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Date Posted: 04:11:59 02/12/03 Wed
Author: Hendrik - 25 Nov 2002
Subject: Re: Vallalar site updated
In reply to: Hendrik - 25 Nov 2002 's message, "Vallalar site updated" on 04:09:50 02/12/03 Wed

Interesting. In one - otherwise partly weird - book on that site, the nuclear physics book by Thulasiram, there is a compilation of texts from Aurobindo's The Life Divine dealing with a topic that has been discussed earlier on this board - the relation between Spirit and Matter.

Ramalinga himself, by the way, composed not only poetry but also essays on the constitution of the body etc., samples of which can be found elsewhere in Thulasiram's mentioned book, and in others.

Hendrik

------------------------------------

1. "When Science discovers that matter resolves itself into forms of Energy, it has hold of a universal and fundamental
truth; and when philosophy discovers that matter only exists as substantial appearance to the consciousness and that
the one reality is spirit or pure conscious Being, it has hold of a greater and completer, a still more fundamental truth.
But still the question remains why Energy should take the form of Matter. ……….” (Life Divine, Tenth edn. p. 234).


2. “ ………… as the All - Existent converts all His self-aspectings into various energy of His creative Force of
consciousness, cosmic Mind turns these, its multiple view-points of universal existence, into stand points of universal
Life; it turns them in Matter into forms of atomic being instinct with the life that forms them and governed by the mind
and will that actuate the formation. At the same time, the atomic existences which it thus forms must by the very law
of their being tend to associate themselves, to aggregate; and each of these aggregates also, instinct with the hidden
life that forms and the hidden mind and will that actuate them, bears with it a fiction of a separated individual
existence ……………” – (Life Divine, Tenth edn. p. 238)

3. "Thus not any eternal and original law of eternal and original Matter, but the nature of the action of cosmic Mind is
the cause of atomic existence. Matter is a creation, and for its creation the infinitesimal, an extreme fragmentation of
the Infinite, was needed as the starting point or basis. Ether may and does exist as an intangible, almost spiritual
support of Matter, but as a phenomenon it does not seem, to or present knowledge at least, to be materially
detectable. Subdivide the visible aggregate or the formal atom into essential atoms, break it up into the most
infinitesimal dust of being, we shall still, because of the nature of the Mind and Life that formed them, arrive at some
utmost atomic existence, unstable perhaps but always reconstituting itself in the eternal flux of force, phenomenally,
and not at a mere unatomic extension incapable of contents, Unatomic extension of substance, extension which is not
an aggregation, coexistence otherwise than by distribution in space are realities of pure existence, pure substance;
they are a knowledge of Supermind .... They are the reality underlying Matter, but not the phenomenon which we
call Matter. Mind, Life, Matter itself can be one with that pure existence and conscious extension in their static
reality, but not operate by that one-ness in their dynamic action, self-perception and self-formation. – (Life Divine,
Tenth edn. p. 238.)

Notes: Sri Aurobindo seems to refer by "formal atom and essential atom" to the atom as known to science and the
nucleus of atom respectively. In subsequent passages he refers to electrons by the term "electric infinitesimals".


4. "There must be and there are grades between inconscient substance (i.e. phenomenal matter) and utterly
self-conscious self-extension, as between the principle of Matter and the principle of spirit …………. these
gradations of substance, in one important aspect of their formulation in series, can be seen to correspond to the
ascending series of Matter, Life, Mind, Supermind and that other higher divine triplicity of Sachchidananda. In other
words, we find that substance in its ascension bases itself upon each of these principles and makes itself successively
a characteristic vehicle for the dominating cosmic self-expression of each in their ascending series" (words within
brackets are our own). – (Life Divine, Tenth edn. p. 255)

5. "A consciousness-Force, everywhere inherent in Existence, acting even when concealed, is the creator of the worlds,
the occult secret of Nature. But in our material world and in our own being, consciousness has a double aspect;
there is a force of Knowledge, there is a force of Ignorance.- - (Life Divine, Tenth edn. P. 295)

6. "Actually to our Science this infinite or indeterminate Existence reveals itself as an Energy, known not by itself but by
its works, which throws up in its motion waves of energism and in them a multitude of infinitesimals; these, grouping
themselves to form larger infinitesimals, become a basis for all the creations of the Energy, even those farthest away
from the material basis, for the emergence of a world of organised Matter, for the emergence of Life, for the
emergence of Consciousness, for all the still unexplained activities of evolutionary Nature. ………………………
……………………………..... We know now that different groupings and a varying number of electric
infinitesimals can produce or serve as the constituent occasion ……. for the appearance of larger atomic
infinitesimals of different natures, qualities, powers; ………… can come to constitute these different atoms.
…………….. We know also that certain combinations of certain invisible atomic infinitesimals produce or occasion
new and visible determinations quite different in nature, quality and power from the constituent infinitesimals; but we
fail to discover, for instance, how a fixed formula for the combination of oxygen and hydrogen comes to determine
the appearance of water which is evidently something more than a combination of gases ……. a material
manifestation of a quite new character. We see that a seed develops into a tree ... .... but we do not discover
………. how the life and form of the tree come to be implied in the substance or energy of the seed .. .... We know
that genes and chromosomes are the cause of hereditary transmissions, not only of physical but of psychological
variations; but we do not discover how psychological characteristics can be contained and transmitted in this
inconscient material vehicle. We do not see or know, but it is expounded to us as a cogent account of
Nature-process, that a play of electrons, of atoms and their resultant molecules, of cells, glands, chemical secretions
and physiological processes manages by their activity on the nerves and brain of a Shakespeare or a Plato to
produce or could be perhaps the dynamic occasion for the production of a Hamlet or a Symposium or a Republic;
……….. These formulative of Science may be pragmatically correct and infallible, they may govern the practical
how of Nature's processes, but they do not disclose the intrinsic how or why ……………..their rationale is
fundamentally unintelligible.” – (Life Divine, Tenth edn. P. 298).

7. "There is more to perplex us; for we see the original indeterminate Energy throwing out general determinates of itself,
- we might equally in their relation to the variety of their products call them generic indeterminates. - with their
appropriate states of substance and determined forms of that substance: the latter are numerous, sometimes
innumerable variations on the substance-energy which is their base: but none of these variations seems to be
predetermined by anything in the nature of the general indeterminate. An electric Energy produces positive, negative,
neutral forms of itself, form that are at once waves and particles; a gaseous state of energy-substance produces a
considerable number of different gases; a solid state of energy-substance, from which results the earth principle
develops into different forms of earth and rock of many kinds and numerous minerals and metals; a life principle
produces its vegetable kingdom teeming with a countless foison of quite different plants, trees, flowers; a principle of
animal life produces an enormous variety of genus, species, individual variations: so it proceeds into human life and
mind and its mind-types towards the still unwritten end or perhaps the yet occult sequel of that unfinished
evolutionary chapter. Throughout there is the constant rule of a general sameness in the original determinate and,
subject to this substantial sameness of basic substance and nature, a profuse variation in the generic and individual
determinates; an identical law obtains of sameness or similarity in the genus or species with numerous variations often
meticulously minute in the individual." – (Life Divine, Tenth. edn. P. 299)

8. "This opens the way for other explanations which make Consciousness the creator of this world out of an apparent
original Inconscience. A Mind, a Will seems to have imagined and organised the universe, but it has veiled itself
behind its creation; its first erection has been this screen of an inconscient Energy and a material form of
substance…. All these things we see around us are then the thoughts of an extra cosmic Divinity, a Being with an
omnipotent and omniscient Mind and Will, who is responsible for the mathematical law of the physical universe, for
its artistry of beauty, for its strange play of sameness and variations, of concordances and discords, of combining and
intermingling opposites, for the drama of consciousness struggling to exist and seeking to affirm itself in an inconscient
universal order." – (Life Divine, Tenth edn. p. 302.)

9. "All the unexplained processes of Nature would find their meaning and their place if this hypothesis (i.e. the above
said hidden consciousness in the inconscient material Nature) proved to be tenable. Energy seems to create
substance, but, in reality, as existence is inherent in Consciousness-Force, so also substance would be inherent in
Energy, – the Energy a manifestation of the Force, substance a manifestation of the secret Existence. But as it is a
spiritual substance, it would not be apprehended by the material sense until it is given by Energy the forms of Matter
seizable by that sense. One begins to understand also how arrangement of design, quantity and number can be a
base for the manifestation of quality and property; for design, quantity and number are powers of
existence-substance, quality and property are powers of the consciousness and its force that reside in the existence;
they can then be made manifest and operative by a rhythm and process of substance. The growth of the tree out of
the seed would be accounted for, like all other similar phenomena, by the indwelling presence of what we have
called the Real-Idea; the Infinite's self-perception of the significant form, the living body of its power of existence that
has to emerge from its own self-compression in energy-substance, would be carried internally in the form of the
seed, carried in the occult consciousness involved in that form, and would naturally evolve out of it. There would be
no difficulty either in understanding on this principle how infinitesimals of a material character like the gene and
chromosome can carry in them psychological elements to be transmitted to the physical form that has to emerge from
the human seed," (Life Divine, Tenth edn. p. 304).



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