The Status of Consciousness Where One Can See Things as They Are

As long as an individual is rooted in his own ego-standpoint, he sees and interprets things from that standpoint and cannot, by definition, ‘see things as they are’ in the wider creation. There is the famous story of 5 different observers of a traffic accident, each one observing from a different standpoint. They came up with 5 different versions of what had happened. Perhaps if there had been another observer, watching from above, and seeing the flow pattern of the traffic, the timing, the circumstances as a whole, rather than from an individual standpoint, there would have been a coherent recap of what happened, as well as an explanation for how and why the 5 ‘on the ground’ observers saw things the way they did.

This alte
ative standpoint, in terms of understanding the forces at play in our lives, is what we may call the ‘divine standpoint’. From this standpoint one can see the comprehensive action, the forces at work and interacting with one another, as well as understand, appreciate and incorporate the nexus of the individual and his standpoint.

It is only from the universal or divine standpoint that one can see beyond the artificial segmentation of the process into past, present and future, and see the rolling out of the universal creation as one whole, present and complete, yet appearing before our individual view as sequential in nature.

The Mother notes: “In another aphorism Sri Aurobindo says — I no longer remember his exact words — that sin is merely something which is not in its right place. In ths perpetual Becoming nothing ever repeats itself, and there are things that disappear, so to speak, into the past; and when their disappearance becomes necessary these things become, for our very limited consciousness, bad and repulsive. And we revolt against them because their time is over. But if we had the overall view, if we could contain within ourselves the past, the present and the future all at once — as it is somewhere above — we would see the relativity of these things and that it is above all the progressive Force of evolution that gives us the will to reject; and that wherever they are in their right place, they are quite acceptable. Only, it is practically impossible to have this experience unless you have the total vision, that is to say, the vision that belongs to the Supreme alone! Therefore you must first of all identify yourself with the Supreme; then, afterwards, with this identification, you can return to a sufficiently exteriorised consciousness and see things as they are. But that is the principle, and to the extent that you are capable of realising it, you reach a state of consciousness where you can look at everything with a smile of total certitude that everything is as it should be….”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 2, Looking at Oneself and Others, pg. 51