As we begin the next chapter, Sri Aurobindo takes a moment to provide a brief recap of the ground we have covered thus far, and show us the foundational understanding that the examination has provided, as the basis for the detailed process yet lying before us. His summary is just about as concise as anyone can make it:
“There is then a fundamental truth of existence, an Omnipresent Reality, omnipresent above the cosmic manifestation and in it and immanent in each individual. There is also a dynamic power of this Omnipresence, a creative or self-manifesting action of its infinite Consciousness-Force. There is as a phase or movement of the self-manifestation a descent into an apparent material inconscience, an awakening of the individual out of the Inconscience and an evolution of his being into the spiritual and supramental consciousness and power of the Reality, into his own universal and transcendent Self and source of existence. It is on this foundation that we have to base our conception of a truth in our terrestrial being and the possibility of a divine Life in material Nature.”
Further issues to be resolved are the question of the origin of the Ignorance and the nature and process of Knowledge that can and does occur as the evolution of Consciousness out of the material Inconscience occurs. But another difficulty continues to our logical intellect and that is a reconciliation of the role of the individual. Does the individual have any status of Eternity? Is there something or someone who survives death and can achieve liberation and exist on the other side of that liberation?
Inasmuch as we all start out with the experience of the individual personality or ego, and we have a natural attachment to this formulation, it becomes essential that we address the issue at some point, and Sri Aurobindo has chosen to do so in this next chapter titled “The Eternal and the Individual”
reference: Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 2, Part I, Chapter 3, The Eternal and the Individual, pg. 365
Sri Aurobindo Studies 