{"id":2111,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2111"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:31","slug":"45-reality-and-the-integral-knowledge-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\/45-reality-and-the-integral-knowledge-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","title":{"rendered":"-45_Reality and the Integral Knowledge.html"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\">\n<table border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"6\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"100%\" valign=\"top\">\n<font face=\"Times New Roman\"> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-21-22_The Life Divine\/_images\/-03_The%20manuscript%20of%20a%20chapter%20written%20in%201939-40.jpg\" width=\"639\" height=\"813\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b>The manuscript of a chapter written in 1939-40<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"\/elibrarytest\/-01 Works of Sri Aurobindo\/-03_CWSA\/-21-22_The Life Divine\/_images\/-04_The%20first%20revised%20typescript%20of%20Book%20Two,%20Chapter%20XXIII.jpg\" width=\"642\" height=\"809\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b>&nbsp;&nbsp;  The first revised typescript of Book Two, Chapter<br \/>\n XXIII  &nbsp;  <\/b> <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b><font size=\"4\">Part II  <\/font><\/b><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b><font size=\"4\">The Knowledge  <\/font><\/b><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b><font size=\"4\">and the Spiritual Evolution  &nbsp;  &nbsp; <\/font><\/b><br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b>Chapter<br \/>\n XV  <\/b><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b><font size=\"4\">Reality and the Integral Knowledge <\/font><\/b><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">This Self is to be won by the Truth and by an integral knowledge<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<i>Mundaka Upanishad.<\/i><sup><font size=\"2\">1<\/font><\/sup> .  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">Hear how thou shalt know Me in My totality . . . for even of  the seekers who have achieved, hardly one knows Me in all<br \/>\nthe truth of My being.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"right\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<i>Gita.<\/i><sup><font size=\"2\">2<\/font><\/sup><br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:25pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<b><font size=\"5\">T<\/font>HIS THEN<\/b> is the origin, this the nature, these the  boundaries of the Ignorance. Its origin is a limitation  of knowledge, its distinctive character a separation  of the being from its own integrality and entire reality; its  boundaries are determined by this separative development of  the consciousness, for it shuts us to our true self and to the  true self and whole nature of things and obliges us to live  in an apparent surface existence. A return or a progress to  integrality, a disappearance of the limitation, a breaking down  of separativeness, an overpassing of boundaries, a recovery of  our essential and whole reality must be the sign and opposite  character of the inner turn towards Knowledge. There must  be a replacement of a limited and separative by an essential  and integral consciousness identified with the original truth and  the whole truth of self and existence. The integral Knowledge  is something that is already there in the integral Reality: it is  not a new or still non-existent thing that has to be created,  acquired, learned, invented or built up by the mind; it must  rather be discovered or uncovered, it is a Truth that is<br \/>\nself-revealed to a spiritual endeavour: for it is there veiled in our  deeper and greater self; it is the very stuff of our own spiritual<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">1<br \/>\nIII. 1. 5.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 2<br \/>\nVII. 1, 3.  &nbsp; <\/font>  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 659<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">consciousness, and it is by awaking to it even in our surface self  that we have to possess it. There is an integral self-knowledge  that we have to recover and, because the world-self also is our  self, an integral world-knowledge. A knowledge that can be  learned or constructed by the mind exists and has its value, but  that is not what is meant when we speak of the Knowledge and  the Ignorance.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">An integral spiritual consciousness carries in it a knowledge  of all the terms of being; it links the highest to the lowest through  all the mediating terms and achieves an indivisible whole. At the  highest summit of things it opens to the reality, ineffable because  superconscient to all but its own self-awareness, of the Absolute.  At the lowest end of our being it perceives the Inconscience from  which our evolution begins; but at the same time it is aware of<br \/>\n\tthe One and the All self-involved in those depths, it unveils the secret<br \/>\n\tConsciousness in the Inconscience. Interpretative, revelatory, moving between these two extremes, its vision discovers the  manifestation of the One in the Many, the identity of the Infinite  in the disparity of things finite, the presence of the timeless  Eternal in eternal Time; it is this seeing that illumines for it the  meaning of the universe. This consciousness does not abolish  the universe; it takes it up and transforms it by giving to it its  hidden significance. It does not abolish the individual existence;  it transforms the individual being and nature by revealing to  them their true significance and enabling them to overcome their  separateness from the Divine Reality and the Divine Nature.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">An integral knowledge presupposes an integral Reality; for it is the power<br \/>\n\tof a Truth-consciousness which is itself the consciousness of the Reality. But our idea and sense of Reality vary  with our status and movement of consciousness, its sight, its  stress, its intake of things; that sight or stress can be intensive  and exclusive or extensive, inclusive and comprehensive. It is  quite possible&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 and it is in its own field a valid movement for  our thought and for a very high line of spiritual achievement&nbsp; \u2014  to affirm the existence of the ineffable Absolute, to emphasise its  sole Reality and to negate and abolish for our self, to expunge  from our idea and sense of reality, the individual being and the  &nbsp;<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 660<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">cosmic creation. The reality of the individual is Brahman the  Absolute; the reality of the cosmos is Brahman the Absolute:  the individual is a phenomenon, a temporal appearance in the  cosmos; the cosmos itself is a phenomenon, a larger and more  complex temporal appearance. The two terms, Knowledge and  Ignorance, belong only to this appearance; in order to reach an  absolute superconsciousness both have to be transcended:<br \/>\n\tego-consciousness and cosmic consciousness are extinguished in that  supreme transcendence and there remains only the Absolute.  For the absolute Brahman exists only in its own identity and is  beyond all other-knowledge; there the very idea of the knower  and the known and therefore of the knowledge in which they  meet and become one, disappears, is transcended and loses its  validity, so that to mind and speech the absolute Brahman must  remain always unattainable. In opposition to the view we have  put forward or in completion of it,&nbsp; \u2014 the view of the Ignorance<br \/>\n\titself as only either a limited or an involved action of the divine<br \/>\n\tKnowledge, limited in the partly conscient, involved in the in conscient,&nbsp; \u2014 we might say from this other end of the scale of  things that Knowledge itself is only a higher Ignorance, since  it stops short of the absolute Reality which is self-evident to  Itself but to mind unknowable. This absolutism corresponds  to a truth of thought and to a truth of supreme experience in  the spiritual consciousness; but by itself it is not the whole of  spiritual thought complete and comprehensive and it does not  exhaust the possibilities of the supreme spiritual experience.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">The absolutist view of reality, consciousness and knowledge  is founded on one side of the earliest Vedantic thought, but<br \/>\n\tit is not the whole of that thinking. In the Upanishads, in the inspired<br \/>\n\tscripture of the most ancient Vedanta, we find the affirmation of the Absolute, the experience-concept of the utter and  ineffable Transcendence; but we find also, not in contradiction  to it but as its corollary, an affirmation of the cosmic Divinity,  an experience-concept of the cosmic Self and the becoming of<br \/>\n\tBrahman in the universe. Equally, we find the affirmation of the Divine<br \/>\n\tReality in the individual: this too is an experience concept; it is seized upon not as an appearance, but as an  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 661<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<p>\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">actual becoming. In place of a sole supreme exclusive affirmation negating<br \/>\n\tall else than the transcendent Absolute we find a comprehensive affirmation carried to its farthest conclusion: this  concept of Reality and of Knowledge enveloping in one view  the cosmic and the Absolute coincides fundamentally with our  own; for it implies that the Ignorance too is a half-veiled part of  the Knowledge and world-knowledge a part of self-knowledge.  The Isha Upanishad insists on the unity and reality of all the  manifestations of the Absolute; it refuses to confine truth to any  one aspect. Brahman is the stable and the mobile, the internal  and the external, all that is near and all that is far whether  spiritually or in the extension of Time and Space; it is the Being  and all becomings, the Pure and Silent who is without feature or  action and the Seer and Thinker who organises the world and  its objects; it is the One who becomes all that we are sensible  of in the universe, the Immanent and that in which he takes up  his dwelling. The Upanishad affirms the perfect and the liberating knowledge to be that which excludes neither the Self nor  its creations: the liberated spirit sees all these as becomings of  the Self-existent in an internal vision and by a consciousness  which perceives the universe within itself instead of looking  out on it, like the limited and egoistic mind, as a thing other  than itself. To live in the cosmic Ignorance is a blindness, but  to confine oneself in an exclusive absolutism of Knowledge is  also a blindness: to know Brahman as at once and together the  Knowledge and the Ignorance, to attain to the supreme status at  once by the Becoming and the Non-Becoming, to relate together  realisation of the transcendent and the cosmic self, to achieve  foundation in the supramundane and a self-aware manifestation  in the mundane, is the integral knowledge; that is the possession  of Immortality. It is this whole consciousness with its complete  knowledge that builds the foundation of the Life Divine and  makes its attainment possible. It follows that the absolute reality of the Absolute must be, not a rigid indeterminable oneness,  not an infinity vacant of all that is not a pure self-existence  attainable only by the exclusion of the many and the finite,  but something which is beyond these definitions, beyond indeed  &nbsp;<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 662<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">any description either positive or negative. All affirmations and  negations are expressive of its aspects, and it is through both a  supreme affirmation and a supreme negation that we can arrive  at the Absolute.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">On the one side, then, presented to us as the Reality, we  have an absolute Self-Existence, an eternal sole self-being, and<br \/>\n\tthrough the experience of the silent and inactive Self or the detached<br \/>\n\timmobile Purusha we can move towards this feature less and relationless Absolute, negate the actions of the creative  Power, whether that be an illusory Maya or a formative Prakriti,  pass from all circling in cosmic error into the eternal Peace  and Silence, get rid of our personal existence and find or lose  ourselves in that sole true Existence. On the other side, we  have a Becoming which is a true movement of Being, and both  the Being and the Becoming are truths of one absolute Reality.  The first view is founded on the metaphysical conception which  formulates an extreme perception in our thought, an exclusive  experience in our consciousness of the Absolute as a reality void  of all relations and determinations: that imposes as its consequence a logical and practical necessity to deny the world of<br \/>\n\trelativities as a falsity of unreal being, a non-existent (Asat), or at<br \/>\n\tleast a lower and evanescent, temporal and pragmatic self experience, and to cut it away from the consciousness in order  to arrive at liberation of the spirit from its false perceptions or its  inferior creations. The second view is based on the conception  of the Absolute as neither positively nor negatively limitable. It  is beyond all relations in the sense that it is not bound by any  relativities or limitable by them in its power of being: it cannot  be tied down and circumscribed by our relative conceptions,  highest or lowest, positive or negative; it is bound neither by  our knowledge nor by our ignorance, neither by our concept  of existence nor by our concept of non-existence. But neither  can it be limited by any incapacity to contain, sustain, create or  manifest relations: on the contrary, the power to manifest itself  in infinity of unity and infinity of multiplicity can be regarded  as an inherent force, sign, result of its very absoluteness, and  this possibility is in itself a sufficient explanation of cosmic  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 663<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">existence. The Absolute cannot indeed be bound in its nature  to manifest a cosmos of relations, but neither can it be bound  not to manifest any cosmos. It is not itself a sheer emptiness; for  a vacant Absolute is no Absolute,&nbsp; \u2014 our conception of a Void or  Zero is only a conceptual sign of our mental inability to know  or grasp it: it bears in itself some ineffable essentiality of all that  is and all that can be; and since it holds in itself this essentiality  and this possibility, it must also hold in itself in some way of  its absoluteness either the permanent truth or the inherent, even  if latent, realisable actuality of all that is fundamental to our  or the world&#8217;s existence. It is this realisable actuality actualised  or this permanent truth deploying its possibilities that we call  manifestation and see as the universe.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">There is, then, in the conception or the realisation of the  truth of the Absolute no inherent inevitable consequence of a  rejection or a dissolution of the truth of the universe. The idea  of an essentially unreal universe manifested somehow by an inexplicable Power of illusion, the Absolute Brahman regarding it  not or aloof and not affecting it even as it is unaffected by it, is at  <i>&nbsp;<\/i>  bottom a carrying over, an imposing or imputation,<br \/>\n<i>adhyaropa<\/i>,  of an incapacity of our mental consciousness to That so as to  limit it. Our mental consciousness, when it passes beyond its  limits, loses its own way and means of knowledge and tends  towards inactivity or cessation; it loses at the same time or tends  to have no further hold on its former contents, no continuing  conception of the reality of that which once was to it all that  was real: we impute to absolute Parabrahman, conceived as  non-manifest for ever, a corresponding inability or separation  or aloofness from what has become or seems now to us unreal;  it must, like our mind in its cessation or self-extinction, be by its  very nature of pure absoluteness void of all connection with this  world of apparent manifestation, incapable of any supporting  cognition or dynamic maintenance of it that gives it a reality&nbsp; \u2014  or, if there is such a cognition, it must be of the nature of an  Is that is not, a magical Maya. But there is no binding reason  to suppose that this chasm must exist; what our relative human  consciousness is or is not capable of, is no test or standard<br \/>\n<\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 664<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">of an absolute capacity; its conceptions cannot be applied to  an absolute self-awareness: what is necessary for our mental  ignorance in order to escape from itself cannot be the necessity  of the Absolute which has no need of self-escape and no reason  for refusing to cognise whatever is to it cognisable.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">There is that unmanifest Unknowable; there is this manifest  knowable, partly manifest to our ignorance, manifest entirely  to the divine Knowledge which holds it in its own infinity. If  it is true that neither our ignorance nor our utmost and widest  mental knowledge can give us a hold of the Unknowable, still  it is also true that, whether through our knowledge or through  our ignorance, That variously manifests itself; for it cannot be  manifesting something other than itself, since nothing else can  exist: in this variety of manifestation there is that Oneness and  through the diversity we can touch the Oneness. But even so,  even accepting this coexistence, it is still possible to pass a final  verdict and sentence of condemnation on the Becoming and  decide on the necessity of a renunciation of it and a return into  the absolute Being. This verdict can be based on the distinction  between the real reality of the Absolute and the partial and  misleading reality of the relative universe.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">For we have in this unfolding of knowledge the two terms  of the One and the Many, as we have the two terms of the  finite and the infinite, of that which becomes and of that which  does not become but for ever is, of that which takes form and  of that which does not take form, of Spirit and Matter, of the  supreme Superconscient and the nethermost Inconscience; in this  dualism, and to get away from it, it is open to us to define  Knowledge as the possession of one term and the possession of  the other as Ignorance. The ultimate of our life would then be  a drawing away from the lower reality of the Becoming to the  greater reality of the Being, a leap from the Ignorance to the  Knowledge and a rejection of the Ignorance, a departure from  the many into the One, from the finite into the infinite, from  form into the formless, from the life of the material universe  into the Spirit, from the hold of the inconscient upon us into  the superconscient Existence. In this solution there is supposed  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 665<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">to be a fixed opposition, an ultimate irreconcilability in each  case between the two terms of our being. Or else, if both are a  means of the manifestation of the Brahman, the lower is a false  or imperfect clue, a means that must fail, a system of values that  cannot ultimately satisfy us. Dissatisfied with the confusions of  the multiplicity, disdainful of even the highest light and power  and joy that it can reveal, we must drive beyond to the absolute  one-pointedness and one-standingness in which all self-variation  ceases. Unable by the claim of the Infinite upon us to dwell for  ever in the bonds of the finite or to find there satisfaction and<br \/>\n\tlargeness and peace, we have to break all the bonds of individual and<br \/>\n\tuniversal Nature, destroy all values, symbols, images, self definitions, limitations of the illimitable and lose all littleness  and division in the Self that is for ever satisfied with its own  infinity. Disgusted with forms, disillusioned of their false and  transient attractions, wearied and discouraged by their fleeting<br \/>\n\timpermanence and vain round of recurrence, we must escape from the cycles of<br \/>\n\tNature into the formlessness and featureless ness of permanent Being. Ashamed of Matter and its grossness,  impatient of the purposeless stir and trouble of Life, tired out  by the goalless running of Mind or convinced of the vanity  of all its aims and objects, we have to release ourselves into  the eternal repose and purity of the Spirit. The Inconscient is  a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of strivings without  ultimate issue or the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into  the superconscious where all darkness of night and half-lights  cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal. The Eternal is our  refuge; all the rest are false values, the Ignorance and its mazes,  a self-bewilderment of the soul in phenomenal Nature.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">Our conception of the Knowledge and the Ignorance rejects  this negation and the oppositions on which it is founded: it  points to a larger if more difficult issue of reconciliation. For we  see that these apparently opposite terms of One and Many, Form  and the Formless, Finite and Infinite, are not so much opposites  as complements of each other; not alternating values of the  Brahman which in its creation perpetually loses oneness to find  itself in multiplicity and, unable to discover itself in multiplicity,  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 666<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">loses it again to recover oneness, but double and concurrent  values which explain each other; not hopelessly incompatible  alternatives, but two faces of the one Reality which can lead us  to it by our realisation of both together and not only by testing  each separately,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 even though such separate testing may be a  legitimate or even an inevitable step or part of the process of  knowledge. Knowledge is no doubt the knowledge of the One,  the realisation of the Being; Ignorance is a self-oblivion of Being,  the experience of separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling  or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings: but this  is cured by the soul in the Becoming growing into knowledge,  into awareness of the Being which becomes in the multiplicity  all these existences and can so become because their truth is  already there in its timeless existence. The integral knowledge  of Brahman is a consciousness in possession of both together,  and the exclusive pursuit of either closes the vision to one side  of the truth of the omnipresent Reality. The possession of the  Being who is beyond all becomings, brings to us freedom from  the bonds of attachment and ignorance in the cosmic existence  and brings by that freedom a free possession of the Becoming  and of the cosmic existence. The knowledge of the Becoming is  a part of knowledge; it acts as an Ignorance only because we&nbsp;dwell imprisoned in it,<br \/>\n<i>avidyayam antare<\/i>, without possessing  the Oneness of the Being, which is its base, its stuff, its spirit,  its cause of manifestation and without which it could not be  possible.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">In fact, the Brahman is one not only in a featureless oneness  beyond all relation, but in the very multiplicity of the cosmic  existence. Aware of the works of the dividing mind but not  itself limited by it, It finds its oneness as easily in the many,  in relations, in becoming as in any withdrawal from the many,  from relations, from becoming. Ourselves also, to possess even  its oneness fully, must possess it&nbsp; \u2014 since it is there, since all is  that&nbsp; \u2014 in the infinite self-variation of the cosmos. The infinity  of the multiplicity finds itself explained and justified only when  it is contained and possessed in the infinity of the One; but  also the infinity of the One pours itself out and possesses itself  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 667<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">in the infinity of the Many. To be capable of that outpouring  of its energies as well as not to lose itself in it, not to recoil  defeated from its boundlessness and endlessness of vicissitudes  and differences as well as not to be self-divided by its variations,<br \/>\n\tis the divine strength of the free Purusha, the conscious Soul in its<br \/>\n\tpossession of its own immortal self-knowledge. The finite self variations of the Self in which the mind losing self-knowledge  is caught and dispersed among the variations, are yet not the  denials but the endless expression of the Infinite and have no  other meaning or reason for existence: the Infinite too, while it  possesses its delight of limitless being, finds also the joy of that  very limitlessness in its infinite self-definition in the universe.  The Divine Being is not incapable of taking innumerable forms  because He is beyond all form in His essence, nor by assuming  them does He lose His divinity, but pours out rather in them the  delight of His being and the glories of His godhead; this gold  does not cease to be gold because it shapes itself into all kinds  of ornaments and coins itself into many currencies and values,  nor does the Earth-Power, principle of all this figured material  existence, lose her immutable divinity because she forms herself  into habitable worlds, throws herself out in the hills and hollows  and allows herself to be shaped into utensils of the hearth and  household or as hard metal into the weapon and the engine.  Matter,&nbsp; \u2014 substance itself, subtle or dense, mental or material,  &nbsp;\u2014 is form and body of Spirit and would never have been created  if it could not be made a basis for the self-expression of the  Spirit. The apparent Inconscience of the material universe holds  in itself darkly all that is eternally self-revealed in the luminous  Superconscient; to reveal it in Time is the slow and deliberate  delight of Nature and the aim of her cycles.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But there are other conceptions of reality, other conceptions  of the nature of knowledge which demand consideration. There  is the view that all that exists is a subjective creation of Mind,  a structure of Consciousness, and that the idea of an objective<br \/>\n\treality self-existent, independent of Consciousness, is an illusion, since<br \/>\n\twe have and can have no evidence of any such independent self-existence of things. This way of seeing may lead to the  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 668<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">affirmation of the creative Consciousness as the sole Reality or to  the denial of all existence and the affirmation of Non-Existence  or a nescient Zero as the sole Reality. For, in one view, the objects  constructed by consciousness have no intrinsic reality, they are  merely structures; even the consciousness that constructs them  is itself only a flux of perceptions that assume an appearance  of connection and continuity and create a sense of continuous  time, but in reality these things have no stable basis as they are  only an appearance of reality. This would mean that the reality  is an eternal absence at once of all self-conscious existence and  of all that constitutes movement of existence: Knowledge would  mean a return to that from the appearance of the constructed  universe. There would be a double and complete self-extinction,  the disappearance of Purusha, the cessation or extinction of  Prakriti; for the conscious Soul and Nature are the two terms  of our being and comprehend all that we mean by existence,  and the negation of both is the absolute Nirvana. What is real,  then, must be either an Inconscience, in which this flux and these  structures appear, or a Superconscience beyond all idea of self  or existence. But this view of the universe is only true of the  appearance of things when we regard our surface mind as the  whole of consciousness; as a description of the working of that  Mind it is valid: there, undoubtedly, all looks like a flux and a  construction by an impermanent Consciousness. But this cannot  prevail as a whole account of existence if there is a greater and  deeper self-knowledge and world-knowledge, a knowledge by  identity, a consciousness to which that knowledge is normal and  a Being of which that consciousness is the eternal self-awareness;  for then the subjective and the objective can be real and intimate  to that consciousness and being, both can be something of itself,<br \/>\n\tsides of its identity, authentic to its existence. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">On the other hand, if<br \/>\n\tthe constructing Mind or Conscious ness is real and the sole reality, then the universe of material  beings and objects may have an existence, but it is purely  subjective-structural, made by Consciousness out of itself,  maintained by it, dissolving into it in their disappearance. For if  there is nothing else, no essential Existence or Being supporting  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 669<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">the creative Power, and there is not, either, a sustaining Void or  Nihil, then this Consciousness which creates everything must  itself have or be an existence or a substance; if it can make  structures, they must be constructions out of its own substance  or forms of its own existence. A consciousness which is not that  of an Existence or is not itself an existence, must be an unreality,  a perceptive Force of a Void or in a Void raising there unreal  structures made of nothing,&nbsp; \u2014 a proposition which is not easily  acceptable unless all others prove to be invalid. It then becomes  apparent that what we see as consciousness must be a Being  or an Existence out of whose substance of consciousness all is  created.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But if we thus get back to the biune or the dual reality of  Being and Consciousness, we can either suppose with Vedanta  one original Being or with Sankhya a plurality of beings to  whom Consciousness or some Energy to which we attribute  consciousness presents its structures. If a plurality of separate  original beings alone is real, then, since each would be or create  its own world in its own consciousness, the difficulty is to account for their relations in a single identical universe; there must  be a one Consciousness or one Energy,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 corresponding to the  Sankhya idea of a single Prakriti which is the field of experience<br \/>\n\tof many like Purushas,&nbsp; \u2014 in which they meet in an identical<br \/>\n\tmind-constructed universe. This theory of things has the advantage of accounting for the multitude of souls and multitude of  things and the oneness in diversity of their experience, while at  the same time it gives a reality to the separate spiritual growth  and destiny of the individual being. But if we can suppose a One  Consciousness, or a One Energy, creating a multitude of figures  of itself and accommodating in its world a plurality of beings,  there is no difficulty in supposing a one original Being who  supports or expresses himself in a plurality of beings,&nbsp; \u2014 souls or  spiritual powers of his one-existence; it would follow also that  all objects, all the figures of consciousness would be figures of  the Being. It must then be asked whether this plurality and these  figures are realities of the one Real Existence, or representative  personalities and images only, or symbols or values created by  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 670<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">Mind to represent It. This would depend largely on whether it  is only Mind as we know it that is in action or a deeper and  greater Consciousness, of which Mind is a surface instrument,  executrix of its initiations, medium of its manifestations. If it  is the former, the universe constructed and seen by Mind can  only have a subjective or symbolic or representative reality: if  the latter, then the universe and its natural beings and objects  can be true realities of the One Existence, forms or powers of its  being manifested by its force of being. Mind would be only an  interpreter between the universal Reality and the manifestations  of its creative Consciousness-Force, Shakti, Prakriti, Maya.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">It is clear that a Mind of the nature of our surface intelligence  can be only a secondary power of existence. For it bears the  stamp of incapacity and ignorance as a sign that it is derivative  and not the original creatrix; we see that it does not know or  understand the objects it perceives, it has no automatic control  of them; it has to acquire a laboriously built knowledge and  controlling power. This initial incapacity could not be there if  these objects were the Mind&#8217;s own structures, creations of its  self-Power. It may be that this is so because individual mind has  only a frontal and derivative power and knowledge and there  is a universal Mind that is whole, endowed with omniscience,  capable of omnipotence. But the nature of Mind as we know  it is an Ignorance seeking for knowledge; it is a knower of  fractions and worker of divisions striving to arrive at a sum,  to piece together a whole,&nbsp; \u2014 it is not possessed of the essence of  things or their totality: a universal Mind of the same character  might know the sum of its divisions by force of its universality,  but it would still lack the essential knowledge, and without the  essential knowledge there could be no true integral knowledge.  A consciousness possessing the essential and integral knowledge, proceeding from the essence to the whole and from the<br \/>\n\twhole to the parts, would be no longer Mind, but a perfect<br \/>\n\tTruth-Consciousness automatically possessed of inherent self knowledge and world-knowledge. It is from this basis that we  have to look at the subjective view of reality. It is true that  there is no such thing as an objective reality independent of  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 671<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">consciousness; but at the same time there is a truth in objectivity  and it is this, that the reality of things resides in something that  is within them and is independent of the interpretation our mind  gives to them and of the structures it builds upon its observation.  These structures constitute the mind&#8217;s subjective image or figure  of the universe, but the universe and its objects are not a mere  image or figure. They are in essence creations of consciousness,  but of a consciousness that is one with being, whose substance  is the substance of Being and whose creations too are of that  substance, therefore real. In this view the world cannot be a  purely subjective creation of Consciousness; the subjective and  the objective truth of things are both real, they are two sides of  the same Reality.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">In a certain sense, to use the relative and suggestive phrasing  of our human language, all things are the symbols through which  we have to approach and draw nearer to That by which we and  they exist. The infinity of unity is one symbol, the infinity of  the multiplicity is another symbol: again, since each thing in the  multiplicity points back to the unity, since each thing that we  call finite is a representative figure, a form-front, a silhouette  shadowing out something of the infinite, all that defines itself  in the universe&nbsp; \u2014 all its objects, happenings, idea-formations,  life-formations&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 are in their turn each a clue and a symbol.  To our subjective mind the infinity of existence is one symbol,  the infinity of non-existence is another symbol. The infinity of  the Inconscient and the infinity of the Superconscient are two  poles of the manifestation of the absolute Parabrahman, and our  existence between these two poles and our passage from one to  the other are a progressive seizing, a constant interpretation, a  subjective building up in ourselves of this manifestation of the  Unmanifest. Through such an unfolding of our self-existence we  have to arrive at the consciousness of its ineffable Presence and  of ourselves and the world and all that is and all that is not as the  unveiling of that which never entirely unveils itself to anything  other than its own self-light eternal and absolute.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But this way of seeing things belongs to the action of the  mind interpreting the relation between the Being and the external  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 672<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">Becoming; it is valid as a dynamic mental representation corresponding to a certain truth of the manifestation, but subject to  the proviso that these symbolic values of things do not make the  things themselves mere significant counters, abstract symbols  like mathematical formulae or other signs used by the mind  for knowledge: for forms and happenings in the universe are  realities significant of Reality; they are self-expressions of That,  movements and powers of the Being. Each form is there because  it is an expression of some power of That which inhabits it;  each happening is a movement in the working out of some<br \/>\n\tTruth of the Being in its dynamic process of manifestation. It is this<br \/>\n\tsignificance that gives validity to the mind&#039;s interpretative knowledge, its subjective construction of the universe; our  mind is primarily a percipient and interpreter, secondarily and  derivatively a creator. This indeed is the value of all mental subjectivity that it reflects in it some truth of the Being which exists  independently of the reflection,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 whether that independence  presents itself as a physical objectivity or a supraphysical reality  perceived by the mind but not perceptible by the physical senses.  Mind, then, is not the original constructor of the universe: it  is an intermediate power valid for certain actualities of being;  an agent, an intermediary, it actualises possibilities and has its  share in the creation, but the real creatrix is a Consciousness, an  Energy inherent in the transcendent and cosmic Spirit.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">There is a precisely opposite view of reality and knowledge  which affirms an objective Reality as the only entire truth and an<br \/>\n\tobjective knowledge as the sole entirely reliable knowledge. This view<br \/>\n\tstarts from the idea of physical existence as the one fundamental existence and the relegation of consciousness, mind,  soul or spirit to the position of a temporary outcome of the  physical Energy in its cosmic action,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 if indeed soul or spirit  has any existence. All that is not physical and objective has a  lesser reality dependent on the physical and objective; it has  to justify itself to the physical mind by objective evidence or  a recognisable and verifiable relation to the truth of physical  and external things before it can be given a passport of reality.  But it is evident that this solution cannot be accepted in its  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 673<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">rigour, as it has no integrality in it but looks at only one side  of existence, even only one province or district of existence, and  leaves all the rest unexplained, without inherent reality, without  significance. If pushed to its extreme, it would give to a stone or  a plum-pudding a greater reality and to thought, love, courage,  genius, greatness, the human soul and mind facing an obscure<br \/>\n\tand dangerous world and getting mastery over it an inferior dependent<br \/>\n\treality or even an unsubstantial and evanescent reality. For in this view these things so great to our subjective  vision are valid only as the reactions of an objective material  being to an objective material existence; they are valid only in  so far as they deal with objective realities and make themselves  effective upon them: the soul, if it exists, is only a circumstance  of an objectively real world-Nature. But it could be held, on  the contrary, that the objective assumes value only as it has a  relation to the soul; it is a field, an occasion, a means for the  soul&#8217;s progression in Time: the objective is created as a ground  of manifestation for the subjective. The objective world is only  an outward form of becoming of the Spirit; it is here a first  form, a basis, but it is not the essential thing, the main truth of  being. The subjective and objective are two necessary sides of  the manifested Reality and of equal value, and in the range of  the objective itself the supraphysical object of consciousness has  as much right to acceptance as the physical objectivity; it cannot  be <i>a priori<br \/>\n<\/i>set aside as a subjective delusion or hallucination. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">In fact, subjectivity<br \/>\n\tand objectivity are not independent realities, they depend upon each other; they are the Being, through  consciousness, looking at itself as subject on the object and the  same Being offering itself to its own consciousness as object  to the subject. The more partial view concedes no substantive<br \/>\n\treality to anything which exists only in the consciousness, or, to put it<br \/>\n\tmore accurately, to anything to which the inner consciousness or sense bears testimony but which the outer physical  senses do not provide with a ground or do not substantiate. But  the outer senses can bear a reliable evidence only when they  refer their version of the object to the consciousness and that  consciousness gives a significance to their report, adds to its  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 674<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">externality its own internal intuitive interpretation and justifies it  by a reasoned adherence; for the evidence of the senses is always  by itself imperfect, not altogether reliable and certainly not final,  because it is incomplete and constantly subject to error. Indeed,<br \/>\n\twe have no means of knowing the objective universe except by our subjective<br \/>\n\tconsciousness of which the physical senses them<br \/>\n\tselves are instruments; as the world appears not only to that but in that,<br \/>\n\tso it is to us. If we deny reality to the evidence of this universal witness for subjective or for supraphysical objectivities,  there is no sufficient reason to concede reality to its evidence for  physical objectivities; if the inner or the supraphysical objects  of consciousness are unreal, the objective physical universe has  also every chance of being unreal. In each case understanding,  discrimination, verification are necessary; but the subjective and<br \/>\n\tthe supraphysical must have another method of verification than that which<br \/>\n\twe apply successfully to the physical and external objective. Subjective experience cannot be referred to the evidence  of the external senses; it has its own standards of seeing and  its inner method of verification: so also supraphysical realities  by their very nature cannot be referred to the judgment of the  physical or sense mind except when they project themselves into  the physical, and even then that judgment is often incompetent  or subject to caution; they can only be verified by other senses  and by a method of scrutiny and affirmation which is applicable  to their own reality, their own nature.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">There are different orders of reality; the objective and  physical is only one order. It is convincing to the physical or  externalising mind because it is directly obvious to the senses,  while of the subjective and the supraphysical that mind has  no means of knowledge except from fragmentary signs and  data and inferences which are at every step liable to error. Our  subjective movements and inner experiences are a domain of  happenings as real as any outward physical happenings; but if  the individual mind can know something of its own phenomena  by direct experience, it is ignorant of what happens in the  consciousness of others except by analogy with its own or such  signs, data, inferences as its outward observation can give it.  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 675<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">I am therefore inwardly real to myself, but the invisible life  of others has only an indirect reality to me except in so far  as it impinges on my own mind, life and senses. This is the  limitation of the physical mind of man, and it creates in him a  habit of believing entirely only in the physical and of doubting  or challenging all that does not come into accord with his own  experience or his own scope of understanding or square with  his own standard or sum of established knowledge.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">This ego-centric attitude has in recent times been elevated  into a valid standard of knowledge; it has been implicitly or  explicitly held as an axiom that all truth must be referred to  the judgment of the personal mind, reason and experience of  every man or else it must be verified or at any rate verifiable  by a common or universal experience in order to be valid. But  obviously this is a false standard of reality and of knowledge,  since this means the sovereignty of the normal or average mind  and its limited capacity and experience, the exclusion of what is  supernormal or beyond the average intelligence. In its extreme,  this claim of the individual to be the judge of everything is an  egoistic illusion, a superstition of the physical mind, in the mass a  gross and vulgar error. The truth behind it is that each man has to  think for himself, know for himself according to his capacity, but  his judgment can be valid only on condition that he is ready to  learn and open always to a larger knowledge. It is reasoned that  to depart from the physical standard and the principle of personal or universal verification will lead to gross delusions and the  admission of unverified truth and subjective phantasy into the  realm of knowledge. But error and delusion and the introduction<br \/>\n\tof personality and one&#039;s own subjectivity into the pursuit of knowledge are<br \/>\n\talways present, and the physical or objective standards and methods do not exclude them. The probability of error  is no reason for refusing to attempt discovery, and subjective  discovery must be pursued by a subjective method of enquiry,  observation and verification; research into the supraphysical  must evolve, accept and test an appropriate means and methods  other than those by which one examines the constituents of  physical objects and the processes of Energy in material Nature.  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 676<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">To refuse to enquire upon any general ground preconceived  and <i>a priori<br \/>\n<\/i>is an obscurantism as prejudicial to the extension  of knowledge as the religious obscurantism which opposed in  Europe the extension of scientific discovery. The greatest inner  discoveries, the experience of self-being, the cosmic consciousness, the inner calm of the liberated spirit, the direct effect of  mind upon mind, the knowledge of things by consciousness in  direct contact with other consciousness or with its objects, most  spiritual experiences of any value, cannot be brought before the  tribunal of the common mentality which has no experience of  these things and takes its own absence or incapacity of experience as a proof of their invalidity or their non-existence. Physical  truth or formulas, generalisations, discoveries founded upon  physical observation can be so referred, but even there a training  of capacity is needed before one can truly understand and judge;  it is not every untrained mind that can follow the mathematics of  relativity or other difficult scientific truths or judge of the validity  either of their result or their process. All reality, all experience<br \/>\n\tmust indeed, to be held as true, be capable of verification by a same or<br \/>\n\tsimilar experience; so, in fact, all men can have a spiritual experience and can follow it out and verify it in themselves,  but only when they have acquired the capacity or can follow  the inner methods by which that experience and verification are  made possible. It is necessary to dwell for a moment on these  obvious and elementary truths because the opposite ideas have  been sovereign in a recent period of human mentality,&nbsp; \u2014 they are  now only receding,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 and have stood in the way of the development of a vast domain of possible knowledge. It is of supreme<br \/>\n\timportance for the human spirit to be free to sound the depths of inner or<br \/>\n\tsubliminal reality, of spiritual and of what is still super conscient reality, and not to immure itself in the physical mind  and its narrow domain of objective external solidities; for in that  way alone can there come liberation from the Ignorance in which  our mentality dwells and a release into a complete consciousness,<br \/>\n\ta true and integral self-realisation and self-knowledge. <\/span> <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">An integral<br \/>\n\tknowledge demands an exploration, an unveiling of all the possible domains of consciousness and experience.  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 677<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">For there are subjective domains of our being which lie behind  the obvious surface; these have to be fathomed and whatever is  ascertained must be admitted within the scope of the total reality.  An inner range of spiritual experience is one very great domain of  human consciousness; it has to be entered into up to its deepest  depths and its vastest reaches. The supraphysical is as real as the  physical; to know it is part of a complete knowledge. The knowledge of the supraphysical has been associated with mysticism  and occultism, and occultism has been banned as a superstition  and a fantastic error. But the occult is a part of existence; a true  occultism means no more than a research into supraphysical  realities and an unveiling of the hidden laws of being and Nature,  of all that is not obvious on the surface. It attempts the discovery  of the secret laws of mind and mental energy, the secret laws of  life and life-energy, the secret laws of the subtle-physical and its  energies,&nbsp; \u2014 all that Nature has not put into visible operation on  the surface; it pursues also the application of these hidden truths  and powers of Nature so as to extend the mastery of the human  spirit beyond the ordinary operations of mind, the ordinary operations of life, the ordinary operations of our physical existence.  In the spiritual domain, which is occult to the surface mind in  so far as it passes beyond normal and enters into supernormal  experience, there is possible not only the discovery of the self and  spirit, but the discovery of the uplifting, informing and guiding  light of spiritual consciousness and the power of the spirit, the  spiritual way of knowledge, the spiritual way of action. To know  these things and to bring their truths and forces into the life of  humanity is a necessary part of its evolution. Science itself is  in its own way an occultism; for it brings to light the formulas  which Nature has hidden and it uses its knowledge to set free  operations of her energies which she has not included in her  ordinary operations and to organise and place at the service of<br \/>\n\tman her occult powers and processes, a vast system of physical magic,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\t\u2014 for there is and can be no other magic than the utilisation of secret truths of being, secret powers and processes of  Nature. It may even be found that a supraphysical knowledge is  necessary for the completion of physical knowledge, because the  &nbsp;<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 678<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">processes of physical Nature have behind them a supraphysical  factor, a power and action mental, vital or spiritual which is not  tangible to any outer means of knowledge.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">All insistence on the sole or the fundamental validity of the<br \/>\n\tobjective real takes its stand on the sense of the basic reality of Matter.<br \/>\n\tBut it is now evident that Matter is by no means fundamentally real; it is a structure of Energy: it is becoming even a  little doubtful whether the acts and creations of this Energy itself  are explicable except as the motions of power of a secret Mind or  Consciousness of which its processes and steps of structure are  the formulas. It is therefore no longer possible to take Matter as  the sole reality. The material interpretation of existence was the  result of an exclusive concentration, a preoccupation with one  movement of Existence, and such an exclusive concentration  has its utility and is therefore permissible; in recent times it  has justified itself by the many immense and the innumerable  minute discoveries of physical Science. But a solution of the  whole problem of existence cannot be based on an exclusive  one-sided knowledge; we must know not only what Matter is  and what are its processes, but what mind and life are and what  are their processes, and one must know also spirit and soul and  all that is behind the material surface: only then can we have  a knowledge sufficiently integral for a solution of the problem.  For the same reason those views of existence which arise from an  exclusive or predominant preoccupation with Mind or with Life  and regard Mind or Life as the sole fundamental reality, have not  a sufficiently wide basis for acceptance. Such a preoccupation  of exclusive concentration may lead to a fruitful scrutiny which  sheds much light on Mind and Life, but cannot result in a total  solution of the problem. It may very well be that an exclusive  or predominant concentration on the subliminal being, regarding the surface existence as a mere system of symbols for an  expression of its sole reality, might throw a strong light on the  subliminal and its processes and extend vastly the powers of the  human being, but it would not be by itself an integral solution or  lead us successfully to the integral knowledge of Reality. In our  view the Spirit, the Self is the fundamental reality of existence;  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 679<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">but an exclusive concentration on this fundamental reality to  the exclusion of all reality of Mind, Life or Matter except as an  imposition on the Self or unsubstantial shadows cast by the Spirit  might help to an independent and radical spiritual realisation but  not to an integral and valid solution of the truth of cosmic and  individual existence.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">An integral knowledge then must be a knowledge of the  truth of all sides of existence both separately and in the relation  of each to all and the relation of all to the truth of the Spirit.  Our present state is an Ignorance and a many-sided seeking; it  seeks for the truth of all things but,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 as is evident from the  insistence and the variety of the human mind&#8217;s speculations as  to the fundamental Truth which explains all others, the Reality  at the basis of all things,&nbsp; \u2014 the fundamental truth of things, their  basic reality must be found in some at once fundamental and  universal Real; it is that which, once discovered, must embrace  and explain all,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 for &#8220;That being known all will be known&#8221;:  the fundamental Real must necessarily be and contain the truth  of all existence, the truth of the individual, the truth of the  universe, the truth of all that is beyond the universe. The Mind,  in seeking for such a Reality and testing each thing from Matter  upwards to see if that might not be It, has not proceeded on a  wrong intuition. All that is necessary is to carry the inquiry to  its end and test the highest and ultimate levels of experience.<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But since it is from the Ignorance that we proceed to the  Knowledge, we have had first to discover the secret nature and  full extent of the Ignorance. If we look at this Ignorance in which  ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative  existence in a material, in a spatial and temporal universe, we  see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever  direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a manysided self-ignorance. We are ignorant of the Absolute which is  the source of all being and becoming; we take partial facts of  being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth  of existence,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 that is the first, the original ignorance. We are  ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable  Self; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 680<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n\t<span lang=\"en-gb\">becoming in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence,  &nbsp;\u2014 that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of  our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming; we take  our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true  self and regard everything other than that as not-self,&nbsp; \u2014 that is  the third, the egoistic ignorance. We are ignorant of our eternal  becoming in Time; we take this little life in a small span of Time,  in a petty field of Space, for our beginning, our middle and our  end,&nbsp; \u2014 that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within<br \/>\n\tthis brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being,<br \/>\n\tof that in us which is superconscient, subconscient, intraconscient, circumconscient to our surface becoming;  we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly  mentalised experiences for our whole existence,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 that is the  fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true  constitution of our becoming; we take the mind or life or body  or any two of these or all three for our true principle or the whole  account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes  them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to  determine sovereignly by its emergence their operations,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 that  is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these  ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoyment of our life in the world; we are ignorant in our thought,  will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at  every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze  of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure,  sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a  changing goal,&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u2014 that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.  <\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">Our conception of the Ignorance will necessarily determine  our conception of the Knowledge and determine, therefore, since  our life is the Ignorance at once denying and seeking after the  Knowledge, the goal of human effort and the aim of the cosmic  endeavour. Integral knowledge will then mean the cancelling of  the sevenfold Ignorance by the discovery of what it misses and  ignores, a sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness:&nbsp; \u2014  it will mean the knowledge of the Absolute as the origin of all  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 681<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n  <span lang=\"en-gb\">things; the knowledge of the Self, the Spirit, the Being and of  the cosmos as the Self&#8217;s becoming, the becoming of the Being, a  manifestation of the Spirit; the knowledge of the world as one  with us in the consciousness of our true self, thus cancelling  our division from it by the separative idea and life of ego; the  knowledge of our psychic entity and its immortal persistence in  Time beyond death and earth-existence; the knowledge of our  greater and inner existence behind the surface; the knowledge  of our mind, life and body in its true relation to the self within  and the superconscient spiritual and supramental being above  them; the knowledge, finally, of the true harmony and true use  of our thought, will and action and a change of all our nature  into a conscious expression of the truth of the Spirit, the Self,  the Divinity, the integral spiritual Reality.<br \/>\n\t<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:25pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\">But this is not an intellectual knowledge which can be  learned and completed in our present mould of consciousness; it  must be an experience, a becoming, a change of consciousness, a  change of being. This brings in the evolutionary character of the  Becoming and the fact that our mental ignorance is only a stage  in our evolution. The integral knowledge, then, can only come<br \/>\n\tby an evolution of our being and our nature, and that would seem to signify<br \/>\n\ta slow process in Time such as has accompanied the other evolutionary transformations. But as against that  inference there is the fact that the evolution has now become  conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether of  the same character as when it was subconscious in its process.  The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of  consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and  endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply  their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a  conscious self-transformation. It is necessary then to see what is  likely to be the principle of this new process of evolution and  what are the movements of the integral knowledge that must  necessarily emerge in it,&nbsp; \u2014 or, in other words, what is the nature  of the consciousness that must be the base of the life divine and  how that life may be expected to be formed or to form itself, to  materialise or, as one might say, to &#8220;realise&#8221;.  &nbsp;<br \/>\n<\/span>  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\" style=\"line-height: 150%;margin-top: 0;margin-bottom: 0;text-indent:0pt;margin-left:0pt\">\n<span lang=\"en-gb\"><br \/>\n<font size=\"2\">Page <\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Times New Roman\">\u2013 682<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The manuscript of a chapter written in 1939-40 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; The first revised typescript of Book Two, Chapter XXIII &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Part&#8230;<\/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-2111","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\/2111","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=2111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}