SYNOPSIS
THE DIVINE AND THE UNDIVINE
- On one hand we say the universe is the manifestation of the Divine Being and on the other hand we say our present life is undivine. As intellectual beings the presence of evil, the insistence of suffering by way of pain, grief in Nature appear as cruel phenomena which baffle our reason thereby losing our instinctive faith in the fact that our life has its origin in the Divine and is governed by It.
- But if we take a wider outlook, we will realise that evil and suffering are not the whole defect, not even the root of the matter. There is also paucity of Good and Delight, of Knowledge, Truth, Beauty, Power and Unity. There is a common principle which is behind all the problems of the world. Evil and suffering are only two strong results of this common principle.
- There is one main fact which is the cause of the fall or the failure. That is our being, consciousness, force, experience of things represents a principle or an effective phenomenon of division from unity of Divine Existence. In its inevitable practical effect this division becomes a limitation. There is a limitation of the divine consciousness and knowledge, the divine delight and beauty, the divine power and capacity, the divine harmony and good.
- It is followed by a secondary ulterior effect which causes perversion of these highest things; unconsciousness and wrong consciousness intervene in our limited mentality; ignorance covers our whole nature. As a result of these, contradictions of the divine elements are formed. There is incapacity, inertia, falsehood, error, pain and grief, wrong-doing, discord, evil. There is also an attachment, somewhere hidden in ourselves, nursed in our secret parts to these negative elements.
- We say all is a divine manifestation; even that which we call undivine is also divine in its essentiality despite the fact that the outer form may look contrary. But this affirmation is not enough. It does not solve the problem. The question remains, why that which is forever pure, perfect, blissful, infinite in itself should tolerate, maintain and encourage in its manifestation imperfection and limitation, impurity and suffering and falsehood and evil. It states the duality that constitutes the problem but does not solve it.
- If we see the dualities of our existence it seems to us there is no reconciliation possible between the divine and undivine life. We can take a view that the inner Presence alone is a Truth. The discordant externality is a falsehood or illusion. Therefore, the only way is to escape out of the falsehood of the manifested world. Or we can take the Buddhist view that perfection and impermanence is a practical fact of things. The one thing that is necessary for liberation is to get rid of this state. We do not achieve anything by this escapist attitude.
- There is also another way to escape from this problem. As the Spirit in things is absolutely perfect and divine, we may take a view that each thing also is relatively perfect and divine in itself; each thing is perfect in its expression of what it has to express of the possibilities of existence. There is an unerring divine Will and Knowledge at work within each creature and all adapt themselves to its purpose. Each thing in its relation to the whole is perfect and divine and each thing is necessary to that totality.
- But this is also a solution incomplete by itself. It says that all that is in the world is right because all is perfectly determined by the divine Wisdom. It does not take sufficient account of the human consciousness and the human view from which we have to start. It does not show us the way to the psychic element in our nature. It does not lead us to the soul’s aspiration towards light and truth and towards spiritual conquest, a victory over imperfection and evil.
- The human consciousness cannot remain forever bound to the sense of imperfection or merely accept this imperfection as the law of our life and the very character of our existence like the blind animal acceptance of animal nature. Because there is not only a mental part in us which recognises the imperfection, also there is a psychic part in us which rejects such imperfection.
- We can admit that all works towards a divine end by a divine wisdom. But their present status can be justified only by what can and will be. There is no doubt a key in the divine reason that would justify things as they are present now. To search for and find the spiritual key of things is the law of our being. There is also the will of God in us to go beyond evil and suffering; to transform imperfection into perfection; to rise into a higher law of Divine Nature. Our present nature can only be a passing phase. Our imperfect status is a starting-point and opportunity for the achievement of another higher, wider and greater nature.
- If we admit the Divine Existence, we are aware of three propositions about God and the world in our general reason and consciousness. One of the three propositions does not harmonise with the other two though it is necessitated by the character of the world we live in. This disharmony drives the human mind into doubt and denial.
- First, we affirm an omnipresent Divinity and Reality which is pure, perfect and blissful; nothing could exist apart from him. It has been thought that the ignorance, the imperfection, the suffering of this world is not supported by the Divine Existence. This implies that there are two Gods, one supporting good and another supporting evil; One is a perfect supracosmic and immanent Being and another is an imperfect cosmic Demiurge (creator of the universe). But we cannot suppose that the one Self in all and the one Power creator of all are different, contrary in character, separate in their will and purpose.
- As a consequence of the first affirmation our mind accepts the supreme consciousness and the supreme power of this omnipresent Divinity as the second affirmation. In its perfect universal knowledge and divine wisdom all things in the universe are ordered and governed in their fundamental relations and their process. On the contrary we see relations of imperfection, of limitation, disharmony, perversion.
- As a consequence of the first two a third affirmation arises. That is, we affirm that the Divine Reality and the world are different in essence or in order. They are so different that in order to reach the one we have to draw away from the other. Either we choose the Divine Inhabitant and reject the world or choose the world and reject the Divine. The third proposition is incompatible with the other two which poses a problem for which we are unable to find a satisfactory solution.
- We can bye-pass this difficulty by inventing some philosophical reasoning, or some theological reasoning. It is possible to conceive of a passive god or a supreme Self absolute, free from all relations unconcerned with the works of cosmic Illusion or Creation whose origin seems to be a paradox. All these solutions create division rather than reconciliation. They do not explain the conflict between the Divine and the world we live in.
- It is the power of the Self that must be constantly determining or at least sanctioning all the phenomenal actions in the world. Because there cannot be any other power that governs this world than that of the original and eternal Self-Existence (Brahman). We must conclude that Its power to govern is complete and absolute.
- Yet it is quite possible to admit that the supreme and immanent Divinity may give a certain freedom of working to something that has come into being in its perfection; that something is itself being imperfect and the cause of imperfection. It may allow a certain freedom or working to an ignorant or an inconscient nature, to the action of the human mind and will; It may allow a certain freedom even to a conscious Power or Forces of darkness and evil that take their stand upon the reign of a basic Inconscience.
- Yet none of these things have an independent existence of their own. They can act only in the presence of the Divinity and by Its sanction or allowance. There is some will of the indwelling Divinity behind the imperfection of Nature’s workings. If we admit the fact that the Divine is concerned with the world He has manifested, then, there is no other Lord than He. This should be the foundation on which we have to consider the problem of imperfection, suffering and evil.
- We must realise that the existence of ignorance, error, limitation, suffering, division and discord in the world need not by itself a denial of the divine being and the divine aspects. There is no real division, no fundamental contradiction of the omnipresent Reality. Yet there seems to be a real limitation of consciousness. There is an ignorance of the self; the inner Divinity is concealed behind a veil. All imperfection is the result of this concealment.
- All our reactions and experience on the surface are based on the ignorance. The ignorance is the frontal power of the all-consciousness which limits itself in a certain field. For a particular operation of knowledge, it limits itself within certain boundaries, in a certain field. Therefore, there is a surface part in the front and the hidden part at the back in our total consciousness which makes up for all the deficiencies of our frontal ignorance.
- This frontal power of Ignorance is a power of concentration in a limited working, much like a power in our human mentality by which we use only that much knowledge and ideas required for that particular work. It is only a supreme self-possessing Knowledge, by its power, can limit itself in the act and yet work out all its intentions through the apparent ignorance.
- In the universe we see a multitude of ignorances. This supreme self-possessing Knowledge work through all these ignorances. Yet through all the ignorances the supreme Knowledge constructs and executes its universal harmonies.
- The miracle of its omniscience appears more strikingly in what seems to us the action of an Inconscient. We see a complete or the partial nescience, thicker than our ignorance in electron, atom, cell, plant, insect, the lowest form of animal life. In all these apparently inconscient forms the supreme Knowledge guides and arranges perfectly its order of things.
- The same is true with the consequences of the Ignorance. What seems to us incapacity, weakness, impotence, limitation of power and our will, our restrained labour are derived from the aspect of a just limitation of an omniscient power, self-imposed by the free will of that Power itself. It does so in order to ensure that the surface energy shall be in exact correspondence with the work that it has to do. Through all these limited workings the indivisible Omnipotence executes infallibly and sovereignly its purposes.
- What we call suffering is evidently a consequence of the limitation of consciousness. There is a restriction of force which prevents us from mastering or assimilating the touch of what appears to us as the other-force. Because of this incapacity and disharmony, we are unable to seize the delight of the touch. It affects our sense with a reaction of discomfort or pain. They can turn into their opposite (pleasure), even into the original All-Delight, Ananda.
- We discover this All-Delight in ourselves when we go back from our outward consciousness into the Self within us. Our psychic being extracts a divine meaning and use from our most pitiful sufferings, difficulties, misfortunes. Because this All-Delight is present in us, it could dare or bear to impose such experiences as sufferings, misfortunes on itself or on us.
- When we get into a deeper and larger consciousness, we discover that there is a cosmic and individual utility in what we call evil. Because without experience of pain we would not get all the infinite value of the divine delight. Ignorance is only a shade that surrounds the true knowledge. Every error represents a significant possibility and effort of a discovery of truth. Every weakness, failure is a promise of power and potentiality. The division is intended to enrich the joy of realised unity.
- All this imperfection appears to us as evil. Evil is the struggle through which eternal good emerges. Because imperfection is the first condition of a greater perfection in the manifestation of the hidden divinity. That is the law of life evolving out of Inconscience.
- Though all the dualities we face in this world are creations of mind Consciousness, Mind is only secondarily responsible. But in deeper reality, they are creations of the Divine Consciousness; It projects the mind away from its all-knowledge, all-delight, all-being and unity.
- If all things are fixed in their unchanging law of being and the man too is fixed in his imperfections, ignorance, sin, weakness, evil nature and suffering 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 reasonable explanation of such a paradoxical manifestation in the world is that everything is a cosmic game, a Divine Lila enacted for the amusement of the Divine Being. Yet this doctrine of Lila so stated here appears to be crude. It would create the impression that there is a God who is himself all-blissful but who delights in the suffering of creatures; or he imposes such suffering on them for the faults of his own imperfect creation.
- But this Leela would cease to be a cruel and revolting paradox if we can say that the human soul is a portion of the Divinity. It is a divine Spirit in man that puts on this imperfection and consents to bear this suffering. Yet to explain this mystery two missing elements are required. One, there should be a conscious assent by the soul to this manifestation. Second, there should be a reason in the All-Wisdom that makes the play significant and intelligible.
- Through the ascending grades of existence, a progressive divine manifestation takes place; it rises from the inconscient to the superconscient or all-conscient status. In this progressive manifestation, the human consciousness serves as its decisive point of transition. This mid-stage is precisely the one in which the mental consciousness of man is placed characterised by part knowledge and part ignorance.
- A partial unfolding of consciousness implies imperfection and ignorance. As its inevitable companion we find an apparent perversion of the original truth of being which is perhaps its basis for certain contrary movements which appear to us undivine. The ignorance originates error, wrong knowledge, wrong dealing with things, with life, with action. The wrong knowledge becomes a wrong will in the nature. Ignorance turns into a complex perversion.
- There must have been the will of the Divine Purusha to make the cosmic creation possible and there must have been the assent of the individual Purusha (soul) to make the individual manifestation possible. But the reason for the Divine Will and delight in such a difficult and tormented progressive manifestation and the reason for the soul’s assent still would remain a mystery.
- In the manifestation there is self-concealment of the Divine and again there is self-finding of the Divine. It is one of the most strenuous joys that the conscious being can give to itself. If we take the man himself, nothing gives him greater joy than a victory which is in principle a conquest over difficulties, a victory in knowledge, a victory in power, a victory in creation over the impossibilities of creation, a delight in the conquest over suffering.
- There is the intense joy of union at the end of separation, the joy of meeting with a self from which we were divided. There is attraction in ignorance because it gives us the joy of discovery. In all these there is a great adventure of the soul. We know that the secret of creation is the delight of existence. This play of the Divine in self-finding in its opposites is also one delight of existence. It can be regarded as the reason or at least one reason of this apparently paradoxical and contrary Lila.
- We must admit the Infinite’s right of various self-manifestations. It is bound by nothing. That being the case, the progressive manifestation of the Divine Consciousness through its contrary aspects of inconscience and ignorance as a possibility becomes intelligible to our reason and appears no more a mystery to us. It has its profound significance.