The Destiny of the Body

Chapter XII

The Mystery of Matter

"...The question may be raised whether, not only at first but always, the divine life must submit to this necessity [of material alimentation]. But it could only deliver itself from it altogether if it could find out the way so to draw upon the universal energy that the energy would sustain not only the vital parts of our physicality but its constituent matter with no need of aid for sustenance from any outside substance of Matter."

(Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 50-51)

"The material universe is only the facade of an immense building which has other structures behind it, and it is only if one knows the whole that one can have some knowledge of the truth of the material universe."

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 212)

"Our substance does not end with the physical body; that is only the earthly pedestal, the terrestrial base, the material starting point.... There are behind our gross physical being other and subtler grades of substance with a finer law and a greater power which support the denser body and which can... be made to impose that law and power on our dense matter ..."

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 260)

To solve radically the problem of material alimentation, the body must discover some appropriate means to replenish and renew its gross substantial existence without needing any outside material aliments. But is this operation at all feasible ? How can the material needs of the body be met otherwise than by the incorporation of matter itself?

If these misgivings have to be adequately resolved we must first inquire into the mystery of Matter and try to find out what physical substance essentially is.

If, indeed, the common-sense view of Matter represents its whole truth or if Matter is the primary datum and the basic reality, all else being derivative and 'departmental activities of Matter', then

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there is not much prospect for the kind of solution we have envisaged above. It is no doubt a fact that till recently men of science conceived of nature as a mechanical system consisting of lumps of matter moving about in a fixed frame of space and time in accordance with certain specifiable laws. One of the primary principles assumed was the Principle of the Conservation of Mass according to which matter can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only undergo transformation. But with the advancing tide of knowledge the position of the traditional mechanist has become untenable and matter has lost much of its 'tangibility'. Its essential nature seems to be shrouded in an inscrutable mystery and along with the naive common-sense conception of matter many other well-entrenched concepts and notions have had to be thrown overboard. The advent of the Theory of Relativity, of Quantum Mechanics and Wave Mechanics has dealt a deathblow to the traditional mechanical picture of physical facts.... "All that seems to have been left by the Theory of Relativity is the presence of matter. Force has gone; simple location has gone; absolute motion has gone; but what still remains are bodies moving through space-time. The Special Theory of Relativity, however, brought Einstein to the conclusion that mass and energy were not essentially different; that energy is equivalent to mass and mass represents energy, and that there is a simple quantitative relation between them. This identification of mass with energy leads us to suspect that matter may be resoluble into something more ultimate."¹

Indeed, recent developments in physics have established the fact that there is no essential difference between Matter and Energy. The study of the structure of matter on the one hand and that of the nature of radiation and its interaction with matter have revealed that the dual aspect of Wave-Corpuscle is a common feature both of radiation and of the fundamental particles of matter. Whereas electromagnetic waves behave in certain respects as a shower of corpuscles (called 'photons'), matter itself in certain circumstances exhibit the characteristics of waves. Matter and energy are thus fundamentally the same and, what is more, they are interconvertible.

In point of fact, both the creation of electromagnetic radiation

¹ Errol E. Harris, Nature, Mind and Modern Science (1954), pp. 380-81. (Italics ours)

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from matter and the creation of matter from radiation have been experimentally achieved and these have come to substantiate Einstein's famous equation E=mc² which incidentally established the fundamental identity of matter and energy. The materialisation of energy in the process of pair production (e.g., the production of an electron-position pair by the materialisation of a photon or quantum of electromagnetic energy) and the release of energy in the process of nuclear reaction so demonstratively symbolised by the atomic bomb prove beyond any shadow of doubt that there is no unbridgeable chasm separating the form of substance from the form of energy.

These epoch-making discoveries of modern science are of great import from our point of view. For if energy, and not matter, is proved to be the primary reality and matter only a derivative phenomenon of energy, this at once offers us the necessary clue to the solution of the problem of substantial replenishment of the body without the aid of any material aliments. It is through the process of the direct tapping and materialisation of energy that the New Body can very well meet its material needs. And since energy is not limited to its physical forms alone but rises through an ascending scale, as we have seen in the previous chapter, to forms subtler and still more subtle, there is no conceivable limit to the effectivity of the whole operation. What is needed is the discovery of an instrumentation through which this materialisation of the superior grades of energy may be effected for the body's needs. But the supramentally transfigured body will surely bring into play the necessary instrumentation. And we may well conceive that in the New Body "material organs as we know them at present would be replaced by centres of concentration of force and energy that are receptive of higher forces and that would, by a sort of alchemy, use these latter for necessities of physical life."¹

About the process of materialisation of energy the Mother says:

"Those who have practised occultism sufficiently know the process of materialising subtle energies to put them in contact with physical vibrations. This is a thing that not only can be done but is done. There is there a whole science that has to be perfected, completed and which evidently must be used for the

¹ The Mother in Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 3, p. 123.

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creation and action of new bodies that will be capable of manifesting the supramental life in a material world."¹

But apart from this process of luminous materialisation of energy, the New Body may renew its material stuff through the materialisation of substance of subtler grades. For it is not at all a fact that there is only this gross material foundation and for the rest the play of various energies. In fact, "there are, quite certainly, other states of Matter itself,"² and "even within the formula of the physical cosmos there is an ascending series in the scale of Matter which leads us from the more to the less dense, from the less to the more subtle."³ And when we reach the highest term of this series, 'the most supra-ethereal subtlety of material substance or formulation of Force', it is not a void or nihil that lies beyond. Rather, there is an ascending series of subtler formulations of substance intervening between the inconscient substance of gross physical matter and the utterly self-conscious pure substance of spirit.

But to comprehend these discoveries of occult-spiritual science, we must first try to have a clear notion of what matter or substance really is. In attempting this conceptual clarity , we cannot do better than to quote in extenso from Sri Aurobindo's own writings on the subject :

"In a certain sense Matter is unreal and non-existent; that is to say, our present knowledge, idea and experience of Matter is not its truth but merely a phenomenon of particular relation between our senses and the all-existence in which we move. When Science discovers that Matter resolves itself into forms of Energy, it has hold of a universal and fundamental truth; and when philosophy discovers that matter only exists as substantial appearance to the consciousness and that the one reality is Spirit or pure conscious Being, it has hold of a greater and completer, a still more fundamental truth....

"We shall understand better if we go back...to the original principle of things. Existence is in its activity a Conscious-Force which presents the workings of its force to its consciousness as

¹The Mother in Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 3, p. 125.

²The Life Divine, p. 251.

³Ibid., p. 254.

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forms of its own being. Since Force is only the action of one sole-existing Conscious-Being, its results can be nothing else but forms of that Conscious-Being; Substance or Matter, then, is only a form of Spirit."¹

"Energy seems to create substance, but, in reality, as existence is inherent in Consciousness-Force, so also substance would be inherent in Energy, — the Energy a manifestation of the Force, substance a manifestation of the secret Existence. But as it is a spiritual substance, it would not be apprehended by the material sense until it is given by Energy the forms of Matter seizable by that sense."²

"...The sharp division which practical experience and long habit of mind have created between Spirit and Matter has [not] any fundamental reality.... Substance is the form of itself on which it works, and of that substance if Matter is one end, Spirit is the other. The two are one: Spirit is the soul and reality of that which we sense as Matter; Matter is form and body of that which we realise as spirit....

"Substance, we have said, is conscious existence presenting itself to the sense as object so that, on the basis of whatever sense-relation is established, the work of world-formation and cosmic progression may proceed. But there need not be only one basis, only one fundamental principle of relation immutably created between sense and substance; on the contrary there is an ascending and developing series."³

"Our present view of Matter and its laws [do not] represent the only possible relation between sense and substance, between the Divine as knowledge and the Divine as object.... There are, quite certainly, other states even of Matter itself; there is undoubtedly an ascending series of the divine gradations of substance; there is the possibility of the material being transfiguring itself through the acceptation of a higher law than its own which is yet its own because it is always there latent and potential in its own secrecies."⁴

"There must be in the nature of things, an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit⁵... There are a series

¹ The Life Divine, pp. 234-35.

²Ibid., p. 304.

³Ibid., pp. 240-41.

⁴Ibid., p. 250.

⁵Ibid., p. 253.

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of subtler and subtler formulations of substance which escape from and go beyond the formula of the material universe.... These gradations of substance, in one important aspect of their formulation in series, can be seen to correspond to the ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of Sachchidananda. In other words, we find that substance in its ascension bases itself upon each of these principles and makes itself successively a characteristic vehicle for the dominating cosmic self-expression of each in their ascending series."¹

"There are different planes of substance, gross, subtle and more subtle going back to what is called causal (Karana) substance. What is more gross can be reduced to the subtle state and the subtle brought into the gross state; that accounts for dematerialisation and rematerialisation."²

This last remark of Sri Aurobindo along with what has gone before makes it clear how the New Body can possibly dispense with the need of any material alimentation. For, one need not limit oneself to the principle of gross physical substance alone: one can very well draw upon the substances corresponding to the supernal ranges of our being.

But even this does not exhaust all the possibilities. For we should not imagine that the New Body will after all remain bound to the present principle of physical substance and that only it will bring into operation hitherto-unknown new processes that will enable it to harness the supernal grades of energy and substance for satisfying its material needs.

As a matter of fact, "the ascent of man from the physical to the supramental must open out the possibility of a corresponding ascent in the grades of substance to that ideal or causal body which is proper to our supramental being, and the conquest of the lower principles by supermind and its liberation of them into a divine life and divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance."³

There would no doubt remain a material base for the New Body, but it will be 'a new earth with a divine structure', having for its

¹ The Life Divine, p. 255.

²On Yoga II, Tome One, p. 233.

³The Life Divine, p. 261.

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stuff the supramental substance, in which the Earth-Mother will finally reveal her unshrouded divine splendour.

And with the evolution of this nobler physical existence here upon earth, when the 'divinely human body' will make its appearance, the problem of material alimentation will lose all its validity and the divine destiny of the body will be amply realised.

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