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

A Psychological Approach to Sri Aurobindo's

The Life Divine

The Double Soul in Man

The Secret Delight

The Four terms of Life

There is a secret Delight pervading the ascent of Life as it wriggles from a material existence to reach a divine consummation. Delight expresses itself through the movement of Love but Love depends upon the interchange between the possessor and the possessed. This equation is evidently not apparent when in its first status, Life animates material forms in accordance to an universal but hidden will.

As it consolidates into an individuality, Life ascends to a second status and develops the capacity to ‘desire’ that initially is ‘eager to possess but limited in capacity’. (The Life Divine, pg.232)

At the third step Life consolidates the faculty of Love that seeks ‘both to possess and be possessed’. (Ibid)

But the full emergence of the universal ‘will’ of creation, the illumined fulfilment of desire and the unity of the possessor and possessed in a deep rapture of perfect love would only be possible in the fourth status of Life that could blossom into a Gnostic community based on soul kinship.

A close scrutiny reveals that the ascent of Life from the matrix of unformed individuality to the Gnostic community of soul comradeship is motivated by the Divine Delight in things. The ascent of Life ‘is in its nature the ascent of divine Delight in things from its dumb conception in Matter through vicissitudes and opposites to its luminous consummation in Spirit.’ (Ibid, pg.233)

Delight as Motivator

How does Life ascend to the domain of the Pure Spirit from the world of limitations? How does Life transcend the quagmire of death, ignorance, incapacity and suffering? What is that which sustains Life amidst all negativities and motivates it to progress beyond its limitations?

To understand this riddle, we have to appreciate the great yogic discovery that the world is ‘a masked form of Sachchidananda’.(Ibid) It is a projection and inverted poise of the Supreme Reality, experientially perceived as the triune of Sat (Existence), Chit-Shakti (Consciousness-Force) and Ananda (Bliss or Delight). While Sat is the truth of the Being, Chit-Shakti or Conscious-Force builds the matrices of consciousness and energy that get aligned as the multiverses. Ananda or Bliss is the value aspect of the manifestation. Ananda is an Omnipresent Delight that gives meaning to the manifestation.

These attributes of Reality get reversed in the world as we know it. The Being gets limited by death. Consciousness sinks into Inconscience. Force or Shakti becomes disconnected from Consciousness and as a result Knowledge gets de-linked from Will-Power to present a spectre of incapacity. The ego cannot bear the effulgence of Bliss which get represented in terms entirely opposite to its essence. In such a scenario, it would be difficult to re-connect with the Supreme Reality.

Yet, despite being hampered by limitations, challenged by destiny and overpowered by death, the human being can afford to sustain the aspiration to ascend to the Truth. This is only possible because the principle of Delight pervades every aspect of the manifestation and man can still ‘cling’ to it even under the most negative conditions. Ananda is the Raison d’etre of creation. ‘To seek for delight is therefore the fundamental impulse and sense of Life; to find and possess and fulfil is its whole motive’. (Ibid)

We seek not merely the individual fulfilment of the ascetics but an universal fulfilment in a Gnostic Community. It is through the immanent and transcendent Delight of Sachchidananda that the soul is intrinsically motivated to seek both the individual and universal fulfilment that can get consummated in ‘the divine unity of souls which is the foundation of the supramental existence’. (Ibid, pg.232)

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu