just as, seeking the fundamental knowledge, we have found out the
\nreality of Mind and Soul and Life.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn a certain sense Matter is unreal and non-existent; that is
\nto say, our present knowledge, idea and experience of Matter is not its truth, but merely a phenomenon of particular relation
\nbetween our senses and the all-existence in which we move. When Science discovers that Matter resolves itself into forms of
\nEnergy, it has hold of a universal and fundamental truth; and when philosophy discovers that Matter only exists as substantial
\nappearance to the consciousness and that the one reality is Spirit or pure conscious Being, it has hold of a greater and completer,
\na still more fundamental truth. But still the question remains why Energy should take the form of Matter and not of mere
\nforce-currents or why that which is really Spirit should admit the phenomenon of Matter and not rest in states, velleities and
\njoys of the spirit. This, it is said, is the work of Mind or else, since evidently Thought does not directly create or even perceive the
\nmaterial form of things, it is the work of Sense; the sense-mind creates the forms which it seems to perceive and the thought-mind works upon the forms which the sense-mind presents to it. But, evidently, the individual embodied mind is not the creator
\nof the phenomenon of Matter; earth-existence cannot be the result of the human mind which is itself the result of earth-existence. If we say that the world exists only in our own minds, we express a non-fact and a confusion; for the material world<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 248<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\texisted before man was upon the earth and it will go on existing
\nif man disappears from the earth or even if our individual mind abolishes itself in the Infinite. We must conclude then that there is
\na universal Mind, subconscious to us in the form of the universe or superconscious in its spirit, which has created that form for its
\nhabitation. And since the creator must have preceded and must exceed its creation, this really implies a superconscient Mind
\nwhich by the instrumentality of a universal sense creates2<\/sup> in itself the relation of form with form and constitutes the rhythm
\nof the material universe. But this also is no complete solution; it tells us that Matter is a creation of Consciousness, but it does
\nnot explain how Consciousness came to create Matter as the basis of its cosmic workings.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe shall understand better if we go back at once to the original principle of things. Existence is in its activity a Conscious-Force which presents the workings of its force to its consciousness as forms of its own being. Since Force is only the action of
\none sole-existing Conscious-Being, its results can be nothing else but forms of that Conscious-Being; Substance or Matter, then, is
\nonly a form of Spirit. The appearance which this form of Spirit assumes to our senses is due to that dividing action of Mind
\nfrom which we have been able to deduce consistently the whole phenomenon of the universe. We know now that Life is an action
\nof Conscious-Force of which material forms are the result; Life involved in those forms, appearing in them first as inconscient
\nforce, evolves and brings back into manifestation as Mind the consciousness which is the real self of the force and which never
\nceased to exist in it even when unmanifest. We know also that Mind is an inferior power of the original conscious Knowledge
\nor Supermind, a power to which Life acts as an instrumental
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t2<\/sup>
\nMind,<\/span> as we know it, creates only in a relative and instrumental sense; it has an
\nunlimited power of combination, but its creative motives and forms come to it from above: all created forms have their base in the Infinite above Mind, Life and Matter
\nand are here represented, reconstructed ―<\/font>very usually misconstructed
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>from the infinitesimal. Their foundation is above, their branchings downward, says the Rig Veda.
\nThe superconscient Mind of which we speak might rather be called an Overmind and inhabits in the hierarchical order of the powers of the Spirit, a zone directly dependent
\non the supramental consciousness.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 249<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tenergy; for, descending through Supermind, Consciousness or
\nChit represents itself as Mind, Force of consciousness or Tapas represents itself as Life. Mind, by its separation from its own
\nhigher reality in Supermind, gives Life the appearance of division and, by its farther involution in its own Life-Force, becomes
\nsubconscious in Life and thus gives the outward appearance of an inconscient force to its material workings. Therefore, the
\ninconscience, the inertia, the atomic disaggregation of Matter must have their source in this all-dividing and self-involving
\naction of Mind by which our universe came into being. As Mind is only a final action of Supermind in the descent towards
\ncreation and Life an action of Conscious-Force working in the conditions of the Ignorance created by this descent of Mind, so
\nMatter, as we know it, is only the final form taken by conscious-being as the result of that working. Matter is substance of the
\none conscious-being phenomenally divided within itself by the action of a universal Mind,3<\/sup>
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>a division which the individual
\nmind repeats and dwells in, but which does not abrogate or at all diminish the unity of Spirit or the unity of Energy or the real
\nunity of Matter.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut why this phenomenal and pragmatic division of an
\nindivisible Existence? It is because Mind has to carry the principle of multiplicity to its extreme potential which can only
\nbe done by separativeness and division. To do that it must, precipitating itself into Life to create forms for the Multiple,
\ngive to the universal principle of Being the appearance of a gross and material substance instead of a pure or subtle substance. It
\nmust, that is to say, give it the appearance of substance which offers itself to the contact of Mind as stable thing or object in
\nan abiding multiplicity of objects and not of substance which offers itself to the contact of pure consciousness as something
\nof its own eternal pure existence and reality or to subtle sense as a principle of plastic form freely expressive of the conscious
\nbeing. The contact of mind with its objects creates what we
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t3<\/sup>
\nMind is here used in its widest sense including the operation of an Overmind power
\nwhich is nearest to the supramental Truth-Consciousness and which is the first fountain of the creation of the Ignorance.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 250<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tcall sense, but here it has to be an obscure externalised sense
\nwhich must be assured of the reality of what it contacts. The descent of pure substance into material substance follows, then,
\ninevitably on the descent of Sachchidananda through supermind into mind and life. It is a necessary result of the will to make
\nmultiplicity of being and an awareness of things from separate centres of consciousness the first method of this lower experience of existence. If we go back to the spiritual basis of things, substance in its utter purity resolves itself into pure conscious
\nbeing, self-existent, inherently self-aware by identity, but not yet turning its consciousness upon itself as object. Supermind
\npreserves this self-awareness by identity as its substance of self-knowledge and its light of self-creation, but for that creation
\npresents Being to itself as the subject-object one and multiple of its own active consciousness. Being as object is held there in a
\nsupreme knowledge which can, by comprehension, see it both as an object of cognition within itself and subjectively as itself,
\nbut can also and simultaneously, by apprehension, project it as an object (or objects) of cognition within the circumference of
\nits consciousness, not other than itself, part of its being, but a part (or parts) put away from itself,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>that is to say, from the
\ncentre of vision in which Being concentrates itself as the Knower, Witness or Purusha. We have seen that from this apprehending
\nconsciousness arises the movement of Mind, the movement by which the individual knower regards a form of his own universal
\nbeing as if other than he; but in the divine Mind there is immediately or rather simultaneously another movement or reverse side
\nof the same movement, an act of union in being which heals this phenomenal division and prevents it from becoming even for a
\nmoment solely real to the knower. This act of conscious union is that which is represented otherwise in dividing Mind obtusely,
\nignorantly, quite externally as contact in consciousness between divided beings and separate objects, and with us this contact in
\ndivided consciousness is primarily represented by the principle of sense. On this basis of sense, on this contact of union subject
\nto division, the action of the thought-mind founds itself and prepares for the return to a higher principle of union in which<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 251<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tdivision is made subject to unity and subordinate. Substance,
\nthen, as we know it, material substance, is the form in which Mind acting through sense contacts the conscious Being of which
\nit is itself a movement of knowledge.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut Mind by its very nature tends to know and sense substance of conscious-being, not in its unity or totality but by the principle of division. It sees it, as it were, in infinitesimal points
\nwhich it associates together in order to arrive at a totality, and into these view-points and associations cosmic Mind throws itself and dwells in them. So dwelling, creative by its inherent force as the agent of Real-Idea, bound by its own nature to convert
\nall its perceptions into energy of life, as the All-Existent converts all His self-aspectings into various energy of His creative Force
\nof consciousness, cosmic Mind turns these, its multiple viewpoints of universal existence, into standpoints of universal Life;
\nit turns them in Matter into forms of atomic being instinct with the life that forms them and governed by the mind and will that
\nactuate the formation. At the same time, the atomic existences which it thus forms must by the very law of their being tend to
\nassociate themselves, to aggregate; and each of these aggregates also, instinct with the hidden life that forms and the hidden
\nmind and will that actuate them, bears with it a fiction of a separated individual existence. Each such individual object or
\nexistence is supported, according as the mind in it is implicit or explicit, unmanifest or manifest, by its mechanical ego of force,
\nin which the will-to-be is dumb and imprisoned but none the less powerful, or by its self-aware mental ego in which the will-to-be
\nis liberated, conscious, separately active.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus not any eternal and original law of eternal and original
\nMatter, but the nature of the action of cosmic Mind is the cause of atomic existence. Matter is a creation, and for its creation
\nthe infinitesimal, an extreme fragmentation of the Infinite, was needed as the starting-point or basis. Ether may and does exist
\nas an intangible, almost spiritual support of Matter, but as a phenomenon it does not seem, to our present knowledge at
\nleast, to be materially detectable. Subdivide the visible aggregate or the formal atom into essential atoms, break it up into the most<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 252<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tinfinitesimal dust of being, we shall still, because of the nature
\nof the Mind and Life that formed them, arrive at some utmost atomic existence, unstable perhaps but always reconstituting itself in the eternal flux of force, phenomenally, and not at a mere unatomic extension incapable of contents. Unatomic extension
\nof substance, extension which is not an aggregation, coexistence otherwise than by distribution in space are realities of pure
\nexistence, pure substance; they are a knowledge of supermind and a principle of its dynamism, not a creative concept of the
\ndividing Mind, though Mind can become aware of them behind its workings. They are the reality underlying Matter, but not the
\nphenomenon which we call Matter. Mind, Life, Matter itself can be one with that pure existence and conscious extension in their
\nstatic reality, but not operate by that oneness in their dynamic action, self-perception and self-formation.
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore we arrive at this truth of Matter that there is a conceptive self-extension of being which works itself out in
\nthe universe as substance or object of consciousness and which cosmic Mind and Life in their creative action represent through
\natomic division and aggregation as the thing we call Matter. But this Matter, like Mind and Life, is still Being or Brahman in
\nits self-creative action. It is a form of the force of conscious Being, a form given by Mind and realised by Life. It holds
\nwithin it as its own reality consciousness concealed from itself, involved and absorbed in the result of its own self-formation
\nand therefore self-oblivious. And, however brute and void of sense it seems to us, it is yet, to the secret experience of the
\nconsciousness hidden within it, delight of being offering itself to this secret consciousness as object of sensation in order to
\ntempt that hidden godhead out of its secrecy. Being manifest as substance, force of Being cast into form, into a figured self-representation of the secret self-consciousness, delight offering itself to its own consciousness as an object,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>what is this but Sachchidananda? Matter is Sachchidananda represented to His own mental experience as a formal basis of objective knowledge,
\naction and delight of existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 253<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XXIV   Matter   He arrived at the knowledge that Matter is Brahman. Taittiriya Upanishad.1   WE HAVE now the rational assurance that Life…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21-22-the-life-divine","wpcat-45-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097","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=2097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}