{"id":2130,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2130"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:39","slug":"25-the-knot-of-matter-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/21-22-the-life-divine\/25-the-knot-of-matter-vol-21-22-the-life-divine","title":{"rendered":"-25_The Knot of Matter.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe Knot of Matter <\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI cannot travel to the Truth of the luminous Lord by force or
\nby the duality. . . . Who are they that protect the foundation of the falsehood? Who are the guardians of the unreal word?
\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThen existence was not nor non-existence, the mid-world was not nor the Ether nor what is beyond. What covered all? where
\nwas it? in whose refuge? what was that ocean dense and deep? Death was not nor immortality nor the knowledge of day and
\nnight. That One lived without breath by his self-law, there was nothing else nor aught beyond it. In the beginning Darkness
\nwas hidden by darkness, all this was an ocean of inconscience. When universal being was concealed by fragmentation, then
\nby the greatness of its energy That One was born. That moved at first as desire within, which was the primal seed of mind.
\nThe seers of Truth discovered the building of being in non-being by will in the heart and by the thought; their ray was
\nextended horizontally; but what was there below, what was there above? There were Casters of the seed, there were Greatnesses; there was self-law below, there was Will above.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tRig Veda.<\/i>1<\/sup> <\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tI<\/font>F THEN<\/b> the conclusion at which we have arrived is correct,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>and there is no other possible on the data upon which we are working,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>the sharp division which practical experience and long habit of mind have created between Spirit and Matter has no longer any fundamental reality. The world is a
\ndifferentiated unity, a manifold oneness, not a constant attempt at compromise between eternal dissonances, not an everlasting
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t1<\/sup> V. 12. 2, 4; X. 129. 1-5.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 254<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tstruggle between irreconcilable opposites. An inalienable oneness generating infinite variety is its foundation and beginning; a constant reconciliation behind apparent division and struggle
\ncombining all possible disparates for vast ends in a secret Consciousness and Will which is ever one and master of all its own
\ncomplex action, appears to be its real character in the middle; we must assume therefore that a fulfilment
\n\t\t\tof the emerging Will and Consciousness and a triumphant harmony must
\n\t\t\tbe its conclusion. Substance is the form of itself on which it works, and of
\nthat substance if Matter is one end, Spirit is the other. The two are one: Spirit is the soul and reality of that which we sense as
\nMatter; Matter is a form and body of that which we realise as Spirit.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCertainly, there is a vast practical difference and on that difference the whole indivisible series and ever-ascending degrees
\nof the world-existence are founded. Substance, we have said, is conscious existence presenting itself to the sense as object so that,
\non the basis of whatever sense-relation is established, the work of world-formation and cosmic progression may proceed. But
\nthere need not be only one basis, only one fundamental principle of relation immutably created between sense and substance; on
\nthe contrary, there is an ascending and developing series. We are aware of another substance in which pure mind works as
\nits natural medium and which is far subtler, more flexible, more plastic than anything that our physical sense can conceive of as
\nMatter. We can speak of a substance of mind because we become aware of a subtler medium in which forms arise and action takes
\nplace; we can speak also of a substance of pure dynamic life-energy other than the subtlest forms of material substance and its
\nphysically sensible force-currents. Spirit itself is pure substance of being presenting itself as an object no longer to physical, vital
\nor mental sense, but to a light of a pure spiritual perceptive knowledge in which the subject becomes its own object, that is
\nto say, in which the Timeless and Spaceless is aware of itself in a pure spiritually self-conceptive self-extension as the basis and
\nprimal material of all existence. Beyond this foundation is the disappearance of all conscious differentiation between subject<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 255<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tand object in an absolute identity, and there we can no longer
\nspeak of Substance. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore it is a purely conceptive
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>a spiritually, not a
\nmentally conceptive difference ending in a practical distinction, which creates the series descending from Spirit through Mind
\nto Matter and ascending again from Matter through Mind to Spirit. But the real oneness is never abrogated, and, when we
\nget back to the original and integral view of things, we see that it is never even truly diminished or impaired, not even in the
\ngrossest densities of Matter. Brahman is not only the cause and supporting power and indwelling principle of the universe, he is
\nalso its material and its sole material. Matter also is Brahman and it is nothing other than or different from Brahman. If indeed
\nMatter were cut off from Spirit, this would not be so; but it is, as we have seen, only a final form and objective aspect of the divine
\nExistence with all of God ever present in it and behind it. As this apparently brute and inert Matter is everywhere and always
\ninstinct with a mighty dynamic force of Life, as this dynamic but apparently unconscious Life secretes within it an ever-working
\nunapparent Mind of whose secret dealings it is the overt energy, as this ignorant, unillumined and groping Mind in the living
\nbody is supported and sovereignly guided by its own real self, the Supermind, which is there equally in unmentalised Matter,
\nso all Matter as well as all Life, Mind and Supermind are only modes of the Brahman, the Eternal, the Spirit, Sachchidananda,
\nwho not only dwells in them all, but is all these things though no one of them is His absolute being.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut still there is this conceptive difference and practical distinction, and in that, even if Matter is not really cut off
\nfrom Spirit, yet it seems with such a practical definiteness to be so cut off, it is so different, even so contrary in its law, the
\nmaterial life seems so much to be the negation of all spiritual existence that its rejection might well appear to be the one short
\ncut out of the difficulty, ―<\/font>as undoubtedly it is; but a short cut or any cut is no solution. Still, there, in Matter undoubtedly lies
\nthe crux; that raises the obstacle: for because of Matter Life is gross and limited and stricken with death and pain, because of<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 256<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tMatter Mind is more than half blind, its wings clipped, its feet
\ntied to a narrow perch and held back from the vastness and freedom above of which it is conscious. Therefore the exclusive
\nspiritual seeker is justified from his view-point if, disgusted with the mud of Matter, revolted by the animal grossness of Life
\nor impatient of the self-imprisoned narrowness and downward vision of Mind, he determines to break from it all and return by
\ninaction and silence to the Spirit’s immobile liberty. But that is not the sole view-point, nor, because it has been sublimely held
\nor glorified by shining and golden examples, need we consider it the integral and ultimate wisdom. Rather, liberating ourselves
\nfrom all passion and revolt, let us see what this divine order of the universe means, and, as for this great knot and tangle of
\nMatter denying the Spirit, let us seek to find out and separate its strands so as to loosen it by a solution and not cut through it
\nby a violence. We must state the difficulty, the opposition first, entirely, trenchantly, with exaggeration, if need be, rather than
\nwith diminution, and then look for the issue. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFirst, then, the fundamental opposition Matter presents to
\nSpirit is this that it is the culmination of the principle of Ignorance. Here Consciousness has lost and forgotten itself in a form
\nof its works, as a man might forget in extreme absorption not only who he is but that he is at all and become momentarily only
\nthe work that is being done and the force that is doing it. The Spirit self-luminous, infinitely aware of itself behind all workings
\nof force and their master, seems here to have disappeared and not to be at all; somewhere He is perhaps, but here He seems
\nto have left only a brute and inconscient material Force which creates and destroys eternally without knowing itself or what it
\ncreates or why it creates at all or why it destroys what once it has created: it does not know, for it has no mind; it does not
\ncare, for it has no heart. And if that is not the real truth even of the material universe, if behind all this false phenomenon there
\nis a Mind, a Will and something greater than Mind or mental Will, yet it is this dark semblance that the material universe itself
\npresents as a truth to the consciousness which emerges in it out of its night; and if it be no truth but a lie, yet is it a most effective<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 257<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tlie, for it determines the conditions of our phenomenal existence
\nand besieges all our aspiration and effort. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor this is the monstrous thing, the terrible and pitiless miracle of the material universe that out of this no-Mind a mind or, at least, minds emerge and find themselves struggling feebly for
\nlight, helpless individually, only less helpless when in self-defence they associate their individual feeblenesses in the midst of the
\ngiant Ignorance which is the law of the universe. Out of this heartless Inconscience
\n\t\t\tand within its rigorous jurisdiction hearts have been born and
\n\t\t\taspire and are tortured and bleed under the weight of the blind and
\n\t\t\tinsentient cruelty of this iron existence, a cruelty which lays its
\n\t\t\tlaw upon them and becomes sentient in their sentience, brutal,
\n\t\t\tferocious, horrible. But what after all, behind appearances, is this
\n\t\t\tseeming mystery? We can see that it is the Consciousness which had
\n\t\t\tlost itself returning again to itself, emerging out of its giant
\n\t\t\tself-forgetfulness, slowly, painfully, as a Life that is would-be
\n\t\t\tsentient, half-sentient, dimly sentient, wholly sentient and finally
\n\t\t\tstruggles to be more than sentient, to be again divinely
\n\t\t\tself-conscious, free, infinite, immortal. But it works towards this
\n\t\t\tunder a law that is the opposite of all these things, under the
\n\t\t\tconditions of Matter, that is to say, against the grasp of the
\n\t\t\tIgnorance. The movements it has to follow, the instruments it has to
\n\t\t\tuse are set and made for it by this brute and divided Matter and
\n\t\t\timpose on it at every step ignorance and limitation. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor the second
\n\t\t\tfundamental opposition that Matter offers to Spirit, is this that it
\n\t\t\tis the culmination of bondage to mechanic Law and opposes to all that seeks to liberate itself a colossal Inertia. Not that Matter itself is inert; it is rather an
\ninfinite motion, an inconceivable force, a limitless action, whose grandiose movements are a subject for our constant admiration.
\nBut while Spirit is free, master of itself and its works, not bound by them, creator of law and not its subject, this giant Matter is
\nrigidly chained by a fixed and mechanical Law which is imposed on it, which it does not understand nor has ever conceived but
\nworks out inconsciently as a machine works and knows not who created it, by what process or to what end. And when Life<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 258<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tawakes and seeks to impose itself on physical form and material
\nforce and to use all things at its own will and for its own need, when Mind awakes and seeks to know the who, the why, the
\nhow of itself and all things and above all to use its knowledge for the imposition of its own freer law and self-guiding action
\nupon things, material Nature seems to yield, even to approve and aid, though after a struggle, reluctantly and only up to a
\ncertain point. But beyond that point it presents an obstinate inertia, obstruction, negation and even persuades Life and Mind
\nthat they cannot go farther, cannot pursue to the end their partial victory. Life strives to enlarge and prolong itself and succeeds;
\nbut when it seeks utter wideness and immortality, it meets the iron obstruction of Matter and finds itself bound to narrowness
\nand death. Mind seeks to aid life and to fulfil its own impulse to embrace all knowledge, to become all light, to possess truth and
\nbe truth, to enforce love and joy and be love and joy; but always there is the deviation and error and grossness of the material
\nlife-instincts and the denial and obstruction of the material sense and the physical instruments. Error ever pursues its knowledge,
\ndarkness is inseparably the companion and background of its light; truth is successfully sought and yet, when grasped, it ceases
\nto be truth and the quest has to continue; love is there but it cannot satisfy itself, joy is there but it cannot justify itself,
\nand each of them drags as if its chain or casts as if its shadow its own opposites, anger and hatred and indifference, satiety
\nand grief and pain. The inertia with which Matter responds to the demands of the Mind and Life, prevents the conquest of
\nthe Ignorance and of the brute Force that is the power of the Ignorance.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd when we seek to know why this is so, we see that the success of this inertia and obstruction is due to a third power
\nof Matter; for the third fundamental opposition which Matter offers to Spirit is this that it is the culmination of the principle
\nof division and struggle. Indivisible indeed in reality, divisibility is its whole basis of action from which it seems forbidden
\never to depart; for its only two methods of union are either the aggregation of units or an assimilation which involves the<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 259<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tdestruction of one unit by another; and both of these methods
\nof union are a confession of eternal division, since even the first associates rather than unifies and by its very principle admits
\nthe constant possibility and therefore the ultimate necessity of dissociation, of dissolution. Both methods repose on death, one
\nas a means, the other as a condition of life. And both presuppose as the condition of world-existence a constant struggle of the
\ndivided units with each other, each striving to maintain itself, to maintain its associations, to compel or destroy what resists it, to
\ngather in and devour others as its food, but itself moved to revolt against and flee from compulsion, destruction and assimilation
\nby devouring. When the vital principle manifests its activities in Matter, it finds there this basis only for all its activities and is
\ncompelled to bow itself to the yoke; it has to accept the law of death, desire and limitation and that constant struggle to devour,
\npossess, dominate which we have seen to be the first aspect of Life. And when the mental principle manifests in Matter, it has
\nto accept from the mould and material in which it works the same principle of limitation, of seeking without secure finding,
\nthe same constant association and dissociation of its gains and of the constituents of its works, so that the knowledge gained
\nby man, the mental being, seems never to be final or free from doubt and denial and all his labour seems condemned to move in
\na rhythm of action and reaction and of making and unmaking, in cycles of creation and brief preservation and long destruction
\nwith no certain and assured progress. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEspecially and most fatally, the ignorance, inertia and division of Matter impose on the vital and mental existence emerging in it the law of pain and suffering and the unrest of dissatisfaction with its status of division, inertia and ignorance. Ignorance would indeed bring no pain of dissatisfaction if the mental
\nconsciousness were entirely ignorant, if it could halt satisfied in some shell of custom, unaware of its own ignorance or of
\nthe infinite ocean of consciousness and knowledge by which it lives surrounded; but precisely it is to this that the emerging
\nconsciousness in Matter awakes, first, to its ignorance of the world in which it lives and which it has to know and master<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 260<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tin order to be happy, secondly, to the ultimate barrenness and
\nlimitation of this knowledge, to the meagreness and insecurity of the power and happiness it brings and to the awareness of
\nan infinite consciousness, knowledge, true being in which alone is to be found a victorious and infinite happiness. Nor would
\nthe obstruction of inertia bring with it unrest and dissatisfaction if the vital sentience emerging in Matter were entirely inert, if
\nit were kept satisfied with its own half-conscient limited existence, unaware of the infinite power and immortal existence in
\nwhich it lives as part of and yet separated from it, or if it had nothing within driving it towards the effort really to participate
\nin that infinity and immortality. But this is precisely what all life is driven to feel and seek from the first, its insecurity and
\nthe need and struggle for persistence, for self-preservation; it awakes in the end to the limitation of its existence and begins
\nto feel the impulsion towards largeness and persistence, towards the infinite and the eternal.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd when in man life becomes wholly self-conscious, this unavoidable struggle and effort and aspiration reach their acme
\nand the pain and discord of the world become finally too keenly sensible to be borne with contentment. Man may for a long time
\nquiet himself by seeking to be satisfied with his limitations or by confining his struggle to such mastery as he can gain over this
\nmaterial world he inhabits, some mental and physical triumph of his progressive knowledge over its inconscient fixities, of his
\nsmall, concentrated conscious will and power over its inertly-driven monstrous forces. But here, too, he finds the limitation,
\nthe poor inconclusiveness of the greatest results he can achieve and is obliged to look beyond. The finite cannot remain permanently satisfied so long as it is conscious either of a finite greater than itself or of an infinite beyond itself to which it can yet aspire.
\nAnd if the finite could be so satisfied, yet the apparently finite being who feels himself to be really an infinite or feels merely
\nthe presence or the impulse and stirring of an infinite within, can never be satisfied till these two are reconciled, till That is
\npossessed by him and he is possessed by it in whatever degree or manner. Man is such a finite-seeming infinity and cannot fail<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 261<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tto arrive at a seeking after the Infinite. He is the first son of
\nearth who becomes vaguely aware of God within him, of his immortality or of his need of immortality, and the knowledge is
\na whip that drives and a cross of crucifixion until he is able to turn it into a source of infinite light and joy and power.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis progressive development, this growing manifestation of the divine Consciousness and Force, Knowledge and Will
\nthat had lost itself in the ignorance and inertia of Matter, might well be a happy efflorescence proceeding from joy to greater
\nand at last to infinite joy if it were not for the principle of rigid division from which Matter has started. The shutting up of the
\nindividual in his own personal consciousness of separate and limited mind, life and body prevents what would otherwise be
\nthe natural law of our development. It brings into the body the law of attraction and repulsion, of defence and attack, of
\ndiscord and pain. For each body being a limited conscious-force feels itself exposed to the attack, impact, forceful contact of
\nother such limited conscious-forces or of universal forces and, where it feels itself broken in upon or unable to harmonise the
\ncontacting and the recipient consciousness, it suffers discomfort and pain, is attracted or repelled, has to defend itself or to assail;
\nit is constantly called upon to undergo what it is unwilling or unable to suffer. Into the emotional and the sense-mind the law
\nof division brings the same reactions with the higher values of grief and joy, love and hatred, oppression and depression, all
\ncast into terms of desire, and by desire into straining and effort, and by the straining into excess and defect of force, incapacity,
\nthe rhythm of attainment and disappointment, possession and recoil, a constant strife and trouble and unease. Into the mind
\nas a whole, instead of a divine law of narrower truth flowing into greater truth, lesser light taken up into wider light, lower
\nwill surrendered to higher transforming will, pettier satisfaction progressing towards nobler and more complete satisfaction, it
\nbrings similar dualities of truth pursued by error, light by darkness, power by incapacity, pleasure of pursuit and attainment by
\npain of repulse and of dissatisfaction with what is attained; mind takes up its own affliction along with the affliction of life and<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 262<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tbody and becomes aware of the triple defect and insufficiency
\nof our natural being. All this means the denial of Ananda, the negation of the trinity of Sachchidananda and therefore, if the
\nnegation be insuperable, the futility of existence; for existence in throwing itself out in the play of consciousness and force must
\nseek that movement not merely for itself, but for satisfaction in the play, and if in the play no real satisfaction can be found, it
\nmust obviously be abandoned in the end as a vain attempt, a colossal mistake, a delirium of the self-embodying spirit.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis is the whole basis of the pessimist theory of the world,
\n\t\t\t―<\/font>optimist, it may be, as to worlds and states beyond, but pessimist as to the earthly life and the destiny of the mental being in his dealings with the material universe. For it affirms that since
\nthe very nature of material existence is division and the very seed of embodied mind is self-limitation, ignorance and egoism, to
\nseek satisfaction of the spirit upon earth or to seek an issue and divine purpose and culmination for the world-play is a vanity
\nand delusion; only in a heaven of the Spirit and not in the world, or only in the Spirit’s true quietude and not in its phenomenal
\nactivities can we reunite existence and consciousness with the divine self-delight. The Infinite can only recover itself by rejecting
\nas an error and a false step its attempt to find itself in the finite. Nor can the emergence of mental consciousness in the material
\nuniverse bring with it any promise of a divine fulfilment. For the principle of division is not proper to Matter, but to Mind; Matter
\nis only an illusion of Mind into which Mind brings its own rule of division and ignorance. Therefore within this illusion Mind
\ncan only find itself; it can only travel between the three terms of the divided existence it has created: it cannot find there the
\nunity of the Spirit or the truth of the spiritual existence. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNow it is true that the principle of division in Matter can be
\nonly a creation of the divided Mind which has precipitated itself into material existence; for that material existence has no self-being, is not the original phenomenon but only a form created by an all-dividing Life-force which works out the conceptions of an
\nall-dividing Mind. By working out being into these appearances of the ignorance, inertia and division of Matter the dividing<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 263<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tMind has lost and imprisoned itself in a dungeon of its own
\nbuilding, is bound with chains which it has itself forged. And if it be true that the dividing Mind is the first principle of creation,
\nthen it must be also the ultimate attainment possible in the creation, and the mental being struggling vainly with Life and
\nMatter, overpowering them only to be overpowered by them, repeating eternally a fruitless cycle must be the last and highest
\nword of cosmic existence. But no such consequence ensues if, on the contrary, it is the immortal and infinite Spirit that has veiled
\nitself in the dense robe of material substance and works there by the supreme creative power of Supermind, permitting the divisions of Mind and the reign of the lowest or material principle only as initial conditions for a certain evolutionary play of the
\nOne in the Many. If, in other words, it is not merely a mental being who is hidden in the forms of the universe, but the infinite
\nBeing, Knowledge, Will which emerges out of Matter first as Life, then as Mind, with the rest of it still unrevealed, then the
\nemergence of consciousness out of the apparently Inconscient must have another and completer term; the appearance of a
\nsupramental spiritual being who shall impose on his mental, vital, bodily workings a higher law than that of the dividing
\nMind is no longer impossible. On the contrary, it is the natural and inevitable conclusion of the nature of cosmic existence.
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSuch a supramental being would, as we have seen, liberate the mind from the knot of its divided existence and use the
\nindividualisation of mind as merely a useful subordinate action of the all-embracing Supermind; and he would liberate the life
\nalso from the knot of its divided existence and use the individualisation of life as merely a useful subordinate action of the
\none Conscious-Force fulfilling its being and joy in a diversified unity. Is there any reason why he should not also liberate the
\nbodily existence from the present law of death, division and mutual devouring and use individualisation of body as merely a
\nuseful subordinate term of the one divine Conscious-Existence made serviceable for the joy of the Infinite in the finite? or why
\nthis spirit should not be free in a sovereign occupation of form, consciously immortal even in the changing of his robe of Matter,<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 264<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tpossessed of his self-delight in a world subjected to the law of
\nunity and love and beauty? And if man be the inhabitant of terrestrial existence through whom that transformation of the
\nmental into the supramental can at last be operated, is it not possible that he
\n\t\t\tmay develop, as well as a divine mind and a divine life, also a
\n\t\t\tdivine body? or, if the phrase seem to be too startling to our
\n\t\t\tpresent limited conceptions of human potentiality, may he not in his development of his true being and its light and joy and power arrive at a divine use of mind and life and
\nbody by which the descent of Spirit into form shall be at once humanly and divinely justified?
\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe one thing that can stand in the way of that ultimate terrestrial possibility is if our present view of Matter and its
\nlaws represent the only possible relation between sense and substance, between the Divine as knower and the Divine as object,
\nor if, other relations being possible, they are yet not in any way possible here, but must be sought on higher planes of existence.
\nIn that case, it is in heavens beyond that we must seek our entire divine fulfilment, as the religions assert, and their other
\nassertion of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the perfect upon earth must be put aside as a delusion. Here we can only
\npursue or attain an internal preparation or victory and, having liberated the mind and life and soul within, must turn from
\nthe unconquered and unconquerable material principle, from an unregenerated and intractable earth to find elsewhere our divine
\nsubstance. There is, however, no reason why we should accept this limiting conclusion. There are, quite certainly, other states
\neven of Matter itself; there is undoubtedly an ascending series of the divine gradations of substance; there is the possibility of the
\nmaterial being transfiguring itself through the acceptation of a higher law than its own which is yet its own because it is always
\nthere latent and potential in its own secrecies.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 265<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XXV   The Knot of Matter   I cannot travel to the Truth of the luminous Lord by force or by the duality. ….<\/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-2130","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\/2130","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=2130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}