{"id":4041,"date":"2013-07-13T01:53:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:53:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=4041"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:53:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:53:02","slug":"37-knowledge-by-unity-vol-03-questions-and-answers-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/02-works-of-the-mother\/01-cwmce\/03-questions-and-answers-volume-03\/37-knowledge-by-unity-vol-03-questions-and-answers-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-37_Knowledge by Unity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

 <\/span>\u00a0<\/font><\/span>Knowledge by Unity with the Divine \u2013
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n


\n
\nThe Divine
\nWill in the World <\/font> <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\nC<\/font><\/span>onsciousness is the faculty of becoming aware of anything
\nwhatsoever through identification with it. But the divine consciousness is not
\nonly aware but knows and effects. For, mere awareness is not knowledge. To
\nbecome aware of a vibration, for instance, does not mean that you know
\neverything about it. Only when the consciousness participates in the divine
\nconsciousness does it get full knowledge by identification with the object. Ordinarily,
\nidentification leads to ignorance rather than knowledge, for the consciousness
\nis lost in what it becomes and is unable to envisage proper causes,
\nconcomitants and consequences. Thus you identify yourself with a movement of
\nanger and your whole being becomes one angry vibration, blind and precipitate,
\noblivious of everything else. It is only when you stand back, remain detached
\nin the midst of the passionate turmoil that you are able to see the process
\nwith a knowing eye. So knowledge in the ordinary state of being is to be
\nobtained rather by stepping back from a phenomenon, to watch it without
\nbecoming identified with it. But the divine consciousness identifies itself
\nwith its object and knows it thoroughly, because it always becomes one with the
\nessential truth or law inherent in each fact. And it not only knows, but, by
\nknowing, brings about what it wants. To be conscious is for it to be effective
\n\u2013 each of its movements being a flash of omnipotence which, besides illumining,
\nblazes its way ultimately to the goal dictated by its truth-nature. <\/span><\/p>\n

Your ordinary consciousness is very much
\nmixed up with unconsciousness–fumbles, strains and is thwarted, while by unity
\nwith the Supreme you share the Supreme Nature and get the full knowledge
\nwhenever you turn to observe any object and identify yourself with it. Of
\ncourse, this does not necessarily amount to embracing all the contents of the
\ndivine consciousness. <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 167<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Your movements become true, but you do not possess all the
\nmanifold riches of the Divine’s activity. Still, within your sphere, you are
\nable to see correctly and according to the truth of things \u2013 which is certainly
\nmore than what is called in yogic parlance knowledge by identity. For, the kind
\nof identification taught by many disciplines extends your limits of perception
\nwithout piercing to the innermost heart of an object: it sees from within it,
\nas it were, but only its phenomenal aspect. For example, if you identify
\nyourself with a tree, you become aware in the way in which a tree is aware of
\nitself, yet you do not come to know everything about a tree for the simple
\nreason that it is itself not possessed of such knowledge. You do share the
\ntree’s inner feeling, but you certainly do not understand the truth it stands
\nfor, any more than by being conscious of your own natural self you possess at
\nonce the divine reality which you secretly are. Whereas if you are one with the
\ndivine consciousness, you know \u2013 over and above how the tree feels \u2013 what the
\ntruth behind it is, in short, you know everything, because the divine
\nconsciousness knows everything. <\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, there are many means of attaining
\nthis unity. It may be done through aspiration, or surrender, or some other
\nmethod. Each followed with persistence and sincerity leads to it. Aspiration is
\nthe dynamic push of your whole nature behind the resolution to reach the
\nDivine. Surrender, on the other hand, may be defined as the giving up of the
\nlimits of your ego. To surrender to the Divine is to renounce your narrow
\nlimits and let yourself be invaded by it and made a centre for its play. But
\nyou must bear in mind that the universal consciousness so beloved of Yogis is
\nnot the Divine: you can break your limits horizontally if you like, but you
\nwill be quite mistaken if you take the sense of wideness and cosmic
\nmultiplicity to be the Divine. The universal movement is after all a mixture of
\nfalsehood and truth, so that to stop there is to be imperfect; for, you may
\nvery well share the cosmic consciousness without ever attaining the transcendent
\nTruth. On the other hand, to go to <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 168<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the Divine is also to attain the universal realisation and yet
\nremain free of falsehood. <\/span><\/p>\n

The real bar to self-surrender, whether to
\nthe Universal or to the Transcendent, is the individual’s love of his own
\nlimitations. It is a natural love, since in the very formation of the
\nindividual being there is a tendency to concentrate on limits. Without that,
\nthere would be no sense of separateness \u2013 all would be mixed, as happens quite
\noften in the mental and vital movements of consciousness. It is the body
\nespecially which preserves separative individuality by not being so fluid. But
\nonce this separateness is established, there creeps in the fear of losing it \u2013
\na healthy instinct in many respects, but misapplied with regard to the Divine.
\nFor, in the Divine you do not really lose your individuality: you only give up
\nyour egoism and become the true individual, the divine personality which is not
\ntemporary like the construction of the physical consciousness which is usually
\ntaken for your self<\/i>. One touch of the
\ndivine consciousness and you see immediately that there is no loss in it. On
\nthe contrary, you acquire a true individual permanence which can survive a
\nhundred deaths of the body and all the vicissitudes of the vital-mental
\nevolution. Without this transfiguring touch, you always go about in fear; with
\nit, you gradually develop the power to make even your physical being plastic
\nwithout losing its individuality. Even now, it is not entirely rigid, it is
\nable to feel the conscious movements of others by a sort of sympathy which
\ntranslates itself into nervous reactions to their joys and sufferings: it is
\nalso able to express your inner movements \u2013 it is well known that the face is
\nan index and mirror to the mind. But only the divine consciousness can make the
\nbody responsive enough to reflect all the movements of the supramental
\nimmortality and be an expression of the true soul and, by being divinised,
\nreach the acme of a supreme individuality which can even physically rise
\nsuperior to the necessity of death and dissolution. <\/span><\/p>\n

In conclusion, I should like to draw your
\nattention to one point, <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 169<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

for it very frequently obstructs true union. It is a great error
\nto suppose that the Divine Will is always acting openly in the world. All that
\nhappens is not, in fact, divine: the Supreme Will is distorted in the
\nmanifestation owing to the combination of lower forces which translate it. They
\nare the medium which falsifies its impetus and gives it an undivine result. If
\nall that happened were indeed the flawless translation of it, how could you
\naccount for the distortions of the world?… Not that the Divine Will could not
\nhave caused the cosmic Ignorance. It is omnipotent and all possibilities are
\ninherent in it: it can work out anything of which it sees the secret necessity
\nin its original vision. And the first cause of the world is, of course, the
\nDivine, though we must take care not to adjudge this fact mentally according to
\nour petty ethical values. But once the conditions of the cosmos were laid down
\nand the involution into nescience accepted as the basis of a progressive
\nmanifestation of the Divine out of all that seemed its very opposite, there
\ntook place a sort of division between the Higher and the Lower. The history of
\nthe world became a battle between the True and the False, in which the details
\nare not all direct representations of the Divine’s progressive action but
\nrather distortions of it owing to the mass of resistance offered by the
\ninferior Nature. If there were no such resistance, there would be nothing
\nwhatever to conquer in the world, for the world would be harmonious, a constant
\npassage from one perfection to another instead of the conflict which it is\u00a0 <\/span>a game of hazards and various possibilities in
\nwhich the Divine faces real opposition, real difficulty and often real
\ntemporary defeat on the way to the final victory. It is just this reality of
\nthe whole play that makes it no mere jest. The Divine Will actually suffers
\ndistortion the moment it touches the hostile forces in the Ignorance. Hence we
\nmust never slacken our efforts to change the world and bring about a different
\norder. We must be vigilant to co-operate with the Divine and not placidly think
\nthat whatever happens is always the best. All depends upon the personal
\nattitude. If, in the presence of circumstances
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 170<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

that are on the point of occurring, you take the highest possible
\nattitude\u00a0 <\/span>that is to say, if you put your
\nconsciousness in contact with the highest consciousness within your reach\u00a0 <\/span>you can be absolutely certain that in such a
\ncase what happens is the best that can happen to you. But as soon as you fall
\nfrom this consciousness and come down into a lower state, then it is evident that
\nwhat happens cannot be the best, since you are not in your best consciousness.
\nAs Sri Aurobindo once said, \u201cWhat happened had to happen, but it could have
\nbeen much better.\u201d Because the person to whom it happened was not in his
\nhighest consciousness, there was no other consequence possible; but if he had
\nbrought about a descent of the Divine, then, even if the situation in general
\nhad been inevitable, it would have turned out in a different way. What makes
\nall the difference is how you receive the impulsion of the Divine Will. <\/span><\/p>\n

You must rise very high before you can
\nmeet this Will in its plenary splendour of authenticity; not before you open
\nyour lower nature to it can it begin to manifest in terms of the Truth. You
\nmust, therefore, refrain from applying the merely Nietzschean standard of temporary
\nsuccess in order to differentiate the Divine from the undivine. For, life is a
\nbattlefield in which the Divine succeeds in detail only when the lower nature
\nis receptive to its impulsions instead of siding with the hostile forces. And
\neven then the test is not so much external as internal: a divine movement
\ncannot be measured by apparent signs \u2013 is a certain kind of vibration that
\nindicates its presence\u00a0 <\/span>external tests
\nare of no avail, since even what is in appearance a failure may be in fact a
\ndivine achievement…. What you have to do is to give yourself up to the Grace
\nof the Divine; for, it is under the form of Grace, of Love, that it has
\nconsented to uplift the universe after the first involution was established.
\nWith the Divine Love is the supreme power of Transformation. It has this power
\nbecause it is for the sake of Transformation that it has given itself to the
\nworld and manifested everywhere. Not only has it infused itself into man, but
\nalso into all the atoms <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 171<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

of the most obscure Matter in order to bring the world back to the
\noriginal Truth. It is this descent that is called the supreme sacrifice in the
\nIndian scriptures. But it is a sacrifice only from the human point of view; the
\nhuman mind thinks that if it had to do such a thing it would be a tremendous
\nsacrifice. But the Divine cannot really be diminished, its infinite essence can
\nnever become less, no matter what \u201csacrifices\u201d are made…. The moment you open
\nto the Divine Love, you also receive its power of Transformation. But it is not
\nin terms of quantity that you can measure it; what is essential is the true
\ncontact; for, you will find that the true contact with it is sufficient to fill
\nat once the whole of your being. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 172<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n <\/font>H<\/a><\/font><\/span>OME<\/font><\/a><\/b>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 \u00a0Knowledge by Unity with the Divine \u2013 The Divine Will in the World \u00a0 Consciousness is the faculty of becoming aware of anything whatsoever through…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-questions-and-answers-volume-03","wpcat-115-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4041","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=4041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}