AT THE FEET OF THE MOTHER
Ask Alok da

I want to understand a few things from the following paragraphs from the the book Life Divine : Delight of Existence : The problem. I have understood Sri Aurobindo’s concept of ethical way of thinking of humans in this chapter but the below points are not clear🫤.

1.) ” when delight of being seeks to realise itself as delight of becoming , it moves in the movement of force and itself takes different forms of movements of which pleasure and pain are positive and negative currents. Subconscient in matter, superconscient beyond Mind this delight seeks in Mind and Life to realise itself by emergence in the becoming, in the increasing self conscious of the movement.” What does this line mean – “Subconscient in matter, superconscient beyond Mind this delight seeks in Mind and Life to realise itself by emergence in the becoming, in the increasing self conscious of the movement.”?

It means first that there is a delight of existence that is hidden in the movement of creation itself (the becoming). It is there hidden even in the subconscious and mechanically driven by the force of material nature, in the physical world and its forms (stars, galaxies, mountains, rivers etc etc). It is there self revealed (not hidden as in material creation) in the Superconscient, the higher Divine Realms. It progressively emerges from the subconscient state in matter towards the Superconscient through the struggle and wrestle of conflicting and opposing forces (since each form seeks to multiply its delight leading to conflict with other forms of creation), through the currents of pleasure (positively moving towards it) and pain (negatively since opposed and frustrated in its efforts). 

2) What does this paragraph mean – Just as Sachchidananda moves towards the realisation of the universal existence in the individual and of the form exceeding consciousness in the form of body and mind, so it moves towards the realisation of universal, self existent and objectless delight in the flux of particular experiences and objects. Those objects we now seek as stimulatin causes of a transient pleasure and satisfaction ; free, possessed of self , we shall not seek but shall posses them as reflectors rather than causes of a delight which eternally exist “

It means that the delight of existence can be felt through the agency of form. Here the form and objects become important as means to reveal, however partial and distorted, something of the Sachchidananda. Then the individual form becomes subordinate and one begins to feel the joy not so much because of the outer form as much as through the inner contact with the consciousness of the person. Similarly one can experience objectless delight purely as a state of universal consciousness.  Then we see objects merely as reflecting and transmitting delight and not its cause or reason. 

In other words there is a delight we feel through the form of objects, then we feel it in the consciousness of the objects and finally, objectless universal delight that passes through objects. 

Affectionately,

Alok Da

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