Part Three. Writings from the Arya (1914 – 1921
Arguments to The Life Divine
Chapter XXIX. Memory,
Self-Consciousness and the Ignorance[[Chapter XXIX of The Life Divine
as published in the Arya was revised in 1939 – 40, becoming the present
Book Two, Part I, Chapter VIII.]]
ARGUMENT
Memory is believed by some schools to be the
constituent of our continuous personality; but memory is only a mechanism, a
device, a substitute for direct consciousness. The mind is directly conscious of
existence in the present, holds existence in the past by its substitute memory,
infers its future existence from this direct present self-consciousness and the
memory of its continuity in the past. – This sense of self-conscious existence
it extends into the idea of eternity, but the only eternity the mind really
seizes is a continuous succession of moments of being in eternal Time; of this
eternity it possesses only the present moment, a limited portion of the past
held fragmentarily and nothing at all of the future, while it is unable to know
any timeless eternity of conscious being, any real eternal Self. Therefore the
nature of our Mind is an Ignorance seizing at knowledge by successive action in
the moments of Time. – If mind is all, then we must remain for ever in this
Ignorance which is not absolute nescience, but an ineffectual and fragmentary
seizing at knowledge. But there are really two powers of our conscious being,
Ignorance of the mind, Knowledge beyond mind, simultaneously existing, either
separately in an eternal dualism or, as is really the fact, as superior and
inferior, sovereign and dependent states of the same consciousness, by which the
Knower sees his timeless being and the action of Time in that self through the
Knowledge while he sees himself in Time and travelling in the succession of its
moments by the Ignorance. For this reason the Upanishad declares that Brahman
can really be known only by knowing him as both
the Knowledge and the Ignorance and so only can one arrive at the status of
immortality. – Ignorance is therefore the consciousness of being in the
succession of Time, and it is so called because, actually self-divided by the
moments of Time, the field of space and the forms of the multiplicity, it cannot
know either eternal Being or the World, either the transcendent or the universal
reality. Its knowledge is partly true, partly false, because it ignores the
essence and sees only fugitive parts of the phenomenon. – It is through
self-consciousness that the mind can arrive most readily at the eternal Reality;
the rest of its means of knowledge are, like memory, devices and substitutes for
direct consciousness. It is easy therefore to regard the knowledge of the self
within as real and the rest as not-self and illusion. But the distinction is
illusory and self-absorption in the stable self within is only one state of
consciousness like self-dispersion in thought and memory and will. The real self
is the Eternal who is capable simultaneously of the mobility in Time and the
immobility basing Time. All object of knowledge is that real and eternal self
whether seen in essence and stability or in phenomenon and instability of Time.
– The Ignorance is a means by which it is rendered into values of knowledge and
action, Time being a sort of bank on which we draw for valuation and action in
the present, with a realised store in the account of the past and an unrealised
infinite deposit to be taken from the future so as to be made valuable for
Time-experience and valid for Time-activity. But, behind, all is known and ready
for use according to the will of the Self in its dealings with Time and Space
and Causality.
him as both
the Knowledge and the Ignorance and so only can one arrive at the status of
immortality. – Ignorance is therefore the consciousness of being in the
succession of Time, and it is so called because, actually self-divided by the
moments of Time, the field of space and the forms of the multiplicity, it cannot
know either eternal Being or the World, either the transcendent or the universal
reality. Its knowledge is partly true, partly false, because it ignores the
essence and sees only fugitive parts of the phenomenon. – It is through
self-consciousness that the mind can arrive most readily at the eternal Reality;
the rest of its means of knowledge are, like memory, devices and substitutes for
direct consciousness. It is easy therefore to regard the knowledge of the self
within as real and the rest as not-self and illusion. But the distinction is
illusory and self-absorption in the stable self within is only one state of
consciousness like self-dispersion in thought and memory and will. The real self
is the Eternal who is capable simultaneously of the mobility in Time and the
immobility basing Time. All object of knowledge is that real and eternal self
whether seen in essence and stability or in phenomenon and instability of Time.
– The Ignorance is a means by which it is rendered into values of knowledge and
action, Time being a sort of bank on which we draw for valuation and action in
the present, with a realised store in the account of the past and an unrealised
infinite deposit to be taken from the future so as to be made valuable for
Time-experience and valid for Time-activity. But, behind, all is known and ready
for use according to the will of the Self in its dealings with Time and Space
and Causality.