We were dealing with the force of life representative of the Truth-Consciousness—and we came to know that all these derivatives here that happen to appear to our mind as if they were the result of the Inconscient are in fact supported, guided and governed by a veiled Truth-Consciousness. To the mind the universe appears as a chance world or a world of accident or a world of inconscience only. But mind is half-knowledge and half-ignorance; it is a movement projected for effecting the division of the Infinite into the finite. It is a movement necessitated by keeping the ego of form into which the souls have cast themselves to keep them separate in order to evolve a world of relations, a world of mutuality. If the Unity alone acted without any necessity of an intervening principle of differentiation, variation—not division—then there would be no world. That variation appears as separation and division to the mind unconnected with the Infinite. But the problem was to create first a conscient centre in the inconscient, a centre of consciousness which would cognize the world.

Nature succeeded first by evolving the physical, the vital and the mental individuahty, as we know them. And this individuality is the first cognizing centre,—subjective centre, —of the whole inconscient world. Having created this individuahty, Nature has got to preserve this creation and see to it that it does not again merge directly into the One without fulfilling its multiple function in the universal. So it has to guard the separately created egos, keep the forms separate so that they can realize the unity of soul and evolve a world of patterns of relations, patterns of mutuality, that

Page 177

create the universe or cosmos. The universe is not a manifestation of one element. The universe is a manifestation of infinitely multiple, varied elements into a world which at least has some homogeneous principle holding it together. Otherwise it would not be a cosmos, it would be only chaos.

So having created this, its interest is to see that mind acts as an instrument,—first, to give a shape to the Infinite and afford it finite forms and, second, to maintain the finite individuated forms with a demarcation, without division. Demarcation is a necessity for practical purposes in a world of Matter. Therefore, though governed now indirectly from behind the veil by the Supermind, mind will not be abrogated when the Supermind overtly descends into man; mind will not be reduced to non-existence or be rejected as an illusory instrument. Rather, it will be utilized for carrying out directly and consciously the purposes of the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness. That will be its task and its office, the function of turning the Infinite into finite forms, giving soul-forms, so to say, for the manifestation of the Infinite —and then to hold these separated soul-forms apart so as to create a world of relations.

Then we come to life. If mind is a veiled working of the Supermind, what is life ? And we saw that life is not merely a delusion or something that is of the nature of insanity, but it is action of the eternal movement of the Conscious-Force of the Eternal. It is the cosmic power which builds forms and energizes them by stimulation, integrates and disintegrates and renews them. It brings a form into existence and again reduces it to non-existence. So disintegration and renewal, are the processes of life. Nothing in life that is manifested perishes. It is always renewed. It seems to perish because that is a process of life. Death itself is a process of life. We find that life in all its forms,—manifested either in the plant, or in the animal or in man, has the same characteristics.

Page 178

The processes of life are assimilation, digestion, response to stimuli etc. They are processes of life not life. Life is an element which is present everywhere, even in what appears to be inconscient. Life is present in the earth, in the material elements, because they are an expression of life. They are not devoid of life because Life in them takes the submental or subconscious form. If life were not present in them they could not have come into existence. That is the basis on which we tried to see this problem of the all-pervading imperishability of life.

And we have also found the existence of life in matter. In plants it is only a nervous sensation and a response indicating the presence of pleasure and pain, waking and sleeping, suffering and fatigue, etc. But even in metals the same tendencies have been located by science, as fatigue, resistance, etc. It is a universal energy manifesting itself as life, Conscious-Being projecting itself or flowing out into life-movement in which the transition from the inconscient to the conscient is effected. So life is a mid-term between the inconscient and the conscient. Life seems to begin with the inconscient matter and ends in mind-consciousness. Life is present in matter as submental life, not mental life, a submental operation of an intelligence and will in material form, in atoms, in molecule and particles and elements. And it leads from there to a gradual awakening of consciousness. It seems to our mind to act as a kind of connecting link between the inconscience of matter and the evolution of mind; life seems to be holding, so to say, the two in its grasp. Life holds matter on one hand, mind on the other. It is an intermediary power which is latent or submerged in matter. If matter were not living it could not support life. If some element of life were not present in it matter could not continue to exist. Life is supported by matter because some common life-force is there which living organisms are able to assimilate from

Page 179

what appears to be inconscient matter. Mere inconscient matter has the power of life latent or submerged. Gradually, finally, there has been the emergence of mind with the full dynamism of the life force. We know that life in plant, in animal, and man is the same thing; birth, growth, and decay are taking place in all the realms of life. In the plant also, you see childhood, growth, and then maturity and old age. Throughout the unending thread of life, infinite rungs of the ladder of life, you find the common characteristics running. The plant has in itself the essence of the force of life, and that is why the plant is able to supply life to all organisms. The common characteristics are birth, growth, and decay, and also propagation of the seed, maintained by nourishment from outside. Nourishment from outside, dependence on food from outside, sleep and waking, infancy, maturity and old age, all these are characteristics of all forms of life. Infinitely varied though they might be in their expression, still the common processes are seen easily by our mind. Life that is involved, in matter, gives rise to forms of life proper by a pressure of life from above. Material energy creates not living groups, but inanimate aggregates. In the insect world you find—in the ant-hill or the beehive, for instance,—a first instinctive beginning of collective consciousness. In the vegetable kingdoms you can divide the whole vegetable kingdom into botanical orders, and each order has common characteristics. Thus the beginning of group-life goes right up to vital life, and creates even in insects by the working of an instinct a social organization more perfect even than that of man. That is what Maeterlinck wrote in his books on white-ants. He said that they exhibited a perfection in their social organization which man has not yet reached. The perfection there is automatic, instinctive; but the root of collective life is to be traced there; and even in Matter where consciousness is not directly present

Page 180

on the surface, the pressure of this drive for unity,—for the Universal manifests itself in aggregations—creates groups of atoms, which hold together. Even though life-force seems to work on another plane, nevertheless it is the same life-force in the atom. Universal operations of a consciousness and force are found even in matter. So the first form of life is subconscious vibration where the force of life is asleep, so to say. In matter the force manifests as vibration. It is consciousness rendered in terms of energy at work. It is consciousness and there the point of note is that this vibration is subconscious, indicating that life is asleep there. It is not absent in the sense of non-existence. It is there, only it is asleep and when the opportunity arises, when the pressure is exerted, life comes into existence in the insect, in the amoeba, and the small beginnings of the vegetable kingdom. The first units of life, the protoplasm, and the amoeba go on dividing themselves into more and more units, until the process builds up the whole organism. And then when the second stage comes, it is a response to an outer stimulus which appears to be not a mental response, but submental-automatic on the life-plane itself. When you touch the Mimosa plant you find that it shrinks immediately. You can see the automatic response of the nervous system to outer stimuli where mind does not seem to be present. Now in the third step, life evolves further and gives a conscious response of the life organized to outer stimuli. In the human being or even in the animal the response is conscious. In man it becomes mentally conscious and in the animals it is vitally conscious; in the animal the beginning of mind is already taking place. I mean mind has begun to come out into expression in the animal already, only it is a vital-mind and not an intellectual or reasoning mind as man has. It cannot put two and two together and come to a conclusion. The animal has a vital rationality which is different from intellectual rationality.

Page 181

They have no questions but they have perception and perception gives them a connection between the subsequent and the precedent conditions—what we call cause and effect. So if you constantly have a door open in a certain way, the animal at once knows the action that precedes it and therefore it will automatically react. It is not by a process of reasoning— "that is the way to open the door." "What is this?" "Why is this ?" are questions not present in the animal. But they have an instinctive understanding of processes at work and that is the logic of vital life rather than mentality, not logic of intellect but logic of life. From the human, by contact with the human, the animals get many human qualities developed in them; they become very, very humanized when they come in contact with men, especially the tame animals or the animals that are domesticated. Some of the qualities of the animals are to be recommended to men,—e.g. the faithfulness of the dog. It is difficult for man to surpass the dog in faithfulness. Not that we do not meet it in some human beings, but it is very rare; whereas to find an exception among dogs is difficult. So we see the development of this life-force in this triple formation.

Life as nervous energy carries the force of form as a sensation to modify mind. You take life at one end, it becomes nervous energy in the vital being. And when you say "you see", the question is : what is seeing ? Seeing is form carried to the mind as a sensation, is it not? You do not get the whole form inside you; that cannot be done. So what happens is that the form is carried to the mind as a sensation by the nerves. What is a form ? It is a material organism, it is matter. And force of matter works as a sensation carried to the mind. Really speaking, it is not form only that is carried but the force that is behind the form. So matter that has a force or power is sending a message to the mind and bringing about a change in the mind. And then mind sends out a

Page 182

response, which can again modify the form with material energy. Life, acting in the inconscient matter, inconscient vitality, inconscient mentality, connects this inconscient material force to the highest development of its own expression, mind. When you "see", it is the vibration of the form that is carried. Form is nothing else but energy of matter. Material energy is expressing itself in form. This material energy expresses itself as a cup. Now this energy of matter is carried to my mind, not as material energy but as a sensation. That is the task done by the nervous system. So life, in the nervous system, connects the inconscient energy of form and the conscient energy of mind. First, mind is modified. You see something that pleases you and, your mind gets into a pleasant state. Matter has come and influenced mind, is not it? You stand before the hill and you say it is nice. It is matter that is actually influencing mind. It is matter that puts your mind into a different state. There is nobody there to say to you, "Please have this impression." What Keyser-ling says about the Himalayas is interesting. The first time he saw them he said "I could not believe that matter, mere matter, could be so sublime." It was when he stood before the Himalayas that he found that matter could be something more than beautiful; it-can be something that strikes you dumb with awe. What an arrangement of matter in form and what a grandeur of proportion and the capacity to produce an impression on mind. The result is that mind acts on matter as a response because there is a conscious reception. Sensation in the mind performs a double function,—one is the reception, the other is the reply. There is a double machinery in the mind, that of sensory nerve and that of motor nerve. The sensory nerve carries the impression, the motor nerve replies to it. The reply is of the mind and not only of the sense. Reaction to sensation is not only mechanical vibration,— but it is also of the will that is independent of the nervous

Page 183

system. The reaction that goes back and says "this is good, it is pleasant", is a mental art conveyed back again to the sensation, with the result that the sensation can modify the mind and mind can react on and change the material condition of the form. Mind can send back its reaction to the sensation so as to change the condition of material energy. In the chain that is established between mind and matter, life intervenes and provides the machinery or technique of sensation which carries matter to mind and mind again to matter to bring back the force of mind as will to modify matter. You say there is a sensation of the river; then mind resorts to an abstract process of reasoning and with the help of science it conceives the idea of a dam. "If I can store up the water and if I can do this then I can have electricity." All that mental operation comes back again to matter, and mind modifies the state of matter through the machinery of sensation which is provided.

Now, the 20th chapter I leave for the time being because it is a chapter which refers to a schematic idea so that you can understand why I leave it. We have taken the Supermind, or Truth-Consciousness more correctly—that is a better name. Now, this Truth-Consciousness is veiled, veiled to mind, veiled to life and veiled to matter. It is working now behind the veil. We have seen that mind is a subsidiary working of the supermind. We have also seen that in the life-force or vital-force there is also the working of the presence of the supermind behind the veil, and this matter that we see is also a working of a submental operation of life, of mind and also of supermind. That there is" law operating in matter and that it is cognized by our mind shows that there is a will and also an intelligence at work in matter. And this matter, when it is expressed in life, is first inconscient. Then it becomes desire. This inconscient becomes death and it becomes incapacity. The chapter that I am leaving out refers to "Death, Desire and Incapacity" as elements or as functions

Page 184

that take place on the plane of matter, and each one is a distortion of the true working of the Supramental. These are its expressions in life. When Matter becomes living, it tries to control life; when it succeeds it returns to its original incon-science,—that is death. Desire at bottom is the impulse to possess the all; and incapacity means inadequacy of the human power to take the whole of the Omnipotence and manifest it. The living organism feels the impact of matter as death, desire and incapacity. These are the workings of the elements of inconscience in matter operating in the present world, particularly in the field of life. Here the inconscience works as an element bringing about the end of the organism, a constant devouring hunger of desire in all living organisms, not only in man. All over the hunger is there which manifests itself as desire, and as incapacity to take the whole, because the power which is given to this particular expression of life is inadequate to hold the infinite. And the hunger is for the Infinite. Therefore life, when manifested here in terms of earth-consciousness,—not life in its purity—is subjected to the almost ovewhelming power of matter which manifests in life as the necessity of death, compulsion of desire, and experience of incapacity. That becomes the working out of it and the existence of law there shows that it is not merely against something, it is not merely a negative working, because even in them the supermind is working as the law compelling the divided life and mind to continue working under the conditions of ignorance; otherwise, the evolving organism would not make an effort to overleap, overreach, go beyond the formula of mind.

The necessity is that the spirit that is manifested in life with mind, that is man, must overleap the present formula —and if it cannot manifest the Satchidananda, the delight, consciousness and existence of the infinite now in terms of its material existence, then it must necessarily pass through a

Page 185

temporary phase of death, disharmony and incapacity. It must pass through that phase in order to go beyond. This is a condition enforced by evolutionary process working in the medium of inconscient matter. It is the necessity and a condition. Mind, life and matter—all the three are,—the world in which we live is,—governed by a veiled operation of supermind. The more important conception that emerges out of it is that the world is not a play of falsehood, that it is not an anti-divine element that has brought this desire and death and incapacity into existence, that it is the operation of a Truth-Consciousness working under the conditions of material inconscience. It is not, as if it was unreal, or that man has no escape from it. That attitude is wrong, because it takes only a temporary condition as if it were the permanent law. The conclusion that Sri Aurobindo substantiates through all these long chapters is that this world, ignorant, full of problems, suffering, conflict, evil, pain, and death is a working out of an Omnipresent Reality. Even when not perceived, even when hidden behind the veil, it is the Truth-Concsiousness that is working. So that behind all the distorted operations and expressions, it is that which is really driving the forces of evolution. The world has to be understood as an expression of a Reality and therefore the possibility of bringing that Truth-Consciousness into an open expression or into an evolved element in the total process of cosmic manifestation becomes the problem for man.

The 21st chapter takes the subject further in the sense that life itself is the parent of this death, desire and hunger in things, because this life is an expression of infinite Conscious-Force. And because it is infinite, it wants to possess the Infinite. In trying to possess the Infinite it gets an infinite hunger for devouring everything. That becomes its badge of what we feel as imperfection. But really the drive is to

Page 186

express the Infinite, to possess the Infinite. So life is the parent of this death, desire and hunger and incapacity because it is a dark figure of the Super-Conscient Force, of Infinite Existence, Consciousness and Delight. It is here the dark figure is operating, and yet it is not so completely isolated as to have no relation with the original Truth. Therefore, it feels this drive of reaching out to the Infinite all the time. This effort of the small being manifested in the little ego—to reach out to the Infinite takes the form of insatiable desire, hunger for everything. He wants everything, and in one sense, the want is right, because he is the All, therefore he wants to possess all. Only, he wants to possess it in the egoistic self by addition, possession by an outer act of seizing, so to say. Because of the limited physical organism and a vital capacity which is also limited, it cannot hold the whole thing together. It can only hold it in an inner act, an inner act of self-expansion. It is not possible to possess the universe by an outer act of seizing it; it can only be possessed by widening the consciousness to include it within oneself. That is the solution that is hinted at. But here Sri Aurobindo tells us first that the dark figure of the Super-conscient Force called Life has its drive towards immortality, towards infinite delight, towards omnipotence. That is what life is, in its origin, in the Truth-Consciousness. Now Life wants to become that here on earth. And in that we see a triple manifestation of life. We will only take life now because that is the fulcrum of the cosmic manifestation. We will take universal life, its first manifestation, the second stage and the third stage. We will indicate the direction toward which it is moving.

The first stage is infinite division, life subjected to infinite division. In the second, division is there, but also some sort of capacity to increase. Life is first subconscient and subject to infinite division. It gives rise to atoms, because that

Page 187

is the limit of division and it is subconscient. It is only physical energy here. Life becomes physical energy, it is life we are dealing with here—not material energy. It is therefore blind, you can say. The force of life is blind as physical energy, yet is potent. It has a very powerful action, the energy of material force, electricity or magnetism, light or heat is irresistible. It is the most potent energy in the physcial world. So that this physical world is an expression of life force. Life's first manifestation on earth,—to our mind— is atomic existence in matter. And this physical energy is blind to our view—but it is full of tremendous power. It is life infinitely divided into material particles giving rise to materiality as a first expression of life. The second is that in which it moves toward conscious mind. This is subconscient mind, if you like to call it. Mind—intelligence and will— is subconscient in the atom, but is moving toward conscious mind. And in the third stage, it evolves mind, conscious mind. Now in this movement toward conscious mind, we find hunger and devouring as the fulcrum of the movement —impulse and desire—the tendency is to increase, expand, to seize and possess; and therefore the nature of this life is struggle,—a struggle for life. All the laws of Darwin are included in this second phase of life. It strives not only for survival but also for possession and perfection. This is what life wants to do here, in the second stage when it is moving toward conscious mind, toward increasing the degree of consciousness. The third is when mind is evolved. When mind is actually evolved then it brings new possibilities. Earth life at the third stage brings not only strife but association as a necessary element. It introduces the principle of preservation of the individual even—the individual here in life feels that his preservation also depends upon association. Mind brings this to the evolving life. When life is evolving it is made to understand that even for individual

Page 188

life, association is a principle for its preservation and progress. This is the second division. And it accepts the necessity and desire for interchange. The urge for interchange is a blind impulse. Here the interchange is intellectual, conscious, with understanding, and there is also interchange that is under the drive of passion. We see that in animal life or in plant life there is interchange all the time of life-force, but there the interchange is not mentally conscious and is not a result of an understanding of the need of association on their part. There it works only as an instinct, a result of impulse and passion from almost the subconscient level; whereas in mind it becomes a necessity of interchange and a desire for interchange, and even self-giving,—self-giving in the form of love.

Now in this third process of awakening of life, life moving from the subconscient material physical world to create more conscious mind, goes through an intermediate stage of hunger and desire, desire to possess and enjoy; and therefore through struggle and survival, possession and effort at perfection. Then it comes to the mental consciousness where mind realizes that even for individual life association is necessary, it accepts the need of interchange, and the necessity of self-giving and even the experience of love.

A fourth stage now becomes necessary. These three have been, so to say, passed by Nature, by life in Nature. Life has gone through these three phases. The fourth will be the stage in which the coming down of the Higher Consciousness, the Truth-Consciousness, will operate. Now, Truth-Consciousness holds within itself the principle of knowledge. It is Being with knowledge,—it is consciousness and power, or consciousness and energy, and delight. These will be the terms towards which life must now make a move. But two principles have emerged in this study which we have made.

The two principles are, first, the will of a separative ego, its

Page 189

will to be distinct. You can call it the evolution of a subjective point of experience and expression, the will of ego to remain distinct all the time and guard its identity. This is what life does. It is the first thing that emerges when you study life. First is emergence of the sense of ego, "I", which constantly wants to preserve itself, wants to preserve its existing personality and wants to guard itself against all annihilation. That is one. And the second is a compulsion imposed on it when it reaches the third stage to fuse itself with others, into something other than itself. These two apparently contradictory impulses emerge out of the three levels through which life has passed. These are the three phases through which life has passed. First comes preservation of the subjectively-evolved entity, individuality. Secondly, there is a compulsion of the individual to fuse with others—a mutuality, the necessity of association. It is expressed poetically by Alexander Selkirk in his poem "Solitude". The poet is stranded and alone on an isolated island in the Ocean:

I am the monarch of all I survey

My right there is none to dispute.

yet he cries out:

O Solitude, where are the charms

The sages have seen in thy face ?

He finds that it is preferable to live in the midst of alarms rather than live in this solitary place, a horrible place. This dislike for solitude is due to the compulsion against the tendency to mix and mingle with other people. This impulse to fuse oneself with a person, a group, a nation, society, to carry out in collective life the ideal of bringing truth, perfection, justice or democracy shows the working of the

Page 190

tendency to interchange, its compulsion to reciprocity.

Now, the third point is, when nature has succeeded in creating a stable individual, going from the infinite to the finite, then she reverses the process. Then from the finite she wants to go back to the Infinite. The finite individual is forced again by a reversal of the process, to seek the Infinite.

In the first process Nature was, as it were, putting out a point of consciousness from this vast inconscience. And now when she has created a mental being, a mental life, she wants to reverse the process. She reverses the process when the ego is formed. From the infinite, the first labour was to create, to manifest or to bring about this individual into being. When this was brought into being, the process is reversed, and it is the path to the universal consciousness, to the Truth-Consciousness of the Infinite again. That is how the supramental operation is leading the whole phase of life towards the original truth from which the individual has been created.

Now, when she has reached this stage, the individual perishes and the aggregate remains. In the process of going back the first thing that mind perceives is that in what we call communism, socialism, and all kinds of "isms",—which argue that the individual perishes and the aggregate continues, therefore the collectivity is to be accepted as the real entity—there is some basic truth. The aggregate profits by the perishing of the individual, by whatever contribution the individual gives to the aggregate, to the group life. But in this process of reversal this is not the final stage. The mistake comes in when the collectivity is accepted as the highest truth. Socialism and communism go wrong philosophically when they posit the collectivity as the final reality to be realized, and as the final Truth that is operating in the Universe. After all, this collectivity is not divine. Secondly, it is not a conscious collectivity in the sense of having a separate organization

Page 191

of its own in the form of a mind or a body. It is superimposed on the individual. An individual has a point of reference to a conscience or mind to decide what he must do. A collectivity has no referable point, no conscience to which it can refer to decide whether it is right or wrong. You elect a hundred people and they sit down and say : here we are, the collectivity, but each one is an individual on whom the consciousness of the collectivity is superimposed, it may be the national consciousness or the racial consciousness, or whole humanity's consciousness. And they sit down to promote collective life; what they do would depend upon their identification with the others, first of of all. For the individual is egoistic even there. And his ego is not submerged into the larger collective ego of the race or culture or nation or humanity. Until it becomes indentified in the soul,—not in the mind, not in self-interest, not in the power-aspect of the collectivity but in the soul-aspect of the collectivity,—it cannot know. And this soul-aspect, if you study carefully, comes out in life or in overt operation only when there is a great crisis. When England is faced with war, she can forget her empire. She forgets the empire and speaks of democracy, freedom of thought, freedom of association, and Atlantic Charter etc. In England, America, or in any country, it is when there is a crisis that the individuals who compose the leadership are compelled to contact the soul of the race, the collective soul, and that collective soul is an emanation of the Supermind, of the Truth-Consciousness. It is not something abstract. It is based on the Truth-Consciousness of the Divine, and therefore it is a personification or a personal aspect of a collective Divine Consciousness. It is necessary for the whole of humanity, and whatever contribution the collectivity has made is a contribution toward the perfection of cultural life of the whole of mankind. It is at such times that you see what a nation's soul

Page 192

is capable of and what it stands for. It is, then, through the crisis, that we see England as a great country. You feel that it is a great nation because it could forget at that time its interest in empire and keeping it up somehow or other. And Hitler promised to keep what he called "the ramshackle empire." England refused. That is the spirit and that is what ultimately brings the soul of the race to its fulfilment.

In 1953 I gave a talk in the Rotary Club at Bulwayo in South Rhodesia. South Rhodesia is a hot-bed of colour-bar. And I was called upon to address the Rotarians there. Europeans there, are keeping down the black Africans and they think they are doing a wonderful job. One Mr. Wilson had written an article on the policy of America and England with regard to Africa. He made out a case that giving equality was the wrong way of dealing with the African situation. Africa will ultimately become the battle ground between Asia and Europe. England he said has committed a great blunder in giving freedom to the Egyptians, Indians and other people. I said at the meeting: You are living 1200 miles from the coast, inland. And therefore you are almost living in the 17th or 18th century, I am afraid. Thoughts don't seem to come here. There are obscure corners of the globe where people hold to the colour bar and think that that is something wonderful. I think that history will give quite a different judgment, because this man seems to be reading history with the telescope turned upside down so that he looks at the same events but doesn't quite see them in their right proportion. England by its one act has created history. She had an understanding of what should be done as a collectivity. In order to come to the correct conclusion the leaders must live in contact with the racial genius, as you call it, or the soul of the race,—the spirit of England. It is something for which she has stood and she proved faithful to it in the second world war. Though she has materially

Page 193

lost an empire, I am perfectly sure that she has gained in inner stature, which is more important after all. Man attains his fulfilment not by money nor by possessions, but by growth of consciousness, an inner growth. You can say, England has done good things out of enlightened interest. But even behind the enlightened self-interest, the drive is that of oneness of humanity. Even when America wants to give aid to other people because of her economic interest,—that is, enlightened self-interest,—even that presupposes great sympathy for others. There is desire to raise the standard of living of all people. This is a universal movement. It is the first sign which indicates that humanity is already becoming one. It has become one already.

Now we are looking at this problem from the point of the growth of life. And I was trying to tell you that those systems of philosophy of social life that consider the collectivity as the ultimate truth or reality stop half way and therefore give a false lead to mankind. There is nothing divine in the collectivity. Collectivity has a truth which is in the Divine, but a collectivity can be as selfish, as egoistic, as full of faults as an individual. Perhaps more, because its faults can ruin a nation. It is titanic. One man committing a mistake can ruin one family or two families or three. But one nation doing something terrible or wrong will ruin millions of people and bring difficulties to others who have nothing to do with it. The imperfections of the collective life have far-reaching bearing on vast masses of mankind; and therefore, it is necessary in collective life to see that we do not put the collectivity in place of the Divine, because collectivity, though a manifestation of the Universal Divine, is not divine in its operation and because it is vast, its proportions do not reduce its ignorance. Because it is vast, it can be vastly ambitious; it can be vastly egoistic. It is only the imperfections of man increased to colossal size.

Page 194

Therefore, a decisive change has become possible with the evolution of mind where the compulsion of association is brought into being. The second stage was the hunger to possess, the desire to go on acquiring more and more. Now, there is an interchange necessary, so there is a desire to give and receive, to receive and give. There is an interchange established; there is an understanding that if one wants to possess, one must allow oneself to be possessed. Love in its beginning obeys the law of hunger where the organism or the individual, simply goes trying to impose itself, to dictate, and to devour almost. Love as a devouring force, you can see, nine cases out of ten in human life. Perhaps it is mutual devouring, sometimes, but it is devouring all the same in the beginning. Equal giving and equal receiving that is the second stage, and the third stage is—only giving, and not receiving; that happens when the psychic being is in front. When the inner soul is in front, then the process is only giving, not thinking of receiving at all—not calculating what one receives. Those are the three stages. The highest is that in which the individual flies into unity or throws himself into the unity. True love means the discovery of one's own highest self outside, in some one else. That is a sign of the acme, where this interchange reaches its highest point. Mind is now the dominant element in the growth of life and it imposes its law on material existence; and mind, therefore, cannot be totally devouring because it knows and sees, even with its limited knowledge, that to give is the best way to receive. It also imposes the law of growth and tries to turn or move the life-force toward conscious unity in difference. This imposition of interchange with others—what does it mean ? Why is the individual ego, evolved after so much labour, again compelled to reverse the process and move toward interchange with others ? It is, really speaking, a movement of trying to realize conscious

Page 195

Unity in difference. That is the law of Satchidananda, that is the law of Truth-Consciousness,—unity in difference. There all individualities exist as variations on the infinite one. The infinite one holds innumerable variations of its own self within itself where there is no difference but only a variant or differentiation on the basis of the one. The same is now imposed on the evolving entity, the ego; it is compelled to admit the necessity of conscious unity in difference. Difference is not abrogated, difference is not regarded as an insuperable obstacle to the realization of unity in the midst of difference. So that is the movement toward the realization of an aspect of Satchidananda in life manifested in earth-consciousness. This impulse to realise conscious unity in difference cannot be fully realized in mind. So long as the organism remains confined to mind in an individual or even in a group, a complete realization of this unity in difference is not possible. It can be only possible by mind or life rising to the fourth term. We have seen life from the submental and subconscious to the conscious, then to the mental; and now it must go beyond mind in order to realize fully the impulse that is at work. The fulfilment of this can come only by ascending beyond mind, because mind is only an inferior term of the Supermind. It is only an instrument for the descent of the higher Truth into form to create individuality and then to ascend back again into the Reality. That is the office which mind has to perform. Mind is an instrument for descent so that the infinite existence of Satchidananda can create an individual, a subjective centre of its expression. And when it goes back, when the evolving mind ascends, it is a step of the ascent toward the Reality...

And, therefore, the perfect solution of the problem of life is not merely by promoting the impulse of association, or merely by accommodating to the ordinary idea of love. It must come by the fourth status to which Life must rise to

Page 196

the eternal unity of man with the Spirit-realization of one spirit, eternal, present in all. The perfect solution is to realize the foundation of human consciousness in the unity and freedom of the Spirit, the freedom to have various self-expressions of its own being operating on the basis of unity. When man has risen to that status then the perfect solution of the problem of collective life will be attained by him. We say man, but it is really life. Life has to go to the fourth status in which unity and freedom of the spirit, creating infinite multiplicity, coexist on the basis of infinite unity. When that is realized then the impulse of association and collectivity in life will have reached its real fulfilment.

Questions and Answers

Q: It is quite colossal. It is very hard to visualize this vast consciousness involving human beings, involving humanity.

It has its laws, it has its functions....

A : Yes, these are the laws which we are studying now. All other laws are derivatives from mind. These are the laws given to us by somebody who has the vision of the Truth-Consciousness, experience of the Truth-Consciousness, and also the experience of the operation of the Truth-Consciousness. So, it is not unrelated to practical life. The most important part of the whole contribution of Sri Aurobindo is that it is not merely an abstract individual experience, but it is the experience of a Reality which he has tried not only to apply to himself but to a collective life. It is something that he has done; so that it is something that can be done. Only we should not think we are now given the task of solving the problem. We are given the task of solving our own problem. You should not be overcome by the proportions. Naturally, when Sri Aurobindo gives you the solution he gives you the vast cosmic background, so that you can see that that

Page 197

alone is the solution. The whole logic of it boils down to this: don't look to another solution, because this is the solution. Other solutions are good in their own way like some palliatives. You apply a remedy for a disease. You have a boil, so you apply something and get rid of it. But unless the system is purified and the possibility of its reappearing is not obviated, it will be there again. What he is suggesting is the radical remedy. And a radical remedy people do not want to try. It is easily understandable; they want something they can do tomorrow. So he says all right, then try a five-year plan. Then, you try lend-lease, or you do this or that. Thousands of things are possible. I want to do something now and here. You do something now and here; it is good. It is in the same direction. It is all right. Even the opposition has ultimately to help this movement. We do not say that therefore they should not do something they like to do. They cannot do anything else. It is better that they do something. They must do what they are doing—that is a good thing. It is not a solution. It helps a little way. A little push in the right direction is good, but it is not the solution. The solution is what Sri Aurobindo points out.

In order to show the rationality of his solution he shows you the whole panorama of life. It is not as if he is talking in the air. He is talking on the earth, very well grounded in the perception of the world as we see it with our mind. We see the material world; we see the animal world, we see the plant world; we see the human world and we see life as the fulcrum over which the whole process is proceeding until it has reached the stage of evolving mental consciousness, and the conscious individuality. Well, now, there is the impulse to perfection and the impulse to delight, which is the driving force of the whole cosmos or the whole process of evolution. How is it going to be realized—the impulse to experience delight, perfection, harmony, knowledge and will,

Page 198

indivisible and harmonized in human life, individual and collective ? For that one has to reach the highest state. One has to open to the Supramental Consciousness or Truth-Consciousness and allow it to descend here and govern and mould life. We think, or most of us think, that we will have to do the whole job, as if the Truth-Consciousness was impotent; but it is not true. If one opens to the Truth-Consciousness one will find that it is dynamic. God is not somebody completely devoid of power. So if the Truth-Consciousness is consciously allowed to descend or an opening is made in mind for it to descend, it will work. It depends on our sincerity and our aspiration; but more, it will depend upon the Higher Power that will work. You are to do your bit; you are to do that, and as I said yesterday, that bit is big enough. If you do that much, then the rest is done by the Higher Power, because that is an active power, a dynamic force. It is not as if it does not know what to do or what to create. It knows what world it is going to create. The difficulty is with the mind all the time saying "I know everything; and I will do it." When the mind is receptive, then the Higher Consciousness that knows what is to be done, gives the right guidance to the mind, to life and to the physical being of man so as to create a mould for its own expression —the expression of the Truth-Consciousness. The purpose of the creation is the manifestation, of the Satchidananda here,—it would be the highest perfection here. Man's idea that he has to do the whole job, is only partially true in the sense that he has to fulfil his part which is quite enough for him.

There was one Girishchandra Ghose,a disciple of Sri Rama-krishna Paramahansa. This is an authentic story. It happened only in the last century. He was a great actor, and a great dramatist. But he was addicted to drinking. He used to come sometimes drunk to Sri Ramakrishna. Sri Ramakrishna did not care. He used to come, fall at his feet, sit there and say he

Page 199

was hopeless, he was a sinner, he was very bad. "Yes, of course. You can change if you want to change," said Sri Ramakrishna. "But you are there, why don't you help me;" asked Girish. "Yes, if you allow me to help you, then I shall help you." So he said, "Take up my burden." Sri Ramakrishna replied, "All right, if you give me your burden, I will take it up." Then when Girishchandra was on his deathbed, he told his people: "He told me to give my burden to him, but I was not able to give it." So you see it is not easy to give oneself.

Q: This flow of evolution, this emergence through crisis, through wars, great events that have meaning—now, will that break down the dead mass of weight of law ? We think law is essential instrument now, but we have so many laws that I think we are just buried under them.

A : Yes, that is to say there is a need for changing values in collective life. The collective life is being shaken. It has been shaken by these two world wars and it is not finding its right direction. Nature is forcing unity of mankind on this collective consciousness all over the world; and it is by fear and by interest and by many other factors that unity of mankind is being promoted. It leaves out the most important, the psychological, factor: the feeling that we are one and that the world is one. This is very simple, but man is evading it. It is difficult but it is there. The world is one and humanity is one. And as soon as the thinking proceeds on that line, you will see that numerous problems will be there, but they will not have the baffling aspect which they have now. You know the acuteness of it and so on. It is because each nation is still seeking somewhere in terms of its own interest and in terms of its own separate existence, and yet the world is one and humanity is one. It is already one. The difficulty is how to convince most people that it is one. Very often man does not see the things before

Page 200

his very eyes. The very acts that he is doing show that the world is one. Still he would not understand it. One should think in terms of all; one should not think : "What should I do to remove unemployment in my nation ?" Rather he should feel "How will all men be employed usefully ?" It is the same thing. You think in terms of "we have got the problem of low wages." It should rather be : What are reasonable wages for all men in the world ? Always think in terms of all. The problem will remain, but then the solution will not be a solution brought about by conflict, by what you call a tug of war, all the time pulling in different directions. It will be then the will of humanity put to the solution of the task. The whole of humanity will combine in that case, and therefore it will be a co-operative, it will be on the basis of harmony. There would be no disharmony and conflict. And that is what UNO can do. That is its real function. It will come to that, ultimately. It will ultimately have to become the government of the world without a rigid constitution; a free association of nations where things are done in the interests of the whole humanity and no nation is considered more important than others because of its size or power or its economic or military strength. When this psychological factor begins to work then UNO itself will become a realization of the world unity, on one plane at any rate,—on the international plane. It is really there. People do not see it. The wave of realizing this unity after the second world war perhaps might ultimately come to something. But if the proper understanding were there it might come quickly, a proper understanding means that ultimately this has to be done. Well, as soon as they realize that this has to be done, everybody will settle down to that way and not go on pulling in different directions. Then the thing might come more quickly and be more effective.

The best solution you can dunk of is to bring the Truth- Consciousness

Page 201

into the dynamic life. Bring that in and allow it to work on life. That would be the most potent power that an individual can bring to bear upon this problem. An American wrote a book, "Ethics of American Foreign Policy." Somebody asked me to speak about international unity and gave me this book. So I took it as a theme. It was an association of International Fellowship in Madras. The writer advocated creating public opinion to influence the policy of the Government. I said there is no use trying to influence the policy of the government. Government policy is laid down and it is not going to be changed by anybody's trying to influence it. Governments do not allow their policies to be influenced by anybody. What is the use of saying "If you create American opinion..." ? That will take how many years, you do not know. The parties are already organized, their programmes are formulated and they work on that basis. Government will not bring about international unity. It is the consciousness that will work. Inner factors have to be evoked into operation. Psychological powers will work, not only political and economic powers. And psychological powers become irresistible, ultimately. It is the change of consciousness. When that is there, Government will have to bow to it, because if there is a change of consciousness, automatically the change will be felt there. So that it is a psychological change which is more important than either political action or social change. The psychological change seems to work in an individual only, but its vibrations or repercussions can be everywhere. You never know. It is not a human power. You are tuning your radio here to New York or to London. You think you alone are receiving. Yes, but it is all the time in the air and anybody can receive it and be affected. The Higher Power is therefore more effective in its working even when it works in an individual; it may not be known to people. But it is not the less effective.

Page 202

< Prev.

Book

Next >

ABOUT

Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine

Lectures delivered in the U.S.A.

Poems by Sri Aurobindo

Spiritual Significance of Flowers

Disciples / Seekers

Sri Aurobindo's Works

The Mother's Works

Satprem's Books

Works by Disciples / Seekers

Guidance

Let us co-create the website.