Foolishness, childish wickedness and destructiveness: Life is a hit-and-miss game - a toxic brew of pleasure and pain

Two Birds from Savitri The moment we utter the very first phrase “dvā suparņā, two birds beautiful of wings”, we are transported to their many-splendoured world; indeed, they immediately become our companions too. What we would analyse as poetry and art and philosophy drops out suddenly and what we would see in the glow and grandeur of its expression is a miracle of the speaking silence and dynamism of the unfathomable peace. We meet in it the Rishi.

Indian Religions: The Spiritual Traditions of South Asia : an ... - Page 455 - Peter Heehs - 2002 - Preview - More editions A few months later, while in jail awaiting trial for conspiracy, Aurobindo had the wider experience of the Divine as simultaneously transcendent of and immanent in the universe. This came to him as a vision of Krishna in all things and beings.

Revisioning Environmental Ethics - Page 119 - Daniel A. Kealey - 1990 - Preview - More editions Aurobindo wants to maintain Brahman's absolute transcendence on the one hand while on the other wants that the knowledge by identity with the absolute transcendental infinity be within the grasp of immanent, finite consciousness.

The Interaction of Soul, Rebirth and Karma from Sri Aurobindo Studies 

When we observe the workings of Nature, we see processes that are worked out in intricate detail and which can span aeons of time in their working. Even short-lived creatures are part of a much larger fabric of life which itself spans long periods of time and which encompasses what came before and sets the stage for what comes after. We see no evidence of any caprice or happenstance in this organized rolling-out of the manifestation. It is therefore unlikely and highly suspect to assume that the Soul which we either intuit or actually experience as providing an independent actor in this development is something that suddenly appears without any precedent, or disappears without any trace after one lifetime… We see here a coherent and organized process that provides a clear sense of the soul’s evolutionary effort through the mechanism of karma, cause and effect, carried out through time by the operation of the systematic rebirth of the soul.

Interesting Thoughts from Kant from Adam Smith's Lost Legacy by Gavin Kennedy

Steve J. posts on Radamisto HERE He has found an interesting nugget loosely related to Adam Smith’s use of the IH metaphor. “KANT HAD HIS OWN VERSION OF THE "INVISIBLE HAND" In "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective" (1784), Immanuel Kant gives this description of the effects of individuals on society: […]

Kant does not repeat the IH metaphor, providing to use “guided along” rather than Smith’s ‘led by an invisible hand”.  How people working against each other, which Kant expands upon in the second quote from Kant suggesting self-interest expressed through “individual actions, all to be made up, by and large, of foolishness, childish vanity, and, often enough, even of childish wickedness and destructiveness” also implies that the degree of counter-actions against each would cancel, or at least severely compromise, outcomes that benefit the general public.

Rape victims and Karma from Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother by Sandeep

For the rest of us, life on earth is a hit-and-miss game.  We survive and evolve through a toxic brew of pleasure and pain before we finally begin the journey to uncover our latent divinity. Every time we experience pain and betrayal from our fellow human beings, it sets in motion a new phase of our conscious development.  Our first response to a tragedy is often despair and helplessness at the humiliation that we have endured;

• when we gather courage, we become revengeful and seek to bring the perpetrator to justice;
• when we see that the tormenter is also a human being like us, inescapably trapped in his flaws, we begin to feel a flicker of compassion and forgiveness;
• when we discover that the tormenter is the product of a wide-ranging cultural problem, we turn into social reformers or psychologists who raise public awareness to prevent other people from falling into the traps that we inadvertently fell into;
• finally, we discover that the true solution is to turn to the Divine for it is only That which can heal the subconscious wounds which resurface in the periodic nightmares that we continue to experience after the trauma.

Many such rounds of suffering are needed to turn us into mature souls who are fully engaged in society and fully conscious within.  It is through this clumsy process that we evolve into full Divinity. Related Posts

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