{"id":607,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:11","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=607"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:11","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:11","slug":"33-the-divine-and-the-undivine-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/18-the-life-divine-volume-18\/33-the-divine-and-the-undivine-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-33_The Divine and the Undivine.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n


\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font> IV<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n


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

 <\/p>\n

\n\n\n
\n

 <\/td>\n

\n


\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Seer, the Thinker, the Self-existent who becomes
\n\t\t\t\t\t\teverywhere has ordered perfectly all things from years sempiternal.<\/font><\/p>\n

Isha Upanishad.1<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nMany purified by knowledge have come to My state of being…. 
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThey have reached likeness in their law of being to Me.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n


\n\t\t\t\t\t\tKnow That for the Brahman and not this which men cherish
\n\t\t\t\t\t\there.<\/font><\/p>\n

Kena Upanishad.3<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nOne controlling inner Self of all beings…. As the Sun, the eye
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tof the world, is not touched by the external faults of
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tvision, so this  inner Self in beings is not
\n\t\t\t\t\t\ttouched by the sorrow of the world.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n


\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Lord abides in the heart of all beings<\/font><\/p>\n


\n\t\t\t\t\t\tGita.5<\/sup><\/font><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE<\/font> <\/b>universe is a manifestation of an infinite
\nand eternal All-Existence: the Divine Being dwells in all that is; we ourselves
\nare that 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 more logical to speak of an ascent from level to
\nhigher level of a divine manifestation. It may be admitted that essentially, if
\nwe look at the inner reality alone and discount the suggestions of the outer
\nfigure, such might be the nature of the evolution, the change we have to undergo
\nin Nature; so it would appear perhaps to the impartial eye of a universal vision
\nuntroubled by our dualities of knowledge and ignorance, good and evil, happiness
\nand suffering and participating in the untrammelled <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

     
\n1<\/sup> Verse 8.       
\n2<\/sup>  IV.  10;  XIV.  2.       
\n3<\/sup>  I. 4.        4<\/sup> 
\nII. 2.  12, 11.        5 <\/sup> XVIII. 
\n61.<\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage 388<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\nconsciousness and delight of Sachchidananda. And yet, from the practical and
\nrelative point of view as distinguished from an essential vision, the
\ndistinction between the divine and the undivine has an insistent value, a very
\npressing significance. This then is an aspect of the problem which it is
\nnecessary to bring into the light and assess its true importance. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tThe distinction between the divine and the undivine life is in fact
\n\t\tidentical with the root distinction between a life of Knowledge lived in
\n\t\tself-awareness and in the power of the Light and a life of Ignorance,\u2014at
\n\t\tany rate it so presents itself in a world that is slowly and with
\n\t\tdifficulty evolving out of an original Inconscience. All life that has
\n\t\tstill this Inconscience for its basis is stamped with the mark of a
\n\t\tradical imperfection; for even if it is satisfied with its own type, it
\n\t\tis a satisfaction with something incomplete and inharmonious, a
\n\t\tpatch-work of discords: on the contrary, even a purely mental or vital
\n\t\tlife might be perfect within its limits if it were based on a restricted
\n\t\tbut harmonious self-power and self-knowledge. It is this bondage to a
\n\t\tperpetual stamp of imperfection and disharmony that is the mark of the
\n\t\tundivine; a divine life, on the contrary, even if progressing from the
\n\t\tlittle to the more, would be at each stage harmonious in its principle
\n\t\tand detail: it would be a secure ground upon which freedom and
\n\t\tperfection could naturally flower or grow towards their highest stature,
\n\t\trefine and expand into their most subtle opulence. All imperfections,
\n\t\tall perfections have to be taken into view in our consideration of the
\n\t\tdifference between an undivine and a divine existence: but ordinarily,
\n\t\twhen we make the distinction, we do it as human beings struggling under
\n\t\tthe pressure of life and the difficulties of our conduct amidst its
\n\t\timmediate problems and perplexities; most of all we are thinking of the
\n\t\tdistinction we are obliged to make between good and evil or of that
\n\t\talong with its kindred problem of the duality, the blend in us of
\n\t\thappiness and suffering. When we seek intellectually for a divine
\n\t\tpresence in things, a divine origin of the world, a divine government of
\n\t\tits workings, the presence of evil, the insistence on suffering, the
\n\t\tlarge, the enormous part offered to pain, grief and affliction in the
\n\t\teconomy of Nature are the cruel phenomena which baffle our reason and
\n\t\tovercome the instinctive faith of\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 389<\/p>\n

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\n

\nmankind in such an origin and government or in an all-seeing, all-determining
\nand omnipresent Divine Immanence. Other difficulties we could solve more easily
\nand happily and make some shift to be better satisfied with the ready
\nconclusiveness of our solutions. But this standard of judgment is not
\nsufficiently comprehensive and it is supported upon a too human point of view;
\nfor to a wider outlook evil and suffering appear only as a striking aspect, they
\nare not the whole defect, not even the root of the matter. The sum of the
\nworld’s imperfections is not made up only of these two deficiencies; there is
\nmore than the fall, if fall there was, of our spiritual or material being from
\ngood and from happiness or our nature’s failure to overcome evil and suffering.
\nBesides the deficiency of the ethical and hedonistic satisfactions demanded by
\nour being, the paucity of Good and Delight in our world-experience, there is
\nalso the deficiency of other divine degrees: for Knowledge, Truth, Beauty,
\nPower, Unity are, they too, the stuff and elements of a divine life, and these
\nare given to us in a scanty and grudging measure; yet all are, in their
\nabsolute, powers of the Divine Nature. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIt is not possible then to limit the description of our and the world’s
\n\t\tundivine imperfection solely to moral evil or sensational suffering;
\n\t\tthere is more in the world-enigma than their double problem,\u2014for they
\n\t\tare only two strong results of a common principle. It is the general
\n\t\tprinciple of imperfection that we have to admit and consider. If we look
\n\t\tclosely at this general imperfection, we shall see that it consists
\n\t\tfirst in a limitation in us of the divine elements which robs them of
\n\t\ttheir divinity, then in a various many-branching distortion, a
\n\t\tperversion, a contrary turn, a falsifying departure from some ideal
\n\t\tTruth of being. To our minds which do not possess that Truth but can
\n\t\tconceive it, this departure presents itself either as a state from which
\n\t\twe have lapsed spiritually or as a possibility or promise which we
\n\t\tcannot fulfil, cannot realise because it exists only as an ideal. There
\n\t\thas been either a lapse of the inner spirit from a greater consciousness
\n\t\tand knowledge, delight, love and beauty, power and capacity, harmony and
\n\t\tgood, or else there is a failure of our struggling nature, an impotence
\n\t\tto achieve what we instinctively see to be divine and desirable. If we
\n\t\tpenetrate to the cause of the fall or\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 390<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\nthe failure, we shall find that all proceeds from the one primal fact that our
\nbeing, consciousness, force, experience of things represent, \u2014 not in their very
\nself, but in their surface pragmatic nature, \u2014 a principle or an effective
\nphenomenon of division or rupture in the unity of the Divine Existence. This
\ndivision becomes in its inevitable practical effect a limitation of the divine
\nconsciousness and knowledge, the divine delight and beauty, the divine power and
\ncapacity, the divine harmony and good: there is a limitation of completeness and
\nwholeness, a blindness in our vision of these things, a lameness in our
\nfollowing of them, in our experience of them a fragmentation, a diminution of
\npower and intensity, a lowering of quality, \u2014 the mark of a descent from
\nspiritual heights or else of a consciousness emerging from the insensible
\nneutral monotone of the Inconscience; the intensities which are normal and
\nnatural on higher ranges are in us lost or toned down so as to harmonise with
\nthe blacks and greys of our material existence. There arises too by a secondary
\nulterior effect a perversion of these highest things; in our limited mentality
\nunconsciousness and wrong consciousness intervene, ignorance covers our whole
\nnature and, \u2014 by the misapplication or misdirection of an imperfect will and
\nknowledge, by automatic reactions of our diminished consciousness-force and the
\ninept poverty of our substance, \u2014 contradictions of the divine elements are
\nformed, incapacity, inertia, falsehood, error, pain and grief, wrong-doing,
\ndiscord, evil. There is too, always, somewhere hidden in our selves, nursed in
\nour recesses, even when not overtly felt in the conscious nature, even when
\nrejected by the parts of us which these things torture, an attachment to this
\nexperience of division, a clinging to the divided way of being which prevents
\nthe excision of these unhappinesses or their rejection and removal. For since
\nthe principle of Consciousness-Force and Ananda is at the root of all
\nmanifestation, nothing can endure if it has not a will in our nature, a sanction
\nof the Purusha, a sustained pleasure in some part of the being, even though it
\nbe a secret or a perverse pleasure, to keep it in continuance. <\/p>\n

       
\n\t\tWhen we say that all is a divine manifestation, even that which we call
\n\t\tundivine, we mean that in its essentiality all is divine even if the
\n\t\tform baffles or repels us. Or, to put it in a\n<\/p>\n


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\n

\nformula to which it is easier for our psychological sense of things to give its
\nassent, in all things there is a presence, a primal Reality, \u2014 the Self, the
\nDivine, Brahman, \u2014 which is for ever pure, perfect, blissful, infinite: its
\ninfinity is not affected by the limitations of relative things; its purity is
\nnot stained by our sin and evil; its bliss is not touched by our pain and
\nsuffering; its perfection is not impaired by our defects of consciousness,
\nknowledge, will, unity. In certain images of the Upanishads the divine Purusha
\nis described as the one Fire which has entered into all forms and shapes itself
\naccording to the form, as the one Sun which illumines all impartially and is not
\naffected by the faults of our seeing. But this affirmation is not enough; it
\nleaves the problem unsolved, why that which is in itself ever pure, perfect,
\nblissful, infinite, should not only tolerate but seem to maintain and encourage
\nin its manifestation imperfection and limitation, impurity and suffering and
\nfalsehood and evil: it states the duality that constitutes the problem, but does
\nnot solve it. <\/p>\n

       
\n\t\tIf we simply leave these two dissonant facts of existence standing in
\n\t\teach other’s presence, we are driven to conclude that there is no
\n\t\treconciliation possible; all we can do is to cling as much as we can to
\n\t\ta deepening sense of the joy of the pure and essential Presence and do
\n\t\tthe best we may with the discordant externality, until we can impose in
\n\t\tits place the law of its divine contrary. Or else we have to seek for an
\n\t\tescape rather than a solution. For we can say that the inner Presence
\n\t\talone is a Truth and the discordant externality is a falsehood or
\n\t\tillusion created by a mysterious principle of Ignorance; our problem is
\n\t\tto find some way of escape out of the falsehood of the manifested world
\n\t\tinto the truth of the hidden Reality. Or we may hold with the Buddhist
\n\t\tthat there is no need of explanation, since there is this one practical
\n\t\tfact of the imperfection and impermanence of things and no Self, Divine
\n\t\tor Brahman, for that too is an illusion of our consciousness: the one
\n\t\tthing that is necessary for liberation is to get rid of the persistent
\n\t\tstructure of ideas and persistent energy of action which maintain a
\n\t\tcontinuity in the flux of the impermanence. On this road of escape we
\n\t\tachieve self-extinction in Nirvana; the problem of things gets itself
\n\t\textinguished by our own self-extinction. This is a way out, but it does
\n\t\tnot look like <\/p>\n


\nPage 392<\/p>\n

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\n

\nthe true and only way, nor are the other solutions altogether satisfactory. It
\nis a fact that by excluding the discordant manifestation from our inner
\nconsciousness as a superficial externality, by insisting only on the pure and
\nperfect Presence, we can achieve individually a deep and blissful sense of this
\nsilent Divinity, can enter into the sanctuary, can live in the light and the
\nrapture. An exclusive inner concentration on the Real, the Eternal is possible,
\neven a self-immersion by which we can lose or put away the dissonances of the
\nuniverse. But there is too somewhere deep down in us the need of a total
\nconsciousness, there is in Nature a secret universal seeking for the whole
\nDivine, an impulsion towards some entire awareness and delight and power of
\nexistence; this need of a whole being, a total knowledge, this integral will in
\nus is not fully satisfied by these solutions. So long as the world is not
\ndivinely explained to us, the Divine remains imperfectly known; for the world
\ntoo is That and, so long as it is not present to our consciousness and possessed
\nby our powers of consciousness in the sense of the divine being, we are not in
\npossession of the whole Divinity. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tIt is possible to escape from the problem otherwise; for, admitting
\n\t\talways the essential Presence, we can endeavour to justify the divinity
\n\t\tof the manifestation by correcting the human view of perfection or
\n\t\tputting it aside as a too limited mental standard. We may say that not
\n\t\tonly is the Spirit in things absolutely perfect and divine, but each
\n\t\tthing also is relatively perfect and divine in itself, in its expression
\n\t\tof what it has to express of the possibilities of existence, in its
\n\t\tassumption of its proper place in the complete manifestation. Each thing
\n\t\tis divine in itself because each is a fact and idea of the divine being,
\n\t\tknowledge and will fulfilling itself infallibly in accordance with the
\n\t\tlaw of that particular manifestation. Each being is possessed of the
\n\t\tknowledge, the force, the measure and kind of delight of existence
\n\t\tprecisely proper to its own nature; each works in the gradations of
\n\t\texperience decreed by a secret inherent will, a native law, an intrinsic
\n\t\tpower of the self, an occult significance. It is thus perfect in the
\n\t\trelation of its phenomena to the law of its being; for all are in
\n\t\tharmony with that, spring out of it, adapt themselves to its purpose
\n\t\taccording to the infallibility of the divine\n<\/p>\n


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\nWill and Knowledge at work within the creature. It is perfect and divine also in
\nrelation to the whole, in its proper place in the whole; to that totality it is
\nnecessary and in it it fulfils a part by which the perfection actual and
\nprogressive of the universal harmony, the adaptation of all in it to its whole
\npurpose and its whole sense is helped and completed. If to us things appear
\nundivine, if we hasten to condemn this or that phenomenon as inconsistent with
\nthe nature of a divine being, it is because we are ignorant of the sense and
\npurpose of the Divine in the world in its entirety. Because we see only parts
\nand fragments, we judge of each by itself as if it were the whole, judge also
\nthe external phenomena without knowing their secret sense; but by doing so we
\nvitiate our valuation of things, put on it the stamp of an initial and
\nfundamental error. Perfection cannot reside in the thing in its separateness,
\nfor that separateness is an illusion; perfection is the perfection of the total
\ndivine harmony. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tAll this may be true up to a certain point and so far as it goes; but
\n\t\tthis also is a solution incomplete by itself and it cannot give us an
\n\t\tentire satisfaction. It takes insufficient account of the human
\n\t\tconsciousness and the human view from which we have to start; it does
\n\t\tnot give us the vision of the harmony it alleges, and so it cannot meet
\n\t\tour demand or convince, but only contradicts by a cold intellectual
\n\t\tconception our acute human sense of the reality of evil and
\n\t\timperfection; it gives too no lead to the psychic element in our nature,
\n\t\tthe soul’s aspiration towards light and truth and towards a spiritual
\n\t\tconquest, a victory over imperfection and evil. By itself, this view of
\n\t\tthings amounts to little more than the facile dogma which tells us that
\n\t\tall that is is right, because all is perfectly decreed by the divine
\n\t\tWisdom. It supplies us with nothing better than a complacent
\n\t\tintellectual and philosophic optimism: no light is turned on the
\n\t\tdisconcerting facts of pain, suffering and discord to which our human
\n\t\tconsciousness bears constant and troubling witness; at most there is a
\n\t\tsuggestion that in the divine reason of things there is a key to these
\n\t\tthings to which we have no access. This is not a sufficient answer to
\n\t\tour discontent and our aspiration which, however ignorant in their
\n\t\treactions, however mixed their mental motives, must correspond to a
\n\t\tdivine reality deeper down in our\n<\/p>\n


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\n

\nbeing. A Divine Whole that is perfect by reason of the imperfection of its
\nparts, runs the risk of itself being only perfect in imperfection, because it
\nfulfils entirely some stage in an unaccomplished purpose; it is then a present
\nbut not an ultimate Totality. To it we could apply the Greek saying Theos ouk
\nestin alla gignetai<\/i>, the Divine is not yet in being, but is becoming. The
\ntrue Divine would then be secret within us and perhaps supreme above us; to find
\nthe Divine within us and above us would be the real solution, to become perfect
\nas That is perfect, to attain liberation by likeness to it or by attaining to
\nthe law of its nature, sadrsya, sadharmya<\/i>. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIf the human consciousness were bound to the sense of imperfection and
\n\t\tthe acceptance of it as the law of our life and the very character of
\n\t\tour existence, \u2014 a reasoned acceptance that could answer in our human
\n\t\tnature to the blind animal acceptance of the animal nature, \u2014 then we
\n\t\tmight say that what we are marks the limit of the divine self-expression
\n\t\tin us; we might believe too that our imperfections and sufferings worked
\n\t\tfor the general harmony and perfection of things and console ourselves
\n\t\twith this philosophic balm offered for our wounds, satisfied to move
\n\t\tamong the pitfalls of life with as much rational prudence or as much
\n\t\tphilosophic sagacity and resignation as our incomplete mental wisdom and
\n\t\tour impatient vital parts permitted. Or else, taking refuge in the more
\n\t\tconsoling fervours of religion, we might submit to all as the will of
\n\t\tGod in the hope or the faith of recompense in a Paradise beyond where we
\n\t\tshall enter into a happier existence and put on a more pure and perfect
\n\t\tnature. But there is an essential factor in our human consciousness and
\n\t\tits workings which, no less than the reason, distinguishes it entirely
\n\t\tfrom the animal; there is not only a mental part in us which recognises
\n\t\tthe imperfection, there is a psychic part which rejects it. Our soul’s
\n\t\tdissatisfaction with imperfection as a law of life upon earth, its
\n\t\taspiration towards the elimination of all imperfections from our nature,
\n\t\tnot only in a heaven beyond where it would be automatically impossible
\n\t\tto be imperfect, but here and now in a life where perfection has to be
\n\t\tconquered by evolution and struggle, are as much a law of our being as
\n\t\tthat against which they revolt; they too are divine, \u2014 a divine
\n\t\tdissatisfaction, <\/p>\n


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a
\ndivine aspiration. In them is the inherent light of a power within which
\nmaintains them in us so that the Divine may not only be there as a hidden
\nReality in our spiritual secrecies but unfold itself in the evolution of
\nNature. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIn this light we can admit that all works perfectly towards a divine end
\n\t\tby a divine wisdom and therefore each thing is in that sense perfectly
\n\t\tfitted in its place; but we say that that is not the whole of the divine
\n\t\tpurpose. For what is is only justifiable, finds its perfect sense and
\n\t\tsatisfaction by what can and will be. There is, no doubt, a key in the
\n\t\tdivine reason that would justify things as they are by revealing their
\n\t\tright significance and true secret as other, subtler, deeper than their
\n\t\toutward meaning and phenomenal appearance which is all that can normally
\n\t\tbe caught by our present intelligence: but we cannot be content with
\n\t\tthat belief, to search for and find the spiritual key of things is the
\n\t\tlaw of our being. The sign of the finding is not a philosophic
\n\t\tintellectual recognition and a resigned or sage acceptance of things as
\n\t\tthey are because of some divine sense and purpose in them which is
\n\t\tbeyond us; the real sign is an elevation towards the spiritual knowledge
\n\t\tand power which will transform the law and phenomena and external forms
\n\t\tof our life nearer to a true image of that divine sense and purpose. It
\n\t\tis right and reasonable to endure with equanimity suffering and
\n\t\tsubjection to defect as the immediate will of God, a present law of
\n\t\timperfection laid on our members, but on condition that we recognise it
\n\t\talso as the will of God in us to transcend evil and suffering, to
\n\t\ttransform imperfection into perfection, to rise into a higher law of
\n\t\tDivine Nature. In our human consciousness there is the image of an ideal
\n\t\ttruth of being, a divine nature, an incipient godhead: in relation to
\n\t\tthat higher truth our present state of imperfection can be relatively
\n\t\tdescribed as an undivine life and the conditions of the world from which
\n\t\twe start as undivine conditions; the imperfections are the indication
\n\t\tgiven to us that they are there as first disguises, not as the intended
\n\t\texpression of the divine being and the divine nature. It is a Power
\n\t\twithin us, the concealed Divinity, that has lit the flame of aspiration,
\n\t\tpictures the image of the ideal, keeps alive our discontent and pushes
\n\t\tus to throw off the disguise and to reveal or, in the Vedic phrase, to
\n\t\tform and disclose the Godhead\n<\/p>\n


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in
\nthe manifest spirit, mind, life and body of this terrestrial creature. Our
\npresent nature can only be transitional, our imperfect status a starting-point
\nand opportunity for the achievement of another higher, wider and greater that
\nshall be divine and perfect not only by the secret spirit within it but in its
\nmanifest and most outward form of existence. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tBut these conclusions are only first reasonings or primary intuitions
\n\t\tfounded on our inner self-experience and the apparent facts of universal
\n\t\texistence. They cannot be entirely validated unless we know the real
\n\t\tcause of ignorance, imperfection and suffering and their place in the
\n\t\tcosmic purpose or cosmic order. There are three propositions about God
\n\t\tand the world, \u2014 if we admit the Divine Existence, \u2014 to which the
\n\t\tgeneral reason and consciousness of mankind bear witness; but, one of
\n\t\tthe three, \u2014 which is yet necessitated by the character of the world we
\n\t\tlive in, \u2014 does not harmonise with the two others, and by this
\n\t\tdisharmony the human mind is thrown into great perplexities of
\n\t\tcontradiction and driven to doubt and denial. For, first, we find
\n\t\taffirmed an omnipresent Divinity and Reality pure, perfect and blissful,
\n\t\twithout whom, apart from whom nothing could exist, since all exists only
\n\t\tby him and in his being. All thinking on the subject that is not
\n\t\tatheistic or materialistic or else primitive and anthropomorphic, has to
\n\t\tstart from this admission or to arrive at this fundamental concept. It
\n\t\tis true that certain religions seem to suppose an extracosmic Deity who
\n\t\thas created a world outside and apart from his own existence; but when
\n\t\tthey come to construct a theology or spiritual philosophy, these too
\n\t\tadmit omnipresence or immanence, \u2014 for this omnipresence imposes itself,
\n\t\tis a necessity of spiritual thinking. If there is such a Divinity, Self
\n\t\tor Reality, it must be everywhere, one and indivisible, nothing can
\n\t\tpossibly exist apart from its existence; nothing can be born from
\n\t\tanother than That; there can be nothing unsupported by That, independent
\n\t\tof It, unfilled by the breath and power of Its being. It has been held
\n\t\tindeed that the ignorance, the imperfection, the suffering of this world
\n\t\tare not supported by the Divine Existence; but we have then to suppose
\n\t\ttwo Gods, an Ormuzd of the good and an Ahriman of the evil or, perhaps,
\n\t\ta perfect supracosmic and immanent Being and an imperfect <\/p>\n


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\ncosmic Demiurge or separate undivine Nature. This is a possible conception but
\nimprobable to our highest intelligence, \u2014 it can only be at most a subordinate
\naspect, not the original truth or the whole truth of things; nor can we suppose
\nthat the one Self and Spirit in all and the one Power creator of all are
\ndifferent, contrary in the character of their being, separate in their will and
\npurpose. Our reason tells us, our intuitive consciousness feels, and their
\nwitness is confirmed by spiritual experience, that the one pure and absolute
\nExistence exists in all things and beings even as all things and beings exist in
\nIt and by It, and nothing can be or happen without this indwelling and
\nall-supporting Presence. <\/p>\n

  
\n\t\tA second affirmation, which our mind naturally accepts as the
\n\t\tconsequence of the first postulate, is that by the supreme consciousness
\n\t\tand the supreme power of this omnipresent Divinity in its perfect
\n\t\tuniversal knowledge and divine wisdom all things are ordered and
\n\t\tgoverned in their fundamental relations and their process. But, on the
\n\t\tother hand, the actual process of things, the actual relations which we
\n\t\tsee are, as presented to our human consciousness, relations of
\n\t\timperfection, of limitation; there appears a disharmony, even a
\n\t\tperversion, something that is the contrary of our conception of the
\n\t\tDivine Existence, a very apparent denial or at least a disfigurement or
\n\t\tdisguise of the Divine Presence. There arises then a third affirmation
\n\t\tof the Divine Reality and the world reality as different in essence or
\n\t\tin order, so different that we have to draw away from one to reach the
\n\t\tother; if we would find the Divine Inhabitant, we must reject the world
\n\t\the inhabits, governs, has created or manifested in his own existence.
\n\t\tThe first of these three propositions is inevitable; the second also
\n\t\tmust stand if the omnipresent Divine has anything at all to do with the
\n\t\tworld he inhabits and with its manifestation, building, maintenance and
\n\t\tgovernment: but the third seems also self-evident and yet it is
\n\t\tincompatible with its precedents, and this dissonance confronts us with
\n\t\ta problem which appears to be incapable of satisfactory solution. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIt is not difficult by some construction of the philosophic reason or of
\n\t\ttheological reasoning to circumvent the difficulty. It is possible to
\n\t\terect a fain\u00e9ant Deity, like the gods of Epicurus,\n<\/p>\n


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\nblissful in himself, observing but indifferent to a world conducted or
\nmisconducted by a mechanical law of Nature. It is open to us to posit a Witness
\nSelf, a silent Soul in things, a Purusha who allows Nature to do what she will
\nand is content to reflect all her order and all her disorders in his passive and
\nstainless consciousness, \u2014or 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, the essential Being of things; her works cannot be altogether
\nindependent of Soul or Self, cannot be her own contrary result and working
\nunaffected by its consent or refusal or a violence of mechanical Force imposed
\non an inertia of mechanical Passivity. It is possible again to posit an
\nobserving inactive Self and an active creating Godhead; but this device cannot
\nserve us, for in the end these two must really be one in a dual aspect, \u2014 the
\nGodhead the active aspect of the observing Self, the Self a witness of its own
\nGodhead in action. A discord, a gulf between the Self in knowledge and the same
\nSelf in its works needs explanation, but it presents itself as unexplained and
\ninexplicable. Or, again, we can posit a double consciousness of Brahman the
\nReality, one static and one dynamic, one essential and spiritual in which it is
\nSelf perfect and absolute, another formative, pragmatic, in which it becomes
\nnot-self and with which its absoluteness and perfection have no concern of
\nparticipation; for it is only a temporal formation in the timeless Reality. But
\nto us who even if only half-existent, half-conscious, yet inhabit the Absolute’s
\nhalf-dream of living and are compelled by Nature to have in it a terrible and
\ninsistent concern and to deal with it as real, this wears the appearance of an
\nobvious mystification; for this temporal consciousness and its formations are
\nalso\n<\/p>\n


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in
\nthe end a Power of the one Self, depend upon it, can exist only by it; what
\nexists by the power of the Reality cannot be unrelated to It or That unrelated
\nto the world of its own Power’s making. If the world exists by the supreme
\nSpirit, so also its ordering and relations must exist by the power of the
\nSpirit; its law must be according to some law of the spiritual consciousness and
\nexistence. The Self, the Reality must be aware of and aware in the
\nworld-consciousness which exists in its being; a power of the Self, the Reality
\nmust be constantly determining or at least sanctioning its phenomena and
\noperations: for there can be no independent power, no Nature not derived from
\nthe original and eternal Self-Existence. If it does no more, it must still be
\noriginating or determining the universe through the mere fact of its conscious
\nomnipresence. It is, no doubt, a truth of spiritual experience that there is a
\nstatus of peace and silence in the Infinite behind the cosmic activity, a
\nConsciousness that is the immobile Witness of the creation; but this is not the
\nwhole of spiritual experience, and we cannot hope to find in one side only of
\nknowledge a fundamental and total explanation of the Universe. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tOnce we admit a divine government of the universe, we must conclude that
\n\t\tthe power to govern is complete and absolute; for otherwise we are
\n\t\tobliged to suppose that a being and consciousness infinite and absolute
\n\t\thas a knowledge and will limited in their control of things or hampered
\n\t\tin their power of working. It is not impossible to concede that the
\n\t\tsupreme and immanent Divinity may leave a certain freedom of working to
\n\t\tsomething that has come into being in his perfection but is itself
\n\t\timperfect and the cause of imperfection, to an ignorant or inconscient
\n\t\tNature, to the action of the human mind and will, even to a conscious
\n\t\tPower or Forces of darkness and evil that take their stand upon the
\n\t\treign of a basic Inconscience. But none of these things are independent
\n\t\tof Its own existence, nature and consciousness and none of them can act
\n\t\texcept in Its presence and by Its sanction or allowance. Man’s freedom
\n\t\tis relative and he cannot be held solely responsible for the
\n\t\timperfection of his nature. Ignorance and inconscience of Nature have
\n\t\tarisen, not independently, but in the one Being; the imperfection of her
\n\t\tworkings cannot be entirely foreign to some will of the Immanence. It
\n\t\tmay be<\/p>\n


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\nconceded that forces set in motion are allowed to work themselves out according
\nto the law of their movement; but what divine Omniscience and Omnipotence has
\nallowed to arise and act in Its omnipresence, Its all-existence, we must
\nconsider It to have originated and decreed, since without the fiat of the Being
\nthey could not have been, could not remain in existence. If the Divine is at all
\nconcerned with the world he has manifested, there is no other Lord than He and
\nfrom that necessity of His original and universal being there can eventually be
\nno escape or departure. It is on the foundation of this self-evident consequence
\nof our first premiss, without any evasion of its implications, that we have to
\nconsider the problem of imperfection, suffering and evil. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tAnd first we must realise that the existence of ignorance, error,
\n\t\tlimitation, suffering, division and discord in the world need not by
\n\t\titself, as we too hastily imagine, be a denial or a disproof of the
\n\t\tdivine being, consciousness, power, knowledge, will, delight in the
\n\t\tuniverse. They can be that if we have to take them by themselves
\n\t\tseparately, but need not be so taken if we get a clear vision of their
\n\t\tplace and significance in a complete view of the universal workings. A
\n\t\tpart broken off from the whole may be imperfect, ugly, incomprehensible;
\n\t\tbut when we see it in the whole, it recovers its place in the harmony,
\n\t\tit has a meaning and a use. The Divine Reality is infinite in its being;
\n\t\tin this infinite being, we find limited being everywhere, \u2014 that is the
\n\t\tapparent fact from which our existence here seems to start and to which
\n\t\tour own narrow ego and its ego-centric activities bear constant witness.
\n\t\tBut, in reality, when we come to an integral self-knowledge, we find
\n\t\tthat we are not limited, for we also are infinite. Our ego is only a
\n\t\tface of the universal being and has no separate existence; our apparent
\n\t\tseparative individuality is only a surface movement and behind it our
\n\t\treal individuality stretches out to unity with all things and upward to
\n\t\toneness with the transcendent Divine Infinity. Thus our ego, which seems
\n\t\tto be a limitation of existence, is really a power of infinity; the
\n\t\tboundless multiplicity of beings in the world is a result and signal
\n\t\tevidence, not of limitation or finiteness, but of that illimitable
\n\t\tInfinity. Apparent division can never erect itself into a real
\n\t\tseparateness; there is supporting and overriding it an indivisible\n<\/p>\n


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\nunity which division itself cannot divide. This fundamental world-fact of ego
\nand apparent division and their separative workings in the world existence is no
\ndenial of the Divine Nature of unity and indivisible being; they are the surface
\nresults of an infinite multiplicity which is a power of the infinite Oneness. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tThere is then no real division or limitation of being, no fundamental
\n\t\tcontradiction of the omnipresent Reality; but there does seem to be a
\n\t\treal limitation of consciousness: there is an ignorance of self, a
\n\t\tveiling of the inner Divinity, and all imperfection is its consequence.
\n\t\tFor we identify ourselves mentally, vitally, physically with this
\n\t\tsuperficial ego-consciousness which is our first insistent
\n\t\tself-experience; this does impose on us, not a fundamentally real, but a
\n\t\tpractical division with all the untoward consequences of that
\n\t\tseparateness from the Reality. But here again we have to discover that
\n\t\tfrom the point of view of God’s workings, whatever be our reactions or
\n\t\tour experience on the surface, this fact of ignorance is itself an
\n\t\toperation of knowledge and not a true ignorance. Its phenomenon of
\n\t\tignorance is a superficial movement; for behind it is an indivisible
\n\t\tall-consciousness: the ignorance is a frontal power of that
\n\t\tall-consciousness which limits itself in a certain field, within certain
\n\t\tboundaries to a particular operation of knowledge, a particular mode of
\n\t\tconscious working, and keeps back all the rest of its knowledge in
\n\t\twaiting as a force behind it. All that is thus hidden is an occult store
\n\t\tof light and power for the All-Consciousness to draw upon for the
\n\t\tevolution of our being in Nature; there is a secret working which fills
\n\t\tup all the deficiencies of the frontal Ignorance, acts through its
\n\t\tapparent stumblings, prevents them from leading to another final result
\n\t\tthan that which the All-Knowledge has decreed, helps the soul in the
\n\t\tIgnorance to draw from its experience, even from the natural
\n\t\tpersonality’s sufferings and errors, what is necessary for its evolution
\n\t\tand to leave behind what is no longer utilisable. This frontal power of
\n\t\tIgnorance is a power of concentration in a limited working, much like
\n\t\tthat power in our human mentality by which we absorb ourselves in a
\n\t\tparticular object and in a particular work and seem to use only so much
\n\t\tknowledge, only such ideas as are necessary for it, \u2014 the rest, which
\n\t\tare alien to it or would interfere with it, are put back <\/p>\n


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\nfor the moment: yet, in reality, all the time it is the indivisible
\nconsciousness which we are that has done the work to be done, seen the thing
\nthat has to be seen,\u2014that and not any fragment of consciousness or any exclusive
\nignorance in us is the silent knower and worker: so is it too with this frontal
\npower of concentration of the All-Consciousness within us. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIn our valuation of the movements of our consciousness this ability of
\n\t\tconcentration is rightly held to be one of the greatest powers of the
\n\t\thuman mentality. But equally the power of putting forth what seems to be
\n\t\tan exclusive working of limited knowledge, that which presents itself to
\n\t\tus as ignorance, must be considered one of the greatest powers of the
\n\t\tdivine Consciousness. It is only a supreme self-possessing Knowledge
\n\t\twhich can thus be powerful to limit itself in the act and yet work out
\n\t\tperfectly all its intentions through that apparent ignorance. In the
\n\t\tuniverse we see this supreme self-possessing Knowledge work through a
\n\t\tmultitude of ignorances, each striving to act according to its own
\n\t\tblindness, yet through them all it constructs and executes its universal
\n\t\tharmonies. More, the miracle of its omniscience appears most strikingly
\n\t\tof all in what seems to us the action of an Inconscient, when through
\n\t\tthe complete or the partial nescience \u2014 more thick than our ignorance, \u2014
\n\t\tof the electron, atom, cell, plant, insect, the lowest forms of animal
\n\t\tlife, it arranges perfectly its order of things and guides the
\n\t\tinstinctive impulse or the inconscient impetus to an end possessed by
\n\t\tthe All-Knowledge but held behind a veil, not known by the instrumental
\n\t\tform of existence, yet perfectly operative within the instinct or the
\n\t\timpetus. We may say then that this action of the ignorance or nescience
\n\t\tis no real ignorance, but a power, a sign, a proof of an omniscient
\n\t\tself-knowledge and all-knowledge. If we need any personal and inner
\n\t\twitness to this indivisible All-Consciousness behind the ignorance, \u2014
\n\t\tall Nature is its external proof, \u2014 we can get it with any completeness
\n\t\tonly in our deeper inner being or larger and higher spiritual state when
\n\t\twe draw back behind the veil of our own surface ignorance and come into
\n\t\tcontact with the divine Idea and Will behind it. Then we see clearly
\n\t\tenough that what we have done by ourselves in our ignorance was yet
\n\t\toverseen and guided in its result by the\n<\/p>\n


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\ninvisible Omniscience; we discover a greater working behind our ignorant working
\nand begin to glimpse its purpose in us: then only can we see and know what now
\nwe worship in faith, recognise wholly the pure and universal Presence, meet the
\nLord of all being and all Nature. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tAs with the cause, \u2014 the Ignorance, \u2014 so is it with the consequences of
\n\t\tthe Ignorance. All this that seems to us incapacity, weakness,
\n\t\timpotence, limitation of power, our will’s hampered struggle and
\n\t\tfettered labour, takes from the point of view of the Divine in his
\n\t\tself-workings the aspect of a just limitation of an omniscient power by
\n\t\tthe free will of that Power itself so that the surface energy shall be
\n\t\tin exact correspondence with the work that it has to do, with its
\n\t\tattempt, its allotted success or its destined because necessary failure,
\n\t\twith the balance of the sum of forces in which it is a part and with the
\n\t\tlarger result of which its own results are an indivisible portion.
\n\t\tBehind this limitation of power is the All-Power and in the limitation
\n\t\tthat All-Power is at work; but it is through the sum of many limited
\n\t\tworkings that the indivisible Omnipotence executes infallibly and
\n\t\tsovereignly its purposes. This power to limit its force and to work
\n\t\tthrough that self-limitation, by what we call labour, struggle,
\n\t\tdifficulty, by what seems to us a series of failures or half-baulked
\n\t\tsuccesses and through them to achieve its secret intention, is not
\n\t\ttherefore a sign, proof or reality of weakness, but a sign, proof,
\n\t\treality, \u2014 the greatest possible, \u2014 of an absolute omnipotence. <\/p>\n

  
\n\t\tAs to the suffering, which is so great a stumbling-block to our
\n\t\tunderstanding of the universe, it is evidently a consequence of the
\n\t\tlimitation of consciousness, the restriction of force which prevents us
\n\t\tfrom mastering or assimilating the touch of what is to us other-force:
\n\t\tthe result of this incapacity and disharmony is that the delight of the
\n\t\ttouch cannot be seized and it affects our sense with a reaction of
\n\t\tdiscomfort or pain, a defect or excess, a discord resultant in inner or
\n\t\touter injury, born of division between our power of being and the power
\n\t\tof being that meets us. Behind in our self and spirit is the All-Delight
\n\t\tof the universal being which takes its account of the contact, a delight
\n\t\tfirst in the enduring and then in the conquest of the suffering and
\n\t\tfinally in its transmutation that shall come hereafter; for pain<\/p>\n


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\nand suffering are a perverse and contrary term of the delight of existence and
\nthey can turn into their opposite, even into the original All-Delight, Ananda.
\nThis All-Delight is not present in the universal alone, but it is here secret in
\nourselves, as we discover when we go back from our outward consciousness into
\nthe Self within us; the psychic being in us takes its account even of its most
\nperverse or contrary as well as its more benign experiences and grows by the
\nrejection of them or acceptance; it extracts a divine meaning and use from our
\nmost poignant sufferings, difficulties, misfortunes. Nothing but this
\nAll-Delight could dare or bear to impose such experiences on itself or on us;
\nnothing else could turn them thus to its own utility and our spiritual profit.
\nSo too nothing but an inalienable harmony of being inherent in an inalienable
\nunity of being would throw out so many harshest apparent discords and yet force
\nthem to its purpose so that in the end they are unable to do anything else but
\nto serve and secure, and even themselves change into elements that constitute, a
\ngrowing universal rhythm and ultimate harmony. At every turn it is the divine
\nReality which we can discover behind that which we are yet compelled by the
\nnature of the superficial consciousness in which we dwell to call undivine and
\nin a sense are right in using that apellation; for these appearances are a veil
\nover the Divine Perfection, a veil necessary for the present, but not at all the
\ntrue and complete figure. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tBut even when we thus regard the universe, we cannot and ought not to
\n\t\tdismiss as entirely and radically false and unreal the values that are
\n\t\tgiven to it by our own limited human consciousness. For grief, pain,
\n\t\tsuffering, error, falsehood, ignorance, weakness, wickedness,
\n\t\tincapacity, non-doing of what should be done and wrong-doing, deviation
\n\t\tof will and denial of will, egoism, limitation, division from other
\n\t\tbeings with whom we should be one, all that makes up the effective
\n\t\tfigure of what we call evil, are facts of the world-consciousness, not
\n\t\tfictions and unrealities, although they are facts whose complete sense
\n\t\tor true value is not that which we assign to them in our ignorance.
\n\t\tStill our sense of them is part of a true sense, our values of them are
\n\t\tnecessary to their complete values. One side of the truth of these
\n\t\tthings we discover when we get into a deeper and larger\n<\/p>\n


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\nconsciousness; for we find then that there is a cosmic and individual utility in
\nwhat presents itself to us as adverse and evil. For without experience of pain
\nwe would not get all the infinite value of the divine delight of which pain is
\nin travail, all ignorance is a penumbra which environs an orb of knowledge,
\nevery error is significant of the possibility and the effort of a discovery of
\ntruth; every weakness and failure is a first sounding of gulfs of power and
\npotentiality; all division is intended to enrich by an experience of various
\nsweetness of unification the joy of realised unity. All this imperfection is to
\nus evil, but all evil is in travail of the eternal good; for all is an
\nimperfection which is the first condition, \u2014 in the law of life evolving out of
\nInconscience, \u2014 of a greater perfection in the manifesting of the hidden
\ndivinity. But at the same time our present feeling of this evil and
\nimperfection, the revolt of our consciousness against them is also a necessary
\nvaluation; for if we have first to face and endure them, the ultimate command on
\nus is to reject, to overcome, to transform the life and the nature. It is for
\nthat end that their insistence is not allowed to slacken; the soul must learn
\nthe results of the Ignorance, must begin to feel their reactions as a spur to
\nits endeavour of mastery and conquest and finally to a greater endeavour of
\ntransformation and transcendence. It is possible, when we live inwardly in the
\ndepths, to arrive at a state of vast inner equality and peace which is untouched
\nby the reactions of the outer nature, and that is a great but incomplete
\nliberation,\u2014for the outer nature too has a right to deliverance. But even if our
\npersonal deliverance is complete, still there is the suffering of others, the
\nworld travail, which the great of soul cannot regard with indifference. There is
\na unity with all beings which something within us feels and the deliverance of
\nothers must be felt as intimate to its own deliverance. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tThis then is the law of the manifestation, the reason of the
\n\t\timperfection here. True, it is a law of manifestation only and, even, a
\n\t\tlaw special to this movement in which we live, and we may say that it
\n\t\tneed not have been,\u2014if there were no movement of manifestation or not
\n\t\tthis movement; but, the manifestation and the movement being given, the
\n\t\tlaw is necessary. It is not enough simply to say that the law and all
\n\t\tits circumstances\n<\/p>\n


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\nare an unreality created by the mental consciousness, non-existent in God, and
\nto be indifferent to these dualities or to get out of the manifestation into
\nGod’s pure being is the only wisdom. It is true they are creations of mind
\nConsciousness, but Mind is only secondarily responsible; in a deeper reality
\nthey are, as we have seen already, creations of the Divine Consciousness
\nprojecting mind away from its all-knowledge so as to realise these opposite or
\ncontrary values of its all-power, all-knowledge, all-delight, all-being and
\nunity. Obviously, this action and these fruits of the Divine Consciousness can
\nbe called by us unreal in the sense of not being the eternal and fundamental
\ntruth of being or can be taxed with falsehood because they contradict what is
\noriginally and eventually the truth of being; but, all the same, they have their
\npersistent reality and importance in our present phase of the manifestation, nor
\ncan they be a mere mistake of the Divine Consciousness without any meaning in
\nthe divine wisdom, without any purpose of the divine joy, power and knowledge to
\njustify their existence. Justification there must be even if it reposes for us
\nupon a mystery which may confront us, so long as we live in a surface
\nexperience, as an insoluble riddle. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tBut if, accepting this side of Nature, we say that all things are fixed
\n\t\tin their statutory and stationary law of being, and man too must be
\n\t\tfixed in his imperfections, his ignorance and sin and weakness and
\n\t\tvileness and suffering, our life loses its true significance. Man’s
\n\t\tperpetual attempt to arise out of the darkness and insufficiency of his
\n\t\tnature can then have no issue in the world itself, in life itself; its
\n\t\tone issue, if there is any, must be by an escape out of life, out of the
\n\t\tworld, out of his human existence and therefore out of its eternally
\n\t\tunsatisfactory law of imperfect being, either into a heaven of the gods
\n\t\tor of God or into the pure ineffability of the Absolute. If so, man can
\n\t\tnever really deliver out of the ignorance and falsehood the truth and
\n\t\tknowledge, out of the evil and ugliness the good and beauty, out of the
\n\t\tweakness and vileness the power and glory, out of the grief and
\n\t\tsuffering the joy and delight which are contained in the Spirit behind
\n\t\tthem and of which these contradictions are the first adverse and
\n\t\tcontrary conditions of emergence. All he can do is to cut the\n<\/p>\n


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\nimperfections away from him and overpass too their balancing opposites,
\nimperfect also,\u2014leave with the ignorance the human knowledge, with the evil the
\nhuman good, with the weakness the human strength and power, with the strife and
\nsuffering the human love and joy; for these are in our present nature
\ninseparably entwined together, look like conjoint dualities, negative pole and
\npositive pole of the same unreality, and since they cannot be elevated and
\ntransformed, they must be both abandoned: humanity cannot be fulfilled in
\ndivinity; it must cease, be left behind and rejected. Whether the result will be
\nan individual enjoyment of the absolute divine nature or of the Divine Presence
\nor a Nirvana in the featureless Absolute, is a point on which religions and
\nphilosophies differ: but in either case human existence on earth must be taken
\nas condemned to eternal imperfection by the very law of its being; it is
\nperpetually and unchangeably an undivine manifestation in the Divine Existence.
\nThe soul by taking on manhood, perhaps by the very fact of birth itself, has
\nfallen from the Divine, has committed an original sin or error which it must be
\nman’s spiritual aim, as soon as he is enlightened, thoroughly to cancel,
\nunflinchingly to eliminate. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tIn that case, the only reasonable explanation of such a paradoxical
\n\t\tmanifestation or creation is that it is a cosmic game, a Lila, a play,
\n\t\tan amusement of the Divine Being. It may be he pretends to be undivine,
\n\t\twears that appearance like the mask or make-up of an actor for the sole
\n\t\tpleasure of the pretence or the drama. Or else he has created the
\n\t\tundivine, created ignorance, sin and suffering just for the joy of a
\n\t\tmanifold creation. Or, perhaps, as some religions curiously suppose, he
\n\t\thas done this so that there may be inferior creatures who will praise
\n\t\tand glorify Him for his eternal goodness, wisdom, bliss and omnipotence
\n\t\tand try feebly to come an inch nearer to the goodness in order to share
\n\t\tthe bliss, on pain of punishment, \u2014 by some supposed eternal, \u2014 if, as
\n\t\tthe vast majority must by their very imperfection, they fail in their
\n\t\tendeavour. But to the doctrine of such a Lila so crudely stated there is
\n\t\talways possible the retort that a God, himself all-blissful, who
\n\t\tdelights in the suffering of creatures or imposes such suffering on them
\n\t\tfor the faults of his own imperfect\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 408<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

\ncreation, would be no Divinity and against him the moral being and intelligence
\nof humanity must revolt or deny his existence. But if the human soul is a
\nportion of the Divinity, if it is a divine Spirit in man that puts on this
\nimperfection and in the form of humanity consents to bear this suffering, or if
\nthe soul in humanity is meant to be drawn to the Divine Spirit and is his
\nassociate in the play of imperfection here, in the delight of perfect being
\notherwhere, the Lila may still remain a paradox, but it ceases to be a cruel or
\nrevolting paradox; it can at most be regarded as a strange mystery and to the
\nreason inexplicable. To explain it there must be two missing elements, a
\nconscious assent by the soul to this manifestation and a reason in the
\nAll-Wisdom that makes the play significant and intelligible. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tThe strangeness of the play diminishes, the paradox loses its edge of
\n\t\tsharpness if we discover that, although fixed grades exist each with its
\n\t\tappropriate order of nature, they are only firm steps for a progressive
\n\t\tascent of the souls embodied in forms of matter, a progressive divine
\n\t\tmanifestation which rises from the inconscient to the superconscient or
\n\t\tall-conscient status with the human consciousness as its decisive point
\n\t\tof transition. Imperfection becomes then a necessary term of the
\n\t\tmanifestation: for, since all the divine nature is concealed but present
\n\t\tin the Inconscient, it must be gradually delivered out of it; this
\n\t\tgraduation necessitates a partial unfolding, and this partial character
\n\t\tor incompleteness of the unfolding necessitates imperfection. An
\n\t\tevolutionary manifestation demands a mid-stage with gradations above and
\n\t\tunder it, \u2014 precisely such a stage as the mental consciousness of man,
\n\t\tpart knowledge, part ignorance, a middle power of being still leaning on
\n\t\tthe Inconscient but slowly rising towards the all-conscious Divine
\n\t\tNature. A partial unfolding implying imperfection and ignorance may take
\n\t\tas its inevitable companion, perhaps its basis for certain movements, an
\n\t\tapparent perversion of the original truth of being. For the ignorance or
\n\t\timperfection to endure there must be a seeming contrary of all that
\n\t\tcharacterises the divine nature, its unity, its all-consciousness, its
\n\t\tall-power, its all-harmony, its all-good, its all-delight; there must
\n\t\tappear limitation, discord, unconsciousness, disharmony, incapacity,
\n\t\tinsensibility and suffering, evil.\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 409<\/p>\n

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\n

\nFor without that perversion imperfection could have no strong standing-ground,
\ncould not so freely manifest and maintain its nature as against the presence of
\nthe underlying Divinity. A partial knowledge is imperfect knowledge and
\nimperfect knowledge is to that extent ignorance, a contrary of the divine
\nnature: but in its outlook on what is beyond its knowledge, this contrary
\nnegative becomes a contrary positive; it originates error, wrong knowledge,
\nwrong dealing with things, with life, with action; the wrong knowledge becomes a
\nwrong will in the nature, at first, it may be, wrong by mistake, but afterwards
\nwrong by choice, by attachment, by delight in the falsehood, \u2014 the simple
\ncontrary turns into a complex perversion. Inconscience and ignorance once
\nadmitted, these form a natural result in a logical sequence and have to be
\nadmitted also as necessary factors. The only question is the reason why this
\nkind of progressive manifestation was itself necessary; that is the sole point
\nleft obscure to the intelligence. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tA manifestation of this kind, self-creation or Lila, would not seem
\n\t\tjustifiable if it were imposed on the unwilling creature; but it will be
\n\t\tevident that the assent of the embodied spirit must be there already,
\n\t\tfor Prakriti cannot act without the assent of the Purusha. There must
\n\t\thave been not only the will of the Divine Purusha to make the cosmic
\n\t\tcreation possible, but the assent of the individual Purusha to make the
\n\t\tindividual manifestation possible. But it may be said that the reason
\n\t\tfor the Divine Will and delight in such a difficult and tormented
\n\t\tprogressive manifestation and the reason for the soul’s assent to it is
\n\t\tstill a mystery. But it is not altogether a mystery if we look at our
\n\t\town nature and can suppose some kindred movement of being in the
\n\t\tbeginning as its cosmic origin. On the contrary, a play of
\n\t\tself-concealing and self-finding is one of the most strenuous joys that
\n\t\tconscious being can give to itself, a play of extreme attractiveness.
\n\t\tThere is no greater pleasure for man himself than a victory which is in
\n\t\tits very principle a conquest over difficulties, a victory in knowledge,
\n\t\ta victory in power, a victory in creation over the impossibilities of
\n\t\tcreation, a delight in the conquest over an anguished toil and a hard
\n\t\tordeal of suffering. At the end of separation is the intense joy of
\n\t\tunion, the joy of a meeting with a self\n<\/p>\n


\nPage 410<\/p>\n

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\n

\nfrom which we were divided. There is an attraction in ignorance itself because
\nit provides us with the joy of discovery, the surprise of new and unforeseen
\ncreation, a great adventure of the soul; there is a joy of the journey and the
\nsearch and the finding, a joy of the battle and the crown, the labour and the
\nreward of labour. If delight of existence be the secret of creation, this too is
\none delight of existence; it can be regarded as the reason or at least one
\nreason of this apparently paradoxical and contrary Lila. But, apart from this
\nchoice of the individual Purusha, there is a deeper truth inherent in the
\noriginal Existence which finds its expression in the plunge into Inconscience;
\nits result is a new affirmation of Sachchidananda in its apparent opposite. If
\nthe Infinite’s right of various self-manifestation is granted, this too as a
\npossibility of its manifestation is intelligible and has its profound
\nsignificance. <\/p>\n


\nPage 411<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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