The Sun and The Rainbow

SRI AUROBINDO

AND THE RESHAPING OF MAN

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It is the message of Sri Aurobindo that the real call on men today in a world going wrong is not so much to reshape their machines, their technologies, their institutions, as to reshape themselves. By that reshaping, the outer face of their complex and confused civilisation will be transfigured.

It is also the message of Sri Aurobindo that nothing can help the reshaping to the full except what he calls the Integral Yoga. But how does the Integral Yoga set about its gigantic task? Perhaps the easiest approach to an answer is through a correct understanding of the common words "inspiration" and "intuition".

From very early times a number of people have claimed to be "inspired" — that is, to be the instruments of a knowledge, a power, a goodness, a beauty and a happiness greater than the human being is ordinarily capable of. Modern psychology confirms the phenomenon of inspiration. From the several recorded facts we may pick out a few to get the nature of this phenomenon into focus.

A brief account is available of how Keats came to describe Apollo in the third book of his unfinished epic, Hyperion. The passage arrived "by chance or magic — as if it were something given to him". He did not realise how beautiful the poetic expressions were, until after he had put them down on paper. When he read them he was himself astonished: they appeared to be the production of another person, some more gifted agency.

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Mozart says of his musical compositions that they were presented to him as complete wholes. He further reports: "Nor do I have in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once." The difficult job of laying out in sequence the musical elements followed the ecstatic experience of the "inspired" totality.

Science no less than Art has its story of inspiration to tell. Lord Kelvin has testified how the solution of a key problem came to him quite suddenly without any direct process of reasoning. And there is the famous incident in the course of the chemist Kekule's research. While seated on the top of a bus he visualised in an instant the structure of a molecule of benzene. What he saw in a flash was the ancient symbol of the serpent biting its own tail and immediately he evolved the chemical formula of the "benzene ring".

Inspiration that is not sustained but flashes across the mind in a revelatory moment may be named "intuition". Intuition is, as it were, a sharp edge of light from within oneself cutting through the knot of a problem. It is knowledge by a sort of instant inwardness towards — or identity with — the thing to be known. Scientists may be said to be more intuitive than inspired — though the case of Kekule is as of a visionary poet or painter.

Possibly Darwin too "saw" the truth in the instance of which Sir Julian Huxley spoke some years ago in a broadcast: "Darwin... in Ch. 4 of the Origin of Species explains at some length why natural selection inevitably produces diversification (and in his autobiography records how he arrived at the solution of this 'problem of great importance' in a flash of intuition)."¹

Perhaps the most intuitive scientist in the past was Clerk Maxwell. His most fruitful intuition is the leap of mind he made in setting forth his equation for electromagnetism. He postulated a term which nothing at the time necessitated and which was found correct by experiment later. His work on the

1. The Listener (London), May 28, 1959, p. 937.

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laws of gases, too, contains a similar leap. It has provoked a modern physicist to exclaim: "Maxwell, by a train of argument which seems to bear no relation at all to molecules, or to the dynamics of their movements, or even to ordinary common sense, reached a formula which, according to all precedents and all the rules of scientific philosophy, ought to have been hopelessly wrong. In actual fact it was subsequently shown to be exactly right and is known as Maxwell's law to this day."

What is most remarkable at present in the field of Science is that Einstein has given "intuition" a legitimate place at the very basis of theoretical physics. The General Theory of Relativity has not only revolutionised our ultimate concepts but also brought about a revolutionary ideal of what these concepts may be and a revolutionary method of reaching them. Although meant to explain the sense-perceived universe, they become, as Einstein says, "steadily more abstract and remote from experience". Of course, they have to be "verified" by experiment, but what is directly verified is only a number of conclusions coming at the end of a long series of deductions from those concepts: the concepts themselves are never asked to submit to experimental tests. They may well mark an extreme of the materially unpicturable, as does indeed Einstein's own theory of a "curved" four-dimensional continuum of fused space and time, in which all events past and present and future are to be plotted as co-existent, as being "all at once" like the musical compositions heard by Mozart's inspired imagination. And in the search for such theories the physicist, writes Einstein, "is compelled in an increasing degree to be guided by purely mathematical, formal considerations... Experience may suggest the appropriate mathematical concepts, but they most certainly cannot be deduced from it". Einstein calls the fundamental axioms of physics "free creations of the mind". For, in his own words, "there is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them".

Now, the pertinent query arises: "If at the back of Science

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there is intuition and at the back of Art there is inspiration, what is the region of psychological being from which these phenomena appear?"

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We are all familiar today with terms like "subliminal self" and "unconscious mind". Psycho-analysis has had to posit a complex working of mental process behind and beyond our known thoughts, feelings, desires and volitions. This process is usually called "subconscious" or "unconscious", but what is meant is that our surface being is not conscious of it. Nor is the hidden region of the mind merely individual: Jung has noted a common pool of memories and symbols, a depth of racial responses, motives and mythological attitudes preserved through the ages. And he has invented for it the expression: "Collective Unconscious." An immense range of psychological being, unhindered by space or time and full of strange possibilities, brilliant or mysterious creativities, surprising supra-personal effectivities, is supposed to exist. And Jung has attempted to show some affinity between his hypotheses and the assumptions of Indian Yoga.

He is right, broadly speaking. For, Yoga is the systematised endeavour to establish contact with unknown profundities of our self by special methods. But it is not limited to what Freud and Jung and their colleagues have got hold of for their field of study. The field of Yoga is much wider, yet it is continuous with the "subliminal" of the psychologists and with their "Collective Unconscious". Modern research has, in a very practical manner, provided a jumping-board to the greater claims of this very ancient research.

Yoga chooses as a starting-point the part of one's being which is most natural to one from day to day according to one's individual constitution. Thus there are different Yogas for those who are intellectual or emotional or bent upon action — for those who have an introspective turn or such as are physically oriented. This division, pragmatically convenient

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and effective, has, however, its limitations.

So long as the predominant aim is to pass from the ordinary consciousness to a vaster Beyond and stay more and more absorbed there, believing that life's destiny is not on the earth but in that mysterious immensity, it does not matter how or where one starts. The moment life here is emphasised, the moment the stress on earth which modem science has given is accepted and the ideal is not only of individual development and salvation but also of collective and social fulfilment, the need arises of taking up the entirety of our being and making our Yoga integral. To cope adequately with this need is the way of Sri Aurobindo.

According to him, all the parts of our being have to combine under the awakened leadership of that in us which he considers the true soul. Our true soul is not guided by pet ideas, selfish demands, pragmatic facilities. It is the pure push in us towards what we sense as the supreme Good, what we may regard as the divinely human. Unified by this push, all our parts have to make accessible and normal the powers which are now remote and supernormal and known only in brief occurrences labelled as "inspiration" and "intuition". The Integral Yoga, elaborated by Sri Aurobindo and set on a manifold practical basis, promises the emergence of a new state of consciousness by which every one of our persisting problems, individual and collective, will be radically solved.

The reasonableness of such a promise must strike us as soon as we look at the panorama modern biology opens up with its theory of evolution. From insensitive matter we see the emergence of active vitality. From vitality, with its instincts and desires, we see the thinking mind of man emerge, haunted vaguely by the presence of the entity he feels as his "soul". Breaking through the routine of human rationality — helped by the aspiration of that yague presence — there is the sporadic play of inspiration and intuition. A more recurrent play of them is seen in the phenomenon of "genius". Variously we are led to mark the evidence of a supramental faculty waiting

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to emerge and take up the whole of our existence for a new evolutionary embodiment.

"Embodiment" is an important term. For, Sri Aurobindo is all for a more dynamic earth-life in the light of a more-than-human consciousness. As his collaborator in the Integral Yoga — the Mother — puts it: "Yoga is not a contempt for matter but a means to divinise it — not a rejection of the body but a means to transform it."

This definition of Yoga and the assumption behind it — that a more-than-human consciousness is already there, awaiting manifestation — can be judged as nothing alien to the direction of scientific thinking. Science not only stresses the value of material existence: it also swears by the principle of continuity. Even a scientist imbued with Marxism, like J.B.S. Haldane, affirms: "We do not find obvious evidence of life or mind in inert matter, and we naturally study them most easily where they are most completely manifested; but if the scientific point of view is correct, we shall ultimately find them, at least in rudimentary forms, all through the universe." Again, Science, unless it wishes to emulate the dogmatic materialism of the nineteenth century, cannot be pledged to a mere reduction of life and mind to matter. The biologist Julian Huxley tells us: "materialism, according to which mind is 'a function of the body (matter) and depends upon it completely' ... is an easy thesis to demolish." And Haldane himself admits: "the biologist must take congnizance of facts (such as the unity of the organism) which have not yet been fully explained on materialistic lines, and perhaps never will be." Hence scientifically we are not bound to believe — though many scientists may choose to do so — that life and mind exist as "rudimentary" accompaniments of material particles: they may be plenary universal powers in their own right, hidden on earth within the physical matrix for a gradual and laboured emergence. Nor need scientific thought stop with life and mind: if man is still evolving, why not a hidden supermind?

Indeed, recently the palaeontologist-cum-priest Teilhard

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de Chardin has scientifically argued, from man's biological "uniqueness" and from the "convergence" of mankind (two facts which Huxley even has stressed), for a collective Superconsciousness not solely as an evolutionary terminus leading to a union with God on earth — "Omega Point" — but also as evolution's original impetus derived from God's omnipresence in matter — "Alpha Point".

However, Teilhard misses the all-round goal of the Integral Yoga which a science grown spiritual must envisage: the divinisation of the bodily being itself to crown the divinisation of mind and life. His "Alpha" and "Omega", also interpreted in terms of a "Cosmic Christ", is in the end given an old-fashioned Christian turn: it leads, for all the "ultra-human" growth it allows on the terrestrial scene, to a final breakaway from that scene into a "trans-human". Teilhard does not always speak with one voice here and the "modem" in him often runs counter to the "traditional" but his anxiety to stay within the Roman Catholic Church in spite of grave disagreements prevents him from being a thorough evolutionist. The supermind of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother has a greater potency for earth's fulfilment in the this-worldy manner which the scientific temper calls for.

The Integral Yoga, demanded by the supermind, has not only a super-science orientation: it has, too, a super-Yoga direction. No doubt, by its very integrality, it would make use of past spiritual techniques wherever necessary. But it cannot be equated simply to a combination of the old Yogic disciplines classified as Jnana, Bhakti, Karma, Raja and Hatha. Least of all does it lean towards the set of difficult exercises that is Hatha Yoga. Actually it favours physical training more along modern lines, since the psychological benefits together with extraordinary vital powers which Hatha Yoga seeks through its complex postures aided by special methods of breathing are sought to be compassed directly by more subtle processes. For, the Integral Yoga is essentially a dynamism of the consciousness, a mode of many-sided psychological deve-

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lopment which yet by the agency of the supermind evokes hidden potentialities of physical development through the secret consciousness dwelling even in material substance and energy.

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Free at the same time of an other-worldly outlook and a limited yogic practice, the Integral Yoga cuts loose still more from all fixed dogmas, rites and observances inherited from the past: it is not a revival of any religion or a

Since a systematic and organised move is here towards this goal, there is a palpable curve of progress in the Integral Yoga. Concrete inner and outer results are obtained. And a general assessment is possible of the individual's research in Yoga at different stages, as well as of the level reached by the entire group of people dedicated to realising Sri Aurobindo's vision. In a broad sense, we may measure progress by four standards:

(1) With what degree of effortless efficiency is the work in hand done, as if some inner knowledge and power were

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automatically active?

(2)How far is the work of one person complementary to that of other persons so that an interrelated totality results as if there acted a single knowledge and power superior to the individual units and making all of them its instruments?

(3)To what extent does the participant in a work pass through it and out of it with not only a detachment from egoistic desire and anxiety but also an increase in happy awareness of the inner and superior agency?

(4)How much oneness even in the outer life does the work produce among the individuals concerned, expressing itself in a purer and profounder relationship, an efflorescence of harmonious living, an advance towards achieving the ideal of human unity?

Thus the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, in which the Integral Yoga is practised, is different from other Ashrams in India. Unquestionably, they have their merits but theirs is ultimately a refinement of past religion and this refinement is turned basically towards individual salvation in some other-world. What they do for this world is not organic to the Yoga and springs from conventional ethico-social motives — good and helpful motives, surely, yet not the direct issue of a super-science of the Spirit such as Sri Aurobindo has developed. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is a research in a new order of existence, with a supramental fount of activity in every department. This research has a particularised aspect in the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, with an eye to assimilating special academic qualification into the general inner education that is the Integral Yoga. The Sri Aurobindo Ashram, researching in what may be termed a novel multi-dimensional education, strives by inner conscious self-expansion to form the nucleus of a renovated humanity.

This nucleus would-stimulate the whole country and then the entire world to the highest intensity and continuity possible of a divinised life to which the phenomena of inspiration and intuition are scattered pointers in a world not yet awake

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to that Yoga of Nature which, through the evolution of matter, vitality and mind, drives integrally towards an earthly unfoldment as of a godhead in the soul of man.

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In India, of all places, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, with its International Centre of Education, should rouse the greatest interest and win the utmost encouragement. For, its work can be seen in intimate relation to the typical genius of the Indian people. Every country has its own basic psychological character and it can truly develop if it acts in consonance with that national personality. Historical India has been two things preeminently. On the outer and visible level, she has been a vast concourse of communities. India is one not by an apparent uniformity of race or by a single strain of culture. She is one by a fusion of a large variety of ethnological elements and by a synthesis of diverse lines of intellectual experiment, social combination, practical pursuit. And she has been able to blend so many outwardly differing components because her true being is attuned to that which is other than the visible forms of life and yet is the common origin of them all, that which is capable of differentiating into a myriad forms without losing its essential identity. This origin is what she has called, by inner observation and experience, the Supreme Self or Spirit, a deepmost Reality directly known as an Infinite that is One-in-Many and Many-in-One.

No doubt, India has not always or, rather, invariably been "spiritual" in the obvious connotation of the word. She has also thought and lived along lines which may be considered sceptic, agnostic, atheistic. In fact, if she did not do so, she would not be the cultural synthesis that she is: she would be single-tracked — and when spirituality is single-tracked it becomes necessarily limitative and intolerant on the one hand, ascetic and unworldly on the other. A tendency towards that attitude which is, in Sri Aurobindo's phrase, "the refusal of the ascetic" has indeed increased from India's medieval

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age onwards and contributed to her decline. But the original Indian genius was very far from such a negative spirituality — and when spirituality is not only positive but also many-tracked, as in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita and the Puranas, a strong impetus is given to the searching mind and the adventurous life-force to try out every kind of speculation and practice, be it ever so non-spiritual in its surface-shape. With her firm hold on what we may describe as a divine dynamism in the inner being, India could allow without any fear a complete liberty to the seeker in man. All roads, she felt, would eventually lead to that spiritual centre, and the expression of this centre would in the end be all the richer for the apparent temporary deviations.

How pervasive was the influence of this potent centre we mark by a look at the form which the non-theistic or even atheistic trends mostly assumed in India. Materialism, in the modem sense, was never characteristic of such trends. They showed themselves typically in movements like Sankhya, Buddhism and Jainism. Judged from the ordinary point of view, these movements were non-theistic or even atheistic; and yet they were paths leading to a liberation of the consciousness from mere mind: they worked towards an inner illumination which can only be regarded as profoundly spiritual. And the very epochs most coloured by the sensuous approach, like the epoch of the poet Kalidasa, has still a deep instinct of Dharma and an intellectual assent to it. Dharma is not simply religion; it is the inherent law of things, making naturally for collective harmony and stability as much as for individual initiative and activity, while its direction through all moods and modes of life, all formulations of thought, is towards a spiritual Truth diversely symbolised by the play of the senses.

Yes, India has been great by her essentially spiritual character. Although competent enough in other fields, the quest for the inmost Spirit as the radiating source of all existence has been her forte. And she can be great again by being true to her own self. She can be even greater than before. Actually,

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that is the demand on her by the logic of events in the modern age. For the key to a divine fulfilment of matter was missed by her and, for all the life-affirmation in her most luminous time, she had to fix her ultimate in a Beyond. That brought about — in the long run, particularly under the impact of foreign invasions — a religious instead of a secular turn. More and more an inward withdrawal took place with a hurry to find a number of separate short-cuts to Nirvana, the Formless Brahman, the peaceful Shiva, the blissful Vishnu. In the outer realm a defensive shell was set up of rigid rites, observances and functions. The Gita was the last explicit testament of a comprehensive and conquering spirituality. Time and again the old urge of the Vedic Rishis and Upanishadic Seers that had reached its largest voice in the Gita broke through the religious turn; but the zest for a divine fulfilment on earth could not quite subdue the growing discontent and weariness to which Tagore has given tongue so memorably in his poem on the migrating cranes: "Not here, not here, somewhere afar is our home!"

To effect a switch-over to the Here and Now, an age of Science, emphasising matter and asserting evolution, had to come. And, along with it, as its inner rationale, as the total Light of which Science was just a one-sided disclosure, there had to dawn the age of an Integral Yoga such as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have discovered and developed on the basis of all that has been positive and synthesis-minded in the past. With the advent of the Integral Yoga India stands on the threshold of a most glorious future.

If she is not loyal to her own genius she will either degenerate in spite of all technological props or else be a second-rate success on the Western model, always an inferior, however hard she may try to juggle with foreign "isms" and "know-hows". The Integral Yoga is there not only to save her but also to complete the curve of her destiny.

Hence the Sri Aurobindo Ashram should immediately commend itself to those who love this country of ours and

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are eager to help it achieve full greatness. The intensity and continuity of the inspired and intuitive super-life which the Ashram aims at will make India, as the Mother has hoped, "the spiritual leader of the world". Then, by her sovereign answer to an inner need which the whole world, bewildered by its own uncontrollable complexity, is coming to feel more and more, India will draw to herself an abundance of material aid to lift to the highest peak her own rightly guided prosperity.

Modern to the most efficient degree but dominating her modernism rather than dominated by it. India living illumi-natedly from within outwards by means of the Integral Yoga will lead the earth towards an era of universal concord, a self-consummation of Man at once spiritual and scientific. To elevate our country to play that happy role is a vital part of the dynamic ideal of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the Ashram of all-round Educational Research they have founded. Their call to men of good will everywhere is to co-operate with them and hasten the completion of the mighty work which is proceeding here in rhythm with Nature's own secret urge and with India's supreme mission.

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