(a project of Mirravision Trust, Financed by Auroshakti Foundation)

A Psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo's

The Life Divine

Book II

The Knowledge and the Ignorance-The Spiritual Evolution

Chapter 13

Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the ignorance

Part II

The Inconscience

The Inconscience is not a real Inconscience but phenomenal as it contains within its matrix the Superconscient values in their dormant and reverse state. Yet the Inconscience and the resulting ignorance is entirely and completely phenomenal. It begins to come out of its self-limitation through the evolutionary process which results in a partial awareness in animal life and in human life manifests some possibility of a truly conscious working. Essentially the Inconscience is an exclusive concentration and self-limitation of consciousness -it is not the absence of consciousness. The self-limitation is to such a degree that it becomes a "law of its action". (SABCL 18, pg. 589) The Inconscience is the Nescience and that is how it is present in Nature as complete self-ignorance. In the human being, a combination of partial knowledge and general ignorance marks in the evolutionary journey a return to self-knowledge. The ignorance appears to be real but actually it is phenomenal, partial and superficial and not integral. The ignorance does not represent the whole truth of our being and whatever truth it represents is mistranslated to us. "In that true truth of itself it is an involved Consciousness and Knowledge evolving back to itself, but it is dynamically effective as an Inconscience and an Ignorance."(Ibid, pg.590)

The raison d'etre for Ignorance

What is the raison d'etre for Ignorance to exist? What is its utility? For Ignorance is multiplicity which has lost track of its origin in the One and Absolute Reality. But this is responsible for the variety in creation. Because it lost its origin in the One Reality, each unit of the multiplicity can grow to its maximum potentiality. This would not have possible if the individual lived in one's superconscient or subliminal self, if one was poised in the universal self instead of living in one's egoistic self. The individual has "to put on the temporal, the psychological, the egoistic ignorance" to protect oneself from "the light of the infinite and the largeness of the universal" so as to develop one's "temporal individuality in the cosmos". (Ibid) One has to live one's single life as the memories of past lives would be a burden and alter the spirit, balance and form of action. One has to live in the limited and dividing mind held by the bodily life and not in the Supermind for then the protecting walls of ignorance would become thin and transparent.

Ignorance and Ananda

As the ignorance permits each unit of the multiplicity to grow to its maximum potentiality, this self-oblivion and self-discovery brings a joy in creation, reflects the Ananda of the Self in conditions other than the supracosmic, in the cosmic being. The Ananda is discovered amidst the oppositions of material existence.

If the Ignorance were not there we still could have a creation but a creation of a different order where evolution would not take place. Instead we would have the non-evolutionary typal worlds or higher worlds of divine Existence "where each being lived in the whole light of its own law of nature" (Ibid, pg.591) without any darkness, without any conflicts. "What is here the goal would be then the eternal condition". (Ibid)

But here Sachchidananda has descended into material Nescience putting on the phenomenal Ignorance as a superficial mask. Amidst conflicts and contradictions, it rediscovers itself and divinely transforms the life which is the secret purpose of its descent into the Inconscience.

The object of this cosmic cycle is not a speedy return to supracosmic light and bliss nor a purposeless journey in Ignorance but to realize the heavenly Ananda amidst the conflicts and contradictions of existence in the journey of self-discovery. "The Ignorance is a necessary, though quite subordinate term which the universal Knowledge has imposed on itself that that movement might be possible, -- not a blunder and a fall, but a purposeful descent, not a curse, but a divine opportunity". (Ibid, pg.592)To create in the material existence a temple of divinity is the task imposed on the spirit.

Mind holds the Ignorance

But which part of consciousness holds the Ignorance? Not Sachchidananda which is the supreme source of the manifestation; not the Supermind where the consciousness of unity embraces the consciousness of diversity. It is present in the mind where diversity has lost touch with the unity though it is supported by the unity-principle. "It is on the plane of mind that this putting back of the real self-consciousness becomes possible". (Ibid)

However if there is a veil between mind and Supermind cutting off the light or allowing some light to percolate in with distortion and deviation, then the phenomenon of Ignorance could intervene. "Such a veil exists, says the Upanishads, constituted by the action of Mind itself: it is in Overmind a golden lid which hides the face of the supramental Truth but reflects its image; in Mind it becomes a more opaque and smoky-luminous coverture." (Ibid, pg.592-593)That action is the Mind looking downward at the diversity without the supreme unity that expresses it. But the unity behind supports the diversity. As Mind, absorbed in the workings of formative Energy has lost touch with its unitary origin, it is identified totally with that Energy. "This is the last stage of the descent of consciousness, an abysmal sleep, a fathomless trance of consciousness which is the profound basis of the action of material Nature". (Ibid, pg.593)

Atmasakti

Ignorance is therefore caused by a partial movement of Consciousness-Force involved in its forms and actions but this does not shut off the integral Force. The integral Force continues to act even if is veiled by the Inconscience. To remove the veil of Ignorance, the conscious Force of being uses a reverse power of exclusive concentration to quieten the action of Prakriti and to concentrate in the inner depths on the inmost being, the Self or Purusha, the soul or psychic being so as to bring That to the surface. (Ibid) Once done, one need not remain in the poise of opposite exclusiveness but can resume its integral consciousness or global consciousness. This is then done in the poise of atmasakti, (Ibid, pg.594) the Purusha working on Prakriti using its self-force. Or it may quieten the whole being and concentrate to bring down higher powers of consciousness needed for transformation. This happens when the Consciousness-Force takes the evolutionary journey upwards from the mental to supramental levels. In each step of the evolutionary journey traversing supra-cognitive levels, the Tapas is active along different denouements.

Ignorance is a natural capacity of variation

It is a mystery how the All-conscient can produce a partial action of exclusive concentration to create the Ignorance. In reality there is no incompatibility between the two. This power of self-limitation must be admitted as one of the manifold powers of the unlimited Infinite. The Ignorance is a power of Knowledge to limit itself under self-imposed conditions and it does not prevent the working of the whole conscious being.

The Absolute is not limited by a multitude of phenomena, the Infinite is not limited by finite constructions, the One is not limited by the multiplicity that emanates from itself. The Reality which is Absolute, Infinite and One does not sport "a rigid, finite and conceptual unity" (Ibid, pg.595)-a bland unity but a living, vibrant and conscious multiplicity. The Ignorance per se is "one of the possible poises of relation of the Absolute in its manifestation, of the Infinite in its series of finite workings, of the One in its self-enjoyment in the Many." (Ibid) It is a natural capacity of variation in the matrix of infinite possibilities. The power of self-absorption in which one is ignorant of the world is one capacity while the power of being absorbed in cosmic workings forgetting the self is another capacity. "But neither really limits the integral self-aware existence of Sachchidananda which is superior to these apparent oppositions; even in their opposition they help to express and manifest the Ineffable."(Ibid)

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu