Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 - Track 907

Question: Is it the unification, is that the reason?

The basic point according to Vedanta is that there is only one reality that is the reason why we can see all this. We can share everything because there is only one reality and the important point is that even materialist when they come to the experience of recognition they see this proposition of identity. The experience of identity is so fundamental, but this is the real Vedantic answer actually because reality is one, the knowledge of the one is inherent in the one. Because there is nothing else because the one is conscious, if it was not conscious then again this would not happen. The very nature of the one is conscious. The one being one and the one being conscious the one recognizing one identical and therefore inevitable and indubitable it can’t be doubted. Infact that is the only standard of truth indubitability, if there is anything which is indubitable it is the knowledge of the one that exist alone which knows which is conscious and therefore can know itself. It’s the only proposition which is really you might say subjectively or objectively that is the only reality, only truth.

Now this is the domain in which materialist has still not entered. We are now obliging him to enter into it. So our argument is that all his arguments are based upon ignoring a large field of enquiry into which many people have made a great entry and also journey. Fine, this is only the preliminary statement, you go farther and you find that as you enter into that domain you find so many experiences which have a system, a mere hallucination has no system. You can’t have a system of hallucinary experiences, systematic. You enter into this and you find a system of experiences. When I see the blue colour and I examine my consciousness, I find illumination. When I see green colour, I find I had in my consciousness − a vital consciousness. There is a system and whenever this happens this happens, so you have in this field a system of experiences and such a system that you can also develop criteria by which you can say this can’t be, this can be. If somebody says oh! I was extremely happy. I have got heavenly delight and then he says I saw everywhere green, green green. If he says so you can be sure that he has not heavenly delight. He says two statement - I was in heavenly delight and I saw everything green, green, green. You can be sure he had no heavenly delight because green is the symbol of the vital experience, so it is true that he had a great vital experience but not the heavenly experience, so there can be criteria by which you can judge always a subjective field, but you can judge, so first judgment is sincerity, which you can judge also. Whether somebody is sincere or not can also be judged, at least your own sincerity you can judge if not somebody else’s. Whether you are truly sincere yourself or not can be judged by you by your inner sincerity. You do know when you are not sincere; you do know when you are sincere. At least we all have experiences, when we are sincere and when we are not sincere. This is subjective, but which have a criterion and which can be proved to be true. Secondly, you have system of experiences which can give you further criteria of what is right and what is wrong. Thirdly, you have farther experiences, you can go out of your body. You can jump into what was subjective into a world which is now objective as much objective as you are here walking into this physical world. There are extra-ordinary experiences of going out of the body and you go on perceiving things not with your physical eyes, not with your brain. Brains cells are no more used there at all and it’s not brain cell at all working. When you come back again you remember that you had gone out, you have seen certain things then of course brain maybe at work, but that knowledge that you possessed that time it was not a result of a brain cell. So, there are experiences in which brain cells are not involved and therefore no physical organ is involved. Therefore, to say that consciousness is connected with physical organ that fundamental proposition of the materialist is now negated, that physical organs are not the only instruments of knowledge. And then you find that there are not one supra-physical world but there are several supra-physical world. There are inter- connections of them. You can send message to one supra-physical world to another supra-physical world and all that we speak of the soul, spirit is connected with this large field. When we say spirit, spirit is what? Spirit is a large field. Word is very simple, therefore we may think that it is simply a little flame, but that is not so. Spirit is more than universal. The whole universe is lesser than the spirit. It is more than universal. So that tremendously vast in which so many communication are possible and communication from there upon the physical, this is another point that if you enter into this domain you find experiences of such a nature that it has even physical effects. If the materialist is prepared, if he is a real inquirer then he will enter into this field. Now Sri Aurobindo says that fortunately materialist of the highest kind is an inquirer. If he was not an inquirer it would be a hopeless case although he resist and resist quite a lot therefore we have several degrees of materialism presented, but there are who are prepared and who can enter into it. Infact many of us ourselves are materialist and we are prepared to enter into it if there are real facts. I think most of the spiritual seekers are as materialistic as anybody else. It is not as if they want to believe somehow. They don’t believe in dogma, they do not believe in aptawakya. They would not even say that because I have faith I enter − No. they have entered into a field where experiences of inner state of sincerity have brought them certain kind of knowledge which can’t reject. It’s impossible to refuse. This is the ground on which you can say that we have arrived at the fundamental basis of a hypothesis that not matter but consciousness may be the real reality. The steam may be the reality not the piston, this is the ground. That consciousness maybe anterior to this physical world. The physical world is the world which is itself a resultant of consciousness and not the their way round. I think we shall stop here today but some of the last portions of this dialogue we shall continue next time.

Question – Consciousness is only the nature of the reality, so we have got him only up to consciousness?

At least that much we shall still go farther into the nature of consciousness and see how it is real. Identity of consciousness and reality, but with regard to materialism we still need to dialogue further, so that we shall come to it next time.