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"The Two Negations  I. THE MATERIALIST DENIAL"

(Book 1 Chapter II)
 

Introduction
Sri Aurobindo continues to discuss how we can reconcile the contradictions we experience through Nature's slow and difficult method, overcome our divided nature, and thereby fulfill our human aspiration for God, light, freedom, and immortality. He indicates that when we rise beyond our surface, sense orientation of mind to higher levels of mentality -- including spiritualized mind of vision and intuition  -- we develop a truer view of life, reconciling things that appear in opposition, perceiving them as true complements. This ascent in consciousness enables us to shed our divided nature, perceive the oneness and unity of all things, which gives us he right consciousness to fulfill our human aspiration.

Sri Aurobindo then focuses on one particular contradiction and duality of life that we (falsely) perceive through our divided consciousness: the contradiction between Life and Spirit. I.e. that though they might on the surface seem contradictory to one another, from our higher consciousness we perceive that they are true complements; that spirit extends its spiritual nature to life, and life fulfills itself in spirit. He says that we can only perceive that complementary Oneness between Life and Spirit through our higher consciousness. 

The focus in this chapter however is on the limitation of our perceptions of the Life side.  That is we have a Materialist view of the world that denies Spirit. He says that this empirical, material view of the world keeps us from perceiving the vast array of truths of life. [from life to spirit]

And yet he says that despite its ignorance of the subtle forces, powers, and energies of life, the Materialist view serves a purpose, in that it aspires for objectivity, a scientific approach of things, which can help us overcome dogma, and superstition, such as those espoused by religious and other limited/partial views of life [It is of course ironic that the Materialist himself is filled with the dogma of his own materialist view, since he denies the planes of life -- the psychological, spiritual, etc that make up the totality of life!]

Finally, Sri Aurobindo concludes that the Materialist and Spiritual view actually share much in commons, such as the desire to overcome death and suffering from their own opposite standpoints.

[Sri Aurobindo will eventually indicate that we can reconcile Matter and Spirit by bringing the spiritual Being into the Becomings of our material existence so that it is perfected and ennobled life, enabling us to realize and fulfill our human aspiration for perfection, truth, and bliss; God, light, freedom, and immortality.]

 

Here are the main points in greater detail:

Reconciling the Contradictions into Higher Harmonies through Our Spiritual Ascent
The contradictions, extremes we see in the world -- e.g. matter and spirit, pleasure and pain, truth and falsehood -- can be reconciled into higher harmonies when we move to a higher consciousness. We can begin to move to this higher status by discovering and living in a higher rational mind (instead of the lower sense-based mind that we currently live in; influenced by the input of the surface of life through the senses, which distorts our ability to perceive the true truth, the multiplicity of truths of life).

We perceive the higher harmonies that transcend the contradictions of life when we rise beyond even rational mind to the spiritual realms of mind, i.e. spiritual mind.

[The unity of the contradictions can only be fully known, realized, in states above our normal mentality, in spiritual mind, culminating in the plane of Supermind. There we have the complete truth perception of the unity of all things; where contradictions are seen in their integral Oneness. There we see the Unity of all, including the apparent separate worlds of spirit. From that poise, we develop the capacity to fulfill our human aspiration.]
 

Contradictory Views of Life Itself
Now Sri Aurobindo discusses one particular contradiction that humanity has found itself in -- the division between life and spirit.

There is also a contradiction of extremes by which humanity has viewed life itself. At one end, particularly in the West, we tend to view life from a materialistic standpoint, of the true reality of life as measured by material substance. At the other extreme is a purely spiritual perception of life; that spirit is truth, and material reality but a transitory reality, or even an illusion. We need to reconcile these two opposites.

The Limitation of the Materialist View
In this chapter we focus on the materialist view of existence -- that knowledge can only be attained through the senses, through observable facts derived by those senses. In fact, this is opposite of the truth. The senses are flawed instruments. We can only have true knowledge of a thing when we shed the sense-input orientation of the mind (which perceives only the surface, the material reality or adheres to the strict empiricism of science), so that it can function from its higher modes of the disciplined intellect, of rational mind, and even to the higher spiritual realms of mind where we are more able to grasp the true knowledge and true truths of things.

The Utility of Materialist View
And yet even the sense-based fact-gathering materialist, who only sees the surface of life and calls it all of life, serves a purpose, in that he adheres to a strict austerity of the scientific approach, which is able to perceive and overcome the dogma, falsehood, and superstition of religionists and other single-minded views of life.

Reconciliation of Materialist and Ascetic Spiritual View
If we think it through we see that [ironically] that there is a similarity of ultimate purpose between the materialist view and the opposite extreme view of the spiritual ascetic who denies the world and its material reality. We see this in materialist science's desire to conquer death, which is similar to the spiritual goals of the spirit-oriented person to find immortality.

[It is interesting to see how Sri Aurobindo shows unity of purpose in such apparent disparate fields as spirit and science. Because he had risen to the consciousness above mind to spiritual mind and above in his own life, he himself had seen the higher harmony that both these views are moving towards. Thus, he saw the reconciliation of these and many other opposites in life. He developed this unitarian consciousness in his own being, the supra-mental consciousness, which he suggested all of humanity was eventually moving towards as its ultimate status and purpose in life.]

[Ultimately Sri Aurobindo will suggest that we reconcile spirit and matter by suggesting we bring spirit into matter; in other words bringing the spirit Being into the daily Becomings of our lives.]