The Glory of Matter

ARABINA BASU
Sri Aurobindo Asharm, Pondicherry

Karl Marx said that he had stood Hegel upside down. He meant that while Hegel’s dialectic method was right, his concept of the Reality, the Absolute Idea was all wrong. One can say in a more real sense that Sri Aurobindo has stood the whole Yogic tradition upside down. This may seem to be a tall claim, indeed unjustified. It could even be asserted that it cannot be done nor is it necessary to do so? What could be the purpose in making any radical change in the Yogic tradition respected, honoured cherished, found to be true through thousands of years?  Can there be anything new that can be added to the tremendous achievements of the different Yogas in India and abroad? Here is an attempt to explain the meaning of, the claim and we hope that it will be evident from what we have to say that it is justified.

If a student of Yoga takes an unbiassed view of the different Yogas, he is sure to discover that they have different aims. Also that later Yogas have entertained diverse ideas about the nature of existence and necessarily therefore varied ideals to be realized. Surely it can be said without any fear of contradiction that the Yoga of the Gita supplements the Yoga of the Upanishads. True that the Upanishads contain in seed-form all that is there in the Gita. Nevertheless the Lord’s Song elucidates many points left unclear in the Upanishads, supplements many ideas and complete the view of realisation laid down in the more ancient scriptures. While the Isha Upanishad gives in almost aphoristic form the gospel of Karma-Yoga, it is the Gita which has made it its special subject matter. It is Krishna’s synthetic teaching which has emphasised will and works as means or liberation and stressed the example of the liberated Karma-Yogi as the type of the Divine Worker on earth.

The Upanishads do speak of Prema, Love, and of the Self as the dear one, But would it be wrong to say that there is not in these great spiritual scriptures the same development of bhakti, devotion and love, as the most important element of spiritual life and discipline as found in the Vaishnava religions, especially in Bengal Vaishnavism? One could give other examples of this kind of development. It cannot be gainsaid that there is an evolution of yogic goals and methods.

Sri Aurobindo’s unerring vision has reiterated the age-old perception of the Vedic and Upanishadic Rishis and the Tantric Yogis that Atman has become everything, that Brahman is all. If Atman is pure Spirit, if it has become everything, sarva-bhutani, it stands to reason to conceive a power of concealment in the Self-Creative Force of the Self. Its function would in other words be described as a process of involution, a progressive hiding of the spiritual nature of the Spirit. As Sri Aurobindo has shown, the seven rays or the seven streams of the Veda are symbols of seven planes of being or consciousness. Thus the Self has become Matter. It was not without reason that Bhrigu, Varuna’s son, after doing tapasyawent to his father and declared: Matter is Brahman. True that his father, a knower of Brahman, sent the aspirant son to do further tapasya. Obviously this means that his son had not known everything about Brahman. Indeed it appears from the context that Bhrigu Varuni was only at the beginning or the spiritual journey. But it is also to be noted that he did not contradict his son or point out that he was wrong. And this would obviously mean that the young aspirant’s initial perception of the nature of Brahman was not wrong though it was not complete.

We know the rest of the story, how Bhrigu Varuni went from perception to higher perception at the end of each stage of Saadhanatill he came to see that Ananda, Bliss, is Brahman. He ascended from Matter to the planes, one after the other, of the Vital, Mental, the Supramental and Bliss. (It need not be said that the planes of Chit and Sat are not expressly mentioned but implied.)

It would appear from this account that from Ananda to Anna, Bliss to Matter, there is the one and the same Reality which has arranged itself in a hierarchy of categories projected from itself. We can in this connection remember the four-fold Self of the Mandukya Upanishad, the Turya. Sushupti, Svapna and Jagrat. These according to Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation are respectively the absolute and the original status of the Self, its aspect of the omniscient and omnipotent Lord in the causal world, its aspect of the enjoyer of the subtle world and its aspect of the enjoyer of the gross world. Nowhere does the Upanishads assert that the three lower aspects are unreal. Sri Aurobindo concedes that according to a strict and rigid logic, these three may be regarded as illusion but he also emphatically states that this is not a necessary conclusion. It is not our purpose here to enter into a discussion on this question. We would content ourselves with noting that Sri Aurobindo accepts the realistic Adwaita of the Upanishads though he does not deny that an element of illusionism crept into some of them.

Now if the Self has become or at least has manifested itself in the gross world of our waking consciousness after manifesting itself as the causal and subtle worlds, no question is more pertinent than this–why should the Self manifest itself as the World? Is it an exercise without any purpose whatsoever? Or if there be a goal, what can it possibly be? The traditional answer is that the Divine creates the world as Lila, as a spiritual sport. The creative Energy of God overflows and takes concrete shape in the things of the world. And even if the Divine has involved Himself in Matter, he, as an individual soul, evolves to its original divinity. The soul realises itself as a portion of the universal Lord or onewith the cosmic Self, or identical with the transcendent Absolute. This is why the soul comes into the world. Matter has not been created for any higher aim than to provide a temporary abode for the Lord who dwells in everything.

Sri Aurobindo joins issue with this view of creation. Not that it is not true at all but it is not the whole truth. The world is created so that the Creator can have the delight of Becoming, it is Lila. But if Matter is a form of conscious Self, if it is sustained in its existence by the conscious power of the self-same Spirit, we can surely say there is a concealed consciousness in Matter itself. The Prakriti of Samkhya has to be moved into action by the static conscious Purusha. The Maya of Sankara-Vedanta is moved and controlled by Ishwara, the personal, qualified Brahman. Nowhere do we come across an explanation of the work of an intelligence in the apparently non-spiritual universe except on the basis of asserting some connection between the active power and the foundational Consciousness.

A rigid mental logic will ultimately sever all connection between force and consciousness, as is evident from Samkhya and Sankara-Vedanta. But would it not be wiser, asks Sri Aurobindo, to accept the fact as it is actually found and experienced? The logic of existence and developing spiritual experience outsteps the boundaries of the logic of mind. If there is observed a secret intelligence functioning in the operations of universal Nature, it is perfectly reasonable to assert that there is a conscious Force inherent in it.

Matter is only a concrete presentation of itself by this conscious Force to itself. Sri Aurobindo believes that not only can the consciousness in Matter be aware of its own essential nature beyond the universe, but that it can come to its own, be aware of itself even in Matter. Another way of stating the same idea would be that Matter can become conscious of what it truly is, namely, a form of Brahman. To prepare Matter for this consummation is the purpose of creation.

The idea may be explained from another point of view. While everything is a manifestation of the Divine, nothing in the universe manifests the indwelling Spirit. The Divine is unmanifest in the world which he has manifested out of his own being. Yet every- thing points to something beyond itself, all things are symbols of God. If this is true, it is a worthwhile ideal to make the symbols capable of not merely suggesting the Symbolised but to express it overtly. The most dense symbol of conscious Spirit is Matter. This last stronghold of unconsciousness is to be radically changed into a conscious instrument for the manifestation of the Divine in the world. Pure Spirit must be realised in such a way that Matter can become Spirit. God having become entirely Nature, Nature wants to be God.

This idea has not been seriously entertained before in the Indian Yogic tradition, or for that matter, anywhere else in the worldbecause the specific principle and force of God that can realise it has not been attained and made operative in mind, life and body. Man has in the spiritual quest ascended to high levels of mental consciousness which are capable of opening to and receiving in the spiritual Knowledge, Peace, Joy, Power. These levels of the mind are divine and the spiritual experiences attained in them are genuine and highly satisfying. But mind even on its highest level is a limited consciousness. It is not able integrally to realise the Divine in all its aspects, far less harmonise Spirit and Matter. Consciousness in man must evolve into a level higher than mind, a plane which has Knowledge inherent in it and where there is no need to seek it. It is Consciousness turned into integral Knowledge and invincible Will. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind.

The Vijnaanaof the Taittiriya Upanishad is neither a massed consciousness without any expression or self-variation, nor is it the buddhiof the lower Prakriti of the three modes. It is true that the term has been taken to mean either of these two. Sri Aurobindo says it is that intermediate level of consciousness which is not Chit as such nor the lower category of pure reason. But it is consciousness which has organised itself into the infinite faculty of Knowledge and infallible power of Will and execution. It is this supramental consciousness which is the true seed and efficient cause of the universe and the Spirit on this plane is truly the Lord, the Creator. The Supermind is also the Idea, based in Brahman, of the whole Universe which is to be created, the inherent Law and process of its manifestation. At the same time it is the substance, the essence of everything in the world though overlaid by the limitations of mind, life and matter. When the concealed but inherent Supermind in Matter wishes to manifest itself more openly and in a less hampered way, it brings about the emergence of Life and then of Mind in living Matter. The physical organism undergoes great changes as a result of the evolution in it of Life and then of Mind in living Matter. But the urge of evolution presses further forward, says Sri Aurobindo, and the Supermind is now asserting, itself in order to effect a new and obvious manifestation of itself in the world. The soul in Mind will ascend to the plane ofintegral Knowledge-Will and become the soul in Supermind. Then it will not have to despise Matter, or be frightened by life or limited by Mind. The emergence of Supermind in them will transform them, enable mind to shed all limitations and receive the truth perfectly, make life serene and self-sustaining devoid of desires and cravings, yet dynamic as a channel of conscious force, change body into divine substance enabling it to know and enjoy the Immortal in it. The most despised would be the most fulfilled. Spirit will embrace Matter which will know and enjoy Brahman as its soul, and what could be a greater glory.