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It can be conceived that the One Eternal Being personifies itself to become an individual passing through several births until one dis-identifies from that individualisation to be merged into the original Oneness. But such a cycle would be devoid of any significance. It would be a pure play, Lila. "But if it is once admitted that the Spirit has involved itself in the Inconscience and is manifesting itself in the individual being by an evolutionary gradation, then the whole process assumes meaning and consistence; the progressive ascent of the individual becomes a key-note of this cosmic significance, and the rebirth of the soul in the body becomes a natural and unavoidable consequence of the truth of the Becoming and its inherent law. Rebirth is an indispensable machinery for the working out of a spiritual evolution; it is the only possible effective condition, the obvious dynamic process of such a manifestation in the material universe." (Ibid, pg.784)
Evolution was preceded by an involution of the Supreme Being in the Nescience from where the Being has to be recovered and resurrected. This recovery and resurrection can only be possible through the "conscious individual being" (Ibid, pg.785) in whom the evolutionary consciousness becomes consolidated. "The immense importance of the individual being, which increases as he rises in the scale, is the most remarkable and significant fact of a universe which started without consciousness and without individuality in an undifferentiated Nescience". (Ibid) The individual promises the discovery of the cosmic Self and Consciousness and of the Supreme Being. If the reality of the persistent individuality is accepted, then naturally, as a corollary, rebirth has to be accepted as an inevitable outcome.
With such a great significance attached to the phenomenon of individuality, the individual cannot be regarded as a temporary freak while the universal Energy survives forever. If the individuality has to be a persistent phenomenon, then behind the personality, upholding all mutations must be a true Person -"a real spiritual individual, a true Purusha"... "The One extended in universality exists in each being and affirms himself in this individuality of himself". (Ibid, pg.786) In the individual the Spirit expresses itself by oneness with all in universality. The Spirit not only expresses its cosmic poise in the individual but also its transcendent status. This trinity of the individuality, the cosmicity and the Transcendence expressing the unitary Reality "is the luminous revelation which emerges by a slow evolution from the original Inconscience". (Ibid) This magic is the Lila of the manifold Identity.
The plunge of the Superconscience into the Nescience through the process of involution not only disrupts the original unitary Reality but creates "the play of separative difference" (Ibid) that culminates in the manifestation of an ego-driven independent body that is the solid basis of the play of division. That assumption of the body is called birth. B ut the Nescience is phenomenal where consciousness has been "tranced into self-forgetfulness" (Ibid, pg.787) -the recovery of the original unity has to be initiated through the separative individuality. The individual Purusha has to initially work through the separative individuality to resurrect the original unity, to unite with the Divine and the body serves as a fulcrum for the progress of the soul in that evolutionary endeavour.
Birth then is necessary for the manifestation of the Purusha and such a birth cannot be a freak or accident in the background of involution and evolution and life has to be in synchrony with the cosmicity and not an isolated and temporary event. The soul has to outgrow the individual life-form and unite first with the cosmic spirit and then with the Transcendent spirit. It is "a great and slow development needing, as we now know, incalculable spaces of Time for its evolution". (Ibid, pg.788) Such a giant endeavour cannot be completed in one life and rebirth becomes a viable necessity for the ascent of the secret Spirit. "This ascent can only take place by rebirth within the ascending order". (Ibid)
The human birth is on its spiritual side a complex of two elements:
(a) An impersonal spiritual Person, man's eternal being who in consonance with the freedom of Sachchidananda and who has willed the involution in the Nescience for a certain round of soul-experience and presides secretly over his evolution. As a spirit he is one with the Transcendence.
(b) A soul of personality, man's cosmic and mutable being, whose own evolution must follow the rules of the universal evolution. As a soul he is part of the universality of Sachchidananda self-expressed in the world. His self-expression and soul-experience must follow the wheel of Brahman in the universe. (Ibid, pg.788-789)
The universal Spirit is present as an essence in every manifested form but its expression depends on the evolutionary grade. In Matter it is present as a secret soul in material forms that cannot be accessed. In plant life, the soul is still secret in vital forms but on the verge of emergence between nescience and the partial light of consciousness. It develops further as an initially conscient soul in the animal and finally "as the more outwardly conscious, but not yet fully conscient soul in man". (Ibid, pg.789)This evolutionary development has both individual and universal connotations. The Universal develops the grades of the being, the individual follows suit. But the human individual is lucky as he is not limited by this form as he was not limited by the plant and animal forms, he can pass from it to a greater self-expression at higher levels of the evolutionary scale. At present the universal Man, the cosmic Purusha is developing from the power that has grown into humanity from below. In future he will grow to manifest the Supermind principle.
This progressive manifestation of the Spirit or soul is possible because it is the Spirit that has created mind and body and not vice-versa. Mind and body are subordinate terms of the Spirit and are taken up to rise from their imperfections to be transformed into instruments of the Spirit's higher self-expression. "The soul is not bound by the formula of mental humanity: it did not begin with that and will not end with it; it had a prehuman past, it has a superhuman future." (Ibid, pg.790)
Nature actually develops from stage to stage and at each stage the past is taken up and transformed to suit the new stage. All the earth-past is thus present in human nature : it has "an element of matter taken up by life, an element of life taken up by mind, an element of mind which is taken up by spirit; the animal is still present in its humanity". (Ibid, pg.791) And it is not that at first material Nature developed by evolution the human mind and body and the soul descended into the form thus created and though there is a certain truth in this idea, it does not represent the fundamental truth of things for nothing can actually exist which is not substance and power of the Spirit, of Brahman and thus Matter, Life and Mind must have been ensouled in principle by the presence of the Spirit.
"We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had for its previous and preparatory terms in the succession of the lower forms of life upon earth". (Ibid, pg.791) However, once humanity has been attained, does the succession of rebirths still continue? At first we have to ask whether the soul, once having arrived at humanity, can go back to the animal life and body as popular versions of transmigration suggest. Sri Aurobindo is emphatic that the transit from animal to human form is a decisive conversion of consciousness that cannot be ordinarily reversed by the soul. (Ibid, pg.792) Perhaps this could happen if the conversion was not so decisive or certain animal propensities were strong enough to demand a separate satisfaction probably by a sort of partial rebirth. "But whether the animal reversion is possible or not, the normal law must be the recurrence of birth in new human forms for a soul that has once become capable of humanity." (Ibid)
The next question that comes to the mind is why the succession of human births and not one alone! For pari passu with the biological evolution runs the spiritual evolution. "For the soul has not finished what it has to do by merely developing into humanity, it has still to develop that humanity into its highest possibilities." (Ibid, pg.792) Obviously the soul has not worked out all its possibilities. The sense of Sachchidananda in the universal Man has not yet been achieved. A Plato or a Shankara may be thought to have reached the crown of evolution but that might be an illusion of our present possibility. There might be a higher Divine possibility that has to be realised by man and the steps built by these higher souls are needed to compose the way. "Man is there to move from the ignorance and from the little life which he is in his mind and body to the knowledge and the large divine life which he can compass by the unfolding of the spirit....the imperfection of Man is not the last word of Nature, but his perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit."(Ibid, pg.793)
This possibility becomes a certitude if we accept that the present intellect is not the highest term of our nature. There are other suprarational powers which are yet imperfectly possessed by humanity at large; if they were developed then an evolutionary progression is possible and consequently, the ascending line of rebirth to embody them becomes an inevitability. And if the Supermind principle is concealed here in the evolution, "the line of rebirth cannot stop even there; it cannot cease in its ascent before the mental has been replaced by the supramental nature and an embodied supramental being becomes the leader of terrestrial existence". (Ibid)
"This then is the rational and philosophical foundation for a belief in rebirth; it is an inevitable logical conclusion if there exists at the same time an evolutionary principle in the Earth-Nature and a reality of the individual soul born into evolutionary nature". (Ibid, pg.793-794)
Thus there are two points to consider; the presence of an evolutionary principle and the presence of the individual soul in the evolutionary paradigm, both these points are necessary to justify rebirth. One might consider an evolution without a soul, rebirth would be unnecessary there. One might consider the individual as a temporary formation ending with the body where rebirth need not exist. Or if there is a persistent but illusory individuality, rebirth, if exists, has no evolutionary or spiritual necessity. If there is an individual soul not dependent on the body but using it only for its purpose, then rebirth begins to be possible but is not a necessity if there is no evolution of the soul in Nature.
"But if there is an evolution of consciousness in an evolutionary body and a soul inhabiting the body, a real and conscious individual, then it is evident that it is the progressive experience of that soul in Nature which takes the form of this evolution of consciousness: rebirth is self-evidently a necessary part, the sole possible machinery of such an evolution. It is as necessary as birth itself; for without it birth would be an initial step without a sequel, the starting of a journey without its farther steps and arrival. It is rebirth that gives to the birth of an incomplete being in a body its promise of completeness and its spiritual significance." (Ibid, pg.794)
Date of Update:
30-Apr-26
- By Dr. Soumitra Basu
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