The Material World Is the Effect, Not the Cause, of Vital, Mental, or Spiritual Manifestation

Humanity, for the most part, continues to believe that the material world occupies a primary place in the creation of the universe, and that somehow, Matter is able to create the encoding and the complex systems that come along with that encoding out of some random mixture of elements.

If we review every other aspect of our existence, however, and examine the process of creation of inventions, we find that just the opposite occurs. A sculptor envisions a form in the material he is sculpting, and then applies his vision, his intelligence, his developed skills and his vital force to turn the material form into the expression of his vision.

Music does not arise automatically out of matter, but is channeled and created through the mental, emotional and vital powers of the individual creating the music.

Computers do not gain the power to analyze data purely from the physical box being assembled; rather, a programmer needs to input software that will operate and utilize the capacity built into the box.

It is the fixation with the foundation of Matter that creates our confusion in this regard. If we examine the universal manifestation, to the extent we can gain insight into it, we invariably find that the more subtle levels, the mental level, the vital level are the ones that drive the operation and changes within matter.

This brings us to the question of how this comes about, and this in turn brings us to an exploration and increasing level of understanding of planes or worlds of existence that are the native home of mental powers and beings, or vital powers and beings, and eventually, we determine there are yet further planes and beings that precede and are causative of even these mental and vital planes, domains we may call spiritual or supramental, etc.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “This character of the other worlds defeats all our attempts to give the premier importance to our own plane of being and to our own part in the mundane manifestation. We do not create God as a myth of our consciousness, but are instruments for a progressive manifestation of the Divine in the material being. We do not create the gods, his powers, but rather such divinity as we manifest is the partial reflection and the shaping here of ete
al godheads. We do not create the higher planes, but are intermediaries by which they reveal their light, power, beauty in whatever form and scope can be given to them by Nature-force on the material plane. It is the pressure of the Life-world which enables life to evolve and develop here in the forms we already know; it is that increasing pressure which drives it to aspire in us to a greater revelation of itself and will one day deliver the mortal from his subjection to the narrow limitations of his present incompetent and restricting physicality. It is the pressure of the Mind-world which evolves and develops mind here and helps us to find a leverage for our mental self-uplifting and expansion, so that we may hope to enlarge continually our self of intelligence and even to break the prison-walls of our matter-bound physical mentality. It is the pressure of the supramental and spiritual worlds which is preparing to develop here the manifest power of the Spirit and by it open our being on the physical plane into the freedom and infinity of the supeconscient Divine; that contact, that pressure can alone liberate from the apparent Inconscience, which was our starting-point, the all-conscient Godhead concealed in us.”

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Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.6 Hidden Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, pp.145-146