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Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo
27 intimate secret of the existence, is the uniqueness of the individual. This uniqueness is everywhere but appears as a subordinate factor only in the lower ranges of existence. It becomes more and more prominent as we rise higher and enlarge our mind. “I enter into birth, not in a separate being, but in the life of the whole. I am born physically by a generation which is a carrying on of its unbroken history; the body, the life, physical mentality of all past being therefore undergo the law of heredity; the present, says the Upanishad, recreates himself by energy in his seed and is reborn in the child. But as soon as I begin to develop, a new, an independent and overbearing factor came in, which is not my parents, nor my ancestry, nor past mankind, but I, my own self. And this is the really important, growing, central factor."49
For Aurobinilo, man is a persistent being who pursues his evolution within the persistent, being of the world. Man is created by his own past Karma which shapes his heredity, his environment, his affinity, his opportunities and obstacles, which is not arbitrarily predestined. It is on this basis that we build our further Karma. This process is woven in with the universal evolution and all its lines are included in the web of being. This is what rebirth means in the history of our manifested selves and of universal being.
The close association between Karma and rebirth is not a mere accident. It is perfectly intelligible union of two related truths, which are needed for each other's completeness. These two cannot exist separately. These two are the soul side and nature side of one and the same cosmic sequence. Rebirth has no moral significance if it is not an instrumentality for the sequences of the soul's continuous experience.
Rebirth is a necessity of the manifestation of Puruşa on the physical plane. But it is not an accident of a soul into body without any preparing past to it or any fulfilling hereafter. In a world of evolution and inevolution, not of physical form only, but of conscious being through life and mind to spirit. Such an isolated assumption of life in the human body could not be the rule of the individual soul's existence. It would be quite meaningless. Such a rule would make it an effect without cause, and a cause without effect. It would be a fragmca
