{"id":646,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=646"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:27","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:27","slug":"05-reality-omnipresent-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\/05-reality-omnipresent-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-05_Reality Omnipresent .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nC<\/font>HAPTER <\/font> IV<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 
\n\t\t
\n\t\tReality Omnipresent<\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

If one knows Him as Brahman the Non-Being, he becomes merely the non-existent. If one knows that Brahman Is,
\nthen is he known as the real in existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

 <\/p>\n

    S<\/b>ince, then, we admit both the claim of the pure Spirit to
\nmanifest in us its absolute freedom and the claim of universal Matter to be the
\nmould and condition of our manifestation, we have to find a truth that can
\nentirely reconcile these antagonists and can give to both their due portion in
\nLife and their due justification in Thought, amercing neither of its rights,
\ndenying in neither the sovereign truth from which even its errors, even the
\nexclusiveness of its exaggerations draw so constant a strength. For wherever
\nthere is an extreme statement that makes such a powerful appeal to the human
\nmind, we may be sure that we are standing in the presence of no mere error,
\nsuperstition or hallucination, but of some sovereign fact disguised which
\ndemands our fealty and will avenge itself if denied or excluded. Herein lies the
\ndifficulty of a satisfying solution and the source of that lack of finality
\nwhich pursues all mere compromises between Spirit and Matter. A compromise is a
\nbargain, a transaction of interests between two conflicting powers; it is not a
\ntrue reconciliation. True reconciliation proceeds always by a mutual
\ncomprehension leading to some sort of intimate oneness. It is therefore through
\nthe utmost possible unification of Spirit and Matter that we shall best arrive
\nat their reconciling truth and so at some strongest foundation for a reconciling
\npractice in the inner life of the individual and his outer existence. <\/p>\n

     We have found already in the cosmic
\nconsciousness a meeting-place where Matter becomes real to Spirit, Spirit
\nbecomes real to Matter. For in the cosmic consciousness Mind and Life are
\nintermediaries and no longer, as they seem in the ordinary egoistic mentality,
\nagents of separation, fomenters of an artificial quarrel <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

     \u00b9<\/font>
\nII. 6.                                                                                                                                          <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-25<\/p>\n

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

\n

between the positive and negative principles of the same unknowable Reality. Attaining to the cosmic consciousness Mind,
\nilluminated by a knowledge that perceives at once the truth of Unity and the truth of Multiplicity and seizes on the formulae
\nof their interaction, finds its own discords at once explained and reconciled by the divine Harmony; satisfied, it consents to
\nbecome the agent of that supreme union between God and Life towards which we tend. Matter reveals itself to the realising
\nthought and to the subtilised senses as the figure and body of Spirit,—Spirit in its self-formative extension. Spirit reveals
\nitself through the same consenting agents as the soul, the truth, the essence of Matter. Both admit and confess each other
\nas divine, real and essentially one. Mind and Life are disclosed in that illumination as at once figures and instruments of the
\nsupreme Conscious Being by which It extends and houses Itself in material form and in that form unveils Itself to Its
\nmultiple centres of consciousness. Mind attains its self-fulfilment when it becomes a pure mirror of the Truth of Being
\nwhich expresses itself in the symbols of the universe; Life, when it consciously lends its energies to the perfect
\nself-figuration of the Divine in ever-new forms and activities of the universal existence.<\/p>\n

     
\nIn the light of this conception we can perceive the possibility of a divine life for man in the world which will at once
\njustify Science by disclosing a living sense and intelligible aim for the cosmic and the terrestrial evolution and realise
\nby the transfiguration of the human soul into the divine the great ideal dream
\nof all high religions. <\/p>\n

     But what then of that silent Self,
\ninactive, pure, self-existent, self-enjoying, which presented itself to us as
\nthe abiding justification of the ascetic? Here also harmony and not
\nirreconcilable opposition must be the illuminative truth. The silent and the
\nactive Brahman are not different, opposite and irreconcilable entities, the one
\ndenying, the other affirming a cosmic illusion; they are one Brahman in two
\naspects, positive and negative, and each is necessary to the other. It is out of
\nthis Silence that the Word which creates the worlds for ever proceeds; for the
\nWord expresses that which is self-hidden in the Silence. It is an eternal
\npassivity which makes possible the perfect freedom and omni-<\/p>\n

\nPage- 26<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

potence of an eternal divine activity in innumerable cosmic systems. For the becomings of that activity derive their
\nenergies and their illimitable potency of variation and harmony from the impartial support of the immutable Being, its consent
\nto this infinite fecundity of its own dynamic Nature.<\/p>\n

    
\nMan, too, becomes perfect only when he has found within himself that absolute calm and passivity of the Brahman and
\nsupports by it with the same divine tolerance and the same divine bliss a free and inexhaustible activity. Those who have
\nthus possessed the Calm within can perceive always welling out from its silence the perennial supply of the energies that
\nwork in the universe. It is not, therefore, the truth of the Silence to say that it is in its nature a rejection of the cosmic
\nactivity. The apparent incompatibility of the two states is an error of the limited Mind which, accustomed to trenchant
\noppositions of affirmation and denial and passing suddenly from one pole to the other, is unable to conceive of a
\ncomprehensive consciousness vast and strong enough to include both in a simultaneous embrace. The Silence does not
\nreject the world; it sustains it. Or rather it supports with an equal impartiality the activity and the withdrawal from the
\nactivity and approves also the reconciliation by which the soul remains free and still even while it lends itself to all action.\n<\/p>\n

     But, still, there is the absolute
\nwithdrawal, there is the Non-Being. Out of the Non-Being, says the ancient
\nScripture, Being appeared.\u00b9<\/font>Then
\ninto the Non-Being it must surely sink again. If the infinite
\nindiscriminate Existence permits all possibilities of
\ndiscrimination and multiple realisation, does not the Non-Being at
\nleast, as primal state and sole constant reality, negate and
\nreject all possibility of a real universe? The Nihil of certain
\nBuddhist schools would then be the true ascetic solution; the Self,
\nlike the ego, would be only an ideative formation by an illusory
\nphenomenal consciousness.<\/p>\n

     
\nBut again we find that we are being misled by words, deceived by the
\ntrenchant oppositions of our limited mentality
\nwith its fond reliance on verbal distinctions as if they perfectly
\nrepresented ultimate truths and its rendering of our supramental\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

   
\n\u00b9<\/font> In the beginning all this was the Non-Being. It was thence that Being was born.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

                                                                                                                    
\n—Taittiriya<\/i>
\nUpanishad.<\/i> II. 7. <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-27<\/p>\n

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

\n

experiences in the sense of those intolerant
\ndistinctions. Non-Being is only a word. When we examine the fact it
\nrepresents,
\nwe can no longer be sure that absolute non-existence has any better
\nchance than the infinite Self of being more than an ideative formation
\nof the mind. We really mean by this Nothing something beyond the last
\nterm to which we can reduce our
\npurest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual
\nbeing as we know or conceive it while in this
\nuniverse. This Nothing then is merely a something beyond positive
\nconception. We erect a fiction of nothingness in order to
\noverpass, by the method of total exclusion, all that we can know and
\nconsciously are. Actually when we examine closely the
\nNihil of certain philosophies, we begin to perceive that it is a zero
\nwhich is All or an indefinable Infinite which appears to the
\nmind a blank, because mind grasps only finite constructions, but is in
\nfact the only true Existence.\u00b9<\/font> <\/p>\n

   
\nAnd when we say that out of Non-Being Being appeared, we perceive that
\nwe are speaking in terms of Time about
\nthat which is beyond Time. For what was that portentous date in the
\nhistory of eternal Nothing on which Being was born out
\nof it or when will come that other date equally formidable on which an
\nunreal all will relapse into the perpetual void? Sat and Asat, if they
\nhave both to be affirmed, must be conceived as if they obtained
\nsimultaneously. They permit each other even though they refuse to
\nmingle. Both, since we must speak in terms of Time, are eternal. And
\nwho shall persuade eternal Being that it does not really exist and only
\neternal Non-Being is? In such a negation of all experience how shall we
\nfind the solution that explains all experience?<\/p>\n

      Pure Being is the affirmation
\nby the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all cosmic existence. We give
\nthe name of Non-Being to a contrary affirmation of Its freedom from all cosmic
\nexistence,—freedom, that is to say, from all positive terms of actual existence
\nwhich consciousness in the universe can <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    
\n\u00b9<\/font>
\nAnother Upanishad rejects the birth of being out of Non-Being as an impossibility; Being, it says, can only be
\nborn from Being. But if we take Non-Being in the sense, not of an inexistent Nihil but of an x which exceeds
\nour idea or experience of existence,—a sense applicable to the Absolute Brahman of the Adwaita as well as
\nthe Void or Zero of the Buddhists,—the impossibility disappears, for That may very well be the source of
\nbeing, whether by a conceptual or formative Maya or a manifestation or creation out of itself.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-28<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

formulate to itself, even from the most abstract, even from the most transcendent. It does not deny them as a real
\nexpression of Itself, but It denies Its limitation by all expression or any expression whatsoever. The Non-Being permits the
\nBeing, even as the Silence permits the Activity. By this simultaneous negation and affirmation, not mutually destructive, but
\ncomplementary to each other like all contraries, the simultaneous awareness of conscious Self-being as a reality and the
\nUnknowable beyond as the same Reality becomes realisable to the awakened human soul. Thus was it possible for the
\nBuddha to attain the state of Nirvana and yet act puissantly in the world, impersonal in his inner consciousness, in his action
\nthe most powerful personality that we know of as having lived and produced results upon earth.\n<\/p>\n

     When we ponder on these
\nthings, we begin to perceive how feeble in their self-assertive
\nviolence and how confusing in
\ntheir misleading distinctness are the words that we use. We begin also
\nto perceive that the limitations we impose on the
\nBrahman arise from a narrowness of experience in the individual mind
\nwhich concentrates itself on one aspect of the
\nUnknowable and proceeds forthwith to deny or disparage all the rest. We
\ntend always to translate too rigidly what we can
\nconceive or know of the Absolute into the terms of our own particular
\nrelativity. We affirm the One and Identical by
\npassionately discriminating and asserting the egoism of our own
\nopinions and partial experiences against the opinions and
\npartial experiences of others. It is wiser to wait, to learn, to grow,
\nand, since we are obliged for the sake of our
\nself-perfection to speak of these things which no human speech can
\nexpress, to search for the widest, the most flexible, the
\nmost catholic affirmation possible and found on it the largest and most
\ncomprehensive harmony.\n<\/p>\n

     We recognise, then, that it
\nis possible for the consciousness in the individual to enter into a
\nstate in which relative
\nexistence appears to be dissolved and even Self seems to be an
\ninadequate conception. It is possible to pass into a Silence
\nbeyond the Silence. But this is not the whole of our ultimate
\nexperience, nor the single and all-excluding truth. For we find
\nthat this Nirvana, this self-extinction, while it gives an absolute
\npeace and freedom to the soul within is yet consistent in
\npractice with a desireless but 
\neffect-<\/p>\n

\nPage-29<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

ive action without. This possibility of an entire motionless impersonality and void Calm within doing outwardly the
\nworks of the eternal verities, Love, Truth and Righteousness, was perhaps the real gist of the Buddha’s teaching,—this
\nsuperiority to ego and to the chain of personal workings and to the identification with mutable form and idea, not the petty
\nideal of an escape from the trouble and suffering of the physical birth. In any case, as the perfect man would combine in
\nhimself the silence and the activity, so also would the completely conscious soul reach back to the absolute freedom of the
\nNon-Being without therefore losing its hold on Existence and the universe. It would thus reproduce in itself perpetually the
\neternal miracle of the divine Existence, in the universe, yet always beyond it and even, as it were, beyond itself. The
\nopposite experience could only be a concentration of mentality in the individual upon Non-existence with the result of an
\noblivion and personal withdrawal from a cosmic activity still and always proceeding in the consciousness of the Eternal
\nBeing.<\/p>\n

     Thus, after reconciling
\nSpirit and Matter in the cosmic consciousness, we perceive the
\nreconciliation, in the
\ntranscendental consciousness, of the final assertion of all and its
\nnegation. We discover that all affirmations are assertions of
\nstatus or activity in the Unknowable; all the corresponding negations
\nare assertions of Its freedom both from and in that
\nstatus or activity. The Unknowable is Something to us supreme,
\nwonderful and ineffable which continually formulates Itself
\nto our consciousness and continually escapes from the formulation It
\nhas made. This it does not as some malicious spirit or
\nfreakish magician leading us from falsehood to greater falsehood and so
\nto a final negation of all things, but as even here the
\nWise beyond our wisdom guiding us from reality to ever profounder and
\nvaster reality until we find the profoundest and
\nvastest of which we are capable. An omnipresent reality is the Brahman,
\nnot an omnipresent cause of persistent illusions.\n<\/p>\n

     If we thus accept a
\npositive basis for our harmony—and on what other can harmony be
\nfounded?—the various
\nconceptual formulations of the Unknowable, each of them representing a
\ntruth beyond conception, must be understood as
\nfar as possible\n<\/p>\n

\nPage-30<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

in their relation to each other and in their effect upon life, not separately, not exclusively, not so affirmed as to destroy or
\nunduly diminish all other affirmations. The real Monism, the true Adwaita, is that which admits all things as the one
\nBrahman and does not seek to bisect Its existence into two incompatible entities, an eternal Truth and an eternal Falsehood,
\nBrahman and not-Brahman, Self and not-Self, a real Self and an unreal yet perpetual Maya. If it be true that the Self alone
\nexists, it must be also true that all is the Self. And if this Self, God or Brahman is no helpless state, no bounded power, no
\nlimited personality, but the self-conscient All, there must be some good and inherent reason in it for the manifestation, to
\ndiscover which we must proceed on the hypothesis of some potency, some wisdom, some truth of being in all that is
\nmanifested. The discord and apparent evil of the world must in their sphere be admitted, but not accepted as our
\nconquerors. The deepest instinct of humanity seeks always and seeks wisely wisdom as the last word of the universal
\nmanifestation, not an eternal mockery and illusion,—a secret and finally triumphant good, not an all-creative and invincible
\nevil,—an ultimate victory and fulfilment, not the disappointed recoil of the soul from its great adventure.\n<\/p>\n

     For we cannot suppose that
\nthe sole Entity is compelled by something outside or other than Itself,
\nsince no such thing
\nexists. Nor can we suppose that It submits unwillingly to something
\npartial within Itself which is hostile to its whole Being,
\ndenied by It and yet too strong for It; for this would be only to erect
\nin other language the same contradiction of an All and
\nsomething other than the All. Even if we say that the universe exists
\nmerely because the Self in its absolute impartiality
\ntolerates all things alike, viewing with indifference all actualities
\nand all possibilities, yet is there something that wills the
\nmanifestation and supports it, and this cannot be something other than
\nthe All. Brahman is indivisible in all things and
\nwhatever is willed in the world has been ultimately willed by the
\nBrahman. It is only our relative consciousness, alarmed or
\nbaffled by the phenomena of evil, ignorance and pain in the cosmos,
\nthat seeks to deliver the Brahman from responsibility
\nfor Itself and its workings by erecting some opposite principle, Maya
\nor Mara, conscious Devil or self-\n<\/p>\n

 
\n   Page-31<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

xistent principle of evil. There is one Lord and Self and the many are only His representations and becomings.<\/p>\n

     
\nIf then the world is a dream or an illusion or a mistake, it is a dream originated and willed by the Self in its totality and
\nnot only originated and willed, but supported and perpetually entertained. Moreover, it is a dream existing in a Reality and
\nthe stuff of which it is made is that Reality, for Brahman must be the material of the world as well as its base and continent.
\nIf the gold of which the vessel is made is real, how shall we suppose that the vessel itself is a mirage? We see that these
\nwords, dream, illusion, are tricks of speech, habits of our relative consciousness; they represent a certain truth, even a great
\ntruth, but they also misrepresent it. Just as Non-Being turns out to be other than mere nullity, so the cosmic Dream turns out
\nto be other than mere phantasm and hallucination of the mind. Phenomenon is not phantasm; phenomenon is the substantial
\nform of a Truth.\n<\/p>\n

     We start, then, with the
\nconception of an omnipresent Reality of which neither the Non-Being at
\nthe one end nor the
\nuniverse at the other are negations that annul; they are rather
\ndifferent states of the Reality, obverse and reverse
\naffirmations. The highest experience of this Reality in the universe
\nshows it to be not only a conscious Existence, but a
\nsupreme Intelligence and Force and a self-existent Bliss; and beyond
\nthe universe it is still some other unknowable
\nexistence, some utter and ineffable Bliss. Therefore we are justified
\nin supposing that even the dualities of the universe,
\nwhen interpreted not as now by our sensational and partial conceptions,
\nbut by our liberated intelligence and experience, will
\nbe also resolved into those highest terms. While we still labour under
\nthe stress of the dualities, this perception must no doubt constantly
\nsupport itself on an act of faith, but a faith which the highest
\nReason, the widest and most patient reflection do not deny, but rather
\naffirm. This creed is given, indeed, to humanity to support it on its
\njourney, until it arrives at a stage of development when faith will be
\nturned into knowledge and perfect experience and Wisdom will be
\njustified of her works.<\/p>\n

\n Page-32<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER  IV   Reality Omnipresent   If one knows Him as Brahman the Non-Being, he becomes merely the non-existent. If one knows that Brahman Is,…<\/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-646","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\/646","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=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}