Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2013 6:57:28 GMT -5
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THE
SUPERCONSCIENT
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE SUPERCONSCIENT
The Riddle
A triple change
of consciousness marks then our voyage on the
earth: the disovery of the psychic being or immanent 'Spirit, the
discovery of Nirvana or the transcendent Spirit and the discovery of
the central being or cosmic Spirit. Here is probably the true meaning
of the Father-Son-Holy Ghost trinity of which Christian tradition
speaks. We have
not to compare the excellence of one or other of these experiences
but to verify them for ourselves: Philosophies
and
religions dispute about the priority of different aspects of God and
different Yogins, Rishis and Saints have preferred this or that
philosophy or religion. Our business is not to dispute about any of
them,
but to realise and become all of them, not to follow after any aspect
to the exclusion of the rest, but to embrace God in all His aspects
and beyond aspect1
— this
is the very meaning of the integral
yoga. But we may ask ourselves if there is nothing beyond this triple
discovery, for however great each may seem to experience, none gives
us the integral plenitude to which we aspire, at least if we consider
that the earth also and the individual ought to form a part of this
plenitude. Indeed, if we discover the psychic being, it is a great
realisation, we become aware of our divinity, but it is limited
to the individual, it does not break the personal walls wherein we
are shut up; if we discover the central being, this is a very vast
realisation, the world becomes our being, but we lose at the same
time the individual, for it would be quite
erroneous
to think that it is Mr. Smith who is seated in the midst of his
cosmic consciousness and who enjoys the view — there is no longer a
Mr. Smith; and if we discover the Transcendent, this is a very
high realisation but we lose both the individual and the world —
there is nothing else but That for ever beyond this play. We may
say theoretically that Father-Son-Holy Ghost are one —
theoretically
one may say anything one likes — but practically, in
experience, each of these changes of consciousness seems to
be cut off from the other by a gulf. And so long as we have not found
the path of experience permitting us to reconcile this triple hiatus
between the pantheist, the individualist and the mpnist, there
will not be any plenitude, either
for the individual or for the world. It is not enough for us
to find our individual centre without the totality of the world, or
the totality of the world without the individual, and yet less to
find the supreme Peace if it dissolves the world and the individual —
"I do not wish to be sugar," exclaimed the great
Ramakrishna, "I want to eat sugar!" In this chaotic,
tormenting world, where we must become, act, bear, we need to be
also. Without this being, our becoming
is scattered in the throng. But without this becoming
our being vanishes into a blissful
%ero? And
without the individual what meaning would all the marvellous
realisations have for us, for we are no longer there. It is this
contradiction that has to be resolved, not in philosophical
terms but in terms of life and power of action. Till today this
reconciliatory path seems inexistent or unknown ; this is why
all religions and all spiritualities have put the transcendent Father
at the summit of the hierarchy, outside this unfortunate affair,
and invite us to seek elsewhere the totality to which we aspire.
However, intuition tells us that if we, beings in a body, aspire
to the
178
THE
ADVENTURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
THE
SUPERCONSCIENT
179
totality, it
means that the totality is
there, that
it is possible in
a body, otherwise we would not aspire to it; what we call
"imagination" does not exist — there is no such thing as
imagination, there are only deferred realities or truths which await
their hour. Jules Verne, in his own way, witnesses this. Is there not
then another discovery to be made,
a fourth change of consciousness which will change everything?
In his iron
cage in the middle of the court-room, Sri Aurobindo had reached the
end of the road; by turns he had realised the Immanent, the
Transcendent, 'the Universal — that cage scarcely enclosed anything
more than a body: he was everywhere he wished to be in his
consciousness. But perhaps he remembered an individual Aurobindo who,
since Cambridge and the years in the West, had not stopped gathering
consciousness into this body, and now here was the Infinite
Consciousness, but this body remained a body among a million others,
subject to the same laws of Nature, continuing to be hungry and
thirsty, perhaps, and ill at times, like all other bodies, and to
advance slowly but surely towards disintegration. The
consciousness is vast, luminous, immortal, but underneath
everything continues.: And because he saw clearly, because
he was no longer the dupe of all the masks superimposed
by morality and decency, he saw perhaps also in the subconscient the
animal grimace under the infinite Consciousness and the material
grossness intact under the beautiful aureole — underneath
everything continues, nothing is changed. Perhaps he saw still all
those other himselfs, behind the cage, who continued to judge and
hate and suffer. Who is saved? Nothing is saved if all is not saved!
And what did this infinite Consciousness do for all this world, its
world? It sees, it knows, but what
can it do?
Had
he not started on his way, one day in Baroda, for action, for power?
And he looked everywhere in his infinite consciousness, he
experienced the vast joy above,
felt
joy laugh nude on the peaks of the Absolute* but
what can
this joy do if the above is not everywhere below? Below all
continues, all suffers, all dies. He did not even listen to the
judges, he did not reply to the questions on which however his life
depended, he heard only the Voice which repeated: / am
guiding, therefore fear not. Turn to your
own Work for which I have brought you to jail, and Sri
Aurobindo
kept his eyes closed in that cage. He was seeking. Was there not a
totality above which could be the totality down below also? Had the
road then come to an end with this golden
impotence?41
What
was the meaning of all this journey?
The
soul, which for some inexplicable reason had descended into this
Matter or rather become this Matter, evolves
slowly in the course of ages; it grows, individualises itself
through its senses, its mind, its experiences, it remembers more
and more its lost or submerged divinity, its consciousness amidst its
force, then discovers itself and finally returns to its Origin,
transcendent and nirvanic, or cosmic, according to its destiny and
its taste. Is all this story then only a long and laborious transit
of the Divine to the Divine across the obscure purgatory of Matter?
But why this purgatory, why this Matter? why did He ever enter into
it if it was only to get out again? We may be told that the cosmic or
nirvanic beatitudes of the end are well worth all the trouble we have
taken; perhaps, but meanwhile the earth suffers; we shine up above in
our sublime beatitude, but the tortures, the illness'es;
death proliferate and batten — our cosmic consciousness does not
make an atom of difference to the destiny of the earth,
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180 THE
ADVENTURE OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
and still less
our Nirvana. We may be told that others have only
to do the same and awaken also from their error — very well, but
yet once again why this earth, if it is simply to awaken from the
error of the earth? We speak of "the fall", of Adam and Eve
or some absurd sin which has spoilt what God had created so perfect
in the beginning — but all is God! the serpent of paradise, if
there was one, was God, and Satan and his Pomps and his Works; there
is nothing but He! Would He then be so clumsy that He falls without
knowing it or so impotent that He suffers without willing it or so
sadistic that He plays at error to have the bliss of getting out of
His error? is the earth then only an error? For if this earth has no
meaning for
the earth, if
the suffering of the world has no meaning for
the world, if
it is only a field of transit to purge oneself of some absurd fault,
then nothing and no one, no ultimate bliss, no final ecstasy
could ever excuse this useless interlude — God had no need to enter
into Matter if it was
to get out of it, God had no need of Death or of Suffering
or of Ignorance, if this Suffering, this Death and this Ignorance
did not carry in
themselves their
meaning, if this earth
and this body finally are not the place of a Secret which changes
everything but the instrument of a purgation and a flight.
I climb not
to thy everlasting Day, Even
as I have shunned thy eternal Night... Thy
servitudes on earth are greater, king, Than alt the glorious
liberties of heaven... Too
far thy heavens for me from suffering men. Imperfect
is the joy not shared by all.6
But if we yet look at this enigma,
this soul-centre around
THE SUPERCONSCIENT
which turns all
the mystery, we are obliged to see that it
does
not need to be "saved" as it is said, it is for ever free,
pure, all saved in its radiance — the moment one enters within,
with the eyes wide open, one can well see that it is marvellously
divine and light, untouched by all the mud thrown upon it! It is the
earth that must be saved, because it
hangs heavy; it is life that must be saved, because it dies. Where
then is the seed of this Deliverance? where the Power which will
deliver? where the true salvation of the world ? The spiritualists
are right in wanting to make us taste the supreme lightness of the
soul; but so too the materialists who dig into Matter and would draw
out marvels from that thickness. But they do not have the
Secret, nobody has the Secret. The marvels of these have no soul and
those of the others no body.
The body, yes,
which at first seemed only an obscure instrument for the liberation
of the Spirit, is perhaps precisely, paradoxically, the place of
an unknown wholeness of the Spirit: These
seeming Instrumentals are the key to a secret
without which the Fundamentals themselves would not unveil
all their mystery.9
"Turn
to your own work," said the Voice, and this Work was not at all
to swim in the cosmic beatitudes but to find down here, in this body
and for the earth, a new path which would bring together in one and
the same consciousness the liberty of the Transcendent, the living
immensity of the Cosmic and "the joy of an individual soul on a
perfected earth and in a truer life. For
the
true change of consciousness, says
the Mother, is
that which
will transform the physical conditions of the world and make of
it a new creation.
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