Page 18 - All India Magazine Sep-2024

Life — A Journey and an Ascent

The life of the human creature, as it is ordinarily lived, is com-
posed of a half-fixed, half-fluid mass of very imperfectly ruled
thoughts, perceptions, sensations, emotions, desires, enjoy-
ments, acts, mostly customary and self-repeating, in part only
dynamic and self-developing, but all centred around a superficial
ego. The sum of movement of these activities eventuates in an
internal growth which is partly visible and operative in this life,
partly a seed of progress in lives hereafter. This growth of the
conscious being, an expansion, an increasing self-expression,
a more and more harmonised development of his constituent
members is the whole meaning and all the pith of human exis-
tence. It is for this meaningful development of consciousness
by thought, will, emotion, desire, action and experience, lead-
ing in the end to a supreme divine self-discovery, that Man, the
mental being, has entered into the material body. All the rest is
either auxiliary and subordinate or accidental and otiose; that
only matters which sustains and helps the evolution of his na-
ture and the growth or rather the progressive unfolding and
discovery of his self and spirit. ...
CWSA 23: 89-90

There are three stages of the ascent, — at the bottom the
bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in
the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that
feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, at the
summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a
supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations
and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the
bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good
of the individual and the society are the governing consider-
ation, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals

18 All India Magazine, September 2024