The Unique Truth of Each Being in Relation to the Divine Manifestation

Recently the question arose about how and in what form the witness consciousness survives death. This is not a question for either philosophical reasoning or religious dogma. Regardless of the opinion that these general approaches put forth, it is between the individual soul, as a unique expression of the Divine in the universal manifestation and the Divine in its totality and reality. Direct knowledge, gained through personal experience, is realistically the only way to go beyond the adoption and recitation of opinions. We can use the authority of a sage or seer, based on their experience, to point us in the right direction to attain the experience; or we can rely on the texts which set forth such experiences, to help us understand the path we need to tread in order to reach this direct knowledge. This also implies that each individual will have his own, very unique relationship to the Divine Truth, which may be similar in certain ways to the experience of others, but nevertheless represents something not exactly reproduced for others. The purpose of the individual nexus in the first place is to provide the basis for multiplicity and uniqueness of experience, making the manifestation richer and more varied than if everyone and everything were indistinguishable.

The Mother writes: ”There is something I was asked some time ago to which I have not yet replied. It is this. I have written somewhere: ’The absolute of every being is its unique relation with the Divine and its unique manner of expressing the Divine in the manifestation.’

“This is what is called here in India the truth of the being or the law of the being, the dharma of the being: the centre and the cause of the individuality.”

“Everyone carries his truth within himself, a truth which is unique, which is altogether his own and which he must express in his life. Now what is this truth? This is the question I have been asked:”

‘What is this truth of the being, and how is it expressed externally in physical life?’

“It is expressed in this way: each individual being has a direct and unique relation with the Supreme, the Origin, That which is beyond all creation. It is this unique relation which must be expressed in one’s life, through a unique mode of being in relation with the Divine. Therefore, each one is directly and exclusively in relation with the Divine — the relation one has with the Divine is unique and exclusive; so that you receive from the Divine, when you are in a receptive state, the totality of the relation it is possible for you to have, and this is neither a sharing nor a part nor a repetition, but exclusively and uniquely the relation which each one can have with the Divine. So, from the psychological point of view, one is all alone in having this direct relation with the Divine.”

“One is all alone with the Supreme…. The relation one has with Him will never have an equal, will never be exactly the same as another’s. No two are the same and therefore nothing can be taken away from you to be given to another. And if this relation disappeared from the creation, it would really disappear — which is impossible.”

“And this means that if one lives in the truth of one’s being, one is an indispensable part of the creation. Naturally, I don’t mean if one lives what one believes one should be, I am saying if one lives the truth of one’s being; if, by a development, one is able to enter into contact with the truth of one’s being, one is immediately in a unique and exclusive relation with the Divine, which hasn’t its equal.” 

“There, now…. And naturally, because it is the truth of your being, that is what you should express in your life.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Our Many Selves: Practical Yogic Psychology, Chapter 6, Some Answers and Explanations, pp. 165-166