02. ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம் - லைப் டிவைன்

ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம்

லைப் டிவைன்

கர்மயோகி

XXII.The Problem Of Life

22. வாழ்வின் பிரச்சனை

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Life is put forth by Conscious-Force. This occurs under certain circumstances. The Conscious-Force is infinite, absolute, untrammelled. It possesses a unity inalienably. It so possesses bliss too. This Conscious-Force is of Sachchidananda. There is a central circumstance of this cosmic process. It differs in its appearances. It is in the purity of the infinite Existence. Also in the self-possession of the undivided Energy. It is the faculty of the Mind. It is obscured by ignorance. It is a divided action of an undivided Force. The result is the apparition of dualities. Oppositions, seeming denials of the nature of Sachchidananda arise. For the mind it is an abiding reality. But it is only a phenomenon. It represents a manifold Reality. It is for the cosmic Consciousness. It is concealed behind the veil of mind. Hence the appearance of clash of opposing truths. Each is seeking to fulfil itself. Each has the right of fulfilment. Therefore a mass of problems and mysteries arise. They all have to be solved. Behind all this confusion there is the hidden Truth. There is also unity. They press for a solution. It is a solution that unveils. The unveiling is the manifestation of the world.

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The solution has to be sought by the mind. But mind alone cannot do it. It has to be a solution in Life. The solution must be in the act of being. It goes further to the consciousness of being. Consciousness as Force creates. It creates the world-movement and its problems. Therefore Consciousness as Force has to solve the problems. After all they are problems of its creation. It has to carry the world-movement to the inevitable fulfilment. It is the secret sense of evolving Truth. Life has taken on appearances. It is successive. They are three. The first is material. It is an expressive action. It represents forms of force. The consciousness itself disappears from view in the act. It is lost in the form. The second is vital. It is an emerging consciousness. It is half-apparent as power of life. It is the process of growth, activity and decay of form. It is half delivered out of its original imprisonment. It has become vibrant in power. It is seen as vital craving. It is seen also as satisfaction or repulsion. At first it is not at all seen vibrant in light. It is an imperfect appearance. The light is knowledge of its own self-existence. It is also the knowledge of its environment. The third is mental sense. It is a responsive perception and idea. As a new idea it tries to become fact of life. It modifies the internal existence of the being. It modifies the external existence of the being conformably. This is mind. Here consciousness is delivered out of its imprisonment. It does so in the act and form. For it has emerged as an individual consciousness. It is aware of only a fragmentary movement. It is a part of its own total activities.

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The whole crux of human life lies here. That is the difficulty too. Man is a mental being. This mental consciousness is working as mental force. It is aware of the universal force and life. Man is a part of that universal force. Man has no knowledge of the universality of his life. Nor does he know the totality of his own being. He is unable to deal with life in general. Nor is he able to deal with his own life in a really effective way. He needs to deal with it in a victorious movement of mastery. He wants to master the material environment. Therefore he seeks to know Matter. He, similarly, seeks to master material existence. For that he needs to know Life. He also seeks to know Mind to master the movement of his mentality. It is a great obscure movement. There he is only a jet of light. It is a jet of self-consciousness. There he is like the animal. But he is more and more a growing flame of knowledge. He seeks to know himself in order to master himself. He needs to master the world to know the world. This is the urge of Existence in him. It is the necessity of the Consciousness he is. It is the impulsion of the Force that is his life. It is the secret will of Sachchidananda. It appears as the individual in the world. He expresses himself there. Yet He denies Himself there. There are conditions which satisfy this inner impulsion. Man’s problem is to find them. Man must always strive to resolve that. Otherwise he will be compelled by his own nature. The Deity seated in him will always drive him till then. The problem must be solved. The impulse must be satisfied. Till then the human race cannot rest from its labour. Man must fulfil himself. He can do so by satisfying the Divine in him. Or he must produce out of himself a new and a greater being. He will be more capable of it. He can become a divine humanity. Or, he must give place to Superman.

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This results from the very logic of things. The mental consciousness in him is not completely illumined. It has not entirely emerged out of the darkness of Matter. It is only a progressive term in the great emergence. It is the line of evolutionary creation. Man has appeared there. He cannot stop where he is now. He must go beyond his present term. Or he must go beyond himself. Otherwise he has not the force to go forward. Mental idea tries to become fact of life. It does so when it becomes the whole Truth of existence. It delivers itself out of the successive wrappings. It is revealed in light. It is its fulfilment. It is the light of Consciousness in which it is fulfilled. There it is joyously fulfilled in power. Power and light are two terms of Existence. It manifests itself there. Existence in its nature is Consciousness and Force. There is a third term. These two constituents meet there. There they become one. Thus it is fulfilled ultimately. It is the satisfied Delight of self-existence. Ours is an evolving life. For it, it is the inevitable culmination. It means finding the self. The Self is contained in the seed of its own birth. Self-finding means the complete working out the potentialities. They are deposited in the movement of Conscious-Force. This life took rise from there. This potentiality is contained in our human existence. It is Sachchidananda. He realises Himself in a certain harmony and unification. They are of the individual life. It is also of the universal life. This mankind can express in a common consciousness. It is expressed in a common movement of power. Also they emerge as common delight. It is of something transcendent. It has cast itself into this form of things.

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All life has fundamental poise. It is of its own constituting consciousness. Life for its nature depends on this. The Force will be as the Consciousness is. The Consciousness is infinite. It is one and transcendent of its acts and forms. It is so even when it is embracing the acts and informing them. Even while organising the acts and executing them, the Consciousness can be transcendent of the acts. Consciousness of Sachchidananda is like that. The Force will be exactly like that. It is infinite in its scope. It is one in its works. It is transcendent in its power and self-knowledge. The Consciousness is also like that of material Nature. It is submerged, self-oblivious. It is driving along in the drift of its own Force. It does not seem to know it, though it determines the drift. Their relationship is of eternal nature. It is so by its very nature. It is the relation between the two terms of Consciousness and Force. The Force will be so. It will be a monstrous movement. It is of the Inert and Inconscient. It is unaware of what it contains. It is seemingly mechanical. It fulfils itself by a sort of accident. It is inexorable. It is an inevitably happy chance. It obeys faultlessly the law. It is a law of the Right and Truth. It is fixed by the will of the supernal Conscious-Being. It is concealed within the movement. The Consciousness can be divided in itself. It is so in Mind. It limits itself to various centres. Each is set to fulfil itself. They have no knowledge of what is in the other centres. Nor do they know of their relation to others. They are apparently divided. In it they are aware of things and forces. They are in opposition to each other. It is not so in their real unity. Such will be the Force. We see a life in us and around us. It will be a life like that. It will be a clash of lives. It is an intertwining of individual lives. Each seeks its own fulfilment. They do not know the relationship to others. It is a conflict. It is a difficult accommodation of forces. They are divided and are opposing. They also differ. In the mentality it is a mixing and a shock. It is a wrestle. It is an insecure combination. It is one of divided opposing, divergent ideas. They cannot arrive at the knowledge of their necessity. Each is necessary to the other. Nor do they grasp their place as elements of that Unity. It is expressing behind. There their discords must cease. The Consciousness can possess unity and diversity. Unity contains diversity. It also governs it. Then it is aware of Truth, Right, Law of All and the individual. The two are consciously harmonised in a mutual unity. There the whole nature of the Consciousness is the One. It knows itself as the Many. The Many know themselves as the One. There the Force also will be of the same nature. It will be a life that obeys the law of Unity. It is Conscious obedience. And yet it fulfils each thing in the diversity. It is done according to its proper rule and function. It will be a life in which all individuals will live in themselves. They will live in each other. It is one Conscious Being in many souls. It is one power of Consciousness in many minds. It is one joy of Force working in many lives. It is one reality of Delight fulfilling itself. It is done in many hearts and bodies.

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The first of these four positions is the source of all this. These are all progressive relations. It is between Consciousness and Force. It is a poise in the being. It is in Sachchidananda. There all the four are one. There the Force is consciousness of being. It works itself out without ever ceasing to be consciousness. Also there the consciousness is similarly luminous Force of being. It is eternally aware of itself. It is aware of its own Delight. It never ceases to be this power of utter delight. It is a self-possession. The second relation is that of material Nature. It is a poise of being in the material universe. It is a great denial of Sachchidananda by Himself. Here there is utter apparent separation of Force from Consciousness. It is a specious miracle. It is a miracle of the all governing and infallible Inconscient. It is only a mask. Modern knowledge has mistaken this for the real face of the cosmic Deity. The third is in the being in Mind and in the Life. We see it emerging out of this denial. It struggles and is bewildered by it. (There is no possibility of cessation by submission. It is without clear knowledge. Nor does it have an instinct of a victorious solution.) There are thousand and one problems in this apparition of man. They are involved in this perplexing event. It is a half-potent conscient being. It is out of the Inconscient of the material universe. The fourth is the poise of being in Supermind. It is a fulfilled existence. It will eventually solve all this. It is a complex problem created by partial affirmation. It emerges out of a total denial. There is only one way to solve it. It needs to solve it by that. It is by a complete affirmation. It fulfils all that is secretly there. It is in potentiality. It is intended in fact of evolution. It is behind the mark of general denial. That is the real life of the real Man. This partial life is partial unfulfilled manhood. It strives forward with a perfect knowledge. It is a guidance in the so called Inconscient within us. In our conscient parts there is only a prevision. It is dim and struggling. It is fragments of realisation. It has glimpse of the ideal. It is of revelation and inspiration. It is in the poet and the prophet. It is in the seer and in the transcendentalist. It is in the mystic and the thinker. They are the great intellects. They are the great souls of humanity.

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We are based on certain data. We proceed on that basis. We see these difficulties arise from an imperfect poise of Consciousness and Force in man. This is his present status of mind and life. They are three. First he is aware only a small part of his own being. They are his surface life. It is his surface mentality. It is his surface physical being. It is all that he knows. He does not know even all of that. Below is the occult life. It is a surge of his subconscious and his subliminal mind. Also there are his subconscious and subliminal life-impulses. His subconscious corporeality also is there. They are a large part of himself. He does not know them. He cannot govern them. But it is that which rather knows him and governs him. Existence and consciousness and force are one. We can only have some real power over a little. It is the existence as we are identified with by self-awareness. The rest must be governed by its own consciousness. It is subliminal to our surface mind, life and body. These two are one movement. They are not yet two separate movements. Therefore the larger governs the smaller. It is more powerful as it is larger. It must determine in the mass. Therefore we are governed by the subconscient and the subliminal. It is so even in our conscious existence. Sometimes we have mastery. It has self-direction. Even there we are only instruments of something greater. It seems to us Inconscient within us.

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Man imagines himself to be the doer of the work by his free will. In reality Nature determines all his works. Even the wise are compelled to follow their own Nature. This is what the old wisdom meant. Nature is the creative force of consciousness of Being. The Being is within us. He is masked by His own inverse movement. It is an apparent denial of Himself. They called the inverse creative movement of His consciousness the Maya. It is the illusion power of the Lord. They said all existences are turned as upon a machine. It is done through His Maya by the Lord. He is seated within us in the heart of all existence. Only Man so far exceeds by mind. It gives him Self-awareness with the Lord. Thus he can become master of his own being. It is evident. This is not possible in the inconscience. It is not possible even in the subconscient itself. Therefore no profit can come by plunging into our depths. The depths are in the Inconscient. The Lord is seated inward. We must go inward. And then ascend to the superconscient. It is in the Supermind. This unity can then be established. There is a higher and divine Maya. It is in the conscious knowledge. It is in the law and truth. It works in the subconscient in the lower Maya. It does so under the conditions of Denial. The Denial seeks to become the Affirmation. This lower Nature works something out. That something is willed in the higher Nature. There is an Illusion-Power. It is of the divine knowledge in the world. It creates appearances. It is governed by the Truth-Power of the same knowledge. It knows the truth behind the appearances. It keeps ready for us the Affirmation. We are working towards it. Man is partial and apparent here. There Man is real and perfect. There he is an entirely self-aware being. He is so by his full unity with that Self-existent. He is the omniscient lord. He is Lord of his own cosmic evolution and procession.

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The second difficulty is man is separated from the universal. He is so separated in mind, in life and body. He does not know himself. He is equally ignorant of his fellow creatures. In fact it is more so here. He forms theories by inferences, observation. He has a certain imperfect capacity of sympathy. He has a rough mental construction about them. But this is not knowledge. Knowledge comes by conscious identity. It is the only true knowledge. It is existence aware of itself. We know what we are consciously aware of ourself. The rest is hidden. We can become one with something in our consciousness. We can know that. It is only so far we can be one with it. The means can be indirect or imperfect. So will be the knowledge acquired. It will enable us to work. It will be with certain clumsiness. It will be precarious. Still it is perfectly enough from our mental standpoint. We can gain certain limited practical aim. Some necessities, conveniences and some harmony can be worked out. It will be an insecure imperfect harmony with what we know. Only conscious unity can give a perfect relation. We must arrive at conscious unity with our fellow-beings. No sympathy created by love will do. Nor by understanding can we reach it. Even mental knowledge cannot do it. It will always be a superficial knowledge. Therefore it will be imperfect in itself. It will be subject to denial of frustration. It is by the uprush of the unknown. What is in the subconscious and subliminal is unmastered. It too will rise. We can establish this conscious oneness. It can be established by entering into them. It is something in which we are one with them. It is universal. The universal has its fullness. It exists consciently. It does so in the superconscient to us. It is Supermind. Here the greater part of life is subconscient. Therefore we cannot possess it. That is normal for mind, life and body. The lower conscious nature is bound down to the ego in all its activities. It is chained triply to the stake. It is the stake of differentiated individuality. The Supermind alone commands unity in diversity.

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There is a third difficulty. It is a division between force and consciousness. It is a truth of evolutionary existence. Evolution itself has created a difference. It is in three successive formations. It is in Matter, Life, Mind. Each has a law of its own working. The Life is at war with the body. It attempts to force the body to satisfy its life’s desires. Its impulses, satisfactions, demands too are to be satisfied. It is of limited capacity. Such a satisfaction is possible only to an immortal body. It would be a divine body. Our body is enslaved. It is tyrannised over. It suffers. It is in constant dumb revolt against Life. Life makes high demands on it. The Mind is at war with both. Sometimes it helps the Life against the Body. Sometimes it restrains the vital urge. Mind seeks to protect the corporeal frame of the body. It needs protection from Life’s desires. Also from passions and over-doings. Mind also seeks to possess Life. Mind tries to turn life’s energies to its own ends. Mind seeks the utmost joys of its own activity. It seeks satisfaction of mental, aesthetic, emotional aims. Its aim is fulfilment in human existence. Life too is enslaved. It is misused. Often it revolts. Mind is a half-ignorant tyrant seated above it. This is the war of our members. Mind cannot satisfactorily resolve it. It is so because it is an insoluble problem. The problem is the aspiration of an immortal being in the mortal life and body. It can only arrive at compromises. Or it can end in abandoning the problem. It can submit with the materialist to the mortality of our apparent being. Or it can reject as the ascetic or the religionist. It can thus condemn earthly life. Thus it can withdraw into an easier life, to happier easier fields of existence. But there is a true solution. It lies beyond Mind. There Immortality is the law. It can conquer the mortality of our existence.

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There is also a fundamental division. It is between force of Nature and the conscious being. It is the original cause of this incapacity. The mental is divided from the vital, vital is divided from the physical. But each of them is divided against itself. The capacity of the body is less than the capacity of the instinctive soul. The soul is the conscious being. It is the physical Purusha within it. The capacity of the vital force is less than the capacity of the impulsive soul. It is the vital conscious being. It is the Purusha within it. The capacity of the mental energy is less than that of the intellectual and emotional soul in it. It is the mental Purusha within it. The soul is the inner consciousness. It aspires for its own complete self-realisation. Therefore it always exceeds the individual formation of the moment. The Force has taken its poise in the formation. It is always pushed by the soul. It is pushed to that which is abnormal to that poise, and transcendent of it. It is thus constantly pushed. Therefore it has much trouble in answering. It has more trouble in evolving from the present to a great capacity. It is trying to fulfil the demands of the triple soul. It is distracted and driven. It sets instinct against instinct. It puts impulse against impulse. It keeps emotion against emotion. Idea is thus poised against idea. It satisfies one, denies the other. It repents and returns on what it has done. It adjusts, compensates, readjusts ad infinitum. But it does not arrive at any principle of unity. In the mind the conscious-power should harmonise and unite. But it is limited in knowledge and in its will. The knowledge and will are disparate. They are often at discord. The principle of unity is above in the Supermind. There alone is the conscious unity of all diversities. There alone will and knowledge are equal. They are in perfect harmony. There alone Consciousness and Force arrive at their divine equation.

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Man develops into a self-conscious being. He also becomes a thinking being. In proportion as he so develops, he is aware of this discord. He becomes acutely aware of it. It is a disparateness in his parts. He seeks to arrive at a harmony of his parts. They are his mind, life and body. He also seeks a harmony of his knowledge and will. His emotions too must be harmonised. It must be in all his members. There is a workable compromise sometimes. It brings him relative peace. He stops short at its attainment. But compromise can only be a halt on the way. There is a Deity within. Eventually it will not be satisfied with less than perfect harmony. It combines itself with the integral development of our many-sided potentialities. Less than this would be an evasion of the problem. It does not mean we have evaded its solution. Or else it may be a temporary solution. It is provided at a resting place for the soul. The soul is in continual self-enlargement and ascension. It is a perfect harmony. It would demand its essential terms. That will be a perfect mentality. Also it will be a perfect play of vital force. It is a perfect physical existence. It is a radically imperfect situation. How can we find in it the principle of power of perfection. Mind is rooted in division. It is also rooted in limitation. It cannot provide perfection to us. Nor can life or body. It is so as they are the energy and frame of mind. Mind divides and limits. The principle and power of perfection are in the subconscient. But it is wrapped up in a veil of lower Maya. A mute premonition emerges as an unreal ideal. In the superconscient it awaits open, eternally realised. Still it is separated from us. The veil of self-ignorance separates us. We seek the reconciling power and knowledge. We, then, must seek them above, not in our present poise nor below.

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Man develops. His development is accompanied by the acute awareness of his discord. He is also aware of his ignorance. They govern his relationship with the world. He is intolerant of it. He seeks a principle of harmony. It is a principle of harmony, peace, joy and unity. He is more and more set on it. This too can come to him from above. Man has to develop his mind. It shall have the knowledge of the mind of others. Then it can know their minds as he knows his own mind. It will be free from our mutual ignorance and misunderstanding. It will be a will that feels and makes itself as others. It will be an emotional heart. It will contain the emotions of others as his own. It will be a life-force too. It can sense the energies of others and accept them as its own. It seeks to fulfil them as its own. It will be a body, not a wall of imprisonment and defence against the world. But all this under the law of a light and Truth. It shall transcend the aberrations and errors. Also it shall transcend much sin and falsehood of our own and others’ minds. It shall do so with others’ wills, emotions, life-energies. Only so the life of man can become one. Then it will be spiritually and practically one. He will feel like his fellow beings. Then the individual shall recover his own universal self. The subconscient as well as the superconscient has this life. They are there under a condition. It is a condition that necessitates our motion upwards. Man does not move towards the God concealed in the inconscient ocean. There darkness is wrapped up in darkness. But he moves towards a Godhead above. He is seated in the sea of eternal light. It is the highest ether of our being. That is the original impetus. It has carried upward the evolving soul. It does so to the type of our humanity.

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The race must aspire to this ascent. It is conducted indeed through love. Also through mental illumination and the vital urge of possession and self-giving. It leads to the Supermind beyond to unity. It unites us with the One. It also unites with all in our being. It does so with all the members of humanity. There it seeks its final goal and salvation. Otherwise the race will fall by the wayside. It will leave the victory to others. There are other new creations. They are of the travailing Mother. This is the fourth status of Life in its ascent towards the Godhead.

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