Chapter VI – Man in the Universe – Synopsis

MAN IN THE UNIVERSE

SYNOPSIS

• The worlds- both material & subtle – are the fields of action for the Divine manifestation providing the necessary material condition and support. The Universe is not an accident. There is meaning and purpose behind its existence as opposed to the materialist belief. Nor is it Maya as opposed to the Mayavadic belief.
• The world is real and not a cheat of Mind. There is Divine Reality behind the multitude of separate existences in the Universe. There is secret intelligence behind the tremendous force that moves all actions in the world. It knows its origin, it knows its goal, it guides the process. Self-aware existence realises itself in form and emerges itself in the individual.
• The Vedic rishis worshipped this emergence as breaking of the dawn. It exists as an all guiding Truth of things. It attracts Man through his progressive self-awakening to his divine ascent. The ascent to Divine Life is the man’s only business in the world. Otherwise he would be no better than an insect.
• The Truth of things behind all contradictions in the world is Sachchidananda. It is eternal and omnipresent. Neither words can express It nor forms can reveal It. The involved conscious self-existence evolves through forms and imparts the delight of Sachchidananda to the forms. Transformation of body, mind and life by Sachchidananda is the goal intended.
• Whether by elimination of all appearances or reduction of all names and forms what ultimately remains is Sachchidananda. Whether in transcendence of life in calm and purity or fulfilment of life in joy and perfection what human consciousness really seeks is Sachchidananda.
• The universe and the individual are the two main appearances through which the Divine descends. By descent – the involution, the Divine conceals itself behind the appearances. By ascent – evolution, or self-revelation, the Divine progressively reveals Itself.
• For each level of descent, there is a corresponding level of ascent in man. Divine conceals itself behind successive veils in manifestation in the world. For God lover each veil is an instrument to discover Him.
• Out of matter’s inconscient sleep consciousness emerges to Life. Mind emerges out of Life. Self-conscious individuality is formed. Universe gains leverage through him for its Supreme work. Mind takes up the work. Unable to complete it, hands it over to the Artist dwelling in Supermind. In Supermind both the individual and the universe become unified.
• The disorders of life and mind cease by discovering a more perfect order than the physical. At the level of matter the consciousness in imprisoned. It contains energy but not ‘possess’ it.
• Consciousness awakes in Life and Mind in the form of desires and seeking knowledge. By rising to a higher level of consciousness – Supermind, our desires are replaced by sense of fulfilment, our ignorance by light of knowledge. Matter’s inertia is replaced by tranquillity – a concentration of absolute force. Limitations of Matter, Life and Mind are overcome in Supermind.
• The universe and the individual are complementary to each other. Universe is the diffusion of Divine All in Space and Time. Individual is the concentration of Divine within Space and Time.
• In its infinite extension the Universe cannot realise the Divine. Therefore, it creates a self-conscious concentration of All in the individual through whom it can aspire to realise the Divine.
• On the other hand, the universe forms the foundation and field for the individual to do the Divine work. As the Divine is concentrated in him, so he must impersonalise and universalise himself to manifest the Divine. Yet he must preserve his contact with the Transcendent to achieve his goal of Divine Life.
• The individual is linked to the Universe by Life. In Life amidst chaotic movement of forces of material nature, it is the Man who brings in some order and harmony. His true progress is measured only by this.
• Man’s ideal is to transform his inborn animal nature. Man’s constant thirst for progress makes him stand apart from the animal below and the Gods above him. He is most discontented because he feels the pressure of his limitations which he always wants to exceed.
• In the entire scheme of things in Life, Man assumes the greatest importance. He is only capable of incarnating God. His body is of animal nature based on matter for its existence. Yet the soul takes birth only in his body.
• Man undergoes three stages in his evolutionary existence. In his lowest stage he appears as animal evolving out of Matter. The second or middle stage is development of Mind. Now man has positioned himself effectively in this middle stage. But the Mind of Man is in search of a superior status by which he may transform his body, life and mind which forms the basis of Divine Life.
• Man, in his search for a superior status gets a glimpse of that higher knowledge and tries to formulate some appearance of it. In this process he is caught between two negations of the Truth. He perceives the beyond as Infinity, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Immortality, Freedom, Love, Beatitude & God etc. This `sun of his seeing’ shines between a double Night -a darkness below (Inconscient) and a mightier darkness beyond (Super-conscient).
• In his higher perception Man finds God transcending Himself, denying to fit Himself into a conception or a formula. His mind gives up negating the existence of God as something beyond his reach. In the world around him, he finds only the opposites of what he wants to affirm as God – death, limitation, error, inconscience, evil, pain, grief. Here also Man is driven to deny God.
• However, Sri Aurobindo clarifies that this negation is not a negation of the Unknowable (Nirvana) – a superior negation. Here Man is able to conceive some aspect of the Divine; yet it is mysterious to him – an inferior negation. This inferior negation also like superior negation can be held as not being true. Because there is Divine Reality behind what seems to us as opposites or shunya. At the same time, we cannot escape by treating the opposites of Sachchidananda as illusion. They are the facts of Life. Both positives and negatives constitute the stuff of life.
• The dualities of life (pleasure & pain, evil & good) arise on account of wrong relations of Man with the Universe and the God. His false view of the Universe and the God leads to his false attitude towards them. He is out of harmony with the Universe and himself. He is in contradiction with the secret Truth of things. This very contradiction becomes a condition for his progress, rather than a punishment for his fall, by which Nature escapes out of matter into consciousness.
• Out of these false relations true has to be found. Man cannot cut off evil from his nature abruptly. Nor can he escape out of life because of this. Instead what man has to do is to transform the evil into good, death into life, human limitation into divine vastness, suffering into bliss, error and falsehood to their secret truth. Only then the Divine journey is completed. Heaven and Earth become one.
• Such things are possible- pain can be turned into pleasure, evil into good- because they are not contraries in their essence. They are manifestations of one Reality. Their basic substance is identical. This fact makes the transmutation conceivable.
• In Buddhist Nirvana one attains the liberated state even while living upon earth. He is filled with unspeakable peace and gladness. In this state there is no suffering because ego disappears, sense of “I” is totally lost. We cannot define it as Sachchidananda as there exists no one to undergo this experience – a superior negation.
• However, in inferior negation we come across the opposites of Sachchidananda in our life. Since all is one Reality what seems to us non-existence of Sachchidananda also is nothing but Sachchidananda.
• We are unable to experience Sachchidananda because the truth is falsified by some great fundamental error. We are possessed and compelled by Ignorance, Maya or Avidya. We look beyond ourselves and seek a solution to come out of our Ignorance. Such a solution may not satisfy our logical mind. But it will form a sufficient basis in experience for practice of Divine Life which is our goal.
• To seek such a solution, we have to go deep below the surface of things. There is vast consciousness lying in our unfathomable depths of our being. We have to go below and identify ourselves with the states of consciousness- subliminal to us (hidden deep within us).
• What we find in our depths may not be translatable in our human language. However, we can get expressible hints of them through symbols and figures. They can help the light of the soul to fall on our mind. Mind will ultimately get some reflection of the ineffable design of the hidden states of consciousness lying deep below.