{"id":639,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=639"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:24","slug":"06-the-destiny-of-the-individual-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\/06-the-destiny-of-the-individual-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-06_The Destiny of the Individual.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


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

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


\nThe Destiny of the Individual<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By the Ignorance they cross beyond Death and by the Knowledge
\nenjoy Immortality…. <\/font><\/p>\n

                                                                                                                     
\nBy the Non-Birth they cross beyond Death and by the Birth
\nenjoy Immortality. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

    A<\/b>n Omnipresent Reality is
\nthe truth of all life and existence whether absolute or relative,
\nwhether corporeal or incorporeal,
\nwhether animate or inanimate, whether intelligent or unintelligent; and
\nin all its infinitely varying and even constantly opposed
\nself-expressions, from the contradictions nearest to our ordinary
\nexperience to those remotest antinomies which lose
\nthemselves on the verges of the Ineffable, the Reality is one and not a
\nsum or concourse. From that all variations begin, in
\nthat all variations consist, to that all variations return. All
\naffirmations are denied only to lead to a wider affirmation of the
\nsame Reality. All antinomies confront each other in order to recognise
\none Truth in their opposed aspects and embrace by
\nthe way of conflict their mutual Unity. Brahman is the Alpha and the
\nOmega. Brahman is the One besides whom there is
\nnothing else existent. <\/p>\n

   
\nBut this unity is in its nature indefinable. When we seek to envisage
\nit by the mind we are compelled to proceed through
\nan infinite series of conceptions and experiences. And yet in the end
\nwe are obliged to negate our largest conceptions, our
\nmost comprehensive experiences in order to affirm that the Reality
\nexceeds all definitions. We arrive at the formula of the
\nIndian sages, neti neti, “It is not this, It is not that”, there is no
\nexperience by which we can limit It, there is no conception
\nby which It can be defined. <\/p>\n

   
\nAn Unknowable which appears to us in many states and attributes of
\nbeing, in many forms of consciousness, in many
\nactivities of energy, this is what Mind can ultimately say about the
\nexistence which we ourselves are and which we see in
\nall that is presented to our thought and senses. It is in and through
\nthose\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n       
\n\u00b9<\/font> Verses 11, 14.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-33<\/p>\n

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

\n

states, those forms, those activities that we have to approach and know the Unknowable. But if in our haste to arrive at a
\nUnity that our mind can seize and hold, if in our insistence to confine the Infinite in our embrace we identify the Reality with
\nany one definable state of being however pure and eternal, with any particular attribute however general and
\ncomprehensive, with any fixed formulation of consciousness however vast in its scope, with any energy or activity however
\nboundless its application, and if we exclude all the rest, then our thoughts sin against Its unknowableness and arrive not at a
\ntrue unity but at a division of the Indivisible.\n<\/p>\n

     So strongly was this truth
\nperceived in the ancient times that the Vedantic Seers, even after they
\nhad arrived at the
\ncrowning idea, the convincing experience of Sachchidananda as the
\nhighest positive expression of the Reality to our
\nconsciousness, erected in their speculations or went on in their
\nperceptions to an Asat, a Non-Being beyond, which is not the
\nultimate existence, the pure consciousness, the infinite bliss of which
\nall our experiences are the expression or the
\ndeformation. If at all an existence, a consciousness, a bliss, it is
\nbeyond the highest and purest positive form of these things
\nthat here we can possess and other therefore than what here we know by
\nthese names. Buddhism, somewhat arbitrarily
\ndeclared by the theologians to be an un-Vedic doctrine because it
\nrejected the authority of the Scriptures, yet goes back to
\nthis essentially Vedantic conception. Only, the positive and synthetic
\nteaching of the Upanishads beheld Sat and Asat not as
\nopposites destructive of each other, but as the last antinomy through
\nwhich we look up to the Unknowable. And in the
\ntransactions of our positive consciousness, even Unity has to make its
\naccount with Multiplicity; for the Many also are
\nBrahman. It is by Vidya, the Knowledge of the Oneness, that we know
\nGod; without it Avidya, the relative and multiple
\nconsciousness, is a night of darkness and a disorder of Ignorance. Yet
\nif we exclude the field of that Ignorance, if we get rid
\nof Avidya as if it were a thing non-existent and unreal, then Knowledge
\nitself becomes a sort of obscurity and a source of
\nimperfection. We become as men blinded by a light so that we can no
\nlonger see the field which that light illumines.\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-34<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

    Such is the teaching, calm, wise
\nand clear, of our most ancient sages. They had the patience and the
\nstrength to find
\nand to know; they had also the clarity and humility to admit the
\nlimitation of our knowledge. They perceived the borders
\nwhere it has to pass into something beyond itself. It was a later
\nimpatience of heart and mind, vehement attraction to an
\nultimate bliss or high masterfulness of pure experience and trenchant
\nintelligence which sought the One to deny the Many
\nand because it had received the breath of the heights scorned or
\nrecoiled from the secret of the depths. But the steady eye
\nof the ancient wisdom perceived that to know God really, it must know
\nHim everywhere equally and without distinction,
\nconsidering and valuing but not mastered by the oppositions through
\nwhich He shines.\n<\/p>\n

     We will put aside then the
\ntrenchant distinctions of a partial logic which declares that because
\nthe One is the reality, the
\nMany are an illusion, and because the Absolute is Sat, the one
\nexistence, the relative is Asat and non-existent. If in the
\nMany we pursue insistently the One, it is to return with the
\nbenediction and the revelation of the One confirming itself in the
\nMany.\n<\/p>\n

     We will guard ourselves
\nalso against the excessive importance that the mind attaches to
\nparticular points of view at
\nwhich it arrives in its more powerful expansions and transitions. The
\nperception of the spiritualised mind that the universe is
\nan unreal dream can have no more absolute a value to us than the
\nperception of the materialised mind that God and the
\nBeyond are an illusory idea. In the one case the mind, habituated only
\nto the evidence of the senses and associating reality
\nwith corporeal fact, is either unaccustomed to use other means of
\nknowledge or unable to extend the notion of reality to a
\nsupra-physical experience. In the other case the same mind, passing
\nbeyond to the overwhelming experience of an
\nincorporeal reality, simply transfers the same inability and the same
\nconsequent sense of dream or hallucination to the
\nexperience of the senses. But we perceive also the truth that these two
\nconceptions disfigure. It is true that for this world of
\nform in which we are set for our self-realisation, nothing is entirely
\nvalid until it has possessed itself of our physical
\nconsciousness and manifested on the lowest levels in harmony with its
\nmanifestation on the highest
\nsum-<\/p>\n

\n     Page-35<\/p>\n

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

\n

mits. It is equally true that form and matter asserting themselves as a self-existent reality are an illusion of Ignorance.
\nForm and matter can be valid only as shape and substance of manifestation for the incorporeal and immaterial. They are in
\ntheir nature an act of divine consciousness, in their aim the representation of a status of the Spirit.<\/p>\n

     In other words, if Brahman
\nhas entered into form and represented Its being in material substance,
\nit can only be to
\nenjoy self-manifestation in the figures of relative and phenomenal
\nconsciousness. Brahman is in this world to represent Itself
\nin the values of Life. Life exists in Brahman in order to discover
\nBrahman in itself. Therefore man’s importance in the world
\nis that he gives to it that development of consciousness in which its
\ntransfiguration by a perfect self-discovery becomes
\npossible. To fulfil God in life is man’s manhood. He starts from the
\nanimal vitality and its activities, but a divine existence is
\nhis objective.\n<\/p>\n

     But as in Thought, so in
\nLife, the true rule of self-realisation is a progressive comprehension.
\nBrahman expresses Itself
\nin many successive forms of consciousness, successive in their relation
\neven if coexistent in being or coeval in Time, and
\nLife in its self-unfolding must also rise to ever-new provinces of its
\nown being. But if in passing from one domain to another
\nwe renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new
\nattainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast
\naway or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject
\nthe mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual,
\nwe do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His
\nself-manifestation. We do not become perfect, but only shift
\nthe field of our imperfection or at most attain a limited altitude.
\nHowever high we may climb, even though it be to the
\nNon-Being itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon
\nthe lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the light of the
\nhigher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature. Brahman
\nis integral and unifies many states of consciousness at
\na time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become
\nintegral and all-embracing.<\/p>\n

     Besides the recoil from the
\nphysical life, there is another exaggeration of the ascetic impulse
\nwhich this ideal of an
\nintegral <\/p>\n

\nPage-36<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

manifestation corrects. The nodus of Life is the
\nrelation between three general forms of consciousness, the individual,
\nthe
\nuniversal and the transcendent or supracosmic. In the ordinary
\ndistribution of life’s activities the individual regards himself as
\na separate being included in the universe and both as dependent upon
\nthat which transcends alike the universe and the
\nindividual. It is to this Transcendence that we give currently the name
\nof God, who thus becomes to our conceptions not so
\nmuch supracosmic as extracosmic. The belittling and degradation of both
\nthe individual and the universe is a natural
\nconsequence of this division: the cessation of both cosmos and
\nindividual by the attainment of the Transcendence would be,
\nlogically, its supreme conclusion.\n<\/p>\n

     The integral view of the
\nunity of Brahman avoids these consequences. Just as we need not give up
\nthe bodily life to
\nattain to the mental and spiritual, so we can arrive at a point of view
\nwhere the preservation of the individual activities is no
\nlonger inconsistent with our comprehension of the cosmic consciousness
\nor our attainment to the transcendent and supracosmic. For the
\nWorld-Transcendent embraces the universe, is one with it and does not
\nexclude it, even as the
\nuniverse embraces the individual, is one with him and does not exclude
\nhim. The individual is a centre of the whole universal
\nconsciousness; the universe is a form and definition which is occupied
\nby the entire immanence of the Formless and
\nIndefinable.\n<\/p>\n

     This is always the true
\nrelation, veiled from us by our ignorance or our wrong consciousness of
\nthings. When we attain
\nto knowledge or right consciousness, nothing essential in the eternal
\nrelation is changed, but only the inview and the outview
\nfrom the individual centre is profoundly modified and consequently also
\nthe spirit and effect of its activity. The individual is
\nstill necessary to the action of the Transcendent in the universe and
\nthat action in him does not cease to be possible by his
\nillumination. On the contrary, since the conscious manifestation of the
\nTranscendent in the individual is the means by which
\nthe collective, the universal is also to become conscious of itself,
\nthe continuation of the illumined individual in the action of
\nthe world is an imperative need of the world-play. If his inexorable
\nremoval through<\/p>\n

     
\nPage-37<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

the very act of illumination is the law, then the world is condemned to remain eternally the scene of unredeemed darkness,
\ndeath and suffering. And such a world can only be a ruthless ordeal or a mechanical illusion.<\/p>\n

     
\nIt is so that ascetic philosophy tends to conceive it. But individual salvation can have no real sense if existence in the
\ncosmos is itself an illusion. In the Monistic view the individual soul is one with the Supreme, its sense of separateness an
\nignorance, escape from the sense of separateness and identity with the Supreme its salvation. But who then profits by this
\nescape? Not the supreme Self, for it is supposed to be always and inalienably free, still, silent, pure. Not the world, for that
\nremains constantly in the bondage and is not freed by the escape of any individual soul from the universal Illusion. It is the
\nindividual soul itself which effects its supreme good by escaping from the sorrow and the division into the peace and the
\nbliss. There would seem then to be some kind of reality of the individual soul as distinct from the world and from the
\nSupreme even in the event of freedom and illumination. But for the Illusionist the individual soul is an illusion and
\nnon-existent except in the inexplicable mystery of Maya. Therefore we arrive at the escape of an illusory non-existent soul
\nfrom an illusory non-existent bondage in an illusory non-existent world as the supreme good which that non-existent soul has
\nto pursue! For this is the last word of the Knowledge, “There is none bound, none freed, none seeking to be free.” Vidya
\nturns out to be as much a part of the Phenomenal as Avidya; Maya meets us even
\nin our escape and laughs at the triumphant logic which seemed to cut the knot of
\nher mystery. <\/p>\n

     These things, it is said, cannot be
\nexplained; they are the initial and insoluble miracle. They are for us a
\npractical fact and have to be accepted. We have to escape by a confusion out of
\na confusion. The individual soul can only cut the knot of ego by a supreme act
\nof egoism, an exclusive attachment to its own individual salvation which amounts
\nto an absolute assertion of its separate existence in Maya. We are led to regard
\nother souls as if they were figments of our mind and their salvation
\nunimportant, our soul alone as if it were entirely real and its salvation the
\none thing that matters. I come to regard my personal escape from bondage <\/p>\n

\nPage-38<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

as real while other souls who are equally myself remain behind in the bondage!<\/p>\n

     It is only when we put
\naside all irreconcilable antinomy between Self and the world that
\nthings fall into their place by a
\nless paradoxical logic. We must accept the many-sidedness of the
\nmanifestation even while we assert the unity of the
\nManifested. And is not this after all the truth that pursues us
\nwherever we cast our eyes, unless seeing we choose not to
\nsee? Is not this after all the perfectly natural and simple mystery of
\nConscious Being that it is bound neither by its unity nor
\nby its multiplicity? It is “absolute” in the sense of being entirely
\nfree to include and arrange in its own way all possible terms
\nof its self-expression. There is none bound, none freed, none seeking
\nto be free,—for always That is a perfect freedom. It is
\nso free that it is not even bound by its liberty. It can play at being
\nbound without incurring a real bondage. Its chain is a
\nself-imposed convention, its limitation in the ego a transitional
\ndevice that it uses in order to repeat its transcendence and
\nuniversality in the scheme of the individual Brahman.\n<\/p>\n

     The Transcendent, the
\nSupracosmic is absolute and free in itself beyond Time and Space and
\nbeyond the conceptual
\nopposites of finite and infinite. But in cosmos it uses its liberty of
\nself-formation, its Maya, to make a scheme of itself in the
\ncomplementary terms of unity and multiplicity, and this multiple unity
\nit establishes in the three conditions of the
\nsubconscient, the conscient and the superconscient. For actually we see
\nthat the Many objectivised in form in our material
\nuniverse start with a subconscious unity which expresses itself openly
\nenough in cosmic action and cosmic substance, but of
\nwhich they are not themselves superficially aware. In the conscient the
\nego becomes the superficial point at which the
\nawareness of unity can emerge; but it applies its perception of unity
\nto the form and surface action and, failing to take
\naccount of all that operates behind, fails also to realise that it is
\nnot only one in itself but one with others. This limitation of
\nthe universal “I” in the divided ego-sense constitutes our imperfect
\nindividualised personality. But when the ego transcends
\nthe personal consciousness, it begins to include and be overpowered by
\nthat which is to us superconscious; it becomes<\/p>\n

\n Page-39<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

aware of the cosmic unity and enters into the Transcendent Self which here cosmos expresses by a multiple oneness.<\/p>\n

     The liberation of the
\nindividual soul is therefore the keynote of the definite divine action;
\nit is the primary divine
\nnecessity and the pivot on which all else turns. It is the point of
\nLight at which the intended complete self-manifestation in
\nthe Many begins to emerge. But the liberated soul extends its
\nperception of unity horizontally as well as vertically. Its unity
\nwith the transcendent One is incomplete without its unity with the
\ncosmic Many. And that lateral unity translates itself by a
\nmultiplication, a reproduction of its own liberated state at other
\npoints in the Multiplicity. The divine soul reproduces itself in
\nsimilar liberated souls as the animal reproduces itself in similar
\nbodies. Therefore, whenever even a single soul is liberated,
\nthere is a tendency to an extension and even to an outburst of the same
\ndivine self-consciousness in other individual souls of
\nour terrestrial humanity and,—who knows?—perhaps even beyond the
\nterrestrial consciousness. Where shall we fix the
\nlimit of that extension? Is it altogether a legend which says of the
\nBuddha that as he stood on the threshold of Nirvana, of
\nthe Non-Being, his soul turned back and took the vow never to make the
\nirrevocable crossing so long as there was a single
\nbeing upon earth undelivered from the knot of the suffering, from the
\nbondage of the ego?\n<\/p>\n

     But we can attain to the
\nhighest without blotting ourselves out from the cosmic extension.
\nBrahman preserves always
\nIts two terms of liberty within and of formation without, of expression
\nand of freedom from the expression. We also, being
\nThat, can attain to the same divine self-possession. The harmony of the
\ntwo tendencies is the condition of all life that aims at
\nbeing really divine. Liberty pursued by exclusion of the thing exceeded
\nleads along the path of negation to the refusal of that
\nwhich God has accepted. Activity pursued by absorption in the act and
\nthe energy leads to an inferior affirmation and the
\ndenial of the Highest. But what God combines and synthetises, wherefore
\nshould man insist on divorcing? To be perfect as
\nHe is perfect is the condition of His integral attainment.\n<\/p>\n

     Through Avidya, the
\nMultiplicity, lies our path out of the transitional egoistic
\nself-expression in which death and
\nsuffering\n<\/p>\n

  
\n  Page-40<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

predominate; through Vidya consenting with Avidya by the perfect sense of oneness even in that multiplicity, we enjoy
\nintegrally the immortality and the beatitude. By attaining to the Unborn beyond all becoming we are liberated from this lower
\nbirth and death; by accepting the Becoming freely as the Divine, we invade mortality with the immortal beatitude and
\nbecome luminous centres of its conscious self-expression in humanity.<\/p>\n

\nPage-41<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER V The Destiny of the Individual   By the Ignorance they cross beyond Death and by the Knowledge enjoy Immortality….                                                                                                                       By the Non-Birth…<\/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-639","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\/639","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=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}