Absolute Spirit - Hegel and Aurobindo

 Kant ignited a revolution in philosophy with his doctrine of transcendental idealism, which asserted that consciousness is not only receptive in character, but also is constitutive of it’s experiential contents, accomplished through an a priori threefold synthesis in sensation, imagination an cognition.

The original unity of apperception is the unified self-consciousness, or ‘I think’, that accompanies every act of experience. This is not subjective consciousness, per Kant, rather, it is transcendental, objective and impersonal consciousness which itself is presupposed by the empirical, subjective and individual ego.

Hegel appropriates the shape of this logic-based impersonal unity into something he calls ‘Absolute Spirit’, that which sits as a supreme metaphysical category of the highest generality. Its character defines a universal consciousness which entirely creates and projects its own experiential contents and reabsorbs them as self-mediated identity-in-difference. This Absolute is derived as the culminating product of the dialectical process which sublates all abstract opposites, overcoming all one-sided thought determinations at the same time as preserving their ideal moments as a concrete totality.

For Hegel, this moment represents the unification of the knowing subject with that which is known, making possible a true knowledge of ‘things in themselves’, that which Kant had denied.

Theologically, this notion of Absolute also represented the Holy Trinity for Hegel, insofar as the self-differentiated identification of nature and God, or man and the divine, is drawn.

Aurobindo, in the 20^th century, appropriated this Hegelian notion of Absolute Spirit, and employed it to radically restructure the architectonic framework of Vedanta into contemporary European terms. It should be noted for Aurobindo that the Absolute was not an outcome of dialectical process, rather, it is a description of an experience of the superconscient phases of awareness, identifiable in yogic concentration, meditation, and contemplation. The Absolute is not a rational or logical consciousness, for Aurobindo, rather, it is a supramental mode of awareness through which Spirit undergoes involution, from Supermind, to Overmind, to Intuitivemind, Illuminedmind, Highermind and physical mind, itself – a felt totality.

Aurobindo’s Absolute raises from the identity of Being (Sat) through radiant supramental intuitive awareness (Chit) to supreme bliss (Ananda). Thus all manifestations of the Absolute have ontological, epistemological and axiological properties.

The categorical scheme of Charles Sanders Pierce also echoes these qualities – of Firstness (aesthetic value), Secondness (existence) and Thirdness (logical structure).

Spirit then, for Hegel and Aurobindo, if not directly, Pierce, is the dynamic three-fold process of the Absolute as a self realising universal consciousness which undergoes a cycle of self-differentiation and self-reconciliation. Hegel criticised the idea of the Absolute as a static oneness as portrayed by Parmenides, Spinoza, Judaism and Vedanta, arguing that it is an attenuated abstraction from the concrete activity of living Spirit which is a triadic process of passing over into otherness and the subsequent restoration of primordial unity now enriched by a moment of difference. The Absolute contains and comprehends three moments in which it posits itself:  eternal Being in and with itself, in the form of universality; the form of manifestation or appearance, Being for another; and the form of return from appearance (Idea, Nature and Spirit).

Idea equates to God in his eternity before the creation of the world – the pure, self-thinking thought. In the second moment, Idea is projected outwards onto Nature, an unconscious system of intelligence, which subsequently undergoes a dialectical self-development, ending in a return to full consciousness of itself as the eternal Absolute.

Heidegger later picks up on the second moment and characterises Being of the Absolute as self-revealing, self-manifesting, coming to presence through emergent blossoming radiating outwards into luminous, lucid Openness.

More than a Creator God, this God has mediation of self with self, this apparent otherness, of Nature, is the very life of Spirit. Spirit multiplies itself into an intersubjective comm-unity of individuals who achieve higher stages of self-realisation precisely through their mutual recognition of one another. For Hegel:

‘It is the real return of self into self [through searching into otherness] which alone makes the depths of God.’ (Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion)

Here is Hegel’s structure of the Christian Trinity - God as Spirit differentiates Himself from Himself, posits an other, and becomes man in order to become God.

Aurobindo radically recasts Vedantic ontology in the terminology of this Hegelian living Spirit, through the introduction of a Supermind, the Real-Idea. Supermind is the integral creative consciousness which mediates Satchitananda and the world – the extension of the Absolute into space and time, both static and dynamic.

For Aurobindo, the involution and evolution of Spirit occurs through an ontological spectrum called the ‘Sevenfold Chord of Being’ – the lower hemisphere of Matter-Life-Mind, the middle principle of Supermind through to Satchitananda.

This differs from orthodox Vedanta in several respects. While Shankara viewed world creation to be merely conventional reality and cosmic illusion, dissolved on realisation of the ultimate reality as static Brahman, Sri Aurobindo regards this as fully real. Shankara describes the world as a delusory superimposition of names and forms upon Satchitananda, Sri Aurobindo maintains that reality represents a transformation of consciousness-force, where the lower hemisphere consists in a dazzling panorama of aesthetic value-experience, ultimately itself supreme bliss.

‘From Delight all beings arise, by Delight they exist and grow, to Delight they return.’ (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine)

Aurobindo also makes a crucial distinction between higher and lower maya – lower maya is the gross, separated realm, whereas the higher maya represents the illumined supramental experience of all phenomena, the inexhaustible play, or lila, of creative consciousness, all in each and each in all, nonobstruction between the many and the one in the realm of Consciousness-only.

AN Whitehead’s process cosmology comes to mind here as the interfusion of unit-events composed of felt-intensities, arising out of vectoral prehensions (feeling transmissions) and creative synthesis (fusion of many to one).

Aurobindo distinguishes three ‘poises’ of the Absolute – the Transcendent, sheer unity beyond creation, The Universal, where all events occur  simultaneously, and the Individual, the moment of sheer diversity, ordinary mind, successive minutes.

In contrast to Hegel’s system, Aurobindo’s has no return inherent in it’s logical structure, rather, the ecstatic dance of Shiva that characterises lila, spontaneousness, adventure, experimentation, emergent novelty and unpredictability guide it’s expansion. Aurobindo’s evolutionary theory posits a non-linear emergence of something evolutionary principles as different to mind as mind is to life, principles which supercede mentation (principles hinted at by the Supermind concept).

Important to note too is Aurobindo’s Neo-Vedantic theory of integration – where the higher emergent principles function to ‘raise up’ the lower hemisphere of mind, life and matter, and thus transform existence, itself. This is not dissimilar to Hegel’s sublation, which contains three meanings – to overcome (abstract polarities), to preserve (one sided ideal moments from the polarities), to ‘raise up’, into richer, more comprehensive categories.

Ref:

Odin, S. (1981). Sri Aurobindo and Hegel on the involution and evolution of Absolute Spirit. Philosophy East and West, 31:2, 179 – 191.