A TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR:

THE LIFE DIVINE(Sri Aurobindo, CWSA, vol. 21-22)

THE LIFE DIVINE.........................................................................................................................................iPublisher's Note...............................................................................................................................................iCONTENTS....................................................................................................................................................iiBOOK ONE....................................................................................................................................................1Omnipresent Reality and the Universe.........................................................................................................1

Chapter I.....................................................................................................................................................3The Human Aspiration..............................................................................................................................3

A. The persistent ideals of the race – God, Light, Freedom, Immortality.........................................31. The earliest and highest preoccupation of man is also the highest...............................................3

• It manifests itself in the divination of Godhead, the impulse towards perfection...............32. The direct contradiction of the unrealised ideals with the realised fact........................................4

• To the ordinary material intellect – A final argument against their validity ......................4• To a more deliberate view – Nature’s profoundest method................................................4

B. The goal of Nature in her terrestrial evolution and the highest aim of man..................................41. A fundamental method of Nature and the very sense of her universal strivings...........................4

a) All problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony..............................................4b) Essentially, all Nature seeks a harmony....................................................................................4

2. The highest and most legitimate aim possible to man upon earth.................................................5• Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life...........................................................5• There seems to be little objection to a farther step in the series..........................................5• The impulse of man towards God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality..............................5

C. A cosmic necessity to be lifted in the light of reason and an instructed will................................6• A divine life in an animal body – Justified to the deliberate reason....................................6• Scepticism could not satisfy – An attempt to deny or stifle a truth.....................................6

Chapter II...................................................................................................................................................8The Two Negations....................................................................................................................................81. The Materialist Denial...........................................................................................................................8

A. The bases for the affirmation of a divine life and an immortal sense...........................................81. The recognition of the Spirit and the acceptance of Matter..........................................................8

• Eternal Spirit as the inhabitant of this bodily mansion........................................................8• Matter as a fit and noble material........................................................................................8

2. Matter also is Brahman – A series of ascending terms between Matter and Spirit.......................8• Life, Mind, Supermind and the grades that link Mind to Supermind..................................8• Otherwise the two must appear as irreconcilable opponents...............................................8

B. The conclusions in the absence of reconciliation..........................................................................91. If we assert only pure Spirit and a mechanical unintelligent substance or energy........................9

• The inevitable end will be that we shall either deny God or else turn from Nature............9• The passively luminous Soul of the Sankhyas and their mechanically active Energy........9• Shankara’s wordless, inactive Self and his Maya of many names and forms.....................9

2. The materialist has an easier field – But he too ends by positing an unknowable........................9C. The human mind must seek a luminous reconciliation.................................................................9

1. The repose of the ultimate unity and the energy of the expressive multiplicity...........................92. The two negations to test separately each of the two great opposites.........................................10

a) Either Spirit or Matter can give for a time some sense of ultimate reality.............................10• To go to the two extremes before the mind can return fruitfully upon the whole.............10

b) The negation of the materialist and the refusal of the ascetic – Europe and India.................113. Towards a new and comprehensive affirmation for the individual and the race........................11

D. The denial of the materialist........................................................................................................11

1

1. A difference of effectiveness in the material and the spiritual negations...................................11a) Agnosticism – A premiss that the physical senses are our sole means of Knowledge...........11

• The denial of the materialist is less enduring, less effective finally..................................11• Agnosticism extends the limits of the unknowable – It comprehends all the unknown....11

b) The insufficiency of the premise – The possibility of an ever-developing enquiry...............122. The utility of the period of rationalistic Materialism..................................................................12

a) The training of the intellect for entering a vast field of evidence and experience..................12b) The faculties that transcend the senses are exposed to a mixed functioning – A danger.......13

• Especially dangerous for men with unchastened minds and unpurified sensibilities........13c) A clear, pure and disciplined intellect – Our foundation for the higher knowledge...............13d) The work of Atheism for the Divine and the service rendered by Agnosticism.....................14

3. The Unknown is not the Unknowable.........................................................................................14a) The Unknowable and other kinds of Knowledge....................................................................14

• An unknowable Reality which translates itself here into different systems of values......14• A kind of Knowledge one with Identity and by which, in a sense, It can be known........14• A kind of Knowledge scrutinising Life, Mind and Supermind.........................................14

b) The existence of faculties to take cognisance of all things in the universe............................154. The advance to conquer what lies beyond the visible universe..................................................16

a) Modern Materialism – Its very soul is the search for Knowledge,.........................................16b) In the great line of its general results Knowledge tends to become one.................................16

(1) Modern Science confirms in the domain of Matter the conceptions in the Vedanta........16(2) Mind, Life and Matter as one Energy – Energy as will and consciousness.....................17(3) What is that work and result, if not a self-involution and a self-evolution.......................17• Will in man – To unending Life, to unbounded Knowledge, to unfettered Power...........17• Collective Will of mankind that works out with the individual as a means......................17• A superconscious Might uses the individual, the collectivity – The cosmic impulse.......17

c) The latest trend in scientific knowledge is significant of a freer future..................................185. Knowledge and control of the worlds immediately above matter – A beyond...........................18

Chapter III...............................................................................................................................................20The Two Negations..................................................................................................................................202. The Refusal of the Ascetic...................................................................................................................20

A. The justification in support of the Sannyasin..............................................................................201. There is a consciousness transcendent of the Cosmos itself.......................................................202. The viewpoint of the materialist – The viewpoint of the Sannyasin...........................................20

• The materialist insisting on Matter as reality, the relative world as the sole thing...........20• The Sannyasin insisting on pure Spirit as the reality, the relative as a dream...................20

B. The sensious association of the real with the materially perceptible – No validity....................211. The existence of physical realities which are suprasensible.......................................................212. The existence of senses which are supraphysical........................................................................21

a) Cognisance of realities of the material world and supraphysical realities of another world. .21• Realities of the material world without the aid of the corporeal sense-organs..................21

b) Increasing evidence by new-born forms of scientific research – Telepathy...........................21c) Supraphysical ranges of experience – The worlds beyond exist and exercise their influences. .

................................................................................................................................................22C. Consciousness is the great underlying fact – The only evidence of the reality...........................22

1. The question of the reality of cosmic existence and of the value of human life.........................22a) The difference of outlook is of the utmost practical import....................................................22b) Opposite conclusions – The materialist conclusion or the unreality of the objective world. .23

• If we push the materialist conclusion far enough, we arrive at an unreality in the life.....23• If we stress too much the unreality of the objective world – Trenchant conclusions........23

2. Solving the question by an extension in the field of our consciousness.....................................243. The extension of our consciousness – The cosmic Consciousness.............................................24

a) An inner enlargement from the individual into the cosmic existence.....................................24b) The possibility of a cosmic consciousness in humanity admitted in modern Psychology.....24c) The awareness of Matter, Life, Mind and Supermind – The cosmic existence .....................24d) The reality of the world – A Conscious Energy one with Being............................................25

2

• And as it is thus real to the world, so is the world real to this cosmic consciousness.......25• The world is a Conscious Energy one with Being that creates it......................................25• But this conscious Being is more than the universe and lives independently...................25

4. The world-transcending consciousness.......................................................................................25a) The relation of this universe with the Beyond........................................................................25

• Whether this transcendence is necessarily also a rejection...............................................25b) The sense of the unreality of the world – A second negation, the refusal of the ascetic........26c) The sense of the cosmic illusion in the general conception of existence in India...................26

D. Conclusion – The passionate aspiration of man upward to the Divine.......................................271. A state of conscious realisation – An element in human perfection...........................................272. We seek a larger and completer affirmation...............................................................................27

• Including the relation to the descending movement of the Divine leaning downward.....27• Acknowledging the service rendered by Asceticism to Life.............................................27

Chapter IV................................................................................................................................................29Reality Omnipresent................................................................................................................................29

• Since we admit both Spirit and Matter, we have to find a truth that can reconcile...........29A. The search for a reconciliation, not a compromise, between Spirit and Matter..........................29B. The cosmic consciousness – The silent and the active Brahman................................................29

1. In the cosmic consciousness Mind finds its own discords explained and reconciled.................29• Matter and Spirit reveal themselves – Mind and Life are disclosed..................................29• Mind – Its self-fulfilment, when it becomes a pure mirror of the Truth of Being.............29• Life – Its self-fulfilment, when it consciously lends its energies to the Divine................29

2. In this conception – The possibility of a divine life for man in the world..................................303. The silent Self and the active Brahman – One Brahman in two aspects.....................................304. The calm within supporting an inexhaustible activity.................................................................31

• The apparent incompatibility of the two states is an error of the limited Mind................31C. The reconciliation of Spirit and Matter in the transcendental consciousness.............................31

1. Does not the Non-Being reject all possibility of a real universe?...............................................312. The meaning of “Non-Being” – A something beyond positive conception................................323. Sat and Asat – They permit each other, both are eternal.............................................................324. The freedom of Non-Being – The Non-Being permitting the Being..........................................33

• Pure Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Itself as the free base of all............33• Non-Being is the affirmation by the Unknowable of Its freedom from all ......................33

5. The limitations arise from a narrowness of experience in the individual mind..........................336. Nirvana consistent with desireless action – The real gist of the Buddha's teaching...................34

D. An omnipresent reality is the Brahman.......................................................................................341. The reconciliation of the final assertion of all and its negation..................................................342. A positive basis for our harmony – The various formulations of the Unknowable....................35

a) The real Monism, the true Adwaita, is that which admits all things as the one Brahman......35b) Wisdom as the last word of the universal manifestation, not an illusion................................35

3. Brahman is indivisible – Evil, ignorance and pain in the cosmos...............................................354. The words of dream and illusion to describe the world – The cosmic Dream............................365. We start, then, with the conception of an omnipresent Reality...................................................36

• The Non-Being and the universe are different states of the Reality..................................36• The highest experience of this Reality – Not only a conscious Existence........................36• The dualities of the universe will be also resolved into those highest terms.....................36

Chapter V.................................................................................................................................................38The Destiny of the Individual.................................................................................................................38

A. The teaching of our most ancient sages – An omnipresent Reality is the truth of all ................381. Brahman is the One besides whom there is nothing else existent...............................................382. But this unity is in its nature indefinable – “It is not this, It is not that”.....................................383. To confine the Infinite – Not a true unity but a division of the Indivisible.................................394. Sat and Asat as the last antinomy through which we look up to the Unknowable.....................395. Our most ancient sages – A later impatience sought the One to deny the Many........................40

B. The integral view of the unity of Brahman – The application....................................................401. We will then put aside the distinctions of a partial logic – The One, the Many.........................40

3

2. We will guard ourselves also against particular points of view..................................................40• The perception of the spiritualised mind that the universe is an unreal dream.................40• The perception of the materialised mind that God and the Beyond are illusory...............40

C. The destiny of the individual – Man’s importance in the world.................................................411. The development of consciousness – To fulfil God in life is man’s manhood...........................412. The true rule of self-realisation is a progressive comprehension................................................41

• Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it is true divinity of nature.............413. Three general forms of consciousness, individual, universal and transcendent..........................42

a) The conclusion of the ascetic impulse – The cessation of both cosmos and individual.........42b) The integral view of the unity of Brahman avoids these consequences.................................42

(1) The preservation of the individual activities is no longer inconsistent.............................42(2) The necessity of the individual to the action of the Transcendent in the universe...........42

c) The ascetic philosophy – A paradoxical logic........................................................................43(1) The supreme good in the escape of an illusory non-existent soul....................................43(2) It is said the initial and insoluble miracle – A supreme act of egoism.............................44(3) A less paradoxical logic – No irreconcilable antinomy between Self and the world.......44

4. The liberation of the individual soul is the primary divine necessity.........................................44a) The subconscient, the conscient and the superconscient – The stages....................................44b) The unity of the liberated soul with the cosmic Many – The extension in other souls...........45c) The condition of a really divine life – Liberty within and formation without........................45

D. The individual accepting the Becoming freely as the Divine.....................................................46Chapter VI................................................................................................................................................47Man in the Universe.................................................................................................................................47

A. The essential intention behind the aspiration of man..................................................................471. The meaning of the universe – The progressive revelation of a great Reality............................472. That luminous Emergence is the dawn which the Aryan forefathers worshipped......................47

• An all-revealing and all-guiding Truth watches over the world and attracts man.............47• The ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the acceptable Sacrifice...................47

3. The emergence of the Truth of things – The utility of individual existence...............................484. Sachchidananda is the term for which the human consciousness is seeking..............................48

B. The universe and the individual – The revelation of Sachchidananda........................................491. The stages of the progressive revelation – In the descent and in the ascent...............................49

a) Each successive level in the descent of the Divine is to man a stage in an ascension............49• Out of material Nature the world struggles into Life........................................................49• Out of Life it struggles upward into Mind.........................................................................49• Our world has yet to climb beyond Mind to a higher principle – Supermind...................49

b) Matter below life and mind – Not the awakened joy of its own harmonious energies...........49c) Life and mind – Ignorance and desire and the attainment beyond life and mind...................50

2. The universe and the individual are necessary to each other in their ascent...............................50a) Universe is a diffusion of the divine All, the individual its concentration..............................50b) The individual is impelled to realise himself by means of the universe.................................50

• He must universalise and impersonalise himself in order to manifest the divine All.......50• Yet he is called upon to preserve a mysterious transcendent something...........................50

c) The real sense of man's progress – The divine frenzy for a remote ideal...............................51C. Man’s progress – The Son of Man is capable of incarnating God..............................................51

1. Animal life, Mind, Supermind – The basis of the divine life in the human being......................51• The animal life is the inferior term, Mind is the middle term – A supreme term..............51

2. A double Night, a darkness below, a mightier darkness beyond – Two negations.....................52• Man’s mind negates God for a Beyond, or it seems to find God denying Himself...........52• Here also, in the world, he is met always by the opposites of his affirmation..................52

3. The darkness below – The contradictions of the secret Truth of things......................................52a) The terms of the denial appear to be knowable – The mystery of their essential reality.......52b) The opposites of Sachchidananda – The negation of their reality..........................................53

• The superior Negation appears to us sometimes as a Nihil, a Non-Existence..................53• This inferior negation may also be, in its essence, a Nihil, a non-existence.....................53

c) A wrong relation founded on a false attitude both towards God and Nature..........................53

4

(1) The conditions of a progress – Nature escapes out of Matter into consciousness............53(2) Out of these false relations and by their aid the true have to be found.............................53

4. How can such contraries pass into each other?...........................................................................54a) If they are the manifestations of one Reality, a divine transmutation becomes conceivable..54b) The Non-Being beyond as a Bliss – The Nirvana of Buddhism as Sachchidananda..............54c) The suggestion – The inferior negation also is none other than Sachchidananda itself..........54

• A basis in experience for the practice of the divine life might be sought.........................54D. To do this we must dare states of being that are not our own.....................................................55

Chapter VII..............................................................................................................................................56The Ego and the Dualities.......................................................................................................................56

• Death, suffering, evil, limitation – The creations of a distorting consciousness...............56A. The dividing consciousness and the dualities – The redemption by knowledge.........................56

• The fall of man in the poetic parable of the Hebrew Genesis – Adam and Eve................56• The redemption comes by the recovery of a higher knowledge........................................56

B. The recovery of a higher knowledge – About the dualities........................................................57• To Sachchidananda in universality – Shadow-forms of their luminous opposites............57• As felt by us, they are notes of a discord – All totality must be a reconciliation..............57• To Sachchidananda transcendent – It transfigures, it does not reconcile..........................57

C. At first, we must strive to relate the individual to the harmony of the totality...........................571. The search for the great verities on the nature of the divine existence.......................................57

a) The terms to render the values of the universe – There are other states of consciousness.....57b) The practical values given us by our senses and by the dualistic sense-mind........................58c) The right goal – A reasoned and effective knowledge round the right central conception.....58d) The divine existence – The abolition of ego and the transcendence of the dualities..............59

2. The difficulty to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed...........................60a) Our present egoistic valuations – Transcendence in Nirvana or a heaven beyond.................60b) It is not very easy for the customary mind of man to conceive of such an existence divine. .60

• The original Ape of the Darwinian theory – Impossible to conceive of the animal Man. 60• Man’s dream of god and Heaven – The same difficulty in accepting its realisation.........60

c) Yet in the principle of reason itself there is the assertion of a Transcendence.......................61(1) The aspirations of humanity to truth, happiness, the elimination of pain and death........61(2) Yet the same law should hold throughout – The error of the practical reason.................62

3. The solution in the Vedanta – The conception and experience of Brahman...............................62a) The hope of conquest – If we could grasp the essential nature and the essential cause.........62b) Such a solution in the ancient Vedanta – The nature of Brahman as Sachchidananda...........63

(1) The essence of life, sensation and emotion, thought and perception, activity..................63(2) Multiplicity and the ego – The ego-determined reactions and the right relations............63

c) In later Vedanta, the limited ego as the essential condition for the existence.........................63• Thus we return to the essentially evil and illusory nature of human existence.................63• But the ego is only an intermediate representation of something beyond itself................63

D. The higher knowledge – The cycles in our evolution and the supreme birth.............................64Chapter VIII.............................................................................................................................................66The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge....................................................................................................66

• But what then is the working of this Sachchidananda in the world...................................66• By what process are the relations between itself and the ego formed and led..................66

A. The knowledge founding the philosophy and practice of a divine life for man..........................66• We arrive at the conception and at the knowledge of a divine existence..........................66

B. The faculties enabling to arrive at conceptions beyond physical experience..............................661. The pure reason and metaphysical knowledge............................................................................66

a) The first of the instruments going beyond physical experience is the pure reason.................66b) Human reason has a double action, mixed or dependent, pure or sovereign..........................66

• A mixed action when it confines itself to the circle of our sensible experience...............66• Its pure action, when it goes behind, judges, works in its own right.................................66

c) The complete use of pure reason brings us finally to metaphysical knowledge.....................67• But every concept is incomplete for us until it becomes an experience............................67• Other faculty of experience is necessary – An extension of psychological experience....67

5

2. An extension of psychological experience..................................................................................68a) Psychological experience – A double action, mixed or dependent, pure or sovereign...........68

• Mixed action – To become aware of the external world, the object..................................68• Pure action – To become aware of itself, the subject........................................................68• In reality, all experience is in its secret nature knowledge by identity..............................68

b) The extensions of faculty of the sense-mind – Knowledge of the phenomena.......................69(1) The direct cognisance of the objects of sense without the aid of the sense-organs..........69• Experiments of hypnosis and cognate psychological phenomena.....................................69• A pure and sovereign instead of its mixed and dependent action......................................69(2) The sovereign action of the sense-mind can be employed to develop other senses.........69• All these extensions of faculty must be admitted..............................................................69

c) An extension of that knowledge by identity, the awareness of our own existence.................70(1) We can extend our faculty of mental self-awareness to awareness of the Self................70(2) Going beyond the mind – The subconscient and the superconscient and Intuition..........71• The subconscient and the superconscient are two different formulations of the All.........71• Intuitional knowledge is that which is common between them – The supramental..........71

C. The Methods of Vedantic knowledge.........................................................................................721. The ancient Vedanta as the best previous foundation of that which we seek now.....................722. Self-awareness – The one door in us as a starting-point for the play of Intuition.......................733. Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations......................................................73

• What the Intuition tells us of, is not so much Existence as the Existent...........................73• Ancient Vedanta seized this message of the Intuition.......................................................73

4. Ancient Vedanta and later Vedanta.............................................................................................74• But Intuition is unable to give us the truth in the ordered and articulated form................74

a) The age of intuitive knowledge had to give place to the age of rational knowledge..............74• This process which seems to be a descent, is really a circle of progress...........................74

b) We see this succession in the Upanishads and the subsequent Indian philosophies...............75(1) The sages of the Veda and Vedanta relied upon intuition and spiritual experience.........75(2) The speculations of the Indian philosophers – The rise of conflicting schools................75• The unity of the first intuitional knowledge was thus broken up......................................75

D. The survival of the earlier Vedanta – The questions in the thought of India..............................761. The main conceptions of the earlier Vedanta remained..............................................................762. The questions which have always occupied the thought of India...............................................76

Chapter IX................................................................................................................................................78The Pure Existent....................................................................................................................................78

A. Ourselves, the infinite Movement and the pure Existence..........................................................781. The perception of a boundless energy – An existence that surpasses ego..................................782. Brahman dwells equally in all existences – The infinite energy is the same in all.....................793. The pretensions of the ego – The right reckoning between the world and ourselves.................79

• To recognise that we are only a partial movement of this infinite Movement..................79• To recognise that in our true selves we are one with the total movement.........................79

4. But to settle the account we have to know what is this All.........................................................80a) The assertion by Vedanta of an eternal stability, an immutable pure existence.....................80b) Those who see only world-energy – There is nothing that is stable.......................................80

B. Is Existence only an action of energy or energy an output of Existence?...................................811. The concepts of pure reason........................................................................................................81

a) If such an Existence is, it must be infinite with regard to Time and Space............................81b) When we look at existence in itself, Time and Space disappear............................................81c) May it not be that Time and Space so disappear because the existence is a fiction?..............82d) If this indefinable Existence is, it is necessarily a pure absolute............................................82

(1) All things in the movement contain, are contained in and are the Absolute....................82• The relation of the phenomena of Nature to the fundamental ether..................................82(2) The emergence of the movement from the Immutable – The eternity of the Timeless....83• All this, so long as we accept the concepts of pure reason – But no obligatory force......83• We must judge of existence by what we see to exist.........................................................83

2. The findings of experience and intuition.....................................................................................83

6

a) The actual insight into existence – Movement and change in Time as the sole absolute.......83b) The supreme intuition – This stability which the pure Reason has already given us, Self.....84c) The pure existent is the fundamental reality – The movement is also a reality......................85

(1) Two fundamental facts of pure existence and of world-existence ...................................85(2) The Absolute is beyond stability and movement, unity and multiplicity ........................85

C. The essential problem about Force, about Movement, about Shakti..........................................85• We have seen about pure Existence, about Sat..................................................................85

1. What pure Reason, intuition and experience have to say about Force........................................852. Whether that Force is simply force or force of creative self-consciousness...............................86

Chapter X.................................................................................................................................................87Conscious Force.......................................................................................................................................87

A. Movement of Force as the whole nature of the Cosmos.............................................................871. The infinite existence of Force – The movement of energy assuming forms.............................872. The explanation by the Sankhyas................................................................................................87

a) The five states of material Force to build the forms of Matter...............................................87• Sound, aerial or contact, fire and heat, water or the liquid state, earth or the solid state. .87

b) The five elements and our sensible experience – The contact of vibrations of Force............88• Sound, touch, sight, taste, smell........................................................................................88

c) The problem of consciousness – The reflection of the activities of Force in the soul............88d) Force in Nature – The principle of things is a formative movement of energies...................89

3. The same conclusion by modern Science as by intuition and experience...................................89B. Two questions – The how and the why.......................................................................................89

1. How did the movement come to take place at all?......................................................................89a) An existence not compelled by the movement – A movement alien to the repose.................89b) The answer by the ancient Indian mind was that Force is inherent in existence....................90c) The double or alternative potentiality of rest and movement..................................................90

2. Why should this possibility of movement of Force translate itself at all?..................................91a) The question only if we suppose or find Existence to be conscious Being............................91b) A conscious Being which is subject to its nature of Force is not Brahman............................91

C. What do we mean by consciousness?..........................................................................................921. The existence of consciousness in all forms of the Force...........................................................92

a) The facts of knowledge – A starting-point for the true science of Force and its workings....92(1) The mental waking consciousness – Only apparently unconscious states.......................92(2) The materialist contention – The tide of increasing knowledge to the contrary...............92• Materialism insists that the extension of consciousness is a material phenomenon.........92• Its explanations are becoming more and more inadequate and strained...........................92

b) The logical consequences – The conclusions that we can suppose........................................93(1) The presence of a universal subconscient mind even in material objects.........................93(2) A subliminal self including a superconscient in us as well as a subconscient..................93

c) A conscious force of being in all forms of the Force..............................................................94(1) The existence of a sub-mental, a vital consciousness – In animals and plants.................94(2) The range of what we can call consciousness – The existence of other worlds...............94(3) Consciousness in that which seems to us purely material................................................95

2. Consciousness as a self-aware force of existence – Mentality as a middle term........................95a) The subconscient and the superconscient – The Indian conception of Chit...........................95b) The evidence – A supreme hidden intelligence in the animal and the inanimate Nature.......96c) The objection – The element in Nature's operations envisaged as a waste.............................96

D. The Existence is conscious Being – The object of the manifestation.........................................97• A perfect emergence of its potentialities in form is the sole object...................................97

Chapter XI................................................................................................................................................98Delight of Existence: The Problem.........................................................................................................98

• If we accept this pure Existence and an inherent self-consciousness as a force................98A. The question of why the creation – It can be only for one reason, for delight............................98B. The ancient Vedantic theory of cosmic origin............................................................................98

1. Absoluteness of conscious existence is illimitable bliss of conscious existence........................982. The object of the Play – To enjoy the movement and variation of self-delight..........................99

7

3. A triune Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Sachchidananda.........................................................99• All things are variable self-expression of one invariable and all-embracing delight........99

C. The problem – The consciousness of pain and the problem of evil..........................................1001. The world appearing as a world of suffering – The error of perspective..................................1002. The definition of the issue – A false issue and a partial issue...................................................101

a) The philosophical issue – The real problem..........................................................................101• All being Sachchidananda, how can pain and suffering at all exist?...............................101

b) A false issue – The idea of a personal extracosmic God......................................................101(1) Pain as a trial and an ordeal – A result and punishment of moral evil...........................101(2) On no theory of an extracosmic moral God, can evil and suffering be explained..........101

c) A partial issue, the ethical difficulty – The ideas of good and of love..................................1023. How the problem appears or how it can be solved in its original purity...................................103

a) We do not live in an ethical world – Material Nature and vital Nature................................103b) Man’s fundamental delight – However, the change in his conception of the self-development

..............................................................................................................................................103c) Three stages, infra-ethical, ethical and supra-ethical – The final reconciliation...................104d) What is common to all three – The self-expression of Sachchidananda..............................104

(1) The ethical standpoint as only one element in the solution............................................104(2) The root-problem – The phenomenon of pain and suffering in the process...................105(3) Shall we say that the beginning and end is a Nihil containing all potentialities?...........105(4) Sachchidananda moving towards a universal, self-existent and objectless delight........105

e) An inalienable underlying delight of existence – The transmutation by its emergence.......106Chapter XII............................................................................................................................................108Delight of Existence: The Solution.......................................................................................................108

A. The true solution of the problem – Ananda and the overmastering will-to-be.........................108B. The reconciliation of the formulae of the old philosophies – The triple view..........................109

1. Maya..........................................................................................................................................109a) Maya – World-existence in its appearances and in its relation to Existence........................109

• Maya in its original sense meant a comprehending and containing consciousness........109• The word came from its original sense to acquire a pejorative sense.............................109

b) World is not unreal – Even if a dream of the Self or if there is the non-manifestation........109c) Still world is Maya – Not essential truth but a creation of self-conscious being..................110

2. Prakriti – World-existence in relation to consciousness and force of consciousness...............1103. Lila – World-Existence in its relation to the self-delight of eternally existent being...............111

• This triune view must be the starting-point for all our understanding of the universe....111C. The root of the whole matter – Delight of being moving out into delight of becoming...........111

1. Pain, pleasure and indifference – An imperfect response.........................................................1112. Certain consequences about the triple variation of pain, pleasure and indifference.................112

a) A superficial arrangement by a limited part of ourselves.....................................................112(1) There must be something in us which takes delight impartially in all experiences........112(2) The presence within us which is our more real self – The Bliss-Self.............................112

b) The triple vibration can have no absoluteness, no necessity.................................................113(1) Only an obligation of habit – An opposite response or a reply of inalienable delight. . .113(2) The nervous being and the mental being – The response to the world’s contacts..........113• The nervous being in us is accustomed to a certain fixedness........................................113• The mental being on the other hand is free......................................................................113(3) Physical pleasure and pain – Three examples of application of the universal truth.......114• According to the habit the same physical contact can be either pleasurable or painful. .114• Men in periods of great excitement or high exaltation....................................................114• In the phenomena of hypnosis – The reason of this phenomenon...................................114

3. The office of pain of body and mind – The eventual elimination of suffering.........................115a) A definite transitional end in the evolution – The shrinking of the limited being................115b) Pain and pleasure are currents of the delight of existence....................................................116

• In Art and Poetry – A capacity for variable but universal delight...................................116c) Facing, enduring and conquest – Equality and the Sachchidananda consciousness.............117

• Neutrality to the imperfect touches is the first direct and natural result..........................117

8

• The direct transformation of the triple vibration into Ananda is less easy......................117D. The solution of the problem – The emergence of Sachchidananda..........................................118

1. The Vedantic view of the universe – The course and movement of the world.........................1182. The delight of the One Existence in self-finding......................................................................118

• In this creation the real Sachchidananda has to emerge..................................................118• Man, the individual, has to reproduce the supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss......118

3. The play of the One as it reveals itself to our enlightened knowledge.....................................119• Through all this play the secret reality is always one and the same delight....................119

Chapter XIII...........................................................................................................................................120The Divine Maya....................................................................................................................................120

• Existence that acts and creates by its conscious being is the reality that we are.............120A. The very nature of the world-play as it has been realised by Sachchidananda.........................120

1. All becoming is self-manifestation – A various play of self-formation....................................1202. The development of existence, force of consciousness and delight of being............................1213. The final goal is the realisation of the infinite consciousness in the individual........................1214. The key of the world-enigma – A movement of involution, emergence and release................1215. The truth of Vedanta and the truth of evolution........................................................................122

• The fusion of the old Eastern and the new Western knowledge......................................122B. The process by which the Reality has turned itself into the phenomenon................................122

1. All has not yet been explained – We perceive a process, we are aware of a Law....................1222. What has presided over the manifestation – A power of self-directive knowledge..................1223. The necessity of a power between the infinite Consciousness and the result...........................1234. Maya, the power known to the Vedic seers – Higher and lower Maya....................................123

• The lower Maya has first to be embraced, then to be overcome.....................................123• That other Maya concealed by this mental has to be overpassed, then embraced...........123

5. Mind is an instrument of the descending creation, a transitional stage in the ascent................124a) The pessimistic and illusionist philosophies miss or neglect the link...................................124

• This distinction between the lower and the higher Maya is the link...............................124b) The points of view.................................................................................................................125

(1) The purely noumenal and the idealistic philosophies – The creative Idea as Real-Idea............................................................................................................................................125

• The purely noumenal recognise in the cosmos only the work of Mind, Thought, Idea. .125• The idealistic – A relation between the Truth behind and the phenomenon in front......125• The view I am presenting goes farther – It sees the creative Idea as Real-Idea..............125(2) From our ascending point of view we may say that the Real is behind all that exists. . .126• It is this that explains the imperfect reality, the aspiration, the surge of the spirit..........126

c) Mind is not sufficient to explain existence in the universe...................................................126(1) Mind is not a faculty of knowledge – A faculty for the seeking of knowledge..............126(2) An infinite Mind free from our limitations would not be mind at all.............................126(3) Mind, as we know it – What is or has been, what may be, or new modifications..........127(4) The conclusion of a pure noumenalism – Nihilism and Illusionism..............................127

6. A higher force than Mind is the original power of knowledge.................................................128a) The world as the growing image of a divine creation...........................................................128b) The means of approaching that something beyond and behind............................................128

(1) Inference or vague feeling of a Law – Reason as a representative or a shadow.............128(2) When we cease to reason and go deep into ourselves – Knowledge beyond mind........129

Chapter XIV...........................................................................................................................................130The Supermind as Creator...................................................................................................................130

• A principle of active Will and Knowledge superior to Mind and creatrix of the worlds 130A. The intermediary between the One and the Many....................................................................130

• To dwell there permanently is in the end the supreme ideal...........................................130B. Towards some idea of the Supermind by comparison and contrast..........................................130

1. The doubtful possibility of an intellectual account or an effective utilisation..........................130a) Dubiety or remoteness – The apparent contradiction between Mind and Supermind..........130b) The relation of Supermind to Mind – A method of comparison and contrast......................131

2. A light from the past on these domains.....................................................................................132

9

a) We need a name and a starting-point – A subsidiary description is required.......................132b) The conception of the Supermind in the Veda......................................................................132

(1) The essential terms – A truth of being luminously one with all that expresses it...........132(2) Details – Two primary faculties and two operations of the truth-consciousness...........133• Two primary faculties of the “truth-conscious” soul are Sight and Hearing...................133• In the Supermind – A comprehending and an apprehending consciousness...................133

3. The description of the Supermind as an intermediate formulation...........................................133a) The link between the unitarian consciousness and that of the Mind.....................................133b) This intermediary term – The starting-point of differentiation, the instrument of unification...

..............................................................................................................................................1344. Precisions about the description of Supermind.........................................................................134

a) Without Supermind, an impossible paradox and an unreconciled antithesis........................134(1) The unitarian consciousness – Since there in no differentiation, there can be no world......

......................................................................................................................................134(2) Mind – An multiplicity which cannot arrive at unity without abolishing itself..............135

b) The solution of the difficulty – Mind is a passage, not a culmination..................................135(1) Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis ............................................................135• The utmost mission of Mind is to train our obscure consciousness................................135(2) The unitarian consciousness must be an original self-concentration..............................136• First, self-concentration, secondly, the diffusion, thirdly, its firm self-extension...........136(3) Supermind is the self-extension – Creation as a movement between two involutions...137• Spirit in which all is involved and out of which all evolves downward..........................137• Matter in which also all is involved and out of which all evolves upward.....................137

c) The process of differentiation – Comprehending and apprehending consciousness............1375. The contrast between our mental consciousness and the Truth-Consciousness.......................138

a) We regard thought as a thing separate from existence..........................................................138• But in Supermind all being is consciousness – The Idea that is a reality........................138

b) Being, consciousness and will – The unity and effectiveness of the three...........................138(1) In Supermind, they are not divided – The Real-Idea, an effective self-awareness.........138(2) In Mind, we differentiate idea, will and ourselves – None of them is self-effective......138(3) In Supermind, knowledge, force and being are not self-divided as in the mind.............139

C. Omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence of the Divine Being...............................................139• Truth is the substance and Truth rises in the Idea and Truth comes out in the form.......139

Chapter XV............................................................................................................................................141The Supreme Truth-Consciousness.....................................................................................................141

• We have to regard therefore Supermind as the nature of the Divine Being in its action 141A. The Truth-Consciousness as an ordering self-knowledge.........................................................141

• The truth of that which we call God – As the Lord and Creator of its own worlds........141• Nevertheless, with this aspect we are not concerned at present......................................141

1. At present, we are seeking the impersonal truth of the Divine.................................................1412. Source and keeper of Law in the world – The development is predetermined.........................141

B. The development and progress of the world – Time and Space and Causality.........................1421. Different viewpoints about Time and Space.............................................................................142

a) Our mental view of Time and Space is determined by the idea of measure.........................142• In actual fact Mind measures Time by event and Space by Matter.................................143

b) To pure mentality and a consciousness higher than Mind – In the transcendent truth.........143• The pure movement of Conscious-Force which constitutes Space and Time.................143

2. The view of Supermind on the successions of Time and the divisions of Space......................143a) If there were not the factor of Time or the factor of Space or if Time alone were real........143b) This Supermind contains all the forms of itself which its conscious force creates..............144

• To the supramental vision – A greater and profounder truth of harmony.......................144• The divine Supermind sees the whole extension of Time and Space..............................144

c) Indwelling Presence and self-revealing Light – The Lord in the heart of all existences......145d) The Truth-Consciousness that informs and governs all things.............................................145

C. The first operative principle – The all-comprehensive Supermind...........................................1461. A cosmic vision which is all-comprehensive, all-pervading, all-inhabiting.............................146

1

2. The knower, knowledge and the known are fundamentally one...............................................146a) The distinction by our mentality – When I regard myself or external objects......................146b) The truth of unity in Supermind – Divine Knowledge and divine Will are one...................147c) The indivisibility contains multiplicity without derogating from its own unity...................147

(1) The initial error of our analytic mentality – Thence proceeds all the error of the ego...147(2) The separate law as an application of the universal law and truth of all Nature............148• Their particular development is determined by their place in the general development.148

3. The equal Brahman – The triple formula of the comprehensive Supermind............................148• Brahman is in all things, all things are in Brahman, all things are Brahman..................148

D. A secondary power of Supermind – The apprehending consciousness....................................1491. The origin of mentality and the organisation of Mind, Life and Matter...................................1492. First – A practical distinction between the Knower, Knowledge and the Known....................1493. Secondly – The Purusha observing the Force repeats himself in every form...........................1504. So long as the soul acts in the Supermind, Ignorance has not yet begun..................................150

a) The individual centre is not yet the determining standpoint, the knower.............................150b) The point where is the lapse from the Truth-Consciousness into the ignorance..................150

Chapter XVI...........................................................................................................................................152The Triple Status of Supermind...........................................................................................................152

A. The nature of the Divine Consciousness – We must pause and resume briefly........................1521. Before we pass to the standpoint of the apprehending Truth-Consciousness...........................1522. The unity of Sachchidananda – The real self concealed from us by the false self....................1523. The possibility of the divine life in the mould of the mind, life and body................................1534. An intermediate link, the Supermind – Time, Space and Causality..........................................153

• The world is an extension in Time and Space and a development by causality..............153• The true name of this Causality is Divine Law – Self-development of Idea...................153• That which thus develops all things must be a Knowledge-Will or Conscious-Force....153

5. Knowledge and Will creating a world of relations in Time and Space.....................................154• The Supermind then is Being moving out into a determinative self-knowledge............154

6. The Being thus conscient is God – Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent..............................155B. The three poises of the Supermind............................................................................................155

1. The Divine Consciousness can take more than one poise even for all time.............................1552. The three poises in the principle of Supermind itself................................................................156

a) The first poise founds the inalienable unity of things – Not the pure unitarian consciousnes..................................................................................................................................................156• Sachchidananda all-comprehending, all-possessing, all-constituting.............................156

b) The second poise modifies the unity so as to support the manifestation..............................157• The Divine Consciousness stands back – A sort of apprehending consciousness..........157

c) The third poise further modifies the unity so as to support individuality.............................157(1) This tertiary poise would be that of a sort of fundamental blissful dualism in unity.....157(2) The individual Divine would still be conscious of itself as the result of the One..........158

3. We cannot stamp any of these poises with the stigma of falsehood and illusion......................158a) These three poises would be only three different ways of dealing with the same Truth......158b) The emphasis on one side of spiritual experience – The schools of philosophy..................159

• Emphasising the sole truth of the unitarian consciousness..............................................159• Emphasising the play of the One in the Many.................................................................159• Emphasising the play of difference.................................................................................159• But the position that we have taken absolves us from these negations and exclusions...159

Chapter XVII.........................................................................................................................................161The Divine Soul......................................................................................................................................161

A. The essential nature of the divine life towards which we aspire...............................................1611. A firm basis of philosophical reasoning to justify our hope and aspiration..............................161

• We may now ask how we must change and what we must become................................161• We have so far been striving to define for ourselves what the Divine is in its descent. .161• What we ourselves actually are is the Divine in the individual ascending back.............161

2. What would be the existence of a divine soul in the original Truth of things...........................162B. The existence of such a soul – The conscious play of Sachchidananda....................................162

1

1. In its being, in its becoming, in its energy, in its self-experience and in Time.........................162• It would be pure and infinite self-existence in its being..................................................162• In its becoming it would be a free play of immortal life.................................................162• It would be a pure and unlimited consciousness in its energy.........................................162• It would be a pure and inalienable delight in its eternal self-experience and in Time....162

2. The Absolute as the foundation of its being in the unity and the differentiation......................1633. It would live in the two terms of Sachchidananda, the One and the Many...............................1644. All that takes form in itself will be the manifested potentialities of the One............................164

C. The divine soul will be aware of the three grades of the supramental existence......................1651. All existences as the Self, as soul-forms of the One, as the individual Divine.........................1652. In the Upanishads – The Self becoming, containing, inhabiting all existences........................1663. In the Veda – The One that becomes, contains, inhabits all.....................................................166

D. The relations of the divine soul with God and with its other selves in other forms..................167• They will be determined by this comprehensive self-knowledge...................................167• Relations of being, consciousness and knowledge, will and force, love and delight......167

1. The relations of the divine soul with its other selves in other forms.........................................167a) In its relations of enjoyment the divine soul will have the delight of all..............................167b) The same rule will apply to its relations with the being, knowledge and will of others.......167

2. Its relations with God – Its relations of knowledge, will, love and delight...............................168E. But what will be the psychological conditions of the divine Life?...........................................168

• At present we are only considering its metaphysical foundations...................................168Chapter XVIII........................................................................................................................................170Mind and Supermind............................................................................................................................170

• So far – The essence only of the supramental life which the divine soul possesses.......170A. Whether a divine living could be possible for embodied human beings...................................170

1. The supramental existence does not seem to have any connection with our life...............................................................................................................................................................................170

2. The apparently undivine Maya – Mind, life and body..............................................................170a) Are connections of infinite being, conscious-force and self-delight with them?..................170b) Mind, life and body must be capable of divinity if the separation is abrogated...................172c) The possibility to remould them in the end – The internal and the external victories..........172d) What Mind, Life and Body are in their supreme sources and what therefore they must be.173

• The Ideal is an eternal Reality which we have not yet realised.......................................173B. Mind..........................................................................................................................................173

1. The essential faculty and the essential limitation of Mind........................................................173• Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out........................173• Mind cannot possess the infinite, it can only suffer it or be possessed by it...................173

2. The divine Mind........................................................................................................................174a) The divine Mind, a subordinate process of the Supermind – The apprehending movement......

..............................................................................................................................................174• The office of Mind is to translate always infinity into the terms of the finite.................174• Actually it does this in our consciousness to the exclusion of the Infinite......................174• But the divine Maya comprehends Vidya as well as Avidya..........................................174

b) The apprehending consciousness, Prajnana – The division of the Purusha and the Prakriti 175• The last action – The Purusha regards the whole from each of the standpoints..............175

c) The elements of division have come into being – Not a binding limitation yet...................176d) The divine soul is not deluded – The defining power for the play of forms and forces.......177

3. The limited mind.......................................................................................................................177a) The separation of mind from Supermind by Avidya – The origin of the limitated mind.....177b) Before that, there is no real division but only an infinitely multiple concentration.............178

• Whence then does the limiting Avidya originally proceed?............................................178c) The individualised soul viewing everything from its own standpoint excluding all others..178

• In reality all is a flux of change – Only the eternal Real-Idea is firm.............................1784. The mind getting back to the Truth of things............................................................................179

a) From corporeal to vital and pure mentality – Still the original error of the mind.................179(1) The corporeal mentality – The illusion of being determined by the body......................179

1

• Still, a life mind – Our first idea or our first realisation of a soul or inner being............179(2) This life mentality – The illusion of life ........................................................................180• Though it may get free from the error of body – Not from the whole error of mind......180(3) The pure mentality – Sometimes mistaken for the pure spirit........................................181• Still even this pure mentality does not escape from the original error of mind...............181

b) A luminous mentality instrumental to the divine Real-Idea.................................................181• The mind is the final operation of the apprehending Truth-consciousness.....................181• The Ignorance is the Mind separated in knowledge from its source...............................181

c) From the original error of the Mind all its ignorances and limitations are contingent results..................................................................................................................................................183

d) Mind becoming again the final action of the apprehending Truth-Consciousness...............183Chapter XIX...........................................................................................................................................185Life..........................................................................................................................................................185

A. The Supermind as the origin and ruler of Mind, Life and Matter.............................................1851. Mind as a creative cosmic agency – The origin and the original perversion............................185

• So long as it is not separated from the Supermind, it supports the universal Truth........1852. A subconscious Mind manifesting Force as having created the material world.......................1853. Supermind is the real creative agency – Svabhāva and svadharma..........................................186

• Law or Truth in the world bringing out of that which is contained in being...................1864. The Supermind, not a subconscious Mind, has created the material universe..........................187

B. Life – We see that here Mind is manifested in a specialisation of Force..................................1881. What is Life and what relation has it to Supermind, to Sachchidananda?................................1882. What is life?...............................................................................................................................188

a) Life is a form of the one cosmic Energy...............................................................................188• The natural opposition between death and life is an error of our mentality....................188

b) One all-pervading Life imperishable that creates all forms of the physical universe...........1893. In what consists the particular result of the play of Force which we call life...........................189

a) Three realms of the play of Force, animal, vegetable and merely material..........................189b) When we speak of life – The action that we recognise as the action of Life-Energy...........190

(1) Locomotion, breathing, eating and the animal life – The life of the plant.....................190(2) The response to stimulus – Life in the plant, metals, the elements and atoms...............190(3) An interchange between energy in the universe and energy in the individual form.......191

c) What we say is not life..........................................................................................................192(1) When a form appears to us to be dead, this force still exists in potentiality ..................192• In certain cases, such as catalepsy, the ordinary physical functioning is suspended.......192(2) In certain forms of trance – The moment of the real death of the body.........................193• Trance – Both the physical functionings and the outward mental may be suspended....193• The real death of the body – When the process of disintegration has begun..................193

d) Life is the dynamic play of a universal Force – An interchange of stimulation and response.. ...............................................................................................................................................193• It is chiefly recognisable to us where obvious phenomena of life are there....................193

4. Is the distinction we make between life and not-life an essential difference?..........................194a) Life in ourselves and life in the plant – The presence of vitality in the metal......................194b) The real difference – A more or less exclusive concentration..............................................195

• In certain forms of concentration, the mentality ceases to act consciously.....................1955. Life is really a universal operation of Conscious-Force – Chit-Tapas......................................196

a) Life is a scale of the universal Energy – The transition from inconscience to consciousness..................................................................................................................................................196

b) The surface process of the emergence in the light of the evolutionary theme......................197c) Life is the same from the atom to man – A middle term between Mind and Matter............198

Chapter XX............................................................................................................................................200Death, Desire and Incapacity................................................................................................................200

• We have considered Life from the point of view of the material existence....................200• But under whatsoever conditions Life is universal Force...............................................200

A. The source of the limitations of life in the individual...............................................................2001. The evolutionary terrestrial existence – Supermind, Mind, Life and Matter............................200

1

• Mind is involved and subconscious in Life.....................................................................200• Supermind is involved and subconscious in Mind..........................................................200• Life instinct with an involved subconscious Mind is again itself involved in Matter.....200

2. Knowledge-Will operating for the maintenance of distinctly individual forms.......................201• Mind is the final individualising operation of the Supermind.........................................201• Life is the final operation by which the Force energises individual forms.....................201

3. Life is the final operation of Supermind intermediary between Mind and Body......................2024. Life existing and acting as a separate life with a limited insufficient capacity.........................202

• The awakening to the Power in it is the gradual awakening to self................................2025. The three badges of individual life’s limitation – Death, Desire and Incapacity......................203

B. Death, desire and incapacity......................................................................................................2041. The necessity and justification of Death...................................................................................204

a) The attack of the external life – The incapacity to protect or to renew itself........................204• The process of death for a new construction or renewal.................................................204

b) The life-force is the food of the body and the body the food of the life-force.....................204• The balance between the currents of life-force – Disease and decay..............................204• The very struggle for conscious mastery and even the growth of mind – Difficulty......204• The attempt at mastery creates always a corresponding reaction....................................204

c) The justification of death – The process of renewal by seeking new forms.........................205d) The variation of experience which the existence in Time and Space demands....................206

2. The necessity, justification and self-fulfilment of Desire.........................................................206a) The necessary attempt of the individual to maintain and aggrandise itself..........................206b) The justification of Desire – The progress and the culmination and self-fulfilment of Desire. .

..............................................................................................................................................207• Desire must and ought to continue until the individual has grown sufficiently..............207• Meanwhile it has to progress from devouring hunger to the type of a mutual giving.....207

3. The third phenomenon of Life, its law of incapacity................................................................208a) The individualised life-force is to its own consciousness limited and full of incapacity......208b) The justification of Incapacity – The progress and the right conclusion of Strife................209

• Incapacity is necessary and inevitable in the nature of things.........................................209• The struggle of limited forces must rise into a mutually helpful trial of strength...........209• Death, Desire and Strife are the trinity of divided living................................................209

Chapter XXI...........................................................................................................................................210The Ascent of Life..................................................................................................................................210

• We have seen that Life is only a dark figure of the divine superconscient Force...........210A. The sets of terms of our evolution – Life is predestined to other statuses................................210

1. The first and the middle terms – The struggle for life and the Darwinian theory.....................210• The first terms of Life are division, a force-driven subconscient will.............................210• The middle terms of Life are death and mutual devouring, desire and the struggle.......210

2. The evolution towards Mind and Supermind and Spirit – The principle of love......................212• Life evolves upward towards Mind.................................................................................212• Mind evolves upward towards Supermind and Spirit......................................................212

B. The ascent of Life – The fulfilment and transfiguration of the first conditions........................213• Life is predestined by its own nature to a third status.....................................................213

1. Division – Death and mutual devouring....................................................................................213• Life starts with the extreme divisions and rigid forms of Matter....................................213

a) In the first status – The atom, the separate ego and the fusion by aggregation.....................213• The atom, as it is the first aggregate, is also the first basis of aggregate unities.............213

b) In the second status – The problem of maintaining the separate form.................................213(1) The dissolution of the constituents – Interchange, intermixture and fusion ..................213(2) Two principles in Life – The separate form and the compulsion to fusion....................214• In the physical world – Nature needs to create stable separate forms.............................214• As soon as Nature has secured a sufficient firmness, she reverses the process...............214• This, however, cannot be the last stage – To fuse without disturbance...........................214

c) In the third status – The problem requires the full emergence of Mind................................214(1) The mental being – The persistence of the individual and the aggregate life.................214

1

• Only a mental being, supported by the psychic nodus within, can hope to persist.........214(2) Association with love as the governing principle and its emergent summit...................215• Beyond the struggle for life by mutual devouring and the survival of the fittest............215• Those are the fittest for survival who develop most the law of association and of love. 215(3) The increasing predominance of Mind – Conscious unity in differentiation ................216

2. The growth into the third status of life transforms and fulfils the law of desire.......................2173. Incapacity – The third status brings a transformation into a fulfilment and a harmony...........217

C. The goal itself by Mind passing beyond itself – The fourth status of life.................................218• The perfect solution of the problem of Life – By a fourth status of life..........................218

Chapter XXII.........................................................................................................................................220The Problem of Life...............................................................................................................................220

• Life is the putting forth of the Conscious-Force of Sachchidananda..............................220• The central circumstance of this cosmic process is the dividing faculty of the Mind.....220

A. Man must either become a divine humanity or give place to Superman..................................2201. A mass of problems to be solved – The hidden Truth pressing for the solution.......................2202. It has to be a solution in Life – This Life has taken three successive appearances...................221

• The first is material, the second is vital, the third is mental............................................221• In mind, consciousness is aware only of a fragmentary movement................................221

3. The problem is to find the conditions under which the secret Will is satisfied........................2214. The potentiality is Sachchidananda realising Himself through mankind..................................2225. Life depends on the poise of its own constituting consciousness – Four positions..................223

• As of Sachchidananda, of material Nature, of Mind, or of Law, Truth and Right..........2236. Sachchidananda, the denial by Himself and His emergence – The real Man...........................224

• The first of these four positions is the poise in the being of Sachchidananda.................224• The second is the great denial of Sachchidananda by Himself.......................................224• The third is the poise of being in Mind and in the Life...................................................224• The fourth is the poise of being in Supermind – The real life of the real Man...............224

B. The difficulties from the imperfect poise of Consciousness and Force in man........................2251. First – Man is aware only of a small part of his own being......................................................225

a) We are governed by the subconscient and subliminal even in our conscious existence.......225b) The real Man will be entirely self-aware by his full unity with the Self-existent.................225

2. Second – The separation of man in his mind, life and body from the universal.......................226• The Supermind alone commands unity in diversity........................................................226

3. Third – The division between force and consciousness in the evolution..................................227a) The division in the three successive formations of Matter, Life and Mind..........................227

• This is the war of our members which the mind cannot satisfactorily resolve................227• The true solution lies in finding the principle beyond Mind...........................................227

b) The fundamental division within between force of Nature and the conscious being...........228• In trying to fulfil the demands of the triple soul, the power of the mind is limited.........228• The principle of unity is above in the supermind............................................................228

C. The search for harmony – The principle of perfection in the superconscient...........................2291. Harmony of mind, life, body, of knowledge, will and emotion, of all members......................229

• It is above and not either in our present poise nor below it that we must seek...............2292. The relations with the world – A principle of harmony, peace, joy and unity..........................230

• This too can only come to him from above.....................................................................230D. The solution of the problem is in the Supermind – The fourth status of Life...........................230

Chapter XXIII........................................................................................................................................231The Double Soul in Man........................................................................................................................231

A. The ascent of Life is in its nature the ascent of the divine Delight in things............................2311. The terms of the four statuses of Life – The soul’s seeking for delight....................................231

• First – A force of some involved will in the material or atomic existence......................231• The second status is desire, eager to possess but limited in capacity..............................231• The third is Love which seeks both to receive and to give itself.....................................231• The fourth – The foundation of the supramental existence.............................................231

2. To seek for delight is the fundamental impulse and sense of Life............................................232B. The double soul in man – The desire-soul and the psychic entity............................................232

1

1. A fourfold principle of divine Being and their four subordinate terms.....................................232• Supermind uses for effectuation its own subordinate term, Mind...................................232• Conscious-Force expresses itself through its own subordinate term, Life......................232• All-existence manifests itself through its own subordinate term, Matter........................232• Bliss must be manifested in us through some subordinate principle of its own..............232

2. Soul or psychic term is double as every other cosmic principle in us.......................................233• We have two minds – The surface mind, a subliminal mind...........................................233• We have two lives – One outer, the other a subliminal force of life...............................233• Even in the matter of our being there is this duality........................................................233• A double psychic entity – The surface desire-soul and a subliminal psychic entity.......233

3. In the concealed part of our being our individuality is close to our universality......................234C. The wrong reception by the desire-soul – Pleasure, pain and indifference...............................234

1. The individual in the Ignorance cannot meet the real soul of the world...................................234• It receives instead a crowd of contradictory touches and impressions............................234• The desire-soul – A triple misinterpretation, pleasure, pain and indifference.................234

2. The three are determined by the subjectivity of the receiving consciousness...........................2353. The subliminal soul has an equal delight in all contacts...........................................................236

• The superconscient in us is one with the self and soul of the world...............................236• The real subconscious is a nether diminished consciousness close to the Inconscient. . .236• The subliminal is a consciousness larger than our surface existence..............................236

4. An all-embracing delight is possible by bringing the real soul to the surface..........................237• The lover of Nature does this when he takes joy in all the things of Nature...................237• The artist and the poet do it when they seek the rasa of the universal............................237• The seeker of knowledge, the God-lover, the sensuous, the aesthetic all do this............237

D. The three transformations, psychic, spiritual and supramental.................................................2381. The psychic entity grows till it is able to come forward into the front.....................................238

• This veiled psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us.............238• Not the unborn Self or Atman it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature.......................238• The psychic Person puts forward a psychic personality which develops........................238• The psychic being can at first exercise only a concealed and partial and indirect action238

2. The psychic transformation is not all that is needed – A spiritual transformation....................2403. Beyond ths spiritual Mind is the higher experience of the supermind......................................241

• After the psychic and the spiritual change – A supramental transformation...................2414. The supramental – Harmony between spirit status and world dynamism.................................242

• In our spiritual change ego has to vanish – A vast impersonality...................................242• One may be divided into two parts of being, the spiritual within, the natural without. . .242• Only the Supermind can establish in the outer existence the harmony of the Spirit.......242

5. In Supermind, the psychic being can unite itself with the original Delight..............................244Chapter XXIV........................................................................................................................................245Matter.....................................................................................................................................................245

• We have now the assurance that Life is a pulsation of the divine All-Existence............245A. We must find out the reality of Matter to consider a perfect solution.......................................245

1. The importance of the body for a perfectly divine manhood in life..........................................2452. The knot of the problem of existence – The different views in the past...................................246

• It seems indeed that the body is from the beginning the soul’s great difficulty..............2463. The discord between Mind, Life and Matter and of the spirit against them.............................2464. The labour of the Divine in the universe towards a real victory...............................................247

• A real victory of Life over Matter...................................................................................247• A real victory of Mind over Life and Matter...................................................................247• A real victory of Spirit over the triplicity........................................................................247

B. The reality of Matter – Cosmic Mind and Life in their creative action....................................2481. Matter is a creation of Consciousness.......................................................................................248

• Science discovers that Matter resolves itself into forms of Energy.................................248• Philosophy discovers that Matter only exists as substantial appearance.........................248• A superconscient Mind creates the material universe.....................................................248

2. How Consciousness came to create Matter as the basis of its workings?.................................249

1

• Mind is only a final action of Supermind in the descent towards creation......................249• Life is an action of Conscious-Force working in the conditions of the Ignorance..........249• Matter, as we know it, is only the final form taken by conscious-being.........................249

3. Why the phenomenal and pragmatic division of an indivisible Existence?..............................250• It is because Mind has to carry the principle of multiplicity to its extreme potential.....250• Material substance is the form in which Mind contacts the conscious Being.................250

4. Atomic division and aggregation by cosmic Mind and Life.....................................................252a) The cause of atomic existence – The will-to be....................................................................252

• Cosmic Mind turns Matter into forms of atomic being...................................................252• At the same time, the atomic existences tend to aggregate.............................................252• Each of these aggregates bears with it a fiction of a separated individual existence......252

b) The subdivision of the atom into an utmost atomic existence, unstable perhaps.................252• The nature of the action of cosmic Mind is the cause of atomic existence.....................252• Unatomic extension of substance – Not a creative concept of the dividing Mind..........252

5. Matter, like Mind and Life, is Brahman in its self-creative action...........................................253Chapter XXV.........................................................................................................................................254The Knot of Matter................................................................................................................................254

• The sharp division between Spirit and Matter has no longer any fundamental reality. . .254A. A purely conceptive difference ending in a practical distinction..............................................254

1. Matter and Spirit are one – Beginning, middle term and conclusion of the world...................2542. An ascending series of principles of relations between sense and Substance...........................255

• A substance of mind, of pure dynamic life-energy – Spirit itself is pure substance.......2553. Brahman is the sole material of the universe – Matter also is Brahman...................................256

• Brahman is not only the cause and supporting power and indwelling principle.............2564. Still there is this conceptive difference and practical distinction..............................................256

• Therefore the exclusive spiritual seeker is justified from his view-point........................256• Let us see what this divine order of the universe means.................................................256• We must state the difficulty and then look for the issue..................................................256

B. The difficulty.............................................................................................................................2571. The fundamental oppositions Matter presents to Spirit.............................................................257

a) It is the culmination of the principle of Ignorance................................................................257(1) Consciousness has lost and forgotten itself in a form of its works ................................257(2) Consciousness emerging works against the grasp of the Ignorance ..............................258

b) It is the culmination of bondage to mechanic Law and opposes a colossal Inertia..............258c) It is the culmination of the principle of division and struggle..............................................259

2. The law of pain and suffering and the unrest of dissatisfaction................................................260• The ignorance, inertia and division of Matter impose that law.......................................260

a) The consciousness and the vital sentience emerging in Matter............................................260b) The pain and discord of the world become finally too keenly sensible................................261

3. The law of division as the basis of the pessimist theory of the world.......................................262a) A separate and limited mind, life and body – The futility of existence................................262b) The pessimist conclusion as to the earthly life and the destiny of the mental being............263

C. The nature of cosmic existence – The supreme creative power of Supermind.........................263• If it is the infinite Being, Knowledge, Will which emerges out of Matter......................263

1. The appearance of a supramental being as the natural and inevitable conclusion....................2632. The liberation of mind, life and bodily existence – A divine mind, life and body...................2643. The condition – An ascending series of the divine gradations of substance.............................265

Chapter XXVI........................................................................................................................................266The Ascending Series of Substance......................................................................................................266

A. The possibility of a divine mind, a divine life and a divine body.............................................2661. The intention and character of the material universe – Divisibility..........................................2662. The possibility of an infinite gradation between Matter and Spirit...........................................267

• If there is an ascending series in the scale of substance from Matter to Spirit................2673. Life and mind may manifest themselves in another relation to substance................................268

B. The ascending series of Substance – The worlds......................................................................2691. A series in the scale of Matter – What is between material and pure substance?.....................269

1

• Between inconscient substance and utterly self-conscious self-extension......................2692. The gradations of substance correspond to the ascending series of principles.........................269

• The series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and the triplicity of Sachchidananda.......2693. The initial, dominating, determining fact in the grades of substance........................................269

a) Matter – An inconscient or subconscient will taking the form of a material force and energy. ...............................................................................................................................................269

b) Life – A conscious cosmic vital Energy, a force of vital seeking and a force of Desire......270c) Mind, Supermind and the divine triplicity of Sachchidananda.............................................271

• Mind – There Mind dominates as the original formula...................................................271• At a yet higher reach Supermind, Bliss, Conscious Power or pure Being dominates.....271

4. Being, consciousness, force, substance descend and ascend a ladder.......................................271• The more subtle is also the more powerful......................................................................271

C. How does the ascending series affect the possibilities of our existence?.................................2721. Evolution comes by the pressure of the supra-material planes on the material........................2722. The higher principles must descend in their characteristic power............................................273

• Life, mind, supermind, spirit must manifest from below, but also from above..............2733. The terms of ancient psycho-physical science – The grades of our substance.........................273

• Five degrees – The material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific.....273• To each of these grades of our soul there corresponds a grade of our substance............273• These five sheaths – The material of three bodies, gross physical, subtle and causal.....273• Six centres in the dense body – Six centres of life and mind faculty in the subtle..........273

4. Subtler grades of substance behind the gross body – The possibilities.....................................274a) The evolution of a nobler physical existence – The truth of our existence...........................274b) An ascent to the ideal or causal body – A divine mind, life and a divine body....................275

Chapter XXVII......................................................................................................................................276The Sevenfold Chord of Being..............................................................................................................276

• The basis of knowledge by our scrutiny of the seven great terms of existence...............276A. The gradations of evolution and involution..............................................................................276

1. The divine quaternary................................................................................................................276a) The triune principle of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss – The fourth, Supermind........276b) Supermind proceeds by a double faculty of comprehensive and apprehensive knowledge. 277

• The Supermind is the divine Gnosis which creates, governs and upholds the worlds....2772. The lower trilogy – Mind, Life and Matter are subordinate powers.........................................277

• Mind is a subordinate power of Supermind.....................................................................277• Life is similarly a subordinate power of the energy aspect of Sachchidananda..............277• Matter is the form of substance of being which Sachchidananda assumes.....................277

3. A fourth human principle, the soul – The desire-soul and the true psychic entity....................2774. Eight principles – An inverted order of ascent and descent......................................................278

a) Our existence is a sort of refraction of the divine existence.................................................278b) A veil between mind and Supermind – The rending of the veil and the divine life.............278

• The rending of the veil is the condition of the divine life in humanity...........................278• Before we can turn to the psychological and practical conditions of the divine life.......279• We have discerned the essential principles of the descent of Sachchidananda...............279• We must discern the plan and the nature and action of the manifested power................279

B. The sevenfold power of being – The principles essential to all cosmic creation......................2791. The higher trinity is the source and basis of all existence and play of existence............................

...................................................................................................................................................279a) The All-Existent as Time and Space – The cosmic action of Conscious-force....................279

• The All-Existent figuring Himself out as Time and Space..............................................279• Cosmic action is impossible without the play of an infinite Force of Existence.............279• That Force equally presupposes or is the action of an infinite Consciousness................279

b) Universal self-delight is the cause, essence and object of cosmic existence........................2802. The Supermind is the Truth or Real-Idea, inherent in all cosmic force and existence.............2813. Mind, Life and Matter are also indispensable to all cosmic being............................................282

a) Mind is necessary for fixed development, measurement and interaction of relations..........282b) Life and Substance – Determination of force and action, of form and substance................282

1

• Life is the determination of interaction of energy from many fixed centres...................282• Substance – Determination of form and substance would always be necessary.............282

C. Involution and evolution of the sevenfold power – The divine destiny of man........................283• Where one principle is manifest in Cosmos, there all the rest must be...........................283• The evolution of the sevenfold power of being must be the destiny...............................283• The only question is whether the earth is to be a scene of that emergence.....................283• Or whether the human creation is its instrument and vehicle..........................................283

Chapter XXVIII.....................................................................................................................................285Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya........................................................................................285

A. The process of the lapse into the Ignorance..............................................................................285• It has still to be made clear how division came about in the Indivisible.........................285• This problem left over to be treated – The phenomenon of Knowledge-Ignorance........285

1. All that is necessary to note at present – An exclusive concentration......................................285• It puts all the rest of consciousness and being behind and veils it..................................285• Still there is one aspect of this problem which must be immediately considered...........286

2. The gulf between Mind and Supermind – There must be gradations.......................................286• There must be in the descending and ascending scale of Being an intermediate power. 286

3. Such gradations must be superconscient to human mind – Means of contact?........................287• Means of contact with these higher gradations of consciousness?..................................287

B. The means of the transition.......................................................................................................2881. There are several directions in which human mind reaches beyond itself................................288

• First – The place Intuition occupies in the human means of knowledge.........................288• There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation.................288• Penetrations from above into our mental limits – The phenomena of genius.................288• Finally, there is the vast and multitudinous field of mystic and spiritual experience.....288

2. Two successive movements of consciousness towards the superior gradations.......................290a) A movement inward – The entry into the inner being..........................................................290

• Still an identification with a diminished cosmic truth or with the cosmic Ignorance.....290b) An ascent upwards – A spiritual mind-range where mind is no longer ignorant..................290

• Once this entry into the inner being is accomplished......................................................290• The first most ordinary result is a discovery of a vast static and silent Self....................290• But another less negative line of supernormal experience also offers itself....................290• It is in the latter alternative that we find the secret we are seeking.................................291• The needed step towards a supramental transformation..................................................291

3. A graduality of ascent – Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition, Overmind..........................291C. Overmind – The occult link we were looking for.....................................................................293

1. The Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness.................................................293a) A line divides Supermind and Overmind – Separateness of aspects or powers...................293

• Overmind takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action................293b) The character of a teeming of infinite possibilities which can be developed.......................294

2. The difference between Overmind and the separative mental consciousness...........................295a) Mental consciousness sees the world in sections – Overmind Consciousness is global.......295

• A development of multitudinous independent or combined Powers or Potentials..........297b) There is no exclusiveness asserting each as the sole truth or the others as inferior..............297c) A comparison of viewpoints about the activities in our material universe...........................298

• An Overmind world would be a world of harmony........................................................2983. If each principle must carry out its complete consequences – The inevitable descent.............299

a) Overmind has made the Ignorance inevitable – The harmony we strive for........................299• The harmony – Only by the evolution in us of the concealed superconscient powers....299

b) A line divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance – The cosmic Mind................300(1) The cosmic Mind on this level is not aware of its own source in the Spirit...................300(2) In this Mind a larger power of communication and mutuality still remains...................301• The complete separation when Inconscience has been reached......................................301• A world in which an original Inconscience and a division of consciousness..................301

4. The hidden Overmind and Supermind must in the end fulfil themselves.................................303• Two things render that culmination more facile..............................................................303

1

• Overmind in the descent has originated modifications of itself – Intuition especially. . .303• Secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind are secretly present............................303

D. A divine Life is the inevitable outcome of Nature's evolutionary endeavour...........................303BOOK TWO...............................................................................................................................................305The Knowledge and the Ignorance...........................................................................................................305– The Spiritual Evolution...........................................................................................................................305PART I.........................................................................................................................................................307The Infinite Consciousness........................................................................................................................307and the Ignorance.......................................................................................................................................307

Chapter I.................................................................................................................................................309Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable....................................................309

• A Consciousness-Force is the creator – Knowledge must be everywhere......................309A. The problem – The double aspect of Knowledge and Ignorance..............................................309

1. A total Nescience at the beginning of things – A seeking Ignorance afterwards......................3092. Moreover the knowledge gained is of phenomena, not of the reality of things........................310

a) Cosmic existence as an Infinite containing a mass of unexplained finites...........................310b) The enigma – The strange process by which things are determined....................................311c) The formulae of Science do not disclose the intrinsic how or why......................................312d) An unexplained variation in the generic and individual determinates..................................313

B. The possible explanations by an approach from the material end of Existence........................3141. A self-organising dynamic Chance – A mechanical Necessity.................................................314

• A first possible explanation – A general chance without any determining principle......314• But there is too much of an iron insistence on order, on a law........................................314• A second explanation – So many mechanical laws of Nature.........................................314• But that does not elucidate the free play of the endless unaccountable variations..........314• The double contradiction –..............................................................................................314• Consciousness emerging from a fundamental Inconscience...........................................314• A Mind of order and reason manifesting in a world created by inconscient Chance......314

2. Consciousness as the creator of the world out of an original Inconscience..............................316a) A theistic explanation of existence starting from an extra-cosmic Deity.............................316

• The difficulty – The arbitrary nature of the creation, its ignorance, strife and suffering 316• This difficulty would disappear only if the Creator were immanent in the creation.......316

b) The manifestation by the Infinite of truths or powers of its own being................................317(1) The forms or vehicles of these truths or powers would be the basic determinates.........317(2) All the unexplained processes of Nature would find their meaning and their place......318(3) Other otherwise unaccountable aspects become also easily understandable .................319• The physiological functionings of the body and the mind’s psychological actions........319• A spiritual entity is the original determinant of both mind and body..............................319• The conception of a divine Mind and Will creating the cosmos becomes justifiable.....319• But an approach from the material end of Existence – No certitude of validity.............321

C. Following the evolving consciousness until the secret is self-discovered................................3211. Subconscious life, animal life, human mind – A veil is still there............................................321

• A veil over the inner secret of ourselves, our consciousness, our total nature................321• A profounder result only when we follow the yogic process of quieting the mind.........322

2. The discovery of the mental being – Still the question remains entire.....................................322• First we discover that mind is a subtle substance............................................................322• Next we see that waves and currents of mental energy...................................................322• We can perceive an occult or subliminal mind and higher planes of consciousness......322• Finally we discover that that which observes all this is a mental being..........................322• This mental being or Purusha first appears as a silent witness........................................322• Afterwards we find that the mental being can become the source of reactions..............322• But still the question remains whether all this is something predetermined...................322• To know that we would have to touch or to enter into a cosmic consciousness.............322

3. Overmind – A cognition of cosmic truth but no final and positive solution.............................323a) The three views of creation that seem to have an equal chance of being right.....................323

• The original question is not solved on the world of perceptions of the mental Person...323

2

• A self-determination, a creation by Nature, or a play of a cosmic Imagination..............323b) In Overmind, the dichotomy of a pure silent self and of a determinative knowledge-power.....

..............................................................................................................................................324c) The existence of the Supreme Being and the Power of his existence as opposites...............325

4. Supermind.................................................................................................................................327• It is in a supramental cognition beyond that we are left to seek for an answer...............327

a) Creation would be an ordered deploying of the infinite possibilities of the Infinite............327b) The process of self-manifestation – The deploying of powers and possibilities..................328

(1) The fundamental determinates of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss..........................328• Love, Joy and Beauty are the fundamental determinates of the Divine Delight.............328• Knowledge and will, the fundamental determinates of the absolute consciousness.......328• Atman, Ishwara, Purusha, the fundamental determinates of the absolute Existence......328(2) Each of these aspects or powers reposes in its first action on a triad or trinity..............329• The fundamental spiritual self-determinations of the Infinite.........................................329• All others are determinates of the fundamental spiritual determinates...........................329

c) Indeterminability is also a necessary element in our conception of the Absolute................330(1) Both the fundamental negating positives and the fundamental affirming positives.......330(2) Not losing sight of the affirmative aspects while accepting the truth of the negative....331

d) A total cognition of cosmic being – The Inconscience and Ignorance.................................333(1) Inconscience, which seems to be a negation of the Reality, yet corresponds to a Truth......

......................................................................................................................................333• The Infinite’s power of plunging the consciousness into a trance of self-involution......333(2) The sense of the phenomenon of the Ignorance and its inevitable consummation.........333• Ignorance – A partial and imperfect evolving knowledge...............................................333• Its consummation would be a return to an integral self-knowledge and all-knowledge. 333

D. The highest spiritual planes would not be a field of blank indeterminability...........................334• The supramental cognition is not the final truth of things...............................................334

1. Beyond the Supermind, the greatest heights of the manifested Spirit.......................................3342. Above all worlds of manifestation – Sachchidananda and the ineffable Absolute...................335

• The Absolute is not a mystery of infinite blankness nor a supreme sum of negations....335Chapter II...............................................................................................................................................336Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara –..............................................................................................................336Maya, Prakriti, Shakti...........................................................................................................................336

A. Brahman, the universe and our own real existence – How this is possible?.............................3361. A Reality indeterminable to Mind, because of its absoluteness and infinity............................3362. The fundamental truths of the Reality – The logic of the Infinite.............................................337

• The fundamental aspects in which we see and experience the omnipresent Reality.......337• The intellect must accustom itself to the logic of the Infinite.........................................337

3. Three fundamental aspects of the Reality and of its power of Consciousness..........................338a) The three terms of the Self-existence – Brahman, the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara.338

• This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature..................338• The Supreme Brahman is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace..........338

b) The three aspects of the power of Consciousness – Maya, Prakriti, Shakti.........................339• As there are three fundamental aspects in which we meet this Reality..........................339• These three aspects and their powers comprise the whole of existence and all Nature. .339• In observing the triple aspect and the triple power we come to see how this is possible339• But to the analysis of the logical intellect it offers an abundance of difficulties.............340

4. The analysis of the logical intellect – Whether illusions or realities?.......................................340a) The being of the Self-existence and the world are a suprarational mystery.........................340b) Our finite consciousness and reason – The infrarational and the suprarational....................341

• Standards suitable to one need not be applicable to another order of the reality............341• Again our intellect finds it difficult to deal with what is infrarational............................341• Still more difficult for our reason to understand and deal with the suprarational...........341

c) There is a greater reason in all the operations of the Infinite................................................343• Not a mental or intellectual – A spiritual and supramental reason..................................343

d) Our reason must become plastic and open to larger states and possibilities.........................344

2

e) We must not emphasise one side of the Truth to the exclusion of all other sides.................3465. The difficulties facing our intelligence when it tries to conceive the Reality...........................347

a) The whole difficulty is verbal and conceptual and not real – The indeterminability............347• The indeterminability is not in its true sense negative – A freedom from limitation......347• An Infinite essentially free from all limitation by qualities, properties, features............347

b) An Infinite teeming with innumerable qualities, properties, features...................................348• Here again the statement of illimitable freedom is positive, not negative.......................348

c) The essential and infinite Oneness capable of an infinite multiplicity.................................350• In the logic of the Infinite there is no opposition.............................................................350

d) An infinite pure status and immobile silence of the Spirit and a boundless movement.......351• To the reason and the logic of the Infinite there can be no opposition............................351

e) The Divine is formless and nameless – Name, nomen, numens...........................................352• The capacity of manifesting all possible names and shapes of being..............................352

B. The logic of the way of the universal being of Brahman..........................................................3521. The coexistence of the Infinite and the finite – The Indefinable and Illimitable......................3522. The incoercible unity in all divisions and diversities – The One becomes Many.....................3533. The underlying immutability of the eternal Identical – Infinite differentiation........................3544. The Maya of Brahman is the magic and the logic of an infinitely variable Oneness...............355

• As with the being of Brahman, so with its consciousness, Maya....................................356• Maya is the supreme and universal consciousness and force of the Eternal...................356

C. The possibilities of the Infinite Consciousness – Maya............................................................3561. The three powers.......................................................................................................................356

a) The power of self-determination of the Infinite – Different real statuses of consciousness.356b) Second – The power of self-limitation into a subordinate movement..................................357

• Each being in a world will see the same world, but see it from its own self-being.........357• There must also be in the consciousness of the Infinite a power of cosmic limitation. . .357• This much cosmic or individual conscious self-limitation would evidently be possible 357• But so far any ignorant separation in our own consciousness would be unaccountable. 357

c) Third, the power of self-absorption – The Superconscience and the Inconscient.................358• A step further – A special or a restricted and partial action of self-absorption...............358• The explanation of the status by which it becomes aware separately of one aspect.......358• The ways in which the three powers can work – A clue to the operations of Maya.......358

2. Both the static and the dynamic states – Different states of consciousness in us.....................359• This throws light incidentally on the opposition between the static and the dynamic....359• This is also the reason why different states of consciousness at the same time..............359

D. The three aspects of Brahman – Absence of contradiction between them................................361• Brahman is the self-existent Absolute and Maya is the Consciousness and Force.........361• But with regard to the universe Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman...361• Maya can then be seen as the self-power, Atma-Shakti, of the Atman...........................361• In the same way we can become aware of it as the Purusha, separate from Prakriti......361

1. The Self, Atman – Freedom and impersonality are the character of the Self...........................361• To realise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.....................................361

2. Purusha, the Conscious Being...................................................................................................362a) Purusha, the Self as originator, witness, support and lord – A more personal aspect...........362

• The experience of Purusha-Prakriti is of immense pragmatic importance......................362b) The philosophy of the Sankhyas – The pragmatic truths......................................................363

• Prakriti is Nature-power – Nature acts by three principles, modes or qualities..............363• Purusha, conscious being, is plural, not one and single, while Nature is one.................363• Not the whole or the fundamental truth either of self or of Nature.................................363

c) An apparent and necessary duality – Status of the Spirit and status of Nature.....................365• Whatever status Nature assumes, there is a corresponding status of the Spirit...............365• The Purusha is the Self in its pure impersonal-personal status of a Spirit......................365

3. The Ishwara – The Divine Being, the supreme Person and All-Person....................................366a) The most comprehensive of the aspects – Not the personal god or the Saguna...................366b) The Person, the various personalities and impersonality – The conciliation........................367

• The sharp opposition between personality and impersonality is a creation of the mind.367

2

• An infinite Person is the essence and source of all personality.......................................367• A difficulty arises in understanding his rule or government of world-existence............368

c) Our view of the divine government – Anthropomorphism and mechanism.........................368• The real truth is that the world is governed by the One in all and over all......................368

E. The relation between the Self-Existence and the dynamics of the Conscious-Force................3691. Being and its Consciousness-Force cannot be fundamentally dual..........................................3692. The Divine Mother-Energy as Maya, Para-Prakriti, Chit-Shakti..............................................370

• It is towards or into the supreme Nature that our ascension has to take place................370• Thus there is no contradiction between the three aspects of Existence...........................370• Neither between them in their eternal status and the three modes of its Dynamis..........370

3. The difficulty for our mind in reconciling these different fronts of the One Spirit..................372a) Something that is not abstract, something that is spiritually living and intensely real.........372

• Its truth could only be rendered by ideas and images living and concrete......................372b) How we must regard the relation between the One and the Many – The duality and unity.373

• In this view of the Ishwara the Many are the Divine One in their inmost reality...........373• The duality expressing unity, proceeding from unity and opening back into unity........373• One problem still remains to be solved, and it can be solved on the same basis............374

4. The problem of the opposition between the Non-Manifest and the manifestation...................374a) The relation of Time to the timeless Spirit – Eternity is the common term..........................374

• These two then are the same Eternity or the same Eternal in a double status.................374b) The Reality timeless and spaceless – Space and Time.........................................................375

(1) A dual aspect of one and the same self-extension of the cosmic Eternal.......................375(2) What Space in the material world and Time could be ...................................................375• In any case, there is a different Time and Space for each status of our consciousness...376(3) A fundamental spiritual reality of Time-Space ..............................................................376

(a) .........When we go behind physical space – This extension is spiritual and not material.....................................................................................................................................376

(b) If we go behind Time – Time observation and Time movement are relative...........377c) Three different states of consciousness with regard to its own eternity................................378

• The first is its timeless eternity........................................................................................378• The second is the stable status or simultaneous integrality of Time...............................378• The third status is the Time movement............................................................................378• All these positions can be taken in a simultaneous vision or experience........................378

d) There is no impossibility in the co-existence of a Timeless Eternal and a Time Eternity....379• If there can be this simultaneous multiplicity of self-presentation of one Reality..........379

Chapter III.............................................................................................................................................380The Eternal and the Individual............................................................................................................380

• There is then a fundamental truth of existence, an Omnipresent Reality........................380• There is also a dynamic power of this Omnipresence.....................................................380• There is a descent into inconscience, an awakening and an evolution............................380• It is on this foundation that we have to base the possibility of a divine Life..................380• There our chief need is to discover the origin and nature of the Ignorance....................380• And the nature of the Knowledge that has to replace it...................................................380• To understand too the process of Nature’s self-unfolding and the soul’s recovery........380

A. The normal mind and the experience of cosmic and transcendental unity...............................3801. But first, the difficulty of admitting the persistence of individuality after liberation...............3802. Our object in considering the difficulties of the normal mind..................................................381

• Logical reasoning is useful and indispensable in its own field.......................................381• But it is much more efficiently a guardian against error than a discoverer of truth........381• Our object then must be solely to make more clear to ourselves....................................381• First, the origin of the difficulties and the escape from them..........................................381• And the real nature of the unity at which we arrive and of the culmination...................381• The first difficulty – Accustomed to identify the individual self with the ego................382

B. The ego and the true individual.................................................................................................3821. The identification with the ego and the transcendence of the ego............................................382

a) What is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego?.......................................382

2

• It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical construction.....................382b) Two terms of our existence, a world-being and an individualising consciousness..............383

• Person and his world-material are both necessary for our present experience................383c) Is all truth of individualisation abolished by transcendence of the ego?..............................383

• The Purusha still individualises and it is still he who exists............................................383• The soul still makes the world-becoming the material for individual experience...........383• Our unity with the world-being is the consciousness of a certain Self............................384

2. A Self capable in its very unity of cosmic differentiation and multiple individuality..............384a) If we arrive at unity with that, why should the power of its being be excised?....................384b) The universal does not absorb and abolish all individual differentiation.............................385c) No reason to get rid of the differentiation by plunging into an exclusive unity...................386

3. Cosmos and individual as manifestations of a transcendent and indivisible Self.....................386• All is in each and each is in all and all is in God and God in all.....................................386

4. The normal experience of the reason is not applicable to these higher truths...........................387• First, there is a true individual – A practical mutuality founded in unity........................387• Secondly, we are applying a language formed by this lower and limited experience.....387• We have to carry still farther the conflict between the normal and the higher reason....388

C. The possibility of oneness with God and yet of having a relation with Him............................3881. The Transcendent, the individual, the cosmic being are powers of consciousness...................3882. The revolt of the normal mind – An apparent mass of contradictions......................................389

• A triple error –.................................................................................................................389• Making an unbridgeable gulf between the Absolute and the relative.............................389• Making too simple and rigid and extending too far the law of contradictions................389• Conceiving in terms of Time the genesis of things in the Eternal...................................389

3. The three errors of the normal reason.......................................................................................391a) Making an unbridgeable gulf between the Absolute and the relative...................................391

(1) The supreme reality of God – The Absolute is for us the Ineffable ..............................391• Indian thought calls it Brahman, European thought the Absolute...................................391(2) An Absolute seeming incapable of relativity and exclusive of all relatives ..................391(3) An all-exclusive negation for a supreme positive and the cause of all positives............393(4) The positives and the negatives of the Absolute – The truth of the Absolute................394• The positives are its various statements of itself to our consciousness...........................394• Its negatives bring in the rest of its absolute positivity...................................................394• We have its large primary relations such as the infinite and the finite............................394• We have the transcendent and the cosmic, the universal and the individual...................394• Even in the lower orders of the relative we find this play of negative and positive........394

b) A law of contradictions extended too far..............................................................................395(1) In dealing with material phenomena and forces ............................................................395

(a) The necessity of the law – The isolation of things for separate analysis..............................................................................................................................................................395

(b) The deeper knowledge which reconciles distinctions in the unity behind all variations......................................................................................................................................395

• There is an essentiality of things, a commonalty of things, an individuality of things. . .395(2) When we ascend in the scale – All things, even while different, are yet one.................396• Each thing is the Absolute, all are that One – Its developed self-existence....................396(3) Our practical dealings with life – That which exceeds and reconciles all relativities....397• Behind all relativities there is this Absolute which gives them their being.....................397

c) Taking refuge in the concept of Time to reconcile the contradictions..................................399• The first source and the primary relations lie beyond our mental divisions of Time......399

D. The all-view of the Absolute – No such irreconcilable opposition or separation.....................4001. Our metaphysical distinctions and our exclusive spiritual realisations.....................................400

• We have to make the metaphysical distinctions in order to help our intelligence..........400• Distinct spiritual realisations may at first seem contrary to each other...........................400

2. Three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual................................401• The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two............................401• The power of the individual – His unity with the Transcendent and the universal.........401

2

• The divine life is the sole conceivable object of the movement......................................401• The possibility of the Divine’s unfolding in the individual is the secret of the enigma..401• The key to the world of Knowledge-Ignorance...............................................................401

Chapter IV..............................................................................................................................................403The Divine and the Undivine................................................................................................................403

• A divine life as the culmination of the evolutionary process..........................................403• An ascent from level to higher level of a divine manifestation.......................................403

A. The distinction between the divine and the undivine has an insistent value.............................403• This is an aspect of the problem which it is necessary to bring into the light.................403

B. The root distinction between a life of Knowledge and a life of Ignorance...............................4041. A stamp of imperfection and disharmony – Evil, suffering, all deficiencies............................4042. It is the general principle of imperfection that we have to admit and consider........................405

• This general imperfection consists first in a limitation in us of the divine elements......405• There arises too by a secondary ulterior effect a perversion of these highest things......405

C. The problem to solve – First reasonings or primary intuitions.................................................4071. The affirmation that all is a divine manifestation, even what we call undivine........................407

• But this affirmation is not enough. It leaves the problem unsolved................................4072. The search for a solution or an escape......................................................................................407

• If we simply leave these two dissonant facts, there is no reconciliation possible...........407a) An exclusive inner concentration on the Presence or a self-extinction in Nirvana...............407

• On this road of escape we achieve self-extinction in Nirvana.........................................407• It is possible to escape from the problem otherwise........................................................408

b) A view of things to justify the divinity of the manifestation................................................408(1) Viewing each thing as relatively perfect – The perfection of the total divine harmony.......

......................................................................................................................................408• This also is a solution incomplete by itself......................................................................409(2) A facile dogma that all is right because perfectly decreed by the divine Wisdom.........409(3) Our soul's dissatisfaction and aspiration are also a law of our being and divine............410(4) Our present nature can only be transitional – Another shall be divine and perfect........411

D. Ignorance, imperfection and suffering – Their real cause and their place................................4121. Three propositions about God and the world – One of the three does not harmonise..............412

a) The three propositions...........................................................................................................412(1) First – An omnipresent Divinity and a Reality pure, perfect and blissful......................412(2) A second affirmation and a third affirmation ................................................................413

(a) A supreme consciousness and power – A disharmony with the actual relations.......413(b) The third affirmation – The Divine Reality and the world reality as different..........413

• The first of these three propositions is inevitable............................................................413• The second also must stand if the omnipresent Divine has anything at all to do............413• The third seems also self-evident and yet it is incompatible with its precedents............413

b) Some philosophic or theological construction to circumvent the difficulty.........................414• But all these solutions do no more than reflect the apparent dissonance........................414

c) There is no other Lord than the Divine – A consequence of our first premiss.....................416• On this foundation – To consider the problem of imperfection, suffering and evil........416

2. Their place and significance in a complete view of the universal workings.............................416a) There is no real division or limitation of being – Ego and real individuality.......................416

• When we come to an integral self-knowledge, we find that we are not limited..............416b) A real limitation of consciousness – Ignorance as the cause of all imperfection.................417

(1) Ignorance is a power of concentration in a limited working..........................................417• The ignorance is a frontal power of that all-consciousness which limits itself...............417(2) The action of the ignorance or nescience is no real ignorance, but a power..................418

c) The consequences of the Ignorance – The limitation of an omniscient power.....................419(1) Behind the limitation is the All-Power – The indivisible Omnipotence.........................419(2) Suffering as a limitation of consciousness – The All-Delight of the universal being....420• We can discover the divine Reality behind that which we call undivine........................420

d) The values that are given to the universe by our own limited human consciousness...........421E. This then is the law of the manifestation – The interpretations................................................422

2

1. It is not enough simply to say an unreality created by the mental consciousness.....................422• They are, as we have seen already, creations of the Divine Consciousness....................422

2. If all things are fixed – An eternally unsatisfactory law of imperfect being.............................423a) The issue by an escape – An undivine manifestation in the Divine Existence.....................423b) The explanation of such a paradoxical manifestation by a cosmic game, a Lila..................424

• An amusement of the Divine Being – The divine Spirit that puts on the imperfection. .4243. A progressive manifestation – An apparent perversion of the original truth of being..............425

a) Although fixed grades exist – They are only firm steps for a progressive ascent.................425b) Why this kind of progressive manifestation was itself necessary?.......................................426

• The Infinite’s right of various self-manifestation............................................................426Chapter V...............................................................................................................................................428The Cosmic Illusion;..............................................................................................................................428Mind, Dream and Hallucination..........................................................................................................428

• All human thought moves between a constant affirmation and negation........................429A. The negation of cosmic existence.............................................................................................429

1. Our nature proceeds from ignorance and has no hold on assured truth....................................4292. Physical, vital and thinking mind..............................................................................................429

a) The physical mind – The objective, the physical actuality for standard...............................429b) The vital mind and the thinking mind – Dissatisfaction, unrest and incertitude..................430

3. The great world-negating religions and philosophies – Buddha and Shankara........................431• At a certain point of this constant unrest and travail.......................................................431

B. Three alternative conclusions if the character of the world-order is permanent.......................4321. The perception at which the thinking mind arrives – Three possible conclusions....................432

• The creation of an inconscient Energy............................................................................432• Intentionally a world of ordeal and failure......................................................................432• A vast and aimless cosmic Illusion..................................................................................432

2. The second and the third conclusions........................................................................................434a) An intentional creation of a world of ordeal – Usually no ground for the philosophic reason...

..............................................................................................................................................434• This world would reveal itself as the process of an evolutionary manifestation.............434

b) A vast and aimless cosmic Illusion.......................................................................................435(1) A higher mental and spiritual basis for the philosophy of world-negation.....................435(2) Certain analogies are brought forward, especially of dream and hallucination..............435

C. The analogies showing the character of an unreal subjective experience.................................4361. The dream analogy....................................................................................................................436

a) There is no analogy between a dream and waking life.........................................................436• Dream is felt to be unreal, first, because it ceases and has no farther validity................436• The second reason – A dream is evanescent, without any sufficient coherence.............436• But it may be questioned whether our dreams are indeed totally unreal.........................438

b) Our dream-experience – Different states of consciousness..................................................438(1) What happens in sleep – Normally, formations from the subconscient.........................438• The inner consciousness is not suspended, it enters into new inner activities................438• But the subconscious is not our sole dream-builder........................................................439• The subconscious in us is the extreme border of our secret inner existence...................439(2) The dream-consciousness in the subconscient................................................................439• After a time this subconscious activity appears to sink into dreamless sleep.................439(3) The illusion of dreamlessness – The subconscient and the entry into the subliminal....440• The activity of the inner dream consciousness continues behind the veil.......................440• The subliminal mental, the subliminal vital, the subtle-physical....................................440(4) The dream-consciousness in the subliminal...................................................................440• Our dreams can take on a subliminal and no longer a subconscious character...............440(5) It is possible to become wholly conscious in sleep and follow the dream experience...441(6) The subliminal realm of inner existence – The inner being's direct consciousness.......442• Our subliminal self – An inner mind, an inner vital being, a subtle-physical being.......442(7) Waking state, dream-state, sleep-state and fourth state of the Self in the Upanishads...443

c) Our waking experience, like dreams, not being a reality but only a transcript of reality.....444

2

• It may be said, however, that our dreams are only a transcript of reality........................444• But we are looking through the sense-image to the reality.............................................444• We experience a real universe through our imaged sense-transcript..............................444

2. The analogy of hallucination – Hardly more helpful than the dream analogy..........................445a) Two kinds of common hallucination – The world being such an imposition.......................445

• Hallucinations are of two kinds, mental or ideative and visual or in some way sensory 445• An example of the first is the mirage...............................................................................445• An example of the second is the classic instance of a rope taken for a snake.................445• In each case the hallucination is an image of something existent and real......................445

b) All mental errors and illusions are the result of an ignorance about the reality...................4473. Other analogies offered for a better understanding of the operation of Maya..........................447

• We detect in all of them an inapplicability that deprives them of their force and value. 447• The familiar instance of mother-of-pearl and silver........................................................447• The example of an optical illusion duplicating or multiplying a single object...............447• Dreams, visions, the imagination of the artist or poet.....................................................447

D. Mind, parent of these illusions – Its nature and relation to the original Existence...................4491. An intermediary creator – That which it receives and what is its own action..........................449

• Our mind stands between a superconscience and an inconscience.................................4492. Mind – Its limitation of Knowledge and openness to error.......................................................449

• Mind creates, but it is not an original creator, not omniscient or omnipotent.................449• Maya, the Illusive Power, on the contrary, must be an original creator..........................449

3. Our mind works best with actualities – Maya’s creation differs from the Reality...................4504. The analogy of the faculty of imagination with the action of Maya.........................................451

a) Imagination as an instrument of Ignorance – A pressure on the world's actualities.............451b) Imaginations proceed with actuals or possibles – A substitute for intuition........................452

E. The dual possibility that arises before us – The result of our inquiry so far.............................454• An original consciousness and power creative of illusions and unrealities.....................454• Or an original, a supreme or cosmic Truth-Consciousness creative of a true universe...454• Our inquiry has so far led rather in the second direction.................................................454• A problem exists, but it consists in the mixture of Knowledge with Ignorance..............454

Chapter VI..............................................................................................................................................455Reality and the Cosmic Illusion............................................................................................................455

A. The problem remains unsolved – The three elements of mental cognition...............................455• The true question is of the nature of the Reality, the validity of the creative action.......455• Three elements – The percipient, the perception and the thing perceived or percept.....455• All or any of these three can be affirmed or denied reality.............................................455

B. It is possible to affirm the reality of the percept but not of the percipient................................456• In the theory of the sole reality of Matter........................................................................456• But if Matter turns out to be a phenomenon of Energy – Energy as the sole Reality.....456• It is possible indeed that what is at work is not an Energy, but a Consciousness...........456

C. The classical theory of Illusionism – Only Brahman pure and absolute is real........................4571. The universe is either a non-existence or in some way unreally real........................................457

• But what then is the relation between the Reality and the Illusion?................................4572. Some kind of reality to Maya or her works – No satisfying answer to the riddle.....................458

a) Maya is at the same time real and unreal – A suprarational enigma.....................................458• But what then is this mystery, or is it insoluble?.............................................................458

b) The basis on which we have to face the dilemma – Maya is in some way real....................459c) A double status of Brahman-Consciousness as the sole plausible explanation....................459d) If there is not this dual consciousness, then one of two things must be true........................460

(1) Maya as Brahman's power of cosmic Imagination inherent in his eternal being?..........460• This solution is logically untenable – Imagination is a necessity for a partial being......460(2) A subjective action, at once real and unreal, of Brahman-consciousness?.....................460• The other solution, the idea of a purely subjective unreal reality....................................460• But such a distinction could hardly exist in Brahman-consciousness.............................460• These solutions – Untenable unless we concede a power of manifold status.................460

e) The dual consciousness cannot be explained as a dual power of Knowledge-Ignorance.....461

2

• We cannot suppose that Brahman is at all subject to Maya............................................461• A self-awareness coexistent with a voluntary will to erect a universe of illusions.........461• This is an explanation which leaves the mystery still beyond logic................................461• There is so far no satisfying answer to the riddle............................................................463

3. The utter unreality of Maya or her works..................................................................................463• This absolute unreality seems to be envisaged by certain formulations of Illusionism. .463• This side, before we can examine a relative or partial reality of the universe................463• A pure static and immutable Reality and an illusory dynamism.....................................463• If a real universe does not exist, a cosmic Illusion exists................................................463

a) In this view we have to suppose that Brahman is not the percipient of Maya......................463b) If Brahman is not the percipient – The individual being as the percipient...........................464

• An individual being of Brahman in Maya – A figment of individuality.........................464• But this deprives everything of significance...................................................................464

c) As a solution that the percipient individual and the percept universe are unreal..................465• Maya by imposing itself on Brahman acquires a certain reality.....................................465• We are driven back to the dual consciousness of Brahman.............................................465• However, if we get rid of the idea of absolute unreality and admit a compromise.........466

4. A relative or partial reality of the universe – Two possible replies to the difficulty.................466a) The Self seen by the Self in three of the four states of its being – The field of Maya..........466

• The affirmation there is that Brahman as Self is fourfold...............................................466• A state of superconscience, a status of sleep-self, the dream-self, the self of waking....466(1) Maya is real because it is the self's experience of the Self, but not the true status.........466(2) A process of illusionary creation or of creative Self-knowledge and All-knowledge....467• If we take this fourfold status as a figure of the Self.......................................................467• However, nowhere in the Upanishads the threefold status is a condition of illusion......467(3) In spiritual experience, there need be no perception of an illusionary Maya ................468

b) A second possible answer on the illusionist basis – A qualified Illusionism.......................469(1) The theory of the cosmic Illusion erects an irreconcilable contradiction.......................469• We begin to suspect that our original premiss must have been incomplete....................470(2) The cosmic consciousness as an experience of some truth of the Absolute...................470• This explanation might prove to be more comprehensive and spiritually fecund...........470(3) A first step by Shankara – A distinction made between two orders of reality................471

(a) This philosophy affirms a qualified reality for Maya................................................471(b) It is difficult to see why it should not be a true reality within its limits....................472

(4) But the universe is condemned as unreal because it is temporary and not eternal.........473• Time is not necessarily cancelled out of existence by timeless Eternity.........................473(5) The stigma of unreal reality on the pragmatic truth of things because it is pragmatic...474• The pragmatic truth is after all not something unconnected with spiritual truth.............474

D. The universe is a phenomenal reality, a manifestation of Brahman.........................................4741. At the basis, the concept or experience of the Reality as immutable........................................474

a) The concept – The Reality could be at once static and dynamic..........................................474• Eternal status and eternal dynamis are both true of the Reality......................................474

b) The experience – In the true self, there is no limitation of action or perception..................4762. In the philosophy of Shankara – A strong intellectual reason...................................................477

a) Behind the phenomenal world is a transcendent Reality – The intuition alone can see.......477• Reason cannot prevail against the intuitive experience...................................................477• Shankara – The explanation of cosmic existence............................................................477• On these premises – The conception of an ineffable suprarational mystery...................479

b) A link is missing – An ignorance has to be overcome and not an illusion...........................479c) We have to pass beyond the intellect to bridge the gulf........................................................480

• The Buddha discovered the way of release from all constructions.................................480• He refused to go farther beyond the scope of the reason’s discovery.............................480• Shankara saw that the mystery of the world must be ultimately suprarational...............480• He did not take one step farther – The world seen from the suprarational awareness....480

3. Even if a phenomenal reality, still the world is a manifestation of Brahman...........................481a) An evolving self-development in Time – The Will of self-expression.................................481

2

b) The finite or the individual as being and power and manifestation of the Infinite...............482E. A theory of Maya in the sense of illusion creates more difficulties than it solves....................483

1. The conclusions of reason.........................................................................................................483a) A devastating simplicity of nullification – The pure unreality of Maya and Buddhism.......483

• An uncompromising theory of Illusion solves no problem of our existence...................484b) A less drastic nullification if a certain reality is admitted.....................................................484

• A real solution implies some reality of individual and cosmos.......................................484c) Illusionism unifies by elimination – The best solution includes and accounts for all..........485

2. The conclusions of spiritual experience....................................................................................485a) In the higher experience, the Reality being known, all assumes its true significance..........485b) In the passage from mental to overmind cognition unity is the leading experience.............487

• A consideration of the possibility of a great cosmic Illusion had to be undertaken........488F. Now we can concentrate on the problem of the Knowledge and the Ignorance.......................488

1. The problem that is left by the exclusion of the illusionist solution.........................................4882. All turns round the question “What is Reality?”.......................................................................489

• Our cognitive consciousness is limited – Our conceptions of reality depend on that.....489a) The essential Reality, the phenomenal reality and our experience of reality........................489b) A cosmic consciousness embracing all the terms of existence.............................................490

(1) It would see the whole in its essential reality and the phenomenon as a manifestation.............................................................................................................................................490

(2) It would be a consciousness of the Infinite and unitarian in its view of diversity..........491c) The Absolute cannot be limited – The impression of limitation is illusory..........................492d) The Absolute can be approached through negation or affirmation in many ways...............483

3. The issue is whether all that we experience is real or unreal....................................................494a) Manifestation depends upon being........................................................................................494

• A distinction is sometimes made between being and existence......................................494• What exists is form of Being and substance of Being.....................................................494

b) Manifestation depends upon consciousness and its power or degree...................................4954. But still unreality is a fact of cosmic existence – Distinctions have to be made.......................495

a) Ignorance as the cause of all things – Or an evolving half-knowledge.................................495• There is still in the universe itself a power of illusion of Ignorance...............................495• If some Ignorance is the cause of all things – An escape of the individual.....................495• But if this world has at its root an evolutionary principle – Another issue.....................495

b) A farther distinction has to be made in our conceptions of unreality...................................497• Secondary movements of our ignorance are not the heart of the problem......................497• The problem of the cosmic Ignorance out of a status of Inconscience............................497

G. The mystery not of an original Illusion, but of the Ignorance and Inconscience......................498Chapter VII............................................................................................................................................499The Knowledge and the Ignorance......................................................................................................499

A. We have to scrutinise the problem of Ignorance at this stage of our reasoning........................4991. The conclusion at which we have arrived by the train of our reasoning...................................499

a) The seven principles of existence are one in their essential and fundamental reality...........499b) There is no essential reason for the intrusion of Ignorance into the divine creation............500

2. The hope of a full success for the human endeavour needs a basis..........................................501a) The creation of which we have present experience is the very opposite..............................501b) The mind of man is puzzled – An opposition between Knowledge and Ignorance..............502

• There can be and is a perfectly rational basis for the hope of our victory.......................5023. One point left obscure – The co-existence of the Knowledge and the Ignorance.....................503

a) The faculty of Mind becomes Ignorance when it excludes the rest of knowledge...............503b) How is it that the Ignorance exists? – Certain have declared the problem insoluble...........504c) Our mind cannot remain satisfied with this evasion at the very root....................................505

• Intellectual knowledge – At the end spiritual knowledge comes in to help us................505d) Man has to arrive at and overstep the borders where Ignorance meets the Truth.................506

• We have then to scrutinise more closely the character and operation of Ignorance........506B. The Nature of Ignorance – The principle in our inquiry...........................................................506

1. In the Veda and Vedanta – What we mean by the word itself..................................................506

2

a) The hymns of the Rig Veda – Ignorance is in its origin a dividing mental knowledge........506b) In the Upanishads – Ignorance, Avidya, is the knowledge of the divided Many.................508c) In later Vedanta – Vidya alone is Knowledge, Avidya is pure Ignorance............................509

2. Our view – How to pursue and reach the solution of the problem............................................509a) We have to fathom the true nature of the Ignorance and of the Knowledge.........................509b) Dialectical intellect is not sufficient – We must look deeply into our consciousness..........510c) Our consciousness seems identical with Mind – However, mind is not the whole of us.....511

(1) If Mind were all – But if a Knowledge is aware of the Reality and of a real universe...511(2) If Reality and an ignorant Mind alone exist – But there is another possibility..............513• Brahman must be capable of a manifold action of consciousness...................................513• The One becoming or being always many and the Many being or becoming the One...513• An Infinite and Eternal capable of manifesting Truth in many aspects and processes. . .513(3) Other powers of consciousness are needed to put these possibilities to the test.............514(4) All changes when we penetrate the lower and the higher depths of consciousness.......514• We find existence to be one always – A unity governs even its utmost multiplicity......514

d) The three poises of the power of consciousness – What we have to discover......................516• First, the supreme divine self-knowledge and all-knowledge.........................................516• Next, the divine Knowledge works within the operations of the Inconscient.................516• Between, the Ignorance, an incomplete emergence of the Knowledge to the surface... .516

C. The process we will follow to verify our interpretation of existence........................................516• We must observe the structure of our surface consciousness and its relation.................516• So best we can distinguish the nature and scope of the Ignorance..................................516

Chapter VIII...........................................................................................................................................519Memory, Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance................................................................................519

• To begin with, it is necessary to consider some of the essential movements..................519A. The essential movements – Memory is a process of the Mind.................................................519

• Memory is simply one of the workings of consciousness...............................................519B. Mind and memory in regard to mental self-consciousness in Time..........................................520

1. If mind is all or if the apparent mind is the index of the nature of our being............................520a) Mind applies memory to our conscious-being and relates that to Time...............................520

• There are two applications – Memory of self, memory of experience............................520• A sense of a persistent continuity – Easily extended into a conviction of eternity.........520

b) The mind may falsely transfer this fact of eternity to our own conscious being..................521c) These questions our surface mind by itself has no means of solving...................................522d) The mind's concept of eternity – The timeless self-knowledge is beyond mind..................522

• The mind’s concept of this eternity – A continuous succession of moments of being. . .522• If there is an eternal Existence which is a conscious being, it must be beyond Time.....522

e) The very nature of our mind is a limited and conditioned knowledge of being...................523• If real existence is a temporal eternity, the mind has not the knowledge of real being...523• If real existence is a time-transcending eternity, the mind is still more ignorant of it... .523

2. If there is a power beyond mind which is timeless – Knowledge and Ignorance.....................523a) They are different and unconnected powers or there is a connection between them............523b) The larger point of view, the ancient Vedantic.....................................................................524

(1) Ourselves as one conscious existence with a double phase of consciousness................524(2) The divine consciousness holds the One and the Many in one self-knowledge.............524• Brahman as being both the Knowledge and the Ignorance.............................................524

c) There is an eternal conscious being who supports the mobile action of mind......................525(1) Mind has only the direct consciousness of self in the moment of its present being.......525(2) A stable consciousness behind mind in which there is no binding conceptual division.......

......................................................................................................................................526• The real self – Capable of both the mobility in Time and the immobility basing Time..526

C. Mind and memory in regard to self-experience and other-experience......................................5271. We shall arrive at the same result on the nature of the Ignorance.............................................527

• The surface mental entity moving from moment to moment..........................................527• But in reality, we shall find, he is always the same Eternal who is for ever stable.........527

2. Ignorance is a utilisation of self-knowledge for Time experience and activity........................527

3

• Behind – The will of the Self in its dealings with Time and Space and Causality..........527Chapter IX..............................................................................................................................................529Memory, Ego and Self-Experience.......................................................................................................529

A. The self-consciousness of the mental being and the surface consciousness.............................5291. The self-consciousness of mind goes to the timelessness of an eternal present........................529

• We become aware of the stable Self without any category of personality or Time........5292. But the surface-consciousness – The ever self-modifying mental experience..........................530

• The conclusion that there is no such thing as a real self..................................................530• Or the conclusion that Time is the only real existence....................................................530• The opposite conclusion of a real Existence but an illusory world.................................530

3. But let us look a little at this surface consciousness without theorising...................................531• We see it first as a purely subjective phenomenon..........................................................531• A constant modification of the mental personality..........................................................531• All this change of circumstance is summed up in philosophical language as causality..531• Thus the mind has above its direct self-consciousness a mutable self-experience..........531

B. Memory, ego and self-experience.............................................................................................5321. The part played by Memory – The continuity of the stream in the surface mind.....................532

a) Memory is a mediator between the sense-mind and the co-ordinating intelligence.............532b) A little analysis will make this apparent – The self-observing inner being..........................532

• Four elements – The object, the act, the occasion and the subject..................................532(1) A partial detachment by the mental person of the act from the object...........................532• By this act of partial detachment we are able to stand back............................................532(2) The detachment of the mental person from his act of self-experience...........................533• The Self that becomes eternally in the succession of Time.............................................533(3) The immutable Self manifests itself mutably under the conditions of our mentality.....534• There are not really two selves, but one conscious being................................................534(4) Memory – Because we cannot keep the past in us on the surface .................................535• Memory comes in when I begin to relate my experience to the successions of Time... .535

2. Memory and the flowing stream of the world-sea....................................................................535a) Memory – One of the devices of the mind to connect the divisions created by its ignorance....

..............................................................................................................................................535b) The continuity is not constituted by memory – A device of the witnessing Mind...............536

3. The ego-sense is another device of mental Ignorance...............................................................537• At first it might seem as if the ego-sense were actually constituted by memory............537

a) The ego-sense is not a result of memory or built by memory...............................................537• A point of reference or something in which the mind-sense concentrates......................537• Ego-memory reinforces this concentration and helps to maintain it...............................537

b) Dissociation of personality and dissociation of memory – The link to an “I”......................539• The importance of Memory becomes apparent in the double personality.......................539• Dissociation of memory occurs also without dissociation of personality.......................539

c) The ego-sense as a preparatory device for self-knowledge in the mental being...................539d) Self-knowledge based on the ego-sense is imperfect – The trenchant conclusions of mind 540

• The mental being – In direct self-consciousness or in the becoming..............................540• Both sides of the mind, separating as antagonists, condemn what they reject................540• An integral knowledge is the aim of the conscious evolution.........................................540

C. To know we have to go within ourselves and see with an inner knowledge............................541• The mental, vital, physical, external ego is a superficial construction of Nature............541

Chapter X...............................................................................................................................................543Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge............................................................................543

A. Four cognitive methods of Nature – Our surface cognition derives from them........................543• The original is a knowledge by identity..........................................................................543• The second, derivative, is a knowledge by direct contact...............................................543• The third is a knowledge by separation from the object of observation..........................543• The fourth is a completely separative knowledge – Indirect contact..............................543

B. Our normal knowledge – Our state in the surface.....................................................................5441. Our subjective being and the movements of our subjective consciousness..............................544

3

a) Awareness by identity and a projection of ourselves with a certain identification...............544b) Three movements of cognition can meet together................................................................544

(1) Knowledge by identity, knowledge by direct contact and separative knowledge..........544• There is an intimate knowledge, by identity....................................................................544• There is at the same time a knowledge by detached observation with direct contact.....544• A kind of balanced double identity by division is possible.............................................544(2) The close contact is always maintained – A certain element of identity........................546• In thought separation of the thinker and the thinking is more difficult...........................546• The knowledge of our internal movements – Separation and direct contact...................546• All the observable movements of our physical being also – Both these ways................546• That is absent in our knowledge of the world outside us – No entirely direct contact....546

2. In the cognition of external things.............................................................................................547a) Our knowledge has an entirely separative basis....................................................................547

• Its whole machinery and process are of the nature of an indirect perception..................547b) Our world-knowledge is therefore a difficult structure – Narrow and imperfect.................548

3. Our self-knowledge and world-knowledge – Limitation and imperfection..............................5494. The cause of our limited knowledge and the return to knowledge by identity.........................549

a) The double wall of self-imprisonment in the bounds of a surface ego.................................549• A wall created by our externalising consciousness.........................................................549• A wall of division also shuts out all that is not centred round its ego.............................549• It knows only what comes through the gates of sense or through mental perceptions....549

b) Two movements to grow towards integral self-knowledge and integral world-knowledge.550• First, a greater inner existence and consciousness and a true self-being.........................550• Second, our being has to break the walls of ego-consciousness which it has created.....550• This outer ego-building is only a provisional device of the Consciousness-Force.........550

C. The awakening to our inner realities and the cosmic self-finding............................................551• But the first of these two movements imposes itself as the prior necessity....................551

1. We have to go into our inner being and learn to live in it and from it......................................5512. The dynamic functionings and pragmatic values of the subliminal cognition..........................552

a) Our self-view is vitiated by the constant impact and intrusion of our vital being................552• An organised self-deception is thus added to an organised self-ignorance.....................552• By going within and seeing these things at their source we can get out of this tangle....552

b) Our conflicting mental, vital and physical parts – The entry into the subliminal being.......552• Behind the intermixed disposition and differing tendencies of our surface nature.........552• Not so difficult provided we have the right psychic and mental will in the endeavour. .552• For the entry into the subliminal being may result in serious dangers and disaster........552

c) The inner being's knowledge – An awareness by direct contact...........................................554• If the psychic and mental parts in us are strong, the vital comes under mastery.............554• If the mental and psychic parts are weak and the vital strong and unruly – Misleading.554• For the subliminal is still a movement of the Knowledge-Ignorance..............................554

d) The subliminal being has also a larger direct contact with the world...................................555• There is indeed an inner sense in the subliminal nature..................................................555(1) The action of the subliminal sense can be confusing or misleading...............................555(2) An immediate, intimate and accurate knowledge – The “psychic phenomena”.............556(3) The change in our dealings with other human beings....................................................557• There is a constant interchange going on between all who meet or live together...........557(4) The change in our dealings with the impersonal forces of the world that surround us. .558• This knowledge proper to the subliminal being is not complete.....................................558• The mixed capacity can be cured by going still deeper behind it to the psychic entity. .558

3. The character of the subliminal cognition and how it is related to true knowledge..................559a) Its main character is a knowledge by direct contact – A pre-existent knowledge................559b) The subliminal enlarged into the cosmic consciousness.......................................................561

(1) On the side of consciousness..........................................................................................561(a) The concealed method of our knowledge – The widening of the circumconscient...561(b) A large universal identity containing smaller identities – The identity veiling itself 562

• The cosmic consciousness of things is founded upon knowledge by identity................562

3

(2) On the side of the cosmic energies – Each individual is a receptacle and a dynamo.....563D. Farther in knowledge by identity – The subconscient and the superconscient.........................564

1. In the subconscient, a dark knowledge by identity is the basis.................................................5642. In the superconscient, we can trace the original power of knowledge......................................564

a) The statuses of the supreme spiritual consciousness.............................................................564(1) The essential awareness by identity of pure existence and of the primal All-Existence......

......................................................................................................................................564• But there is another status of spiritual awareness............................................................565(2) An awareness by inclusion and by indwelling................................................................565• Without the need of any act, regard or operation of knowledge.....................................565• But a regard of consciousness can manifest....................................................................565• This regard – The Spirit regards itself, it becomes the knower and the known..............565(3) Tertiary powers when the subject draws a little back from itself as object....................566(4) A separative knowledge arises – The origin of knowledge by direct contact................567

b) The planes of consciousness and the methods of knowledge...............................................568• Knowledge by direct contact is or can be an element in all that is supraphysical...........568• The subliminal self or inner being is a projection from these higher planes...................568

c) Ignorance becomes complete with the entire separation – Indirect means...........................5693. The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience........................570

E. The stages of the emergence of consciousness from involution...............................................5701. Material existence, primary forms of life, overtly conscious life.............................................5702. Spiritual Awareness slowly manifested – The deeper methods of knowledge.........................572

• First, a crude or veiled sense which develops into precise sensations.............................572• Then a life-mind perception manifests............................................................................572• Last arises to the surface conception, thought, reason.....................................................572• When the subliminal is able – A rudimentary action of the deeper methods..................572• By an opening to our inner being – A direct intimate awareness can be added..............572• By our awakening to our inmost soul or superconscient self – Knowledge by identity. 572

Chapter XI..............................................................................................................................................573The Boundaries of the Ignorance.........................................................................................................573

• It is now possible to review in its larger lines this Ignorance..........................................573A. A narrowly self-limiting and separative knowledge.................................................................573

1. The surface mental individuality is ego-centric........................................................................573• The necessity of centralisation around the ego – Until there is no longer need..............573

2. The self-experience on the surface is a small part even of our waking consciousness.............5753. Our waking mind and ego are only a superimposition upon an inner being.............................5764. To know our inner being is the first step towards a real self-knowledge..................................576

B. The subliminal self, our lower subconscient and upper superconscient ends...........................5771. What are its limits? – The subconscient and the superconscient..............................................5772. The subconscient, where does it begin, how is it related to our surface being.........................578

a) A vital-physical part of us for the most part subconscious to our mental being...................578b) We may more justly call it the submental – The true subconscious is the Inconscient........579

3. The subliminal self – Rather a secret intraconscient and circumconscient...............................580• The No-man's-land between the subliminal and the surface – Intermediate zones.........580• We might say then that there are three elements in the totality of our being..................581• The submental and the subconscient which appears to us as if it were inconscient........581• The subliminal, which comprises the inner being...........................................................581• This waking consciousness which the subliminal and the subconscient throw up..........581• But something also high above our normal self-awareness – That too is ourselves.......581

4. We become aware, in a certain experience, of a superconscient..............................................581• There is then a superconscience as well as a subconscience and inconscience...............581• Sachchidananda creating by the power of His divine Knowledge-Will..........................581• Its subconscient existence, its subliminal existence, our surface existence....................581

C. A many-sided Ignorance striving to become an all-embracing Knowledge.............................5811. Of our superconscient existence we are normally ignorant – Our capital ignorance................5812. We are ignorant of our existence in Time except the small hour which we remember............582

3

• This is another limiting and frustrating ignorance...........................................................582• Here the self-ignorance of man does not end..................................................................583

3. So are we ignorant of our universal self....................................................................................583a) Man is ignorant of his world in which he presently lives.....................................................583

• Ego is the most formidable of the knots which keep us tied to the Ignorance................583b) It is this identification and this conception that form the life of the ego..............................584

• We are ignorant of ourselves in Space............................................................................584• Space is the self-conceptive extension of the one Being.................................................584

Chapter XII............................................................................................................................................586The Origin of the Ignorance.................................................................................................................586

• The problem of the Ignorance from the point of view of its pragmatic origin................586A. The problem on the basis of an integral Oneness as the truth of existence...............................586

• How could this narrowly self-limiting and separative knowledge arise..........................5861. Absolute Being cannot be ignorant – We are ignorant of ourselves and things.......................586

• We do not ease the difficulty if we plead that Mind is a thing of Maya.........................586• Maya can be nothing but a power of Brahman................................................................586

2. It is not open to us to get rid of the whole difficulty.................................................................587a) Saying that the Jivatman and the Supreme are not one, but eternally different....................587

• This contradicts the supreme experience.........................................................................587• Or saying that the Unknowable is beyond or above our experience...............................587• Agnosticism is subject to this objection that it may be our refusal to know...................587

b) The Unknowable – Two possibilities....................................................................................588(1) A supreme state of the Infinite or the absolute Non-Being of the nihilistic thinker.......588• But out of absolute Nothingness nothing can come........................................................589(2) Non-Existence as unrealised Potentiality – Out of this anything may arise ..................589• Anything may be true in such a cosmos – The negation of the aim of philosophy.........589• We must discover an Absolute which can be so known that all truths can stand in it....589

3. The primal truth from which we must start in approaching the problem..................................590• Ignorance is a phenomenon of the dynamic action of Force of Consciousness..............590• To Sachchidananda all is himself and within himself.....................................................590• In Sachchidananda all action and result are movements of his one indivisible will.......590• It is the integral Tapas of an integral consciousness in an indivisible Existence............590• Here a question may arise – The place and role of this Force where all is immobile.....592

B. Brahman exceeds the passivity and the activity – Not the origin of Ignorance........................5921. Tapas is the character of the passive and the active consciousness of Brahman......................592

a) Beyond the relative aspect of status and kinesis – An apparent absence of Tapas...............592• Is there such an effective distinction in Sachchidananda?...............................................592

b) The static consciousness and the more dynamic opening – Tapas present in both..............5932. There is not a passive Brahman and an active Brahman, but one Brahman.............................593

a) The passive and the active consciousness of Brahman are the same consciousness............593b) An Existence which reserves Its Tapas in passivity and gives Itself in activity...................594c) The Reality is not an alternation in Time between the passivity and the activity.................595

(1) The opposition is only true in relation to the activities of the consciousness.................595(2) We too can possess the passivity and the activity with a simultaneous possession.......596

3. The Supreme exceeds both the immobile self and the mobile being........................................597• There follows that the Ignorance cannot have its origin in the absolute Brahman..........598• Is it then something inherent in the multiplicity of souls?...............................................598

C. Brahman exceeds the unity and multiplicity.............................................................................5981. We seem divided from others only in the external mind and the physical...............................5982. When we get back to soul-consciousness, the obstacles to unity lessen...................................5993. Ignorance and self-limiting division are not inherent in the multiplicity of souls....................600

D. The origin must be sought for in some self-absorbed concentration of Tapas..........................600• We have to ask ourselves what is the nature of this self-forgetful concentration...........600

Chapter XIII...........................................................................................................................................602Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force...............................................................................602and the Ignorance..................................................................................................................................602

3

A. Ignorance as an exclusive concentration of consciousness-force.............................................6021. Ignorance is an exclusive concentration of separative active consciousness............................602

a) Several hypotheses of an exclusive concentration of consciousness....................................602b) The hypothesis we adopt – A concentration of separative active consciousness in Prakriti 602

2. The Absolute holds an essential, integral, multiple and separative concentration....................603• First – At one end the superconscient Silence, at the other end the Inconscience..........603• Second – The total consciousness of Sachchidananda, the supramental concentration. .603• Third – The multiple is the method of the totalising or global overmental awareness. . .603• Fourth – The separative is the characteristic nature of the Ignorance.............................603

3. Self-limiting knowledge can result in a separative knowledge and ignorance.........................604• When the concentration is exclusive, it brings about a holding back behind it...............604

B. The nature of exclusive concentration and self-forgetfulness in mental man...........................6041. The self-limitation to the apparent man – A limited practical self-oblivion.............................6042. The apparent course of the action related to a definite succession of moments.......................606

a) Man lives absorbed in the present moment...........................................................................606• The true consciousness within is not unaware of its past – Of the future.......................606• Something in the inner being lives indivisibly in the three times....................................606

b) The existence in the moment – Man identifies himself with his present existence..............6063. The absorption in a particular character or type of working of one's larger self.......................607

• There is a minor pragmatic use of exclusive concentration on the surface.....................607• The active self-oblivion of the man in his work and the part he plays............................607

4. A complete self-forgetfulness in the particular action at the moment......................................609C. The inconscience of material Nature – The complete self-ignorance.......................................609

1. The Prakriti bound in a sort of trance or swoon of concentration in the action........................6092. All ignorance is a superficially exclusive self-forgetful concentration of Tapas......................610

D. The questions of the why, the where and the how of this movement.......................................6111. The reason for the Ignorance, its necessity...............................................................................611

a) Without it the object of the manifestation of our world would be impossible......................611b) The cosmic manifestation would be quite different from the one in which we live.............612

• The Ignorance is a necessary, though quite subordinate term.........................................6122. The mechanism of the Ignorance and of the return to the Knowledge.....................................613

a) Where does that development take place – On the plane of mind........................................613• This is the last stage of the descent of consciousness – Material Nature........................613

b) A partial movement of Consciousness-Force – This does not imply any real division........615• The conscious Force of being in us can resume its integral consciousness.....................615• In each case it is Tapas that is effective, but it acts in a different manner......................615

3. The mystery how the All-conscient could succeed in arriving at inconscience........................615a) The Ignorance is its power of self-limitation for a particular working.................................615b) The Ignorance is a natural capacity of variation in its self-conscious knowledge................616

Chapter XIV...........................................................................................................................................618The Origin and Remedy of....................................................................................................................618Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil.......................................................................................................618

• If Ignorance is in its nature a self-limiting knowledge – The problem of evil................619A. The problem of falsehood and error, wrong and evil, of their necessity and utility.................619

• This problem may be taken up from three points of view...............................................619• Its relation to the Absolute, the supreme Reality.............................................................619• Its origin and place in the cosmic workings....................................................................619• Its action and point of hold in the individual being.........................................................619

B. The relation of the problem to the Absolute, the supreme Reality............................................6191. These contrary phenomena have no direct root in the supreme Reality itself..........................619

• Falsehood and Evil are, unlike Truth and Good, very clearly results of the Ignorance. .619• There is no such intrinsic obstacle to the absoluteness of Truth and Good.....................619

2. Truth is relative to us because our knowledge is surrounded by ignorance..............................620• Ignorance exists by a limitation or absence or abeyance of knowledge..........................620• Error exists by a deviation from truth..............................................................................620• Falsehood exists by a distortion of truth or its contradiction and denial.........................620

3

3. The relation of truth to falsehood, of good to evil is not a mutual dependence........................621• The untoward outcome of good producing evil...............................................................621• The opposite case of evil producing good.......................................................................621

C. The origin and place of the problem in the cosmic workings...................................................6231. There is no authentic inevitable cosmicity of falsehood and evil.............................................623

• They are circumstances or results that arise only at a certain stage................................6232. The question is at what juncture of cosmic manifestation the opposites enter in.....................624

a) A traditional knowledge of invisible cosmic forces mental and vital in their nature............624(1) Powers and forms of vital mind and life in the planes of supraphysical experience......624(2) The theory is perfectly rational and imposes itself – The truth of the cosmic Invisible.......

......................................................................................................................................625• There are Powers of Ignorance and tenebrous Forces of the Darkness...........................625(3) The theory is verifiable by inner experience – The planes of Life and Mind.................626

b) Two things that we have to note of importance to the problem............................................627(1) Pain and evil cannot attain to absoluteness, they are bound to limitation and derivative.....

......................................................................................................................................627(2) The opposites are not primal cosmic powers, but creations of Life or of Mind in life...628

c) An outcome of the Inconscience – The duality of good and evil..........................................629(1) It is not native to the material principle – It is absent from the world of Matter............629(2) It begins with conscious life – The awakening to the values of good and evil...............630(3) From what then does this awakening proceed ...............................................................631• It is the vital mind that makes the distinction of good and evil.......................................631• But thinking mind then comes in with its own valuation................................................631• There is within us the soul’s discernment, an inborn light within our nature.................631(4) What is the value of the sense of good and evil to the psychic witness?........................632• It is the soul in us which turns always towards Truth, Good and Beauty........................632• The superior spiritual light is beyond good and evil.......................................................632• Then, evil and falsehood are natural products of the Inconscience.................................633• We have to see how they arise.........................................................................................633• We have to see on what they depend for their existence.................................................633• We have to see what is the remedy or escape..................................................................633

D. The action and point of hold of the problem in the individual being........................................6331. The two initial and basic facts of the evolutionary emergence.................................................633

• First, through an obscure medium the emerging mentality has to force its way.............633• Next, the emergence takes place in a separated form of life – The ego..........................633

2. The process by which evil and falsehood come into being.......................................................634a) A concealed consciousness with inherent and native powers emerging little by little.........634b) In this consciousness, an underlying Knowledge comes to the surface................................635

(1) The individual animal – An imperfect but growing surface awareness..........................635(a) Two sources of knowledge – Intuition as instinct and a surface contact...................635(b) A minimum formation of consciousness grows into a life-mind and vital intelligence. .

.....................................................................................................................................636(2) Human intelligence – Our imperfect mental intelligence is a necessary stage...............637

(a) The automatic life of instinct and vital intuition diminishes – The capacity of error 637(b) Error would not be possible if the surface consciousness were open to intuition.....638

c) The origin of error – A limited consciousness growing out of nescience.............................638(1) Two poles – A surface nescience and a Consciousness-Force emerging in nescience. .638(2) Error is a necessary stage in the slow evolution towards knowledge.............................639• The evolving consciousness has to acquire knowledge by an indirect means................639(3) Intuition itself is limited in the human mind – The character of human knowledge......640

d) The origin of falsehood – A personal attachment to the limitation and the error.................641(1) Error by itself would not amount to falsehood, it would be an essay of possibilities... .641(2) But the second condition or factor of the evolution intervenes – The action of the ego......

......................................................................................................................................641• In the terms of the Sankhya psychology – Three types of mental individuality.............642(3) Tamasic, rajasic and sattwic intelligence – The limitation of mind by personality........642

3

• This condition is inevitably a source of error and can be the cause of falsehood...........642• This is in the field of cognition, but the same law applies to will and action..................644

3. A wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego, the source of wrong and evil.....................644a) The dominance of the ignorant vital being – In the realm of interests, ideas, religion.........644b) The vital being and its life-force and their drive towards self-affirmation...........................645

• The inner or true vital being – The drive of the vital ego can be wholly overcome........645• The origin and nature of error, falsehood, wrong and evil in the individual –................646• A limited consciousness growing out of nescience is the source of error.......................646• A personal attachment to the limitation and the error is the source of falsity.................646• A wrong consciousness governed by the life-ego the source of evil...............................646

E. What is the remedy or escape....................................................................................................6461. The drive of the cosmic Force towards evolutionary self-expression.......................................646

a) The individual ego has the impulse to the infinite, a will to be a boundless finite...............646b) Nature accepts wrong and evil – Yet there is in man the sense of good and evil.................647

2. How is the evolutionary intention in Nature to fulfil itself.......................................................648a) A religious sanction, a social or moral rule of life or an ethical ideal – Mental control.......648b) The right way of self-affirmation and self-negation that we have to discover.....................648

(1) The need of a right way – The relative good as a training towards the true Good.........648(2) A total change of consciousness, a radical change of nature is the remedy and issue....650(3) No partial change can be a sufficient substitute – A temporary help and guidance.......651(4) To be ourselves liberated from ego and realise our true selves is the first necessity.....652• That is one reason why a spiritual call must be accepted as imperative..........................652

3. The liberation in knowledge and liberation of the will – The change of nature.......................653a) Three steps of the self-achievement of the spiritual knowledge of self................................653

• First – The discovery of the soul, the secret psychic entity.............................................653• Next – To become aware of the eternal self in us one with the self of all beings...........653• Third – To know the Divine Being who is at once transcendent, cosmic, individual.....653• We can learn to become channels of his Shakti, the Divine Puissance...........................653

b) An eternal Truth-Consciousness must possess us and sublimate all our natural modes.......655PART II.......................................................................................................................................................657The Knowledge and the Spiritual Evolution............................................................................................657

Chapter XV............................................................................................................................................659Reality and the Integral Knowledge....................................................................................................659

• This then is the origin, this the nature, these the boundaries of the Ignorance................659• Its origin is a limitation of knowledge.............................................................................659• Its distinctive character a separation of the being from its own integrality.....................659• Its boundaries are determined by this separative development of the consciousness.....659

A. The turn towards Knowledge – A recovery of our essential and whole reality........................6591. A limited and separative replaced by an essential and integral consciousness.........................6592. An integral consciousness – It does not abolish the universe or the individual........................660

• An integral knowledge presupposes an integral Reality..................................................660B. The consciousness of the Reality – But our idea and sense of Reality vary.............................660

1. The absolutist view of reality, consciousness and knowledge..................................................660a) The affirmation of the Absolute and the negation of the individual and the cosmos...........660

• This absolutism is not the whole of spiritual thought, the supreme spiritual experience 660b) A concept of Reality and of Knowledge enveloping the cosmic and the Absolute..............661

(1) The absolute reality – Beyond any description either positive or negative....................661• We can arrive at the Absolute through both a supreme affirmation and negation..........661(2) Two views.......................................................................................................................663• On the one side, an absolute Self-Existence, a featureless and relationless Absolute.....663• On the other side, both the Being and the Becoming are truths of one absolute Reality 663• The first view – The Absolute as a reality void of all relations and determinations.......663• The second view – The Absolute as neither positively nor negatively limitable............663(3) An imputation to the Absolute of an incapacity of our mental consciousness...............664• The idea of an essentially unreal universe manifested somehow....................................664

2. The real reality of the Absolute and the misleading reality of the universe..............................665

3

a) The negation and the oppositions on which this view is founded.........................................665(1) It is still possible to pass a final verdict of condemnation on the Becoming..................665(2) The greater reality of the Being and the lower reality of the Becoming.........................665

b) Our conception of the Knowledge and the Ignorance rejects this........................................666(1) The integral knowledge is in possession of both Being and Becoming.........................666(2) The Brahman is still one in the infinite self-variation of the cosmos.............................667• Other conceptions of reality demand consideration........................................................668

3. All as a subjective creation of Mind – But Mind is not the original constructor......................668a) The view that the objects constructed by consciousness have no intrinsic reality................668

• But this view of the universe is only true of the appearance of things............................668b) If the constructing Mind or Consciousness is real and the sole reality.................................669

• Then this Consciousness which creates – Itself an existence or a substance..................669(1) A Being or an Existence out of whose substance of consciousness all is created..........669(2) All objects, all the figures of consciousness would be figures of the Being .................670(3) Whether these figures are realities or symbols or values created by Mind?...................671

(a) The nature of Mind as we know it is an Ignorance seeking for knowledge...............671• A consciousness possessing the integral knowledge would be no longer Mind.............671• It is from this basis that we have to look at the subjective view of reality......................671• The world cannot be a purely subjective creation of Consciousness..............................671

(b) In a sense, all things are symbols through which we have to approach the Reality. .672[1]This way of seeing things – A certain truth of the manifestation..........................672[2]Forms and happenings in the universe are realities significant of Reality.............672

4. The exclusive affirmation of the objective Reality and knowledge..........................................673a) The subjective and objective are two necessary sides of the manifested Reality.................673b) Subjectivity and objectivity depend upon each other – The outer physical senses..............674c) There are different orders of reality – The objective and physical is only one order...........675

• The limitation of the physical mind – Believing entirely only in the physical................675d) The axiom of the physical standard and of the personal or universal verification...............676

(1) Research into the supraphysical must evolve with appropriate means and methods.....676(2) All men can have a spiritual experience and follow it out and verify it in themselves. .677(3) An integral knowledge demands an exploration of all possible domains – Occultism. .677

C. A solution of the problem of existence needs a knowledge sufficiently integral......................6791. An integral knowledge must be of the truth of all sides of existence.......................................679

a) The material interpretation of existence – The result of an exclusive concentration............679• In our view the Spirit, the Self is the fundamental reality of existence...........................679

b) The Mind is seeking for such a Reality and testing each thing from Matter upwards..........6802. Our conception of the Ignorance and our conception of the Knowledge..................................680

a) Our conception of the Ignorance – The sevenfold Ignorance...............................................680• We have had first to discover the secret nature and full extent of the Ignorance............680• Original, cosmic, egoistic, temporal, psychological, constitutional, practical ignorance680• We are ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming...........680• We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self.....................680• We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness 680• We are ignorant of our eternal becoming in Time...........................................................680• We are ignorant of our large and complex being............................................................680• We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming...............................................680• We are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions................................................680

b) Integral Knowledge – A sevenfold self-revelation within our consciousness......................6813. The integral knowledge can only come by an evolution of our being and our nature..............682

Chapter XVI...........................................................................................................................................683The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life;....................................................................................683Four Theories of Existence...................................................................................................................683

• Before we examine the principles and process of the evolutionary ascent.....................684A. Truth of knowledge must base truth of life and determine the aim of life................................684

• The evolutionary process itself is the development of a Truth of existence...................684B. The fundamental truths of the Reality and its manifestation.....................................................684

3

1. An Absolute as the origin and support and secret Reality of all things....................................684a) All that is can be regarded as an expression of the Reality and itself a reality.....................684b) The Being is the fundamental reality, the Becoming is an effectual reality.........................685c) The supracosmic Absolute – The significance of cosmic and individual existence.............686

2. A divine Existence, Consciousness and Delight of Being........................................................686a) A supracosmic Reality, but also the secret truth underlying the whole manifestation.........686b) The triple aspect of the reality, supracosmic, cosmic and individual – The total truth........687

(1) This triple aspect of the reality must be included in the total truth ................................687(2) Incomplete accounts of the truth of being .....................................................................687• The pantheistic view of the identity of the Divine and the Universe..............................687• Every view that affirms the cosmos only and dismisses the individual..........................687• Any view that sees the universe as existent only in the individual consciousness..........687

c) Sachchidananda at once impersonal and personal – The dualistic and theistic views..........6883. The seven gradations of the manifesting Consciousness – The two hemispheres....................689

• The first three are the original and fundamental principles.............................................689• A fourth principle of supramental truth-consciousness...................................................689• The other three – A hemisphere of Mind, Life and Matter.............................................689

a) The manifestation takes the shape of an involution followed by an evolution.....................689(1) A lapse into a divided in place of the true undivided existence – The involution..........689(2) A gradual and inevitable evolution – The significance of the terrestrial evolution........690

b) Expressions of a half-truth and not the integral knowledge..................................................690(1) The predominance assigned to Mind, Life or Matter as creative principle....................690

(a) The creative Energy in Matter is a movement of the power of the Spirit..................690(b) Life is a form of a Divine Energy which is itself greater than the Life-force............691(c) Mind is an outcome of Overmind or a luminous shadow thrown by the Supermind 692

(2) The Inconscient taken as the real origin and creator.......................................................692• A conscious Spirit and not an inconscient Being is emerging in the evolution..............692

C. The metaphysical truth as a guide for self-experience and world-experience..........................6931. Truth of being must govern truth of life – The aim of life........................................................6932. Four different conceptions of truth of existence.......................................................................693

• The supracosmic, the cosmic and terrestrial, the other-worldly, and the integral...........693• Our regard – On the three first to see where they depart from the integralising view....693

3. The three first theories with their corresponding mental attitudes and ideals...........................694a) In the supracosmic view of things the supreme Reality is alone entirely real......................694

(1) The ideal of a self-extinction of the individual and the universal in the Absolute.........694• This idea of the total vanity of life is not altogether an inevitable consequence.............695(2) In the Upanishads, the truth and law of a temporal becoming – The question remains.......

......................................................................................................................................695b) The cosmic and terrestrial view – As the exact opposite of the supracosmic.......................696

(1) Cosmic existence as the only reality ..............................................................................696• It is indeed possible to suppose a persistence of man the individual...............................696• But in an extreme terrestrial view this is with difficulty tenable.....................................696(2) The view of a restricted transient passage in the material universe ...............................697• For the terrestrial aim of our being, the nature and scope of our ideals..........................697

c) The supraterrestrial or other-worldly view............................................................................698(1) A belief in the eternal persistence of the individual human spirit apart from the body........

......................................................................................................................................698(2) The character, the origin and the end of the deviation into a material existence............698

(a) A solitary episode on earth or a preterrestrial existence of the soul..........................698(b) A succession of worlds as stages of growth – Three essential characteristics...........699

• First, the belief in the individual immortality of the human spirit...................................699• Secondly, the idea of its sojourn on earth as a temporary passage..................................699• Thirdly, an emphasis on the development of the ethical and spiritual being..................699

4. The integral or synthetic or composite views – Our view of existence....................................700a) The leading motive of the first three attitudes or composites – The complexity of the problem

700

3

(1) The first terrestrial nature of humanity ..........................................................................700• Almost all men normally devote the major part of their energy to the life on earth.......700• Nature takes good care that the race shall not neglect these aims...................................700• But she has implanted in us a sense that there is something which goes beyond............701(2) The idea and feeling of a soul and spirit in us – The supraterrestrial view....................701(3) The perception that there is something supracosmic – The life of the ascetic...............702• Here again there is a sign of some insufficiency.............................................................702

b) The solution to our whole complex human nature by an evolutionary synthesis.................703(1) The synthesis attempted in the ancient Indian culture – An evolutionary synthesis......703• It accepted four legitimate motives of human living.......................................................703• This synthesis collapsed – An exaggeration of the impulse of renunciation...................703(2) A spiritual evolution is the link needed for the reconciliation of life and spirit.............704

(a) The terrestrial ideal – The good it has accomplished and its limitations...................704(b) That for which our mind, life and body are seeking – The spiritual consciousness. .705

• An opposite exaggeration demanding only colourless purity of spiritual existence.......705• The supraterrestrial aspiration cuts short the fulfilment of the being..............................705(3) In this integration the supracosmic Reality stands as the supreme Truth of being.........706• A perfect self-expression of the spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence..............706• The soul of the individual must awake to universality and to transcendence.................706(4) The supraterrestrial existence is also a truth of being – Other planes of consciousness......

......................................................................................................................................706(a) The earth contains the possibilities of all the other worlds, unrealised but realisable

706(b) The power of a greater consciousness has to develop itself here...............................707

(5) An integration by spiritual evolution .............................................................................708• The evolution of mind, life and spirit in Matter is the sign that this integration.............708• There is a possibility of self-expression by an always unveiled development................708• A possibility also of various expression in perfect types fixed and complete.................708• There is also a possibility of self-expression by self-finding..........................................708(6) The three stages of the spirit's self-expression in life ....................................................708• An involution of spirit in the Inconscience is the beginning...........................................708• An evolution in the Ignorance is the middle....................................................................708• The self-power of its divine being and consciousness is the culmination.......................708

Chapter XVII.........................................................................................................................................710The Progress to Knowledge –...............................................................................................................710God, Man and Nature............................................................................................................................710

A. The ultimate meaning of our individual and terrestrial existence.............................................7101. The evolutionary movement......................................................................................................710

a) The involution of the Reality – The integral emergence is the goal of evolving Nature......710• An involution in the apparent inconscience of Matter.....................................................710

b) Man is there to affirm himself, but also to evolve and finally to exceed himself.................711• The natural man has to evolve himself into the divine Man............................................711

2. The knowledge to arrive at and the ultimate aim of our life.....................................................712a) Ancient Indian thought – Our aim must be to grow into our true being...............................712b) To become ourselves by exceeding ourselves – The sense of our existence........................712c) The object is to grow into universality and infinity – What is meant by Knowledge...........713

B. The search for knowledge – Three principal categories, man, Nature, God.............................714• The first is that of which alone he is directly aware........................................................714• Secondly, there is that which he knows only indirectly..................................................714• Finally, he sees or rather divines something else which he does not know at all............714

1. Man is obliged to move step by step in this immense evolutionary movement........................7142. Man has tried to deny all these categories – None of these denials can satisfy........................715

a) The denial of God is a denial of his true quest and his own supreme Ultimate....................715b) Man as he is is not sufficient – The visible cosmos too, he finds, is not sufficient..............716c) Man cannot affirm the Absolute by itself to the exclusion of the two other categories........716

3. Man has to enlarge his knowledge of himself, the world and God – Their unity.....................717

4

a) A perception of the unity of these three categories is essential to the Knowledge...............717b) Man arrives at the knowledge of God through the knowledge of self and the world...........718c) This spiritual truth and true aim of his being is not allowed to appear till late.....................719

(1) The preparatory business of man is to affirm his individuality .....................................719(a) Man has in the beginning principally to occupy himself with his own ego...............719(b) The dual importance of the individual.......................................................................720

• Through him the cosmic spirit organises its collective units...........................................720• Through him it raises Nature from the Inconscience to the Superconscience.................720• In the mass the collective consciousness is near to the Inconscient................................720• This mass consciousness, life, action can be extraordinarily effective...........................720• But this is an efficiency of the outer life..........................................................................720

(c) Nature invented the ego that the individual might disengage himself from the mass721(2) The attempt by the individual to know himself and to find a new goal for his life........722

(a) He may seek that in Nature and mankind or in God – The attempt of both paths.....722(b) An individual seeking individual self-knowledge and the aim of his separate existence

.....................................................................................................................................723(c) The Divinity in the individual – The perfection or liberation has to be individual....723

d) The progress towards the higher self-knowledge – The steps on the path...........................724• One step is to know that this life is not all – A temporal eternity...................................724• Another step is to learn that his surface waking state is only a small part......................724• A third step – To learn what are the categories of his spiritual being.............................724• Discovering self and spirit he discovers God..................................................................724

e) His discovery of the unity of the three categories, man, God and Nature............................725(1) We arrive at that by the discovery of which all is known as one with our self..............725• His unity with Nature, with God and with other beings, and of God and Nature...........725(2) The knowledge of the universe must lead the mind of man to the same revelation.......726(3) The inadequacy of the first perceptions – The truth of the great quest for God.............726• Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism.................................726(4) Unity is the secret of the variety of human religions and philosophies – The one Truth.....

......................................................................................................................................727• When knowledge reaches its highest aspects – Its greatest unity....................................727• The unity of God and man and Nature and all that is in Nature......................................727

C. The truth of being to which man's entire triune knowledge rises and widens..........................728• The conscious unity of the three, God, soul and Nature, in his own consciousness.......728

Chapter XVIII........................................................................................................................................730The Evolutionary Process –..................................................................................................................730Ascent and Integration..........................................................................................................................730

• We have formed a clear idea of the significance of the evolutionary manifestation.......730A. Now, a regard on the principles of the process of the evolutionary manifestation...................730

1. A physical foundation, a progress of the consciousness and an integration.............................7302. Inconscience, Ignorance, Knowledge – The necessary stages of the journey...........................7313. The new power of existence establishing itself and changing the foundation..........................732

a) For an entire transformation, it must be itself the original Principle of Existence...............732b) The original creative Power is not the material energy, neither Mind nor Life....................732c) An entire transformation can only come by the full emergence of the law of the Spirit......733

4. All depends upon the more or less involved or evolved consciousness....................................7345. To each grade belongs its class of existences – The continuity of the process.........................735

• Man is the now apparent culmination but not the real ultimate summit.........................735• The past has been the history of a slow and difficult subconscious working..................735• The present is a middle stage in which the human intelligence is used..........................735• The future must be a more and more conscious evolution of the spiritual being............735

B. The stride from one principle of being to another creates the transitions.................................7361. The missing links – There is a radical difference between grade and grade.............................736

• These gulfs appear deeper, but less wide, as we rise higher in the scale of Nature........7372. The dividing furrows – The reason is in the working of the inner Force..................................737

• The life-reaction in the metal and the life-reaction in the plant......................................737

4

• Between the highest plant life and lowest animal...........................................................737• Between the highest animal and the lowest man.............................................................737

3. The difference is in the rise of consciousness to another principle of being.............................738C. The way of the transition from the lower to higher grades of consciousness...........................739

1. What is necessary for the evolutionary process to make a transition........................................739• A working to a point at which the higher can manifest...................................................739

2. The transitions before the coming of man.................................................................................739a) The outer form-consciousness absorbed in the material object, vitally responsive in the plant.

..............................................................................................................................................739b) The transition to the mind and sense that appear in the animal being..................................741

3. When we come to man, we see the whole thing becoming conscious......................................741a) A heightening of the force, a widening of the range, a taking up of the lower grades.........741b) Two particularities of this human and at present highest development................................742

(1) The taking up of the lower parts of life by a downward eye of knowledge and will.....742(a) A raising to a higher level – The true inmost meaning of ethics, discipline and askesis.

.....................................................................................................................................742• To purify and prepare to be fit instruments the vital, physical and lower mental life.....742• Ascent is the first necessity, but an integration is an accompanying intention...............742

(b) The secret Spirit's way – The plant-soul, the animal being and man.........................743• The plant soul takes a nervous-material view of its whole physical existence...............743• The animal being takes a mentalised sense-view of its vital and physical existence......743• Man enlarges, subtilises and elevates his use of life-values............................................743(2) Man has a conscious gaze and its upward and inward gaze also develops....................744

D. Where is the limit in the being's self-becoming by self-exceeding?.........................................745• In mind itself there are grades of the series and each grade again is a series in itself.....745

1. The development of mental self is largely an ascent of planes and sub-planes........................745a) The lowest sub-plane of the intelligence, the physical-mental – The physical man.............745b) The life-mind, the obscurer life-soul and the inner life-mind – The vital man.....................746c) A mind-plane of pure thought and intelligence – The mental man.......................................748

(1) The mental man cannot transform his nature, but he can control and harmonise it.......748(2) Mind and the mind-soul – The highest position, short of spirituality.............................748• To be an intelligence rather than a life and a body..........................................................748• The mental man is the normal summit of Nature’s evolutionary formation...................748• These three degrees of mentality are the steps of Nature’s evolution of mental being...748

2. The spiritual man.......................................................................................................................749a) The mental man has not been Nature’s last effort – The spiritual man is her supreme effort....

..............................................................................................................................................749b) A different possibility if we can live within or on the spiritual and intuitive planes............750

• The spiritual man is the sign of this new evolution.........................................................750c) A conscious effort of human mind and an extending inward, outward and upward.............750d) A heightening of our force of conscious being so as to create a higher type of being.........751

3. Humanity is still weighted by gravitation.................................................................................752• It is only if the race advances that, for it, the victories of the Spirit can be secure.........752

E. The principle of the process of evolution is a foundation, an ascent, an integration................753• The first foundation is Matter, the ascent is that of Nature.............................................753• The integration is an at first unconscious or half-conscious automatic change..............753• The foundation of the developing existence will be the new spiritual status..................753

Chapter XIX...........................................................................................................................................754Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance............................................................................................................754towards the Sevenfold Knowledge.......................................................................................................754

A. The evolutionary process of heightening and widening and integralisation.............................7541. To heighten the force of consciousness is not all the thing to be done.....................................7542. An integral transformation is the integral aim of the Being in Nature......................................755

• The process of Nature is not confined to a heightening of herself into a new principle. 755• It brings with it a widening and establishes a larger field of life.....................................755• It includes a taking up of that which is lower into the higher values..............................755

4

B. An ascent out of the sevenfold ignorance into the integral knowledge.....................................7561. The constitutional ignorance – An unawareness of our total self.............................................756

a) A limitation by the plane of Matter and by the materialised mental intelligence.................756• This natural materialism or materialised vitalism is a form of self-restriction................756

b) The growth into the full mental being – One step out of the material and vital absorption. 757c) Our gain in becoming more perfect mental beings – A race truly human............................758d) The Greek thinkers – In later times, the imperfect spiritual ideal and a vital urge...............759

• The vital urge became the preoccupation of the race......................................................759• The most recent outcome has been a perilous spiritual ill-health and a vast disorder.....759

e) How to change the constitutional ignorance into a true and effective knowledge................760• We have to heighten, to widen, to take up our lower life and use it for greater ends.....760

2. The psychological ignorance – A limitation to the waking self................................................761• Behind our waking self is an occult existence and energy of our secret being...............761

a) How to revolutionise our status?...........................................................................................761• We can bring into our status the higher undeveloped lights and powers........................761

b) The inner and higher parts of ourselves................................................................................762(1) The subconscient – Below the level of mind and conscious life....................................762

(a) The purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being..............762(b) How we can become aware and in control of our subconscient nature?...................763

• By drawing back into the subliminal or by ascending into the superconscient...............763(2) The intraconscient and circumconscient – How we can be fully self-aware..................763

(a) The intraconscient – An inner intelligence, sense-mind, vital, subtle-physical being763

• Our surface being has been formed with this subliminal help.........................................763(b) The circumconscient – An enveloping consciousness in contact with the universal.764

• By going inward behind the veil of superficial mind and living within..........................764• An evolution beyond it by an ascension to the native heights of the Spirit.....................764(3) The superconscience – The ascent, widening and integration........................................765• The first indispensable step – To elevate into higher parts of Mind...............................765• Afterwards, a sublimer ascent into the supramental and the supreme spiritual nature....765• There must be a conscious heightening and widening, and a taking up..........................765• The method of self-transcendence – Ascent, widening of field and base, integration....765

3. The temporal ignorance – Our life in the body between a single birth and death.....................766a) To realise our persistent existence in time and our eternal existence beyond it...................766

• A concrete sense of our perpetual being in Time and of our timeless existence.............766b) Survival, timeless immortality and time-immortality – The conditions of the divine life....767

• We are immortal by the eternity of our self-existence without beginning or end...........767• To exist consciously in eternity is a first condition of the divine life..............................767• To possess and govern from that inner eternity of being is the second...........................767

4. The egoistic ignorance – How the ego perishes by the loss of its limits...................................768• As our consciousness changes into the height and depth and wideness of the spirit......768

5. The cosmic and the practical ignorance – The conditions for their dissolution........................769• Our timeless immutable self possessing itself in cosmos and beyond cosmos...............769• The large and luminous movement of a divine living.....................................................769

C. The method and the result of the conscious spiritual evolution................................................770• A transformation of the life of the Ignorance into the divine life....................................770

Chapter XX............................................................................................................................................771The Philosophy of Rebirth....................................................................................................................771

A. What were we before birth and what are we after death? – Many hypotheses.........................7711. Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second......................7712. The solution depends upon the nature, source and object of the cosmic movement................772

B. The hypotheses without even now any final solution...............................................................7721. Whether the before and the after are physical and vital or mental and spiritual?.....................7722. A God who creates constantly immortal souls..........................................................................773

a) The old religious myth and dogmatic mystery – Two paradoxes.........................................773• First, the hourly creation of beings who have a beginning in time but no end in time. . .773

4

• Secondly, their assumption of a ready-made mass of combined qualities......................773b) Legitimate presumptions of the philosophic reason.............................................................773

(1) That which has no end must have had no beginning, all that begins has an end............773(2) Where we see in Time a certain stage of development, there must have been a past.....774

3. The hypothesis of the creation of a temporary or apparent soul...............................................775a) Certain modern ideas or the old theories – Three explanations practically one...................775

• In all three theories the apparent soul is not immortal in the sense of eternity...............775• In all three rebirth is either unnecessary or else illusory.................................................775

b) In none of these, rebirth is an absolute necessity – The soul will cease to exist..................776c) A great difference – The old theories affirm, the modern denies rebirth as a part...............777

• Modern thought starts from the physical body as the basis of our existence..................777d) The prevalent modern idea of a temporary conscious existence..........................................778

(1) What may be found with the increase of our knowledge – Two possible alternatives...778• If it were found that the human personality survives the death of the body....................778• Either a psychic entity pre-exists in other worlds in a subtle form and comes...............778• Or the soul develops here in the material world itself.....................................................778(2) An evolving universal Life – Pythagorean transmigration or the Indian idea of rebirth......

......................................................................................................................................778• The soul in us may have evolved in lower life-shapes before man was created.............778(3) Even then the developing vitalistic theory need not spiritualise itself ...........................780• It might regard the personality still as a phenomenal creation of the universal Life.......780• It might even arrive at a sort of vitalistic Buddhism, admitting Karma..........................780• It might admit a universal Self or cosmic Spirit as the primal reality.............................780• In this theory too a law of rebirth would be possible but not inevitable.........................780

e) Adwaita of the Mayavada, the old theory of a sole-existing Superconscient, like Buddhism..................................................................................................................................................780(1) A before and after for the personality – A cosmic illusion.............................................780(2) The Buddhistic thought – The Adwaitic Mayavada ......................................................781• In Buddhistic thought the existence of the Self was denied............................................781• In the Adwaitic Mayavada there was the admission of a Jivatman – But no real self... .781(3) In the Mayavada theory, individual experience and actions have no real importance.. .782(4) The older Adwaita Vedantism........................................................................................782

(a) It admits a real universe. The individual too assumes a sufficient reality.................782(b) But the reality of the individual is temporal – Rebirth is not an inevitable consequence

.....................................................................................................................................783(c) Rebirth is an indispensable machinery for the working out of a spiritual evolution. 784

C. Our explanation of the evolution in Matter – The universe is a self-creative process..............7841. The results – The reality of the persistent individual and the necessity of rebirth....................7842. There must be a true Person – The necessity of birth...............................................................785

• It is no longer sufficient to suppose an illusory or temporary individual........................785a) The trinity of self-manifestation – Individuality, universality and transcendence................785b) A development in the body towards a recovery of unity with God and with all in God......786

• The individual Purusha has to assume a body – That assumption of body we call birth 786• Birth then is a necessity of the manifestation of the Purusha on the physical plane.......787• But his birth cannot be an isolated accident or a sudden excursion................................787

3. The necessity of rebirth.............................................................................................................787a) The same law of progression as cosmic life – Human life as a term in a graded series.......787b) The human birth – A complex of a spiritual Person and of a soul of personality.................788

• The former is man’s eternal being, the latter is his cosmic and mutable being...............788c) The cosmic Purusha in humanity shall yet grow to Supermind and Spirit...........................789

(1) This evolutionary development has a universal as well as an individual aspect............789(2) The soul had a prehuman past, it has a superhuman future............................................790(3) Human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths. . .790(4) Whether, humanity once attained, this succession of rebirths still continues.................791

(a) Whether the soul arrived at humanity can go back to the animal life and body........791• It seems impossible that it should so go back with any entirety......................................791

4

(b) But why a succession of human births and not one alone?........................................792• The soul has not finished what it has to do by merely developing into humanity..........792

(c) The possibility of a prolongation of the ascending line of rebirth – A certitude.......793D. This then is rational and philosophical foundation for a belief in rebirth.................................793

Chapter XXI...........................................................................................................................................795The Order of the Worlds.......................................................................................................................795

A. A commerce between material life and the life of the other planes of existence......................795• In so far as it affects the theory of evolution and rebirth in material Nature...................795

B. A large universal totality of which the material world is only one province............................7961. The idea of the whole cosmos as an evolution out of the Inconscient......................................796

a) There would be no intermediate powers or realities other than Matter and Spirit................796b) This idea cannot outlive a wider view of the complex nature of existence..........................796

(1) There are several possible originations of cosmic existence according to this idea.......796(2) In any of these views the cosmos would be an evolution out of the Inconscient...........797(3) But what has willed to plunge into the inconscience of Matter?....................................798

(a) The desire of the individual soul – But the world is too vast in its movement..........798(b) The will or the spiritual impetus of the Many – But the All-Soul must first accept..799(c) The All-consciousness of the Spirit – A possibility of its manifestation...................800

• A sole material universe cannot be the one solitary and limited possibility...................800(4) What are Mind and Life – There should be worlds of Mind and worlds of Life...........801• Mind and life are too different from Matter to be products of Matter.............................801

2. Whether there is any evidence of the existence of such other worlds?.....................................801a) The persistent belief in the existence of a supraphysical reality...........................................801

(1) The axiom that no evidence could be accepted unless objective and physical...............801(2) This demand is irrational and illogical – The process of the psychic phenomena.........802(3) If it be said that subjective experience or subtle-sense images can easily be deceptive.......

......................................................................................................................................803• The subliminal consciousness, when rightly interrogated, is a witness to truth..............803

b) The intimations of supraphysical world-realities which we receive.....................................804(1) Two main orders of experience in our contact with the larger planes ...........................804

(a) The purely subjective – Vital forces and formations and mental formulations.........804(b) The subjective-objective – The existence and action of worlds and beings..............805

(2) What value are we to put upon these beliefs or upon this mass of experiences?...........807(a) A mental organisation of this side of our capacity of experience is indispensable....807(b) One explanation is that man himself creates the supraphysical worlds.....................807(c) But there is no likelihood that man's mind can create in this way a world................808

• An entirely original creation in the void is beyond its possibilities................................8083. Whether they are in the order of a series between Matter and Spirit?......................................809

a) The hypothesis of higher worlds created subsequently to the material cosmos....................809(1) But how were these other worlds created, by what force, by what instrumentality?.....809(2) We find these higher worlds to be in no way based upon the material universe............810

b) The order of things where the material plane is the result and not the origin.......................811(1) The pressure of the higher planes – The importance of the human consciousness........811• The pressure of the life-world enables life to evolve and develop here..........................811• The pressure of the mind-world evolves and develops mind here and helps us..............811• The pressure of the supramental and spiritual worlds is preparing to develop here........811(2) Elements against any invariable priority of the other worlds to the material existence.......

......................................................................................................................................812• One such indication – In after-death experience a prolongation of earth-conditions......812• Another – In the life-worlds especially, inferior movements of earth-existence............812

c) A base from which their workings can be cast into the process of evolutionary Nature......813(1) The powers of Life are self-founded, perfect and full in a greater Life beyond us........813(2) The powers of Mind have in the greater Mind-world their fullness of self-nature.........814• These other worlds are not evolutionary, but typal.........................................................814

d) The principle of gradation we have accepted – Importance for the evolution......................814

4

(1) Traditional accounts of other-worldly existence – Life-states, mental, spiritual-mental...........................................................................................................................................814

(2) Spirit, Mind, Life would have no native field of their own power and principle...........816• If the physical universe were the only field of manifestation of the infinite Reality......816• Life could not become dominant and determinative.......................................................816• Mind could not become the master and creator...............................................................816(3) The infinite Reality can create an order of things with another dominant principle......817

(a) The spiritual being, the Spirit’s conscious Force or Will, Bliss or Supermind..........817(b) Mind or Life – The separate dominance of each principle of being is a possibility. .817

4. Is there a relation and interaction of the higher worlds on the world of Matter?......................818a) The higher planes are acting upon and in communication with our own plane of being......818

• We are free to accept this evidence and to admit the reality of these planes..................818b) These worlds are prior to the physical universe – Two contributions by man.....................820

• The higher worlds have not come by a pressure from the lower physical universe........820• Still less are they the creations of the human soul itself..................................................820• Man creates the reflex images of these planes in his own embodied consciousness......820• He can create a certain kind of subjective annexe to these supraphysical planes...........820

c) A constant pressure and influence is in the very nature of the manifested universe.............821C. An action from within and from above can liberate the higher powers....................................821

• A secret continuous action of the higher powers and principles.....................................821Chapter XXII.........................................................................................................................................823Rebirth and Other Worlds;..................................................................................................................823Karma, the Soul and Immortality........................................................................................................823

A. Three questions on the subject of reincarnation which it is necessary to elucidate..................824B. Whether the process of rebirth is not quickly successive..........................................................824

1. An immediate transition from body to body or a retardation or interval..................................824a) There is a life on other planes after death and before the subsequent rebirth.......................824b) A double cause for the interregnum – Theories about the passage to other planes..............825

• An attraction of the other planes for the mental and the vital being................................825• The utility or even the need of an interval for assimilation.............................................825• A theory of rebirth which admits only of a constant transmigration...............................825• Another theory in which this passage is the obligatory rule for all.................................825• A compromise between the two theories is also possible................................................825

c) The popular ideas which derive from the religions that admit reincarnation........................826• The definitive solution of the question depends on psychic inquiry and experience......826

2. Whether there is any necessity for the life in other worlds or for transmigration.....................827a) The normal line taken by the psychic entity once it had reached the human stage..............827

• A rebirth of the Person into a new formation of the personality.....................................827b) A necessity for discarding past mind and life formations and preparing new ones..............828

C. The principle and process of the passage to other worlds.........................................................8291. Where then would the temporary dwelling in the supraphysical take place?...........................829

a) There is a relation which the human being in his evolution on earth develops....................829• That must have a predominant effect on his internatal dwelling in these planes............829

b) Also – The soul may linger for a time in one of the created annexes of the other worlds....830• Any residence of the soul in annexes could be only a transitional stage.........................831

c) The internatal journey in the higher planes...........................................................................831(1) The subtle-physical planes, life-worlds and mental or spiritual-mental planes..............831(2) There must then be a final resort to a plane of pure psychic existence..........................832

d) Whether there is any more essential necessity for these internatal intervals........................832(1) The decisive part played by the higher planes in the earth-evolution ............................832• The action of this veiled alliance takes place principally in our subliminal being..........832(2) The resort of man to the higher forces must continue in the internatal stage.................833(3) Each of the powers of his being is in relation with its own proper plane of existence...834• The soul on earth evolves the physical, the vital, the mental, the spiritual being...........834• According to the development of their powers should be the internatal resort...............834• If this view is correct, rebirth and the after-life assume a different significance............835

4

2. The long-current belief about reincarnation and the after-death sojourn..................................835a) An aspect of spiritual necessity, an aspect of cosmic justice and ethical discipline.............835b) These notions offer no answer to a search for the true significance of life..........................836c) But the same solution can be elevated to a higher level of reason........................................837

(1) The working of the energies must bear their consequence – The law of Karma............837• Man is the creator of himself. He is the creator also of his fate......................................837(2) Two riders which are less general and authentic ...........................................................838

(a) The same nature of energies and results – Justice as the master word of Karma......838(b) Karma cannot be accepted as the whole machinery of rebirth .................................839

[1]Karma is only one of the processes the soul it uses for its own evolution.............839[2]Two elements, Karma as an instrument, but also the secret Consciousness and Will.

................................................................................................................................840• When the soul and self emerges, that can cancel or wholly remodel our physical fate. .840

(c) An over-simplification and the arbitrary selection of a limited principle..................841[1]Energy is not of one sole kind – Ethics cannot be the sole principle of determination..............................................................................................................841[2]It is difficult to accept the idea of retribution of Karma as a solution for life hazards

................................................................................................................................843[3]The complexity of Karma or return to output of Energy – The true ethical standard..

................................................................................................................................843• The truly ethical being does not need a system of rewards and punishments.................843

[4]A limited interaction between vital-physical good and ill and ethical good and ill.....................................................................................................................................845

(3) A value of the lessons of experience in the soul's cosmic training ................................846D. Spiritual evolution and the mutations which the soul undergoes in its passage .......................847

1. The idea of the soul as a limited personality which survives unchanged..................................847a) Another element of the ordinary conception of rebirth which is not acceptable..................847b) Rebirth exists as a means for the evolution of the spiritual being in Nature........................848

• Personality is only a temporary mental, vital, physical formation. It is not the self.......848• In each return to earth the Person, the Purusha, makes a new formation........................848

2. The false importance which our mind attaches to the memory of past lives............................849a) This memory does not very apparently help in the next birth...............................................849b) Conscious memory is of no importance in the process of rebirth.........................................850c) The absence of any memory wrongly taken as a disproof of the actuality of rebirth...........851

3. Our current ideas about the immortality of the soul..................................................................852a) The idea of the survival after death of a definite unchanging personality............................852b) The demand of survival for our mind, our life, even our body.............................................853

• The dogma of the resurrection of the body attests to this last demand............................853(1) Our mental personality and life-personality could subsist in certain circumstances......853(2) How the physical being could endure – The triple and the true immortality ................854• This consummation of a triple immortality might be the crown of rebirth.....................854• Immortality of the nature, immortality of the spirit and the psychic survival of death...854• But the true immortality would still be the eternity of the spirit.....................................854

Chapter XXIII........................................................................................................................................856Man and the Evolution..........................................................................................................................856

A. Man has still to evolve – The passage to a greater evolution in the Knowledge......................8561. A spiritual evolution is the central motive – The next product of the evolution.......................8562. A double process, a physical evolution and a soul evolution – Birth and rebirth.....................858

• Rebirth is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution....................858• But this account is at every point exposed to challenge in the mind of man himself......858

B. A challenge by another construction neither teleological nor evolutionary..............................8581. A formulation of the line of thinking which makes such a construction possible....................8582. That there is no teleological purpose in creation and there cannot be......................................859

a) That each thing created is divine in itself and there is no need of change or progress.........859b) That each type remains itself – The soul to go beyond must pass out of cosmic existence. 859

3. It is possible to challenge the theory of evolution.....................................................................860

4

a) It is insufficiently founded – Heredity is conservative rather than evolutionary..................860• If it be asked, how then did all these various gradations and types of being come.........862

b) The variation by the power of the Real-Idea – Other forces than hereditary variation........862• A constant creation of types is visible, but that is no indubitable proof of evolution.....862

c) A doubt whether man has the capacity to develop into a higher being.................................863(1) Man does not exceed the earthly creation – There is no sign of any such intention......863(2) If this is intended by any occult law of Nature, it could only be by a few in humanity.......

......................................................................................................................................864(3) There is no such stress for a new step in evolution – The idea of human progress........864• Man is what he always was in the early beginnings of civilisation.................................864

d) A doubt, granting rebirth to be a fact, that it is a means of a spiritual evolution..................865• Escape is likely to be the true end of the cycle................................................................865

C. This view of things is not complete and its cogency is not conclusive.....................................8651. The objection to the teleological element..................................................................................865

a) Two very different grounds – A scientific reasoning and a metaphysical reasoning...........865• Scientific – That all is the work of an inconscient Energy..............................................865• Metaphysical – That the Infinite and Universal has everything in it already..................865

b) The scientific or materialist objection cannot maintain its validity......................................866• Truth of being inevitably fulfilling itself would be the fundamental fact.......................866

c) The metaphysical objection – A manifestation of the greater powers of Existence.............866• An evolutionary movement in Matter can be there only for the delight.........................866• This teleology does not bring in any factor that does not belong to the totality..............866

2. A theory of spiritual evolution – From the visible process of physical evolution....................868a) The theory of evolution in its outward aspects – The succession of man to animal.............868

(1) The scientific theory of form-evolution and physical life-evolution .............................868• The fact of a successive creation with a developing plan in it........................................868• A graduated necessary succession in the evolution – Matter, Life, Mind.......................868• Whether there was a succession of man to animal or a simultaneous development.......868(2) The idea of the priority of the lower forms of Life in ancient thinking..........................869• The priority of the animal over man in the time succession............................................869

b) Man, his origin and first appearance, his status in the manifestation...................................870(1) Two possibilities – A sudden appearance or an evolution out of animal being.............870

(a) The latter theory offers no difficulty – The operations of the Energy in Nature.......870(b) The other hypothesis presents considerable difficulties ...........................................872

(2) The impulse towards self-exceeding and human progress – The stress of spirituality...873• Part of the law of the human type is its impulse towards self-exceeding........................873• The stress of spirituality – The next step is the spiritual and supramental being............873(3) The human mental status as an open step towards the spiritual and supramental status......

......................................................................................................................................874(4) The substitution of a conscious for a subconscious evolution – The aspiration of man.......

......................................................................................................................................875(a) A decisive change in the course and process of the evolution...................................875(b) The consciousness itself will operate whatever mutation is needed for the body.....876

3. Rebirth and the progress of the soul by ascent from grade to grade.........................................877a) The emergence of the soul – The demand for a diviner, a more spiritual existence.............877b) It seems inevitable that the higher powers of Existence should manifest here in Mind.......878c) The urge of the occult spiritual being within to emergence is unmistakable........................878

• Man’s urge towards spirituality is the inner driving of the spirit within him..................878D. Man cannot be the last term of the evolution – Supermind and supermanhood.......................879

• If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed.......................879Chapter XXIV........................................................................................................................................880The Evolution of the Spiritual Man.....................................................................................................880

A. The intention in Nature – To develop out of the mental being the spiritual man.....................8811. A Witness of creation conscious but uninstructed would have seen appearing........................881

a) An Energy busy with the creation of Matter, but no hint of Mind or Life............................881b) A Nature concerned only with establishing Life, but no thinking mind...............................881

4

c) A mental being, but not the hidden Spirit.............................................................................883• A more conscious Witness might have discovered the clue at an early period...............883

2. If this is to be accepted as the intention in Nature, there are two questions..............................884• The exact nature of the transition from mental to spiritual being....................................884• The process and method of the evolution of the spiritual out of the mental man............884• This then is what has to be brought out...........................................................................884• The clear distinction between the spiritual and the mental..............................................884• The nature of this evolution and the factors which make it possible and inevitable.......884

B. The exact nature of the transition from mental to spiritual being.............................................8851. It is necessary first to posit the spiritual being as distinct from the mental being.....................885

a) It might seem that what we call the soul or spirit is only a power of mentality....................885b) The emergence of the soul – The decisive steps of the spiritual evolution in Nature..........886

• It is difficult to distinguish entirely the soul from the mental and vital formation..........886• But that is only so long as the emergence is not complete..............................................886• A soul in him standing back from the mind and life and body, seeing and controlling. .886

c) The true character of the evolution becomes evident – The decisive emergence.................887• A spiritual consciousness which is other than the mental...............................................887

d) This truth is not self-evident to the mind – What spirituality is in its essence.....................888• Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being...................888• A transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration...................................888

2. A double evolution – The outward nature and the inner being.................................................890a) This double evolution is intelligible and justifies itself – Nature's final intention................890

• Indispensable for that purpose if her intention is a comprehensive change of the being 890b) A pure spiritual absolutism is also indispensable – Asceticism, illusionism........................890

• The obstacle of the mind, life and body is an impediment to the spiritual urge..............890• The downward gravitation would make the spiritual emergence impossible..................890• There is thus a dual tendency in the spiritual emergence................................................890• A drive towards the establishment at all cost of the spiritual consciousness..................890• A push towards the extension of spirituality to our parts of nature.................................890• But until the first is fully achieved, the second can only be imperfect and halting.........890

C. The process and method of the evolution of the spiritual man out of the mental man.............8921. Four main lines which Nature has followed to open up the inner being...................................862

a) All four powers have worked by a simultaneous action, more or less connected.................892b) Each corresponds to something necessary to the total aim of the evolution.........................893

• There are four necessities of man’s self-expansion.........................................................893• He must know himself and discover and utilise all his potentialities – Occultism.........893• He must know the hidden Power or Powers that control the world – Religion...............893• His thinking mind must be able to accept this knowledge – Philosophy........................893• An opening up of the spiritual consciousness – Spiritual realisation and experience.....893

2. The means, the lines of development utilised by Nature..........................................................894a) Religion.................................................................................................................................894

(1) To understand and appreciate the work done by religion for humanity.........................894(a) The process of Nature – A slow unfolding, formations afterwards, finally emergence. .

.....................................................................................................................................894(b) It is this process that has taken place in the evolution of religion.............................895(c) The excessive and premature claim by religion to determine the truth – Faith.........896

• Faith is indispensable to man but it ought not to be imposed..........................................896(d) The development of religion in India – Proper to an experimental evolution...........897

• Religion’s real business is to prepare man’s mind, life and bodily existence.................897• The errors of religion are caused by the very nature of that inferior stuff.......................897(2) The line of the natural evolution of religion ..................................................................898

(a) The creation of the early forms of religion – Occultism and spiritual experience.....898• The early, at first very superficial and external stage of human religion........................898

(b) The tendency towards intellectualisation – The first amalgam is disrupted..............899• The first amalgam of religion, occultism and mystic experience is disrupted................899• A complete denial of religion, occultism and all that is supraphysical...........................899

4

• But still evolutionary Nature keeps alive her ulterior intentions.....................................899• Religion itself has shown its power of survival and is undergoing an evolution............899

(c) The evidences of this line of natural evolution if we look at the past........................901[1]A first stage occult after a crude inchoate fashion in its character and interests. . .901[2]A second stage........................................................................................................901

[a]. .A national or tribal religion expressive of the stage of evolution of thought and life..........................................................................................................................901[b]. .Secret formulas of the mystics to initiates – Religious or traditional symbols to the rest....................................................................................................................902

[3]A third stage...........................................................................................................902[a]..............Two forms, the esoteric and the exoteric – Concentration and expansion

..............................................................................................................................902[b].......Two tendencies, catholic and protestant – The intellect as the sole surviving power......................................................................................................................904

(d) A synthesis of the principle of concentration and diffusion would have been possible. ......................................................................................................................................904[1]The method of religion in India – The method of evolutionary Nature herself.....904

• But this plasticity sought to support itself on a fixed religio-social system....................904[2]The results in India – The religion the most in consonance with the purpose of Nature..........................................................................................................................905

• A method of this plastic and universal kind – An unexampled multitudinous richness..905b) Occultism..............................................................................................................................906

(1) Occultism is an effort to arrive at a knowledge and a mastery ......................................906• Powers of the mind and the life-force can be brought to bear.........................................906• Hypnotism is an example of such a discovery and systematised application..................906(2) In modern times occultism receded – History in the West and in the East....................908• Science has attempted to move towards a control of mind and life processes................908• It might not be without danger for the existence of the human race...............................908(3) A swing backward towards the old occultism and to new formulations........................909• Occult science is, essentially, the science of the subliminal and the use of it.................909

c) Spiritual thought....................................................................................................................910(1) An intellectual approach to the highest knowledge is an indispensable aid...................910

(a) The intellect of man needs to know what is the nature of the original Truth.............910(b) Its action is secondarily critical and finally organising, controlling and formative...911

(2) The means is a spiritual philosophy – History in the East and in the West....................911• There must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason............................911

d) Spiritual experience...............................................................................................................913(1) The final line of the soul's progress towards which the others are pointing ..................913(2) The spiritual evolution of the individual – The stages in the emergence.......................914• First a certain kind of religiosity which is not the pure spiritual temperament...............914• A preparatory influence or influx in some part or tendency of the mind or life..............914• A strong inner formation and claim to govern the whole life and take over the nature. .914• The last or highest emergence is the liberated man who has realised the Self................914

D. A view of the actual results – The objections to the mystic and his knowledge.......................915• What is the exact sum of this achievement and its actual significance...........................915

1. The objection against its effect upon life..................................................................................915a) The materialistic view of things – The spiritual tendency has come to very little................915b) The true significance of the spiritual evolution in man or the value of spirituality..............916

(1) The solution of the problem which spirituality offers is by an inner change ................916(2) Man in the mass has always deflected the spiritual impulsion – A spiritual change......917• Only a spiritual change can make a real and effective difference...................................917(3) The spiritual evolution of Nature is still in process – A collective spiritual life............918• Any premature attempt at a large-scale collective spiritual life is exposed to vitiation. .918• A higher instrumental dynamis than mind is needed to transform totally.......................918

2. The objection against his method and against the Truth that he discovers...............................919a) The method is purely subjective – A great differences in the actual results.........................919

5

• But the object of the mystic can only be arrived at by an inward gaze...........................919b) The transference from the physical field to the field of life and mind and spirit..................920

• The fundamental truth of spiritual experience is one......................................................920• But there are numberless possibilities of variation of experience and expression..........920

3. Stages and variety of individual formations in the evolution of the spiritual man...................921Chapter XXV.........................................................................................................................................922The Triple Transformation...................................................................................................................922

• If the evolution of the spiritual man is a close and an exit – Nothing more....................922• We have supposed that there is a farther intention – A transformation of Nature..........922

A. The necessity of a triple transformation: psychic, spiritual, supramental.................................9221. The spiritual man has evolved, but not the supramental being.................................................9222. This can be done only by the triple transformation...................................................................923

• The gulf between mind and supermind has to be bridged – A transformation................923• Psychic – The conversion of our whole present nature into a soul-instrumentation.......923• Spiritual – The descent of a higher Light, Knowledge, Power, Force, Bliss, Purity.......923• Supramental – The ascent into the supermind and the transforming descent..................923

B. The psychic change...................................................................................................................9241. At the beginning the soul is an entirely veiled part of us..........................................................924

a) The soul is other and greater than its outer instrumentation of mind, life and body.............924b) Intimations rise to our surface, but our mind does not detect their source...........................925c) As the evolution proceeds the soul puts forward and develops a psychic being..................926

(1) The influence of the psyche – A feeling for all that is true and good and beautiful.......926(2) The psychic influence does not remain distinct in its purity – A deviation and mixture.....

......................................................................................................................................927d) The psychic being passes through a slow development and formation................................928

• A quicker conscious method only when man awakes to the knowledge of the soul.......928e) This slow development can be aided by the mind's effort – This at first is impeded...........929

(1) Many elements in us, many formations can be mistaken for the psyche........................929• The ghost in the early Greek and some other traditions about the after-life...................929• Our ignorance of the subliminal parts of our nature – The inner mind or vital self........929(2) A conflict in our members – One part often rules and can be mistaken for the soul......930(3) This rule of different selves in us is at the root of the stages of the development..........931

(a) The physical Purusha and the physical man – The being of life and the vital man...931(b) The being of mind and the mental man – Mind cannot integrate the whole nature...932

• The true central being is the soul, but this being stands back..........................................932• The soul can come forward and control the nature..........................................................932

2. The soul's complete emergence.................................................................................................934a) The direct contact in the surface being with the Reality itself is indispensable....................934

• At first, it seeks this Reality through the good, the true, the beautiful............................934• This touch through outer signs cannot entirely or most profoundly change...................934• Truth, Good and Beauty – That which they represent has to come.................................934

b) The instrument to achieve the contact...................................................................................934(1) Through the thinking mind ............................................................................................934

(a) The mind of the sage, at first the high mental thinker, then the spiritual sage...........934(b) A higher endeavour through the mind – The spiritualised consciousness is achieved....

.....................................................................................................................................935• It is into a vast formless and featureless impersonality that it enters..............................935(2) Through the heart – The devotee, the saint ....................................................................936(3) By consecration of the will, the selfless worker – A combination of the three..............936• A combination of all these three approaches creates a spiritual or psychic condition....936

3. The entry into the inner being...................................................................................................937a) The consciousness has to shift its centre from the surface to the inner being.......................937

• One must cease to be the surface personality and become the inner Person...................937b) A premature movement, before the tranquillising purification of the outer nature..............938c) The separation of the Purusha from the Prakriti – The way to get still more deeply inward......

..............................................................................................................................................939

5

• If one stands back from the mind and its activities.........................................................939• By similarly standing back from the life activities..........................................................939• By standing back from the body and its demands and activities.....................................939• By standing back from all these activities of nature successively or together................939• Beyond mind-being, life-being, body-being, still more deeply inward...........................939• A strict obedience to the wise and intuitive leading of a Guide is also normal...............939

d) The psychic entity manifests itself as the central being, the guide and ruler – The results. .941(1) The conscious being is made perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind.........941(2) A free inflow of spiritual experience – An opening outward of the inner being............942

e) Dangers of an opening without any full emergence of the soul, the psychic entity..............942C. The spiritual transformation......................................................................................................943

1. The spiritual transformation must intervene – An opening into what is above us....................943a) An aperture before the psycho-spiritual change can be attended with dangers – Premature......

..............................................................................................................................................943b) The process of the spiritual transformation – The three motions.........................................944

(1) An opening of vision to something above us and a rising up of the mind towards it.....944• What we see by the opening of vision is an Infinity above us........................................944• There may be, instead, an ascension of the mind to heights above.................................944• But for the full spiritual transformation more is needed – A descent..............................944(2) The third motion, the descent, is essential for bringing the permanent ascension..........946

c) The culmination of the process – The consciousness of the spiritual being.........................9472. The actual process is difficult – Every part of our being has to be taken.................................948

a) Dangers, if the psychic mutation has not taken place, of a premature pulling down............948b) There is a modification which keeps up an imperfection and limitation in the results.........949c) The reason of the slow and difficult emergence of the Consciousness-Force in Nature......950

• For mind and life have to descend into Matter and suit themselves to its conditions.....950• Neither life nor mind succeeds in converting or perfecting the material existence.........950• As the psychic change has to call in the spiritual to complete it.....................................951

D. The supramental transformation to complete the first spiritual change....................................9511. Only the Supermind can thus descend without losing its full power of action.........................9512. The Truth-Consciousness, finding Nature ready, has to descend into her................................951

Chapter XXVI........................................................................................................................................953The Ascent towards Supermind...........................................................................................................953

A. Abstract generalisations which may serve for an initial light of guidance...............................9531. The mind can look towards Supermind through high and luminous approaches.....................9532. A development of elements already present – The same logic of the process..........................954

• We can begin to trace the passage to a higher dynamic degree.......................................954B. The conditions – An intervention from above and a surrender from below.............................955

1. The transformation can take place by a comparatively swift conscious change.......................955a) The descent of Overmind and Supermind is a sine qua non of the transition.......................955b) If the conditions can be achieved, there would be no farther need of a slow evolution.......956

• There must be a direct and unveiled intervention from above........................................956• There would be necessary too a total surrender of the lower consciousness...................956

2. The conditions before the supramental transformation can become possible...........................957a) The participation and consent of the Purusha to the transition.............................................957

(1) Man must become the psychic and inner mental being master of his energies..............957(a) An increasing conscious participation is a logical consequence of the evolution.....957(b) A participation of a higher and more intimate kind would result from the transition958(c) The power of participation would enlarge – A beginning of authentic free will.......959

• Even in our present state, a participation of a kind is there.............................................959• In the evolution, this initial power of conscious participation would enlarge.................959• A beginning of authentic free will would grow more and more effective.......................959

(d) Our notion of free will – The will could not act in an isolated independence...........960• There could indeed be in the ascent a dual line...............................................................960• On one line the being could feel and behave as an independent self-existence..............960• On the other line the being would feel itself a spiritual instrument.................................960

5

(e) The individual soul would be a conscious, open and free field and instrument........961(2) The participation in the action of Supernature and the supramental transformation......962• But this highest condition is difficult and must evidently take long to bring about........962• For the participation and consent of the Purusha to the transition is not sufficient.........962

b) The surrender of the whole being to the light and power from the Supernature..................962• A second condition which has to be accomplished slowly and with difficulty...............962(1) The participation and consent not only of the Purusha but also of the Prakriti..............962(2) The psychic and the spiritual transformation must be far advanced ..............................963

c) The consciousness centred in the inner self and the cosmic consciousness..........................965• Another necessary condition for the supramental change...............................................965• Besides he must have already become aware of what is now to him superconscient.....965• It is possible for the spiritual opening to take place before the psychic is far advanced.965• But the third, the supramental change does not admit of any premature descent...........965

C. A gradation in the transition from the spiritualised mind to Supermind...................................9661. The necessity of a gradation in the last transitional process.....................................................966

a) The spiritual evolution obeys the logic of a successive unfolding........................................966• A greater or concentrated speed does not eliminate the steps themselves......................966

b) The first touch of spiritualisation must be followed by a further change.............................967• At first – The pure touch of the spiritual force must intervene in mental nature............967• This can be done from within by an invisible action through the psychic entity............967• The necessary turn or change can also be brought about by an occult descent...............967• If the transformation of earth life is intended – A further change...................................967

c) The same process of evolution as in the rest of the movement of Nature.............................968(1) The demand for integration becomes a point of cardinal importance ...........................968(2) The lower parts of the being must be made to consent to their own transformation......970(3) Steps towards overcoming this difficulty – The point of the turning in the transition...970• An indispensable step is the opening up of the inner being and its centre of actions.....970• If the inmost being, the psychic, takes charge – A deeper mutation...............................970• At this point – The working of the higher powers of the spiritual mind and overmind. .970• The turning of the spiritual towards the supramental transformation commences..........970

2. The gradations of the transition towards the supramental transformation................................972• The gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents...............................972

a) A succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind.................972(1) Each stage of this ascent is a general, if not a total, conversion of the being.................972(2) In the descent of the higher grades upon us, they enter into mind, life, body................973• As we descend the scale – Consciousness becomes more and more diluted...................973• As we ascend – A finer but far stronger and more spiritually concrete substance..........973

b) The stages of the ascent........................................................................................................974(1) The higher Mind – The fulfilment for the spiritual sage and thinker.............................974

(a) In its aspect of cognition............................................................................................974[1]It is a luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge.......974[2]A Knowledge formulating itself on a basis of self-existent all-awareness............974

(b) In the aspect of will – The limited power of the Higher Mind and its idea-force......975[1]The idea generates the force and form proper to the idea and imposes it..............975

• It charges the whole being with a new and superior consciousness................................975[2]The power of persistence, recurrence, resistance of established things in Nature.976

• The higher forces are not in their descent immediately all-powerful..............................976(c) The importance of a preliminary psychic control and spiritual transformation.........978

(2) The Illumined Mind – The fulfilment for the seer and the illumined mystic ................978(a) A play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above – Light............978(b) The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision...................979(c) A Truth-sight and Truth-light and its seeing and seizing power................................980

(3) The Intuition ..................................................................................................................981(a) A power of consciousness nearer to the original knowledge by identity...................981(b) In the human mind the intuition is subject to alterations – The control by reason....982(c) A complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind is imperative........983

5

(d) Intuition can change the whole consciousness – A certain integration can take place.........................................................................................................................................983

• Intuition has a fourfold power.........................................................................................983• A power of revelatory truth-seeing..................................................................................983• A power of inspiration or truth-hearing...........................................................................983• A power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance.........................................983• A power of true and automatic discrimination................................................................983(4) The Overmind.................................................................................................................984

(a) A principle of global knowledge – By an opening into the cosmic consciousness. . .984(b) Multiple possibilities – The discovery of a true individual replacing the dead ego. .986

• There can be many formulations of overmind consciousness and experience................986• There may be the sense of the universe in oneself or as oneself.....................................986• Often there is no rule or governance – But a sense of governance can come in.............986• A special centre may be revealed or created overtopping and dominating.....................986

(c) All spiritual experiences are taken up – The whole nature becomes cosmic.............986D. A supramental change of the being – A gnostic Purusha and a gnostic Nature........................987

1. The necessity of a descent of the Supermind into the terrestrial formula.................................987a) The reasons why Overmind is not the final possibility of the spiritual evolution................987

• It is a power, though the highest power, of the lower hemisphere..................................987b) A transition to Supermind and a descent of Supermind must intervene...............................988

• The overmind descent would not be able to transform wholly the Inconscience............988• The supreme power of the principle of unity would not as yet be there.........................988• There could be no security against the downward pull or gravitation.............................988

c) The descent of the gnostic Light would effectuate a complete transformation....................9892. The difficulty to bring about a complete integration – An interaction......................................990

a) There is not actually a series of simple clear-cut and successive stages...............................990b) The causes of complexity in the process of evolutionary Nature.........................................991

(1) An intricate action instead of a cleanly determined and firmly arranged course............991(2) The need of integration itself – The descent to transform the inferior nature................992• Ordinarily the higher powers descend first into the mind...............................................992• The higher transforming power has, without waiting, to descend into the heart.............992• Afterwards into the inferior vital and, finally, into the physical centres.........................992(3) An inner and a surface nature – And the intricacy of a secret circumconscient.............994

(a) The power of the consciousness to live in more than one status at a time.................994• In the spiritual opening, it is the awakened inner being that readily receives.................994• The outer is still involved in a mixed and difficult movement........................................994• This disparity repeats itself at each step of the ascent.....................................................994• The still more external but occult part through which the outside world invades...........994• This creates a difficulty which is of capital importance..................................................994

(b) The integral transformation must embrace fully the dynamic being.........................9953. The substance of our normal being is moulded out of the Inconscience..................................996

a) A self-protective law of blind Necessity in the substance of the Inconscience....................996b) With the supramental force enters an opposite and luminous Necessity..............................997

4. The principle of a divine life in terrestrial Nature would be manifested..................................997• The individual must be the instrument and first field of the transformation...................997• The appearance of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a Gnostic Nature 997• The intervening powers of Overmind and spiritual Mind – A hierarchy of states..........997• Mind and mental humanity would remain as one step in the spiritual evolution............997

Chapter XXVII......................................................................................................................................999The Gnostic Being..................................................................................................................................999

A. An idea of the first status of the evolutionary supramental existence.......................................9991. It is difficult for mental thought to understand or describe supramental nature.......................9992. Certain deductions can be made from the very fact of the difference of nature.....................1000

• The supramental, the divine life is a life of essential, spontaneous and inherent unity.10003. A general description of the passage from Overmind to Supermind......................................1001

a) A transition from an evolution in the Ignorance to an evolution in the Knowledge...........1001

5

• The supramental being unfolding the powers of the gnosis within the terrestrial nature.............................................................................................................................................1001

b) There will be the creation of a supramental being, nature, life on earth.............................1002• There will be established on earth a gnostic Consciousness and Power.......................1002• The process will be an open outflowering consciously felt and followed.............................

.......................................................................................................................................1002c) Consequences in the whole evolution – A hierarchy of ascending degrees........................1003

(1) Supermind would not annul but facilitate the process of evolutionary emergence......1003• A decisive stress would affect the life of the lower evolutionary stages.......................1003• A dominant principle of harmony would impose itself on the life of the Ignorance.....1003(2) Supermind would create a harmonic unity with the still surviving mental world........1005• The hope of a more harmonious evolutionary order in terrestrial Nature.....................1005

4. We can attempt to form an idea of the general principle of the supramental existence..........1006• There would be below it the degrees of the overmind and intuitive gnosis..................1006• There would be also at the summit the unitarian self-realisation in the body...............1006• In the supramental race itself – The variation of its degrees.........................................1006

B. The first major results of the spiritual transformation – The gnostic being............................10071. His existence in oneness with the transcendent and universal Self and Spirit........................1007

a) The gnostic individual would be the consummation of the spiritual man..........................1007• The gnostic individual would be universal, individual, transcendental.........................1007

b) The three powers would find in his life a united fulfilment of their harmony....................1008• The individual, the cosmic entity and the Reality present in both and beyond them....1008(1) Individual – The gnostic being will be the perfected and complete individual............1008• All his elements would be carried to a highest degree and integrated...........................1008• What we are striving towards is completeness and harmony........................................1008• Each being would be a new totality, harmony, self-equation of the One Being...........1008(2) Cosmic – He would act in a universal awareness and a harmony with the total self. . .1009• The relation between the individual personal destiny and the cosmic whole................1009• The right relation at each step and find the dynamic right expression of that relation..1009(3) The supramental being – Acting in the creative light and power of the Transcendence......

....................................................................................................................................10102. An affirmation of spiritual existence, consciousness, delight of being...................................1010

a) The delight of self-manifestation of the Spirit in himself but equally in all.......................1010b) The gnostic being has the will of action but also the knowledge and the power................1011

• His knowledge self-realised in action will be not ideative, but the Real-Idea..............1011c) An inner existence creating its outer form and self-expressive environment of living.......1012

3. The universal inner life of the individual................................................................................1013a) An inner life in which the antinomy of the self and the world will have been exceeded. . .1013b) One who carries the universe and all its beings within himself – Inwardly in contact.......1014c) The full power of the mental and vital planes and the use of their greater forces..............1015

4. All that is our attempt to be in the Ignorance, he will fulfil in the Knowledge.......................1015a) Supermind working in its manifested power in the earth-existence...................................1015b) A lifting of mind, life and body out of themselves into a greater way of being.................1017

(1) Mind – The gnostic movement of knowledge and action of knowledge......................1017(a) It will act not by the discovery of the unknown, but by the bringing out of the known. .

...................................................................................................................................1017(b) A self-illumination, a revelation of light out of light will be the method of cognition....

...................................................................................................................................1018(2) Life – The gnostic life will exist and act for the Divine in itself and in the world.......1019(3) The body and the material Nature ................................................................................1020

(a) It will be turned into a true and fit and perfectly responsive instrument of the Spirit........................................................................................................................................1020

(b) There can be a new liberated and sovereign acceptance of material Nature...........1022(c) The spiritualisation, perfection and fulfilment of the physical being......................1023(d) The claim of the body for immunity and serenity and for deliverance from suffering....

...................................................................................................................................1024

5

c) An aspiration, a demand for the supreme and total delight of existence............................1025(1) Ananda would be inherent in the Gnostic consciousness ............................................1025• The evolution of the being of gnosis – Followed by an evolution of the being of bliss1025(2) All the movements of Nature would be pervaded by Ananda .....................................1026• Peace and ecstasy cease to be different and become one..............................................1026• In the universal phenomenon is revealed the eternal Ananda.......................................1026

C. Two other questions present themselves from our mental viewpoint.....................................10271. The place of personality in the gnostic being..........................................................................1027

a) A universalised spiritual individual who is a centre of the transcendent Being.................1027b) There is no opposition, no incompatibility of the Impersonal and the Person....................1028c) A supramental individual will be a spiritual Person – Personality and character...............1029

• Personality as a flux, character as a formed fixity of Nature’s structure.......................1029• But flux of nature and fixity of nature are two aspects of being...................................1029• Besides this flux and this fixity there is also a third element, the Person......................1029• The Person is larger than his personality.......................................................................1029• This, then, would be the nature of the gnostic Person...................................................1031

d) An infinite and universal being revealing its eternal self through individuality.................10312. The place of the ethical element and its perfection and fulfilment.........................................1032

a) There could be no problem of an ethical content, any conflict of good and evil................1032b) Freedom of the Spirit and an entire self-existent order.......................................................1033

(1) Life in the mental ignorance and life in the gnostic being and nature – A true law.....1033• All true law is the right motion and process of a reality – Its own truth of existence...1033(2) Unity, harmony, mutuality – The law of the supreme and universal Truth of things...1034(3) A free self-determination of the spiritual being in a plastic entirely conscious nature.........

....................................................................................................................................1036(4) The supreme truth of his being would create the order of his spiritual freedom..........1036(5) Law and liberty in the Spirit – The spontaneity of a Truth self-aware and self-active.........

....................................................................................................................................1037(6) He feels both his liberty and the order of his liberty to be one truth of his being........1039• In him Knowledge and Will become one and cannot be in conflict..............................1039• His liberty of knowledge is not a freedom to follow falsehood or error.......................1039• His liberty of action is not a licence to act upon wrong will.........................................1039

c) A direct and inherent awareness of the truth of being and the truth of things....................1040(1) A truth of relation of all the parts and movements of the being ..................................1040(2) Absence of reason for a separative assertion of self-will or pride of independence.....1041(3) There would be no place for disharmony or conflict between the powers of the nature......

....................................................................................................................................1042(4) The identity-consciousness would lead and contain everything ..................................1043• A knowledge by identity using the powers of the integrated being..............................1043• A fulfilment of the being in a luminous and blissful integration...................................1043(5) A consciousness of inherent self-knowledge and of intimate world-knowledge.........1044(6) The right relation and action or reaction of each upon each in every circumstance.....1045• It would found all relations upon the common spiritual unity.......................................1045• This would be the nature of the being, life and action of the gnostic individual...........1046• This would determine all the relations of the life or group-life of gnostic beings........1046

D. The gnostic collectivity and the influence on the evolution....................................................10461. A collective soul-power of the Supermind – The law of the collective life............................1046

• This collectivity would be and act not as a mechanical but a spiritual integer.............1046• An order of the conscious unity of souls which is the law of the supramental Infinite.1046• The difficulty in mind and life is created by ego...........................................................1046• A farther difficulty is created by the imperfection of intuition and direct inner contact.......

.......................................................................................................................................1046• In the collective gnostic life – The unity of a luminous life-whole...............................1046

2. A lesser consummation in its own degree of what must remain still below...........................1047• The two forms of being and life would either exist side by side or interpenetrate........1047

5

• The higher spiritual-mental degrees would be in touch with the supramental principle..............................................................................................................................................1047

• The involved principle of the gnosis – Acting on the Inconscience and Ignorance......1047• There might well arise a new and greater order of mental human beings.....................1047

3. Whether that would mean the cessation of the evolution from the Inconscience...................1049• The law of harmony, the law of unity in diversity and of diversity working out unity.1049• No longer an evolution through strife – Harmonious from stage to stage.....................1049

Chapter XXVIII...................................................................................................................................1051The Divine Life.....................................................................................................................................1051

A. The divine life, the secret intention of evolutionary Nature....................................................10511. The significance of our existence – A Reality unrolling itself in Time..................................10512. Consciousness and life are the keywords to what is being worked out in Time.....................1052

a) The perfect and natural condition of consciousness – Supermind......................................1052b) The divine life of a perfected consciousness in a gnostic power of spiritual being............1054

(1) A greater consciousness means a greater life – A manifestation of the Spirit..............1054(2) For the full and perfect fulfilment of the evolutionary urge ........................................1054

(a) A remoulding of both the inner and outer existence – The collective life...............1054• All spiritual life is in its principle a growth into divine living......................................1054

(b) A greater dynamic change in earth-nature – A gnostic way of dynamic living.......1055• The appearance of a new order of beings and a new earth-life.....................................1055

c) The first importance of the inner life – The rest as its expression and outcome.................1056B. The divine life – The essential conditions of a perfected life on earth...................................1057

1. Individual perfection and inner completeness of being...........................................................1057a) Our mind is led in three directions – It is within us that the Reality must be found...........1057

• A concentration on our own inner spiritual growth and perfection...............................1057• A concentration on an individual development of our surface nature...........................1057• A concentration on the outer world itself, on making it better......................................1057

b) Two preoccupations – An inner life and to convert our whole surface being....................1058• In the growth into a divine life the spirit must be our first preoccupation....................1058• A perfected human world cannot be composed of men who are themselves imperfect1058

c) A divine life must be first and foremost an inner life.........................................................1059(1) To be or become something – Knowledge, thought, action are not the object of life. .1059• To become ourselves is the one thing to be done – That which is within us.................1059• It is only by growing within and living within that we can find it................................1059(2) To be and to be fully is Nature's aim in us ...................................................................1060

(a) To be wholly conscious of one's being – Spiritual knowledge................................1060• The essence of spiritual knowledge is an intrinsic self-existent consciousness............1060

(b) To have the intrinsic and integral force of one's being – The will of the Spirit.......1060(c) To have the full delight of being – An entire delight of itself and all things...........1061

(3) Other necessary conditions of the integral divine living .............................................1061(a) To be universally – All being is one and to be fully is to be all that is....................1061(b) To be transcendentally – To transcend body, mind, life, the formula of the universe.....

...................................................................................................................................1062(4) To enter into ourselves and live within is the first necessity for the divine life...........1063(5) The extrovert and the introvert – The silence and void in the inner spiritual experience.....

....................................................................................................................................1064• The opposition between the extrovert and the introvert................................................1064• An inner darkness when looking inwards – A mentality always on the surface...........1064• This silence is the silence of the spirit...........................................................................1064• This emptiness is the emptying of the cup of our natural being....................................1064

2. The perfection of the relation of the individual with all around him......................................1065• This inner living can extend itself and embrace the universal life................................1065

a) This inward turning and movement is the first step towards a true universality................1065• Our utmost universalisation on the surface is a poor and limping endeavour...............1065

b) Universality in action – A close and complete consciousness of the self of others............1066• The gnostic being lives in and for the Divine in himself, the collectivity, all beings. . .1066

5

3. A new perfected collective life – Unity, mutuality and harmony...........................................1067• The utmost possible individual perfection – Our first supreme business......................1067• Second – The perfection of the relation of the individual with all around him.............1067

a) Many gnostic individuals forming a new kind of beings and a new common life.............1067• A common consciousness consolidating a common life...............................................1067

b) A considerable free diversity for communities and individuals.........................................1068• A single Consciousness-Force would act through all and harmonise their action........1068• Unity, mutuality and harmony must be the law of a collective gnostic life..................1068

c) The necessity of the passage to the spiritual and supramental being and life.....................1070(1) We can construct nothing which goes beyond our nature ...........................................1070• Whatever happens in Nature must be the result of Nature............................................1070(2) Our nature is that of beings separated from each other – The social order..................1071• The social order – Nothing better than an imperfect structure of life...........................1071(3) The perfection of ourselves and our existence if our nature develops beyond itself....1072• If our nature is fixed in what it is, no perfection is possible in earthly life...................1072• It is our spiritual destiny to manifest and become that supernature..............................1072

d) The foundation of the perfect unity, mutuality, harmony – The increase of power...........1072(1) The native character of gnostic seeing and action .......................................................1072• In the mental being there is a discord............................................................................1072• A discord of knowledge with knowledge, of will with will, of knowledge with will...1072• Our mental seeing and action lifted into the Gnostic light must become more perfect.1072(2) The correlation of Knowledge and Power – New powers of consciousness ...............1074• A correlation not altogether apparent – Consciousness in an original Inconscience... .1074• Life-Force seems to be more dynamic and effective than Mind – The vital man.........1074• In the end the mental man is able to extend the mastery of existence far beyond.........1074

(a) A greater consciousness – An immensely greater power over existence and Nature.........................................................................................................................................1074

(b) Power as a natural concomitant of the growth of consciousness and knowledge....1075• The gnostic being would be in unison and communion with the Consciousness-Force1075

(c) The characters of the new powers of consciousness – A conscious unanimism......1076• A spontaneous and innate, not a constructed, unity and harmony.................................1076(3) New and superior means and powers of uniting consciousness inwardly – Harmony.........

....................................................................................................................................1077• The harmony would be there as a spontaneous expression of the unity........................1077• This spontaneous expression presupposes a mutuality of consciousness......................1077(4) Nothing supernatural or miraculous in an evolution of yet unevolved powers............1078(5) Their rejection in mystic experience – The necessary course of the evolution............1079• New powers of consciousness have been known to develop........................................1079• Their rejection is logical for those who seek to withdraw from life..............................1079• A similar rejection is a necessary self-restraint for the immature seeker......................1079• But when new capacities come as an inevitable result – A natural working.................1079(6) The powers of consciousness would be not only normal but indispensable ...............1080

(a) The imperfect accommodation of the constituting individuals in a human society.1080(b) The mind and the life of the individual are actuated by forces not in accord..........1081

• We have to grow into a more complete spiritual nature................................................1081(c) The accord and concord are the true normality of the Spirit....................................1082

• It is natural to the gnostic individual, natural to a community of gnostic beings..........1082• With the ignorant life – A relation of action of knowledge to action of ignorance.......1082

C. Where we stand at this juncture and what prospect there is of any turn.................................10831. The aspiration towards individual and collective perfection...................................................1083

a) The three principal preoccupations of our idealism – The present tendency......................1083• The perfectibility of the individual................................................................................1083• The perfectibility of society...........................................................................................1083• Of individual with individual and society and of community with community............1083• In recent times the whole stress has passed to the life of the race.................................1083

b) How to solve the problem of the true way of individual and communal living?................1084

5

• A unifying and harmonising knowledge can alone find the way..................................1084c) The secret of perfection whether of individual or communal being...................................1085

(1) To find the Reality and live in it – The most perfect manifestation and formation......1085• This Reality is there within – The universe, humanity, the community, the individual1085• The individual is indeed the key of the evolutionary movement...................................1086• It is the individual who finds himself, who becomes conscious of the Reality.............1086(2) The real object of existence of the individual – Spiritual freedom and oneness..........1086• As he moves towards spiritual freedom, he moves also towards spiritual oneness......1086• Our only real freedom is the discovery and disengagement of the spiritual Reality.....1086• Our only means of true perfection – The self-effectuation of the spiritual Reality.......1086

2. A critical choice which must one day be solved in the true sense..........................................1088a) Material, mental and spiritual preoccupations – The modern spirit and Science...............1088

• Our nature is complex – We have to find a key to some perfect unity and fullness.....1088• What the modern spirit has sought for is the economic social ultimate........................1088

b) The stress on a perfected economic and material existence – The dangers........................1089• The first danger is a resurgence of the old vital and material primitive barbarian........1089• Another danger – A cessation of the evolutionary urge................................................1089

c) At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis – Reason and Science...............1090• Man has created a system of civilisation which has become too big............................1090• At the same time Science has put at his disposal many potencies – The ego................1090• Reason and Science can only help by standardising.....................................................1090

d) The evolutionary nisus is pushing towards a critical choice – What is needed..................1092• A life of unity, mutuality and harmony born of a deeper and wider truth.....................1092

e) What the modern mind presents us in this crisis as a light for its solution.........................1093(1) A life of identity for the community in place of a life of difference ...........................1093• The communal ego is idealised as the soul of the nation, the race, the community......1093• It is not in this direction that evolutionary Nature has pointed mankind...............................

.......................................................................................................................................1093(2) A unified organisation of the economic life of the race ...............................................1094• A unanimity of this kind can only be maintained by a compression of all freedom.....1094(3) An enlightened reason and will of the normal man – Education and social machinery.......

....................................................................................................................................1094• Machinery cannot form the soul and life-force into standardised shapes.....................1094

f) An organised religion and the idea of a society governed or sanctioned by religion..........1095• Religion so conceived does not transform the race.......................................................1095

3. A radical change of nature as the sole possibility for the transmutation of life......................1096a) What is demanded is not alien to us – The necessity of a turn in humanity.......................1096

• The feeling that there is no other solution than the spiritual cannot but grow..............1096b) Problems of the transition...................................................................................................1097

(1) An individual answer or a new worthwhile collective existence .................................1097• The monastic life is in its nature an association of other-worldly seekers....................1097• It is not usually an effort to create a new life-formation...............................................1097• A new consciousness in many individuals is needed for the new life to appear...........1097(2) A period of ordeal for the new life in its beginnings – The separate community.........1098• It might be that all the difficulties of the change – With a concentrated force..............1098(3) A life of gnostic beings proceeding with a life of beings in the Ignorance..................1099• The life-interchange of gnostic individuals in a gnostic community – Harmonious.....1099• But here, actually, there would be a life of gnostic beings attempting to emerge.........1099• A complete seclusion or separation would then seem to impose itself.........................1099• But the new and completer light would bring also a new and completer power...........1099

c) If we suppose the gnostic consciousness to be established in the earth-life.......................1100(1) The influence of the supramental principle would fall upon the life of the Ignorance.........

....................................................................................................................................1100(2) What the gnostic being shall do – The criterion of decision ........................................1101

(a) The values of our normal ignorant Nature – The mind's ideals and standards........1101• The gnostic being will not accept the mind’s ideals and standards...............................1101

5

• But what is true in the mental ideals will be fulfilled....................................................1101(b) The many mental idols, constructed principles and systems, conflicting ideals......1102

• What is real and abiding in them will undergo the transformation...............................1102(c) The frame of the life and its detail and circumstance..............................................1103

• Ascetic spareness – This standard or any mental standard cannot be absolute.............1103• A rigid standardisation could not be the law of the spiritual life...................................1103(3) This must not be confused with past and present ideas of supermanhood...................1104(4) Such an existence might seem void of vital savour – The delight of the Spirit............1106

D. Our evolution in the Ignorance leads towards an evolution in the Knowledge......................1107Note on the Text........................................................................................................................................1109

6