Indrani Sanyal

The truth of practical life becomes apparent in ethical life only in an account that can track progress to reveal a process. The rational perspective has historically examined progress in ethical life as a matter of reason. Hence, some theorists resort to principles or laws of reason for determining practical action. Sri Aurobindo critiqued the failure of reason to tackle ethical problems, though. Enigmatically, he held the view that an ethical being is a law to itself. Furthermore, the depth of this essentially metaphysical condition challenges either a deontologist or a consequentialist ethical viewpoint. Yet, Aurobindo was also committed to finding an answer to the question: From where do moral impulses, instincts, and activities originate? Not to suggest that Sri Aurobindo was framing a set of practical rules for one to follow, this chapter demonstrates that Aurobindo is committed to the notion of nature, or svabhāva and personal duty, or svadharma as preached in the Gita. In Sri Aurobindo’s model, like Dharma ethical models, virtue ethics prepares one for a purer sattvic element. The domain of ethics is nothing but the rational level that is a stage in evolution. The ethical aim of Yoga is not an external idea of virtue but rather a heightening of the divine by way of a three-tier existential level: suprarational, rational, and infrarational. The superior Nature transcends the duality of good and evil, as there is a suprarational truth that forms in spiritual experience of universal possibility. This is the level where mysteries and puzzles of deception and evil may be remedied. Only a reflective or thoughtful mind that tries to find some law or rational principle, like the law of karma, will progressively develop an ethical system founded on reason, emotion, or aesthetics. The present discussion isolates the importance and dire necessity of the medium level of consciousness.