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The Problem of Life
The interplay of Consciousness and Force
The interplay of Consciousness and Force has different denouements at different levels of Reality:
At the Transcendent Reality
At the highest level of Transcendent reality experientially perceived by mystics and yogis as Sachchidananda, Consciousness and Force are different aspects of the same Reality. As a result, ‘the Force is consciousness of being working itself out without ever ceasing to be consciousness and the Consciousness is similarly luminous Force of being eternally aware of itself and of its own Delight and never ceasing to be this power of utter light and self-possession’ (The Life Divine, pg.225). At this level of Transcendence, the potentiality of both Consciousness and Force is infinite and not inhibited by any restraining factor. ‘Where the Consciousness is Infinite, one, transcendent of its acts and forms even while embracing and informing, organizing and executing them, as is the consciousness of Sachchidananda, so will be the Force, infinite in its scope, one in its works, transcendent in its power and self-knowledge’. (Ibid, pg.224)
At the Material Reality
The material reality is the exact opposite of the Transcendent experience and has thus been considered as the ‘denial of Sachchidananda by itself’. Consciousness and Force are not only de-linked from each other but get lost in ‘the specious miracle of the all-governing and infallible Inconscient which is only the mask but which modern knowledge has mistaken for the real face of the cosmic Deity’.(Ibid, pg.225)
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This was expected as creation had to start from assemblages and conglomerations of scattered islets of consciousness enmeshed in vortices of force or energy. At this level, Consciousness gets submerged to be driven by a mechanical force, ‘a monstrous movement of the Inert and Inconscient’ that seems to apparently work out things and events by an ‘inexorable accident’ or an ‘inevitably happy chance’ though ‘all the while it really obeys faultlessly the law of the Right and Truth fixed for it’ (Ibid, pg.224) by the Transcendence whose essence is hidden within the movement. That is why though the electrons rotate blindly and mechanically in their orbit and the bee instinctively builds its hive, they yet conform to their own sets of law.
At the level of the Mind
At the level of the material reality, even though Consciousness and Force are separated, they unconsciously align with each other to make the world of physical reality to conform to discernible laws as much as possible till the sub atomic particles like leptons and quarks sink into formlessness. At the level of the Mind, Consciousness and Force are delinked with an apparent vengeance, their relations are distorted and they have been allowed to confront each other. The knowledgeable intellectual may lack the energy or force to execute ideas. The man of action may not be supported by a visionary knowledge. There has to be a half-conscious effort to align with each other, though precariously for an optimal dragging of life amid adversities and imperfection. Mind and Life seem to be bewildered ‘without any clear knowledge or instinct of a victorious solution –against the thousand and one problems involved in in this perplexing apparition of man the half-potent conscient being out of the omnipotent Inconscience of the material universe’.(Ibid, pg.225). As a result we are perpetually sieged by clashes and conflicts of ‘differing forces’ and ‘insecure combinations and divided and opposing or divergent ideas’ (Ibid, pg.224) which fail to grasp the integral unity behind all manifestation.
At the level of the Supermind
The Supermind is the plane of creative consciousness where the diversity and unity are held together though ‘the latter contains and governs the former’ (Ibid, pg.225). The many and one are ‘consciously harmonised in a mutual unity’ so that a life would be ushered where ‘all the individuals live at once in themselves and in each other as one conscious Being in many souls, one power of Consciousness in many minds, one joy of Force working in many lives, one reality of Delight fulfilling itself in many hearts and bodies’. (Ibid) It would solve the complex problem of life by fulfilling all hitherto submerged potentials so long believed to be Utopian in nature and glimpsed occasionally in prevision, perceived hesitatingly ‘with fragments of realisation, with glimpses of the ideal, with flashes of revelation and inspiration in the poet and the prophet, the seer and the transcendentalist, the mystic and the thinker, the great intellects and the great soul of humanity’. (Ibid, pg.226) Consciousness gets fulfilled in Force to be an effectual and actualizing knowledge; Force becomes impregnated with knowledge to become spontaneously an illumined Will. If the Supermind consciousness manifested on the earth we would have paradise here and not in some elusive after-world.
Date of Update:
25-Sep-18
- By Dr. Soumitra Basu
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