The Door Of Escape From the Ignorance

Combining knowledge, action and dedication, the seeker is able to understand the order of the cosmos and his role in it, and devote his life and action to the fulfillment of the divine purpose of existence. This brings about the transcendence of the ego-sense, and a new perspective or standpoint which alters the seeker from the basis of Ignorance to a new foundation in Knowledge. Ignorance is understood to be the mistaking of the illusion for the ultimate reality, and for the fixation on the action of the lower Nature of the Gunas and the fragmented ways of seeing and thinking that are operative at the mental and vital levels. Knowledge is understood to be the liberation from the divided and separative view of things to take a new stand from a position of unity and Oneness.

Sri Aurobindo describes the manifestation of the universal Being: “First as the immutable timeless self omnipresent and all-supporting which is in its eternity being and not becoming. Then, held in that being there is an essential power or spiritual principle of self-becoming, svabhava, through which by spiritual self-vision it determines and expresses, creates by liberation all that is latent or contained in its own existence. The power or the energy of that self-becoming looses forth into universal action, Karma, all that is thus determined in the spirit. All creation is this action, is this working of the essential nature, is Karma. But it is developed here in a mutable Nature of intelligence, mind, life, sense and form-objectivity of material phenomenon actually cut off from the absolute light and limited by the Ignorance. All its workings become there a sacrifice of the soul in Nature to the supreme Soul secret within her, and the supreme Godhead dwells therefore in all as the Master of their sacrifice, whose presence and power govern it and whose self-knowledge and delight of being receive it.”

This understanding of the ordering of manifestation and existence is the key to the liberation: “To know this is to have the right knowledge of the universe and the vision of God in the cosmos and to find out the door of escape from the Ignorance. For this knowledge, made effective for man by the offering up of his works and all his consciousness to the Godhead in all, enables him to return to his spiritual existence and through it to the supracosmic Reality eternal and luminous above this mutable Nature.”

Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Second Series, Part I, Chapter 4, The Secret of Secrets, pp. 294-295