{"id":644,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=644"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:26","slug":"27-the-ascending-series-of-substance-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\/27-the-ascending-series-of-substance-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-27_The Ascending Series of Substance .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


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

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


\nThe Ascending Series of Substance<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

There is a self that is of the essence of Matter—there is another inner self of Life that fills the other—there is another
\ninner self of Mind—there is another inner self of Truth-Knowledge—there is another inner self of Bliss. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

They climb Indra like a ladder. As one mounts peak after peak, there becomes clear the much that has still to be done.
\nIndra brings consciousness of That as the goal. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like a hawk, a kite He settles on the Vessel and upbears it; in His stream of movement He discovers the Rays, for He
\ngoes bearing his weapons: He cleaves to the ocean surge of the waters; a great King, He declares the fourth status.
\nLike a mortal purifying his body, like a war-horse galloping to the conquest of riches He pours calling through all the
\nsheath and enters these vessels. <\/font><\/p>\n

Rig Veda.\u00b2<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

     <\/font>I<\/font><\/b>F WE<\/font> consider what it is that most represents to us the materiality of Matter, we shall see that it is its aspects of solidity,
\ntangibility, increasing resistance, firm response to the touch of Sense. Substance seems more truly material and real in
\nproportion as it presents to us a solid resistance and by virtue of that resistance a durability of sensible form on which our
\nconsciousness can dwell; in proportion as it is more subtle, less densely resistant and enduringly seizable by the sense, it
\nappears to us less material. This attitude of our ordinary consciousness towards Matter is a symbol of the essential object
\nfor which Matter has been created. Substance passes into the material status in order that it may present to the
\nconsciousness which has to deal with it durable, firmly seizable images on which the mind can rest and base its operations
\nand which the Life can handle with at least a relative surety of permanence in the form upon which it works. Therefore in
\nthe ancient Vedic formula Earth, type of the more solid states of substance, was accepted as the symbolic name of the
\nmaterial principle. Therefore, too, touch or contact is for us the essential basis of Sense; all other physical senses,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

        
\n\u00b9<\/font> II. 1-5.      \u00b2<\/font>
\nI. 10. 1, 2; IX. 96. 19, 20.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage- 252<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

taste, smell, hearing, sight are based upon a series of more and more subtle and indirect contacts between the percipient and
\nthe perceived. Equally, in the Sankhya classification of the five elemental states of Substance from ether to earth, we see
\nthat their characteristic is a constant progression from the more subtle to the less subtle so that at the summit we have the
\nsubtle vibrations of the ethereal and at the base the grosser density of the earthly or solid elemental condition. Matter
\ntherefore is the last stage known to us in the progress of pure substance towards a basis of cosmic relation in which the first
\nword shall be not spirit but form, and form in its utmost possible development of concentration, resistance, durably gross
\nimage, mutual impenetrability,—the culminating point of distinction, separation and division. This is the intention and
\ncharacter of the material universe; it is the formula of accomplished divisibility.<\/p>\n

     And if there is, as there
\nmust be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of
\nsubstance from Matter to
\nSpirit, it must be marked by a progressive diminution of these
\ncapacities most characteristic of the physical principle and a
\nprogressive increase of the opposite characteristics which will lead us
\nto the formula of pure spiritual self-extension. This is
\nto say that they must be marked by less and less bondage to the form,
\nmore and more subtlety and flexibility of substance
\nand force, more and more interfusion, interpenetration, power of
\nassimilation, power of interchange, power of variation,
\ntransmutation, unification. Drawing away from durability of form, we
\ndraw towards eternity of essence; drawing away from
\nour poise in the persistent separation and resistance of physical
\nMatter, we draw near to the highest divine poise in the
\ninfinity, unity and indivisibility of Spirit. Between gross substance
\nand pure spirit substance this must be the fundamental
\nantinomy. In Matter Chit or Conscious-Force masses itself more and more
\nto resist and stand out against other masses of
\nthe same Conscious-Force; in substance of Spirit pure consciousness
\nimages itself freely in its sense of itself with an
\nessential indivisibility and a constant unifying interchange as the
\nbasic formula even of the most diversifying play of its own
\nForce. Between these\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-253<\/p>\n

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

\n

two poles there is the possibility of an infinite gradation.<\/p>\n

     
\nThese considerations become of great importance when we consider the
\npossible relation between the divine life and
\nthe divine mind of the perfected human soul and the very gross and
\nseemingly undivine body or formula of physical being in
\nwhich we actually dwell. That formula is the result of a certain fixed
\nrelation between sense and substance from which the
\nmaterial universe has started. But as this relation is not the only
\npossible relation, so that formula is not the only possible
\nformula. Life and mind may manifest themselves in another relation to
\nsubstance and work out different physical laws, other
\nand larger habits, even a different substance of body with a freer
\naction of the sense, a freer action of the life, a freer action
\nof the mind. Death, division, mutual resistance and exclusion between
\nembodied masses of the same conscious life-force
\nare the formula of our physical existence; the narrow limitation of the
\nplay of the senses, the determination within a small
\ncircle of the field, duration and power of the life-workings, the
\nobscuration, lame movement, broken and bounded functioning
\nof the mind are the yoke which that formula expressed in the animal
\nbody has imposed upon the higher principles. But these
\nthings are not the sole possible rhythm of cosmic Nature. There are
\nsuperior states, there are higher worlds, and if the law
\nof these can by any progress of man and by any liberation of our
\nsubstance from its present imperfections be imposed on
\nthis sensible form and instrument of our being, then there may be even
\nhere a physical working of divine mind and sense, a
\nphysical working of divine life in the human frame and even the
\nevolution upon earth of something that we may call a
\ndivinely human body. The body of man also may some day come by its
\ntransfiguration; the Earth-Mother too may reveal in
\nus her godhead.\n<\/p>\n

     Even within the formula of
\nthe physical cosmos there is an ascending series in the scale of Matter
\nwhich leads us from
\nthe more to the less dense, from the less to the more subtle. Where we
\nreach the highest term of that series, the most
\nsupra-ethereal subtlety of material substance or formulation of Force,
\nwhat lies beyond? Not a Nihil, not a void; for there is
\nno such thing as absolute void or real nullity and what we call by that\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-254<\/p>\n

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

\n

name is simply something beyond the grasp of our sense, our mind or our most subtle consciousness. Nor is it true that there
\nis nothing beyond, or that some ethereal substance of Matter is the eternal beginning; for we know that Matter and material
\nForce are only a last result of a pure Substance and pure Force in which consciousness is luminously self-aware and
\nself-possessing and not as in Matter lost to itself in an inconscient sleep and an inert motion. What then is there between this
\nmaterial substance and that pure substance? For we do not leap from the one to the other, we do not pass at once from the
\ninconscient to absolute consciousness. There must be and there are grades between inconscient substance and utterly
\nself-conscious self-extension, as between the principle of Matter and the principle of Spirit.<\/p>\n

     All who have at all sounded
\nthose abysses are agreed and bear witness to this fact that there are a
\nseries of subtler and
\nsubtler formulations of substance which escape from and go beyond the
\nformula of the material universe. Without going
\ndeeply into matters which are too occult and difficult for our present
\ninquiry, we may say, adhering to the system on which
\nwe have based ourselves, that these gradations of substance, in one
\nimportant aspect of their formulation in series, can be
\nseen to correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind,
\nSupermind and that other higher divine triplicity of
\nSachchidananda. In other words, we find that substance in its ascension
\nbases itself upon each of these principles and
\nmakes itself successively a characteristic vehicle for the dominating
\ncosmic self-expression of each in their ascending
\nseries.\n<\/p>\n

     Here in the material world
\neverything is founded upon the formula of material substance. Sense,
\nLife, Thought found
\nthemselves upon what the ancients called the Earth-Power, start from
\nit, obey its laws, accommodate their workings to this
\nfundamental principle, limit themselves by its possibilities and, if
\nthey would develop others, have even in that development to
\ntake account of the original formula, its purpose and its demand upon
\nthe divine evolution. The sense works through physical
\ninstruments, the life through a physical nerve-system and vital organs,
\nthe mind has to build its operations upon a<\/p>\n

\n Page-255<\/p>\n

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

\n

corporeal basis and use a material instrumentation, even its pure mental workings have to take the data so derived as a field
\nand as the stuff upon which it works. There is no necessity in the essential nature of mind, sense, life that they should be so
\nlimited: for the physical sense-organs are not the creators of sense-perceptions, but themselves the creation, the instruments
\nand here a necessary convenience of the cosmic sense; the nervous system and vital organs are not the creators of life’s
\naction and reaction, but themselves the creation, the instruments and here a necessary convenience of the cosmic
\nLife-force; the brain is not the creator of thought, but itself the creation, the instrument and here a necessary convenience of
\nthe cosmic Mind. The necessity then is not absolute, but teleological; it is the result of a divine cosmic Will in the material
\nuniverse which intends to posit here a physical relation between sense and its object, establishes here a material formula and
\nlaw of Conscious-Force and creates by it physical images of Conscious-Being to serve as the initial, dominating and
\ndetermining fact of the world in which we live. It is not a fundamental law of being, but a constructive principle necessitated
\nby the intention of the Spirit to evolve in a world of Matter.<\/p>\n

     In the next grade of
\nsubstance the initial, dominating, determining fact is no longer
\nsubstantial form and force, but life
\nand conscious desire. Therefore the world beyond this material plane
\nmust be a world based upon a conscious cosmic vital
\nEnergy, a force of vital seeking and a force of Desire and their
\nself-expression and not upon an inconscient or subconscient
\nwill taking the form of a material force and energy. All the forms,
\nbodies, forces, life-movements, sense-movements,
\nthought-movements, developments, culminations, self-fulfilments of that
\nworld must be dominated and determined by this
\ninitial fact of Conscious-Life to which Matter and Mind must subject
\nthemselves, must start from that, base themselves upon
\nthat, be limited or enlarged by its laws, powers, capacities,
\nlimitations; and if Mind there seeks to develop yet higher
\npossibilities, still it must then too take account of the original
\nvital formula of desire-force, its purpose and its demand upon
\nthe divine manifestation.<\/p>\n

\n Page-256<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

     
\nSo too with the higher gradations. The next in the series must be
\ngoverned by the dominating and determining factor of
\nMind. Substance there must be subtle and flexible enough to assume the
\nshapes directly imposed upon it by Mind, to obey its
\noperations, to subordinate itself to its demand for self-expression and
\nself-fulfilment. The relations of sense and substance
\ntoo must have a corresponding subtlety and flexibility and must be
\ndetermined, not by the relations of physical organ with
\nphysical object, but of Mind with the subtler substance upon which it
\nworks. The life of such a world would be the servant
\nof Mind in a sense of which our weak mental operations and our limited,
\ncoarse and rebellious vital faculties can have no
\nadequate conception. There Mind dominates as the original formula, its
\npurpose prevails, its demand overrides all others in
\nthe law of the divine manifestation. At a yet higher reach
\nSupermind—or, intermediately, principles touched by it—or, still
\nhigher, a pure Bliss, a pure Conscious Power or pure Being replace Mind
\nas the dominant principle, and we enter into those
\nranges of cosmic existence which to the old Vedic seers were the worlds
\nof illuminated divine existence and the foundation
\nof what they termed Immortality and which later Indian religions imaged
\nin figures like the Brahmaloka or Goloka, some
\nsupreme self-expression of the Being as Spirit in which the soul
\nliberated into its highest perfection possesses the infinity and
\nbeatitude of the eternal Godhead.\n<\/p>\n

     The principle which
\nunderlies this continually ascending experience and vision uplifted
\nbeyond the material formulation
\nof things is that all cosmic existence is a complex harmony and does
\nnot finish with the limited range of consciousness in
\nwhich the ordinary human mind and life is content to be imprisoned.
\nBeing, consciousness, force, substance descend and
\nascend a many-runged ladder on each step of which being has a vaster
\nself-extension, consciousness a wider sense of its
\nown range and largeness and joy, force a greater intensity and a more
\nrapid and blissful capacity, substance gives a more
\nsubtle, plastic, buoyant and flexible rendering of its primal reality.
\nFor the more subtle is also the more powerful,—one might
\nsay, the more truly concrete; it is less bound than the gross, it has a\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-257<\/p>\n

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

\n

greater permanence in its being along with a greater
\npotentiality, plasticity and range in its becoming. Each plateau of the
\nhill
\nof being gives to our widening experience a higher plane of our
\nconsciousness and a richer world for our existence. <\/p>\n

    But how does this ascending
\nseries affect the possibilities of our material existence? It would not
\naffect them at all if
\neach plane of consciousness, each world of existence, each grade of
\nsubstance, each degree of cosmic force were cut off
\nentirely from that which precedes and that which follows it. But the opposite is the truth; the manifestation of the Spirit is a
\ncomplex weft and in the design and pattern of one principle all the others enter as elements of the spiritual whole. Our
\nmaterial world is the result of all the others, for the other principles have all descended into Matter to create the physical
\nuniverse, and every particle of what we call Matter contains all of them implicit in itself; their secret action, as we have
\nseen, is involved in every moment of its existence and every movement of its activity. And as Matter is the last word of the
\ndescent, so it is also the first word of the ascent; as the powers of all these planes, worlds, grades, degrees are involved in
\nthe material existence, so are they all capable of evolution out of it. It is for this reason that material being does not begin
\nand end with gases and chemical compounds and physical forces and movements, with nebulae and suns and earths, but
\nevolves life, evolves mind, must evolve eventually Supermind and the higher degrees of the spiritual existence. Evolution
\ncomes by the unceasing pressure of the supra-material planes on the material compelling it to deliver out of itself their
\nprinciples and powers which might conceivably otherwise have slept imprisoned in the rigidity of the material formula. This
\nwould even so have been improbable, since their presence there implies a purpose of deliverance; but still this necessity
\nfrom below is actually very much aided by a kindred superior pressure.<\/p>\n

     Nor can this evolution end
\nwith the first meagre formulation of life, mind, Supermind, spirit
\nconceded to these higher
\npowers by the reluctant power of Matter. For as they evolve, as they
\nawake, as they become more active and avid of their
\nown potentialities, the pressure on them of the superior planes,
\na 
\npres-<\/p>\n

\nPage-258<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

sure involved in the existence and close connection and interdependence of the worlds, must also increase in insistence,
\npower and effectiveness. Not only must these principles manifest from below in a qualified and restricted emergence, but
\nalso from above they must descend in their characteristic power and full possible efflorescence into the material being; the
\nmaterial creature must open to a wider and wider play of their activities in Matter, and all that is needed is a fit receptacle,
\nmedium, instrument. That is provided for in the body, life and consciousness of man.<\/p>\n

     Certainly, if that body,
\nlife and consciousness were limited to the possibilities of the gross
\nbody which are all that our
\nphysical senses and physical mentality accept, there would be a very
\nnarrow term for this evolution, and the human being
\ncould not hope to accomplish anything essentially greater than his
\npresent achievement. But this body, as ancient occult
\nscience discovered, is not the whole even of our physical being; this
\ngross density is not all of our substance. The oldest Vedantic
\nknowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the
\nvital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific
\nand to each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of
\nour substance, a sheath as it was called in the ancient
\nfigurative language. A later psychology found that these five sheaths
\nof our substance were the material of three bodies,
\ngross physical, subtle and causal, in all of which the soul actually
\nand simultaneously dwells, although here and now we are
\nsuperficially conscious only of the material vehicle. But it is
\npossible to become conscious in our other bodies as well and it
\nis in fact the opening up of the veil between them and consequently
\nbetween our physical, psychical and ideal personalities
\nwhich is the cause of those “psychic” and “occult” phenomena that are
\nnow beginning to be increasingly though yet too little
\nand too clumsily examined, even while they are far too much exploited.
\nThe old Hathayogins and Tantriks of India had long
\nago reduced this matter of the higher human life and body to a science.
\nThey had discovered six nervous centres of life in
\nthe dense body corresponding to six centres of life and mind faculty in
\nthe subtle, and they had found out subtle physical
\nexercises by which these centres, now closed, could be\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-259<\/p>\n

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

\n

opened up, the higher psychical life proper to our subtle existence entered into by man, and even the physical and vital
\nobstructions to the experience of the ideal and spiritual being could be destroyed. It is significant that one prominent result
\nclaimed by the Hathayogins for their practices and verified in many respects was a control of the physical life-force which
\nliberated them from some of the ordinary habits or so-called laws thought by physical science to be inseparable from life in
\nthe body.<\/p>\n

     
\nBehind all these terms of ancient psycho-physical science lies the one
\ngreat fact and law of our being that whatever be
\nits temporary poise of form, consciousness, power in this material
\nevolution, there must be behind it and there is a greater, a
\ntruer existence of which this is only the external result and
\nphysically sensible aspect. Our substance does not end with the
\nphysical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base,
\nthe material starting-point. As there are behind our
\nwaking mentality vaster ranges of consciousness subconscient and
\nsuperconscient to it of which we become sometimes
\nabnormally aware, so there are behind our gross physical being other
\nand subtler grades of substance with a finer law and a
\ngreater power which support the denser body and which can by our
\nentering into the ranges of consciousness belonging to
\nthem be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter and
\nsubstitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of
\nbeing for the grossness and limitation of our present physical life and
\nimpulses and habits. If that be so, then the evolution of
\na nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of
\nanimal birth and life and death, of difficult alimentation
\nand facility of disorder and disease and subjection to poor and
\nunsatisfied vital cravings ceases to have the appearance of a
\ndream and chimera and becomes a possibility founded upon a rational and
\nphilosophic truth which is in accordance with all
\nthe rest that we have hitherto known, experienced or been able to think
\nout about the overt and secret truth of our
\nexistence.\n<\/p>\n

     So it should rationally be;
\nfor the uninterrupted series of the principles of our being and their
\nclose mutual connection is
\ntoo evident for it to be possible that one of them should be condemned
\nand cut off while the others are capable of a divine\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-260<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

liberation. The ascent of man from the physical to the supramental must open out the possibility of a corresponding ascent in
\nthe grades of substance to that ideal or causal body which is proper to our supramental being, and the conquest of the lower
\nprinciples by Supermind and its liberation of them into a divine life and a divine mentality must also render possible a
\nconquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance. And this means the evolution not
\nonly of an untrammelled consciousness, a mind and sense not shut up in the walls of the physical ego or limited to the poor
\nbasis of knowledge given by the physical organs of sense, but a life-power liberated more and more from its mortal
\nlimitations, a physical life fit for a divine inhabitant and,—in the sense not of attachment or of restriction to our present
\ncorporeal frame but an exceeding of the law of the physical body,—the conquest of death, an earthly immortality. For from
\nthe divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic
\nSoma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he
\nenters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the
\nbeing and nature.<\/p>\n

\n     
\nPage-261<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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