Sri Aurobindo

Essays Divine and Human

Writings from Manuscripts. 1910 – 1950

God: The One Reality

Non-Being, Being and the Absolute

21

All being is the Eternal, the Infinite, the Divine; there is nothing beyond the Eternal and Infinite, neither is there anything else anywhere whether in existence or in non-existence.

All being ranges between the Manifestation and the Non-Manifestation. These are the two poles of the Infinite.

The Non-Manifestation is not a Non-Existence. Non-Existence is a term created by the mind and has no absolute significance; there is no such thing as an absolute Nihil or Zero. It is agreed even by the philosophies of the Nihil, Tao or Zero (Sunya) that the Non-Existence of which they speak is a Nought in which all is and from which all comes. Tao, Nihil or Zero is not different from the Absolute or the Supreme Brahman of Vedanta; it is only another way of describing or naming it. The Supreme is an Existence beyond what we know of our existence and therefore only it can seem to our mind as a Zero, a Nihil, a Non-Existence. There is nothing there of what we know as existence, for though all is in Tao, yet all is there in a way of which our mind can have no conception or experience, therefore to the mind it has¹ no reality and brings no concept of existence.

The manifestation in the Ignorance, that in which we live, has also been described as Asat, a non-existence, because it is not real, eternal, infinite, divine; it must therefore be an illusion, since only That exists and nothing else. But even Illusionism agrees that the manifested world is not without reality, — it is practically real, but not eternal. Moreover manifestation even if illusory in this sense, has no end or beginning in itself, but only to the soul that withdraws from it. It goes on existing eternally to other souls, it goes on existing to the Eternal. It is in the eternal consciousness that it exists, though apart from that consciousness it has no existence. Moreover the stuff of which it is made is not nothingness or void, but the Eternal itself which manifests it from itself and out of its own substance cast into form and force. It is therefore not a real Nihil, but a limited and constantly renewed, recurrent or mutable existence.

It is therefore permissible to say that all being ranges between Manifestation and Non-Manifestation, for both are degrees of existence, the one rising towards the Absolute, the other in appearance, but in appearance only, determined and relative.

Circa 1930/39

¹ In manuscript cancelled without substitution.

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