Universal Delight of Existence

The Taittiriya Upanishad describes the ascending gradations of bliss, the delight of existence, by starting with one measure of human bliss, and with each higher gradation of conscious awareness, the measure of bliss increases “a hundred and a hundredfold”. Each higher gradation represents also a widening of consciousness to embrace the universal creation. At the top end “is one bliss of the Eternal Spirit”. The Upanishad goes on to explain “The Spirit who is here in a man and the Spirit who is there in the Sun, it is one Spirit and there is no other.”

In our normal human experience, we experience delight of existence in a very fragmentary way, directly tied to our own fulfillment of desire and satisfaction. As we grow and widen in consciousness, we begin, through an increasing universal sympathy, or compassion, to experience the larger delight associated with the universal creation, although still in a limited way based on aggregation of parts rather than an established unity of consciousness.

The supramental consciousness resolves the fragmentation of consciousness and therefore brings with it the capacity to experience the universal bliss of existence, as well as the transcendent bliss of the Eternal.

Sri Aurobindo explains: “One in self with all, the supramental being will seek the delight of self-manifestation of the Spirit in himself but equally the delight of the Divine in all: he will have the cosmic joy and will be a power for bringing the bliss of the Spirit, the joy of being to others; for their joy will be part of his own joy of existence. To be occupied with the good of all beings, to make the joy and grief of others one’s own has been described as a sign of the liberated and fulfilled spiritual man. The supramental being will have no need, for that, of an altruistic self-effacement, since this occupation will be intimate to his self-fulfilment, the fulfilment of the One in all, and there will be no contradiction or strife between his own good and the good of others: nor will he have any need to acquire a universal sympathy by subjecting himself to the joys and griefs of creatures in the Ignorance; his cosmic sympathy will be part of his inborn truth of being and not dependent on a personal participation in the lesser joy and suffering; it will transcend what it embraces and in that transcendence will be its power. His feeling of universality, his action of universalilty will be always a spontaneous state and natural movement, an automatic expression of the Truth, an act of the joy of the Spirit’s self-existence.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 27, “The Gnostic Being”