{"id":637,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=637"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:23","slug":"20-life-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/18-the-life-divine-volume-18\/20-life-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-20_Life.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


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

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

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

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

 <\/p>\n

                                                                        Pranic energy
\nis the life of creatures; for that is said to be the universal
\nprinciple of life.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

    W<\/font><\/b>e perceive, then, what Mind is in its divine origin and how it is related to the Truth-Consciousness,—Mind, the highest of
\nthe three lower principles which constitute our human existence. It is a special action of the divine consciousness or rather,
\nit is the final strand of its whole creative action. It enables the Purusha to hold apart the relations of different forms and
\nforces of himself to each other; it creates phenomenal differences which to the individual soul fallen from the
\nTruth-Consciousness take the appearance of radical divisions, and is by that original perversion the parent of all the resultant
\nperversions which impress us as the contrary dualities and oppositions proper to the life of the Soul in the Ignorance. But so
\nlong as it is not separated from the Supermind, it supports, not perversions and falsehoods, but the various working of the
\nuniversal Truth.\n<\/p>\n

     Mind thus appears as a
\ncreative cosmic agency. This is not the impression which we normally
\nhave of our mentality;
\nrather we regard it primarily as a perceptive organ, perceptive of
\nthings already created by Force working in Matter, and the
\nonly origination we allow to it is a secondary creation of new combined
\nforms from those already developed by Force in
\nMatter. But the knowledge we are now recovering, aided by the last
\ndiscoveries of Science, begins to show us that in this
\nForce and in this Matter there is a subconscious Mind at work which is
\ncertainly responsible for its own emergence, first in
\nthe forms of life and secondly in the forms of mind itself, first in
\nthe nervous consciousness of plant-life and the primitive
\nanimal, secondly in the ever-developing mentality of the evolved animal
\nand of man. And as we have already discovered
\nthat Matter is only substance-form of Force, so we shall discover that
\nmaterial Force is only\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

      
\n\u00b9<\/font>
\nII. 3. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-173<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

energy-form of Mind. Material force is, in fact, a
\nsubconscious operation of Will; Will that works in us in what seems to
\nbe
\nlight, though it is in truth no more than a half-light, and material
\nForce that works in what to us seems to be a darkness of
\nunintelligence, are yet really and in essence the same, as
\nmaterialistic thought has always instinctively felt from the wrong or
\nlower end of things and as spiritual knowledge working from the summit
\nhad long ago discovered. We may say, therefore,
\nthat it is a subconscious Mind or Intelligence which, manifesting Force
\nas its driving-power, its executive Nature, its Prakriti,
\nhas created this material world.\n<\/p>\n

     But since, as we have now
\nfound, Mind is no independent and original entity but only a final
\noperation of the
\nTruth-Consciousness or Supermind, therefore wherever Mind is, there
\nSupermind must be. Supermind or the
\nTruth-Consciousness is the real creative agency of the universal
\nExistence. Even when Mind is in its own darkened
\nconsciousness separated from its source, yet is that larger movement
\nalways there in the workings of Mind; forcing them to
\npreserve their right relation, evolving from them the inevitable
\nresults they bear in themselves, producing the right tree from
\nthe right seed, it compels even the operations of so brute, inert and
\ndarkened a thing as material Force to result in a world of
\nLaw, of order, of right relation and not, as it would otherwise be, of
\nhurtling chance and chaos. Obviously, this order and
\nright relation can only be relative and not the supreme order and
\nsupreme right which would reign if Mind were not in its
\nown consciousness separated from Supermind; it is an arrangement, an
\norder of the results right and proper to the action of
\ndividing Mind and its creation of separative oppositions, its dual
\ncontrary sides of the one Truth. The Divine Consciousness,
\nhaving conceived and thrown into operation the Idea of this dual or
\ndivided representation of itself, deduces from it in
\nreal-idea and educes practically from it in substance of life, by the
\ngoverning action of the whole Truth-Consciousness
\nbehind it, its own inferior truth or inevitable result of various
\nrelation. For this is the nature of Law or Truth in the world that
\nit is the just working and bringing out of that which is contained in
\nbeing, implied in the essence and nature of the thing itself,
\nlatent in its\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-174<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

self-being and self-law, svabhā<\/font>va<\/i> and
\nsvadharma<\/i>, as seen by the divine Knowledge. To use one of those wonderful
\nformulas of the Upanishad\u00b9<\/font><\/p>\n

which contain a world of knowledge in a few revealing words, it is the Self-existent who as the seer and thinker becoming
\neverywhere has arranged in Himself all things rightly from years eternal according to the truth of that which they are. <\/p>\n

   
\nConsequently, the triple world that we live in, the world of
\nMind-Life-Body, is triple only in its actual accomplished
\nevolution. Life involved in Matter has emerged in the form of thinking
\nand mentally conscious life. But with Mind, involved
\nin it and therefore in Life and Matter, is the Supermind, which is the
\norigin and ruler of the other three, and this also must
\nemerge. We seek for an intelligence at the root of the world, because
\nintelligence is the highest principle of which we are
\naware and that which seems to us to govern and explain all our own
\naction and creation and, therefore, if there is a
\nConsciousness at all in the universe, we presume that it must be an
\nIntelligence, a mental Consciousness. But intelligence
\nonly perceives, reflects and uses within the measure of its capacity
\nthe work of a Truth of being superior to itself; the power
\nbehind that works must therefore be another and superior form of
\nConsciousness proper to that Truth. We have,
\naccordingly, to mend our conception and affirm that not a subconscious
\nMind or Intelligence, but an involved Supermind,
\nwhich puts Mind in front of it as the immediately active special form
\nof its knowledge-will subconscious in Force and uses
\nmaterial Force or Will subconscious in substance of being as its
\nexecutive Nature or Prakriti, has created this material
\nuniverse. <\/p>\n

    But we see
\nthat here Mind is manifested in a specialisation of Force to which we
\ngive the name of Life. What then is
\nLife? and what relation has it to Supermind, to this supreme trinity of
\nSachchidananda active in creation by means of the
\nReal-Idea or Truth-Consciousness? From what principle in the Trinity
\ndoes it take its birth? or by what necessity, divine or
\nundivine, of the Truth or the illusion, does it come into being? Life
\nis an evil, rings down the centuries the ancient cry, a
\ndelusion, a delirium, an\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

         
\n\u00b9<\/font> Kavir manīī<\/font>sī
\n<\/font>paribhū<\/font>h svayambhū<\/font>r
\nyā<\/font>thā<\/font>tathyato’rthā<\/font>n
\nvyadadhā<\/font>t ś<\/font>aś<\/font>vatī<\/font>bhyah
\nsamā<\/font>bhyah.—Isha Upanishad,<\/font><\/i>
\nVerse 8.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-175<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

insanity from which we have to flee into the repose of eternal being. Is it so? and why then is it so? Why has the Eternal
\nwantonly inflicted this evil, brought this delirium or insanity upon Himself or else upon the creatures brought into being by
\nHis terrible all-deluding Maya? Or is it rather some divine principle that thus expresses itself, some power of the Delight of
\neternal being that had to express and has thus thrown itself into Time and Space in this constant outburst of the million and
\nmillion forms of life which people the countless worlds of the universe?\n<\/p>\n

     When we study this Life as
\nit manifests itself upon earth with Matter as its basis, we observe
\nthat essentially it is a
\nform of the one cosmic Energy, a dynamic movement or current of it
\npositive and negative, a constant act or play of the
\nForce which builds up forms, energises them by a continual stream of
\nstimulation and maintains them by an unceasing
\nprocess of disintegration and renewal of their substance. This would
\ntend to show that the natural opposition we make
\nbetween death and life is an error of our mentality, one of those false
\noppositions—false to inner truth though valid in
\nsurface practical experience—which, deceived by appearances, it is
\nconstantly bringing into the universal unity. Death has
\nno reality except as a process of life. Disintegration of substance and
\nrenewal of substance, maintenance of form and
\nchange of form are the constant process of life; death is merely a
\nrapid disintegration subservient to life’s necessity of
\nchange and variation of formal experience. Even in the death of the
\nbody there is no cessation of Life, only the material of
\none form of life is broken up to serve as material for other forms of
\nlife. Similarly we may be sure, in the uniform law of
\nNature, that if there is in the bodily form a mental or psychic energy,
\nthat also is not destroyed but only breaks out from one
\nform to assume others by some process of metempsychosis or new
\nensouling of body. All renews itself, nothing perishes.<\/p>\n

      It could be affirmed as a
\nconsequence that there is one all-pervading Life or dynamic energy—the material
\naspect being only its outermost movement—that creates all these forms of the
\nphysical universe, Life imperishable and eternal which, even if the whole figure
\nof the universe were quite abolished, would itself still go on existing and be
\ncapable of producing a new<\/p>\n

uni-<\/p>\n

\nPage-176<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

verse in its place, must indeed, unless it be held
\nback in a state of rest by some higher Power or hold itself back,
\ninevitably go on creating. In that case Life is nothing else than the
\nForce that builds and maintains and destroys forms in the
\nworld; it is Life that manifests itself in the form of the earth as
\nmuch as in the plant that grows upon the earth and the
\nanimals that support their existence by devouring the life-force of the
\nplant or of each other. All existence here is a universal
\nLife that takes form of Matter. It might for that purpose hide
\nlife-process in physical process before it emerges as submental
\nsensitivity and mentalised vitality, but still it would be throughout
\nthe same creative Life-principle.<\/p>\n

     
\nIt will be said, however, that this is not what we mean by life; we
\nmean a particular result of universal force with which
\nwe are familiar and which manifests itself only in the animal and the
\nplant, but not in the metal, the stone, the gas, operates
\nin the animal cell but not in the pure physical atom. We must,
\ntherefore, in order to be sure of our ground, examine in what
\nprecisely consists this particular result of the play of Force which we
\ncall life and how it differs from that other result of the
\nplay of Force in inanimate things which, we say, is not life. We see at
\nonce that there are here on earth three realms of the
\nplay of Force, the animal kingdom of the old classification to which we
\nbelong, the vegetable, and lastly the mere material
\nvoid, as we pretend, of life. How does life in ourselves differ from
\nthe life of the plant, and the life of the plant from the
\nnot-life, say, of the metal, the mineral kingdom of the old
\nphraseology, or that new chemical kingdom which Science has
\ndiscovered?<\/p>\n

     
\nOrdinarily, when we speak of life, we have meant animal life, that which moves, breathes, eats, feels, desires, and, if
\nwe speak of the life of plants, it has been almost as a metaphor rather than a reality, for plant life was regarded as a purely
\nmaterial process rather than a biological phenomenon. Especially we have associated life with breathing; the breath is life, it
\nwas said in every language, and the formula is true if we change our conception of what we mean by the Breath of Life.
\nBut it is evident that spontaneous motion or locomotion, breathing, eating are only processes of life and not life itself; they
\nare means for the generation\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-177<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

or release of that constantly stimulating energy which is our vitality and for that process of disintegration and renewal by
\nwhich it supports our substantial existence; but these processes of our vitality can be maintained in other ways than by our
\nrespiration and our means of sustenance. It is a proved fact that even human life can remain in the body and can remain in
\nfull consciousness when breathing and the beating of the heart and other conditions formerly deemed essential to it have
\nbeen temporarily suspended. And new evidence of phenomena has been brought forward to establish that the plant, to
\nwhich we can still deny any conscious reaction, has at least a physical life identical with our own and even organised
\nessentially like our own though different in its apparent organisation. If that is proved true, we will have to make a clean
\nsweep of our old facile and false conceptions and get beyond symptoms and externalities to the root of the matter.\n<\/p>\n

     In some recent discoveries\u00b9
\n<\/font> which, if their conclusions are accepted, must throw an
\nintense light on the problem of Life in Matter, a great Indian
\nphysicist has pointed attention to the response to stimulus as an
\ninfallible sign of the existence of life. It is especially the
\nphenomenon of plant-life that has been illumined by his data and
\nillustrated in all its subtle functionings; but we must not
\nforget that in the essential point the same proof of vitality, the
\nresponse to stimulus, the positive state of life and its negative
\nstate which we call death, have been affirmed by him in metals as in
\nthe plant. Not indeed with the same abundance, not
\nindeed so as to show an essentially identical organisation of life; but
\nit is possible that, could instruments of the right nature
\nand sufficient delicacy be invented, more points of similarity between
\nthe metal and plant life could be discovered; and even
\nif it prove<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    
\n\u00b9<\/font>These considerations drawn from recent scientific researches are brought in here as illustrative, not probative
\nof the nature and process of Life in Matter as they are developed here. Science and metaphysics (whether
\nfounded on pure intellectual speculation or, as in India, ultimately on a spiritual vision of things and spiritual
\nexperience) have each its own province and method of inquiry. Science cannot dictate its conclusions to
\nmetaphysics any more than metaphysics can impose its conclusions on Science. Still if we accept the
\nreasonable belief that Being and Nature in all their states have a system of correspondences expressive of a
\ncommon Truth underlying them, it is permissible to suppose that truths of the physical universe can throw some
\nlight on the nature as well as the process of the Force that is active in the universe—not a complete light, for
\nphysical Science is necessarily incomplete in the range of its inquiry and has no clue to the occult movements
\nof the Force.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n Page-178<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

not to be so, this might mean that the same or any
\nlife organisation is absent, but the beginnings of vitality could still
\nbe there.
\nBut if life, however rudimentary in its symptoms, exists in the metal,
\nit must be admitted as present, involved perhaps or
\nelementary and elemental in the earth or other material existences akin
\nto the metal. If we can pursue our inquiries farther,
\nnot obliged to stop short where our immediate means of investigation
\nfail us, we may be sure from our unvarying experience
\nof Nature that investigations thus pursued will in the end prove to us
\nthat there is no break, no rigid line of demarcation
\nbetween the earth and the metal formed in it or between the metal and
\nthe plant and, pursuing the synthesis farther, that
\nthere is none either between the elements and atoms that constitute the
\nearth or metal and the metal or earth that they
\nconstitute. Each step of this graded existence prepares the next, holds
\nin itself what appears in that which follows it. Life is
\neverywhere, secret or manifest, organised or elemental, involved or
\nevolved, but universal, all-pervading, imperishable; only
\nits forms and organisings differ.\n<\/p>\n

     We must remember that the
\nphysical response to stimulus is only an outward sign of life, even as
\nare breathing and
\nlocomotion in ourselves. An exceptional stimulus is applied by the
\nexperimenter and vivid responses are given which we can
\nat once recognise as indices of vitality in the object of the
\nexperiment. But during its whole existence the plant is responding
\nconstantly to a constant mass of stimulation from its environment; that
\nis to say, there is a constantly maintained force in it
\nwhich is capable of responding to the application of force from its
\nsurroundings. It is said that the idea of a vital force in the
\nplant or other living organism has been destroyed by these experiments.
\nBut when we say that a stimulus has been applied
\nto the plant, we mean that an energised force, a force in dynamic
\nmovement has been directed on that object, and when we
\nsay that a response is given, we mean that an energised force capable
\nof dynamic movement and of sensitive vibration
\nanswers to the shock. There is a vibrant reception and reply, as well
\nas a will to grow and be, indicative of a submental, a
\nvital-physical organisation of consciousness-force hidden in the form
\nof being. The fact would seem to be, then, that as there
\nis a constant dynamic energy in
\nmove-                                \n<\/p>\n

\nPage-179<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

ment in the universe which takes various material forms more or less subtle or gross, so in each physical body or
\nobject, plant or animal or metal, there is stored and active the same constant dynamic force; a certain interchange of these
\ntwo gives us the phenomena which we associate with the idea of life. It is this action that we recognise as the action of
\nLife-Energy and that which so energises itself is the Life-Force. Mind-Energy, Life-Energy, material Energy are different
\ndynamisms of one World-Force.\n<\/p>\n

     Even when a form appears to
\nus to be dead, this force still exists in it in potentiality although
\nits familiar operations of
\nvitality are suspended and about to be permanently ended. Within
\ncertain limits that which is dead can be revived; the
\nhabitual operations, the response, the circulation of active energy can
\nbe restored; and this proves that what we call life was
\nstill there in the body, latent, that is to say, not active in its
\nusual habits, its habits of ordinary physical functioning, its habits
\nof
\nnervous play and response, its habits in the animal of conscious mental
\nresponse. It is difficult to suppose that there is a
\ndistinct entity called life which has gone entirely out of the body and
\ngets into it again when it feels—how, since there is
\nnothing to connect it with the body?—that somebody is stimulating the
\nform. In certain cases, such as catalepsy, we see that
\nthe outward physical signs and operations of life are suspended, but
\nthe mentality is there self-possessed and conscious
\nalthough unable to compel the usual physical responses. Certainly, it
\nis not the fact that the man is physically dead but
\nmentally alive or that life has gone out of the body while mind still
\ninhabits it, but only that the ordinary physical functioning is
\nsuspended, while the mental is still active.<\/p>\n

     
\nSo also, in certain forms of trance, both the physical functionings and the outward mental are suspended, but afterwards
\nresume their operation, in some cases by external stimulation, but more normally by a spontaneous return to activity from
\nwithin. What has really happened is that the surface mind-force has been withdrawn into subconscious mind and the surface
\nlife-force into sub-active life and either the whole man has lapsed into the subconscious existence or else he has withdrawn
\nhis outer life into the subconscious while his inner being has been lifted\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-180<\/p>\n

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

\n

into the superconscient. But the main point for us at present is that the Force, whatever it be, that maintains dynamic energy
\nof life in the body, has indeed suspended its outer operations, but still informs the organised substance. A point comes,
\nhowever, at which it is no longer possible to restore the suspended activities; and this occurs when either such a lesion has
\nbeen inflicted on the body as makes it useless or incapable of the habitual functionings or, in the absence of such lesion,
\nwhen the process of disintegration has begun, that is to say, when the Force that should renew the life-action becomes
\nentirely inert to the pressure of the environing forces with whose mass of stimulation it was wont to keep up a constant
\ninterchange. Even then there is Life in the body, but a Life that is busy only with the process of disintegrating the formed
\nsubstance so that it may escape in its elements and constitute with them new forms. The Will in the universal force that held
\nthe form together, now withdraws from constitution and supports instead a process of dispersion. Not till then is there the
\nreal death of the body.\n<\/p>\n

     Life then is the dynamic
\nplay of a universal Force, a Force in which mental consciousness and
\nnervous vitality are in
\nsome form or at least in their principle always inherent and therefore
\nthey appear and organise themselves in our world in
\nthe forms of Matter. The life-play of this Force manifests itself as an
\ninterchange of stimulation and response to stimulation
\nbetween the different forms it has built up and in which it keeps up
\nits constant dynamic pulsation; each form is constantly
\ntaking into itself and giving out again the breath and energy of the
\ncommon Force; each form feeds upon that and nourishes
\nitself with it by various means, whether indirectly by taking in other
\nforms in which the energy is stored or directly by
\nabsorbing the dynamic discharges it receives from outside. All this is
\nthe play of Life; but it is chiefly recognisable to us
\nwhere the organisation of it is sufficient for us to perceive its more
\noutward and complex movements and especially where
\nit partakes of the nervous type of vital energy which belongs to our
\nown organisation. It is for this reason that we are ready
\nenough to admit life in the plant because obvious phenomena of life are
\nthere,—and this becomes still easier if it can be
\nshown that it manifests symptoms of\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-181<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

nervosity and has a vital system not very different from our own,—but are unwilling to recognise it in the metal and the
\nearth and the chemical atom where these phenomenal developments can with difficulty be detected or do not apparently at
\nall exist.\n<\/p>\n

     Is there any justification
\nfor elevating this distinction into an essential difference? What, for
\ninstance, is the difference
\nbetween life in ourselves and life in the plant? We see that they
\ndiffer, first, in our possession of the power of locomotion
\nwhich has evidently nothing to do with the essence of vitality, and,
\nsecondly, in our possession of conscious sensation which
\nis, so far as we know, not yet evolved in the plant. Our nervous
\nresponses are largely, though by no means always or in their
\nentirety, attended with the mental response of conscious sensation;
\nthey have a value to the mind as well as to the
\nnerve-system and the body agitated by the nervous action. In the plant
\nit would seem that there are symptoms of nervous
\nsensation, including those which would be in us rendered as pleasure
\nand pain, waking and sleep, exhilaration, dullness and
\nfatigue, and the body is inwardly agitated by the nervous action, but
\nthere is no sign of the actual presence of mentally
\nconscious sensation. But sensation is sensation whether mentally
\nconscious or vitally sensitive, and sensation is a form of
\nconsciousness. When the sensitive plant shrinks from a contact, it
\nappears that it is nervously affected, that something in it
\ndislikes the contact and tries to draw away from it; there is, in a
\nword, a subconscious sensation in the plant, just as there
\nare, as we have seen, subconscious operations of the same kind in
\nourselves. In the human system it is quite possible to
\nbring these subconscious perceptions and sensations to the surface long
\nafter they have happened and have ceased to affect
\nthe nervous system; and an ever-increasing mass of evidence has
\nirrefutably established the existence of a subconscious
\nmentality in us much vaster than the conscious. The mere fact that the
\nplant has no superficially vigilant mind which can be
\nawakened to the valuation of its subconscious sensations, makes no
\ndifference to the essential identity of the phenomena.
\nThe phenomena being the same, the thing they manifest must be the same,
\nand that thing is a subconscious mind. And it is
\nquite possible that there is a more rudimentary life operation of the\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-182<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 subconscious sense-mind in the metal, although in the metal there is no bodily agitation corresponding to the nervous
\nresponse; but the absence of bodily agitation makes no essential difference to the presence of vitality in the metal any more
\nthan the absence of bodily locomotion makes an essential difference to the presence of vitality in the plant.\n<\/p>\n

     What happens when the
\nconscious becomes subconscious in the body or the subconscious becomes
\nconscious? The
\nreal difference lies in the absorption of the conscious energy in part
\nof its work, its more or less exclusive concentration. In
\ncertain forms of concentration, what we call the mentality, that is to
\nsay, the Prajnana or apprehensive consciousness almost
\nor quite ceases to act consciously, yet the work of the body and the
\nnerves and the sense-mind goes on unnoticed but
\nconstant and perfect; it has all become subconscious and only in one
\nactivity or chain of activities is the mind luminously
\nactive. While I write, the physical act of writing is largely or
\nsometimes entirely done by the subconscious mind; the body
\nmakes, unconsciously as we say, certain nervous movements; the mind is
\nawake only to the thought with which it is
\noccupied. The whole man indeed may sink into the subconscious, yet
\nhabitual movements implying the action of mind may
\ncontinue, as in many phenomena of sleep; or he may rise into the
\nsuperconscient and yet be active with the subliminal mind
\nin the body, as in certain phenomena of samā<\/font>dhi<\/i> or Yoga trance. It is evident, then, that the difference between plant
\nsensation and our sensation is simply that in the plant the conscious Force manifesting itself in the universe has not yet fully
\nemerged from the sleep of Matter, from the absorption which entirely divides the worker Force from its source of work in
\nthe superconscient knowledge, and therefore does subconsciously what it will do
\nconsciously when it emerges in man from its absorption and begins to wake,
\nthough still indirectly, to its knowledge-self. It does exactly the same things
\nbut in a different way and with a different value in terms of consciousness.<\/p>\n

      It is becoming possible now to
\nconceive that in the very atom there is something that becomes in us a will and
\na desire, there is an attraction and repulsion which, though phenomenally other,\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-183<\/p>\n

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

\n

are essentially the same thing as liking and disliking in ourselves, but are, as we say, inconscient or subconscient. This
\nessence of will and desire are evident everywhere in Nature and, though this is not yet sufficiently envisaged, they are
\nassociated with and indeed the expression of a subconscient or, if you will, inconscient or quite involved sense and
\nintelligence which are equally pervasive. Present in every atom of Matter all this is necessarily present in everything which
\nis formed by the aggregation of those atoms; and they are present in the atom because they are present in the Force which
\nbuilds up and constitutes the atom. That Force is fundamentally the Chit-Tapas or Chit-Shakti of the Vedanta,
\nconsciousness-force, inherent conscious force of conscious-being, which manifests itself as nervous energy full of
\nsubmental sensation in the plant, as desire-sense and desire-will in the primary animal forms, as self-conscious sense and
\nforce in the developing animal, as mental will and knowledge topping all the rest in man. Life is a scale of the universal
\nEnergy in which the transition from inconscience to consciousness is managed; it is an intermediary power of it latent or
\nsubmerged in Matter, delivered by its own force into submental being, delivered finally by the emergence of Mind into the
\nfull possibility of its dynamis.\n<\/p>\n

     Apart from all other
\nconsiderations, this conclusion imposes itself as a logical necessity
\nif we observe even the surface
\nprocess of the emergence in the light of the evolutionary theme. It is
\nself-evident that Life in the plant, even if otherwise organised than
\nin the animal, is yet the same power, marked by birth and growth and
\ndeath, propagation by the seed, death
\nby decay or malady or violence, maintenance by indrawing of nourishing
\nelements from without, dependence on light and
\nheat, productiveness and sterility, even states of sleep and waking,
\nenergy and depression of life-dynamism, passage from
\ninfancy to maturity and age; the plant contains, moreover, the essences
\nof the force of life and is therefore the natural food
\nof animal existences. If it is conceded that it has a nervous system
\nand reaction to stimuli, a beginning or undercurrent of
\nsubmental or purely vital sensations, the identity becomes closer; but
\nstill it remains evidently a stage of life evolution intermediate
\nbetween animal existence and “  inani-<\/p>\n

\nPage-184<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

mate” Matter. This is precisely what must be
\nexpected if Life is a force evolving out of Matter and culminating in
\nMind, and, if it is that, then we are bound to suppose that it is
\nalready there in Matter itself submerged or latent in the
\nmaterial subconsciousness or inconscience. For from where else can it
\nemerge? Evolution of Life in matter supposes a
\nprevious involution of it there, unless we suppose it to be a new
\ncreation magically and unaccountably introduced into
\nNature. If it is that, it must either be a creation out of nothing or a
\nresult of material operations which is not accounted for by
\nanything in the operations themselves or by any element in them which
\nis of a kindred nature; or, conceivably, it may be a
\ndescent from above, from some supraphysical plane above the material
\nuniverse. The two first suppositions can be
\ndismissed as arbitrary conceptions; the last explanation is possible
\nand it is quite conceivable and in the occult view of things
\ntrue that a pressure from some plane of Life above the material
\nuniverse has assisted the emergence of life here. But this
\ndoes not exclude the origin of life from Matter itself as a primary and
\nnecessary movement; for the existence of a
\nLife-world or Life-plane above the material does not of itself lead to
\nthe emergence of Life in matter unless that Life-plane
\nexists as a formative stage in a descent of Being through several
\ngrades or powers of itself into the Inconscience with the
\nresult of an involution of itself with all these powers in Matter for a
\nlater evolution and emergence. Whether signs of this
\nsubmerged life are discoverable, unorganised yet or rudimentary, in
\nmaterial things or there are no such signs, because this
\ninvolved Life is in a full sleep, is not a question of capital
\nimportance. The material Energy that aggregates, forms and
\ndisaggregates\u00b9 <\/font> is the same
\nPower in another grade of itself as that Life-Energy which expresses
\nitself in birth, growth and death, just as by
\nits doing<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    
\n\u00b9 <\/font>Birth,
\ngrowth and death of life are in their outward aspect the same process
\nof aggregation, formation and disaggregation, though more than that in
\ntheir inner process and significance. Even the ensoulment of the body
\nby the psychic being follows, if the occult view of these things is
\ncorrect, a similar outward process, for the
\nsoul as nucleus draws to itself for birth and aggregates the elements
\nof its mental, vital and physical sheaths
\nand their contents, increases these formations in life, and in its
\ndeparting drops and disaggregates again these
\naggregates, drawing back into itself its inner powers, till in rebirth
\nit repeats the original process.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-185<\/p>\n

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

\n

of the works of Intelligence in a somnambulist
\nsubconscience it betrays itself as the same Power that in yet another
\ngrade
\nattains the status of Mind; its very character shows that it contains
\nin itself, though not yet in their characteristic organisation
\nor process, the yet undelivered powers of Mind and Life.\n<\/p>\n

     Life then reveals itself as
\nessentially the same everywhere from the atom to man, the atom
\ncontaining the subconscious
\nstuff and movement of being which are released into consciousness in
\nthe animal, with plant life as a midway stage in the
\nevolution. Life is really a universal operation of Conscious-Force
\nacting subconsciously on and in Matter; it is the operation
\nthat creates, maintains, destroys and re-creates forms or bodies and
\nattempts by play of nerve-force, that is to say, by
\ncurrents of interchange of stimulating energy to awake conscious
\nsensation in those bodies. In this operation there are three
\nstages; the lowest is that in which the vibration is still in the sleep
\nof Matter, entirely subconscious so as to seem wholly
\nmechanical; the middle stage is that in which it becomes capable of a
\nresponse still submental but on the verge of what we
\nknow as consciousness; the highest is that in which life develops
\nconscious mentality in the form of a mentally perceptible
\nsensation which in this transition becomes the basis for the
\ndevelopment of sense-mind and intelligence. It is in the middle
\nstage that we catch the idea of Life as distinguished from Matter and
\nMind, but in reality it is the same in all the stages and
\nalways a middle term between Mind and Matter, constituent of the latter
\nand instinct with the former. It is an operation of
\nConscious-Force which is neither the mere formation of substance nor
\nthe operation of mind with substance and form as its
\nobject of apprehension; it is rather an energising of conscious being
\nwhich is a cause and support of the formation of
\nsubstance and an intermediate source and support of conscious mental
\napprehension. Life, as this intermediate energising of
\nconscious being, liberates into sensitive action and reaction a form of
\nthe creative force of existence which was working
\nsubconsciently or inconsciently, absorbed in its own substance; it
\nsupports and liberates into action the apprehensive
\nconsciousness of existence called mind and gives it a dynamic
\ninstrumentation so that it can work not only on its own forms
\nbut<\/p>\n

 Page-186<\/p>\n

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

\n

on forms of life and matter; it connects too, and supports, as a middle term between them, the mutual commerce of the two,
\nmind and matter. This means of commerce Life provides in the continual currents of her pulsating nerve-energy which carry
\nforce of the form as a sensation to modify Mind and bring back force of Mind as will to modify Matter. It is therefore this
\nnerve-energy which we usually mean when we talk of Life; it is the Prana or Life-force of the Indian system. But
\nnerve-energy is only the form it takes in the animal being; the same Pranic energy is present in all forms down to the atom,
\nsince everywhere it is the same in essence and everywhere it is the same operation of Conscious-Force,—Force supporting
\nand modifying the substantial existence of its own forms, Force with sense and mind secretly active but at first involved in
\nthe form and preparing to emerge, then finally emerging from their involution. This is the whole significance of the
\nomnipresent Life that has manifested and inhabits the material universe.\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-187<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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