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Essays on the Gita -Sri Aurobindo
Second Series : PART-2 : Chapter 18
The Gunas, Faith and Works
But for the Gita absolute Brahman is also supreme Purusha, and Purusha is always conscious Soul, though its highest consciousness, its super consciousness, if we will, — as, one may add, its lowest which we call the Inconscient,—is something very different from our mind consciousness to which alone we are accustomed to give the name. There is in that highest super conscience a highest truth and dharma of immortality, a greatest divine way of being, a way of the eternal and infinite. That eternal way of existence and divine manner of being exists already in the eternity of the Purushottama, but we are now attempting to create it here too in our becoming by Yoga; our endeavour is to become the Divine, to be as He, madbhava. That also depends on sraddha . It is by an act of our conscious substance and a belief in its truth, an inmost will to live it or be it that we come by it; but this does not mean that it does not already exist beyond us. Though it may not exist for our outward mind until we see and create ourselves anew into it, it is still there in the Eternal and we may say even that it is already there in our own secret self; for in us also, in our depths the Purushottama always is. Our growing into that, our creation of it is his and its manifestation in us. All creation indeed since it proceeds from the conscious substance of the Eternal, is a manifestation of him and proceeds by a faith, acceptance, will to be in the originating consciousness, Chit-Shakti.
We are concerned at present, however, not with the meta physical issue, but with the relation of this will or faith in our being to our possibility of growth into the perfection of the divine nature. This power, this sraddha is in any case our basis. When we live, when we are and do according to our desires, that is a persistent act of s ́raddha ̄ belonging mostly to our vital and physical, our tamasic and rajasic nature. And when we try to be, to live and to do according to the Shastra, we proceed by a persistent act of sraddha which belongs, supposing it to be not a routine faith, to a sattwic tendency that is constantly labouring to impose itself on our rajasic and tamasic parts.
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