Teilhard de Chardin and our Time

Towards a Vedantic Christianity: the Individual,

About the "pantheistic experience...that the Divine is everywhere and is all", a letter by Sri Aurobindo¹ pronounces: "it is a very common thing to have this feeling or realisation in the Vedantic sadhana² - in fact without it there would be no Vedantic sadhana. I have had it myself on various levels of consciousness and in numerous forms and I have met scores of people who have had it very genuinely - not as an intellectual theory or perception, but as a spiritual reality which was too concrete for them to deny, whatever paradoxes it may entail for the ordinary intelligence." But, keeping in mind his correspondent's reference to the thesis that "all is good" because the Divine is everywhere and in all, he adds: "Of course it does not mean that all here is good or that in the estimation of values a brothel is as good as an Ashram, but it does mean that all are part of one manifestation and that in the inner heart of the harlot as in the inner heart of the sage or saint there is the Divine.... I don't think any Vedantin (except perhaps some modernised ones) would maintain that all is good here - the orthodox Vedantic idea is that all is here an inextricable mixture of good and evil, a play of the Ignorance and therefore a play of the dualities.... He [the Vedantin] says that the dualities come by a separative Ignorance and so long as you accept this separative Ignorance, you cannot get rid of that, but it is possible to draw back from it in experience and to have the realisation of the Divine in all and the Divine everywhere and then you begin to realise the Light, Bliss and Beauty behind all and this is the one thing to do. Also you begin to realise the one Force and you can use it or let it use you for the growth of the Light in you and others - no longer

1.On Yoga II, Tome One (Pondicherry, 1958), pp. 125-26,

2.Sadhana - practice and process of inner spiritual development. (K.D.S.)

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for the satisfaction of the ego and for the works of the ignorance and darkness."

Like pantheism the ancient Vedanta is monistic, a spiritual philosophy of the One, an Adwaita - to use the Indian term meaning "Non-dualism" - but it does not overlook the Many. Only, "the Many exist in the One and by the One, the differences are variations in manifestation of that which is fundamentally ever the same".³ And the ancient Vedanta avoids the two common extremes of monism: (1) the One alone is and the Many are an illusion (Mayavada Adwaita), in which case there is only the transcendental reality, with the universe a phantasmal appearance; (2) the universe, as a system of the One and the Many, is the sole reality, in which case God is nothing except Nature and hence, despite appearance, everything of Nature is equally divine. Nature, as we know it, is, for the ancient Vedanta, merely the outer manifestation and if we ignore what is behind this manifestation "we shall fall into the intellectual error of Pantheism, not realising that the Divine is more than this outer manifestation and cannot be known by it alone".⁴

"The European type of monism," Sri Aurobindo⁵ states in a letter, "is usually pantheistic and weaves the universe and the Divine so intimately together that they can hardly be separated. But what explanation of the evil and misery can there be there? The Indian view is that the Divine is the inmost substance of the universe, but he is also outside it, transcendent; good and evil, happiness and misery are only phenomena of cosmic experience due to a division and-a diminution of consciousness in the manifestation but are not part of the essence or of the undivided whole-consciousness either of the Divine or of our own spiritual being."

However, Sri Aurobindo⁶ is careful to note in consonance with the ancient Vedanta: "...it is not, as some religions

3.On Yoga Il, Tome One, p. 44

4.Ibid., p. 280.

5.Ibid., p. 34.

6.Ibid., p. 28. Cf. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 89,

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suppose, a supracosmic, arbitrary, personal Deity, himself altogether uninvolved in the fall who has imposed evil and suffering on creatures made capriciously by his fiat. The Divine...is an infinite Being in whose infinite manifestation these things have come - it is the Divine itself that is here, behind us, pervading the manifestation, supporting the world with its oneness; it is the Divine that is in us upholding itself the burden of the fall and its dark consequence. If above It stands for ever in its perfect Light, Bliss and Peace, It is also here, its Light, Bliss and Peace are secretly here supporting all; in ourselves there is a spirit, a central presence greater than the series of surface personalities which, like the supreme Divine itself, is not overborne by the fate they endure. If we find this Divine within us, if we know ourselves as this spirit which is of one essence and being with the Divine, that is our gate of deliverance and in it we can remain ourselves even in the midst of this world's disharmonies, luminous, blissful and free. That much is the age-old testimony of spiritual experience."

On the general position as regards ultimate reality Sri Aurobindo⁷ makes the summary; "In the Upanishads, in the inspired scripture of the most ancient Vedanta, we find the affirmation of the Absolute, the experience-concept of the utter and ineffable Transcendence; but we find also, not in contradiction to it but as its corollary, an affirmation of the cosmic Divinity, an experience-concept of the cosmic Self and the becoming of Brahman in the universe. Equally, we find the affirmation of the Divine Reality in the individual: this too is an experience-concept; it is seized upon not as an appearance, but as an actual becoming."⁸

Now we may consider at a little more length the subtlety and complexity of the old comprehensive Vedanta:

7.The Life Divine, p. 567.

8.Here "appearance", contrasted to "actual becoming", has the suggestion of "illusion". In a different context the word can suggest "phenomenon" or "manifestation", e.g., the next quotation. (K.D.S.)

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"The Unknowable knowing itself as Sachchidananda⁹ is the one supreme affirmation of Vedanta," writes Sri Aurobindo.¹⁰ "The universe and the individual are the two essential appearances into which the Unknowable descends and through which it has to be approached; for other intermediate collectivities are born only of their interaction." ¹¹

"The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent. Always indeed they exist for each other and profit by each other. Universe is a diffusion of the divine All in infinite Space and Time, the individual its concentration within limits of Space and Time. Universe seeks in infinite extension the divine totality it feels itself to be but cannot entirely realise; for in extension existence drives at a pluralistic sum of itself which can neither be the primal nor the final unit, but only a recurring decimal without end or beginning. Therefore it creates in itself a self-conscious concentration of the All through which it can aspire. In the conscious individual...,World seeks after Self; God having entirely become Nature, Nature seeks to become progressively God.

"On the other hand it is by means of the universe that the individual is impelled to realise himself. Not only is it his foundation, his means, his field, the stuff of the divine Work; but also, since the concentration of the universal Life which he is takes place within limits and is not like the intensive unity of Brahman free from all conception of bound and term, he must necessarily universalise and impersonalise himself in order to manifest the divine All which is his reality. Yet is he called upon to preserve, even when he most extends himself in universality of consciousness, a mysterious transcendent something of which his sense of personality gives him an obscure and egoistic representation."¹²

9. Sachchidananda - Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. (K.D.S.)

10.The life Divine, p. 43.

11.Ibid.

12 Ibid., p. 45.

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"All views of existence that stop short of the Transcendence and ignore it must be incomplete accounts of the truth of being. The pantheistic view of the identity of the Divine and the Universe is a truth, for all this that is is the Brahman: but it stops short of the whole truth when it misses and omits the supra-cosmic Reality. On the other side, every view that affirms the cosmos only and dismisses the individual as a byproduct of the Cosmic Energy, errs by laying too much emphasis on one apparent factual aspect of the world-action; it is true only of the natural individual and is not even the whole truth of that: for the natural individual, the nature-being, is indeed a product of the universal Energy, but is at the same time a nature-personality of the soul, an expressive formation of the inner being and person, and this soul is not a perishable cell or a dissoluble portion of the cosmic Spirit, but has its original immortal reality in the Transcendence.... But equally any view that sees the universe as existent only in the individual consciousness must very evidently be a fragmentary truth: it is justified by a perception of the universality of the spiritual individual...but neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental Divine being.

"This Divine Being, Sachchidananda, is at once impersonal and personal: it is an Existence and the origin and foundation of all truths, forces, powers, existences, but it is also the one transcendent Conscious Being and the All-Person of whom all conscious beings are the selves and personalities; for He is their highest Self and the universal indwelling Presence. It is a necessity for the soul in the universe - and therefore the inner trend of the evolutionary Energy and its ultimate intention - to know and to grow into this truth of itself, to become one with the Divine Being, to raise its nature to the Divine Nature, its existence into the Divine Existence, its consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, its delight of being into the Divine Delight of Being, and to receive all this into its becoming, to make the becoming an expression of that

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highest Truth, to be possessed inwardly of the Divine Self and Master of its existence and to be at the same time wholly possessed by Him and moved by His Divine Energy and live and act in a complete self-giving and surrender. On this side the dualistic and theistic views of existence which affirm the eternal real existence of God and the Soul and the eternal real existence and cosmic action of the Divine Energy, express also a truth of the integral existence; but their formulation falls short of the whole truth if it denies the essential unity of God and Soul or their capacity for utter oneness or ignores what underlies the supreme experience of the merger of the soul in the Divine Unity through love, through union of consciousness, through fusion of existence in existence."¹³

We may note here that the soul's merger in the Divine Unity can come even by love. Contrary to the diverse sides of mystical love-experience, Teilhard fails to recognise this merger and keeps harping on the formula: "Union differentiates." But "union" will never be "internal" if there is no essential unity at the base of the play of a differentiating relationship, a unity into which and out of which the mysticism of love can pass at various stages. The full truth behind love is at once being one and being other: it is a self-differentiating oneness and not a union which can do nothing but differentiate.

To continue Sri Aurobindo:

"The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists-as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman, Life is Brahman, Matter is Brahman; addressing Vayu, the Lord of Air, of Life, it is said 'O Vayu, thou art manifest Brahman'; and, pointing to man and beast and bird and insect, each separately is identified

13. Ibid., pp. 589-91.

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with the One, - 'O Brahman, thou art this old man and boy and girl, this bird, this insect.'..."¹⁴

"[Brahman] is the Absolute independent of all relatives, the Absolute basing all relatives, the Absolute governing, pervading, constituting all relatives..."¹⁵

"...there are three fundamental aspects in which we meet this Reality, - Self, Conscious Being or Spirit and God, the Divine Being or to use the Indian terms, the absolute and omnipresent Reality, Brahman, manifest to us as Atman, Purusha, Ishwara..,"¹⁶ "...with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic Self, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and at the same time individual-universal in each being.... As soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal, unborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form of being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from above,..; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and pure and intangible for ever.... At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature."¹⁷ "The Conscious Being, Purusha, is the Self as originator, witness, support and lord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature. As the aspect of Self is in its essential character transcendental even when involved and identified with its universal and individual becomings, so the Purusha aspect is characteristically universal-individual and intimately connected with Nature even when separated from her."¹⁸ "This comes out in its fullest revelation in the third aspect of the Reality, the Divine Being who is the master and creator of the universe. Here the supreme Person, the Being in its transcen-

14.Ibid., p. 294.

15.Ibid., p. 295.

16.Ibid.

17.Ibid., pp. 313-14.

18.Ibid., pp. 314-15.

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dental and cosmic consciousness and force, comes to the front, omnipotent, omniscient, the controller of all energies, the Conscious in all that is conscient or inconscient, the Inhabitant of all souls and minds and hearts and bodies, the Ruler or Overruler of all works, the Enjoyer of all delight, the Creator who has built all things in his own being, the All-Person of whom all beings are personalities, the Power from whom are all powers, the Self, the Spirit in all, by his being the Father of all that is, in his Consciousness-Force the Divine Mother, the Friend of all creatures, the All-blissful and All-beautiful of whom beauty and joy are the revelation, the All-Beloved and All-Lover. In a certain sense, so seen and understood, this becomes the most comprehensive of the aspects of the Reality, since here all are united in a single formulation: for the Ishwara is supracosmic as well as intra-cosmic; He is that which exceeds and inhabits and supports all individuality; He is the supreme and universal Brahman, the Absolute, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha....revealed as possessor, enjoyer of his own self-existence, creator of the universe and one with it, Pantheos, and yet superior to it..."19

19. Ibid., p. 318.

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