Page 41 - NAMAH-Jan-2020

Insight

The parting of the ways

Nolini Kanta Gupta

Abstract
Nature is at a parting of the ways. She has done with her experiment of self-conscious man.
Everything follows the evolution of consciousness. A choice has to be made: to be divine or remain
human. It is time for man to become super-conscious and unveil his concealed divinity.

To be divine or to remain human — this is consciousness, the animal by consciousness
the one choice that is now before Nature in and man by self-consciousness. Man knows
her upward march of evolution. What is the that he knows, an animal only knows; a plant
exact significance of this choice? does not even know, it merely feels or senses;
matter cannot do that even, it simply acts or
To remain human means to continue the rather is acted upon. We are not concerned
fundamental nature of man. In what consists here, however, with the last two forms of
the humanity of man? We can ascertain it being; we will speak of the first two only.
by distinguishing what forms the animality
of the animal, since that will give us the We say, then, that man is distinguished from the
differentia that nature has evolved to raise animal by his having consciousness as it has, but
man over the animal. The animal, again, has added to it the consciousness of self. Man acts
a characteristic differentiating it from the and feels and knows as much as the animal does;
vegetable world, which latter, in its turn, has but also he knows that he acts, he knows that he
something to mark it off from the inorganic feels, he knows that he knows — and this is a
world. The inorganic, the vegetable, the thing the animal cannot do. It is the awakening
animal and finally man — these are the four of the sense of self in every mode of being
great steps of Nature’s evolutionary course. that characterises man, and it is owing to this
consciousness of an ego behind, of a permanent
The differentia, in each case, lies in the degree and unit of reference, which has modified even the
nature of consciousness, since it is consciousness functions of knowing and feeling and acting, has
that forms the substance and determines the mode refashioned them in a mould which is not quite
of being. Now, the inorganic is characterised that of the animal, in spite of a general similarity.
by un-consciousness, the vegetable by sub- So the humanity of man consists in his

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