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Creations of Ignorance and Inconscience
Actually, Falsehood and Evil are creations of Ignorance and Inconscience and have no relation to the Supreme Transcendent Reality. It is sometimes held that as Truth and Good have their absolutes, Falsehood and Evil must also have their absolutes. Or else both must be relative so that Truth and Falsehood, Good and Evil, Knowledge and Ignorance might exist only in relation to each other and they have no existence beyond the dualities. However both these views cannot stand on merit as unlike Truth and Good, Falsehood and Evil are derived from Ignorance and have their root "in the black soil of the Inconscient" (Ibid. pg.598) and cannot exist where there is no Ignorance. Thus there can be no absolutes of Falsehood and Evil while the relativities of truth and error, good and evil may be part of experience but are not a permanent factor native to existence.
Self-existent and authentic knowledge
"Truth is relative to us because our knowledge is surrounded by ignorance". (Ibid) As a result we cannot perceive real and authentic Truth but speculate what is constructed. Our mental statement of things remains imperfect. But this character changes if we can perceive truth by "a direct action of consciousness" or through "knowledge by identity" where our seeing might be limited but remains authentic. (Ibid, pg.599) This authenticity is important and reveals knowledge which is "self-existent". Ignorance lacks both self-existent truth and authenticity. In fact Ignorance "exists by a limitation or absence or abeyance of knowledge" while error exists "by a deviation from Truth" and falsehood exists by "a distortion of truth or its contradiction and denial". (Ibid) True knowledge is self-existent and authentic, arises from our depths and does not need to be constructed from premises.
Circumstance of human mentality
Under ordinary circumstances, good and evil, truth and error are somewhat uncertain and relative for what is good or truth at one place and time might be their opposites in another place and time. Moreover we also witness that good sometimes turn to evil and evil at times lead to good. Due to the mixture of good and evil, good is sometimes seen to turn to evil. And when evil turns to good, it must be due to the intervention of some true consciousness in the flux of circumstances. This mixture of good and evil is "a circumstance of human mentality"(Ibid, pg.600) and is not the fundamental truth of things. It might be argued that physical pain and bodily suffering is independent of knowledge and ignorance but "fundamentally, all pain and suffering are the result of an insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being which makes it unable to deal rightly with self and Nature". (Ibid) They would not have existed if there was an integral presence of a luminous consciousness. Therefore, good and evil, truth and falsehood are not mutually dependent on one another but remain in contradiction as light and shadow; -- "a shadow depends on light for its existence, but light does not depend for its existence on the shadow". (Ibid) Falsehood and evil lack the fundamentality and authenticity of existence.
Opposites of truth and good are activated in cosmos
It is commonly known that whenever and wherever truth or good manifests, their opposites also become equally active for all possibilities try to actualize themselves. But Sri Aurobindo notes that the opposites are activated only in the cosmic manifestation, they do not pre-exist in the timeless being. In cosmos also they appear only when there is a breaking up of the unity of existence and consciousness into separative consciousness and separative being. There are exceptions for if truth exists as a whole on basis of self-aware oneness, falsehood and evil cannot enter. And if there is sufficient mutuality in the absence of oneness, and if the separative beings do not deviate from their limited norms, harmony and truth can reign and evil cannot enter. There is therefore no authenticity of falsehood and evil and no absoluteness but they are circumstances of existence. (Ibid, pg.601)
The question arises at what point the opposites enter the cosmic manifestation. Do they come from below, intrinsic in the vital and mental planes during evolution or arise from the material consciousness that manifests first during evolution from the Inconscience? Or do they arise as a supraphysical affirmation in the cosmic Mind and Life as an inevitable outcome of the creative Inconscience? (Ibid, pg.602)
The pre-physical foundation
Traditional knowledge has always considered that Falsehood, Ignorance and Evil exist in supraphysical cosmic planes as "the prephysical foundation" (Ibid) of the discordant and perverse powers of the life-mind and life-force. These powers are embodied in supraphysical beings which try to impose them upon terrestrial creatures. They oppose light and truth and good and retard the progress of the soul to divine consciousness. This is what we see portrayed in myths and religions as the conflict between the Powers of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, cosmic Harmony and cosmic Anarchy.
This theory is verifiable by inner experience. Actually, "Whatever is formulated in the universe has a Force or Forces that support it." (Ibid, pg.603) As there are powers of Knowledge and Light, there are tenebrous Powers or Forces of Ignorance and Darkness who prolong the reign of Ignorance and Inconscience. As there are Forces of Truth, there are Forces of Falsehood. As there are Forces of Good, there are forces of Evil. They are in conflict for the darker forces want to rule the world. This is the significance of the conflict between the Vedic Gods and their opponents, sons of Darkness and Division later known as "Titan and Giant and Demon, Asura, Rakshasa, Pisacha" (Ibid) and the same principle is found in the Zoroastrian Double Principle and in the later Semitic tradition in the opposition of God and his Angels on one side and Satan and his accomplices on the other.
Modern Science does not believe in invisible beings but believes in invisible cosmic forces that work on inanimate physical objects. If that is so, why there should be objection to invisible cosmic forces that are mental and vital in nature and act upon the human's mind and life-force? And as these cosmic forces can work through human beings, they can also form conscious beings in the cosmic plane whose subtler substance remains invisible to us. And they can as well act from the superphysical planes on physical Nature. "In that case the first source of good and evil would be not in terrestrial life or in the evolution from the Inconscience, but in Life itself, their source would be supraphysical and they would be reflected here from a larger supraphysical Nature". (Ibid, pg.604)
Cosmic forces exceed human relativity
It is true that the human being is influenced by invisible forces to which one has no access unless one steps into one's inner or subliminal being that is connected with the cosmic consciousness. Only then one can realise that one is not born in Ignorance but is an embodied soul through which cosmic Nature is trying to fulfil itself. Forces of Good and Evil move him as powers of universal Nature but they seem to originate in supraphysical planes.
The first thing to be noted is that these invisible cosmic forces seem to exceed human relativity in their massive effects on the human being, titanic or demoniac. It seems there is an absoluteness that can be ascribed to evil. For as the human being yearns for an absolute good, truth and beauty, one can also attempt at the "self-realisation of an absolute evil". (Ibid, pg.605) But Sri, Aurobindo explains "the absolute is not in itself a thing of magnitude; it is beyond measure, not in the sole sense of vastness, but in the freedom of its essential being; it can manifest itself in the infinitesimal as well as in the infinite". (Ibid) When we pass into the spiritual, we experience an intensity of peace and ecstasy but this is a sign of freedom, not of an inner absoluteness. Pain and evil cannot attain absoluteness for they are bound by limitation. If pain becomes intense, it can end that in which it manifests or turn into ecstasy. If evil becomes too intense, it can destroy or lead to disintegration into non-existence. The Powers of Darkness and Evil can mimic absoluteness but they can achieve immensity but not infinity. Error, falsehood and evil are cosmic powers which are relative in nature since they exist on the contradiction of their opposites and are not like truth and good self-existent absolutes.
Adverse forces are not primal powers of cosmos
The second question that arises is whether these adverse cosmic forces, "these dark opposites" (Ibid, pg.606) can be considered as original cosmic principles or not. But these adverse forces occupy a very limited range of the cosmic consciousness and "does not extend higher than the lower supraphysical life-planes; they are "powers of the Prince of Air", --air being in the ancient symbolism the principle of life and therefore of the mid-worlds where the vital principle is predominant and essential. The adverse opposites are not, then, primal powers of the cosmos, but creations of Life or of Mind in life". (Ibid)
Involutionary and parallel evolutionary worlds
Involution is the process by which the Superconscious comes down into the Inconscience, creating graded non-evolutionary worlds on its way. There are upper worlds of light and lower worlds of darkness. The supraphysical action of the adverse cosmic forces on earth nature can be explained by the co-existence of involutionary worlds of darkness with parallel worlds of an ascending evolution not emerging from earth-existence but created as an annexe to the descending world-order. There evil appears as "a possibility and pre-formation"(Ibid) that later becomes inevitable when consciousness emerges from the Inconscience.
Date of Update:
29-Jan-25
- By Dr. Soumitra Basu
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