(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 II

The Integral Being beyond passivity and activity

Brahman is simultaneously passive and active. It reserves Its Tapas in passivity and gives Itself in activity. In passivity, it dwells upon Itself in a self-absorbed concentration and in activity, it liberates whatever had been held in incubation. But this release "is not really a diffusion, but a deploying" (CWSA 21-22, pg.595); the energy released is not lost in some external Void but is creative - the energy released undergoes a continual process of conversion and transmutation.

When we perceive Reality in its poise of deployment of energy, we call it the mobile active Brahman, Saguna, Khara; when the energy is kept back from action we call it the immobile passive Brahman, Nirguna, Akshara. But it is the One Reality in two poises, the poise of the soul's evolution into action, pravrtti and its involution into passivity, nivrtti. (Ibid, pg.595-596) Superficially we believe that in action the individual soul becomes ignorant of its true being which is passive and in passivity it becomes ignorant of its apparent or false being. But this is a partial and one-sided view because these two movements occur alternately in us. It is akin to our sleeping and waking states because in sleep we do not remember our waking state and our waking state is nescient of our sleeping state. But a deeper psychological experience reveals a larger being in us which is neither limited by sleep nor waking, indeed it can sometimes remember what happened during a state of unconsciousness. (Ibid, pg.596) Similar is the case with Brahman who is our real and integral being. Our spiritual-mental being either identifies with the active poise of Reality or the passive poise. True, in the silence of the passive poise, we partake of a status through which the soul passes into the Absolute. "But there is a greater fulfilment of our true and integral being in which both the static and the dynamic sides of the self are liberated and fulfilled in That which upholds both and is limited neither by action nor by silence". (Ibid)

Brahman does not pass alternatively from passive into active states. Integral Brahman possesses both the passivity and the activity simultaneously. For "we can become aware of an eternal passivity and self-concentrated calm penetrating and upholding all the cosmic activity and all its multiple concentrated movement, -- and this could not be if, so long as any activity continued, the concentrated passivity did not exist supporting it and within it." (Ibid, pg.597) Indeed, our integral being is not subject to these opposites. It does not have to forget its dynamic self to get back its self of silence. If we have the integral knowledge and integral liberation of both soul and nature free from this partial view of Reality, we can also simultaneously possess the passivity and activity and exceed both these poles of universality.

In the Gita, the Supreme surpasses both the immobile self and the mobile being and even if put together or added to each other, they do not represent him fully. (Ibid) Brahman or the Supreme Being must regard the passivity and activity as not his absolute being, "but as opposite, yet, mutually satisfying term of his universalities". (Ibid, pg.598) It cannot be that Brahman by an eternal passivity is unaware of his own activities for "he contains them in himself, supports them with his eternal power of calm, initiates them from his eternal poise of energy". (Ibid) It must also be untrue that Brahman in activity is separated from passivity because he is actually omnipresent, and can be calm and full of bliss in the whirl of energies. Nether in silence or activity one can be unaware of the absolute being. If it is not so, then we identify with only one aspect ignoring the other and "by that exclusiveness fail to open ourselves to the integral Reality." (Ibid)

Ignorance is not primal or original

"Ignorance cannot have the origin of its existence or the starting-point of its dividing activities in the absolute Brahman or in integral Sachchidananda; it belongs only to a partial action of the being with which we identify ourselves... And if Ignorance is not an element or power proper to the absolute nature of the Brahman or to Its integrality, there can be no original and primal Ignorance." (Ibid) The question can be raised whether Maya, the power which creates the multiplicity is of the nature of Ignorance. But Sri Aurobindo states that Maya , if it is an original power of the Eternal cannot be an Ignorance, "but must be a transcendent and universal power of self-knowledge and all-knowledge; ignorance can only intervene as a minor and subsequent movement, partial and relative." (Ibid)

Multiplicity per se is not the cause of Ignorance

The issue that next crops us is whether Ignorance is inherent in the multiplicity. For within the multiplicity, each soul is unaware of other souls, linked to them externally but not in real unity. But this appears so to the superficial personality. When we go to the inner and subtler depths of the being, the walls of division become thinner and finally disappear. (Ibid, pg.599)

The body is the index of division in the evolutionary scheme but also the starting-point of recovery of unity. Bodies cannot communicate with each other except through external means, cannot unite except by a breaking up and devouring signalling the process of assimilation. Mind too has limitations but is more subtle, can and two minds can penetrate each other more easily. Still the mind has an unique separateness from others and can take a standpoint based on that separateness. Only at the level of the soul do all obstacles to unity lessen and finally disappear. "The soul can in its consciousness identify itself with other souls, can contain them and enter into and be contained by them, can realise its unity with them; and this can take place, not in a featureless and indistinguishable sleep, not in a Nirvana in which all distinctions and individualities of soul and mind and body are lost, but in a perfect waking which observes and takes account of all distinctions but exceeds them". (Ibid)

"Multiplicity, then, is not the necessary cause of Ignorance". (Ibid, pg.600) Brahman is not only beyond passivity and activity but also beyond unity and multiplicity. Brahman is one with himself but this unity is not minus the multiplicity. He is not like the mathematical integer, one which cannot contain the hundred but actually contains the hundred and is one in all the hundred. "Brahman in his unity of spirit is aware of his multiplicity of souls and in the consciousness of his multiple souls is aware of the unity of all souls." (Ibid) The Jivatman, derived from him and illumined by him is simultaneously aware of the unity with the One and the unity with the many. Our superficial personality, body and mind is ignorant of this but can be illumined and made aware of this truth. (Ibid)

Tracing the Origin of Ignorance

Ignorance comes at a later stage when mind is separated from its spiritual and supramental source and identifies in this earth-life with the form. But the Matter in the form is a concentrated energy, a knot of force maintained by a constant whirl of action as quantum physics has now demonstrated. Sri Aurobindo wrote (The Life Divine was serialized in the Arya from August 1914 to January 1919) with scientific clarity about the "form": "It is not eternal in its integrality, nor in its constituting atoms; for they can be disintegrated by dissolving the knot of energy in constant concentrated action which is the sole thing that maintains their apparent stability. It is a concentration of Tapas in movement of force on the form maintaining it in being which sets up the physical basis of division". (Ibid) A century later, Ulrich Mohroff explains that Quantum mechanics demonstrates that atoms break into leptons and quarks which are not further divisible as they are formless. In other words the form lapses into formlessness. Ulrich further explains that the shape of things resolve themselves into the self-relations of a single formless "something", akin to what we call the consciousness of the Brahman. (Mohrhoff, Ulrich: Spiritual Physics, in Essays on Sri Aurobindo, ed by Aparajita Mukhopadhyay, Centre for Sri Aurobindo Studies, Jadavpur University, 2015, pg.60-75)

It is as Mohroff explained, "the self-relations of a single formless "something" "is responsible for the formation of forms. Sri Aurobindo, with scientific insight, explains a century back that it is here that the origin of Ignorance must be sought. "The origin of the Ignorance must then be sought for in some self-absorbed concentration of Tapas, of Consciousness-Force in action on a separate movement of the Force." (Ibid, pg.601) To us "this takes the appearance of mind identifying itself with the separate movement and identifying itself also in the movement separately with each of the forms resulting from it". (Ibid)

It is in this way that a wall of separation is built by the mind between the consciousness in each form from awareness of its own total self. This wall of separation extends to other embodied consciousnesses and of the universal being. "It is here that we must look for the secret of the apparent ignorance of the embodied mental being as well as of the great apparent inconscience of physical Nature". (Ibid)

- By Dr. Soumitra Basu