Chapter XXIV: Matter – Synopsis

SYNOPSIS

  • There is one principle below our Mind and Life, that is Matter. This requires our close consideration. Matter is the pedestal upon which Life stands. Our mind, life and body depend upon and conditioned by this physical principle of Matter. The importance of body is obvious. It enables him to rise above the animal with his mental capacity and to reach still a higher illumination – Supramental.
  • From the beginning, body continues to be the great stumbling block for the soul. In his eagerness to get rid of his body, he has gone to the extent of denying the bodily existence. He has denied the reality of the material universe. The ancient spiritual teachings (Vedic period) were more patient and more profound. They did not make this forceful division between Matter and Spirit.
  • The conflict begins with the appearance of life itself. Life struggles to establish its activities against the forces of inconscience of Matter. Life is at constant war with Matter with the apparent defeat of Life. Mind has its own quarrel with both Life and Matter. It is at constant war with their limitations and achieves a costly and partial victory. In this struggle, victory of the Self within is sought for in an escape from its narrow residence – rejection of mind, life and body and withdrawal into its own infinitudes.
  • The defeat of Life and the victory of Mind (over life and body) are not real but only apparent. This struggle and discord cannot be eternal and fundamental principles in the Divine. Real victory of Life over Matter can be achieved only through the free and perfect use of body by Life. Real victory of Mind over Life and Matter can be achieved only through a free and perfect use of life-force and form by Mind. Real victory of Spirit over body, mind and life can be achieved only through a free and perfect occupation of mind, life and body by conscious spirit. In order to achieve the above victories, we must find out the reality of Matter.
  • Our present knowledge, idea and experience of Matter is not the real truth about Matter. What we think as Matter is only a phenomenon of particular relation between our senses and the all-existence in which we move. Science discovered that Matter ultimately resolves itself into forms of energy and philosophy discovered that Matter only exists as substantial appearance to the consciousness; the only reality is Spirit or pure conscious Being. But the still the question remains why the energy should take the form of Matter instead of remaining as mere force-currents and why Spirit should admit the phenomenon of Matter.
  • It is wrong to presume that the mind contained in our body is the creator of the phenomenon of Matter. Later day philosophies are of the view that the world has no reality of existence of its own; it is only in the conception of our mind. This view is a non-fact and confusion. Because the material world existed before the appearance of man on earth. Another view is that Matter is the creation of Consciousness in a superconscious Mind. It does not explain how Consciousness created Matter as the basis of its cosmic workings.
  • Substance or Matter is the form created by the Force of the Existence (Sat). The result of the Force cannot be other than the forms of Existence (Sat). Therefore, Matter is only a form of Spirit (Sat). We are not able to perceive the Spirit in the appearances through our senses because of the dividing action of the Mind.
  • Consciousness or Chit descends through Supermind and represents itself as Mind. Force of consciousness or Tapas descends through Supermind and represents itself as Life. Mind separated from its own higher reality in Supermind gives Life the appearance of division. Mind becomes subconscious in Life by its farther involution in its own Life-Force giving the outward appearance of an inconscient force to its material workings.
  • Mind is the final action of Supermind in the descent towards creation. Life is an action of Conscious-Force working in the conditions of the Ignorance created by this descent of Mind. So, Matter is only the final form taken by conscious-being (Sat) as the result of that working.
  • Existence, which is One, when manifests itself in the world, creates multiplicity of itself. Mind has to carry the principle of multiplicity to its extreme potential. This can be done only by separativeness and division. Therefore, there is involution of Mind into Life to create forms for the Multiple; it makes the universal principle of Being (Sat) appear as gross and material substance, contactable by mind instead of a pure and subtle substance.
  • When Sachchidananda descends through supermind into mind and life, there is a descent of pure substance (Sat) into material substance. It is a necessary result of the will (of Sachchidananda) to make One manifest as Many. With multiplicity multiple centres of Being are created with a need to make an awareness of things from separate centres of consciousness.
  • Substance in its utter purity is represented by pure conscious being (Sat-Chit). It is self-existent, inherently self-aware by identity. It does not turn its consciousness upon itself as object. Supermind has this self-awareness by identity as its substance of self-knowledge and its power of self-creation. In the process of creation, Supermind presents the Being (Sat) to itself as subject-object one. By a comprehending consciousness both the subject and the object are held within itself. By its apprehending consciousness, it projects it as an object of cognition within the circumference of its consciousness. It can see it as something put away from itself and yet as a part of its being, as the Knower, Witness or Purusha.
  • The apprehending consciousness of Supermind ultimately culminates into the movement of Mind and its ignorance. It is a movement of division. But in the divine Mind (apprehending Supermind), simultaneously, reverse side of same movement takes place. That is the movement of unity. This counteracts the movement of division at the level of the physical world. It prevents the movement of division from becoming the only reality to the knower.
  • This unity at the level of apprehending Supermind is otherwise represented by the dividing Mind externally as contact in consciousness between divided beings and separate objects. The action of our thought-mind is founded on the basis of sense and on the basis of contact of union subject to division. It prepares for the return to a higher principle of union i.e., apprehending Supermind where division is subordinate principle to oneness.
  • But the Mind tends to know and sense substance of conscious-being by the principle of division. It sees the substance in infinitesimal points. It associates together these points to arrive at a totality. The cosmic Mind throws itself and dwells in these multiple view-points.
  • The cosmic Mind is the agent of Real-Idea (of Supermind), the executor of Divine Plan. The cosmic Mind turns its multiple viewpoints of universal existence into standpoints of universal Life. In Matter it turns them into forms of atomic being instinct with the life that forms them.
  • These atomic existences aggregate themselves instinct with the hidden life that forms and the hidden mind and will that make the formation possible. Each unit bears with it a fiction of a separated individual existence. Each such individual existence has the mind in it either implicit or explicit, when implicit, it is supported by its mechanical ego of force and when explicit, it is supported by its self-aware mental ego.
  • Matter is not the fundamental reality. The fundamental reality is Sat. To create a starting point for creation of Matter an extreme fragmentation of the Infinite (Sat) i.e., atom was needed. By subdividing the formal atom into essential atoms, breaking it up into the most infinitesimal dust of being we shall arrive at some utmost atomic existence because of the nature of the Mind and Life that formed the atoms. We shall not arrive at a mere unatomic extension incapable of contents.
  • Unatomic extension of substance means, substance extending itself without atomic contents, can only be found in the Sat of Sachchidananda. Only realities of pure existence (Sat), pure substance are unatomic. That is the fundamental reality. It cannot be found in created physical world. They fall under the domain of knowledge of supermind and form the principle of its dynamism.
  • Pure existence and pure substance are the reality underlying Matter. But they do not constitute the phenomenon of Matter. There is secret consciousness within the Matter. It is involved and absorbed in the result of its own self-formation.
  • Matter though appears brute and devoid of sense and yet in reality, it is the delight of being (Ananda) offering itself to this secret consciousness as object of sensation tempting the hidden godhead to come out of its secrecy. Sri Aurobindo says that here, Being (Sat)manifesting itself as substance, Force of Being (Chit-shakti) casting itself into form, Delight (Ananda) offering itself to its own consciousness as an object, can be what else than Sat-chit-ananda.