The Metaphysical basis for Integral Health — illusionism and health

errorAn error has a chance to be corrected whereas an illusion needs to be rejected.

In Chapter V of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo makes a very significant comment on the illusory view of existence. There are certain spiritual experiences which hold that Reality or Brahman is only an undifferentiated pure consciousness (Being) or a fathomless zero (Non-Being) while ‘Existence’ as manifested in the cosmos and the individual is secondary, ‘unreal’, and hence an ‘illusion’. How is such an ‘illusion’ sustained? It has been traditionally suggested that such a ‘falsity’ exists due to a conceptual or formative phenomenon called Maya — the existence as we perceive is an illusory phenomenon that appears to be ‘true’ only to the subjective mind-space of the observer. What is the remedy? The conventional answer suggested is to get ‘liberated’ from the illusion (and hence from existence). Evidently, such a world-view would make the pursuit of health per se illusory and meaningless. If existence is considered to be an illusion, life itself would be an illusion and the pursuit of health and well-being would turn out to be in the long run a meaningless ordeal. Sri Aurobindo admits that the spiritual experience of Reality as pure Being or Non-Being beyond all existence has a certain validity but also points out that it is only one side of the Truth and hence a partial representation of Reality. The constructions based on that partial experience appear to be exaggerated, illogical and self-contradictory. In fact, The Life Divine counters the ‘illusionist’ model both psychologically and metaphysically.

The psychological contradiction of the illusionist model

Sri Aurobindo mentions two important psychological flaws of the illusionist view of existence:

The sensory perception that the sun moves around the earth cannot be called an illusion in psycho-physiological terms because our bodily senses actually perceive the phenomenon. Yet this perception is an error when we go behind our senses and take a rational, scientific view of things.

Sri Aurobindo (1) clarifies further, “The snake-rope image cannot be used to illustrate the non-existence of the world, it would only mean that our seeing of the world is not that of the world as it really is.”(p.57) “The illusionist metaphors all fail when you drive them home — they are themselves an illusion. Identification with the body is an error, not an illusion. We are not the body, but the body is still something of ourselves. With realisation the erroneous identification ceases — in certain experiences the existence of the body is not felt at all. In the full realisation the body is within us, not we in it, it is an instrumental formation in our wider being — our consciousness exceeds but also pervades it, — it can be dissolved without our ceasing to be the self (2).“

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2. The second psychological flaw is that the theory of ‘illusion’ of existence is merely a mental construct but the mental plane does not suffice to be the sole determinant of the destiny of the individual soul. Actually, the ‘mind’ finds it difficult to accept any higher principle of existence beyond itself and as such if it has at all to experience a ‘Reality’ beyond itself, the only plausible way is to get its functioning ‘dissolved’ or ‘abolished’.

However, Sri Aurobindo does not consider the ‘mind’ and its cognitive capacity to be the summit of the individual consciousness and that its sole destiny is to get itself finally dissolved. He advocates an evolution of consciousness beyond the mind and en-route the Absolute, a whole hierarchy of cognitive fields surpassing the ordinary mind can manifest. The ordinary mind need not be dissolved but can evolve so that ‘higher than mental’ ranges capable of progressively manifesting the Absolute become a ‘tangible’ reality. Thus, dissolution of the individual in the Absolute Reality is replaced by a manifestation of the Absolute Reality in the evolved individual consciousness.

The metaphysical contradiction of the illusionist model

Sri Aurobindo is very clear and bold in his metaphysical approach to Illusionism and is very explicit in exposing its self-contradictory standpoint. If ‘illumination’ of consciousness necessitates ‘dissolution’ of the individual, then the world will always remain a cruel ordeal of darkness, death and suffering!

“It is so that ascetic philosophy tends to conceive it. But individual salvation can have no real sense if existence in the cosmos is itself an illusion. In the Monistic view the individual soul is one with the Supreme, its sense of separateness an ignorance, escape from the sense of separateness and identity with the Supreme its salvation. But who then profits by this escape? Not the supreme Self, for it is supposed to be always and inalienably free, still, silent, pure. Not the world, for that remains constantly in the bondage and is not freed by the escape of any individual soul from the universal Illusion. It is the individual soul itself which effects its supreme good by escaping from the sorrow and the division into the peace and the bliss. There would seem then to be some kind of reality of the individual soul as distinct from the world and from the Supreme even in the event of freedom and illumination. But for the Illusionist the individual soul is an illusion and non-existent except in the inexplicable mystery of Maya. Therefore we arrive at the escape of an illusory non-existent soul from an illusory non-existent bondage in an illusory non-existent world as the supreme good which that non-existent soul has to pursue! For this is the last word of the Knowledge, ‘There is none bound, none freed, none seeking to be free.... Maya meets us even in our escape and laughs at the triumphant logic which seemed to cut the knot of her mystery (3).”

In fact, Sri Aurobin

The Metaphysical basis for Integral Health — illusionism and health

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