2. MENTAL CONSTRUCTIONS AND THE FREEDOM OF THE SPIRIT

    In the lower existence the order is automatic, the binding of Nature complete, her groove firm and imperative: the cosmic Consciousness-Force evolves a pattern of Nature and its habitual mould or fixed round of action and obliges the infrarational being to live and act according to the pattern and in the mould or round made for it. Mind in man starts with this prearranged pattern and routine, but, as it evolves,

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it enlarges the design and expands the mould and, tries to replace this fixed unconscious or half-conscious law of automatism by an order based. on ideas and significances and life-motives, or it attempts an intelligent standardisation and a framework determined. by rational purpose, utility and convenience. There is nothing really binding or permanent in man's knowledge-structures or his life structures, but still he cannot but create standards of thought, knowledge, personality, life, conduct and, more or less consciously and completely, base his existence on them or, at. Least, try his best to frame his life in the ideative cadre of his chosen or accepted dharmas. In the passage to. the spiritual life the supreme ideal held up is, on the contrary, not law but liberty in the Spirit; the Spirit breaks through all formulas to find its self and, if it has still to be concerned with expression, it must arrive at the liberty of a free and true instead of an artificial expression, a true and spontaneous spiritual order. "Abandon all dharmas, all standards and rules of being and action, and take refuge in Me alone", is the summit rule of the highest existence held up by the is the Divine Being to the seeker. In the seeking for this freedom, in the liberation from constructed law into law of self and spirit, in the casting away of the mental control in order to substitute for it the control of the spiritual Reality, an abandonment of the lower constructed truth of mind for the higher essential Truth of being, it is possible to pass through a stage in which there is an inner freedom but a lack of outer an action in the flux of nature childlike or inert like a leaf lying passive or driven by the wind or even incoherent or extravagant in outer semblance. It is possible also to at a temporary ordered spiritual expression of the self which is sufficient for the stage one can reach for a time

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or in this life; or it may be a personal order of self-expression valid according to the norm of what one has already realised of the spiritual truth but afterwards changing freely by the force of spirituality to express the yet larger truth that one goes on to realise. But the supramental gnostic being stands in a consciousness in which knowledge is self-existent and manifests itself according to the order self-determined by the" will of the Infinite in the supernature. This self-determination according to a self-existent knowledge replaces the. automatism of Nature and the standards of Mind by the spontaneity of a Truth self-aware and self-active in the very grain of the existence.

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    This is the whole sense and the inherent law and necessity" of the passage from the purely mental and material being and life to the spiritual and supramental being and life, that the liberation, perfection, self fulfilment for which the being in the Ignorance is seeking can only be reached by a passing out of his present nature of ignorance into a nature of spiritual self knowledge and world-knowledge. This greater nature we speak of as Supernature because it is beyond his actual level of consciousness and capacity; but in fact it is his own true nature, the height and completeness of it, to which he must arrive if he is to find his real self and whole possibility of being Whatever happens in Nature must be the result of Nature, the effectuation of what is implied or inherent in it, its inevitable fruit and consequence. If our nature is a fundamental inconscience and ignorance arriving with difficulty at an imperfect knowledge, an imperfect formulation of consciousness and being, the results in our beings,

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life and action and creation must be, as they now are, a constant imperfection. and insecure half result, an imperfect mentality, an, imperfect life, an imperfect physical existence.. We seek to construct systems of knowledge and systems of life by which we can arrive at some perfection of our existence, some order of right relations, right use of mind, right. use and happiness and beauty of life, right use of the body. But what we achieve is a constructed half-rightness mixed with much that is wrong and unlovely and unhappy; our: successive constructions, because of the vice in them and. because mind and life cannot rest permanently anywhere in their seeking, are exposed to destruction, decadence, disruption of their order, and we pass from them to others which are not more finally successful or enduring, even if on one side or another they may be richer and fuller or more rationally plausible. It cannot be otherwise, because we can construct nothing which goes beyond our nature; imperfect, we cannot: construct perfection, however wonderful may seem to us the machinery our mental ingenuity invents, however externally: effective. Ignorant, we cannot construct a system of entirely, true and fruitful self-knowledge or world-knowledge: our. science itself is a construction, a mass, of formulas and devices;. masterful in knowledge of processes and in the creation of apt machinery, but ignorant of the foundations of our being and of world-being, it cannot perfect our nature and therefore- cannot perfect our life.