Study Notes
PARAGRAPH 21
But if, accepting this side of Nature, we say that all things are fixed in their statutory and stationary law of being, and man too must be fixed in his imperfections, his ignorance and sin and weakness and vileness and suffering, our life loses its true significance. Man’s perpetual attempt to arise out of the darkness and insufficiency of his nature can then have no issue in the world itself, in life itself; its one issue, if there is any, must be by an escape out of life, out of the world, out of his human existence and therefore out of its eternally unsatisfactory law of imperfect being, either into a heaven of the gods or of God or into the pure ineffability of the Absolute.
EXPLANATION
While accepting this side of Nature can we say that all things are fixed in their unchanging law of being? If that being the case, should the man be too fixed in his imperfections, ignorance, sin, weakness, evil nature and suffering?
If we accept this proposition, then our life loses its true significance. There would be no purpose in man’s perpetual attempt to arise out of the darkness and insufficiency of his nature in the world itself and in life itself. The only solution for man would be to escape out of life, out of the world, out of his human existence. His only recourse would be to escape from this unsatisfactory status of being into a heaven of the gods or into an ineffable Absolute.
If so, man can never really deliver out of the ignorance and falsehood the truth and knowledge, out of the evil and ugliness the good and beauty, out of the weakness and vileness the power and glory, out of the grief and suffering the joy and delight which are contained in the Spirit behind them and of which these contradictions are the first adverse and contrary conditions of emergence.
EXPLANATION
If man is forever doomed to be in this state, he can never deliver the truth and knowledge out of the ignorance and falsehood; the good and beauty out of the evil and ugliness; the power and glory out of the weakness and wickedness; the joy and delight out of the grief and suffering.
These positive aspects are contained in the Spirit behind the corresponding contrary aspects. These contradictions are the first adverse and contrary conditions of emergence in the evolutionary progress.
All he can do is to cut the imperfections away from him and overpass too their balancing opposites, imperfect also,—leave with the ignorance the human knowledge, with the evil the human good, with the weakness the human strength and power, with the strife and suffering the human love and joy; for these are in our present nature inseparably entwined together, look like conjoint dualities, negative pole and positive pole of the same unreality, and since they cannot be elevated and transformed, they must be both abandoned: humanity cannot be fulfilled in divinity; it must cease, be left behind and rejected.
EXPLANATION
Man cannot escape from the dualities of the world. Ignorance and the human knowledge, evil and the human good, weakness and the human strength and power, struggle and suffering and the human love and joy are in our present nature inseparably entwined together like conjoined twins. They are like negative and positive poles of the same unreality.
If man abandons both the positive and negative sides of the duality, just because he is unable to elevate and transform them, then humanity cannot be fulfilled in divinity. He cannot overpass them in order to cut the imperfections away from him.
The positive and negative balance each other. By abandoning the both, the positives are left with their corresponding negatives without any scope of redemption. Knowledge would be forever left with the ignorance, human good would be forever left with the evil, human strength and power would be forever left with the weakness, human love and joy would be forever left with the strife and suffering. Humanity must cease, be left behind and rejected.
Whether the result will be an individual enjoyment of the absolute divine nature or of the Divine Presence or a Nirvana in the featureless Absolute, is a point on which religions and philosophies differ: but in either case human existence on earth must be taken as condemned to eternal imperfection by the very law of its being; it is perpetually and unchangeably an undivine manifestation in the Divine Existence. The soul by taking on manhood, perhaps by the very fact of birth itself, has fallen from the Divine, has committed an original sin or error which it must be man’s spiritual aim, as soon as he is enlightened, thoroughly to cancel, unflinchingly to eliminate.
EXPLANATION
What man would achieve by his escape from the dualities of the world? It would be an individual enjoyment of the absolute divine nature or of the Divine Presence or a state of Nirvana. In either case the human existence on earth must be taken as condemned to eternal imperfection by the very law of its being.
Human existence would be perpetually and unchangeably an undivine manifestation in the Divine Existence. The soul is considered to have fallen from the Divine; it has committed an original sin or error.
Therefore, man’s spiritual aim must be to cancel or eliminate his existence from this world once he attains enlightenment.
(According to one argument, humanity cannot be perfected. The soul has come upon earth by an error or as a fall from the Divine. If we say humanity is eternally condemned to imperfection, then all this becomes a fiasco, a meaningless tragic error or mistake. Then the only recourse for the soul is to realise its situation and leave this world and this life behind and enter into Nirvana or the transcendent Brahman – Dr. Ananda Reddy: Deliberations of The Life Divine: Vol VI: SACAR: p. 242)