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There is another aspect to true discrimination that can enable one to distinguish it. It is of the nature of memory. Sri Aurobindo deals with this esoteric aspect of discrimination in his Record of Yoga. Here he says, "The inner faculties of knowledge, -- revelation, inspiration, discrimination and intuition can be divided into sruti and smriti." These two terms, sruti and smriti or direct evidence and memory respectively, form an important polarity in the Indian scholastic tradition and are more commonly understood in that context. There, the Vedas and Upanishads (Vedanta) are considered revealed scripture and classed as sruti while later texts such as the Puranas and Sastras, are considered smriti, remembered texts. But in Sri Aurobindo's usage, these terms take on a more strictly psychological aspect, related to the yoga of the discrimination. Here truth-seeing or revelation (drishti) and truth-hearing or inspiration (sruti) are both classed as direct reception of reality, shruti, while intuition and discrimination are classed under memory, smriti. This use of the term "memory" provides an important link between human knowl-' edge and divine knowledge.
Divine knowledge is knowledge by identity. It is self-evident knowledge since it is through being that one knows. One knows because one is or one has become. The divine, being absolute, possesses itself in its completeness. It is the knower of the three times, trikaladrishti. In its static transcendental poise, all has already happened and stands mapped out in its gaze. However, to speak in these terms is paradoxical, since human knowledge is always finite and the self-knowledge of the infinite is incomprehensible to finite knowledge. It constitutes a shift of modality. The power of knowledge of the Divine is mobilized in time and space from a status where it is already realized. This is what Sri Aurobindo calls Real-Idea. Hence, this quality of the "already known" marks the link between human and divine, relative and absolute or mental and supramental knowledge. The development of an intuitive mentality is marked from the outset by the emergence of this recognitive quality of experience. This is the sense of something settled, which has always been, known for ever to have been, yet occurring in the present. The development of the power of intuitive discrimination is accompanied by the emergence of this quality, which relates to the prakritic understanding of the overcoming of karma by being one with the will of the Lord. This memorial structure of intuitive knowledge appears in the succeeding stanzas of the Isha Upanishad and forms a very important subtextual aspect of its communication.
XIV
The Upanishad continues:
Asoorya nama te loka undhena tamsaghrita Tamte pretyabhigachchhanti ye ke cha atmahono jana
34
| SR No. | 007005 |
| Book Title | World of Philosophy |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave |
| Publisher | Shanti Prakashan |
| Publication Year | 2011 |
| Total Pages | 1002 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 30 MB |