Latest / Sri Aurobindo Studies / Immersion in the External Nature: the Roots of Atheism and Agnosticism

Transcript

Immersion in the External Nature: the Roots of Atheism and Agnosticism · Sri Aurobindo Studies

• 0:02
  Many people profess to believe in the existence of God based on
• 0:06
  the teachings of their religion. Because the belief is based
• 0:10
  solely on a teaching rather than actual experience that would
• 0:14
  support this belief, they may in many cases not take their faith
• 0:19
  in God seriously enough to actually abide by the rules,
• 0:23
  laws, and commandments set forth for regulating their behavior in
• 0:29
  their lifetime. The judeo-christian belief in
• 0:32
  God and the 10 commandments is a case in point.
• 0:36
  Many professed believers still commit adultery, steal, or kill.
• 0:42
  Many Christians do not follow the prescription set forth by
• 0:45
  Jesus to turn the other cheek, beat your swords into
• 0:50
  plowshares, or to feed the hungry, et cetera.
• 0:55
  There are, of course, those who take the belief seriously and
• 0:58
  try to abide by the tenets of their religious teaching.
• 1:02
  As long as the belief is based on a teaching and not actual
• 1:06
  experience, it can lead to this type of anomalous result.
• 1:12
  As long as we remain fixed and embedded in the external
• 1:16
  consciousness, we are surrounded by the action of nature,
• 1:19
  procrity, and have no evidence of the existence of God in the
• 1:25
  workings of nature. Thus we see various people
• 1:29
  conclude that there is no evidence for God, and they
• 1:33
  become either agnostic or even atheistic.
• 1:38
  Some conclude, again without evidence, that there was a God,
• 1:42
  the Creator, but he must be dead.
• 1:45
  In today's world, we see a proliferation of ideas about
• 1:48
  existence created by random chance, chemical reactions that
• 1:53
  create life automatically, or that we actually exist within
• 1:58
  some kind of computer simulation or hologram.
• 2:02
  These are expressions of the agnostic or atheistic attempt to
• 2:06
  justify our very existence in the absence of a Creator God.
• 2:12
  All of this is based on conclusions that are drawn from
• 2:16
  being bound and limited within the frame of the external
• 2:20
  existence. It is rational and realistic for
• 2:25
  someone without this experience to try to base his understanding
• 2:29
  of the world on logic, inference and reason founded in the
• 2:33
  perception of his senses. Thus it is a healthy response of
• 2:38
  such an individual to suggest either that he does not know
• 2:43
  that God exists, agnosticism, or even to deny the existence of
• 2:48
  God atheism. This is perhaps a better
• 2:52
  starting point for a spiritual opening than someone who bases
• 2:56
  his beliefs solely on a fixed teaching and is not receptive to
• 3:01
  opening himself to the actual shift of consciousness and the
• 3:06
  experience that comes with it. Once an individual experiences a
• 3:12
  shift of consciousness out of the external framework of
• 3:15
  procrity, the existence of God or the Divine under whatever
• 3:20
  name or conception one has based on the background of the
• 3:24
  individual and his view of things becomes a self-evident
• 3:29
  fact, not subject to argument or philosophy.
• 3:34
  Just as an individual has never seen the ocean, can speculate
• 3:38
  about whether it exists, may question the amazing things he
• 3:43
  hears about it from those who have that experience, and may
• 3:47
  try to find an alternative explanation for things that the
• 3:51
  ocean is the basis of. So also a person who has never
• 3:56
  experienced the extraordinary force of the divine reality may
• 4:01
  question its existence. This is in fact recounted in the
• 4:05
  Bible with the conversion of Saul based on his experience on
• 4:10
  the road to Damascus. It should be noted that a number
• 4:15
  of advanced scientists have eventually come to conclude,
• 4:18
  based on their pushing of the boundaries of space, matter,
• 4:23
  energy, and time, that there is a divine existence which
• 4:27
  creates, contains, permeates, infuses, and is the basis of all
• 4:35
  existence as we know it. They begin to see that the
• 4:39
  mathematical precision, the principles of matter, life and
• 4:44
  mind, require a further principle of existence, the seer
• 4:50
  of the Isha Upanishad declares, quote.
• 4:54
  But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences, and all
• 4:59
  existences in the Self shrinks not thereafter from aught.
• 5:05
  He in whom it is the Self Being that has become all existences,
• 5:09
  that are becomings for he has the perfect knowledge.
• 5:14
  How shall he be deluded? When shall he have grief, who
• 5:19
  sees everywhere oneness? It is He that has gone abroad,
• 5:25
  that which is bright, bodyless, without scar, of imperfection,
• 5:31
  without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil.
• 5:36
  The seer, the thinker, the one who becomes everywhere the self
• 5:42
  existent, has ordered objects perfectly according to their
• 5:47
  nature from years. Sempiternal End Quote Reference
• 5:54
  Isha Upanishad verses 6 to 8 translated by Sriorobindo in the
• 5:59
  Upanishads. Sriorobindo Notes quote This
• 6:04
  apparently self acting mechanism of nature conceals an imminent
• 6:09
  divine will that compels and guides it and shapes its
• 6:13
  purposes. But you cannot feel or know that
• 6:17
  will while you are shut up in your narrow cell of personality,
• 6:22
  blinded and chained to your viewpoint of the ego and its
• 6:25
  desires. For you can wholly respond to it
• 6:29
  Only when you are impersonalized by Knowledge and widened to see
• 6:34
  all things in the self and in God and the self and God in all
• 6:40
  things, all becomes here by the power of the Spirit.
• 6:45
  All do their works by the imminence of God in things and
• 6:49
  His presence in the heart of every creature.
• 6:54
  End Quote Reference Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The
• 6:59
  Hidden Forces of Life, Chapter One, Life Through the Eyes of
• 7:04
  the Yogin, page 23.