{"id":2117,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:33","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2117"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:33","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:33","slug":"33-the-divine-and-the-undivine-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\/33-the-divine-and-the-undivine-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","title":{"rendered":"-33_The Divine and the Undivine.html"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n Chapter IV <\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n The Divine and the Undivine <\/font><\/b>
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\nThe Seer, the Thinker, the Self-existent who becomes everywhere has ordered
\nperfectly all things from years sempiternal.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\nMany purified by knowledge have come to My state of being. . . . They have
\nreached likeness in their law of being to Me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nGita.<\/i>2<\/font><\/sup> <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nKnow That for the Brahman and not this which men cherish here<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nKena Upanishad.<\/i>3<\/font><\/sup>. <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nOne controlling inner Self of all beings. . . . As the Sun, the eye of the
\nworld, is not touched by the external faults of vision, so this inner Self in
\nbeings is not touched by the sorrow of the world<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nKatha Upanishad.<\/i>4<\/font><\/sup> <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nThe Lord abides in the heart of all beings.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n
\nGita.<\/i>5<\/font><\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nT<\/font>HE UNIVERSE<\/b> is a manifestation of an infinite and
\neternal All-Existence: the Divine Being dwells in all that is; we ourselves are
\nthat in our self, in our own deepest being; our soul, the secret indwelling
\npsychic entity, is a portion of the Divine Consciousness and Essence. This is
\nthe view we have taken of our existence; but at the same time we speak of a
\ndivine life as the culmination of the evolutionary process, and the use of the
\nphrase implies that our present life is undivine and all the life too that is
\nbelow us. At the first glance this looks like a self-contradiction; instead of
\nmaking a distinction between the divine life we aspire for and a present
\nundivine existence, it would be <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1 Verse 8.      2 IV. 10; XIV. 2.     
\n3 I. 4.      4 II. 2. 12, 11.     
\n5 XVIII. 61.   <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 403<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n more logical to speak of an ascent from level to higher level of a divine
\n\tmanifestation. It may be admitted that essentially, if we look at the inner
\n\treality alone and discount the suggestions of the outer figure, such might
\n\tbe the nature of the evolution, the change we have to undergo in Nature; so
\n\tit would appear perhaps to the impartial eye of a universal vision
\n\tuntroubled by our dualities of knowledge and ignorance, good and evil,
\n\thappiness and suffering and participating in the untrammelled consciousness
\n\tand delight of Sachchidananda. And yet, from the practical and relative
\n\tpoint of view as distinguished from an essential vision, the distinction
\n\tbetween the divine and the undivine has an insistent value, a very pressing
\n\tsignificance. This then is an aspect of the problem which it is necessary to
\n\tbring into the light and assess its true importance. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe distinction between the divine and the undivine life is in fact identical
\nwith the root distinction between a life of Knowledge lived in self-awareness
\nand in the power of the Light and a life of Ignorance,  \u2014 at any rate it so
\npresents itself in a world that is slowly and with difficulty evolving out of an
\noriginal Inconscience. All life that has still this Inconscience for its basis
\nis stamped with the mark of a radical imperfection; for even if it is satisfied
\nwith its own type, it is a satisfaction with something incomplete and
\ninharmonious, a patchwork of discords: on the contrary, even a purely mental or
\nvital life might be perfect within its limits if it were based on a restricted
\nbut harmonious self-power and self-knowledge. It is this bondage to a perpetual
\nstamp of imperfection and disharmony that is the mark of the undivine; a divine
\nlife, on the contrary, even if progressing from the little to the more, would be
\nat each stage harmonious in its principle and detail: it would be a se cure
\nground upon which freedom and perfection could naturally flower or grow towards
\ntheir highest stature, refine and expand into their most subtle opulence. All
\nimperfections, all perfections have to be taken into view in our consideration
\nof the difference between an undivine and a divine existence: but ordinarily,
\nwhen we make the distinction, we do it as human beings struggling under the
\npressure of life and the difficulties of our conduct   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 404<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n amidst its immediate problems and perplexities; most of all we are thinking of
\n\tthe distinction we are obliged to make between good and evil or of that
\n\talong with its kindred problem of the duality, the blend in us of happiness
\n\tand suffering. When we seek intellectually for a divine presence in things,
\n\ta divine origin of the world, a divine government of its workings, the
\n\tpresence of evil, the insistence on suffering, the large, the enormous part
\n\toffered to pain, grief and affliction in the economy of Nature are the cruel
\n\tphenomena which baffle our reason and overcome the instinctive faith of
\n\tmankind in such an origin and government or in an all-seeing,
\n\tall-determining and omnipresent Divine Immanence. Other difficulties we
\n\tcould solve more easily and happily and make some shift to be better
\n\tsatisfied with the ready conclusiveness of our solutions. But this standard
\n\tof judgment is not sufficiently comprehensive and it is supported upon a too
\n\thuman point of view; for to a wider outlook evil and suffering appear only
\n\tas a striking aspect, they are not the whole defect, not even the root of
\n\tthe matter. The sum of the world’s imperfections is not made up only of
\n\tthese two deficiencies; there is more than the fall, if fall there was, of
\n\tour spiritual or material being from good and from happiness or our nature’s
\n\tfailure to overcome evil and suffering. Besides the deficiency of the
\n\tethical and hedonistic satisfactions demanded by our being, the paucity of
\n\tGood and Delight in our world-experience, there is also the deficiency of
\n\tother divine degrees: for Knowledge, Truth, Beauty, Power, Unity are, they
\n\ttoo, the stuff and elements of a divine life, and these are given to us in a
\n\tscanty and grudging measure; yet all are, in their absolute, powers of the
\n\tDivine Nature. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt is not possible then to limit the description of our and the world’s undivine
\nimperfection solely to moral evil or sensational suffering; there is more in the
\nworld-enigma than their double problem,  \u2014 for they are only two strong
\nresults of a common principle. It is the general principle of imperfection that
\nwe have to admit and consider. If we look closely at this general imperfection,
\nwe shall see that it consists first in a limitation in us of the divine elements
\nwhich robs them of their divinity, then in a various many-branching distortion,
\na perversion, a contrary   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 405<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n turn, a falsifying departure from some ideal Truth of being. To our minds
\n\twhich do not possess that Truth but can conceive it, this departure presents
\n\titself either as a state from which we have lapsed spiritually or as a
\n\tpossibility or promise which we cannot fulfil, cannot realise because it
\n\texists only as an ideal. There has been either a lapse of the inner spirit
\n\tfrom a greater consciousness and knowledge, delight, love and beauty, power
\n\tand capacity, harmony and good, or else there is a failure of our struggling
\n\tnature, an impotence to achieve what we instinctively see to be divine and
\n\tdesirable. If we penetrate to the cause of the fall or the failure, we shall
\n\tfind that all proceeds from the one primal fact that our being,
\n\tconsciousness, force, experience of things represent  \u2014 not in their
\n\tvery self, but in their surface pragmatic nature  \u2014 a principle or an
\n\teffective phenomenon of division or rupture in the unity of the Divine
\n\tExistence. This division becomes in its inevitable practical effect a
\n\tlimitation of the divine consciousness and knowledge, the divine delight and
\n\tbeauty, the divine power and capacity, the divine harmony and good: there is
\n\ta limitation of completeness and wholeness, a blindness in our vision of
\n\tthese things, a lameness in our following of them, in our experience of them
\n\ta fragmentation, a diminution of power and intensity, a lowering of quality, 
\n\t\u2014 the mark of a descent from spiritual heights or else of a consciousness
\n\temerging from the insensible neutral monotone of the Inconscience; the
\n\tintensities which are normal and natural on higher ranges are in us lost or
\n\ttoned down so as to harmonise with the blacks and greys of our material
\n\texistence. There arises too by a secondary ulterior effect a perversion of
\n\tthese highest things; in our limited mentality unconsciousness and wrong
\n\tconsciousness intervene, ignorance covers our whole nature and  \u2014 by
\n\tthe misapplication or misdirection of an imperfect will and knowledge, by
\n\tautomatic reactions of our diminished consciousness-force and the inept
\n\tpoverty of our substance  \u2014 contradictions of the divine elements are
\n\tformed, incapacity, inertia, falsehood, error, pain and grief, wrong-doing,
\n\tdiscord, evil. There is too, always, somewhere hidden in our selves, nursed
\n\tin our recesses, even when not overtly felt in the
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 406<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n conscious nature, even when rejected by the parts of us which these things
\n\ttorture, an attachment to this experience of division, a clinging to the
\n\tdivided way of being which prevents the excision of these unhappinesses or
\n\ttheir rejection and removal. For since the principle of Consciousness-Force
\n\tand Ananda is at the root of all manifestation, nothing can endure if it has
\n\tnot a will in our nature, a sanction of the Purusha, a sustained pleasure in
\n\tsome part of the being, even though it be a secret or a perverse pleasure,
\n\tto keep it in continuance. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nWhen we say that all is a divine manifestation, even that which we call
\nundivine, we mean that in its essentiality all is divine even if the form
\nbaffles or repels us. Or, to put it in a formula to which it is easier for our
\npsychological sense of things to give its assent, in all things there is a
\npresence, a primal Reality,  \u2014 the Self, the Divine, Brahman,  \u2014 which
\nis for ever pure, perfect, blissful, infinite: its infinity is not affected by
\nthe limitations of relative things; its purity is not stained by our sin and
\nevil; its bliss is not touched by our pain and suffering; its perfection is not
\nimpaired by our defects of consciousness, knowledge, will, unity. In certain
\nimages of the Upanishads the divine Purusha is described as the one Fire which
\nhas entered into all forms and shapes itself according to the form, as the one
\nSun which illumines all impartially and is not affected by the faults of our
\nseeing. But this affirmation is not enough; it leaves the problem unsolved, why
\nthat which is in itself ever pure, perfect, blissful, infinite, should not only
\ntolerate but seem to maintain and encourage in its manifestation imperfection
\nand limitation, impurity and suffering and falsehood and evil: it states the
\nduality that constitutes the problem, but does not solve it. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIf we simply leave these two dissonant facts of existence standing in each
\nother’s presence, we are driven to conclude that there is no reconciliation
\npossible; all we can do is to cling as much as we can to a deepening sense of
\nthe joy of the pure and essential Presence and do the best we may with the
\ndiscordant externality, until we can impose in its place the law of its divine
\ncontrary. Or else we have to seek for an escape rather than a   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 407<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n solution. For we can say that the inner Presence alone is a Truth and the
\n\tdiscordant externality is a falsehood or illusion created by a mysterious
\n\tprinciple of Ignorance; our problem is to find some way of escape out of the
\n\tfalsehood of the manifested world into the truth of the hidden Reality. Or
\n\twe may hold with the Buddhist that there is no need of explanation, since
\n\tthere is this one practical fact of the imperfection and impermanence of
\n\tthings and no Self, Divine or Brahman, for that too is an illusion of our
\n\tconsciousness: the one thing that is necessary for liberation is to get rid
\n\tof the persistent structure of ideas and persistent energy of action which
\n\tmaintain a continuity in the flux of the impermanence. On this road of
\n\tescape we achieve self-extinction in Nirvana; the problem of things gets
\n\titself extinguished by our own self-extinction. This is a way out, but it
\n\tdoes not look like the true and only way, nor are the other solutions
\n\taltogether satisfactory. It is a fact that by excluding the discordant
\n\tmanifestation from our inner consciousness as a superficial externality, by
\n\tinsisting only on the pure and perfect Presence, we can achieve individually
\n\ta deep and blissful sense of this silent Divinity, can enter into the
\n\tsanctuary, can live in the light and the rapture. An exclusive inner
\n\tconcentration on the Real, the Eternal is possible, even a self-immersion by
\n\twhich we can lose or put away the dissonances of the universe. But there is
\n\ttoo somewhere deep down in us the need of a total consciousness, there is in
\n\tNature a secret universal seeking for the whole Divine, an impulsion towards
\n\tsome entire awareness and delight and power of existence; this need of a
\n\twhole being, a total knowledge, this integral will in us is not fully
\n\tsatisfied by these solutions. So long as the world is not divinely explained
\n\tto us, the Divine remains imperfectly known; for the world too is That and,
\n\tso long as it is not present to our consciousness and possessed by our
\n\tpowers of consciousness in the sense of the divine being, we are not in
\n\tpossession of the whole Divinity. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIt is possible to escape from the problem otherwise; for, admitting always the
\nessential Presence, we can endeavour to justify the divinity of the
\nmanifestation by correcting the human view of perfection or putting it aside as
\na too limited mental   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 408<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n standard. We may say that not only is the Spirit in things absolutely perfect
\n\tand divine, but each thing also is relatively perfect and divine in itself,
\n\tin its expression of what it has to express of the possibilities of
\n\texistence, in its assumption of its proper place in the complete
\n\tmanifestation. Each thing is divine in itself because each is a fact and
\n\tidea of the divine being, knowledge and will fulfilling itself infallibly in
\n\taccordance with the law of that particular manifestation. Each being is
\n\tpossessed of the knowledge, the force, the measure and kind of delight of
\n\texistence precisely proper to its own nature; each works in the gradations
\n\tof experience decreed by a secret inherent will, a native law, an intrinsic
\n\tpower of the self, an occult significance. It is thus perfect in the
\n\trelation of its phenomena to the law of its being; for all are in harmony
\n\twith that, spring out of it, adapt themselves to its purpose according to
\n\tthe infallibility of the divine Will and Knowledge at work within the
\n\tcreature. It is perfect and divine also in relation to the whole, in its
\n\tproper place in the whole; to that totality it is necessary and in it it
\n\tfulfils a part by which the perfection actual and progressive of the
\n\tuniversal harmony, the adaptation of all in it to its whole purpose and its
\n\twhole sense is helped and completed. If to us things appear undivine, if we
\n\thasten to condemn this or that phenomenon as inconsistent with the nature of
\n\ta divine being, it is because we are ignorant of the sense and purpose of
\n\tthe Divine in the world in its entirety. Because we see only parts and
\n\tfragments, we judge of each by itself as if it were the whole, judge also
\n\tthe external phenomena without knowing their secret sense; but by doing so
\n\twe vitiate our valuation of things, put on it the stamp of an initial and
\n\tfundamental error. Perfection cannot reside in the thing in its
\n\tseparateness, for that separateness is an illusion; perfection is the
\n\tperfection of the total divine harmony. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAll this may be true up to a certain point and so far as it goes; but this also
\nis a solution incomplete by itself and it cannot give us an entire satisfaction.
\nIt takes insufficient account of the human consciousness and the human view from
\nwhich we have to start; it does not give us the vision of the harmony it
\nalleges, and so it cannot meet our demand or convince, but only  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 409<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n contradicts by a cold intellectual conception our acute human sense of the
\n\treality of evil and imperfection; it gives too no lead to the psychic
\n\telement in our nature, the soul’s aspiration towards light and truth and
\n\ttowards a spiritual conquest, a victory over imperfection and evil. By
\n\titself, this view of things amounts to little more than the facile dogma
\n\twhich tells us that all that is is right, because all is perfectly decreed
\n\tby the divine Wisdom. It supplies us with nothing better than a complacent
\n\tintellectual and philosophic optimism: no light is turned on the
\n\tdisconcerting facts of pain, suffering and discord to which our human
\n\tconsciousness bears constant and troubling witness; at most there is a
\n\tsuggestion that in the divine reason of things there is a key to these
\n\tthings to which we have no access. This is not a sufficient answer to our
\n\tdiscontent and our aspiration which, however ignorant in their reactions,
\n\thowever mixed their mental motives, must correspond to a divine reality
\n\tdeeper down in our being. A Divine Whole that is perfect by reason of the
\n\timperfection of its parts, runs the risk of itself being only perfect in
\n\timperfection, because it fulfils entirely some stage in an unaccomplished
\n\tpurpose; it is then a present but not an ultimate Totality. To it we could
\n\tapply the Greek saying,
\nTheos ouk estin<\/i> alla gignetai<\/i>, the Divine is not yet in being,
\n\tbut is becoming. The true Divine would then be secret within us and perhaps
\n\tsupreme above us; to find the Divine within us and above us would be the
\n\treal solution, to become perfect as That is perfect, to attain liberation by
\n\tlikeness to it or by attaining to the law of its nature, sādrśya<\/i>,
\nsādharmya.<\/i> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIf the human consciousness were bound to the sense of imperfection and the
\nacceptance of it as the law of our life and the very character of our existence, 
\n\u2014 a reasoned acceptance that could answer in our human nature to the blind
\nanimal acceptance of the animal nature,  \u2014 then we might say that what we
\nare marks the limit of the divine self-expression in us; we might believe too
\nthat our imperfections and sufferings worked for the general harmony and
\nperfection of things and console ourselves with this philosophic balm offered
\nfor our wounds, satisfied to move among the pitfalls of life with as much
\nrational   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 410<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n prudence or as much philosophic sagacity and resignation as our incomplete
\n\tmental wisdom and our impatient vital parts permitted. Or else, taking
\n\trefuge in the more consoling fervours of religion, we might submit to all as
\n\tthe will of God in the hope or the faith of recompense in a Paradise beyond
\n\twhere we shall enter into a happier existence and put on a more pure and
\n\tperfect nature. But there is an essential factor in our human consciousness
\n\tand its workings which, no less than the reason, distinguishes it entirely
\n\tfrom the animal; there is not only a mental part in us which recognises the
\n\timperfection, there is a psychic part which rejects it. Our soul’s
\n\tdissatisfaction with imperfection as a law of life upon earth, its
\n\taspiration towards the elimination of all imperfections from our nature, not
\n\tonly in a heaven beyond where it would be automatically impossible to be
\n\timperfect, but here and now in a life where perfection has to be conquered
\n\tby evolution and struggle, are as much a law of our being as that against
\n\twhich they revolt; they too are divine,  \u2014 a divine dissatisfaction, a
\n\tdivine aspiration. In them is the inherent light of a power within which
\n\tmaintains them in us so that the Divine may not only be there as a hidden
\n\tReality in our spiritual secrecies but unfold itself in the evolution of
\n\tNature. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIn this light we can admit that all works perfectly towards a divine end by a
\ndivine wisdom and therefore each thing is in that sense perfectly fitted in its
\nplace; but we say that that is not the whole of the divine purpose. For what is
\nis only justifiable, finds its perfect sense and satisfaction by what can and
\nwill be. There is, no doubt, a key in the divine reason that would justify
\nthings as they are by revealing their right significance and true secret as
\nother, subtler, deeper than their outward meaning and phenomenal appearance
\nwhich is all that can normally be caught by our present intelligence: but we
\ncannot be content with that belief, to search for and find the spiritual key of
\nthings is the law of our being. The sign of the finding is not a philosophic
\nintellectual recognition and a resigned or sage acceptance of things as they are
\nbecause of some divine sense and purpose in them which is beyond us; the real
\nsign is an elevation towards the spiritual knowledge and power which will
\ntransform the law   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 411<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n and phenomena and external forms of our life nearer to a true image of that
\n\tdivine sense and purpose. It is right and reasonable to endure with
\n\tequanimity suffering and subjection to defect as the immediate will of God,
\n\ta present law of imperfection laid on our members, but on condition that we
\n\trecognise it also as the will of God in us to transcend evil and suffering,
\n\tto transform imperfection into perfection, to rise into a higher law of
\n\tDivine Nature. In our human consciousness there is the image of an ideal
\n\ttruth of being, a divine nature, an incipient godhead: in relation to that
\n\thigher truth our present state of imperfection can be relatively described
\n\tas an undivine life and the conditions of the world from which we start as
\n\tundivine conditions; the imperfections are the indication given to us that
\n\tthey are there as first disguises, not as the intended expression of the
\n\tdivine being and the divine nature. It is a Power within us, the concealed
\n\tDivinity, that has lit the flame of aspiration, pictures the image of the
\n\tideal, keeps alive our discontent and pushes us to throw off the disguise
\n\tand to reveal or, in the Vedic phrase, to form and disclose the Godhead in
\n\tthe manifest spirit, mind, life and body of this terrestrial creature. Our
\n\tpresent nature can only be transitional, our imperfect status a
\n\tstarting-point and opportunity for the achievement of another higher, wider
\n\tand greater that shall be divine and perfect not only by the secret spirit
\n\twithin it but in its manifest and most outward form of existence. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut these conclusions are only first reasonings or primary intuitions founded on
\nour inner self-experience and the apparent facts of universal existence. They
\ncannot be entirely validated unless we know the real cause of ignorance,
\nimperfection and suffering and their place in the cosmic purpose or cosmic
\norder. There are three propositions about God and the world,  \u2014 if we admit
\nthe Divine Existence,  \u2014 to which the general reason and consciousness of
\nmankind bear witness; but, one of the three,  \u2014 which is yet necessitated by the
\ncharacter of the world we live in,  \u2014 does not harmonise with the two
\nothers, and by this disharmony the human mind is thrown into great perplexities
\nof contradiction and driven to doubt and denial. For, first, we find  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 412<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n affirmed an omnipresent Divinity and Reality pure, perfect and blissful,
\n\twithout whom, apart from whom nothing could exist, since all exists only by
\n\thim and in his being. All thinking on the subject that is not atheistic or
\n\tmaterialistic or else primitive and anthropomorphic, has to start from this
\n\tadmission or to arrive at this fundamental concept. It is true that certain
\n\treligions seem to suppose an extracosmic Deity who has created a world
\n\toutside and apart from his own existence; but when they come to construct a
\n\ttheology or spiritual philosophy, these too admit omnipresence or immanence, 
\n\t\u2014 for this omnipresence imposes itself, is a necessity of spiritual
\n\tthinking. If there is such a Divinity, Self or Reality, it must be
\n\teverywhere, one and indivisible, nothing can possibly exist apart from its
\n\texistence; nothing can be born from another than That; there can be nothing
\n\tunsupported by That, independent of It, unfilled by the breath and power of
\n\tIts being. It has been held indeed that the ignorance, the imperfection, the
\n\tsuffering of this world are not supported by the Divine Existence; but we
\n\thave then to suppose two Gods, an Ormuzd of the good and an Ahriman of the
\n\tevil or, perhaps, a perfect supracosmic and immanent Being and an imperfect
\n\tcosmic Demiurge or separate undivine Nature. This is a possible conception
\n\tbut improbable to our highest intelligence,  \u2014 it can only be at most a
\n\tsubordinate aspect, not the original truth or the whole truth of things; nor
\n\tcan we suppose that the one Self and Spirit in all and the one Power creator
\n\tof all are different, contrary in the character of their being, separate in
\n\ttheir will and purpose. Our reason tells us, our intuitive consciousness
\n\tfeels, and their witness is confirmed by spiritual experience, that the one
\n\tpure and absolute Existence exists in all things and beings even as all
\n\tthings and beings exist in It and by It, and nothing can be or happen
\n\twithout this indwelling and all-supporting Presence. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nA second affirmation which our mind naturally accepts as the consequence of the
\nfirst postulate, is that by the supreme consciousness and the supreme power of
\nthis omnipresent Divinity in its perfect universal knowledge and divine wisdom
\nall things are ordered and governed in their fundamental relations  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 413<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n and their process. But, on the other hand, the actual process of things, the
\n\tactual relations which we see are, as presented to our human consciousness,
\n\trelations of imperfection, of limitation; there appears a disharmony, even a
\n\tperversion, something that is the contrary of our conception of the Divine
\n\tExistence, a very apparent denial or at least a disfigurement or disguise of
\n\tthe Divine Presence. There arises then a third affirmation of the Divine
\n\tReality and the world reality as different in essence or in order, so
\n\tdifferent that we have to draw away from one to reach the other; if we would
\n\tfind the Divine Inhabitant, we must reject the world he inhabits, governs,
\n\thas created or manifested in his own existence. The first of these three
\n\tpropositions is inevitable; the second also must stand if the omnipresent
\n\tDivine has anything at all to do with the world he inhabits and with its
\n\tmanifestation, building, maintenance and government: but the third seems
\n\talso self-evident and yet it is incompatible with its precedents, and this
\n\tdissonance confronts us with a problem which appears to be incapable of
\n\tsatisfactory solution. <\/span><\/p>\n

\n It is not difficult by some construction of the
\n\tphilosophic reason or of theological reasoning to circumvent the difficulty. 
\nIt is possible to erect a fain\u00e9ant Deity, like the gods of Epicurus, blissful in
\nhimself, observing but indifferent to a world conducted or misconducted by a
\nmechanical law of Nature. It is open to us to posit a Witness Self, a silent
\nSoul in things, a Purusha who allows Nature to do what she will and is content
\nto reflect all her order and all her disorders in his passive and stainless
\nconsciousness,  \u2014 or a supreme Self absolute, inactive, free from all
\nrelations, unconcerned with the works of the cosmic Illusion or Creation which
\nhas mysteriously or paradoxically originated from It or over against It to tempt
\nand afflict a world of temporal creatures. But all these solutions do no more
\nthan reflect the apparent dissonance of our twofold experience; they do not
\nattempt to reconcile, neither do they solve or explain it, but only reaffirm it
\nby an open or covert dualism and an essential division of the Indivisible.
\nPractically, there is affirmed a dual Godhead, Self or Soul and Nature: but
\nNature, the Power in things, cannot be anything else than a power of the Self,
\nthe Soul,   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 414<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n the essential Being of things; her works cannot be altogether independent of
\n\tSoul or Self, cannot be her own contrary result and working unaffected by
\n\tits consent or refusal or a violence of mechanical Force imposed on an
\n\tinertia of mechanical Passivity. It is possible again to posit an observing
\n\tinactive Self and an active creating Godhead; but this device cannot serve
\n\tus, for in the end these two must really be one in a dual aspect,  \u2014
\n\tthe Godhead the active aspect of the observing Self, the Self a witness of
\n\tits own Godhead in action. A discord, a gulf between the Self in knowledge
\n\tand the same Self in its works needs explanation, but it presents itself as
\n\tunexplained and inexplicable. Or, again, we can posit a double consciousness
\n\tof Brahman the Reality, one static and one dynamic, one essential and
\n\tspiritual in which it is Self perfect and absolute, another formative,
\n\tpragmatic, in which it becomes not-self and with which its absoluteness and
\n\tperfection have no concern of participation; for it is only a temporal
\n\tformation in the timeless Reality. But to us who even if only half-existent,
\n\thalf-conscious, yet inhabit the Absolute’s half-dream of living and are
\n\tcompelled by Nature to have in it a terrible and insistent concern and to
\n\tdeal with it as real, this wears the appearance of an obvious mystification;
\n\tfor this temporal consciousness and its formations are also in the end a
\n\tPower of the one Self, depend upon it, can exist only by it; what exists by
\n\tthe power of the Reality cannot be unrelated to It or That unrelated to the
\n\tworld of its own Power’s making. If the world exists by the supreme Spirit,
\n\tso also its ordering and relations must exist by the power of the Spirit;
\n\tits law must be according to some law of the spiritual consciousness and
\n\texistence. The Self, the Reality must be aware of and aware in the
\n\tworld-consciousness which exists in its being; a power of the Self, the
\n\tReality must be constantly determining or at least sanctioning its phenomena
\n\tand operations: for there can be no independent power, no Nature not derived
\n\tfrom the original and eternal Self-Existence. If it does no more, it must
\n\tstill be originating or determining the universe through the mere fact of
\n\tits conscious omnipresence. It is, no doubt, a truth of spiritual experience
\n\tthat there is a status of peace and silence in the Infinite behind the  
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 315<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n cosmic activity, a Consciousness that is the immobile Witness of the creation;
\n\tbut this is not the whole of spiritual experience, and we cannot hope to
\n\tfind in one side only of knowledge a fundamental and total explanation of
\n\tthe Universe.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\tOnce we admit a divine government of the universe, we must conclude that the
\n\tpower to govern is complete and absolute; for otherwise we are obliged to
\n\tsuppose that a being and consciousness infinite and absolute has a knowledge
\n\tand will limited in their control of things or hampered in their power of
\n\tworking. It is not impossible to concede that the supreme and immanent
\n\tDivinity may leave a certain freedom of working to something that has come
\n\tinto being in his perfection but is itself imperfect and the cause of
\n\timperfection, to an ignorant or inconscient Nature, to the action of the
\n\thuman mind and will, even to a conscious Power or Forces of darkness and
\n\tevil that take their stand upon the reign of a basic Inconscience. But none
\n\tof these things are independent of Its own existence, nature and
\n\tconsciousness and none of them can act except in Its presence and by Its
\n\tsanction or allowance. Man’s freedom is relative and he cannot be held
\n\tsolely responsible for the imperfection of his nature. Ignorance and
\n\tinconscience of Nature have arisen, not independently, but in the one Being;
\n\tthe imperfection of her workings cannot be entirely foreign to some will of
\n\tthe Immanence. It may be conceded that forces set in motion are allowed to
\n\twork themselves out according to the law of their movement; but what divine
\n\tOmniscience and Omnipotence has allowed to arise and act in Its
\n\tomnipresence, Its all-existence, we must consider It to have originated and
\n\tdecreed, since without the fiat of the Being they could not have been, could
\n\tnot remain in existence. If the Divine is at all concerned with the world He
\n\thas manifested, there is no other Lord than He and from that necessity of
\n\tHis original and universal being there can eventually be no escape or
\n\tdeparture. It is on the foundation of this self-evident consequence of our
\n\tfirst premiss, without any evasion of its implications, that we have to
\n\tconsider the problem of imperfection, suffering and evil. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAnd first we must realise that the existence of ignorance,  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 416<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n error, limitation, suffering, division and discord in the world need not by
\n\titself, as we too hastily imagine, be a denial or a disproof of the divine
\n\tbeing, consciousness, power, knowledge, will, delight in the universe. They
\n\tcan be that if we have to take them by themselves separately, but need not
\n\tbe so taken if we get a clear vision of their place and significance in a
\n\tcomplete view of the universal workings. A part broken off from the whole
\n\tmay be imperfect, ugly, incomprehensible; but when we see it in the whole,
\n\tit recovers its place in the harmony, it has a meaning and a use. The Divine
\n\tReality is infinite in its being; in this infinite being, we find limited
\n\tbeing everywhere,  \u2014 that is the apparent fact from which our existence here
\n\tseems to start and to which our own narrow ego and its ego-centric
\n\tactivities bear constant witness. But, in reality, when we come to an
\n\tintegral self-knowledge, we find that we are not limited, for we also are
\n\tinfinite. Our ego is only a face of the universal being and has no separate
\n\texistence; our apparent separative individuality is only a surface movement
\n\tand behind it our real individuality stretches out to unity with all things
\n\tand upward to oneness with the transcendent Divine Infinity. Thus our ego,
\n\twhich seems to be a limitation of existence, is really a power of infinity;
\n\tthe boundless multiplicity of beings in the world is a result and signal
\n\tevidence, not of limitation or finiteness, but of that illimitable Infinity.
\n\tApparent division can never erect itself into a real separateness; there is
\n\tsupporting and overriding it an indivisible unity which division itself
\n\tcannot divide. This fundamental world-fact of ego and apparent division and
\n\ttheir separative workings in the world existence is no denial of the Divine
\n\tNature of unity and indivisible being; they are the surface results of an
\n\tinfinite multiplicity which is a power of the infinite Oneness. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThere is then no real division or limitation of being, no fundamental
\ncontradiction of the omnipresent Reality; but there does seem to be a real
\nlimitation of consciousness: there is an ignorance of self, a veiling of the
\ninner Divinity, and all imperfection is its consequence. For we identify
\nourselves mentally, vitally, physically with this superficial ego-consciousness
\nwhich   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 417<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

\tis our first insistent self-experience; this does impose on us, not a
\n\tfundamentally real, but a practical division with all the un toward
\n\tconsequences of that separateness from the Reality. But here again we have
\n\tto discover that from the point of view of God’s workings, whatever be our
\n\treactions or our experience on the surface, this fact of ignorance is itself
\n\tan operation of knowledge and not a true ignorance. Its phenomenon of
\n\tignorance is a superficial movement; for behind it is an indivisible
\n\tall-consciousness: the ignorance is a frontal power of that
\n\tall-consciousness
\n\twhich limits itself in a certain field, within certain boundaries to a
\n\tparticular operation of knowledge, a particular mode of conscious working,
\n\tand keeps back all the rest of its knowledge in waiting as a force behind
\n\tit. All that is thus hidden is an occult store of light and power for the
\n\tAll-Consciousness to draw upon for the evolution of our being in Nature;
\n\tthere is a secret working which fills up all the deficiencies of the frontal
\n\tIgnorance, acts through its apparent stumblings, prevents them from leading
\n\tto another final result than that which the All-Knowledge has decreed, helps
\n\tthe soul in the Ignorance to draw from its experience, even from the natural
\n\tpersonality’s sufferings and errors, what is necessary for its evolution and
\n\tto leave behind what is no longer utilisable. This frontal power of
\n\tIgnorance is a power of concentration in a limited working, much like that
\n\tpower in our human mentality by which we absorb ourselves in a particular
\n\tobject and in a particular work and seem to use only so much knowledge, only
\n\tsuch ideas as are necessary for it,  \u2014 the rest, which are alien to it
\n\tor would interfere with it, are put back for the moment: yet, in reality,
\n\tall the time it is the indivisible consciousness which we are that has done
\n\tthe work to be done, seen the thing that has to be seen,  \u2014 that and not any
\n\tfragment of consciousness or any exclusive ignorance in us is the silent
\n\tknower and worker: so is it too with this frontal power of concentration of
\n\tthe All-Consciousness within us. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIn our valuation of the movements of our consciousness this ability of
\nconcentration is rightly held to be one of the greatest powers of the human
\nmentality. But equally the power   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 418<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n of putting forth what seems to be an exclusive working of limited knowledge,
\n\tthat which presents itself to us as ignorance, must be considered one of the
\n\tgreatest powers of the divine Consciousness. It is only a supreme
\n\tself-possessing Knowledge which can thus be powerful to limit itself in the
\n\tact and yet work out perfectly all its intentions through that apparent
\n\tignorance. In the universe we see this supreme self-possessing Knowledge
\n\twork through a multitude of ignorances, each striving to act according to
\n\tits own blindness, yet through them all it constructs and executes its
\n\tuniversal harmonies. More, the miracle of its omniscience appears most
\n\tstrikingly of all in what seems to us the action of an Inconscient, when
\n\tthrough the complete or the partial nescience  \u2014 more thick than our
\n\tignorance  \u2014 of the electron, atom, cell, plant, insect, the lowest
\n\tforms of animal life, it arranges perfectly its order of things and guides
\n\tthe instinctive impulse or the inconscient impetus to an end possessed by
\n\tthe All-Knowledge but held behind a veil, not known by the instrumental form
\n\tof existence, yet perfectly operative within the instinct or the impetus. We
\n\tmay say then that this action of the ignorance or nescience is no real
\n\tignorance, but a power, a sign, a proof of an omniscient self-knowledge and
\n\tall-knowledge. If we need any personal and inner witness to this indivisible
\n\tall consciousness behind the ignorance,  \u2014 all Nature is its external
\n\tproof,  \u2014 we can get it with any completeness only in our deeper inner
\n\tbeing or larger and higher spiritual state when we draw back behind the veil
\n\tof our own surface ignorance and come into contact with the divine Idea and
\n\tWill behind it. Then we see clearly enough that what we have done by
\n\tourselves in our ignorance was yet overseen and guided in its result by the
\n\tinvisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant
\n\tworking and begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and
\n\tknow what now we worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal
\n\tPresence, meet the Lord of all being and all Nature. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAs with the cause,  \u2014 the Ignorance,  \u2014 so is it with the consequences
\nof the Ignorance. All this that seems to us incapacity, weakness, impotence,
\nlimitation of power, our will’s hampered   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 419<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n struggle and fettered labour, takes from the point of view of the Divine in
\n\this self-workings the aspect of a just limitation of an omniscient power by
\n\tthe free will of that Power itself so that the surface energy shall be in
\n\texact correspondence with the work that it has to do, with its attempt, its
\n\tallotted success or its destined because necessary failure, with the balance
\n\tof the sum of forces in which it is a part and with the larger result of
\n\twhich its own results are an indivisible portion. Behind this limitation of
\n\tpower is the All-Power and in the limitation that All-Power is at work; but
\n\tit is through the sum of many limited workings that the indivisible
\n\tOmnipotence executes infallibly and sovereignly its purposes. This power to
\n\tlimit its force and to work through that self-limitation, by what we call
\n\tlabour, struggle, difficulty, by what seems to us a series of failures or
\n\thalf-baulked successes and through them to achieve its secret intention, is
\n\tnot therefore a sign, proof or reality of weakness, but a sign, proof,
\n\treality  \u2014 the greatest possible  \u2014 of an absolute omnipotence.
\n\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAs to suffering, which is so great a stumbling-block to our understanding of the
\nuniverse, it is evidently a consequence of the limitation of consciousness, the
\nrestriction of force which prevents us from mastering or assimilating the touch
\nof what is to us other-force: the result of this incapacity and disharmony is
\nthat the delight of the touch cannot be seized and it affects our sense with a
\nreaction of discomfort or pain, a defect or excess, a discord resultant in inner
\nor outer injury, born of division between our power of being and the power of
\nbeing that meets us. Behind in our self and spirit is the All-Delight of the
\nuniversal being which takes its account of the contact, a delight first in the
\nenduring and then in the conquest of the suffering and finally in its
\ntransmutation that shall come hereafter; for pain and suffering are a perverse
\nand contrary term of the delight of existence and they can turn into their
\nopposite, even into the original All Delight, Ananda. This All-Delight is not
\npresent in the universal alone, but it is here secret in ourselves, as we
\ndiscover when we go back from our outward consciousness into the Self within us;
\nthe psychic being in us takes its account even of its most perverse or contrary
\nas well as its more benign experiences and grows by the   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 420<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n rejection of them or acceptance; it extracts a divine meaning and use from our
\n\tmost poignant sufferings, difficulties, misfortunes. Nothing but this
\n\tAll-Delight could dare or bear to impose such experiences on itself or on
\n\tus; nothing else could turn them thus to its own utility and our spiritual
\n\tprofit. So too nothing but an inalienable harmony of being inherent in an
\n\tinalienable unity of being would throw out so many harshest apparent
\n\tdiscords and yet force them to its purpose so that in the end they are
\n\tunable to do anything else but to serve and secure, and even themselves
\n\tchange into elements that constitute, a growing universal rhythm and
\n\tultimate harmony. At every turn it is the divine Reality which we can
\n\tdiscover behind that which we are yet compelled by the nature of the
\n\tsuperficial consciousness in which we dwell to call undivine and in a sense
\n\tare right in using that appellation; for these appearances are a veil over
\n\tthe Divine Perfection, a veil necessary for the present, but not at all the
\n\ttrue and complete figure. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut even when we thus regard the universe, we cannot and ought not to dismiss as
\nentirely and radically false and unreal the values that are given to it by our
\nown limited human consciousness. For grief, pain, suffering, error, falsehood,
\nignorance, weakness, wickedness, incapacity, non-doing of what should be done
\nand wrong-doing, deviation of will and denial of will, egoism, limitation,
\ndivision from other beings with whom we should be one, all that makes up the
\neffective figure of what we call evil, are facts of the world-consciousness, not
\nfictions and unrealities, although they are facts whose complete sense or true
\nvalue is not that which we assign to them in our ignorance. Still our sense of
\nthem is part of a true sense, our values of them are necessary to their complete
\nvalues. One side of the truth of these things we discover when we get into a
\ndeeper and larger consciousness; for we find then that there is a cosmic and
\nindividual utility in what presents itself to us as adverse and evil. For
\nwithout experience of pain we would not get all the infinite value of the divine
\ndelight of which pain is in travail; all ignorance is a penumbra which environs
\nan orb of knowledge, every error is significant of the possibility and the
\neffort of a   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 421<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n discovery of truth; every weakness and failure is a first sounding of gulfs of
\n\tpower and potentiality; all division is intended to enrich by an experience
\n\tof various sweetness of unification the joy of realised unity. All this
\n\timperfection is to us evil, but all evil is in travail of the eternal good;
\n\tfor all is an imperfection which is the first condition  \u2014 in the law
\n\tof life evolving out of Inconscience  \u2014 of a greater perfection in the
\n\tmanifesting of the hidden divinity. But at the same time our present feeling
\n\tof this evil and imperfection, the revolt of our consciousness against them
\n\tis also a necessary valuation; for if we have first to face and endure them,
\n\tthe ultimate command on us is to reject, to overcome, to transform the life
\n\tand the nature. It is for that end that their insistence is not allowed to
\n\tslacken; the soul must learn the results of the Ignorance, must begin to
\n\tfeel their reactions as a spur to its endeavour of mastery and conquest and
\n\tfinally to a greater endeavour of transformation and transcendence. It is
\n\tpossible, when we live inwardly in the depths, to arrive at a state of vast
\n\tinner equality and peace which is untouched by the reactions of the outer
\n\tnature, and that is a great but incomplete liberation,  \u2014 for the outer
\n\tnature too has a right to deliverance. But even if our personal deliverance
\n\tis complete, still there is the suffering of others, the world travail,
\n\twhich the great of soul cannot regard with indifference. There is a unity
\n\twith all beings which something within us feels and the deliverance of
\n\tothers must be felt as intimate to its own deliverance. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis then is the law of the manifestation, the reason of the imperfection here.
\nTrue, it is a law of manifestation only and, even, a law special to this
\nmovement in which we live, and we may say that it need not have been  \u2014 if
\nthere were no movement of manifestation or not this movement; but, the
\nmanifestation and the movement being given, the law is necessary. It is not
\nenough simply to say that the law and all its circumstances are an unreality
\ncreated by the mental consciousness, non-existent in God, and to be indifferent
\nto these dualities or to get out of the manifestation into God’s pure being is
\nthe only wisdom. It is true they are creations of mind Consciousness, but Mind
\nis only secondarily responsible; in a deeper reality they are, as we have  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
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\n

\n seen already, creations of the Divine Consciousness projecting mind away from
\n\tits all-knowledge so as to realise these opposite or contrary values of its
\n\tall-power, all-knowledge, all-delight, all-being and unity. Obviously, this
\n\taction and these fruits of the Divine Consciousness can be called by us
\n\tunreal in the sense of not being the eternal and fundamental truth of being
\n\tor can be taxed with falsehood because they contradict what is originally
\n\tand eventually the truth of being; but, all the same, they have their
\n\tpersistent reality and importance in our present phase of the manifestation,
\n\tnor can they be a mere mistake of the Divine Consciousness without any
\n\tmeaning in the divine wisdom, without any purpose of the divine joy, power
\n\tand knowledge to justify their existence. Justification there must be even
\n\tif it reposes for us upon a mystery which may confront us, so long as we
\n\tlive in a surface experience, as an insoluble riddle. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut if, accepting this side of Nature, we say that all things are fixed in their
\nstatutory and stationary law of being, and man too must be fixed in his
\nimperfections, his ignorance and sin and weakness and vileness and suffering,
\nour life loses its true significance. Man’s perpetual attempt to arise out of
\nthe darkness and insufficiency of his nature can then have no issue in the world
\nitself, in life itself; its one issue, if there is any, must be by an escape out
\nof life, out of the world, out of his human existence and therefore out of its
\neternally unsatisfactory law of imperfect being, either into a heaven of the
\ngods or of God or into the pure ineffability of the Absolute. If so, man can
\nnever really deliver out of the ignorance and falsehood the truth and knowledge,
\nout of the evil and ugliness the good and beauty, out of the weakness and
\nvileness the power and glory, out of the grief and suffering the joy and delight
\nwhich are contained in the Spirit behind them and of which these contradictions
\nare the first adverse and contrary conditions of emergence. All he can do is to
\ncut the imperfections away from him and overpass too their balancing opposites,
\nimperfect also,  \u2014 leave with the ignorance the human knowledge, with the
\nevil the human good, with the weakness the human strength and power, with the
\nstrife and suffering the human love and joy; for these are   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 423<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n in our present nature inseparably entwined together, look like conjoint
\n\tdualities, negative pole and positive pole of the same unreality, and since
\n\tthey cannot be elevated and transformed, they must be both abandoned:
\n\thumanity cannot be fulfilled in divinity; it must cease, be left behind and
\n\trejected. Whether the result will be an individual enjoyment of the absolute
\n\tdivine nature or of the Divine Presence or a Nirvana in the featureless
\n\tAbsolute, is a point on which religions and philosophies differ: but in
\n\teither case human existence on earth must be taken as condemned to eternal
\n\timperfection by the very law of its being; it is perpetually and
\n\tunchangeably an undivine manifestation in the Divine Existence. The soul by
\n\ttaking on manhood, perhaps by the very fact of birth itself, has fallen from
\n\tthe Divine, has committed an original sin or error which it must be man’s
\n\tspiritual aim, as soon as he is enlightened, thoroughly to cancel,
\n\tunflinchingly to eliminate. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nIn that case, the only reasonable explanation of such a paradoxical
\nmanifestation or creation is that it is a cosmic game, a Lila, a play, an
\namusement of the Divine Being. It may be He pretends to be undivine, wears that
\nappearance like the mask or make-up of an actor for the sole pleasure of the
\npretence or the drama. Or else He has created the undivine, created ignorance,
\nsin and suffering just for the joy of a manifold creation. Or, perhaps, as some
\nreligions curiously suppose, He has done this so that there may be inferior
\ncreatures who will praise and glorify Him for his eternal goodness, wisdom,
\nbliss and omnipotence and try feebly to come an inch nearer to the goodness in
\norder to share the bliss, on pain of punishment  \u2014 by some supposed eternal 
\n\u2014 if, as the vast majority must by their very imperfection, they fail in their
\nendeavour. But to the doctrine of such a Lila so crudely stated there is always
\npossible the retort that a God, himself all-blissful, who delights in the
\nsuffering of creatures or imposes such suffering on them for the faults of his
\nown imperfect creation, would be no Divinity and against Him the moral being and
\nintelligence of humanity must revolt or deny His existence. But if the human
\nsoul is a portion of the Divinity, if it is a divine Spirit in man that puts on
\nthis imperfection and   <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
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\n

\n in the form of humanity consents to bear this suffering, or if the soul in
\n\thumanity is meant to be drawn to the Divine Spirit and is His associate in
\n\tthe play of imperfection here, in the delight of perfect being otherwhere,
\n\tthe Lila may still remain a paradox, but it ceases to be a cruel or
\n\trevolting paradox; it can at most be regarded as a strange mystery and to
\n\tthe reason inexplicable. To explain it there must be two missing elements, a
\n\tconscious assent by the soul to this manifestation and a reason in the
\n\tAll-Wisdom that makes the play significant and intelligible. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe strangeness of the play diminishes, the paradox loses its edge of sharpness
\nif we discover that, although fixed grades exist each with its appropriate order
\nof nature, they are only firm steps for a progressive ascent of the souls
\nembodied in forms of matter, a progressive divine manifestation which rises from
\nthe inconscient to the superconscient or all-conscient status with the human
\nconsciousness as its decisive point of transition. Imperfection becomes then a
\nnecessary term of the manifestation: for, since all the divine nature is
\nconcealed but present in the Inconscient, it must be gradually delivered out of
\nit; this graduation necessitates a partial unfolding, and this partial character
\nor incompleteness of the unfolding necessitates imperfection. An evolutionary
\nmanifestation demands a mid-stage with gradations above and under it,  \u2014
\nprecisely such a stage as the mental consciousness of man, part knowledge, part
\nignorance, a middle power of being still leaning on the Inconscient but slowly
\nrising towards the all-conscious Divine Nature. A partial unfolding implying
\nimperfection and ignorance may take as its inevitable companion, perhaps its
\nbasis for certain movements, an apparent perversion of the original truth of
\nbeing. For the ignorance or imperfection to endure there must be a seeming
\ncontrary of all that characterises the divine nature, its unity, its
\nall-consciousness, its all-power, its all-harmony, its all-good, its
\nall-delight; there must appear limitation, discord, unconsciousness, disharmony,
\nincapacity, insensibility and suffering, evil. For without that perversion
\nimperfection could have no strong standing-ground, could not so freely manifest
\nand maintain its nature as against the presence of the underlying Divinity. A  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 425<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n partial knowledge is imperfect knowledge and imperfect knowledge is to that
\n\textent ignorance, a contrary of the divine nature: but in its outlook on
\n\twhat is beyond its knowledge, this contrary negative becomes a contrary
\n\tpositive; it originates error, wrong knowledge, wrong dealing with things,
\n\twith life, with action; the wrong knowledge becomes a wrong will in the
\n\tnature, at first, it may be, wrong by mistake, but afterwards wrong by
\n\tchoice, by attachment, by delight in the falsehood,  \u2014 the simple
\n\tcontrary turns into a complex perversion. Inconscience and ignorance once
\n\tadmitted, these form a natural result in a logical sequence and have to be
\n\tadmitted also as necessary factors. The only question is the reason why this
\n\tkind of progressive manifestation was itself necessary; that is the sole
\n\tpoint left obscure to the intelligence. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nA manifestation of this kind, self-creation or Lila, would not seem justifiable
\nif it were imposed on the unwilling creature; but it will be evident that the
\nassent of the embodied spirit must be there already, for Prakriti cannot act
\nwithout the assent of the Purusha. There must have been not only the will of the
\nDivine Purusha to make the cosmic creation possible, but the assent of the
\nindividual Purusha to make the individual manifestation possible. But it may be
\nsaid that the reason for the Divine Will and delight in such a difficult and
\ntormented progressive manifestation and the reason for the soul’s assent to it
\nis still a mystery. But it is not altogether a mystery if we look at our own
\nnature and can suppose some kindred movement of being in the beginning as its
\ncosmic origin. On the contrary, a play of self-concealing and self-finding is
\none of the most strenuous joys that conscious being can give to itself, a play
\nof extreme attractiveness. There is no greater pleasure for man himself than a
\nvictory which is in its very principle a conquest over difficulties, a victory
\nin knowledge, a victory in power, a victory in creation over the impossibilities
\nof creation, a delight in the conquest over an anguished toil and a hard ordeal
\nof suffering. At the end of separation is the intense joy of union, the joy of a
\nmeeting with a self from which we were divided. There is an attraction in
\nignorance itself because it provides us with the joy of discovery,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 426<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tthe surprise of new and unforeseen creation, a great adventure of the
\n\tsoul; there is a joy of the journey and the search and the finding, a joy of the battle and the crown, the labour and the reward of labour. If delight of existence be the secret of creation, this too is one delight of existence; it can be regarded as the reason or at least one reason of this apparently paradoxical and contrary Lila. But, apart from this choice of the individual Purusha, there is a deeper truth inherent in the original Existence which finds its expression in the plunge into Inconscience; its result is a new affirmation of Sachchidananda in its apparent opposite. If the Infinite’s right of various self-manifestation is granted, this too as a possibility of its manifestation is intelligible and has its profound significance.  
\n\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage <\/font>\u2013 427<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter IV   The Divine and the Undivine   The Seer, the Thinker, the Self-existent who becomes everywhere has ordered perfectly all things from years…<\/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-2117","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\/2117","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=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}