{"id":608,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=608"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:12","slug":"22-the-ascent-of-life-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\/22-the-ascent-of-life-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-22_The Ascent of Life .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


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

<\/font> XXI<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\tThe Ascent of Life<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nL<\/b>et the path of the Word lead to the godheads, towards the <\/font><\/p>\n


\nWaters by the working of the Mind….\u00b9
\n<\/font> O Flame, thou goest to<\/font><\/p>\n


\nthe ocean of Heaven, towards the gods; thou makest to meet together <\/font><\/p>\n


\nthe godheads of the planes, the waters that are in the realm <\/font><\/p>\n


\nof light above the sun and the waters that abide below.\u00b2 
\n<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/div>\n

     
\nThe Lord of Delight conquers the third status; he maintains <\/font><\/p>\n


\nand governs according to the Soul of universality; like a hawk,<\/font><\/p>\n


\na kite he settles on the vessel and uplifts it, a finder of the Light <\/font><\/p>\n


\nhe manifests the fourth status and cleaves to the ocean that is the <\/font><\/p>\n


\nbillowing of those waters.\u00b3
\n<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n<\/div>\n

    
\nThrice Vishnu paced and set his step uplifted out of the primal <\/font><\/p>\n


\ndust; three steps he has paced, the Guardian, the Invincible, and <\/font><\/p>\n


\nfrom beyond he upholds their laws. Scan the workings of Vishnu <\/font><\/p>\n


\nand see from whence he has manifested their laws. That is his <\/font><\/p>\n


\nhighest pace which is seen ever by the seers like an eye extended <\/font><\/p>\n


\nin heaven; that the illumined, the awakened kindle into a blaze, <\/font><\/p>\n


\neven Vishnu’s step supreme….<\/font>4 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n                                                                                               
\n<\/font>Rig Veda.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

   
\nW<\/font><\/b>E HAVE<\/font> seen that as the divided mortal Mind,
\nparent of limitation and ignorance and the dualities, is only a dark figure of
\nthe Supermind, of the self-luminous divine Consciousness in its first dealings
\nwith the apparent negation of itself from which our cosmos commences, so also
\nLife as it emerges in our material universe, an energy of the dividing Mind
\nsubconscious, submerged, imprisoned in Matter, Life as the parent of death,
\nhunger and incapacity, is only a dark figure of the divine superconscient Force
\nwhose highest terms are immortality, satisfied delight and omnipotence. This
\nrelation fixes the nature of that great cosmic processus of which we are a part;
\nit determines the first, the middle and the ultimate terms of our evolution. The
\nfirst terms of Life are division, a force-driven subconscient will, apparent not
\nas will but as dumb urge of physical energy, and the impotence of an inert
\nsubjection to the mechanical forces that govern the interchange between the form
\nand its environment. This inconscience and this blind but potent action of
\nEnergy are the type of the material universe as the physical scientist sees it\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

        
\n\u00b9<\/font> X. 30. 1.     \u00b2 <\/font>
\n III. 22. 3.    \u00b3 <\/font>IX. 96. 18, 19.  
\n<\/font>4<\/font> I. 22. 17-21. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-198<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nand this his view of things extends and turns into the whole of basic existence;
\nit is the consciousness of Matter and the accomplished type of material living.
\nBut there comes a new equipoise, there intervenes a new set of terms which
\nincrease in proportion as Life delivers itself out of this form and begins to
\nevolve towards conscious Mind; for the middle terms of Life are death and mutual
\ndevouring, hunger and conscious desire, the sense of a limited room and capacity
\nand the struggle to increase, to expand, to conquer and to possess. These three
\nterms are the basis of that status of evolution which the Darwinian theory first
\nmade plain to human knowledge. For the phenomenon of death involves in itself a
\nstruggle to survive, since death is only the negative term in which Life hides
\nfrom itself and tempts its own positive being to seek for immortality. The
\nphenomenon of hunger and desire involves a struggle towards a status of
\nsatisfaction and security, since desire is only the stimulus by which Life
\ntempts its own positive being to rise out of the negation of unfulfilled hunger
\ntowards the full possession of the delight of existence. The phenomenon of
\nlimited capacity involves a struggle towards expansion, mastery and possession,
\nthe possession of the self and the conquest of the environment, since limitation
\nand defect are only the negation by which Life tempts its own positive being to
\nseek for the perfection of which it is eternally capable. The struggle for life
\nis not only a struggle to survive, it is also a struggle for possession and
\nperfection, since only by taking hold of the environment whether more or less,
\nwhether by self-adaptation to it or by adapting it to oneself either by
\naccepting and conciliating it or by conquering and changing it, can survival be
\nsecured, and equally is it true that only a greater and greater perfection can
\nassure a continuous permanence, a lasting survival. It is this truth that
\nDarwinism sought to express in the formula of the survival of the fittest. <\/p>\n

    
\nBut as the scientific mind sought to extend to Life the mechanical principle
\nproper to the existence and concealed mechanical consciousness in Matter, not
\nseeing that a new principle has entered whose very reason of being is to subject
\nto itself the mechanical, so the Darwinian formula was used to extend too
\nlargely the aggressive principle of Life, the vital selfishness of the <\/p>\n

\nPage-199<\/p>\n

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

\n

\nindividual, the instinct and process of self-preservation, self-assertion and
\naggressive living. For these two first states of Life contain in themselves the
\nseeds of a new principle and another state which must increase in proportion as
\nMind evolves out of matter through the vital formula into its own law. And still
\nmore must all things change when as Life evolves upward towards Mind, so Mind
\nevolves upward towards Supermind and Spirit. Precisely because the struggle for
\nsurvival, the impulse towards permanence is contradicted by the law of death,
\nthe individual life is compelled, and used, to secure permanence rather for its
\nspecies than for itself; but this it cannot do without the co-operation of
\nothers; and the principle of co-operation and mutual help, the desire of others,
\nthe desire of the wife, the child, the friend and helper, the associated group,
\nthe practice of association, of conscious joining and interchange are the seeds
\nout of which flowers the principle of love. Let us grant that at first love may
\nonly be an extended selfishness and that this aspect of extended selfishness may
\npersist and dominate, as it does still persist and dominate, in higher stages of
\nthe evolution: still as mind evolves and more and more finds itself, it comes by
\nthe experience of life and love and mutual help to perceive that the natural
\nindividual is a minor term of being and exists by the universal. Once this is
\ndiscovered, as it is inevitably discovered by man the mental being, his destiny
\nis determined; for he has reached the point at which Mind can begin to open to
\nthe truth that there is something beyond itself; from that moment his evolution,
\nhowever obscure and slow, towards that superior something, towards Spirit,
\ntowards Supermind, towards Supermanhood is inevitably predetermined.\n<\/p>\n

    
\nTherefore Life is predestined by its own nature to a third status, a third set
\nof terms of its self-expression. If we examine this ascent of Life we shall see
\nthat the last terms of its actual evolution, the terms of that which we have
\ncalled its third status, must necessarily be in appearance the very
\ncontradiction and opposite but in fact the very fulfilment and transfiguration
\nof its first conditions. Life starts with the extreme divisions and rigid forms
\nof Matter, and of this rigid division the atom, which is the basis of all
\nmaterial form, is the very type. The atom stands apart<\/p>\n

\n Page-200<\/p>\n

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

\n

\nfrom all others even in its union with them, rejects death and dissolution under
\nany ordinary force and is the physical type of the separate ego defining its
\nexistence against the principle of fusion in Nature. But unity is as strong a
\nprinciple in Nature as division; it is indeed the master principle of which
\ndivision is only a subordinate term, and to the principle of unity every divided
\nform must therefore subordinate itself in one fashion or another by mechanical
\nnecessity, by compulsion, by assent or inducement. Therefore, if Nature for her
\nown ends, in order principally to have a firm basis for her combinations and a
\nfixed seed of forms, allows the atom ordinarily to resist the process of fusion
\nby dissolution, she compels it to subserve the process of fusion by aggregation;
\nthe atom, as it is the first aggregate, is also the first basis of aggregate
\nunities.\n<\/p>\n

    
\nWhen Life reaches its second status, that which we recognise as vitality, the
\ncontrary phenomenon takes the lead and the physical basis of the vital ego is
\nobliged to consent to dissolution. Its constituents are broken up so that the
\nelements of one life can be used to enter into the elemental formation of other
\nlives. The extent to which this law reigns in Nature has not yet been fully
\nrecognised and indeed cannot be until we have a science of mental life and
\nspiritual existence as sound as our present science of physical life and the
\nexistence of Matter. Still we can see broadly that not only the elements of our
\nphysical body, but those of our subtler vital being, our life-energy, our
\ndesire-energy, our powers, strivings, passions enter both during our life and
\nafter our death into the life-existence of others. An ancient occult knowledge
\ntells us that we have a vital frame as well as a physical and this too is after
\ndeath dissolved and lends itself to the constitution of other vital bodies; our
\nlife energies while we live are continually mixing with the energies of other
\nbeings. A similar law governs the mutual relations of our mental life with the
\nmental life of other thinking creatures. There is a constant dissolution and
\ndispersion and a reconstruction effected by the shock of mind upon mind with a
\nconstant interchange and fusion of elements. Interchange, intermixture and
\nfusion of being with being, is the very process of life, a law of its existence.<\/p>\n

\n Page-201<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

    
\nWe have then two principles in Life, the necessity or the will of the separate
\nego to survive in its distinctness and guard its identity and the compulsion
\nimposed upon it by Nature to fuse itself with others. In the physical world she
\nlays much stress on the former impulse; for she needs to create stable separate
\nforms, since it is her first and really her most difficult problem to create and
\nmaintain any such thing as a separative survival of individuality and a stable
\nform for it in the incessant flux and motion of Energy and in the unity of the
\ninfinite. In the atomic life therefore the individual form persists as the basis
\nand secures by its aggregation with others the more or less prolonged existence
\nof aggregate forms which shall be the basis of vital and mental
\nindividualisations. But as soon as Nature has secured a sufficient firmness in
\nthis respect for the safe conduct of her ulterior operations, she reverses the
\nprocess; the individual form perishes and the aggregate life profits by the
\nelements of the form that is thus dissolved. This, however, cannot be the last
\nstage; that can only be reached when the two principles are harmonised, when the
\nindividual is able to persist in the consciousness of his individuality and yet
\nfuse himself with others without disturbance of preservative equilibrium and
\ninterruption of survival.<\/p>\n

     
\nThe terms of the problem presuppose the full emergence of Mind; for in vitality
\nwithout conscious mind there can be no equation, but only a temporary unstable
\nequilibrium ending in the death of the body, the dissolution of the individual
\nand the dispersal of its elements into the universality. The nature of physical
\nLife forbids the idea of an individual form possessing the same inherent power
\nof persistence and therefore of continued individual existence as the atoms of
\nwhich it is composed. Only a mental being, supported by the psychic nodus within
\nwhich expresses or begins to express the secret soul, can hope to persist by his
\npower of linking on the past to the future in a stream of continuity which the
\nbreaking of the form may break in the physical memory but need not destroy in
\nthe mental being itself and which may even by an eventual development bridge
\nover the gap of physical memory created by death and birth of the body. Even as
\nit is, even in the present imperfect development of embodied mind, the mental
\nbeing is conscious in the mass of a\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-202<\/p>\n

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

\n

\npast and a future extending beyond the life of the body; he becomes aware of an
\nindividual past, of individual lives that have created his and of which he is a
\ndevelopment and modified reproduction and of future individual lives which his
\nis creating out of itself; he is conscious also of an aggregate life past and
\nfuture through which his own continuity runs as one of its fibres. This which is
\nevident to physical Science in the terms of heredity, becomes otherwise evident
\nto the developing soul behind the mental being in the terms of persistent
\npersonality. The mental being expressive of this soul-consciousness is therefore
\nthe nodus of the persistent individual and the persistent aggregate life; in him
\ntheir union and harmony become possible.\n<\/p>\n

    
\nAssociation with love as its secret principle and its emergent summit is the
\ntype, the power of this new relation and therefore the governing principle of
\nthe development into the third status of life. The conscious preservation of
\nindividuality along with the consciously accepted necessity and desire of
\ninterchange, self-giving and fusion with other individuals, is necessary for the
\nworking of the principle of love; for if either is abolished, the working of
\nlove ceases, whatever may take its place. Fulfilment of love by entire
\nself-immolation, even with an illusion of self-annihilation, is indeed an idea
\nand an impulse in the mental being, but it points to a development beyond this
\nthird status of Life. This third status is a condition in which we rise
\nprogressively beyond the struggle for life by mutual devouring and the survival
\nof the fittest by that struggle; for there is more and more a survival by mutual
\nhelp and a self-perfectioning by mutual adaptation, interchange and fusion. Life
\nis a self-affirmation of being, even a development and survival of ego, but of a
\nbeing that has need of other beings, an ego that seeks to meet and include other
\negos and to be included in their life. The individuals and the aggregates who
\ndevelop most the law of association and the law of love, of common help,
\nkindliness, affection, comradeship, unity, who harmonise most successfully
\nsurvival and mutual self-giving, the aggregate increasing the individual and the
\nindividual the aggregate, as well as individual increasing individual and
\naggregate aggregate by mutual interchange, will be the fittest for survival in
\nthis tertiary status of the evolution.\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-203<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

     
\nThis development is significant of the increasing predominance of Mind\u00b9
\n\u00b9<\/font>What is spoken of here is mind as it acts directly in life, in the vital
\nbeing, through the heart. Love\u2014the relative principle, not its absolute\u2014is a
\nprinciple of life, not of mind, but it can possess itself and move towards
\npermanence only when taken up by the mind into its own light. What is called
\nlove in the body and the vital parts is mostly a form of hunger without
\npermanence. which progressively imposes its own law more and more upon the
\nmaterial existence. For mind by its greater subtlety does not need to devour in
\norder to assimilate, possess and grow; rather the more it gives, the more it
\nreceives and grows; and the more it fuses itself into others, the more it fuses
\nothers into itself and increases the scope of its being. Physical life exhausts
\nitself by too much giving and ruins itself by too much devouring; but though
\nMind in proportion as it leans on the law of Matter suffers the same limitation,
\nyet, on the other hand, in proportion as it grows into its own law it tends to
\novercome this limitation, and in proportion as it overcomes the material
\nlimitation giving and receiving become one. For in its upward ascent it grows
\ntowards the rule of conscious unity in differentiation which is the divine law
\nof the manifest Sachchidananda.\n<\/p>\n

    
\nThe second term of the original status of life is subconscious will which in the
\nsecondary status becomes hunger and conscious desire,\u2014hunger and desire, the
\nfirst seed of conscious mind. The growth into the third status of life by the
\nprinciple of association, the growth of love, does not abolish the law of
\ndesire, but rather transforms and fulfils it. Love is in its nature the desire
\nto give oneself to others and to receive others in exchange; it is a commerce
\nbetween being and being. Physical life does not desire to give itself, it
\ndesires only to receive. It is true that it is compelled to give itself, for the
\nlife which only receives and does not give must become barren, wither and
\nperish,\u2014if indeed such life in its entirety is possible at all here or in any
\nworld; but it is compelled, not willing, it obeys the subconscious impulse of
\nNature rather than consciously shares in it. Even when love intervenes, the
\nself-giving at first still preserves to a large extent the mechanical character
\nof the subconscious will in the atom. Love itself at first obeys the law of
\nhunger and enjoys the re-<\/p>\n

\nPage-204<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nceiving and the exacting from others rather than the giving and surrendering to
\nothers which it admits chiefly as a necessary price for the thing that it
\ndesires. But here it has not yet attained to its true nature; its true law is to
\nestablish an equal commerce in which the joy of giving is equal to the joy of
\nreceiving and tends in the end to become even greater; but that is when it is
\nshooting beyond itself under the pressure of the psychic flame to attain to the
\nfulfilment of utter unity and has therefore to realise that which seemed to it
\nnot-self as an even greater and dearer self than its own individuality. In its
\nlife-origin, the law of love is the impulse to realise and fulfil oneself in
\nothers and by others, to be enriched by enriching, to possess and be possessed
\nbecause without being possessed one does not possess oneself utterly.\n<\/p>\n

    
\nThe inert incapacity of atomic existence to possess itself, the subjection of
\nthe material individual to the not-self belongs to the first status of life. The
\nconsciousness of limitation and the struggle to possess, to master both self and
\nthe not-self is the type of the secondary status. Here, too, the development to
\nthe third status brings a transformation of the original terms into a fulfilment
\nand a harmony which repeat the terms while seeming to contradict them. There
\ncomes about through association and through love a recognition of the not-self
\nas a greater self and therefore a consciously accepted submission to its law and
\nneed which fulfils the increasing impulse of aggregate life to absorb the
\nindividual; and there is a possession again by the individual of the life of
\nothers as his own and of all that it has to give him as his own which fulfils
\nthe opposite impulse of individual possession. Nor can this relation of
\nmutuality between the individual and the world he lives in be expressed or
\ncomplete or secure unless the same relation is established between individual
\nand individual and between aggregate and aggregate. All the difficult effort of
\nman towards the harmonisation of self-affirmation and freedom, by which he
\npossesses himself, with association and love, fraternity, comradeship, in which
\nhe gives himself to others, his ideals of harmonious equilibrium, justice,
\nmutuality, equality by which he creates a balance of the two opposites, are
\nreally an attempt inevitably predetermined in its lines to solve the original
\nproblem of Nature, the very problem of Life\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-205<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nitself, by the resolution of the conflict between the two opposites which
\npresent themselves in the very foundations of Life in Matter. The resolution is
\nattempted by the higher principle of Mind which alone can find the road towards
\nthe harmony intended, even though the harmony itself can only be found in a
\nPower still beyond us.\n<\/p>\n

    
\nFor, if the data with which we have started are correct, the end of the road,
\nthe goal itself can only be reached by Mind passing beyond itself into that
\nwhich is beyond Mind, since of That the Mind is only an inferior term and an
\ninstrument first for descent into form and individuality and secondly for
\nreascension into that reality which the form embodies and the individuality
\nrepresents. Therefore the perfect solution of the problem of Life is not likely
\nto be realised by association, interchange and accommodations of love alone or
\nthrough the law of the mind and the heart alone. It must come by a fourth status
\nof life in which the eternal unity of the many is realised through the spirit
\nand the conscious foundation of all the operations of life is laid no longer in
\nthe divisions of body, nor in the passions and hungers of the vitality, nor in
\nthe groupings and the imperfect harmonies of the mind, nor in a combination of
\nall these, but in the unity and freedom of the Spirit.\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-206<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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