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Rather we have to consider that all our classifications have limitations. An individual human being is not an exclusive phenomenon for he/she also represents the universal human being and is thus representative of the entire mankind. In terms of consciousness too, the human being is not a meteorite dropped from the sky but has evolved from an infra-human consciousness and is now set to evolve into a greater supra-human consciousness. Sri Aurobindo describes, "For practical purposes plant, animal, man are different existences; yet when we look deeper we see that the plant is only an animal with an insufficient evolution of self-consciousness and dynamic force; the animal is man in the making; man himself is that animal and yet the something more of self-consciousness and dynamic power of consciousness that make him man; and yet he is the something more which is contained and repressed in his being as the potentiality of the divine, -- he is a god in the making." (Ibid)
Our problem in understanding arises when we simultaneously attempt to put the One and the multiplicity, the Absolute and the relativities at the same par. The law of contradictions cannot help much as it cannot justify contradictory view-points in the same field but this is an over-simplified notion. A single human being can carry a lot of contradictions while any event like a war that is devastating can also harbour an optimism for a new era. We can look at the Reality from two ends:
(a) We can follow the multiplicity without acknowledging the wholeness. In that case, as the human mind loves superlatives and yearns for them, we have to artificially construct the culmination of whatever is conceived. This artificial construction takes the intellectual route to construct multiple absolutist icons of evil, injustice, vanity, vulgarity as if the ultimate Reality is not a single absolute oneness but a complex of several absolutist terms). But this would be an extension of the method of Ignorance (which is the knowledge of multiplicity sans the knowledge of Oneness). (Ibid, pg.399)
(b) Alternatively, we can consider that the Absolute is there behind all relativities and justifies them. We cannot appreciate that as our knowledge is not comprehensive. Even one can attempt to have a glimpse of an absolute good or absolute beauty but not regard them as indeterminates as that would clarify nothing but the Absolute. (Ibid, pg.398-399) "We can only understand entirely if we get to some sense of the Absolute and yet look at its workings in all the relativities which are being manifested, -- look not only at each by itself , but each in relation to all and to that which exceeds and reconciles them all. In fact we can only know by getting to the divine view and purpose in things and not merely looking at our own, though our own limited human view and momentary purpose have their validity in the cadre of the All". (Ibid, pg.398)
An integral vision does not exclude a relativity at the cost of another relativity though that is what the ordinary mind does. Yet the ordinary mind refuses to accept a crowning culmination, albeit correctly, because at the level of Ignorance, no reconciliation is possible. "The human reason is wrong in attaching a separate and definitive value to each contradiction by itself or getting rid of one by altogether denying the other; but it is right in refusing to accept as final and as the last word the coupling of contradictions which have in no way been reconciled together or have not found their source and significance in something beyond their opposition." (Ibid, pg.399)
Date of Update:
28-Nov-22
- By Dr. Soumitra Basu
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