Relationship between Matter and Mind

Mind emerges in the evolution by the contact of matter that generates sensations. That is how we become conscious. If I touch something very hot, I get an intense sensation in my hand; I shout and move my hand away. I look at it and study it, understanding it is a hot coil. It creates a thought. That may sound very primitive, but this is how thought was born in humanity. Thought was born, not because we sat in meditation and received thoughts in our head. Thoughts were born because we had intense physical experiences that generated intense sensations, which gave rise in turn to waves of mental sensations which we call thoughts.

The process starts with a physical sensation, a physical contact, and leads to a thought. Later the same process occurs with social contacts and emotional interactions. I am excluded from a group of friends, and the pain of that exclusion makes me think about the nature of true friendship and the character of those who have rejected me. I am emotionally attracted to someone, who later turns out to be undesirable. The rude emotional shock of being disappointed generates thought. I believe a certain thing to be true. When I am confronted by the very opposite of it, it is a blow to my convictions that makes me think freshly. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers died during the trench warfare of World War I. When Winston Churchill, who was directing the British navy, tried to convince the army generals that tanks could be used to save lives and shorten the war, the generals rejected the idea as utter nonsense. The idea that a non-army person could have a meaningful idea was a violent affront to their pride. The tank proved to be such a powerful weapon that all armies in the world quickly embraced it. It took the loss of so many lives to make the generals consider something new!

That is how in the evolution mind is awakened. In Savitri He writes, “Life teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.” All the intense stimulations of life make us think. You all know the difference between life in the village and life in the city. People are less sophisticated in the village, there is less thought in the village. Living in the city results in contact with many people, involvement in innumerable events, and exposure to vast amounts of information. This intense life activity stimulates thought. Living in a large city is itself an education. The city is a ‘univer-city’.

This is the process by which our intelligence has emerged, like iron being hammered into useful shapes. It sounds like a very crude process, and it is. Humanity has evolved from the stone and the animal by the contact of material form with other material forms resulting in sensations that stimulated the gradual awakening and emergence of consciousness. At a later stage, the same process repeats at the social and mental level. Contacts with other people and their attitudes generate vital sensations in us that give rise to thoughts about people and society. Contact with different ideas and experiences generate mental sensations that give rise to thoughts about the meaning of life and existence. This gradual emergence of conscious thought out of physical experience is what we mean by evolution in the Ignorance. The knowledge that mind acquires from this process based on our personal experience and sensations is extremely subjective, fragmented and limited. It is itself a form of ignorance.

If we want to acquire real knowledge, or rationality, what must we do? The first condition to acquire that knowledge is that we should not speak from our sensations. We must detach ourselves from sensations and allow the mind to think and act on its own. Only then it can become rational. If you want to judge the innocence of a person or the facts of an event, you have to first detach yourself from sensations, emotions and preferences. Just because you dislike the color of a person’s hair or the turn of his nose, you should not base your judgment on that personal preference. You must become objective, which means to detach yourself from your personal, subjective viewpoint. Only then do we become ‘reasonable’. But this is only the first step to real knowledge, because what we call reason is really only the viewpoint of the separate individual ego. Reason is ego, according to Sri Aurobindo. Real knowledge of the world comes only when we transcend the ego, go deep within and acquire true self-knowledge. Going within we discover the deeper sources of our thoughts, emotions and impulsions; we become conscious of the division and conflict between our mental, vital and physical personalities; we observe thoughts and influences entering us from outside. The greater the self-knowledge we acquire, the greater our knowledge of the world around us and the greater our control and mastery of life.

The contact of forms of matter generates sensations and sensations give rise to thoughts. There is also a process in the reverse direction. Our minds also act on matter. When the body receives a visual sensation that a ball is coming toward it, that sensation generates a thought in the mind. The mind decides it has to do something to avoid getting hit by the ball. Mind activates its will and releases vital energy to raise the hand to stop the ball. This is the process by which immaterial mind acts indirectly on matter. We have to understand both aspects of the relationship between physical matter and mind.

We have already said that matter is asleep, the life force wants to do its own thing, and the mind has its own ignorant understanding. How do matter, life and mind work together? In fact, they are working together all the time. We are constantly experiencing the sensations of life or matter or events. These sensations of experience generate thoughts and these thoughts generate decisions that go back down through the vital as sensations leading to physical actions.

The process by which the Divine creates and the process by which we human beings create is the same. The Divine creates by converting Real-Ideas into material forms. We create by translating ideas into actions. If we want to create, we have to have a clear idea and by an act of will we have to convert that idea into a decision. The decision releases and directs our vital energy to do what we have decided to do. When we do that, we are doing exactly what the Creator is doing in creating the world. The Divine conceives of a Real-Idea, it converts it into a will, and it releases the force of life to move matter. We can use the same process to achieve unfailing success.