{"id":609,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:12","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=609"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:12","slug":"25-matter-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\/25-matter-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-25_Matter .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


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


\nMatter<\/p>\n

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                                                                                            He arrived at
\nthe knowledge that Matter is Brahman. <\/font><\/p>\n

                                          
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\n        Taittiriya Upanishad.\u00b9
\n<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    W<\/font><\/b>E HAVE<\/font>
\nnow the rational assurance that Life is neither an inexplicable dream
\nnor an impossible evil that has yet become a
\ndolorous fact, but a mighty pulsation of the divine All-Existence. We
\nsee something of its foundation and its principle, we
\nlook upward to its high potentiality and ultimate divine out-flowering.
\nBut there is one principle below all the others which we
\nhave not yet sufficiently considered, the principle of Matter upon
\nwhich Life stands as upon a pedestal or out of which it
\nevolves like the form of a many-branching tree out of its encasing
\nseed. The mind, life and body of man depend upon this
\nphysical principle, and if the out-flowering of Life is the result of
\nConsciousness emerging into Mind, expanding, elevating
\nitself in search of its own truth in the largeness of the supramental
\nexistence, yet it seems also to be conditioned by this case
\nof body and by this foundation of Matter. The importance of the body is
\nobvious; it is because he has developed or been
\ngiven a body and brain capable of receiving and serving a progressive
\nmental illumination that man has risen above the
\nanimal. Equally, it can only be by developing a body or at least a
\nfunctioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving
\nand serving a still higher illumination that he will rise above himself
\nand realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being
\nbut in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise
\nof Life is cancelled, its meaning annulled and earthly
\nbeing can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding
\nfrom it mind, life and body and returning to the pure
\nInfinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined
\nlimit to the consciously progressive power which
\ndistinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has
\nreplaced them in the front of things, so another must\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

      
\n\u00b9<\/font>
\nIII. 2.<\/p>\n

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

\nPage-231<\/p>\n

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\n

eventually replace him and assume his heritage.<\/p>\n

     
\nIt seems indeed that the body is from the beginning the soul’s great
\ndifficulty, its continual stumbling-block and rock of
\noffence. Therefore the eager seeker of spiritual fulfilment has hurled
\nhis ban against the body and his world-disgust selects
\nthis world-principle above all other things as an especial object of
\nloathing. The body is the obscure burden that he cannot
\nbear; its obstinate material grossness is the obsession that drives him
\nfor deliverance to the life of the ascetic. To get rid of it
\nhe has even gone so far as to deny its existence and the reality of the
\nmaterial universe. Most of the religions have put their
\ncurse upon Matter and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary
\nendurance of the physical life the test of religious
\ntruth and of spirituality. The older creeds, more patient, more
\nbroodingly profound, not touched with the torture and the
\nfeverish impatience of the soul under the burden of the Iron Age, did
\nnot make this formidable division; they acknowledged
\nEarth the Mother and Heaven the Father and accorded to them an equal
\nlove and reverence; but their ancient mysteries are
\nobscure and unfathomable to our gaze who, whether our view of things be
\nmaterialistic or spiritual, are alike content to cut
\nthe Gordian knot of the problem of existence with one decisive blow and
\nto accept an escape into an eternal bliss or an end
\nin an eternal annihilation or an eternal quietude.<\/p>\n

     
\nThe quarrel does not really commence with our awakening to our
\nspiritual possibilities; it begins from the appearance of
\nlife itself and its struggle to establish its activities and its
\npermanent aggregations of living form against the force of inertia,
\nagainst the force of inconscience, against the force of atomic
\ndisaggregation which are in the material principle the knot of
\nthe great Denial. Life is at constant war with Matter and the battle
\nseems always to end in the apparent defeat of Life and
\nin that collapse downward to the material principle which we call
\ndeath. The discord deepens with the appearance of Mind;
\nfor Mind has its own quarrel with both Life and Matter: it is at
\nconstant war with their limitations, in constant subjection to
\nand revolt against the grossness and inertia of the one and the
\npassions and sufferings of the other; and the battle seems to
\nturn eventually, though\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-232<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

not very surely, towards a partial and costly
\nvictory for the Mind in which it conquers, represses or even slays the
\nvital
\ncravings, impairs the physical force and disturbs the balance of the
\nbody in the interests of a greater mental activity and a
\nhigher moral being. It is in this struggle that the impatience of Life,
\nthe disgust of the body and the recoil from both towards
\na pure mental and moral existence take their rise. When man awakens to
\nan existence beyond Mind, he carries yet farther
\nthis principle of discord. Mind, Body and Life are condemned as the
\ntrinity of the world, the flesh and the devil. Mind too is
\nbanned as the source of all our malady; war is declared between the
\nspirit and its instruments and the victory of the spiritual
\nInhabitant is sought for in an evasion from its narrow residence, a
\nrejection of mind, life and body and a withdrawal into its
\nown infinitudes. The world is a discord and we shall best solve its
\nperplexities by carrying the principle of discord itself to its
\nextreme possibility, a cutting away and a final severance.\n<\/p>\n

     But these defeats and
\nvictories are only apparent, this solution is not a solution but an
\nescape from the problem. Life is
\nnot really defeated by Matter; it makes a compromise by using death for
\nthe continuance of life. Mind is not really victorious
\nover Life and Matter, but has only achieved an imperfect development of
\nsome of its potentialities at the cost of others
\nwhich are bound up with the unrealised or rejected possibilities of its
\nbetter use of life and body. The individual soul has not
\nconquered the lower triplicity, but only rejected their claim upon it
\nand fled from the work which spirit had undertaken when
\nit first cast itself into form of universe. The problem continues
\nbecause the labour of the Divine in the universe continues,
\nbut without any satisfying solution of the problem or any victorious
\naccomplishment of the labour. Therefore, since our own
\nstandpoint is that Sachchidananda is the beginning and the middle and
\nthe end and that struggle and discord cannot be
\neternal and fundamental principles in His being but by their very
\nexistence imply labour towards a perfect solution and a
\ncomplete victory, we must seek that solution in a real victory of Life
\nover Matter through the free and perfect use of body
\nby Life, in a real victory of Mind over Life and Matter through a free
\nand perfect use of life-force\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-233<\/p>\n

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

\n

and form by Mind and in a real victory of Spirit over the triplicity through a free and perfect occupation of mind, life and
\nbody by conscious spirit; in the view we have worked out this last conquest can alone make the others really possible. To
\nthe end, then, that we may see how these conquests can be at all or wholly possible, we must find out the reality of Matter
\njust as, seeking the fundamental knowledge, we have found out the reality of Mind and Soul and Life.<\/p>\n

     
\nIn a certain sense Matter is unreal and non-existent; that is to say, our present knowledge, idea and experience of
\nMatter is not its truth, but merely a phenomenon of particular relation between our senses and the all-existence in which we
\nmove. When Science discovers that Matter resolves itself into forms of Energy, it has hold of a universal and fundamental
\ntruth; and when philosophy discovers that Matter only exists as substantial appearance to the consciousness and that the one
\nreality is Spirit or pure conscious Being, it has hold of a greater and completer, a still more fundamental truth. But still the
\nquestion remains why Energy should take the form of Matter and not of mere force-currents or why that which is really
\nSpirit should admit the phenomenon of Matter and not rest in states, velleities
\nand joys of the spirit. This, it is said, is the work of Mind or else, since
\nevidently Thought does not directly create or even perceive the material form of
\nthings, it is the work of Sense; the sense-mind creates the forms which it seems
\nto perceive and the thought-mind works upon the forms which the sense-mind
\npresents to it. But, evidently, the individual embodied mind is not the creator
\nof the phenomenon of Matter; earth-existence cannot be the result of the human
\nmind which is itself the result of earth-existence. If we say that the world
\nexists only in our own minds, we express a non-fact and a confusion; for the
\nmaterial world existed before man was upon the earth and it will go on existing
\nif man disappears from the earth or even if our individual mind abolishes itself
\nin the Infinite. We must conclude then that there is a universal Mind,\u00b9
\n<\/font>subconscious to us in the form of the <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

            
\n\u00b9<\/font> Mind, as we know it, creates only in a relative and
\ninstrumental sense; it has an unlimited power of combination, but its creative
\nmotives and forms come to it from above: all created forms have their base in
\nthe Infinite above Mind, Life and Matter and are here<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-234<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n

universe or superconscious in its spirit, which has created that form for its habitation. And since the creator must have
\npreceded and must exceed its creation, this really implies a superconscient Mind which by the instrumentality of a universal
\nsense creates in itself the relation of form with form and constitutes the rhythm of the material universe. But this also is no
\ncomplete solution; it tells us that Matter is a creation of Consciousness, but it does not explain how Consciousness came to
\ncreate Matter as the basis of its cosmic workings.<\/p>\n

     
\nWe shall understand better if we go back at once to the original principle of things. Existence is in its activity a
\nConscious-Force which presents the workings of its force to its consciousness as forms of its own being. Since Force is
\nonly the action of one sole-existing Conscious-Being, its results can be nothing else but forms of that Conscious-Being;
\nSubstance or Matter, then, is only a form of Spirit. The appearance which this form of Spirit assumes to our senses is due to
\nthat dividing action of Mind from which we have been able to deduce consistently the whole phenomenon of the universe.
\nWe know now that Life is an action of Conscious-Force of which material forms are the result; Life involved in those
\nforms, appearing in them first as inconscient force, evolves and brings back into manifestation as Mind the consciousness
\nwhich is the real self of the force and which never ceased to exist in it even when unmanifest. We know also that Mind is
\nan inferior power of the original conscious Knowledge or Supermind, a power to which Life acts as an instrumental energy;
\nfor, descending through Supermind, Consciousness or Chit represents itself as Mind, Force of consciousness or Tapas
\nrepresents itself as Life. Mind, by its separation from its own higher reality in Supermind, gives Life the appearance of
\ndivision and, by its farther involution in its own Life-Force, becomes subconscious in Life and thus gives the outward
\nappearance of an inconscient force to its material workings. Therefore, the inconscience, the inertia,\n<\/p>\n

———————<\/p>\n

represented, reconstructed—very
\nusually misconstructed—from the infinitesimal. Their foundation is
\nabove, their branchings downwards, says the Rig
\nVeda. The superconscient Mind of which we speak might rather be called
\nan Overmind and inhabits in the
\nhierarchical order of the powers of the Spirit, a zone directly
\ndependent on the supramental consciousness. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-235<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

the atomic disaggregation of Matter must have their source in this all-dividing and self-involving action of Mind by which our
\nuniverse came into being. As Mind is only a final action of Supermind in the descent towards creation and Life an action of
\nConscious-Force working in the conditions of the Ignorance created by this descent of Mind, so Matter, as we know it, is
\nonly the final form taken by conscious-being as the result of that working. Matter is substance of the one Conscious-Being
\nphenomenally divided within itself by the action of a universal Mind,\u00b9<\/font> <\/p>\n

—a division which the individual mind repeats and dwells in, but which does not abrogate or at all diminish the unity of Spirit
\nor the unity of Energy or the real unity of Matter. <\/p>\n

     But why this phenomenal and
\npragmatic division of an indivisible Existence? It is because Mind has
\nto carry the
\nprinciple of multiplicity to its extreme potential which can only be
\ndone by separativeness and division. To do that it must,
\nprecipitating itself into Life to create forms for the Multiple, give
\nto the universal principle of Being the appearance of a
\ngross and material substance instead of a pure or subtle substance. It
\nmust, that is to say, give it the appearance of
\nsubstance which offers itself to the contact of Mind as stable thing or
\nobject in an abiding multiplicity of objects and not of
\nsubstance which offers itself to the contact of pure consciousness as
\nsomething of its own eternal pure existence and reality
\nor to subtle sense as a principle of plastic form freely expressive of
\nthe conscious being. The contact of mind with its objects
\ncreates what we call sense, but here it has to be an obscure
\nexternalised sense which must be assured of the reality of what
\nit contacts. The descent of pure substance into material substance
\nfollows, then, inevitably on the descent of
\nSachchidananda through Supermind into mind and life. It is a necessary
\nresult of the will to make multiplicity of being and an
\nawareness of things from separate centres of consciousness the first
\nmethod of this lower experience of existence. If we go
\nback to the spiritual basis of things, substance in its utter purity
\nresolves itself into pure conscious being,\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    
\n\u00b9<\/font>
\nMind is here used in its widest sense including the operation of an Overmind power which is nearest to the
\nsupramental Truth-Consciousness and which is the first fountain of the creation of the Ignorance.<\/font><\/p>\n

    
\nPage-236<\/p>\n

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

\n

self-existent, inherently self-aware by identity,
\nbut not yet turning its consciousness upon itself as object. Supermind
\npreserves this self-awareness by identity as its substance of
\nself-knowledge and its light of self-creation, but for that
\ncreation presents Being to itself as the subject-object one and
\nmultiple of its own active consciousness. Being as object is
\nheld there in a supreme knowledge which can, by comprehension, see it
\nboth as an object of cognition within itself and
\nsubjectively as itself, but can also and simultaneously, by
\napprehension, project it as an object (or objects) of cognition within
\nthe circumference of its consciousness, not other than itself, part of
\nits being, but a part (or parts) put away from
\nitself,—that is to say, from the centre of vision in which Being
\nconcentrates itself as the Knower, Witness or Purusha. We have seen
\nthat from this apprehending consciousness arises the movement of Mind,
\nthe movement by which the individual knower regards a form of his own
\nuniversal being as if other than he; but in the divine Mind there is
\nimmediately or rather simultaneously another movement or reverse side
\nof the same movement, an act of union in being which heals this
\nphenomenal division and prevents it from becoming even for a moment
\nsolely real to the knower. This act of conscious union is that which is
\nrepresented otherwise in dividing Mind obtusely, ignorantly, quite
\nexternally as contact in consciousness between divided beings and
\nseparate objects, and with us this contact in divided consciousness is
\nprimarily represented by the principle of sense. On this basis of
\nsense, on this contact of union subject to division, the action of the
\nthought-mind founds itself and prepares for the return to a higher
\nprinciple of union in which division is made subject to unity and
\nsubordinate. Substance, then, as we know it, material substance, is the
\nform in which Mind acting through sense contacts the Conscious Being of
\nwhich it is itself a movement of knowledge. <\/p>\n

     But Mind by its very nature tends to
\nknow and sense substance of conscious-being, not in its unity or totality but by
\nthe principle of division. It sees it, as it were, in infinitesimal points which
\nit associates together in order to arrive at a totality, and into these
\nviewpoints and associations cosmic Mind throws itself and dwells in them. So
\ndwelling, creative by its inherent <\/p>\n

\nPage-237<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

force as the agent of Real-Idea, bound by its own nature to convert all its perceptions into energy of life, as the All-Existent
\nconverts all His self-aspectings into various energy of His creative Force of consciousness, cosmic Mind turns these, its
\nmultiple viewpoints of universal existence, into standpoints of universal Life; it turns them in Matter into forms of atomic
\nbeing instinct with the life that forms them and governed by the mind and will that actuate the formation. At the same time,
\nthe atomic existences which it thus forms must by the very law of their being tend to associate themselves, to aggregate;
\nand each of these aggregates also, instinct with the hidden life that forms and the hidden mind and will that actuate them,
\nbears with it a fiction of a separated individual existence. Each such individual object or existence is supported, according as
\nthe mind in it is implicit or explicit, unmanifest or manifest, by its mechanical ego of force, in which the will-to-be is dumb
\nand imprisoned but none the less powerful, or by its self-aware mental ego in which the will-to-be is liberated, conscious,
\nseparately active.\n<\/p>\n

     Thus not any eternal and
\noriginal law of eternal and original Matter, but the nature of the
\naction of cosmic Mind is the
\ncause of atomic existence. Matter is a creation, and for its creation
\nthe infinitesimal, an extreme fragmentation of the
\nInfinite, was needed as the starting-point or basis. Ether may and does
\nexist as an intangible, almost spiritual support of
\nMatter, but as a phenomenon it does not seem, to our present knowledge
\nat least, to be materially detectable. Subdivide the
\nvisible aggregate or the formal atom into essential atoms, break it up
\ninto the most infinitesimal dust of being, we shall still,
\nbecause of the nature of the Mind and Life that formed them, arrive at
\nsome utmost atomic existence, unstable perhaps but
\nalways reconstituting itself in the eternal flux of force,
\nphenomenally, and not at a mere unatomic extension incapable of
\ncontents. Unatomic extension of substance, extension which is not an
\naggregation, coexistence otherwise than by
\ndistribution in space are realities of pure existence, pure substance;
\nthey are a knowledge of Supermind and a principle of its
\ndynamism, not a creative concept of the dividing Mind, though Mind can
\nbecome aware of them behind its workings. They
\nare the reality underlying\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-238<\/p>\n

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

\n

Matter, but not the phenomenon which we call Matter. Mind, Life, Matter itself can be one with that pure existence and
\nconscious extension in their static reality, but not operate by that oneness in their dynamic action, self-perception and
\nself-formation.\n<\/p>\n

     Therefore we arrive at this
\ntruth of Matter that there is a conceptive self-extension of being
\nwhich works itself out in
\nthe universe as substance or object of consciousness and which cosmic
\nMind and Life in their creative action represent
\nthrough atomic division and aggregation as the thing we call Matter.
\nBut this Matter, like Mind and Life, is still Being or
\nBrahman in its self-creative action. It is a form of the force of
\nconscious Being, a form given by Mind and realised by Life.
\nIt holds within it as its own reality consciousness concealed from
\nitself, involved and absorbed in the result of its own
\nself-formation and therefore self-oblivious. And, however brute and
\nvoid of sense it seems to us, it is yet, to the secret
\nexperience of the consciousness hidden within it, delight of being
\noffering itself to this secret consciousness as object of
\nsensation in order to tempt that hidden godhead out of its secrecy.
\nBeing manifest as substance, force of Being cast into
\nform, into a figured self-representation of the secret
\nself-consciousness, delight offering itself to its own consciousness as
\nan
\nobject,—what is this but Sachchidananda? Matter is Sachchidananda
\nrepresented to His own mental experience as a formal
\nbasis of objective knowledge, action and delight of existence.\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-239<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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