(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 12

The Origin of the Ignorance

Part I

Integral Oneness

Sri Aurobindo examines the problem of Ignorance and its origin from the poise of an "integral Oneness" (CWSA 21-22, pg.587) which is the truth of existence. He finds it difficult to posit two diametrically opposite powers, one of Brahman incapable of illusion and the other of a self-illusive Maya and combine them together into an impossible unity. Indeed, considering the Mind, the seat of Ignorance as a thing of illusion or Maya and a component of Asat, the Non-Existence which cannot touch the Brahman is a sort of escape from the riddle of existence. If we consider the Jivatman as no other than the Brahman itself, then the Jivatman cannot be subject to Maya though it appears that the Jivatman is subject to Maya. But this is not fundamentally possible and the subjection if any "can only be a submission of something in Nature to an action of Nature which is part of the conscious and free movement of the Spirit in things....Ignorance must be part of the movement of the One, a development of its consciousness knowingly adopted, to which it is not forcibly subjected but which it uses for its cosmic purpose." (Ibid) In other words, Ignorance is a phenomenon generated by the Absolute for some cosmic action and not an impossible contradiction to the one Reality.

Idealistic Agnosticism

The fact that the Jivatman is subject to Maya may lead us to consider that the Jivatman and the Brahman are different in origin. It would be easier to accept the fact of unity in difference with the consideration that that "we are one, yet different, one in essential being and therefore in essential nature, different in soul-form and therefore in active nature". (Ibid, pg.588) But still that does not solve the problem of how the Jivatman, one with the Brahman is subject to Ignorance. Well the Jivatman can be considered to have the capacity to unite actively with the Brahman. Or it may be considered that Maya began its action in the Unmanifest before the world began and thus it is itself unknowable. Sri Aurobindo considers that this would be an idealistic Agnosticism as opposed to a materialistic Agnosticism. But Agnosticism may be nothing than our refusal to know. (Ibid) After all, the mind has inherent limitations but not the Jivatman who is one with the Supreme. The Supreme must know itself and the cause of Ignorance and the Jivatman must therefore also know the cause of its own Ignorance.

We have posited an Unknowable beyond our highest state of conception, be it a Sachchidananda or an ASAT - the Non-Existent out of which the Existent was born. It might be the Nirvana too that frees us from all notion of experience or self. But be it Asat, Sachchidananda or Nirvana, the acceptance of such a state beyond all conceptive experience "commits us only to a refusal to put a limit to the ascension of the Infinite". (Ibid, pg.589)

Absolute eternally unrealised Potentiality

If there is an absolute Unknowable it must be an absolute Nothingness from which nothing can manifest. Yet there is the manifestation. Therefore it would be better to consider the absolute Non-Existence as an "absolute eternally unrealised Potentiality" (Ibid) out of which relative potentialities can any time emerge and some can make way into phenomenal existence. It can give rise to an absolute chaos that can in turn give rise to paradoxes about the origin of the universe. The universe can be considered as an accident or emerge from an absolute Inconscience and Ignorance. Instead of being a self-evolution of a conscious Will, it might correspond to the mechanical law of an eternal self-ignorance. It might be an error but errors too open the mind to Truth. But pushed too far, this view gives rise to the negation of that philosophy which in the words of the Upanishads seeks to find the Truth which being found, all is known.

Unknowable is not absolutely unknowable

Sri Aurobindo explains that the Unknowable is not absolutely unknowable but beyond our cognitive capacities to know. It could be Something beyond the loftiest capacities of the human mind. And all truths would stand by it and be reconciled. That must be discovered as a starting-point as it carries the key to the paradoxes about the manifestation.

That Something is Sachchidananda, a trinity of absolute existence, consciousness and bliss. It is from this primal truth that we have to seek the problem of the origin of Ignorance - "the solution must be found in an action of consciousness manifesting itself as knowledge and yet limiting that knowledge in such a way as to create the phenomenon of the Ignorance, -- and since the Ignorance is a phenomenon of the dynamic action of Force of Consciousness, not an essential fact but a creation, a consequence of that action, it is this Force aspect of Consciousness that it will be fruitful to consider." (Ibid, pg.590-591)

Force or Shakti

This Force or Shakti is another poise of consciousness. For Sri Aurobindo, Sachchidananda is not merely Sat-Chit-Ananda but Sat-Chit-Shakti-Ananda. Force is concentrated within consciousness and is either active or passive. It is brought out by Tapas, the heat of its incubation. For us, this Shakti or dynamic Force can be effective in our internal world and our external world. To Sachchidananda this division does not apply because all is himself and within himself. Secondly, in us only a part of the Force is activated while the will is engaged elsewhere and a large part of ourselves immersed in the subconscient or superconscient but in Sachchidananda this division does not apply since all is his one indivisible self. (Ibid, pg.591) Tapas or the heat of incubation which energizes consciousness in us as well as in Sachchidananda is actually "the integral Tapas of an integral consciousness in an indivisible Existence". (Ibid, pg.592)

We find that this Force or Shakti is present in Existence and Nature either in the poise of passivity or activity. That which is passive in us produces no action and we do not link it with our will or conscious-force still it holds the possibility of emergence of automatic activity. It might be that there is "a larger conscious force, power or will in our being unknown to us which is behind this involuntary action, -- if not a will, at least a force of some kind which itself initiates action or else responds to the contacts, suggestions, stimulations of the universal Energy". (Ibid) In Nature too all things inert or passive are maintained by an energy in action upholding the apparent immobility. Beyond this relative aspect of status or kinesis, we can arrive at an absolute passivity or immobility. There seems to be an active consciousness of which Tapas is the character and a passive consciousness where absence of Tapas is the character. This effective distinction can be traced to Sachchidananda. The affirmation of "the dual status of Brahman, quiescent and creative, is indeed one of the most important and fruitful distinctions in Indian philosophy; it is besides a fact of spiritual experience". (Ibid, pg.593)

Advantages of Passivity

We also discover that the poise of passivity in us has two advantages. (Ibid) Firstly, we arrive from a broken knowledge to a more unifying knowledge. Secondly, the state of passivity opens us entirely to a higher Force, universal or transcendental. We open to the Divine, to Sachchidananda with ourselves as only a field or channel. Our individual consciousness shifts from an ignorant and limited action and opens itself to the supreme status or supreme action. In the more dynamic opening we find the power and play of knowledge and action, of Tapas but the static poise also holds a concentration of consciousness in immobility and a self-realisation and this too is Tapas. "Therefore it would seem that Tapas, concentration of power of consciousness, is the character of both the passive and active consciousness of Brahman, and that our own passivity also has a certain character of an unseen supporting or instrumentalising Tapas." (Ibid)

Passivity is not inertia but self-reserved energy

Still our mind dwells on the incompatibility between the passivity of Brahman which leads to the cessation of existence and the active Brahman that leads to its continuance. Actually this discordance springs from two different poises of the individual soul. In one poise it is the fulcrum for universal action. In another poise it withholds the energy from universal action. And if it is Tapas that is present in the poise of dynamic action, it is the same Tapas that withholds the force of being in the passive poise. "The passive consciousness of Brahman and its active consciousness are not two different, conflicting and incompatible things; they are the same consciousness, the same energy, at one end in a state of self-reservation, at the other cast into a motion of self-giving and self-deploying". (Ibid, pg.594) Behind every activity there is a passive power of being from where it arises, which supports the activity and governs it from behind in a detached way. It is actually "our whole being which stands behind any particular act or sum of activities, passive in the rest of its integrality, active in its limited dispensation of energy; but that passivity is not an incapable inertia, it is a poise of self-reserved energy". (Ibid) Similarly the truth must apply to the conscious being of the Infinite, whose power in silence and in the action of creation must be infinite.

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu