1. Nature and Ignorance: As I understand it, Nature is essentially Divine because it is Consciousness-Force, but in evolution it operates through Ignorance. Does this mean that ordinary Nature can genuinely act ignorantly, making real mistakes and groping forward, while a higher supramental Consciousness secretly supports and guides it from behind?
Or should we understand that Nature itself is always acting with perfect wisdom and that only our limited consciousness mistakes its movements for ignorance?
Ignorance means a partial knowledge. It is not an absence of knowledge but a knowledge that misses the whole. It is a knowledge absorbed in the particular, somewhat like looking at a tree or its branch while missing the forest and all life that is intertwined and interconnected with it. Seen from the larger background picture, the waste and the error are all part of the larger picture. In the larger picture, there are no opposites or contradictory parts but complimentaries. Yet from the practical purposes, individual life must first evolve through Ignorance taking its little standpoint. Once the little individual life is established, then one arrives at the whole but without destroying the individual. Rather the total picture is seen along with the standpoint of the individual. As the Isha Upanishad says, the goal is not to annul the individual in the universal or the Transcendental but to fulfil both through each other.
The distinction is therefore practical and not ultimate and absolute as you have rightly surmised.
2. The Prodigality of Evolution
If evolution is fundamentally an ascent from Matter to Life, Life to Mind, and Mind toward Supermind, why is there such an enormous lateral multiplicity? Why so many forms of matter, so many species of life, so many types of minds and cultures? What is the metaphysical significance of this vast diversity? Ananda for its own sake?
Yes, the richness of expression is due to the multiplication of the delight of existence. Since the delight and existence itself, in its origin is infinite, Sacchidananda, and the finite is limited, the only way Nature strives to express the One Infinite Sacchidananda, in and through finite forms, is through countless, limitless expansion.
3. The Psychic Being and the Working of Nature: If the psychic being is the evolving divine element in us, how much influence does it actually have over the movements of Nature?
Does Nature faithfully arrange circumstances according to the soul’s deepest needs, or does the psychic being work through an operationally ignorant Nature that only partially and imperfectly responds to its influence?
Relatedly, does the psychic being gain a progressively greater power over both the inner and outer movements of Nature as it comes more and more to the front?
Yes, the journey of the psychic being starts as a little baby in the womb of Ignorance. In the beginning, the soul does not know itself. It is an apparent slave of Nature, anish. The whole effort of Nature is to help it grow through all its experiences. She is like a teacher who challenges the child until it grows into a perfect adult soul. Then Nature herself submits and yields her powers and secrets and the child becomes her equal and her master and mate, Isa. In between, while the soul is learning and growing, it passes through the stage of a witness, Sakshi, and sanctioner, Anumanta. Finally, it becomes the bharta, the upholder, and bhokta, the enjoyer.
4. Just as individual centres of consciousness witness a field of names and forms, is there, in Sri Aurobindo’s view, a Divine Witness that simultaneously witnesses all manifested worlds and all possible movements of manifestation?
Unlike our ordinary awareness, would such a consciousness be free from distraction, fragmented attention, or the need to focus on one thing at the expense of another?
Relatedly, I often hear that the Divine knows something by identity, that is, by being the essential reality of that thing. But does the Divine also know by witnessing? In other words, does it not only be all things, but also consciously observe all things and their movements? And can we ever Become This, not only in essence but also in the magnitude of Its operation?
Yes, in the Divine there is no Ignorance. The Witness, the Ishwara, the Sarvabhoktaram, the Sarvalokamaheshwara is One Reality in the Supramental Divine Consciousness. Thus, for example, the body, though unique in its completeness, simultaneously knows and acts through and upon each and every cell separately as well as in totality; so too the Divine is aware of each and every element, individually as well as in its universality. Since all has emerged from Him, is sustained by Him and absorbed back into Him, there is always a perfect identification. Sakshi, or Witness, is only a means to indicate that in spite of all the identification, the Supreme Reality continues to be independent as well. It is not bound by its own creation, even as an author is not bound by the book he writes. Though he knows each and every character more intimately than any other onlooker, in fact, each expresses some broken reflex of His unity, yet He is not bound by the book He writes and exists independently of all the books and the characters. Yes, this will be the practical omniscience and practical omnipotence of the supramental beings in the New Creation.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
