{"id":615,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=615"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:14","slug":"43-the-origin-and-remedy-of-falsehood-error-wrong-and-evil-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\/43-the-origin-and-remedy-of-falsehood-error-wrong-and-evil-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-43_The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


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

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


\nThe Origin and Remedy
\nof Falsehood,
\nError,
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n


\n\t\tWrong and Evil <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

   
\n           
\n           
\n    The Lord accepts the sin and the virtue of none;
\nbecause knowledge
\n                               
\nis veiled by Ignorance, mortal men are deluded.
\n
\n                                                                                                                                                   
\nGita<\/i>.<\/font>1<\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

                               
\nThey live according to another idea of self than the reality, deluded,
\n                               
\nattached, expressing a falsehood,—as if by an
\nenchantment they see
\n                               
\nthe false as the true.
\n
\n                                                                                                                   
\nMaitrayani Upanishad.<\/i><\/font>2<\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

                                
\nThey live and move in the Ignorance and go round and round, battered
\n                               
\nand stumbling, like blind men led by one who is
\nblind.
\n                                                                                                                       
\nMundaka Upanishad.<\/i><\/font>3<\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

                               
\nOne whose intelligence has attained to Unity, casts away from him both
\n                               
\nsin and virtue.
\n
\n                                                                                                                                                       
\nGita.<\/i><\/font>4<\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

                               
\nHe who has found the bliss of the Eternal is afflicted no more by the
\n                               
\nthought, “Why have I not done the good? Why
\nhave I done evil?” One
\n                               
\nwho knows the self extricates himself from both these things.
\n
\n                                                                                                                           
\nTaittiriya Upanishad.<\/i><\/font>5<\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

                               
\nThese are they who are conscious of the much falsehood in the world;
\n                               
\nthey grow in the house of Truth, they are the
\nstrong and invincible sons
\n                               
\nof Infinity.
\n
\n                                                                                                                                               
\nRig Veda.<\/i><\/font>6<\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

                               
\nThe first and the highest are truth; in the middle there is falsehood,
\nbut it is
\n                               
\ntaken between the truth on both sides of it
\nand it draws its being from the
\n                               
\ntruth.7<\/sup>
\n                                                                                                               
\nBrihadaranyaka Upanishad.<\/i><\/font>8<\/font><\/sup><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

      I<\/font><\/b>F Ignorance is in its nature a
\nself-limiting knowledge oblivious of the integral self-awareness and confined to
\nan exclusive concentration in a single field or upon a concealing surface of
\ncosmic movement, what, in this view, are we to make <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

          1 <\/font><\/sup>V. 15.        
\n<\/font>2 <\/font><\/sup>VII. 10.        
\n<\/font>3 <\/font><\/sup>I. 2. 8.        
\n<\/font>4 <\/font><\/sup>II. 50.        
\n<\/font>5 <\/font><\/sup>II. 9.        
\n<\/font>6 <\/font><\/sup>VII. 60. 5.
\n
\n        7 <\/sup>The truth of the physical reality and the truth of the spiritual
\nand superconscient reality. Into the intermediate
\nsubjective and mental realities which stand between them, falsehood can enter, but it takes either truth from
\nabove or truth from below as the substance out of which it builds itself and both are pressing upon it to turn its
\nmisconstructions into truth of life and truth of spirit.
\n<\/font>        8 <\/font><\/sup>V. 5. 1. <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage 596 <\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

of the problem which most poignantly preoccupies the mind of man when it is turned on the mystery of his own existence
\nand of cosmic existence, the problem of evil? A limited knowledge supported by a secret All-Wisdom as an instrument for
\nworking out within the necessary limitations a restricted world-order may be admitted as an intelligible process of the
\nuniversal Consciousness and Energy; but the necessity of falsehood and error, the necessity of wrong and evil or their utility
\nin the workings of the omnipresent Divine Reality is less easily admissible. And yet if that Reality is what we have supposed
\nit to be, there must be some necessity for the appearance of these contrary phenomena, some significance, some function
\nthat they had to serve in the economy of the universe. For in the complete and inalienable self-knowledge of the Brahman
\nwhich is necessarily all-knowledge, since all this that is is the Brahman, such phenomena cannot have come in as a chance,
\nan intervening accident, an involuntary forgetfulness or confusion of the Consciousness-Force of the All-Wise in the cosmos
\nor an ugly contretemps for which the indwelling Spirit was not prepared and of which it is the prisoner erring in a labyrinth
\nwith the utmost difficulty of escape. Nor can it be an inexplicable mystery of being, original and eternal, of which the divine
\nAll-Teacher is incapable of giving an account to himself or to us. There must be behind it a significance of the All-Wisdom
\nitself, a power of the All-Consciousness which permits and uses it for some indispensable function in the present workings
\nof our self-experience and world-experience. This aspect of existence needs now to be examined more directly and
\ndetermined in its origins and the limits of its reality and its place in Nature. <\/p>\n

    
\nThis problem may be taken up from three points of view, — its relation
\nto the Absolute, the supreme Reality, its origin
\nand place in the cosmic workings, its action and point of hold in the
\nindividual being. It is evident that these contrary
\nphenomena have no direct root in the supreme Reality itself, there is
\nnothing there that has this character; they are creations
\nof the Ignorance and Inconscience, not fundamental or primary aspects
\nof the Being, not native to the Transcendence or to the infinite power
\nof the Cosmic Spirit. It is sometimes reasoned that as Truth and <\/p>\n

\nPage 597 <\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n

Good have their absolutes, so Falsehood and Evil must also have their absolutes, or, if it is not so, then both must belong to
\nthe relativity only; Knowledge and Ignorance, Truth and Falsehood, Good and Evil exist only in relation to each other and
\nbeyond the dualities here they have no existence. But this is not the fundamental truth of the relation of these opposites; for,
\nin the first place, Falsehood and Evil are, unlike Truth and Good, very clearly results of the Ignorance and cannot exist
\nwhere there is no Ignorance: they can have no self-existence in the Divine Being, they cannot be native elements of the
\nSupreme Nature. If, then, the limited Knowledge which is the nature of Ignorance renounces its limitations, if Ignorance
\ndisappears into Knowledge, evil and falsehood can no longer endure: for both are fruits of unconsciousness and wrong
\nconsciousness and, if true or whole consciousness is there replacing Ignorance, they have no longer any basis for their
\nexistence. There can therefore be no absolute of falsehood, no absolute of evil; these things are a by-product of the
\nworld-movement: the sombre flowers of falsehood and suffering and evil have their root in the black soil of the Inconscient.
\nOn the other hand, there is no such intrinsic obstacle to the absoluteness of
\nTruth and Good: the relativity of truth and error, good and evil is a fact of
\nour experience, but it is similarly a by-product, it is not a permanent factor
\nnative to existence; for it is true only of the valuations made by the human
\nconsciousness, true only of our partial knowledge and partial ignorance. <\/p>\n

     Truth is relative to us because our
\nknowledge is surrounded by ignorance. Our exact vision stops short at outside
\nappearances which are not the complete truth of things, and, if we go deeper,
\nthe illuminations we arrive at are guesses or inferences or intimations, not a
\nsight of indubitable realities: our conclusions are partial, speculative or
\nconstructed, our statement of them, which is the expression of our indirect
\ncontact with the reality, has the nature of representations or figures,
\nword-images of thought-perceptions that are themselves images, not embodiments
\nof Truth itself, not directly real and authentic. These figures or
\nrepresentations are imperfect and opaque and carry with them their shadow of
\nnescience or error; for they seem to deny or shut <\/p>\n

\nPage 598 <\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n

out other truths and even the truth they express
\ndoes not get its full value: it is an end or edge of it that projects
\ninto form
\nand the rest is left in the shadow unseen or disfigured or uncertainly
\nvisible. It might almost be said that no mental statement
\nof things can be altogether true; it is not Truth bodied, pure and
\nnude, but a draped figure, — often it is only the drapery that
\nis visible. But this character does not apply to truth perceived by a
\ndirect action of consciousness or to the truth of
\nknowledge by identity; our seeing there may be limited, but so far as
\nit extends, it is authentic, and authenticity is a first step
\ntowards absoluteness: error may attach itself to a direct or identical
\nvision of things by a mental accretion, by a mistaken or
\nillegitimate extension or by the mind’s misinterpretation, but it does
\nnot enter into the substance. This authentic or identical
\nvision or experience of things is the true nature of knowledge and it
\nis self-existent within the being, although rendered in our
\nminds by a secondary formation that is unauthentic and derivative.
\nIgnorance in its origin has not this self-existence or this
\nauthenticity; it exists by a limitation or absence or abeyance of
\nknowledge, error by a deviation from truth, falsehood by a
\ndistortion of truth or its contradiction and denial. But it cannot be
\nsimilarly said of knowledge that in its very nature it exists
\nonly by a limitation or absence or abeyance of ignorance: it may indeed
\nemerge in the human mind partly by a process of
\nsuch limitation or abeyance, by the receding of darkness from a partial
\nlight, or it may have the aspect of ignorance turning
\ninto knowledge; but in fact, it rises by an independent birth from our
\ndepths where it has a native existence. <\/p>\n

    Again, of good and evil it can be
\nsaid that one exists by true consciousness, the other survives only by wrong
\nconsciousness: if there is an unmixed true consciousness, good alone can exist;
\nit is no longer mixed with evil or formed in its presence. Human values of good
\nand evil, as of truth and error, are indeed uncertain and relative: what is held
\nas truth in one place or time is held in another place or time to be error; what
\nis regarded as good is elsewhere or in other times regarded as evil. We find too
\nthat what we call evil results in good, what we call good results in evil. But
\nthis untoward outcome of good producing evil is due to <\/p>\n

\nPage 599 <\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\n

the confusion and mixture of knowledge and
\nignorance, to the penetration of true consciousness by wrong
\nconsciousness, so
\nthat there is an ignorant or mistaken application of our good, or it is
\ndue to the intervention of afflicting forces. In the
\nopposite case of evil producing good, the happier and contradictory
\nresult is due to the intervention of some true
\nconsciousness and force acting behind and in spite of wrong
\nconsciousness and wrong will or it is due to the intervention of
\nredressing forces. This relativity, this mixture is a circumstance of
\nhuman mentality and the workings of the Cosmic Force in
\nhuman life; it is not the fundamental truth of good and evil. It might
\nbe objected that physical evil, such as pain and most
\nbodily suffering, is independent of knowledge and ignorance, of right
\nand wrong consciousness, inherent in physical Nature:
\nbut, fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an
\ninsufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which
\nmakes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature or unable to
\nassimilate and to harmonise itself with the contacts of the
\nuniversal Energy; they would not exist if in us there were an integral
\npresence of the luminous Consciousness and the divine
\nForce of an integral Being. Therefore the relation of truth to
\nfalsehood, of good to evil is not a mutual dependence, but is in
\nthe nature of a contradiction as of light and shadow; a shadow depends
\non light for its existence, but light does not depend
\nfor its existence on the shadow. The relation between the Absolute and
\nthese contraries of some of its fundamental aspects
\nis not that they are opposite fundamental aspects of the Absolute;
\nfalsehood and evil have no fundamentality, no power of
\ninfinity or eternal being, no self-existence even by latency in the
\nSelf-Existent, no authenticity of an original inherence. <\/p>\n

    
\nIt is no doubt a fact that once truth or good manifests, the conception
\nof falsehood and evil becomes a possibility; for
\nwhenever there is an affirmation, its negation becomes conceivable. As
\nthe manifestation of existence, consciousness and
\ndelight made the manifestation of non-existence, inconscience,
\ninsensibility conceivable and, because conceivable, therefore in a way
\ninevitable, for all possibilities push towards actuality until they
\nreach it, so is it with these contraries of the aspects <\/p>\n

\nPage 600 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

of the Divine Existence. It may be said on this
\nground that these opposites, since they must be immediately perceivable
\nby
\nthe manifesting Consciousness on the very threshold of manifestation,
\ncan take rank as implied absolutes and are
\ninseparable from all cosmic existence. But it must first be noted that
\nit is only in cosmic manifestation that they become
\npossible; they cannot pre-exist in the timeless being, for they are
\nincompatible with the unity and bliss that are its substance.
\nIn cosmos also they cannot come into being except by a limitation of
\ntruth and good into partial and relative forms and by a
\nbreaking up of the unity of existence and consciousness into separative
\nconsciousness and separative being. For where
\nthere is oneness and complete mutuality of consciousness-force even in
\nmultiplicity and diversity, there truth of
\nself-knowledge and mutual knowledge is automatic and error of
\nself-ignorance and mutual ignorance is impossible. So too
\nwhere truth exists as a whole on a basis of self-aware oneness,
\nfalsehood cannot enter and evil is shut out by the exclusion
\nof wrong consciousness and wrong will and their dynamisation of
\nfalsehood and error. As soon as separateness enters,
\nthese things also can enter; but even this simultaneity is not
\ninevitable. If there is sufficient mutuality, even in the absence of
\nan active sense of oneness, and if the separate beings do not
\ntransgress or deviate from their norms of limited knowledge,
\nharmony and truth can still be sovereign and evil will have no gate of
\nentry. There is, therefore, no authentic inevitable
\ncosmicity of falsehood and evil even as there is no absoluteness; they
\nare circumstances or results that arise only at a
\ncertain stage when separativeness culminates in opposition and
\nignorance in a primitive unconsciousness of knowledge and
\na resultant wrong consciousness and wrong knowledge with its content of
\nwrong will, wrong feeling, wrong action and
\nwrong reaction. The question is at what juncture of cosmic
\nmanifestation the opposites enter in; for it may be either at some
\nstage of the increasing involution of consciousness in separative mind
\nand life or only after the plunge into inconscience. This resolves
\nitself into the question whether falsehood, error, wrong and evil exist
\noriginally in the mental and vital planes and are native to mind and
\nlife or are proper only to the material manifestation because inflicted
\non <\/p>\n

\nPage 601 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

mind and life there by the obscurity arising from the Inconscience. It may be questioned too whether, if they do exist in
\nsupraphysical mind and life, they were original and inevitable there; for they may rather have entered in as a consequence
\nor a supraphysical extension from the material manifestation. Or, if that is untenable, it may be that they arose as an
\nenabling supraphysical affirmation in the universal Mind and Life, a precedent necessity for their appearance in that
\nmanifestation to which they more naturally belong as an inevitable outcome of the creative Inconscience. <\/p>\n

     
\nIt was for a long time held by the human mind as a traditional
\nknowledge that when we go beyond the material plane,
\nthese things are found to exist there also in worlds beyond us. There
\nare in these planes of supraphysical experience powers
\nand forms of vital mind and life that seem to be the prephysical
\nfoundation of the discordant, defective or perverse forms
\nand powers of life-mind and life-force which we find in the terrestrial
\nexistence. There are forces, and subliminal
\nexperience seems to show that there are supraphysical beings embodying
\nthose forces, that are attached in their root-nature
\nto ignorance, to darkness of consciousness, to misuse of force, to
\nperversity of delight, to all the causes and consequences
\nof the things that we call evil. These powers, beings or forces are
\nactive to impose their adverse constructions upon
\nterrestrial creatures; eager to maintain their reign in the
\nmanifestation, they oppose the increase of light and truth and good
\nand, still more, are antagonistic to the progress of the soul towards a
\ndivine consciousness and divine existence. It is this
\nfeature of existence that we see figured in the tradition of the
\nconflict between the Powers of Light and Darkness, Good
\nand Evil, cosmic Harmony and cosmic Anarchy, a tradition universal in
\nancient myth and in religion and common to all
\nsystems of occult knowledge. <\/p>\n

   
\nThe theory of this traditional knowledge is perfectly rational and
\nverifiable by inner experience, and it imposes itself if
\nwe admit the supraphysical and do not cabin ourselves in the
\nacceptation of material being as the only reality. As there is a cosmic
\nSelf and Spirit pervading and upholding the universe and its beings, so
\ntoo there is a cosmic Force that moves all <\/p>\n

\nPage 602 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

things, and on this original cosmic Force depend and
\nact many cosmic Forces that are its powers or arise as forms of its
\nuniversal action. Whatever is formulated in the universe has a Force or
\nForces that support it, seek to fulfil or further it, find
\ntheir foundation in its functioning, their account of success in its
\nsuccess and growth and domination, their self-fulfilment or
\ntheir prolongation of being in its victory or survival. As there are
\nPowers of Knowledge or Forces of the Light, so there are
\nPowers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness whose work is
\nto prolong the reign of Ignorance and
\nInconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, so there are Forces that
\nlive by the Falsehood and support it and work for its
\nvictory; as there are powers whose life is intimately bound up with the
\nexistence, the idea and the impulse of Good, so there
\nare Forces whose life is bound up with the existence and the idea and
\nthe impulse of Evil. It is this truth of the cosmic
\nInvisible that was symbolised in the ancient belief of a struggle
\nbetween the powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil
\nfor the possession of the world and the government of the life of man;
\n— this was the significance of the contest between the
\nVedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division, figured
\nin a later tradition as Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa,
\nPisacha; the same tradition is found in the Zoroastrian Double
\nPrinciple and the later Semitic opposition of
\nGod and his Angels on the one side and Satan and his hosts on the
\nother, — invisible Personalities and Powers that draw man
\nto the divine Light and Truth and Good or lure him into subjection to
\nthe undivine principle of Darkness and Falsehood and
\nEvil. Modern thought is aware of no invisible forces other than those
\nrevealed or constructed by Science; it does not believe
\nthat Nature is capable of creating any other beings than those around
\nus in the physical world, men, beasts, birds, reptiles,
\nfishes, insects, germs and animalculae. But if there are invisible
\ncosmic forces physical in their nature that act upon the body of
\ninanimate objects, there is no valid reason why there should not be
\ninvisible cosmic forces mental and vital in their nature that act upon
\nhis mind and his life-force. And if Mind and Life, impersonal forces,
\nform conscious beings or use persons to embody them in physical forms
\nand in a physical world and can <\/p>\n

\nPage 603 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

act upon Matter and through Matter, it is not impossible that on their own planes they should form conscious beings whose
\nsubtler substance is invisible to us or that they should be able to act from those planes on beings in physical Nature.
\nWhatever reality or mythical unreality we may attach to the traditional figures of past human belief or experience, they
\nwould then be representations of things that are true in principle. In that case the first source of good and evil would be not
\nin terrestrial life or in the evolution from the Inconscience, but in Life itself, their source would be supraphysical and they
\nwould be reflected here from a larger supraphysical Nature. <\/p>\n

   
\nThis is certain that when we go back into ourselves very deep away from
\nthe surface appearance, we find that the
\nmind, heart and sensational being of man are moved by forces not under
\nhis own control and that he can become an
\ninstrument in the hands of Energies of a cosmic character without
\nknowing the origin of his actions. It is by stepping back
\nfrom the physical surface into his inner being and subliminal
\nconsciousness that he becomes directly aware of them and is
\nable to know directly and deal with their action upon him. He grows
\naware of interventions which seek to lead him in one
\ndirection or another, of suggestions and impulsions which had disguised
\nthemselves as original movements of his own mind
\nand against which he had to battle. He can realise that he is not a
\nconscious creature inexplicably produced in an
\nunconscious world out of a seed of inconscient Matter and moving about
\nin an obscure self-ignorance, but an embodied soul
\nthrough whose action cosmic Nature is seeking to fulfil itself, the
\nliving ground of a vast debate between a darkness of Ignorance out of
\nwhich it emerges here and a light of Knowledge which is growing upwards
\ntowards an unforeseen termination. The Forces which seek to move him,
\nand among them the Forces of good and evil, present themselves as
\npowers of universal Nature; but they seem to belong not only to the
\nphysical universe, but to planes of Life and Mind beyond it. <\/p>\n

     The first thing that we have to note
\nof importance to the problem preoccupying us is that these Forces in their
\naction seem often to surpass the measures of human relativity; they are in their
\nlarger action superhuman, divine, titanic or demoniac, but <\/p>\n

\nPage 604 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

they may create their formations in him in large or
\nin little, in his greatness or his smallness, they may seize and drive
\nhim at
\nmoments or for periods, they may influence his impulses or his acts or
\npossess his whole nature. If that possession happens,
\nhe may himself be pushed to an excess of the normal humanity of good or
\nevil; especially the evil takes forms which shock
\nthe sense of human measure, exceed the bounds of human personality,
\napproach the gigantic, the inordinate, the
\nimmeasurable. It may then be questioned whether it is not a mistake to
\ndeny absoluteness to evil; for as there is a drive, an
\naspiration, a yearning in man towards an absolute truth, good, beauty,
\nso these movements, — as also the transcending
\nintensities attainable by pain and suffering, — seem to indicate the
\nattempt at self-realisation of an absolute evil. But the
\nimmeasurable is not a sign of absoluteness: for the absolute is not in
\nitself a thing of magnitude; it is beyond measure, not in
\nthe sole sense of vastness, but in the freedom of its essential being;
\nit can manifest itself in the infinitesimal as well as in the
\ninfinite. It is true that as we pass from the mental to the spiritual,
\n— and that is a passage towards the absolute, — a subtle
\nwideness and an increasing intensity of light, of power, of peace, of
\necstasy mark our passing out of our limitations: but this
\nis at first only a sign of freedom, of height, of universality, not yet
\nof an inward absoluteness of self-existence which is the
\nessence of the matter. To this absoluteness pain and evil cannot
\nattain, they are bound to limitation and they are derivative.
\nIf pain becomes immeasurable, it ends itself or ends that in which it
\nmanifests, or collapses into insensibility or, in rare
\ncircumstances, it may turn into an ecstasy of Ananda. If evil became
\nsole and immeasurable, it would destroy the world or
\ndestroy that which bore and supported it; it would bring things and
\nitself back by disintegration into non-existence. No doubt
\nthe Powers that support darkness and evil attempt by the magnitude of
\ntheir self-aggrandisement to reach an appearance of
\ninfinity, but immensity is all they can achieve and not infinity; or,
\nat most, they are able to represent their element as a kind
\nof abysmal infinite commensurate with the Inconscient, but it is a
\nfalse infinite. Self-existence, in essence or by an eternal inherence
\nin the Self-existent, is the condition of <\/p>\n

\nPage 605 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

absoluteness: error, falsehood, evil are cosmic powers, but relative in their nature, not absolute, since they depend for
\nexistence on the perversion or contradiction of their opposites and are not like truth and good self-existent absolutes,
\ninherent aspects of the supreme Self-existent. <\/p>\n

    
\nA second point of questioning emerges from the evidence given for the
\nsupraphysical and pre-physical existence of
\nthese dark opposites: for that suggests that they may be after all
\noriginal cosmic principles. But it is to be noted that their
\nappearance does not extend higher than the lower supraphysical
\nlife-planes; they are “powers of the Prince of Air”, — air
\nbeing in the ancient symbolism the principle of life and therefore of
\nthe mid-worlds where the vital principle is predominant
\nand essential. The adverse opposites are not, then, primal powers of
\nthe cosmos, but creations of Life or of Mind in life.
\nTheir supraphysical aspects and influences on earth-nature can be
\nexplained by the co-existence of worlds of a descending
\ninvolution with parallel worlds of an ascending evolution, not
\nprecisely created by earth-existence, but created as an annexe
\nto the descending world-order and a prepared support for the
\nevolutionary terrestrial formations; here evil may appear, not
\nas inherent in all life, but as a possibility and a pre-formation that
\nmakes inevitable its formation in the evolutionary
\nemergence of consciousness out of the Inconscient. However this may be,
\nit is as an outcome of the Inconscience that we
\ncan best watch and understand the origin of falsehood, error, wrong and
\nevil, for it is in the return of Inconscience towards
\nConsciousness that they can be seen taking their formation and it is
\nthere that they seem to be normal and even inevitable. <\/p>\n

    
\nThe first emergence from the Inconscient is Matter, and in Matter it
\nwould seem that falsehood and evil cannot exist,
\nbecause both are created by a divided and ignorant surface
\nconsciousness and its reactions. There is no such active surface
\norganisation of consciousness, no such reactions in material forces or
\nobjects: whatever indwelling secret consciousness
\nthere may be in them seems to be one, undifferentiated, mute; inertly
\ninherent and intrinsic in the Energy that constitutes the
\nobject, it effectualises and maintains the form by the silent <\/p>\n

\nPage 606 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

occult Idea in it, but is otherwise self-rapt in the form of energy it has created, uncommunicating
\nand inexpressive. Even if it differentiates itself according to the form of
\nMatter in a corresponding form of self-being, rupam rupam pratirupo
\nbabhuva,<\/i>1<\/sup>
\nthere is no psychological organisation, no system of conscious actions
\nor reactions. It is only by contact with conscious
\nbeings that material objects exercise powers or influences which can be
\ncalled good or evil: but that good or evil is
\ndetermined by the contacted being’s sense of help or harm, of benefit
\nor injury from them; these values do not belong to the
\nmaterial object but to some Force that uses it or they are created by
\nthe consciousness that contacts it. Fire warms a man or
\nburns him, but that is as involuntarily he meets it or voluntarily uses
\nit; a medicinal herb cures or a poison kills, but the value
\nof good or evil is brought into action by the user: it is to be
\nobserved too that a poison can cure as well as kill, a medicine kill
\nor harm as well as cure or benefit. The world of pure Matter is
\nneutral, irresponsible; these values insisted on by the human
\nbeing do not exist in material Nature: as a superior Nature transcends
\nthe duality of good and evil, so this inferior Nature
\nfalls below it. The question may begin to assume a different aspect if
\nwe go behind physical knowledge and accept the
\nconclusions of an occult inquiry, — for here we are told that there are
\nconscious influences that attach themselves to objects
\nand these can be good or evil; but it might still be held that this
\ndoes not affect the neutrality of the object which does not act
\nby an individualised consciousness but only as it is utilised for good
\nor for evil or for both together: the duality of good and
\nevil is not native to the material principle, it is absent from the
\nworld of Matter. <\/p>\n

   
\nThe duality begins with conscious life and emerges fully with the
\ndevelopment of mind in life; the vital mind, the mind of
\ndesire and sensation, is the creator of the sense of evil and of the
\nfact of evil. Moreover, in animal life, the fact of evil is
\nthere, the evil of suffering and the sense of suffering, the evil of
\nviolence and cruelty and strife and deception, but the sense
\nof moral evil is absent; in animal life there is no duality of sin or
\nvirtue, all action is neutral and permissible for the <\/p>\n

1 <\/font><\/sup>Katha
\nUpanishad, II. 2. 9.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage 607<\/p>\n

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

\n

preservation of life and its maintenance and for the satisfaction of the life-instincts. The sensational values of good and evil
\nare inherent in the form of pain and pleasure, vital satisfaction and vital frustration, but the mental idea, the moral response
\nof the mind to these values are a creation of the human being. It does not follow, as might be hastily inferred, that they are
\nunrealities, mental constructions only, and that the only true way to receive the activities of Nature is either a neutral
\nindifference or an equal acceptance or, intellectually, an admission of all that she may do as a divine or a natural law in
\nwhich everything is impartially admissible. That is indeed one side of the truth: there is an infrarational truth of Life and
\nMatter which is impartial and neutral and admits all things as facts of Nature and serviceable for the creation, preservation
\nor destruction of life, three necessary movements of the universal Energy which are all connectedly indispensable and, each
\nin its own place, of equal value. There is too a truth of the detached reason which can look on all that is thus admitted by
\nNature as serviceable to her processes in life and matter and observe everything that is with an unmoved neutral impartiality
\nand acceptance; this is a philosophic and scientific reason that witnesses and seeks to understand but considers it futile to
\njudge the activities of the cosmic Energy. There is too a suprarational truth formulating itself in spiritual experience which
\ncan observe the play of universal possibility, accept all impartially as the true and natural features and consequences of a
\nworld of ignorance and inconscience or admit all with calm and compassion as a
\npart of the divine working, but, while it awaits the awakening of a higher
\nconsciousness and knowledge as the sole escape from what presents itself as
\nevil, is ready with help and intervention where that is truly helpful and
\npossible. But, nonetheless, there is also this other middle truth of
\nconsciousness which awakens us to the values of good and evil and the
\nappreciation of their necessity and importance; this awakening, whatever may be
\nthe sanction or the validity of its particular judgments, is one of the
\nindispensable steps in the process of evolutionary Nature. <\/p>\n

    But from what then does this
\nawakening proceed? what is it in the human being that originates and gives its
\npower and <\/p>\n

\nPage 608 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

place to the sense of good and evil? If we regard
\nonly the process, we may agree that it is the vital mind that makes the
\ndistinction. Its first valuation is sensational and individual, — all
\nthat is pleasant, helpful, beneficial to the life-ego is good, all
\nthat is unpleasant, malefic, injurious or destructive is evil. Its next
\nvaluation is utilitarian and social: all that is considered
\nhelpful to the associated life, all that it demands from the individual
\nin order to remain in association and to regulate
\nassociation for the best maintenance, satisfaction, development, good
\norder of the associated life and its units, is good; all
\nthat has in the view of the society a contrary effect or tendency is
\nevil. But thinking mind then comes in with its own
\nvaluation and strives to find out an intellectual basis, an idea of law
\nor principle, rational or cosmic, a law of Karma perhaps
\nor an ethical system founded on reason or on an aesthetic, emotional or
\nhedonistic basis. Religion brings in her sanctions;
\nthere is a word or law of God that enjoins righteousness even though
\nNature permits or stimulates its opposite, — or perhaps
\nTruth and Righteousness are themselves God and there is no other
\nDivinity. But, behind all this practical or rational
\nenforcement of the human ethical instinct, there is a feeling that
\nthere is something deeper: all these standards are either too
\nnarrow and rigid or complex and confused, uncertain, subject to
\nalteration by a mental or a vital change or evolution; yet it is
\nfelt that there is a deeper abiding truth and something within us that
\ncan have the intuition of that truth, — in other words, that
\nthe real sanction is inward, spiritual and psychic. The traditional
\naccount of this inner witness is conscience, a power of
\nperception in us half mental, half intuitive; but this is something
\nsuperficial, constructed, unreliable: there is certainly within
\nus, though less easily active, more masked by surface elements, a
\ndeeper spiritual sense, the soul’s discernment, an inborn
\nlight within our nature. <\/p>\n

    
\nWhat then is this spiritual or psychic witness or what is to it the
\nvalue of the sense of good and evil? It may be
\nmaintained that the one use of the sense of sin and evil is that the
\nembodied being may become aware of the nature of this
\nworld of inconscience and ignorance, awake to a knowledge of its evil
\nand <\/p>\n

\nPage 609 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

suffering and the relative nature of its good and
\nhappiness and turn away from it to that which is absolute. Or else its
\nspiritual use may be to purify the nature by the pursuit of good and
\nthe negation of evil until it is ready to perceive the
\nsupreme good and turn from the world towards God, or, as in the
\nBuddhistic ethical insistence, it may serve to prepare the
\ndissolution of the ignorant ego-complex and the escape from personality
\nand suffering. But also it may be that this
\nawakening is a spiritual necessity of the evolution itself, a step
\ntowards the growth of the being out of the Ignorance into the
\ntruth of the divine unity and the evolution of a divine consciousness
\nand a divine being. For much more than the mind or life
\nwhich can turn either to good or to evil, it is the soul-personality,
\nthe psychic being, which insists on the distinction, though in
\na larger sense than the mere moral difference. It is the soul in us
\nwhich turns always towards Truth, Good and Beauty,
\nbecause it is by these things that it itself grows in stature; the
\nrest, their opposites, are a necessary part of experience, but
\nhave to be outgrown in the spiritual increase of the being. The
\nfundamental psychic entity in us has the delight of life and all
\nexperience as part of the progressive manifestation of the spirit, but
\nthe very principle of its delight of life is to gather out of
\nall contacts and happenings their secret divine sense and essence, a
\ndivine use and purpose so that by experience our mind
\nand life may grow out of the Inconscience towards a supreme
\nconsciousness, out of the divisions of the Ignorance towards
\nan integralising consciousness and knowledge. It is there for that and
\nit pursues from life to life its ever-increasing upward
\ntendency and insistence; the growth of the soul is a growth out of
\ndarkness into light, out of falsehood into truth, out of
\nsuffering into its own supreme and universal Ananda. The soul’s
\nperception of good and evil may not coincide with the mind’s artificial
\nstandards, but it has a deeper sense, a sure discrimination of what
\npoints to the higher Light and what points away from it. It is true
\nthat as the inferior light is below good and evil, so the superior
\nspiritual light is beyond good and evil; but this is not in the sense
\nof admitting all things with an impartial neutrality or of obeying
\nequally the impulses of good and evil, but in the sense that a <\/p>\n

\nPage 610 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

higher law of being intervenes in which there is no longer any place or utility for these values. There is a self-law of
\nsupreme Truth which is above all standards; there is a supreme and universal Good inherent, intrinsic, self-existent,
\nself-aware, self-moved and determined, infinitely plastic with the pure plasticity of the luminous consciousness of the
\nsupreme Infinite. <\/p>\n

    
\nIf, then, evil and falsehood are natural products of the Inconscience,
\nautomatic results of the evolution of life and mind
\nfrom it in the processus of the Ignorance, we have to see how they
\narise, on what they depend for their existence and what
\nis the remedy or escape. In the surface emergence of mental and vital
\nconsciousness from the Inconscience is to be found
\nthe process by which these phenomena come into being. Here there are
\ntwo determining factors, — and it is these that are
\nthe efficient cause of the simultaneous emergence of falsehood and
\nevil. First, there is an underlying, a still occult
\nconsciousness and power of inherent knowledge, and there is also an
\noverlying layer of what might be called indeterminate
\nor else ill-formed stuff of vital and physical consciousness; through
\nthis obscure difficult medium the emerging mentality has
\nto force its way and has to impose itself on it by a constructed and no
\nlonger an inherent knowledge, because this stuff is
\nstill full of nescience, heavily burdened and enveloped with the
\ninconscience of Matter. Next, the emergence takes place in
\na separated form of life which has to affirm itself against a principle
\nof inanimate material inertia and a constant pull of that
\nmaterial inertia towards disintegration and a relapse into the original
\ninanimate Inconscience. This separated life-form has also to affirm
\nitself, supported only by a limited principle of association, against
\nan outside world which is, if not hostile to its existence, yet full of
\ndangers and on which it has to impose itself, conquer life-room, arrive
\nat expression and propagation, if it wishes to survive. The result of
\nan emergence of consciousness in these conditions is the growth of a
\nself-affirming vital and physical individual, a construction of Nature
\nof life and matter with a concealed psychic or spiritual true
\nindividual behind it for which Nature is creating this outward means of
\nexpression. As mentality increases, this vital and material individual
\ntakes <\/p>\n

\nPage 611 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

the more developed form of a constantly self-affirming mental, vital and physical ego. Our surface consciousness and type
\nof existence, our natural being, has developed its present character under the compulsion of these two initial and basic facts
\nof the evolutionary emergence. <\/p>\n

   
\nIn its first appearance consciousness has the semblance of a miracle, a
\npower alien to Matter that manifests
\nunaccountably in a world of inconscient Nature and grows slowly and
\nwith difficulty. Knowledge is acquired, created out of
\nnothing as it were, learned, increased, accumulated by an ephemeral
\nignorant creature in whom at birth it is entirely absent
\nor present only, not as knowledge, but in the form of an inherited
\ncapacity proper to the stage of development of this slowly
\nlearning ignorance. It might be conjectured that consciousness is only
\nthe original Inconscience mechanically recording the
\nfacts of existence on the brain-cells with a reflex or response in the
\ncells automatically reading the record and dictating their
\nanswer; the record, reflex, response together constitute what appears
\nto be consciousness. But this is evidently not the
\nwhole truth, for it might account for observation and mechanical
\naction, — although it is not clear how an unconscious record
\nand response can turn into a conscious observation, a conscious sense
\nof things and sense of self, — but does not credibly
\naccount for ideation, imagination, speculation, the free play of
\nintellect with its observed material. The evolution of
\nconsciousness and knowledge cannot be accounted for unless there is
\nalready a concealed consciousness in things with its
\ninherent and native powers emerging little by little. Further, the
\nfacts of animal life and the operations of the emergent mind
\nin life impose on us the conclusion that there is in this concealed
\nconsciousness an underlying Knowledge or power of
\nknowledge which by the necessity of the life-contacts with the
\nenvironment comes to the surface. <\/p>\n

     The individual animal being in its
\nfirst conscious self-affirmation has to rely on two sources of knowledge. As it
\nis nescient and helpless, a small modicum of uninformed surface consciousness in
\na world unknown to it, the secret Conscious-Force sends up to this surface the
\nminimum of intuition necessary <\/p>\n

\nPage 612 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

for it to maintain its existence and go through the
\noperations indispensable to life and survival. This intuition is not
\npossessed
\nby the animal, but possesses and moves it; it is something that
\nmanifests of itself in the grain of the vital and physical
\nsubstance of consciousness under pressure of a need and for the needed
\noccasion: but at the same time a surface result of
\nthis intuition accumulates and takes the form of an automatic instinct
\nwhich works whenever the occasion for it recurs; this
\ninstinct belongs to the race and is imparted at birth to its individual
\nmembers. The intuition, when it occurs or recurs, is
\nunerring; the instinct is automatically correct as a rule, but can err,
\nfor it fails or blunders when the surface consciousness or
\nan ill-developed intelligence interferes or if the instinct continues
\nto act mechanically when, owing to changed
\ncircumstances, the need or the necessary circumstances are no longer
\nthere. The second source of knowledge is surface
\ncontact with the world outside the natural individual being; it is this
\ncontact which is the cause first of a conscious sensation
\nand sense-perception and then of intelligence. If there were not an
\nunderlying consciousness, the contact would not create
\nany perception or reaction; it is because the contact stimulates into a
\nfeeling and a surface response the subliminal of a
\nbeing already vitalised by the subconscious life-principle and its
\nfirst needs and seekings that a surface awareness begins to form and
\ndevelop. Intrinsically the emergence of a surface consciousness by
\nforce of life contacts is due to the fact that in both subject and
\nobject of the contact consciousness-force is already existent in a
\nsubliminal latency: when the life-principle is ready, sufficiently
\nsensitive in the subject, the recipient of the contact, this subliminal
\nconsciousness emerges in a response to the stimulus which begins to
\nconstitute a vital or life mind, the mind of the animal, and then, in
\nthe course of the evolution, a thinking intelligence. The secret
\nconsciousness is rendered into surface sensation and perception, the
\nsecret force into surface impulse. <\/p>\n

    If this underlying subliminal
\nconsciousness were to come itself to the surface, there would be a direct
\nmeeting between the consciousness of the subject and the contents of the object
\nand the result would be a direct knowledge; but this is not possible, <\/p>\n

\nPage 613 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

first, because of the veto or obstruction of the
\nInconscience and, secondly, because the evolutionary intention is to
\ndevelop
\nslowly through an imperfect but growing surface awareness. The secret
\nconsciousness-force has therefore to limit itself to
\nimperfect renderings in a surface vital and mental vibration and
\noperation and is forced by the absence, holding back or
\ninsufficiency of the direct awareness to develop organs and instincts
\nfor an indirect knowledge. This creation of an external
\nknowledge and intelligence takes place in an already prepared
\nindeterminate conscious structure which is the earliest
\nformation on the surface. At first this structure is only a minimum
\nformation of consciousness with a vague sensational
\nperception and a response-impulse; but, as more organised forms of life
\nappear, this grows into a life-mind and vital
\nintelligence largely mechanical and automatic in the beginning and
\nconcerned only with practical needs, desires and
\nimpulses. All this activity is in its initiation intuitive and
\ninstinctive; the underlying consciousness is translated in the surface
\nsubstratum into automatic movements of the conscious stuff of life and
\nbody: the mind-movements, when they appear, are
\ninvolved in these automatisms, they occur as a subordinate mental
\nnotation within the predominant vital sense-notation. But
\nslowly mind starts its task of disengaging itself; it still works for
\nthe life-instinct, life-need and life-desire, but its own special
\ncharacters emerge, observation, invention, device, intention, execution
\nof purpose, while sensation and impulse add to
\nthemselves emotion and bring a subtler and finer affective urge and
\nvalue into the crude vital reaction. Mind is still much
\ninvolved in life and its highest purely mental operations are not in
\nevidence; it accepts a large background of instinct and vital
\nintuition as its support, and the intelligence developed, though always
\ngrowing as the animal life-scale rises, is an added
\nsuperstructure. <\/p>\n

    
\nWhen human intelligence adds itself to the animal basis, this basis
\nstill remains present and active, but it is largely
\nchanged, subtilised and uplifted by conscious will and intention; the
\nautomatic life of instinct and vital intuition diminishes and cannot
\nkeep its original predominant proportion to the self-aware mental
\nintelligence. Intuition becomes less purely intuitive: even when there
\nis still a strong vital intuition, its vital character is concealed <\/p>\n

\nPage 614 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

by mentalisation, and mental intuition is most often
\na mixture, not the pure article, for an alloy is added to make it
\nmentally
\ncurrent and serviceable. In the animal also the surface consciousness
\ncan obstruct or alter the intuition but, because its
\ncapacity is less, it interferes less with the automatic, mechanical or
\ninstinctive action of Nature: in mental man when the
\nintuition rises towards the surface, it is caught at once before it
\nreaches and is translated into terms of mind-intelligence with
\na gloss or mental interpretation added which conceals the origin of the
\nknowledge. Instinct also is deprived of its intuitive
\ncharacter by being taken up and mentalised and by that change becomes
\nless sure, though more assisted, when not
\nreplaced, by the plastic power of adaptation of things and
\nself-adaptation proper to the intelligence. The emergence of mind
\nin life brings an immense increase of the range and capacity of the
\nevolving consciousness-force; but it also brings an
\nimmense increase in the range and capacity of error. For evolving mind
\ntrails constantly error as its shadow, a shadow that
\ngrows with the growing body of consciousness and knowledge. <\/p>\n

    
\nIf in the evolution the surface consciousness were always open to the
\naction of intuition, the intervention of error would
\nnot be possible. For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the
\nsecret Supermind, and an emergent Truth-Consciousness,
\nhowever limited, yet sure in its action, would be the consequence.
\nInstinct, if it had to form, would be plastic to the intuition
\nand adapt itself freely to evolutionary change and the change of inner
\nor environing circumstance. Intelligence, if it had to
\nform, would be subservient to intuition and would be its accurate
\nmental expression; its brilliancy would perhaps be
\nmodulated to suit a diminished action serving as a minor, not, as it is
\nnow, a major function and movement, but it would not
\nbe erratic by deviation, would not by its parts of obscurity sink into
\nthe false or fallible. But this could not be, because the
\nhold of Inconscience on the matter, the surface substance, in which
\nmind and life have to express themselves, makes the surface
\nconsciousness obscure and unresponsive to the light within; it is
\nimpelled moreover to cherish this defect, to substitute more and more
\nits own incomplete but better grasped clarities for the unaccountable
\ninner <\/p>\n

\nPage 615<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 intimations, because a rapid development of the Truth-Consciousness is not the intention in Nature. For the method chosen
\nby her is a slow and difficult evolution of Inconscience developing into Ignorance and Ignorance forming itself into a mixed,
\nmodified and partial knowledge before it can be ready for transformation into a higher Truth-Consciousness and
\nTruth-Knowledge. Our imperfect mental intelligence is a necessary stage of transition before this higher transformation can
\nbe made possible. <\/p>\n

    
\nThere are, in practical fact, two poles of the conscious being between
\nwhich the evolutionary process works, one a
\nsurface nescience which has to change gradually into knowledge, the
\nother a secret Consciousness-Force in which all
\npower of knowledge is and which has slowly to manifest in the
\nnescience. The surface nescience full of incomprehension
\nand inapprehension can change into knowledge because consciousness is
\nthere involved in it; if it were intrinsically an entire
\nabsence of consciousness, the change would be impossible: but still it
\nworks as an inconscience trying to be conscious; it is
\nat first a nescience compelled by need and outer impact to feeling and
\nresponse and then an ignorance labouring to know.
\nThe means used is a contact with the world and its forces and objects
\nwhich, like the rubbing of tinders, creates a spark of
\nawareness; the response from within is that spark leaping out into
\nmanifestation. But the surface nescience in receiving the
\nresponse from an underlying source of knowledge subdues and changes it
\ninto something obscure and incomplete; there is
\nan imperfect seizure or a misprision of the intuition that answers to
\nthe contact: still by this process an initiation of responsive
\nconsciousness, a first accumulation of ingrained or habitual
\ninstinctive knowledge begins, and there follows upon it first a
\nprimitive and then a developed capacity of receptive awareness,
\nunderstanding, reply of action, previsional initiation of action, — an
\nevolving consciousness which is half-knowledge, half-ignorance. All
\nthat is unknown is met on the basis of what is known; but as this
\nknowledge is imperfect, as it receives imperfectly and responds
\nimperfectly to the contacts of things, there can be a misprision of the
\nnew contact as well as a misprision or deformation of the intuitive
\nresponse, a double source of error. <\/p>\n

\nPage 616 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

It is evident, in these conditions, that Error is a
\nnecessary accompaniment, almost a necessary condition and
\ninstrumentation, an indispensable step or stage in the slow evolution
\ntowards knowledge in a consciousness that begins from
\nnescience and works in the stuff of a general nescience. The evolving
\nconsciousness has to acquire knowledge by an
\nindirect means which does not give even a fragmentary certitude; for
\nthere is at first only a figure or a sign, an image or a
\nvibration physical in character created by contact with the object and
\na resulting vital sensation which have to be interpreted
\nby mind and sense and turned into a corresponding mental idea or
\nfigure. Things thus experienced and mentally known have
\nto be related together; things unknown have to be observed, discovered,
\nfitted into the already acquired sum of experience
\nand knowledge. At each step different possibilities of fact,
\nsignificance, judgment, interpretation, relation present themselves;
\nsome have to be tested and rejected, others accepted and confirmed: to
\nshut out error is impossible without limiting the
\nchances of acquisition of knowledge. Observation is the first
\ninstrument of the mind, but observation itself is a complex
\nprocess open at every step to the mistakes of the ignorant observing
\nconsciousness; misprision of the fact by the senses and
\nthe sense-mind, omission, wrong selection and putting together,
\nunconscious additions made by a personal impression or
\npersonal reaction create a false or an imperfect composite picture; to
\nthese errors are added the errors of inference,
\njudgment, interpretation of facts by the intelligence: when even the
\ndata are not sure or perfect, the conclusions built on
\nthem must also be insecure and imperfect. <\/p>\n

    
\nConsciousness in its acquisition of knowledge proceeds from the known
\nto the unknown; it builds a structure of
\nacquired experience, memories, impressions, judgments, a composite
\nmental plan of things which is of the nature of a
\nshifting and ever modifiable fixity. In the reception of new knowledge,
\nwhat comes in to be received is judged in the light of
\npast knowledge and fitted into the structure; if it cannot properly
\nfit, it is either dovetailed in anyhow or rejected: but the
\nexisting knowledge and its structures or standards may not be
\napplicable to the new object or new field of knowledge, the
\nfitting may be a misfitting <\/p>\n

\nPage 617<\/p>\n

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

\n

or the rejection may be an erroneous response. To
\nmisprision and wrong interpretation of facts, there is added
\nmisapplication of knowledge, miscombination, misconstruction,
\nmisrepresentation, a complicated machinery of mental error.
\nIn all this enlightened obscurity of our mental parts a secret
\nintuition is at work, a truth-urge that corrects or pushes the
\nintelligence to correct what is erroneous, to labour towards a true
\npicture of things and a true interpretative knowledge. But
\nintuition itself is limited in the human mind by mental misprision of
\nits intimations and is unable to act in its own right; for
\nwhether it be physical, vital or mental intuition, it has to present
\nitself in order to be received, not nude and pure, but garbed
\nwith a mental coating or entirely enveloped in an ample mental vesture;
\nso disguised, its true nature cannot be recognised
\nand its relation to mind and its office are not understood, its way of
\nworking is ignored by the hasty and half-aware human
\nintelligence. There are intuitions of actuality, of possibility, of the
\ndetermining truth behind things, but all are mistaken by the
\nmind for each other. A great confusion of half-grasped material and an
\nexperimental building with it, a representation or
\nmental structure of the figure of self and things rigid and yet
\nchaotic, half formed and arranged, half jumbled, half true, half
\nerroneous, but always imperfect, is the character of human
\nknowledge. <\/p>\n

    
\nError by itself, however, would not amount to falsehood; it would only
\nbe an imperfection of truth, a trying, an essay of
\npossibilities: for when we do not know, untried and uncertain
\npossibilities have to be admitted and, even if as a result an
\nimperfect or inapt structure of thought is built, yet it may justify
\nitself by opening to fresh knowledge in unexpected
\ndirections and either its dissolution and rebuilding or the discovery
\nof some truth it concealed might increase our cognition or
\nour experience. In spite of the mixture created the growth of
\nconsciousness, intelligence and reason could arrive through this
\nmixed truth to a clearer and truer figure of self-knowledge and
\nworld-knowledge. The obstruction of the original and
\nenveloping inconscience would diminish, and an increasing mental
\nconsciousness would reach a clarity and wholeness which would enable
\nthe concealed powers of direct knowledge and intuitive process to
\nemerge, <\/p>\n

\nPage 618 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

utilise the prepared and enlightened instruments and make mind-intelligence their true agent and truth-builder on the
\nevolutionary surface. <\/p>\n

    
\nBut here the second condition or factor of the evolution intervenes;
\nfor this seeking for knowledge is not an impersonal
\nmental process hampered only by the general limitations of
\nmind-intelligence: the ego is there, the physical ego, the life-ego
\nbent, not on self-knowledge and the discovery of the truth of things
\nand the truth of life, but on vital self-affirmation; a
\nmental ego is there also bent on its own personal self-affirmation and
\nlargely directed and used by the vital urge for its
\nlife-desire and life-purpose. For as mind develops, there develops also
\na mental individuality with a personal drive of
\nmind-tendency, a mental temperament, a mind-formation of its own. This
\nsurface mental individuality is egocentric; it looks
\nat the world and things and happenings from its own standpoint and sees
\nthem not as they are but as they affect itself: in
\nobserving things it gives them the turn suitable to its own tendency
\nand temperament, selects or rejects, arranges truth
\naccording to its own mental preference and convenience; observation,
\njudgment, reason are all determined or affected by
\nthis mind-personality and assimilated to the needs of the individuality
\nand the ego. Even when the mind aims most at a pure
\nimpersonality of truth and reason, a sheer impersonality is impossible
\nto it; even the most trained, severe and vigilant intellect
\nfails to observe the twists and turns it gives to truth in the
\nreception of fact and idea and the construction of its mental
\nknowledge. Here we have an almost inexhaustible source of distortion of
\ntruth, a cause of falsification, an unconscious or
\nhalf-conscious will to error, an acceptance of ideas or facts not by a
\nclear perception of the true and the false, but by
\npreference, personal suitability, temperamental choice, prejudgment.
\nHere is a fruitful seed-plot for the growth of falsehood
\nor a gate or many gates through which it can enter by stealth or by an
\nusurping but acceptable violence. Truth too can enter
\nin and take up its dwelling, not by its own right, but at the mind’s
\npleasure. <\/p>\n

     In the terms of the Sankhya
\npsychology we can distinguish three types of mental individuality, — that which
\nis governed by <\/p>\n

\nPage 619 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

the principle of obscurity and inertia, first-born
\nof the Inconscience, tamasic; that which is governed by a force of
\npassion
\nand activity, kinetic, rajasic; that which is cast in the mould of the
\nsattwic principle of light, harmony, balance. The tamasic
\nintelligence has its seat in the physical mind: it is inert to ideas, —
\nexcept to those which it receives inertly, blindly, passively
\nfrom a recognised source or authority, — obscure in their reception,
\nunwilling to enlarge itself, recalcitrant to new stimulus,
\nconservative and immobile; it clings to its received structure of
\nknowledge and its one power is repetitive practicality, but it
\nis a power limited by the accustomed, the obvious, the established and
\nfamiliar and already secure; it thrusts away all that is
\nnew and likely to disturb it. The rajasic intelligence has its main
\nseat in the vital mind and is of two kinds: one kind is
\ndefensive with violence and passion, assertive of its mental
\nindividuality and all that is in agreement with it, preferred by its
\nvolition, adapted to its outlook, but aggressive against all that is
\ncontrary to its mental ego-structure or unacceptable to its
\npersonal intellectuality; the other kind is enthusiastic for new
\nthings, passionate, insistent, impetuous, often mobile beyond
\nmeasure, inconstant and ever restless, governed in its idea not by
\ntruth and light but by the zest of intellectual battle and
\nmovement and adventure. The sattwic intelligence is eager for
\nknowledge, as open as it can be to it, careful to consider and
\nverify and balance, to adjust and adapt to its view whatever confirms
\nitself as truth, receiving all that it can assimilate, skilful
\nto build truth in a harmonious intellectual structure: but, because its
\nlight is limited, as all mental light must be, it is unable to
\nenlarge itself so as to receive equally all truth and all knowledge; it
\nhas a mental ego, even an enlightened one, and is
\ndetermined by it in its observation, judgment, reasoning, mental choice
\nand preference. In most men there is a predominance
\nof one of these qualities but also a mixture; the same mind can be open
\nand plastic and harmonic in one direction, kinetic and
\nvital, hasty and prejudiced and ill-balanced in another, in yet another
\nobscure and unreceptive. This limitation by personality,
\nthis defence of personality and refusal to receive what is
\nunassimilable, is necessary for the individual being because in its
\nevolution, at the stage reached, <\/p>\n

\nPage 620<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 it has a certain self-expression, a certain type of experience and use of experience which must, for the mind and life at
\nleast, govern nature; that for the moment is its law of being, its dharma. This limitation of mind-consciousness by personality
\nand of truth by mental temperament and preference must be the rule of our nature so long as the individual has not reached
\nuniversality, is not yet preparing for mind-transcendence. But it is evident that this condition is inevitably a source of error
\nand can at any moment be the cause of a falsification of knowledge, an unconscious or half-wilful
\nself-deception, a refusal to admit true knowledge, a readiness to assert
\nacceptable wrong knowledge as true knowledge. <\/p>\n

   This is in the field of cognition,
\nbut the same law applies to will and action. Out of ignorance a wrong
\nconsciousness is created which gives a wrong dynamic reaction to the contact of
\npersons, things, happenings: the surface consciousness develops the habit of
\nignoring, misunderstanding or rejecting the suggestions to action or against
\naction that come from the secret inmost consciousness, the psychic entity; it
\nanswers instead to unenlightened mental and vital suggestions, or acts in
\naccordance with the demands and impulsions of the vital ego. Here the second of
\nthe primary conditions of the evolution, the law of a separate life-being
\naffirming itself in a world which is not-self to it, comes into prominence and
\nassumes an immense importance. It is here that the surface vital personality or
\nlife-self asserts its dominance, and this dominance of the ignorant vital being
\nis a principal active source of discord and disharmony, a cause of inner and
\nouter perturbations of the life, a mainspring of wrong-doing and evil. The
\nnatural vital element in us, in so far as it is unchecked or untrained or
\nretains its primitive character, is not concerned with truth or right
\nconsciousness or right action; it is concerned with self-affirmation, with
\nlife-growth, with possession, with satisfaction of impulse, with all
\nsatisfactions of desire. This main need and demand of the life-self seems
\nall-important to it; it would readily carry it out without any regard to truth
\nor right or good or any other consideration: but because mind is there and has
\nthese conceptions, because the soul is there and has these soul-perceptions, it
\ntries to dominate mind and get from it <\/p>\n

\nPage 621 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

by dictation a sanction and order of execution for
\nits own will of self-affirmation, a verdict of truth and right and good
\nfor its
\nown vital assertions, impulses, desires; it is concerned with
\nself-justification in order that it may have room for full
\nself-affirmation. But if it can get the assent of mind, it is quite
\nready to ignore all these standards and set up only one
\nstandard, the satisfaction, growth, strength, greatness of the vital
\nego. The life-individual needs place, expansion, possession
\nof its world, dominance and control of things and beings; it needs
\nlife-room, a space in the sun, self-assertion, survival. It
\nneeds these things for itself and for those with whom it associates
\nitself, for its own ego and for the collective ego; it needs
\nthem for its ideas, creeds, ideals, interests, imaginations: for it has
\nto assert these forms of I-ness and my-ness and impose
\nthem on the world around it or, if it is not strong enough to do that,
\nit has at least to defend and maintain them against others
\nto the best of its power and contrivance. It may try to do it by
\nmethods it thinks or chooses to think or represent as right; it
\nmay try to do it by the naked use of violence, ruse, falsehood,
\ndestructive aggression, crushing of other life-formations: the
\nprinciple is the same whatever the means or the moral attitude. It is
\nnot only in the realm of interests, but in the realm of
\nideas and the realm of religion that the vital being of man has
\nintroduced this spirit and attitude of self-affirmation and
\nstruggle and the use of violence, oppression and suppression,
\nintolerance, aggression; it has imposed the principle of
\nlife-egoism on the domain of intellectual truth and the domain of the
\nspirit. Into its self-affirmation the self-asserting life
\nbrings in hatred and dislike towards all that stands in the way of its
\nexpansion or hurts its ego; it develops as a means or as a
\npassion or reaction of the life-nature cruelty, treachery and all kinds
\nof evil: its satisfaction of desire and impulse takes no
\naccount of right and wrong, but only of the fulfilment of desire and
\nimpulse. For this satisfaction it is ready to face the risk of
\ndestruction and actuality of suffering; for what it is pushed by Nature
\nto aim at is not self-preservation alone, but life-affirmation and
\nlife-satisfaction, formulation of life-force and life-being. <\/p>\n

      It does not follow that this is all
\nthat the vital personality is <\/p>\n

\nPage 622<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 in its native composition or that evil is its
\nvery nature. It is not primarily concerned with truth and good, but it
\ncan have the
\npassion for truth and good as it has, more spontaneously, the passion
\nfor joy and beauty. In all that is developed by the
\nlife-force there is developed at the same time a secret delight
\nsomewhere in the being, a delight in good and a delight in evil,
\na delight in truth and a delight in falsehood, a delight in life and an
\nattraction to death, a delight in pleasure and a delight in
\npain, in one’s own suffering and the suffering of others, but also in
\none’s own joy and happiness and good and the joy and
\nhappiness and good of others. For the force of life-affirmation affirms
\nalike the good and the evil: it has its impulses of help
\nand association, of generosity, affection, loyalty, self-giving; it
\ntakes up altruism as it takes up egoism, sacrifices itself as well
\nas destroys others; and in all its acts there is the same passion for
\nlife-affirmation, the same force of action and fulfilment.
\nThis character of vital being and its trend of existence in which what
\nwe term good and evil are items but not the
\nmainspring, is evident in subhuman life; in the human being, since
\nthere a mental, moral and psychic discernment has
\ndeveloped, it is subjected to control or to camouflage, but it does not
\nchange its character. The vital being and its life-force
\nand their drive towards self-affirmation are, in the absence of an
\novert action of soul-power and spiritual power, Atmashakti,
\nNature’s chief means of effectuation, and without its support neither
\nmind nor body can utilise their possibilities or realise their aim here
\nin existence. It is only if the inner or true vital being replaces the
\nouter life-personality that the drive of the vital ego can be wholly
\novercome and the life-force become the servant of the soul and a
\npowerful instrumentation for the action of our true spiritual
\nbeing. <\/p>\n

   This then is the origin and nature of
\nerror, falsehood, wrong and evil in the consciousness and will of the
\nindividual; a limited consciousness growing out of nescience is the source of
\nerror, a personal attachment to the limitation and the error born of it the
\nsource of falsity, a wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego the source of
\nevil. But it is evident that their relative existence is only a phenomenon
\nthrown up by the cosmic Force in its drive towards evolutionary self-expression,
\nand it is there that we have <\/p>\n

\nPage 623 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

to look for the significance of the phenomenon. For
\nthe emergence of the life-ego is, as we have seen, a machinery of
\ncosmic Nature for the affirmation of the individual, for his
\nself-disengagement from the indeterminate mass substance of the
\nsubconscient, for the appearance of a conscious being on a ground
\nprepared by the Inconscience; the principle of
\nlife-affirmation of the ego is the necessary consequence. The
\nindividual ego is a pragmatic and effective fiction, a translation
\nof the secret self into the terms of surface consciousness, or a
\nsubjective substitute for the true self in our surface
\nexperience: it is separated by ignorance from other-self and from the
\ninner Divinity, but it is still pushed secretly towards an
\nevolutionary unification in diversity; it has behind itself, though
\nfinite, the impulse to the infinite. But this in the terms of an
\nignorant consciousness translates itself into the will to expand, to be
\na boundless finite, to take everything it can into itself, to
\nenter into everything and possess it, even to be possessed if by that
\nit can feel itself satisfied and growing in or through
\nothers or can take into itself by subjection the being and power of
\nothers or get thereby a help or an impulse for its
\nlife-affirmation, its life-delight, its enrichment of its mental, vital
\nor physical existence. <\/p>\n

   
\nBut because it does these things as a separate ego for its separate
\nadvantage and not by conscious interchange and
\nmutuality, not by unity, life-discord, conflict, disharmony arise, and
\nit is the products of this life-discord and disharmony that
\nwe call wrong and evil. Nature accepts them because they are necessary
\ncircumstances of the evolution, necessary for the
\ngrowth of the divided being; they are products of ignorance, supported
\nby an ignorant consciousness that founds itself on
\ndivision, by an ignorant will that works through division, by an
\nignorant delight of existence that takes the joy of division. The
\nevolutionary intention acts through the evil as through the good; it
\nhas to utilise all because confinement to a limited good would imprison
\nand check the intended evolution; it uses any available material and
\ndoes what it can with it: this is the reason why we see evil coming out
\nof what we call good and good coming out of what we call evil; and, if
\nwe see even what was thought to be evil coming to be accepted as good,
\nwhat was thought to be good accepted as evil, <\/p>\n

\nPage 624<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 it is because our standards of both are
\nevolutionary, limited and mutable. Evolutionary Nature, the terrestrial
\ncosmic Force,
\nseems then at first to have no preference for either of these
\nopposites, it uses both alike for its purpose. And yet it is the
\nsame Nature, the same Force that has burdened man with the sense of
\ngood and evil and insists on its importance: evidently,
\ntherefore, this sense also has an evolutionary purpose; it too must be
\nnecessary, it must be there so that man may leave
\ncertain things behind him, move towards others, until out of good and
\nevil he can emerge into some Good that is eternal and
\ninfinite. <\/p>\n

    But how is
\nthis evolutionary intention in Nature to fulfil itself, by what power,
\nmeans, impulsion, what principle and
\nprocess of selection and harmonisation? The method adopted by the mind
\nof man through the ages has been always a principle of selection and
\nrejection, and this has taken the forms of a religious sanction, a
\nsocial or moral rule of life or an ethical ideal. But this is an
\nempirical means which does not touch the root of the problem because it
\nhas no vision of the cause and origin of the malady it attempts to
\ncure; it deals with the symptoms, but deals with them perfunctorily,
\nnot knowing what function they serve in the purpose of Nature and what
\nit is in the mind and life that supports them and keeps them in being.
\nMoreover, human good and evil are relative and the standards erected by
\nethics are uncertain as well as relative: what is forbidden by one
\nreligion or another, what is regarded as good or bad by social opinion,
\nwhat is thought useful to society or noxious to it, what some temporary
\nlaw of man allows or disallows, what is or is considered helpful or
\nharmful to self or others, what accords with this or that ideal, what
\nis prompted or discouraged by an instinct which we call conscience, —
\nan amalgam of all these viewpoints is the determining heterogeneous
\nidea, constitutes the complex substance of morality; in all of them
\nthere is the constant mixture of truth and half-truth and error which
\npursues all the activities of our limiting mental Knowledge-Ignorance.
\nA mental control over our vital and physical desires and instincts,
\nover our personal and social action, over our dealings with others is
\nindispensable to us as human beings, and morality creates a standard by
\nwhich we can guide ourselves and establish a <\/p>\n

\nPage 625 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

customary control; but the control is always imperfect and it is an expedient, not a solution: man remains always what he is
\nand has ever been, a mixture of good and evil, sin and virtue, a mental ego with an imperfect command over his mental, vital
\nand physical nature. <\/p>\n

     The endeavour to select, to retain
\nfrom our consciousness and action all that seems to us good and reject all that
\nseems to us evil and so to re-form our being, to reconstitute and shape
\nourselves into the image of an ideal, is a more profound ethical motive, because
\nit comes nearer to the true issue; it rests on the sound idea that our life is a
\nbecoming and that there is something which we have to become and be. But the
\nideals constructed by the human mind are selective and relative; to shape our
\nnature rigidly according to them is to limit ourselves and make a construction
\nwhere there should be growth into larger being. The true call upon us is the
\ncall of the Infinite and the Supreme; the self-affirmation and self-abnegation
\nimposed on us by Nature are both movements towards that, and it is the right way
\nof self-affirmation and self-negation taken together in place of the wrong,
\nbecause ignorant, way of the ego and in place of the conflict between the yes
\nand the no of Nature that we have to discover. If we do not discover that,
\neither the push of life will be too strong for our narrow ideal of perfection,
\nits instrumentation will break and it will fail to consummate and perpetuate
\nitself, or at best a half result will be all that we shall obtain, or else the
\npush away from life will present itself as the only remedy, the one way out of
\nthe otherwise invincible grasp of the Ignorance. This indeed is the way out
\nusually indicated by religion; a divinely enjoined morality, a pursuit of piety,
\nrighteousness and virtue as laid down in a religious code of conduct, a law of
\nGod determined by some human inspiration, is put forward as a part of the means,
\nthe direction, by which we can tread the way that leads to the exit, the issue.
\nBut this exit leaves the problem where it was; it is only a way of escape for
\nthe personal being out of the unsolved perplexity of the cosmic existence. In
\nancient Indian spiritual thought there was a clearer perception of the
\ndifficulty; the practice of truth, virtue, right will and right doing was
\nregarded as a necessity of the <\/p>\n

\nPage 626 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

approach to spiritual realisation, but in the
\nrealisation itself the being arises to the greater consciousness of the
\nInfinite and
\nEternal and shakes away from itself the burden of sin and virtue, for
\nthat belongs to the relativity and the Ignorance. Behind
\nthis larger truer perception lay the intuition that a relative good is
\na training imposed by World-Nature upon us so that we
\nmay pass through it towards the true Good which is absolute. These
\nproblems are of the mind and the ignorant life, they do
\nnot accompany us beyond mind; as there is a cessation of the duality of
\ntruth and error in an infinite Truth-Consciousness,
\nso there is a liberation from the duality of good and evil in an
\ninfinite Good, there is transcendence. <\/p>\n

   
\nThere can be no artificial escape from this problem which has always
\ntroubled humanity and from which it has found no
\nsatisfying issue. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil with its
\nsweet and bitter fruits is secretly rooted in the very
\nnature of the Inconscience from which our being has emerged and on
\nwhich it still stands as a nether soil and basis of our
\nphysical existence; it has grown visibly on the surface in the manifold
\nbranchings of the Ignorance which is still the main
\nbulk and condition of our consciousness in its difficult evolution
\ntowards a supreme consciousness and an integral
\nawareness. As long as there is this soil with the unfound roots in it
\nand this nourishing air and climate of Ignorance, the tree
\nwill grow and flourish and put forth its dual blossoms and its fruit of
\nmixed nature. It would follow that there can be no final
\nsolution until we have turned our inconscience into the greater
\nconsciousness, made the truth of self and spirit our life-basis
\nand transformed our ignorance into a higher knowledge. All other
\nexpedients will only be makeshifts or blind issues; a
\ncomplete and radical transformation of our nature is the only true
\nsolution. It is because the Inconscience imposes its original obscurity
\non our awareness of self and things and because the Ignorance bases it
\non an imperfect and divided consciousness and because we live in that
\nobscurity and division that wrong knowledge and wrong will are
\npossible: without wrong knowledge there could be no error or falsehood,
\nwithout error or falsehood in our dynamic parts there could be no wrong
\nwill in our members; without wrong will there could be no wrong- <\/p>\n

\nPage 627<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 doing or evil: while these causes endure, the
\neffects also will persist in our action and in our nature. A mental
\ncontrol can
\nonly be a control, not a cure; a mental teaching, rule, standard can
\nonly impose an artificial groove in which our action
\nrevolves mechanically or with difficulty and which imposes a curbed and
\nlimited formation on the course of our nature. A
\ntotal change of consciousness, a radical change of nature is the one
\nremedy and the sole issue. <\/p>\n

    But since the root of the difficulty is a split, limited and separative
\nexistence, this change must consist in an integration, a healing of the divided
\nconsciousness of our being, and since that division is complex and many-sided,
\nno partial change on one side of the being can be passed off as a sufficient
\nsubstitute for the integral transformation. Our first division is that created
\nby our ego and mainly, most forcefully, most vividly by our life-ego, which
\ndivides us from all other beings as not-self and ties us to our ego-centricity
\nand the law of an egoistic self-affirmation. It is in the errors of this
\nself-affirmation that wrong and evil first arise: wrong consciousness engenders
\nwrong will in the members, in the thinking mind, in the heart, in the life-mind
\nand the sensational being, in the very body-consciousness; wrong will engenders
\nwrong action of all these instruments, a multiple error and many-branching
\ncrookedness of thought and will and sense and feeling. Nor can we deal rightly
\nwith others so long as they are to us others, beings who are strangers to
\nourselves and of whose inner consciousness, soul-need, mind-need, heart-need,
\nlife-need, body-need we know little or nothing. The modicum of imperfect
\nsympathy, knowledge and good-will that the law, need and habit of association
\nengender, is a poor quantum of what is required for a true action. A larger
\nmind, a larger heart, a more ample and generous life-force can do something to
\nhelp us or help others and avoid the worst offences, but this too is
\ninsufficient and will not prevent a mass of troubles and harms and collisions of
\nour preferred good with the good of others. By the very nature of our ego and
\nignorance we affirm ourselves egoistically even when we most pride ourselves on
\nselflessness and ignorantly even when we most pride ourselves on understanding
\nand knowledge. Altruism taken as a rule of life does not deliver us; it is a <\/p>\n

\nPage 628 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

potent instrument for self-enlargement and for
\ncorrection of the narrower ego, but it does not abolish it nor
\ntransform it into
\nthe true self one with all; the ego of the altruist is as powerful and
\nabsorbing as the ego of the selfish and it is often more
\npowerful and insistent because it is a self-righteous and magnified
\nego. It helps still less if we do wrong to our soul, to our
\nmind, life or body with the idea of subordinating our self to the self
\nof others. To affirm our being rightly so that it may
\nbecome one with all is the true principle, not to mutilate or immolate
\nit. Self-immolation may be necessary at times,
\nexceptionally, for a cause, in answer to some demand of the heart or
\nfor some right or high purpose but cannot be made the
\nrule or nature of life; so exaggerated, it would only feed and
\nexaggerate the ego of others or magnify some collective ego,
\nnot lead us or mankind to the discovery and affirmation of our or its
\ntrue being. Sacrifice and self-giving are indeed a true
\nprinciple and a spiritual necessity, for we cannot affirm our being
\nrightly without sacrifice or without self-giving to something
\nlarger than our ego; but that too must be done with a right
\nconsciousness and will founded on a true knowledge. To develop
\nthe sattwic part of our nature, a nature of light, understanding,
\nbalance, harmony, sympathy, good-will, kindness,
\nfellow-feeling, self-control, rightly ordered and harmonised action, is
\nthe best we can do in the limits of the mental formation,
\nbut it is a stage and not the goal of our growth of being. These are
\nsolutions by the way, palliatives, necessary means for a
\npartial dealing with this root difficulty, provisional standards and
\ndevices given us as a temporary help and guidance because
\nthe true and total solution is beyond our present capacity and can only
\ncome when we have sufficiently evolved to see it and
\nmake it our main endeavour. <\/p>\n

   
\nThe true solution can intervene only when by our spiritual growth we
\ncan become one self with all beings, know them
\nas part of our self, deal with them as if they were our other selves;
\nfor then the division is healed, the law of separate
\nself-affirmation leading by itself to affirmation against or at the
\nexpense of others is enlarged and liberated by adding to it
\nthe law of our self-affirmation for others and our self-finding in
\ntheir self-finding and self-realisation. It has been made a rule of
\nreligious ethics <\/p>\n

\nPage 629 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

to act in a spirit of universal compassion, to love
\none’s neighbour as oneself, to do to others as one would have them do
\nto
\nus, to feel the joy and grief of others as one’s own; but no man living
\nin his ego is able truly and perfectly to do these things,
\nhe can only accept them as a demand of his mind, an aspiration of his
\nheart, an effort of his will to live by a high standard
\nand modify by a sincere endeavour his crude ego-nature. It is when
\nothers are known and felt intimately as oneself that this
\nideal can become a natural and spontaneous rule of our living and be
\nrealised in practice as in principle. But even oneness
\nwith others is not enough by itself, if it is a oneness with their
\nignorance; for then the law of ignorance will work and error of
\naction and wrong action will survive even if diminished in degree and
\nmellowed in incidence and character. Our oneness
\nwith others must be fundamental, not a oneness with their minds,
\nhearts, vital selves, egos,—even though these come to be
\nincluded in our universalised consciousness,—but a oneness in the soul
\nand spirit, and that can only come by our liberation
\ninto soul-awareness and self-knowledge. To be ourselves liberated from
\nego and realise our true selves is the first necessity;
\nall else can be achieved as a luminous result, a necessary consequence.
\nThat is one reason why a spiritual call must be
\naccepted as imperative and take precedence over all other claims,
\nintellectual, ethical, social, that belong to the domain of
\nthe Ignorance. For the mental law of good abides in that domain and can
\nonly modify and palliate; nothing can be a
\nsufficient substitute for the spiritual change that can realise the
\ntrue and integral good because through the spirit we come to the root
\nof action and existence. <\/p>\n

   In the spiritual knowledge of self
\nthere are three steps of its self-achievement which are at the same time three
\nparts of the one knowledge. The first is the discovery of the soul, not the
\nouter soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the
\ndivine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we
\nare consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as
\nits instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good,
\nthe true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its
\nluminous law and leads our life and being <\/p>\n

\nPage 630 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

towards spiritual completeness. Even within the
\nobscure workings of the Ignorance we have then a witness who discerns,
\na
\nliving light that illumines, a will that refuses to be misled and
\nseparates the mind’s truth from its error, the heart’s intimate
\nresponse from its vibrations to a wrong call and wrong demand upon it,
\nthe life’s true ardour and plenitude of movement
\nfrom vital passion and the turbid falsehoods of our vital nature and
\nits dark self-seekings. This is the first step of
\nself-realisation, to enthrone the soul, the divine psychic individual
\nin the place of the ego. The next step is to become aware
\nof the eternal self in us unborn and one with the self of all beings.
\nThis self-realisation liberates and universalises; even if our
\naction still proceeds in the dynamics of the Ignorance, it no longer
\nbinds or misleads because our inner being is seated in the
\nlight of self-knowledge. The third step is to know the Divine Being who
\nis at once our supreme transcendent Self, the
\nCosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within
\nof which our psychic being, the true evolving individual
\nin our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal
\nFire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness
\never living within us and the conscious instrument of its light and
\npower and joy and beauty. Aware of the Divine as the
\nMaster of our being and action, we can learn to become channels of his
\nShakti, the Divine Puissance, and act according to her dictates or her
\nrule of light and power within us. Our action will not then be mastered
\nby our vital impulse or governed by a mental standard, for she acts
\naccording to the permanent yet plastic truth of things, — not that
\nwhich the mind constructs, but the higher, deeper and subtler truth of
\neach movement and circumstance as it is known to the supreme knowledge
\nand demanded by the supreme will in the universe. The liberation of the
\nwill follows upon the liberation in knowledge and is its dynamic
\nconsequence; it is knowledge that purifies, it is truth that liberates:
\nevil is the fruit of a spiritual ignorance and it will disappear only
\nby the growth of a spiritual consciousness and the light of spiritual
\nknowledge. The division of our being from the being of others can only
\nbe healed by removing the divorce of our nature from the inner
\nsoul-reality, by abolishing the veil between our becoming and our
\nself-being, by bridging the <\/p>\n

\nPage 631 <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

remoteness of our individuality in Nature from the Divine Being who is the omnipresent Reality in Nature and above Nature. <\/p>\n

   
\nBut the last division to be removed is the scission between this Nature
\nand the Supernature which is the Self-Power of
\nthe Divine Existence. Even before the dynamic Knowledge-Ignorance is
\nremoved, while it still remains as an inadequate
\ninstrumentation of the spirit, the supreme Shakti or Supernature can
\nwork through us and we can be aware of her workings;
\nbut it is then by a modification of her light and power so that it can
\nbe received and assimilated by the inferior nature of the
\nmind, life and body. But this is not enough; there is needed an entire
\nremoulding of what we are into a way and power of the
\ndivine Supernature. The integration of our being cannot be complete
\nunless there is this transformation of the dynamic action; there must
\nbe an uplifting and change of the whole mode of Nature itself and not
\nonly some illumination and transmutation of the inner ways of the
\nbeing. An eternal Truth-Consciousness must possess us and sublimate all
\nour natural modes into its own modes of being, knowledge and action; a
\nspontaneous truth-awareness, truth-will, truth-feeling, truth-movement,
\ntruth-action can then become the integral law of our nature. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

E<\/font>nd
\nof the <\/font>S<\/font>econd <\/font>
\nB<\/font>ook,  <\/font>P<\/font>art
\n<\/font>I <\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage 632<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XIV The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil                                                                    The Lord accepts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","wpcat-13-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}