Page 11 - NAMAH-Jan-2020

Namah Editorial

of humanity, it is because it lacks the same One could cite a common experience. We
essential illumination inherent in its own positive know very well how difficult it is to eliminate
activity. We can just conceive of a positive or pain and death. Yet we cannot deny the
absolute realisation of happiness, because fact that “the rejection of pain is a sovereign
the heart, to which that instinct for happiness instinct of the sensations, the rejection of death
belongs has its own form of certitude, is capable a dominant claim inherent in the essence of our
of faith and because our minds can envisage vitality (10).” Indeed we have been trying to
the elimination of unsatisfied want which is the eliminate negative phenomena like pain and
apparent cause of suffering (7).” Reason not postpone death as far as possible. We have
only lacks faith but is countered, contradicted been trying to detect and minimize the causes
and challenged by faith. of error, falsehood, ignorance and suffering.
To the last moment we do not want to lose
In The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo elaborates: hope for a moribund subject. We try to keep a
comatose subject in the life-support system as
“The reason cannot grasp all truth in its embrace far as possible. We try to explore our available
because truth is too infinite for it; but still it does potentiality to the maximum extent so as to
grasp the something of it which we immediately move with caution and precision towards
need, and its insufficiency does not detract our constructs of truth. We do not call a full
from the value of its work, but is rather the stop to research; we do not call for a halt to our
measure of its value. For man is not intended endeavour for progress beyond our present
to grasp the whole truth of his being at once, capacities.
but to move towards it through a succession
of experiences and a constant, though not Sri Aurobindo is optimistic and points out
by any means a perfectly continuous self- that “present potentiality is a clue to future
enlargement….Its inconstancy, its divisibility realisation (11).” He is confident that the scope
against itself, its power of sustaining opposite of the present levels of human experience
views are the whole secret of its value…For so (viz. sensory perception and reason) can be
man moves towards the infinity of the Truth extended for conceptualising and willing an
by the experience of its variety...(8)” anterior potentiality. This can only be possible
by an expansion of the faculties of knowledge.
Surpassing reason That expansion necessitates a surpassing of
reason and harnessing hitherto untapped
Man cannot remain satisfied unless what suprarational faculties. These suprarational
presents to reason as instinctive aspirations faculties have been sporadically available to
are turned into realisable potentialities. This exceptional individuals scattered in space
is difficult to achieve. Sri Aurobindo explains: and time. But Sri Aurobindo previsions their
emergence as a more generalised, universal
“The error of the practical reason is an excessive experience. He works out this concept in
subjection to the apparent fact which it can The Life Divine and traces an evolution of
immediately feel as real and an insufficient consciousness through cognitive matrices
courage in carrying profounder facts of potentiality that progressively moves towards a global
to their logical conclusion (9).” cognition that includes both the oneness and

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