{"id":621,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=621"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:17","slug":"02-the-human-aspiration-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\/02-the-human-aspiration-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-02_The Human Aspiration .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n

BOOK ONE<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

OMNIPRESENT REALITY AND THE UNIVERSE<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n

\n

<\/p>\n

C<\/font>HAPTER<\/font>
\nI  <\/font>
\n<\/b>\n<\/p>\n


\nThe Human Aspiration<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond,  she is the first in the eternal succession of the dawns that
\nare coming, —Usha widens bringing out that which lives, awakening someone who was dead….
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

What is her scope
\nwhen she harmonises with the dawns that shone out before and those that now must shine? She desires the ancient
\nmornings and fulfils their light; projecting forwards her illumination she enters into communion with the rest that are to
\ncome.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>Kutsa Angirasa<\/font><\/i>—Rig Veda<\/i>.\u00b9<\/font> 
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Threefold are those supreme births of this divine force that is in the world,  they are true, they are desirable; he moves
\nthere wide-overt within the Infinite and shines pure, luminous and fulfilling…. That which is immortal in mortals and
\npossessedof the truth,  is a god and established inwardly as an energy working out in our divine powers….
\nBecome high-uplifted, O Strength, pierce all veils, manifest in us the things of
\nthe Godhead.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

Vamadeva—Rig Veda.<\/font>\u00b2<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nT<\/font>HE <\/font>earliest preoccupation of man in his awakened thoughts and, as it seems, his inevitable and ultimate preoccupation,—for
\nit survives the longest periods of scepticism and returns after every banishment,—is also the highest which his thought can
\nenvisage. It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection, the search after pure Truth and
\nunmixed Bliss, the sense of a secret immortality. The ancient dawns of human knowledge have left us their witness to this
\nconstant aspiration; today we see a humanity satiated but not satisfied by victorious analysis of the externalities of Nature
\npreparing to return to its primeval longings. The earliest formula of Wisdom promises to be its last,—God, Light, Freedom,
\nImmortality. <\/p>\n

   
\nThese persistent ideals of the race are at once the contradiction of
\nits normal experience and the affirmation of higher
\nand deeper experiences which are abnormal to humanity and only to be
\nattained, in their organised entirety, by a
\nrevolutionary individual effort or an evolutionary general progression.
\nTo<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 
\n\u00b9 I.113.8,10.    \u00b2<\/font><\/font>  IV. 1. 7; IV. 2. 1; IV. 4. 5.<\/font>\n<\/p>\n

\nPage–<\/font>1<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

know, possess and be the divine being in an animal
\nand egoistic consciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical
\nmentality into the plenary supramental illumination, to build peace and
\na self-existent bliss where there is only a stress of
\ntransitory satisfactions besieged by physical pain and emotional
\nsuffering, to establish an infinite freedom in a world which
\npresents itself as a group of mechanical necessities, to discover and
\nrealise the immortal life in a body subjected to death
\nand constant mutation,—this is offered to us as the manifestation of
\nGod in Matter and the goal of Nature in her terrestrial
\nevolution. To the ordinary material intellect which takes its present
\norganisation of consciousness for the limit of its
\npossibilities, the direct contradiction of the unrealised ideals with
\nthe realised fact is a final argument against their validity.
\nBut if we take a more deliberate view of the world’s workings, that
\ndirect opposition appears rather as part of Nature’s
\nprofoundest method and the seal of her completest sanction.\n<\/p>\n

    For all problems of existence are
\nessentially problems of harmony. They arise from the perception of an
\nunsolved
\ndiscord and the instinct of an undiscovered agreement or unity. To rest
\ncontent with an unsolved discord is possible for the
\npractical and more animal part of man, but impossible for his fully
\nawakened mind, and usually even his practical parts only
\nescape from the general necessity either by shutting out the problem or
\nby accepting a rough, utilitarian and unillumined
\ncompromise. For essentially, all Nature seeks a harmony, life and
\nmatter in their own sphere as much as mind in the
\narrangement of its perceptions. The greater the apparent disorder of
\nthe materials offered or the apparent disparateness,
\neven to irreconcilable opposition, of the elements that have to be
\nutilised, the stronger is the spur, and it drives towards a
\nmore subtle and puissant order than can normally be the result of a
\nless difficult endeavour. The accordance of active Life
\nwith a material of form in which the condition of activity itself seems
\nto be inertia, is one problem of opposites that Nature
\nhas solved and seeks always to solve better with greater complexities;
\nfor its perfect solution would be the material
\nimmortality of a fully organised mind-supporting animal body. The
\naccordance of conscious mind and conscious                                                                                            \n<\/p>\n

\nPage–<\/font>2
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

will with a form and a life in themselves not overtly self-conscious and capable at best of a mechanical or sub-conscious will
\nis another problem of opposites in which she has produced astonishing results and aims always at higher marvels; for there
\nher ultimate miracle would be an animal consciousness no longer seeking but possessed of Truth and Light, with the
\npractical omnipotence which would result from the possession of a direct and perfected knowledge. Not only, then, is the
\nupward impulse of man towards the accordance of yet higher opposites rational in itself, but it is the only logical completion
\nof a rule and an effort that seem to be a fundamental method of Nature and the very sense of her universal strivings.\n<\/p>\n

    We speak of the evolution of Life
\nin Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word
\nwhich merely
\nstates the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no
\nreason why Life should evolve out of material
\nelements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic
\nsolution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind
\nin Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form
\nof veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be
\nlittle objection to a farther step in the series and the admission that
\nmental consciousness may itself be only a form and a veil
\nof higher states which are beyond Mind. In that case, the unconquerable
\nimpulse of man towards God, Light, Bliss,
\nFreedom, Immortality presents itself in its right place in the chain as
\nsimply the imperative impulse by which Nature is
\nseeking to evolve beyond Mind, and appears to be as natural, true and
\njust as the impulse towards Life which she has
\nplanted in certain forms of Matter or the impulse towards Mind which
\nshe has planted in certain forms of Life. As there, so
\nhere, the impulse exists more or less obscurely in her different
\nvessels with an ever-ascending series in the power of its
\nwill-to-be; as there, so here, it is gradually evolving and bound fully
\nto evolve the necessary organs and faculties. As the
\nimpulse towards Mind ranges from the more sensitive reactions of Life
\nin the metal and the plant up to its full organisation in
\nman, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the
\npreparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. The
\nanimal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said,\n<\/p>\n

\nPage–<\/font>3<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation
\nshe wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God? For if evolution is the progressive
\nmanifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she
\nsecretly is. We cannot, then, bid her pause at a given stage of her evolution, nor have we the right to condemn with the
\nreligionist as perverse and presumptuous or with the rationalist as a disease or hallucination any intention she may evince or
\neffort she may make to go beyond. If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the
\nmanifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim
\npossible to man upon earth.<\/p>\n

    
\nThus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an
\nanimal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a
\nmortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing
\nitself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent,
\nindefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and
\nspace and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher
\ntruth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the
\ndeliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition
\nof mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with
\nquestionings which have so often been declared
\ninsoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental
\nactivities to the practical and immediate problems of
\ntheir material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never
\npermanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them
\nwith a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an
\nimmediate solution. By that hunger mysticism
\nprofits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been
\ndestroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which
\nitself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it
\nwas unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny
\nor stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and
\ntoo often represented by obscurantist superstition or a
\ncrude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from
\na cosmic necessity because\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-4<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate
\ntangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out
\neventually to
\nhave been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the
\nsecret, mightier will of the great Mother. It is better
\nand more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to
\nreject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure
\nintuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an
\ninstructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any
\nhigher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is
\nnow in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with
\nintermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional
\ndisplays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then
\nthere also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is
\nthe next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only
\na form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the
\npath of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever
\nhighest state is humanity’s ultimate resting-place.<\/p>\n

\n Page-5 <\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOK ONE OMNIPRESENT REALITY AND THE UNIVERSE CHAPTER I  The Human Aspiration   She follows to the goal of those that are passing on beyond, …<\/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-621","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\/621","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=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}