The Sevenfold Ignorance

Man’s knowledge scans bright pebbles on the shore   
Of the huge ocean of his ignorance.   
Out, out with the mind and it’s candle flare;   
Light, light the suns that never die.   
   

First, we think the little world that we see, the little self of which we are conscious, is all. We do not know that there is an oceanic reality, an immense Absolute, from which is derived this little swarm of a universe. We forget the source of our life. This is the original ignorance.  

We look at the world—see the passing show, see people being born and dying, movements taking place and fading away, all passing in time-— and we say this world is a phenomenon. We forget that there is behind this world a stable, an immutable, an immobile Self, on the bosom of which the universe revolves — the Being of which the universe is a Becoming. This is the second ignorance or the cosmic ignorance.  

Third, I stay confined to my world of which I am the centre: I am separate from you all, you are so many others; I am alone; I am different. This shutting myself within the walls of my ego is the third ignorance, the egoistic ignorance.  

Fourth, we think the little fifty or sixty years or a hundred years that we have to live is all, that things are over the moment the lifespan is finished and death claims the body. We forget that there is an eternal of which all is the becoming in time. This is the temporal ignorance.  

Even within this little temporal ignorance, we are conscious only of a very small surface part of ourselves; the little mentalizing phenomenon of which we are aware, that constitutes our consciousness or awareness. There is much behind this consciousness, much below, much above, much around. This ignorance is called the psychological ignorance.  

Still further, one thinks his body is all, another person thinks his mind is all, a third one thinks his life-force is all, a fourth thinks a conglomeration of all the three is all. We forget that there is something else behind which lends meaning to this combination of the three; it gives sense and continuity. That is the constitutional ignorance.  

And last, as a result of the operation of this manifold ignorance, we don’t have the key to the practical problems of life. We do not know how to conduct relations in harmony. We do not know how to have oneness. We react wrongly, we take in wrongly, we take in incompletely. This is called the practical ignorance.  

This sevenfold ignorance has to be corrected by a seven-fold knowledge. A knowledge that will always keep before us the reality that there is an absolute which upholds all the cosmic revolutions; which sees that there is a Cosmic Self of which the phenomena of the world are a becoming; which sees that I am not just the body, but I am a portion of the Eternal Soul, an Eternal Psychic, who progresses from life to life and has his progression in time—through the temporal he crosses into the eternal. The knowledge that we strive for knows that the ego is a shadow, that I am not really separate from others, that ego is a veil behind which my consciousness and yours are one—there is a basis of unity. I also know, when this knowledge begins to operate, that my mental knowledge is only a small projection in mental terms, in mental formulae, of the large consciousness that is at my back. I also know—or I should know—that my body, mind, and life are held together by the Self, by the Soul, by the Spirit, which gives unity, continuity, to the others. And as a result of all these plays of knowledge, one develops a feeling, an intuitive perception, of oneness, of harmony in relations, of a spontaneous movement of love from the soul in one to the soul in the other.  

This sevenfold knowledge to correct the sevenfold ignorance is an absolute must if man is to take the next step in his mental evolution. If mind were all, if the present boundaries of human mind were the final, then there would be no future for man in the scheme of evolution. As my Master observes:  

If Mind is all, renounce the hope of bliss;   

If Mind is all, renounce the hope of Truth,   

For Mind can never touch the body of Truth   

And Mind can never see the soul of God . . .  

What is the next step? We have to recognize that the present knowledge given by the mind is only a partial knowledge. We have, at least conceptually, to develop a framework, a perspective of an Integral Knowledge. Every bit of knowledge that we build, that we find and organize in ourselves, must embrace the Integral Reality. And by Integral Reality I mean: God, Nature, Man. Every knowledge has a threefold reference. It will not do to take something as knowledge only if it refers to the individual. Does it hold good on the level of God, on the level of Nature? As I said, there has to be a threefold reference. Only a knowledge that embraces reality in its integrality is the Integral Knowledge.  

And the means to develop it is to develop the consciousness—awareness, the chit, as they say in Sanskrit, the chaitanya —that each one of us has. We have to develop our consciousness. We have to break the mind’s habit of fitting everything into the mould of its logical, rationalizing, intellect; allow some play of feeling, of heart, some play of the intuitive perception. That means, as Sri Aurobindo points out again, that we have to undertake a discipline—each one of us who is serious about the matter—of culturing, of developing our consciousness. When we read, when we hear, let it not be our surface mind that grasps. Hold back, stand back a little, suspend your judgement,—that all-wise judgement—suspend your opinions for a while. And let what you hear sink into you, let what you see go deep in you, stand still, let the mind be like tranquil water reflecting the moon. And you will see that the perception that grows and the conception that follows, are quite different from what we are used to. That again means that each one of us, whatever the name by which we may call it, does yoga.  

Consciously or unconsciously, all of us are participating in the Yoga of Nature, which is a development of consciousness from level to level. The progress is slow as long as we are unaware, as long as we are ignorant participants; but men that we are, we should assert our manhood by exercising our will, by consciously determining the direction of our evolution or development.  

Mental knowledge remains a theory unless it is connected with life, verified in life. Man really grows only as he integrates his mental knowledge with his practical life. We have seen scholars, people highly learned, who arrive at a stage when they realize that they really know nothing.  

There is a classic story which bears repetition. It is the legend of the famous Indian sage, Narada, the divine sage, who had arrived at the acme of human perfection. He had mastered all the branches of knowledge that were open to the human mind. But, at that stage, when he looked into himself and asked what is the purpose of life? What is the way for fulfilment?—his knowledge was of no help. He became very depressed, and invoked Sanat kumara, the divine sage, and told him: ‘Sire, I have mastered all the Vedas, all the sub-Vedas, I have known and practiced all the sciences—archery, warfare, medicine, and so on—but I realize that all that 1 know is only the name, I do not know what the name stands for. I beseech Thy Grace to help me across to the shore of this darkness’.  

Sanatkumara, the Upanishad recalls, was pleased with this confession of ignorance on the part of so learned a man as Narada, and said: ‘Indeed, what thou hast known is only the name'. And the legend continues that he initiated the sage into the inner Science, the inner Art of the soul—the mystic approach to the Divine.  

That is the case of the most intellectually developed among us today. We have to find another route of the development of mind. We have to develop the habit of thinking in order to make life worth living, to make mind an integrated part of the whole of life. Mere scholarship, mere learning has helped nobody. But wisdom, an illumined knowledge, has been the soothing balm to the whole of humanity, not only when the authors of those words of wisdom were alive, but even centuries after. The destiny of man lies in the development of mind towards transcending itself, in opening to faculties which are beyond the logical intellect—the faculties of intuition, inspiration, illumination’.  

With deep gratitude to Shri MP Panditji  

Excerpted from MP Pandit's Sat Sang , Vol 1.