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The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil 
(Book 2 Chapter  XIV)

 

[SUMMARY]

In this chapter Sri Aurobindo explain what the source and nature of falsehood and evil is; both from a cosmic perspective, as well as from the perspective of Man. He describes the supraphysical planes where it originates, and the vital mind and ego of Man where it takes root. He also explains the necessity and utility of falsehood and evil in life, and how we can overcome them by moving to a deeper consciousness within (to the evolving soul; the psychic being).

Here are the main points:

Introduction
Sri Aurobindo begins by restating his definition of what Ignorance's nature is: that it is a self-limiting knowledge oblivious of the integral self-awareness, and confined to an exclusive concentration in a single field.

He then indicates that he will uncover the origin, purpose, and nature of evil.

Utility of Good and Evil
He surprisingly says that evil and good both serve a positive purpose; in Nature, in the evolutionary intention. That our views of them are limited and relative. That evil comes out of good, and good out of evil. That evil can only come about once good occurs. [SA often shows how the negative is the greatest power for accelerating the evolution and contributing to the Good. Evil is the same; playing that role in Nature, in the evolutionary unfolding. E.g. WWII brought about the European Union that might have taken centuries to occur if at all.]

Source of Falsehood and Evil in Creation in Occult Planes
Sri Aurobindo tackles the issue of the source of falsehood and evil. He indicates that the source of falsehood and evil is not there in the omnipresent Reality (the Absolute, Brahman) or Sat-Chit-Ananda of the Upper Hemisphere (nor involving the essential cosmic principles or primal powers in the cosmos); nor in the terrestrial life or in the evolution out of the inconscience.

Rather falsehood and evil originate in between; in the occult planes in the unfolding of life, in the creations of Life or Mind in Life -- specifically in the invisible, supraphysical  where there are personalities, powers, and forces that are Superhuman, divine, titanic, and daemonic. In addition, Man becomes an instrument of these supraphysical good and evil energies.

Falsehood and Evil in Man
Then what is the source of falsehood and evil in Man?  Specifically it takes root in his vitalized mind of desire and sensation; in the most surface mental and vital consciousness (from out of the Inconscience). [Perhaps we can say that it originate and descend in the lower to mid supraphysical planes, and ascend/arise in us from our vitalized mind.]

Source and Nature of Our Surface Consciousness & Thinking Intelligence; and Error
Now Sri Aurobindo goes on to explain the nature of the development of mind, and how that leads to greater capacities, but also the introduction of error. He begins with a long explanation of how our surface consciousness and thinking intelligence emerged. He says that our surface consciousness is a product of a mentality pushing through the physical and vital consciousness, and being drawn out contact with the outside world. It is supported by a subliminal being of intuition and instinct that supports its unfolding. It is at first a vital or life mind that then matures into a thinking intelligence. Though this emergence of mind in life brings a great increase in consciousness compared to the instinctive life, but also an increase in the range and capacity for error.

Though there is a misinterpretation of facts, misapplication of knowledge, miscombination, misconstruction, misrepresentation in the minds surface consciousness and thinking intelligence, all contribute to human error; error alone does alone does not amount to falsehood.

Ego as Source of Ignorance, Falsehood, and Evil  Key!
Now we come to perhaps the heart of the chapter. He says that the human ego which focuses on things that merits its own self-oriented needs, creates an almost inexhaustible distortion of truth. Thus there is Ignorance. Out of ignorance comes a wrong consciousness, which gives a wrong dynamic reaction to the contact with the outside world; answering only to unenlightened mental and vital suggestions or in accordance with the ego. This is the source of Falsehood. With the development of a seperative life being; i.e. with the vital ego asserting its devise; and with a primitive unrestricted action uncensored with truth or what's right, this vitalized falsehood of knowledge becomes a power of Evil.  Wrong will and action is thus the basis of evil.

Methods of Evil
The action and will of evil takes specific forms such as hatred, dislike, violence, opposition, oppression, intolerance, aggression, cruelty, and treachery.

IGNORANCE, FALSEHOOD, AND EVIL
Item	Definition	Roots	Predominant Plane(s)	Example
Ignorance (e.g. as Error)	Limited, wrong understanding	Due to exclusive nature of surface consciousness	Surface Mental	"Bill isn't a good cook because he is of Italian descent."
Falsehood	Personal attachment to one's Ignorance (limitation of error)	Takes root in his vitalized mind of desire and sensation;  in the seperative ego	Vital Mind, Vital	"It's good that people like Bill aren't hired. This makes me happy."
Evil	Wrong egoistic will and action based on vitalized falsehood.	Takes root in vital will and physical consciousness of seperative ego	Vital, Physical	X acted and did what was necessary to prevent Bill from getting the cook position.

 

Liberation from Falsehood & Evil through Inner, Soul Movement
To overcome falsehoods and evil, we must overcome ego. When we replace the outer life-personality with the inner or true vital being the drive of the vital ego begins to be overcome.

In the inner and soul being, the mind, life, and body take their true place as its instruments. We have the guide that knows the truth, the good, the delight, the beauty of existence. We are able to discern the mind's and heart's and the vital's darker movements. We become truly self-giving and one with others.

When we connect to the evolving soul within, and then to the eternal self and cosmic being, and further to the transcendent Divine, becoming instruments of its light and power, we permanently overcome the ego sense and thus eliminate falsehood and evil in our being.

 

[DETAILS]

DEFINITION OF IGNORANCE

-Ignorance's nature is a self-limiting knowledge oblivious of the integral self-awareness, and confined to an exclusive concentration in a single field.

 

CONSIDERING THE ORIGINS OF EVIL

-What is evil, and its purpose?

-What is evil's [and falsehood's] origin, the limits of its reality, and its place in Nature.

 

EVIL & FALSEHOOD NOT ASSOCIATED WITH THE SUPERME REALITY

 -We can examine evil's relation to the Absolute, its origins and place in the cosmic workings, and its action and point of hold in the individual.

-Evil and falsehood have no direct root in the Supreme Reality.

 

EVIL & FALSEHOOD AND THE IGNORANCE/INCONSCIENCE

-Evil and falsehood are creations of the Ignorance and Inconscient.

-If Knowledge replaces Ignorance, evil and falsehood can't continue to exist. [which would mean that anchored in a soul status they would also not be.]

-Evil and falsehood are not permanent factors, and natural(?) to our existence; only products of our part Knowledge and Ignorance.

 

TRUE RELATIONSHIP BETEWEEN GOOD & EVIL

-Human values of good and evil, as of truth and error are uncertain and relative.

-Evil results in good, and good in evil.

-When evil produces good, the result is due to the intervention of some true consciousness and force acting behind, or due to redressing forces.

-All pain and suffering are the result of an insufficient consciousness-force in the surface being, which makes it unable to deal with Self and Nature.

-As a shadow depends on light for its existence, evil depends on (an unseen) good.

-Once truth or good manifests, falsehood and evil become possible.

-From Existence, Conscious-Force, Delight come their opposite.

However, where there is truth in its wholeness, falsehood cannot exist.

-There is no inevitable cosmicity of falsehood and evil, even as there is no absoluteness [i.e. as product of the Reality, the Absolute, Brahman].

 

ROOTS OF FALSEHOOD & EVIL IN CREATION

-At what plane then do falsehood and evil enter their picture. [This is the same question asked in the previous chapter about Ignorance?]

-There are powers and forces of Light and Darkness, good and evil, harmony and anarchy, etc.

-The powers of Darkness seek to prolong the Ignorance and Inconscience. There are forces whose life is bound up with the existence, idea, and impulse of Evil.

-There is the ancient belief in the struggle between the powers of Light and Darkness.

-The first source of good and evil would not be in the terrestrial life or in the evolution from out of the Inconscience, but in Life itself. Their source is supraphysical. E.g. the Personalities and Powers, as well as forces of the occult planes.

-Man can become instruments of these good and evil energies, without knowing the origin of one's actions.

-From the inner being, subliminal consciousness one becomes aware of them. One develops powers to control or block or support them.

-These forces of good and evil are powers of the universal nature -- belonging to the physical, but also the Life and Mind planes.

-They are Superhuman, divine, titanic, daemonic.

-These forces do not extend higher than the lower supraphysical planes. They are not original cosmic principles, primal powers of the cosmos, but creations of Life or Mind in Life.

-In Matter, falsehood and evil do not exist. There is no organization of consciousness for it to manifest.

 

VITALS MIND AS SOURCE OF FALEHOOD & EVIL IN MAN

-Falsehood and evil emerge fully with the development of mind in life. The vital mind of desire and sensation is where evil begins. [It seems to be originate and descend in the lower to mid supraphysical planes, and ascend/arise in us from the vital mind.]

-There is a sense of evil in the animal, but not a moral evil.

-What is it in the human being that originates and gives its power and place to this sense of good and evil?

-It is the vital mind.

-Evil and falsehood are natural products, automatic results of the evolution of life and mind from out of its Ignorance.

-In the surface emergence of mental and vital consciousness from the Inconscience is where evil and falsehood come into our being.

 

HOW OUR SURFACE CONSCIOUSNESS  & THINKING INTELLIGENCE EMERGED

-[Sri Aurobindo will explain from here on in how the surface consciousness and thinking intelligence emerges, and its impact on error, falsehood, and evil.]

-The emerging mentality has to force its way through an obscure physical and vital consciousness and assert itself against a dangerous, if not hostile world.

-This eventually leads to the emergence of a self-affirming physical, vital, and mental ego.

-It [ego?] is in the development of our surface consciousness.

-The secret Conscious-Force within, the subliminal sends up the minimum of intuition necessary for the animal being to maintain its existence and survive.

-This intuition enables automatic instinct (in Man) which works whensoever it is warranted.

-The Intuition is unerring.

-The instinct that is conferred upon birth is automatically correct, but can err.

-The supreme awareness and sense perception is an interplay of the outside world and the subliminal being within. It is the vital or life mind that develops; and later on a thinking intelligence.

-The secret consciousness (of the subliminal) is rendered into surface sensation and perception, the secret force into surface impulse.

-[Summary: the surface consciousness is a product of a mentality pushing through the physical and vital consciousness, and being drawn out contact with the outside world. It is supported by a subliminal being of intuition and instinct that supports its unfolding. It is at first a vital or life mind that then matures into a thinking intelligence.]

-As mind emerges from out of the surface consciousness, it develops characteristics of observation, invention, devise, intention, purposefulness; plus the emotions add a sense of value [i.e. of values]. There is thus a movement to a self-aware, thinking intelligence.

-However, this emergence of mind in life brings a great increase in consciousness compared to the instinctive life, but also an increase in the range and capacity for error.

-We can transition beyond the mental intelligence to intuition, and further still to Supermind.

-[Thus, the is a continuum: physical/vital consciousness > surface consciousness > mental intelligence > intuition > supramental perception.]

-[We can say that there are polar opposites from a surface Nescience to a Conscious-Force of an all power of Knowledge.]

-The surface nescience is penetrated by subliminal intuition from within, but it is absorbed and developed into (a somewhat lower) mental intelligence (compared to the intuition).

-In the enlightened obscurity of our mental parts, a secret intuition is at work, a truth urge. However, its nature is not recognized and understood by our limited mental intelligence.

 

THE NATURE OF ERROR

-The source of error is a limited consciousness growing out of nescience.

-[Error is an expression of our Ignorance; our exclusive, surface consciousness.]

-There is a misinterpretation of facts, misapplication of knowledge, miscombination, misconstruction, misrepresentation, all contributing to human error.

-There are intuitions of actuality, possibility, and determining truth, but they are not really perceived by human intelligence.

-Human error alone does not amount to falsehood.

 

THE DISTORTION OF ERROR & FALSEHOOD SUPPORTED BY EGO

-The limitation of mind intelligence alone cannot account for falsehood.

-There is also the human ego which focuses on things that merits its own self-oriented needs.

-Through ego we have an almost inexhaustible distortion of truth.

-Out of ignorance comes a wrong consciousness, which gives a wrong dynamic reaction to the contact with the outside world; answering only to unenlightened mental and vital suggestions or in accordance with the ego.

-Falsification of knowledge inwardly follows.

-With the development of a seperative life being; with the vital asserting its devise; with a primitive unrestricted action uncensored with truth or what's right, the vitalized falsehood of knowledge becomes a power of evil.

-Indications of the vital ego are:
--The vital assertions, impulses, desires
--Self justification and self-affirmation
--The satisfaction, growth, strength, greatness of itself
--Life egoism that leads to hatred, dislike, violence, opposition, oppression, intolerance, aggression, cruelty, treachery, evil

-It is only if the inner or true vital being replaces the outer life-personality that the drive of the vital ego can be overcome.

-The source of error is a limited consciousness growing out of nescience.

-The source of falsehood is the personal attachment to the limitation of error.

 

EGO THAT ENABLES EVIL

-The source of evil is the wrong consciousness governed by the life ego.

-Yet even the life/vital ego is a machinery of Cosmic Nature for the affirmation of the individual to disengage himself from the indeterminate mass substance of subconscience (?).

-It is a translation or substitute of the true secret self.

-It is still being pushed from its separateness and limitation to unification and an infinite.

-Life discord and disharmony arise from the life ego. It leads to what we call wrong and evil.

 

THE NECESSITY OF GOOD & EVIL

-And yet Nature accepts them as necessary stages of the evolution.

-The evolutionary intention acts through good and evil.

-Our standards of what is good and evil are changeable.

-Good and evil serve the evolutionary purpose.

 

WRONG WILL ENABLES EVIL

-Wrong will and knowledge are possible because we live in the obscurity of Ignorance.

-Wrong knowledge is the basis of error and falsehood.

-Error and falsehood enable wrong will.

-Wrong will is the basis of evil.

 

OUR SELF-AFFIRMATION THAT CREATES EGO, & THUS EVIL

-We live in a seperative, divided existence.

-Our first division is created mainly by our life ego, which divides us from all other beings.

-We are trusted to our ego-centricity and the law of egoistic affirmation.

-It is the errors of this self-affirmation that wrong and evil first arise.

 

SOUL BASIS THAT LIBERATES IS FROM EGO (& THUS FALSEHOOD AND EVIL)

-It is only if the inner or true vital being replaces the outer life-personality that the drive of the vital ego can be overcome.

-To be one with others, we must be liberated from ego through our soul awareness and knowledge -- i.e. connecting with our true selves.

-To be truly self-giving and one with others, we need the inner, soul basis.

-When we are consciously the soul -- mind, life, and body take their true place as its instruments.

-From that center we have the guide that knows the truth, the good, the delight, the beauty of existence.

-From that poise, we are able to discern the mind's and heart's and the vital's darker movements.

 

CONNECTING TO PSYCHIC, UNIVERSAL, & TRANSCENDENT BEING WE PERMANENTLY OVERCOME EGO, EVIL

-The first step of self-realization is to enthrone the soul, the psychic individual in place of the ego.

-The next step is to become aware of the eternal self, which liberates and universalizes.

-The third step is to know the Divine Being, the transcendent, the Cosmic Being.

-We thus become channels to his Shakti, and act according to its dictates or her light and power within us.

-We thus become one with others by knowing our psychic nature, universalizing, and opening to the transcendent Divine.

-Beyond that, an ultimate truth consciousness must change all parts of our nature; enabling us to become an instrument of the Supernature.

 

OTHER

Additional comments:

[Falsehood and evil are not directly caused by the Ignorance, but in the human vital.]

[Ignorance is supported and expanded by the vital ego.]

[Ignorance is indicated by error. Attachment to the error is falsehoods. The life ego expanding on that falsehood enables evil.]