The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

XVIII

Short Notes

(i) The sense of Earthly Evolution

Ignorance is usually equated with innocence. A child is; ignorant, therefore he is innocent. Although it is said that ignorance of law is no excuse. Spiritually however, ignorance does not mean innocence. Ignorance or unconsciousness or inconscience—different degrees of the same thing —that is to say lack of consciousness, mean, at bottom, falsehood. It is through the ignorance that Maya, the great illusion, was born. Ignorance is false apprehension, it begins with the sense of separation, "I am other than the Divine." That is how Jiva is born in or through the ignorance. The world is separate from the Divine. That is how Matter is born as or in inconscience. And the creation appears as evil. This sense of separation is a falsehood for in reality nothing is separate from the supreme Consciousness, all is That.

To regain the Truth-sense, to move upward in the cycle of ignorance and falsehood towards this Truth-sense is the world-labour and also human labour.

Even in the state of separation under conditions of the inconscience and falsehood, in spite of all appearances the Unity, the Truth-consciousness remains intact behind It is never effaced or obliterated.

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The sense of earthly evolution is the gradual unfolding of the Divine, the Supreme Consciousness in and through the gradations of consciousness from the inconscience through unconsciousness and consciousness to supra-consciousness—Matter wholly transmuted into Light.

(2) God above and God within

God is not only above or beyond the creation. He is also here within the creation. He is not only over our head looking down upon us. He is within our heart inspiring us, enlightening us, loving us. This is the dynamic Divine, the Supreme Consciousness concealed within the apparent inconscience of the material existence. It is that which pushes creation upward in its evolutionary course. It is that which lies behind man's ignorance purifying his obscurity leading him to a more and more luminous revelation.

In the Vedic image above shines Surya, here below burns Agni. Both are aspects of the same Truth.

(3) Emptying and Replenishment

The body is composed of cells, living cells. These cells from the standpoint of consciousness are desire-cells, that is to say particles of desire, concrete and consolidated packets of hunger and thirst. A string of such innumerable packets of hunger and thirst is life—the Buddha said. The cells are to be emptied completely. Emptiness

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of cells is Nirvana.

Not necessarily. For one may empty the cells of their obscure contents but replenish them with something of a purer order. This is a possibility we envisage and which we are working for. The Divine life empties the cells of desire hut fills it with the energy of solar Light.

(4) Ego

To renounce is a greater delight than to enjoy.

To give is a greater joy than to take.

To love is a greater ravishment than to be loved.

In one it is the ego, man's self-centredness that limits, dilutes, and even perverts his happiness. In the other, it is precisely the egolessness that brings the pure felicity. For ego is hunger, hunger that is death, says the Upa-nishad.

It is the ego, the personal shift that cuts the Infinite, obscures the consciousness which otherwise in its natural condition is always the supreme bliss and beatitude.

It is the ego that turns reality into unreality, light into darkness, immortality into death.

And whatever the interim necessity and utility of the ego, originally and also ultimately it has no space or standing. For originally and ultimately and absolutely, it is the Divine that exists in and through the Divine, moves in and through the Divine to the Divine.

It is the Divine that knows the Divine through the Divine.

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It is the Divine that dynamises the Divine through the Divine.

It is the Divine that enjoys, loves the Divine through the Divine.

The Vedic Rishis declared the same truth, in their own language and imagery when they said "The sacrifice is made a sacrifice through the sacrifice".

(5) Consciousness and Dimensions of View

The material world is, as we all know, three-dimensional; it has a length, a breadth and a depth. In fact every material object is material because it has these three dimensions. That is what we knew till now. But Einstein has added another dimension to complete the picture of material reality. He says, time is the fourth dimension. For along with space, time also is to be taken into consideration for fixing or situating a physical object. Not space alone with its three dimensions determines the physical character of an object but time also has its share. A material object exists in space; it exists also in time. It occupies a portion of space and it occupies a portion of time. Indeed time, sometimes, becomes a more important factor; for it brings about a change in the spatial dimension.

But dimension, in reality, that is to say, the configuration it gives to an object is a function of consciousness. The four-dimensional aspect of material reality is given or projected by what we call the physical consciousness..

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Material time and material space are the two norms through which the physical consciousness deploys itself.

But physical consciousness, the consciousness that plays through the senses is only one form of it—the lowest, the most material formation. For there is a ladder of consciousness and in it we rise rung by rung to other—what are known as higher formulations.

As we rise we find that the dimensions increase in number. Our consciousness, our being becomes more and more multiple. In the physical and material, our perception is limited to the four dimensions because of two factors—one, things are spaced out that is to say, they are separate and discrete from one another. We know the law of material space that two things cannot occupy the same space. Secondly, things or events are separated in time, that is to say, there is the law of succession. But in the higher regions, higher or subtler regions, this separation due to time and space loses much of its exclusive force. Things tend to coalesce, even to get identified with each other. The obstructions that time and space offer to intercommunication are minimised more and more as our consciousness or being soars up or dives down into deeper and deeper and higher and higher regions. The dimensions increase in number; that means we begin to apprehend things from many angles and sides at the same time, we have more and more a simultaneous view of the total or global reality of an object. So instead of a fourfold view of things we may have a fivefold, sixfold, tenfold, hundredfold view of things depending on our status of

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consciousness. In the highest status,—we call it Sachchid-ananda, the infinite and eternal consciousness—things attain infinite dimensions, all merged in the Ultimate's unitary consciousness.

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