Out of the Sevenfold Ignorance towards the Sevenfold Knowledge

Garry Jacobs 1

Involution creates a Seven-fold Ignorance

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Original Ignorance of the Absolute

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Cosmic Ignorance of the unity of God and Nature

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Temporal Ignorance of our eternal existence

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Egoistic Ignorance of our oneness with others

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Psychological Ignorance of the entire fullness of our being

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Constitutional Ignorance of our surface mind, life, body

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Practical Ignorance of truth and right action in the world 2

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Process of Creation by Involution

By Self-conception , Supermind projects Brahman as an object to its own subjective self-experience

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By Self-limitation , Mind divides the One into God & Nature, Consciousness & Force, Time & Timeless, Finite & Infinite

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By Self-absorption , Consciousness becomes involved in Force as energetic movements of Life and immobile forms of Matter

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Ego separates our surface consciousness from the Self in the depths and from other selves

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Ignorance knowledge separates us from the entirety and integrality of 3

Process of Evolution is by Ascent and Integration

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Evolution raises the Force of Consciousness in the manifest being to the greater intensity of what is still unmanifest

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Evolution is by a heightening, widening, integration

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Values change as we ascend to each new level

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Integral transformation to manifest Spirit in Life is the aim of Being in Nature

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Evolution is growth out of 7-fold ignorance into integral Knowledge 4

Indian Spiritual Tradition

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Starts from the surface in one of the parts of being and tries to reach the spirit

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It moves to the subtle inner mind – Purusha – and from there to the Superconscient

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It regards the individual as temporary

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It regards the world as ephemeral or irredeemable

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It regards the ego for as creator and rejects the world as incorrigible falsehood, suffering or Maya 5

Tradition starts from Mind and accepts as real separation and division into

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Absolute and the Relative

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Immutable Brahman and mutable Brahman

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Transcendent and Universal

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Matter and Spirit

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Life and Spirit

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God and Nature 6

Constitutional Ignorance

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We are unaware of our true self

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Our consciousness is founded on the plane of Matter

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Our predominant principle is mental intelligence supported by the sense-mind

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Our mental intelligence is preoccupied with material existence

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We rely on the emphasis of senses on outer actions & appearances

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Our lives are a compromise with matter—material vitalism

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Mental, Vital and Physical function separately and in conflict

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This is the crux of our Ignorance 7

First step toward humanity’s progress

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This preoccupation with matter and life is a necessary first step

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Outgrowing vital materialism is essential for true happiness and fullness of being

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Growth into full mental being is first transitional move to freedom and perfection 8

Becoming mental beings

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Rising in the scale of mind opens the possibility of a higher, wider existence, consciousness, force, happiness & delight Mind is liberated from tyranny of physical and life

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We acquire greater knowledge & control over our physical-vital existence Life and body become obedient to higher will, ethical perception and aesthetic intelligence Our parts acquire higher values Mother should be more real to us than property & social approval 9

Mind is not enough

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Surface mental knowledge of physical universe is imperfect guide

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Even truths of physical things cannot be entirely known

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We cannot know or make the right use of material existence

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Mind serves the vital and physical

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Mind lacks the power to purify and transform life 10

We must go beyond and within

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We must heighten and widen our consciousness universally and infinitely

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We must infuse, transform and integralize our natural being with the Being, Consciousness and Delight of Spirit 11

Overcoming Constitutional Ignorance

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We can heighted and widen our natural being and integrate it with higher spiritual principles

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We can rise above mental intelligence to discover higher principles, powers, ranges, instruments beyond mind, vital, physical

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We can go within to discover ourselves as Soul or Spirit using mind, life and body as field for experience

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Then we can possess the true constitution of our being 12

Psychological Ignorance

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Conquest of Constitutional Ignorance cannot be complete without conquest of Psychological Ignorance

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Psychological Ignorance is a limitation of self-knowledge to surface conscient waking self

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Behind the surface is a vast subliminal existence and energy of our secret being 13

Surface consciousness is bound, hedged in, encircled

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Ego divides us from not self

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Limitation of the senses prevents wider knowledge

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Identification with the body limits us in space and time

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Identification with a class, position, role, social identity

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Limitation of our beliefs, attitudes and values 14

Subliminal Being

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Subconscient

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Intraconscient

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Circumconscient

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Superconscient

15

Subconscient

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Subconscient is below the mind & conscious life – inferior and obscure

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Subconscient is Inconscience in process of becoming conscious

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Purely physical – bodily functions and life processes

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Vital elements – unmentalized impulses, urges

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Submerged sense-mind – more operative in the animal and plant

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Memory of past impressions beneath the surface arising in dreams

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Everything rejected from the surface

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Subconscious is reverse of the surface

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Subconscious supports all in us that refuses to change 16

Changing the subconscious

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Changing the subconscious is indispensable for higher life and integral transformation of the nature

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Subconscious cannot be changed by a descent alone

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Descent would plunge us into dull trance or sleep

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Gaining awareness and control of it are very important

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Mind can be aware and control only by –

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ascending to superconscient

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looking down from the heights

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transforming the depths by the higher consciousness 17

Intraconscient of the Subliminal

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Intraconscient is still more valuable and potent than Subconscious

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The real power is not on the surface

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Inner intelligence, sense-mind, vital and subtle physical being

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Subliminal mediates between Inconscient and the larger planes of Life and Mind created by the involutionary descent

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Subliminal supports our waking consciousness &surface responses 18

Circumconscient

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Circumconscient is an enveloping consciousness which receives currents from universal Mind, Life and Subtle material forces

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We can control by penetrating the dividing wall and becoming conscious of them

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We become fully aware by going behind the veil of surface mind and living in the inner mind, life and inmost soul

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We can also rise to a higher plane of mind above the waking consciousness 19

Superconscient

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Superconscient & Inconscient were created by a double involution

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Superconscient includes the higher spiritual planes of mind, supermind and pure spiritual being

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Ascent beyond normal mind is necessary to reach integral self knowledge, consciousness and being

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Self-transcendence involves Ascent, Widening and Integration

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We must rise into higher planes of Mind to become conscious in the Superconscient

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Destiny of man is to unite the sSubconscient with Superconscient 20

Temporal Ignorance

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We live from moment to moment in Time ignorant of past & future

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Our view is limited to the present body between a single birth and death

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We are ignorant of the karma of past deeds

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We do not know what is waiting in future births

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Temporal ignorance is dependent upon the constitutional ignorance – living on the surface 21

Realizing our Immortality

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Overcoming temporal ignorance is possible only by withdrawing from absorbing material preoccupation and to live constantly in the inner and higher planes of spiritual Mind and pure Spirit

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We have to live in the consciousness of our immortality

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We can awaken to and live consciously in both Timeless Immortality and Time Immortality

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Timeless Immortality –the Spirit’s timeless existence is the true immortality

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Time Immortality –the soul’s perpetual continuity of temporal existence and experience from life to life 22

Overcoming Egoistic Ignorance

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Ego is falsification of our true individuality

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Ego separates us from other souls & shuts us up in our individual experience

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Ego prevents us from living as the universal individual

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Ego separates us from God, our highest Self, the one Self in all existences, Divine Inhabitant within us

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Ego cannot survive heightening, deepening and widening of spirit

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True individuality remains after disappearance of ego

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By widening, our separate individuality becomes universal

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By rising into the supreme infinity and eternity, we become independent of individual and cosmic existence 23

Overcoming Cosmic Ignorance

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We gain knowledge of ourselves as the timeless, immutable Self possessing itself in and beyond cosmos

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We reunite and reconcile the One and the Many

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We reconcile eternal unity and eternal multiplicity

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We reunite soul with God

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We discover the Divine in the universe – basis for the Divine Play in Time 24

Overcoming the Original Ignorance

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Now we can approach the Absolute as the source of all circumstances and relations

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We can raise our existence to absolute values that converge into the Absolute 25

Overcoming the Practical Ignorance

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Practical Ignorance expresses as wrong-doing, suffering, error, confusion, discord and falsehood

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Only when the other six forms of Ignorance are transformed can perfect Knowledge replace the practical ignorance.

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False, imperfect values are transformed into divine values of Infinite Being, Consciousness-Force and Ananda 26

Mental vs. Supramental Knowledge

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Mental knowledge is knowledge of the separate parts and their surface relationship to one another

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Supramental Knowledge is knowledge of the whole and integration of all its aspects with one another to discover

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Finite as frontal appearance of the infinite

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Ignorance as limitation of knowledge not its opposite

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Formlessness as the basis for all form

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Oneness as the source of the Many

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Silence as basis for all movement

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Being as basis for Becoming – not its opposite

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Absolute as the basis for the Relative 27

Conscious Spiritual Evolution

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Change from mental into spiritual and supramental way of being

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Self-expansion out of sevenfold ignorance into sevenfold knowledge

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Natural completion of upward process of Nature

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The true spiritual individual emerges

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Spiritual Evolution transforms life in Ignorance into Divine Life of truth-conscious spirit

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Life no longer appears as a formation of things and an action of beings created by separative Ignorance 28

Sincerity

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Spiritual sincerity is an inner psychic status capable of receiving Grace

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Psychic sincerity brings one in contact with Mother’s consciousness

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Mental receptivity results in clarity & attracts the knowledge we seek

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Physical sincerity restores lost objects

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Body’s sincerity is receptivity that thrills in gratitude

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Gratitude is an emotion of the psychic being

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Sincerity makes gratitude possible

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Sincerity to Mother is to be aware of God’s intention and act on it – he tells us that intention in the book

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Increasing sincerity is everlasting opening 29