Eckhart Tolle and Sri Aurobindo

The Process of Inner Change

One of Eckhart's most appealing teachings is regarding the process of inner change. In its simplicity and beauty it is comparable to the "supreme secret" of the Gita revealed in its last chapter where Krishna says to the disciple:

Become My-minded, My lover and adorer, a sacrificer to Me, bow thyself to Me, to Me thou shalt come, this is My pledge and promise to thee, for dear art thou to me. Abandon all Dharmas⁹⁷ and take refuge in Me alone. I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve."⁹⁸

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Elaborating the Gita's "secret of secrets," Sri Aurobindo writes:

All this personal effort and self-discipline will not in the end be needed, all following and limitation of rule and Dharma can at last be thrown away as hampering encumbrances if thou canst make a complete surrender to Me, depend alone on the Spirit and Godhead within thee and all things and trust to his sole guidance. Turn all thy mind to me and fill it with the thought of Me and My Presence. ... I am here with thee in thy chariot of battle revealed as the Master of existence within and without thee and I repeat the absolute assurance, the infallible promise that I will lead thee to Myself through and beyond all sorrow and evil. Whatever difficulties and perplexities arise, be sure of this that I am leading thee to a complete divine life in the universal and an immortal existence in the transcendent Spirit."⁹⁹

Eckhart conveys this supreme secret of the Gita in a form more accessible to the modern mind. How to transform the unconsciousness of the mind into the consciousness of Presence? One cannot transform one's unconsciousness by any kind of doing, says Eckhart. Presence is not something that one can make happen by personal effort. Presence is either there or not there. It is perhaps Grace. Presence wants to arise. All one has to do is to cooperate with it and open the doorway for the Grace to enter. Instead of trying to "fix" or "rewire" oneself, one has simply to give up resistance to the present moment and allow the Now to be. The Now is one's innermost being, which is covered up due to identification with the mind. One is all the time acting and reacting from the conditioning to which the mind has been subjected, and one is continually dragged along by the mind-stream of unending thoughts. All that is needed to free oneself is a "tiny witness in the background" that sees the workings of the mind-identified self. Once one becomes the witnessing Presence and sees the conditioning that operates in oneself, the unconscious activity of the mind-stream cannot sustain itself that much longer. Once Presence has arisen, it

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will not stop. It may be temporarily obscured, but it will re-emerge. One has only to allow Presence to go on emerging and transmuting the unconsciousness of the mind-identified self into the consciousness of Presence.

In a similar vein, as previously quoted, Sri Aurobindo states:

The ego person in us cannot transform itself by its own force or will or knowledge or by any virtue of its own into the nature of the Divine; all it can do is to fit itself for the transformation and make more and more its surrender to that which it seeks to become. As long as the ego is at work in us, our personal action is and must always be in its nature a part of the lower grades of existence; it is obscure or half-enlightened, limited in its field, very partially effective in its power. If a spiritual transformation, not a mere illumining modification of our nature, is to be done at all, we must call in the Divine Shakti¹⁰⁰ to effect that miraculous work in the individual; for she alone has the needed force, decisive, all-wise and illimitable.¹⁰¹

Commenting on the supreme secret of the Gita, Sri Aurobindo writes:

For a time comes in spiritual development when we become aware that all our effort and action are only our mental and vital reactions to the silent and secret insistence of a greater Presence in and around us. It is borne in on us that all our Yoga, our aspiration and our endeavour are imperfect or narrow forms, because disfigured or at least limited by the mind's associations, demands, prejudgments, predilections, mistranslations or half translations of a vaster truth. Our ideas and experiences and efforts are mental images only of greatest things which would be done more perfectly, directly, freely, largely, more in harmony with the universal and eternal will by that Power itself in us if we could only

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put ourselves passively as instruments in the hands of a supreme and absolute strength and wisdom. That Power is not separate from us; it is our own self one with the self of all others and at the same time a transcendent Being and an immanent Person. Our existence, our action taken up into this greatest Existence would be no longer, as it seems to us now, individually our own in a mental separation. It would be the vast movement of an Infinity and an intimate ineffable Presence; it would be the constant spontaneity of formation and expression in us of this deep universal self and this transcendent Spirit.¹⁰²

Thus, Eckhart and Sri Aurobindo have the same perspective in looking upon the egoic self as incapable of transforming itself and in regarding Presence or the Divine Force as the sole power that can bring about transformation.

However, Sri Aurobindo further states:

... the entire substitution of the divine for the human personal action is not at once entirely possible. All interference from below that would falsify the truth of the superior action must first be inhibited or rendered impotent, and it must be done by our own free choice. A continual and always repeated refusal of the impulsions and falsehoods of the lower nature is asked from us and an insistent support to the Truth as it: grows in our parts; for the progressive settling into our nature and final perfection of the incoming informing Light, Purity and Power needs for its development and sustenance our free acceptance of it and our stubborn rejection of all that is contrary to it, inferior or incompatible.¹⁰³

Therefore, the practice of Sri Aurobindo's yoga entails a long and arduous preparation for arriving at complete surrender when the need for personal effort ceases and all work of transformation is taken up

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by the Divine Power. Thus, Sri Aurobindo speaks of two somewhat overlapping periods, movements, or stages in yoga. In the first, which is one of the process of surrender, the individual prepares oneself for the reception of the divine action. In this first movement of preparation through personal effort, a continual rejection of all that interferes with and falsifies the divine action is called for. Rejection, which is the negative element in yoga, is necessitated as a transitional movement due to the resistance of the egoic self to the process of transformation and its opposition to the truth of one's being.

In the transitional stage between the first period and the second, our personal and necessarily ignorant effort more and more dwindles and a higher Nature acts; the eternal Shakti descends into this limited form of mortality and progressively possesses and transmutes it.¹⁰⁴

In the second period the greater movement wholly replaces the lesser, formerly indispensable first action; but this can be done only when our self-surrender is complete.¹⁰⁵

The initial step in the first period of self-preparation through personal effort is to become conscious of the movements of one's egoic self and to observe them as an impartial witness by detaching oneself from them instead of identifying with them and regarding them as part of one's real nature.

[The method of self-discipline prescribed by the Gita] is to stand back in oneself from the action of the modes¹⁰⁶ and observe this unsteady flux as the Witness seated above the surge of the forces of Nature. He is one who watches but is impartial and indifferent, aloof from them on their own level and in his native posture high above them. As they rise and fall in their waves, the Witness looks, observes, but neither accepts nor for the moment interferes with their course. First there

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must be the freedom of the impersonal Witness; afterwards there can be rhe control of the Master, the Ishwara¹⁰⁷.¹⁰⁸

To observe the movements as a witness without being discouraged or disturbed is the best way to effect the necessary detachment and separation.¹⁰⁹

The first principle is to detach oneself from them, not to identify, not to admit them any longer as part of one's real nature bur to look on them as things imposed to which one says "This is not I or mine—this is a thing I reject altogether". One begins to feel a part of the being inside which is not identified, which remains firm and says "This may give trouble on the surface, but it shall not touch me". If this separate being within can be felt, then half the trouble is over— provided there is a will there not only to separate but to get rid of the imperfection from the surface nature also."¹¹⁰

The following points may be noted in the passages just quoted:

1. At first, one must become simply a Witness who observes but neither accepts nor, for the moment, interferes with the course of what one sees. This attitude is similar to what Eckhart describes as "allowing." In the light of the Gita's teaching, allowing would mean not interfering with what one sees and not accepting it either.

2. Feeling an inner being within (what Eckhart calls the "witnessing Presence") that is separate and detached from the egoic surface self is the first principle.

3. Observing the movements of the surface being as an impartial wiriness is the best way to bring about the separation between the surface being and one's true being within.

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4.There must be a will not only to be detached and separate from the surface consciousness but also to reject its egoic movements. Without rejection one may arrive at the liberation of the inner being as a detached Witness, but one cannot become Master of one's whole being; one continues to experience reactions in one's surface consciousness although the inner being is free and unaffected by the reactions. Explaining the difference between the freedom that comes from detachment and the mastery that comes from rejection, Sri Aurobindo states:

Detachment is the beginning of mastery, but for complete mastery there should be no reactions at all. When there is something within undisturbed by the reactions that means the inner being is free and master of itself, but it is not yet master of the whole nature. When it is master, it allows no wrong reactions—if any come they are at once repelled and shaken off, and finally none come at all.¹¹¹

So, as Sri Aurobindo writes in a previously quoted letter:

The Purusha above is not only a Witness, he is the giver (or withholder) of the sanction; if he persistently refuses the sanction to a movement of Prakriti^keeping himself detached, then, even if it goes on for a time by its past momentum, it usually loses its hold after a time, becomes more feeble, less persistent, less concrete and in the end fades away. If you take the Purusha consciousness, it should be not only as the Witness but as the Anumanta,"¹¹² refusing sanction to the disturbing movements, sanctioning only peace, calm, purity and whatever else is pat of the divine nature. This refusal of sanction need not mean a struggle with the lower Prakriti; it should be a quiet, persistent, detached refusal leaving unsupported, unassented

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to, without meaning or justification, the contrary action of the nature.¹¹³

In the same vein, Sri Aurobindo writes in another letter:

The witness attitude is not meant as a convenient means for disowning the responsibility of one's defects and thereby refusing to mend them. It is meant for self-knowledge and, in our yoga, as a convenient station (detached and uninvolved, therefore not subject to Prakriti) from which one can act on the wrong movements by refusal of assent and by substituting for them the action of the true consciousness from within or above.¹¹⁴

Therefore, as stated in the previous chapter (p. 73), the inner being (Purusha) must emerge not only as Sakshi, the Witness, but also as Anumanta, the giver or withholder of sanction. To reiterate what has been stated a little earlier about the method of self-discipline taught by the Gita: "First there must be the freedom of the impersonal Witness; afterwards there can be the control of the Master, the Ishwara." Mastery comes when one is no longer a mere Witness but also a Sanctioner.

Besides the method of standing back as a detached witness of the movements of the surface being, Sri Aurobindo's yoga teaches the method of offering one's egoic movements and surrendering them to the Divine, calling on the Divine for the taking up of one's egoic nature by a Higher Power for transformation. Explaining the compatibility of the method of self-offering or surrender with the method of the detached witness, Sri Aurobindo writes to a disciple:

As for the surrender it is not inconsistent with the witness attitude. On the contrary by liberating from the ordinary Prakriti,"¹¹⁵ it makes easier the surrender to the higher or

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divine Power. Very often when this witness attitude has not been taken but there is a successful calling in of the Force to act in one, one of the first things the Force does is to establish the witness attitude so as to be able to act with less interference or immixture from the movements of the lower Prakriti.¹¹⁶

Rejection taught in yoga is apt to be confused with what is called repression in psychoanalysis and, consequently, regarded as harmful and pathological. Rejection may also appear to be counter to Eckhart's teaching about "allowing" the unconsciousness to be there, letting the Presence transmute the unconsciousness instead of trying to get rid of it by personal effort.

Repression has to be distinguished from suppression and rejection. Repression of an impulse or desire is considered in psychoanalysis to operate at an unconscious level; its very operations lie outside of conscious awareness. For, repression is not done by the conscious mind but is brought about by certain more or less unconscious painful feelings such as fear, shame, or guilt. The repressed impulse is forced into the unconscious and remains outside of the person's conscious awareness. Suppression, called Nigraha in Indian psychology, is, on the other hand, a conscious process involving the exercise of the conscious mental will. It consists in restraining the outer expression of an impulse in speech or action. But inwardly one continues to feel the impulse and is conscious of it. What Sri Aurobindo calls rejection is spoken of as Samyama (self-control or self-mastery) in Indian psychology. Rejection, like suppression, is a conscious process, and is done either by the less effective mental will or the more powerful will of the inner being (soul or Purusha). Rejection consists essentially in self-dissociation and detachment from the inept impulse or desire, but also includes the restraint of its outer expression in speech or action. The following passages from Sri Aurobindo's letters to disciples serve to explicate the nature of rejection and distinguish it from suppression:

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Nigraha means holding down the movement, but a movement merely held down is only suspended—it is better to reject and dismiss, detaching yourself from it.¹¹⁷

Not necessarily suppression, if the refusal ... [to a desire] is accompanied by detachment in the major part of the being. The difference between suppression (nigraha) and self-control (saṁyama) is that one says "I cannot help desiring but I will not satisfy my desire", while the other says "I refuse the desire as well as the satisfaction of the desire".¹¹⁸

The rejection of desire is essentially the rejection of the element of craving, putting that out from the consciousness itself as a foreign element not belonging to the true self and the inner nature. But refusal to indulge the suggestions of desire is also a part of the rejection; to abstain from the action suggested, if it is not the right action, must be included in the yogic discipline. It is only when this is done in the wrong way, by a mental ascetic principle or a hard moral rule, that it can be called suppression. The difference between suppression and an inward essential rejection is the difference between mental or moral control and a spiritual purification.¹¹⁹

It is true that the mere suppression or holding down of desire is not enough, not by itself truly effective, but that does not mean that desires are to be indulged; it means that desires have not merely to be suppressed, but to be rejected from the nature.¹²⁰

"I won't desire" is quite the right thing to say, even if "I don't desire" cannot yet be said by the vital. Still there is something in the being that can even say "I don't desire" and refuse to recognise the vital desire as part of the true being.¹²¹

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No, it is not necessary to lose the mental control; it is best to replace it gradually by the psychic or spirirual.¹²²

Your theory is a mistaken one. The free expression of a passion may relieve the vital for a time, but at the same time it gives it a right to return always. It is not reduced at all. Suppression with inner indulgence in subtle forms is not a cure, but expression in outer indulgence is still less a cure. It is perfectly possible to go on without manifestation if one is resolute to arrive at a complete control, the control being not a mere suppression but an inner and outer rejection.¹²³

You do not seem to have a correct idea of the nature of vital desire. Vital desire grows by being indulged, it does not become satisfied. If your desire were indulged, it would begin to grow more and more and ask for more and more. That has been our constant experience with the sadhaks¹²⁴ and it confirms what has always been known about desire. Desire and envy have to be thrown out of the consciousness—there is no other way to deal with them.¹²⁵

It is a known psychological law that whatever is suppressed in the conscious mind remains in the subconscient being and recurs either in the waking state when the control is removed or else in sleep. Mental control by itself cannot eradicate anything entirely out of the being. ... In order to make a true and complete change, one has to make all these conscious, to see clearly what is still there and to reject them from one layer after another till they have been entirely thrown out from the personal existence. Even then, they may remain and come back on the being from the surrounding universal forces and it is only when no part of the consciousness makes any

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response to these forces of the lower plane that the victory and transformation are absolutely complete.¹²⁶

In the ordinary life people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex, etc., as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or insists to keep them within fixed limits or subject to a decent restraint or measure, people try to control them so as to conform to the social standard of morality or rule of conduct. Here, on the contrary, as in all spiritual life, the conquest and complete mastery of these things is demanded. That is why the struggle is more felt, not because these things rise more strongly in sadhaks than in ordinary men, but because of the intensity of the struggle between the spiritual mind which demands control and the vital movements which rebel and want to continue in the new as they did in the old life. As for the idea that the sadhana raises up things of the kind, the only truth in that is this that, first, there are many things in the ordinary man of which he is not conscious, because the vital hides them from the mind and gratifies them without the mind realising what is the force that is moving the action—thus things that are done under the plea of altruism, philanthropy, service, etc. are largely moved by ego which hides itself behind these justifications; in yoga the secret motive has to be pulled out from behind the veil, exposed and got rid of. Secondly, some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without it being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasized, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis. Here again, in sadhana one has to become conscious of these

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suppressed impulses and eliminate them—this may be called rising up, but that does not mean that they have to be raised up into action but only raised up before the consciousness so as to be cleared out of the being.

... In sadhana the mental or moral control has to be replaced by the spiritual mastery—for that mental control is only partial and it controls but does not liberate; it is only the psychic and spiritual that can do that. That is the main difference in this respect between the ordinary and the spiritual life.¹²⁷

An important point to be noted is that truly effective rejection can be done only by exercising the will of the inner being (the soul or Purusha), but when one is not in touch with one's inner being due to an identification with the mind, one needs to exercise the mental will to reject what needs to be rejected. As Sri Aurobindo explains in these letters:

... in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us—inner mental, inner vital, inner physical—silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed. .. .¹²⁸

Detach yourself from this vital-physical¹²⁹—observe it as something not yourself; reject it, refuse your consent to its claims and impulses, but quietly as the witness Purusha whose refusal of sanction must ultimately prevail. ...

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When you are not in this impersonality, still use your mental will and its power of assent or refusal—not with a painful struggle, but in the same way, quietly, denying the claims of Desire, till these claims by loss of sanction and assent lose their force of return and become more and more faint and external.¹³⁰

The Gita throws good light on the distinction between suppression (Nigraha) and self-mastery (Samyama). Commenting on certain verses in the Gita, Sri Aurobindo writes:

There is therefore a distinction to be made between what is essential in the nature, its native and inevitable action, which it avails not at all to repress, suppress, coerce, and what is accidental to it, its wanderings, confusions, perversions, over which we must certainly get control. There is a distinction implied too between coercion and suppression, nigraha, and control with right use and right guidance, saṁyama. The former is a violence done to the nature by the will, which in the end depresses the natural powers of the being, ātmānam avasādayet; the latter is the control of the lower by the higher self, which successfully gives to those powers their right action and their maximum efficiency,—yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam¹³¹. This nature of saṁyama is made very clear by the Gita in the opening of its sixth chapter, "By the self thou shouldst deliver the self, thou shouldst not depress and cast down the self (whether by self-indulgence or suppression); for the self is the friend of the self and the self is the enemy. To the man is his self a friend in whom the (lower) self has been conquered by the (higher) self, but to him who is not in possession of his (higher) self, the (lower) self is as if an enemy and it acts as an enemy." When one has conquered one's self and attained to the calm of a perfect self-mastery and self-possession, then is the supreme self in a man founded and poised even in his outwardly conscious human being,

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samāhita. In other words, to master the lower self by the higher, the natural self by the spiritual is the way of man's perfection and liberation.¹³²

The teaching of the Gita for mastering the natural self (normally governed by Prakriti or Nature) by the spiritual self (Purusha or soul) seems to explain from the viewpoint of yoga the role and significance of what Eckhart calls "allowing" whatever one witnesses in one's natural self, letting it be instead of trying to change it.

In terms of the Gita, the natural self in us is subject to the three modes or qualities (Gunas) of Prakriti or Nature through which Nature works in us: the quality of obscurity and inertia (Tamas), the quality of passion and desire (Rajas), and the quality of peace, poise, and light (Sattwa). Tamas obscures and prevents the light of knowledge from penetrating the dark corners of our natural self, and takes away the energy and the will for change and progress. Rajas perverts knowledge and makes the reasoning mind an accomplice and abettor of movements that are contrary to our true nature but for which the mind gives specious rationalizations. Rajas disturbs the workings of the life-force and thereby upsets the balance and health of body and mind. An escape from these two inferior qualities is therefore indispensable if the natural self is to be transformed and made an instrument of the spiritual consciousness. "Tamas unenlightened and rajas unconverted, no divine change or divine life is possible."¹³³

It may seem that the solution lies in cultivating exclusively the quality of Sattwa. But no single quality can by itself prevail against the other two. If Rajas, the quality of passion and desire, is subdued, the principle of activity is thereby dulled, and Tamas, the principle of inertia, rises. The peace that comes from Sattwa becomes a tranquility of inaction; "the nature may become in its dynamic parts Sattwa-tamasic, neutral, pale-tinted, uncreative or emptied of power."¹³⁴

Nor is a compromise between the three qualities, with Sattwa leading and the other two subordinate to it, a solution. It leads to a milder action of the play of Nature but not to a spiritual freedom

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from her enslaving modes. To arrive at freedom, all the three modes of Prakriti must be transcended so that Purusha, the soul, is no longer involved in their workings and subjected to their law. In order to transcend the three modes of Nature, the Gita prescribes a radically different method of self-discipline that enables one to draw back from the three modes and lifts one above them.

It is to stand back in oneself from the action of the modes and observe this unsteady flux as the Witness seated above the surge of the forces of Nature. He is one who watches but is impartial and indifferent, aloof from them on their own level and in his native posture high above them. As they rise and fall in their waves, the Witness looks, observes, but neither accepts nor for the moment interferes with their course. First there must be the freedom of the impersonal Witness; afterwards there be the control of the Master, the Ishwara.¹³⁵ [Italics by the author.]

When the sadhaka has once stood back from the action of Prakriti within him or upon him and, not interfering, not amending or inhibiting, not choosing or deciding, allowed its play and analysed and watched the process, he soon discovers that her modes are self-dependent and work as a machine once put in action works by its own structure and propelling forces.¹³⁶ [Italics by the author.]

This teaching of the Gita for arriving at freedom from the modes of Nature by standing back as their impartial Witness without accepting or interfering with them is quite similar to Eckhart's teaching about simply witnessing the unconscious patterns in one's normal self and allowing them to be there instead of trying to get rid of them by personal effort.

This first step of becoming an impartial witness, says the Gita, leads to Nistraigunya, the state of inner freedom in which one is free from the three Gunas or modes of Nature and inwardly

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unaffected by them while they still continue to operate in one's outer surface nature.

The soul is inwardly separated and free from the lower Prakriti, not involved in its coils, indifferent and glad above it. Nature continues to act in the triple round of her ancient habits—desire, grief and joy attack the heart, the instruments fall into inaction and obscurity and weariness, light and peace come back into the heart and mind and body; but the soul stands unchanged and untouched by these changes. Observing and unmoved by the grief and desire of the lower members, smiling at their joys and their straining, regarding and unoverpowered by the failing and the darknesses of the thought and the wildness or the weaknesses of the heart and nerves, uncompelled and unattached to the mind's illuminations and its relief and sense of ease or of power in the return of light and gladness, it throws itself into none of these things, but waits unmoved for the intimations of a higher Will and the intuitions of a greater luminous knowledge.¹³⁷

The state of detachment from and disidentification with Nature brings the profound realization that, as long as one is identified with one's surface being, the motive power and propulsion for all one's activities come from Nature.

Then he realises how mistaken was his impression that his mind was the doer of his works; his mind was only a small part of him and a creation and engine of Nature. Nature was acting all the while in her own modes moving the three general qualities about as a girl might play with her puppets. His ego was all along a tool and plaything; his character and intelligence, his moral qualities and mental powers, his creations and works and exploits, his anger and forbearance, his cruelty and mercy, his love and his hatred, his sin and his virtue, his light and his darkness, his passion of joy and his

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anguish of sorrow were the play of Nature to which the soul, attracted, won and subjected, lent its passive concurrence.¹³⁸

The teaching contained in the passage just quoted is what Eckhart has often said about the nonpersonal or collective nature of what we ignorantly tend to attribute all to our personal self-—the mental and emotional characteristics of our nature and the patterns of our reactions. There is very little that is personal about it all, says Eckhart; what we see in us is not our own personal nature but mostly collective human nature. The Gita calls it Prakriti or universal Nature-Force.

This insight into the extraneous nature of the forces that operate in our surface being is a powerful tool in overcoming desire—the very first precondition laid down by the Gita for a spiritual birth. As Sri Aurobindo explains in his letters to disciples:

All the ordinary vital movements¹³⁹ are foreign to the true being and come from outside; they do not belong to the soul nor do they originate in it but are waves from the general Nature, Prakriti. The desires come from outside, enter the subconscious vital and rise to the surface. It is only when they rise to the surface and the mind becomes aware of them, that we become conscious of the desire. It seems to us to be our own because we feel it thus rising from the vital into the mind and do not know that it came from outside. What belongs to the vital, to the being, what makes it responsible is not the desire itself, but the habit of responding to the waves or the currents of suggestion that come into it from the universal Prakriti.¹⁴⁰

When one lives in the true consciousness one feels the desires outside oneself, entering from outside, from the universal lower Prakriti, into the mind and the vital parts. In the ordinary human condition this is not felt; men become aware of

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the desire only when it is there, when it has come inside and found a lodging or a habitual harbourage and so they think it is their own and a part of themselves. The first condition for getting rid of desire is, therefore, to become conscious with the true consciousness; fort then it becomes much easier to dismiss it than when one has to struggle with it as if it were a constituent part of oneself to be thrown out from the being. It is easier to cast off an accretion than to excise what is felt as a parcel of our substance.¹⁴¹

Desire takes a long time to get rid of entirely. But, if you can once get it out of the nature and realise it as a force coming from outside and putting its claws into the vital and physical,¹⁴² it will be easier to get rid of the invader. You are too accustomed to feel it as part of yourself or planted in you—that makes it more difficult for you to deal with its movements and dismiss its ancient control over you.¹⁴³

It may be noted in passing that thoughts, too, like desires, come from outside, says Sri Aurobindo, though in our ordinary consciousness we experience them as generated in our own mind. As Sri Aurobindo explains to disciples:

Our thoughts are not really created within ourselves independently in the small narrow thinking machine we call our mind; in fact, they come to us from a vast mental space or ether either as mind-waves or waves of mind-force that carry a significance which takes shape in our personal mind or as thought-formations ready-made which we adopt and call ours. Our outer mind is blind to this process of Nature; but by the awakening of the inner mind we can become aware of it.¹⁴⁴

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For him [the Yogi] the image of the factory of thoughts is no longer quite valid; for he sees that thoughts come from outside, from the universal Mind or universal Nature, sometimes formed and distinct, sometimes unformed and then they are given shape somewhere in us. The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or a refusal to these thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature-Force.¹⁴⁵

... the real truth is that all these thoughts and activities are Nature's and come into us or pass through us as waves from the universal Nature. It is our egoism and our limitation in the body and individual physical mind which prevent us from feeling and experiencing this truth.¹⁴⁶

The error comes from thinking that your thoughts are your own and that you are their maker and if you do not create thoughts (i.e., think), there will be none. A little observation ought to show that you are not manufacturing your own thoughts, but rather thoughts occur in you. Thoughts are born, not made—like poets, according to the proverb. Of course, there is a sort of labour and effort when you try to produce or else to think on a certain subject, but that is a concentration for making thoughts come up, come in, come down, as the case may be, and fit themselves together. The idea that you are shaping the thoughts or fitting them together is an egoistic delusion. They are doing it themselves, or Nature is doing it for you, only under a certain compulsion; you have to beat her often in order to make her do it, and the beating is not always successful.¹⁴⁷

Sri Aurobindo discovered this truth about the extraneous source of our thoughts when he followed the instructions given to him by

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Yogi Vishnu Bhaskar Lele for silencing the mind. Describing his experience, Sri Aurobindo writes:

It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation," he said, "but do not think, look only at your mind; you will see thoughts coming into it; before they can enter throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence." I had never heard before of thoughts coming visibly into the mind from outside, but I did not think either of questioning the truth or the possibility, I simply sat down and did it. In a moment my mind became silent as a windless air on a high mountain summit and then I saw one thought and then another coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire.¹⁴⁸

The description of the same experience in another context throws some more light on silencing the mind.

There are in fact several ways [of achieving silence]. My own way was by rejection of thought. "Sit down," I was told, "look and you will see that your thoughts come into you from outside. Before they enter, fling them back." I sat down and looked and saw to my astonishment that it was so; I saw and felt concretely the thought approaching as if to enter through or above the head and was able to push it back concretely before it came inside.

In three days—really in one—my mind became full of an eternal silence—it is still there. But that I don't know how many people can do. One (not a disciple—I had no disciples

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in those days) asked me how to do Yoga. I said: "Make your mind quiet first." He did and his mind became quite silent and empty. Then he rushed to me saying: "My brain is empty of thoughts, I cannot think. I am becoming an idiot." He did not pause to look and see where these thoughts he uttered were coming from! Nor did he realise that one who is already an idiot cannot become one. Anyhow I was not patient in those days and I dropped him and let him lose his miraculously achieved silence.

The usual way, the easiest if one can manage it at all, is to call down the silence from above you into the brain, mind and body.¹⁴⁹

It is interesting that Nisargadatta's definition of meditation, which Eckhart alludes to more than once, seems to imply the same method of rejection of thoughts taught to Sri Aurobindo by Lele. Mediation, says Nisargadatta's, as Eckhart quotes him, is "a radical refusal to harbor thoughts." Eckhart remarks that Presence has to arise strongly if one is to be able to do this.

To return to the teaching of the Gita about liberating oneself from the three modes of Nature, it was stated a little earlier that the first step is to become an impartial Witness so as to arrive at the state of inner freedom from the modes or Gunas of Nature—the state of Nistraigunya. The next step, the Gita teaches, is to be free from the Gunas not only in one's inner being-—the freedom of the soul or Purusha—but also in one's outer surface being—the freedom of Prakriti, the state of Trigunatita. To reiterate what has been stated previously: "First there must be the freedom of the impersonal Witness; afterwards there can be the control of the Master, the Ishwara."

Freedom—the first step—consists in transcending the modes of Nature. Mastery—the decisive step—lies in transforming the three modes of the lower Nature (Apsara Prakriti)—Tamas, Rajas, Sattwa—-into their equivalents of the divine Nature (Para Prakriti)—Shaman, Tapas, Jyoti. Describing this transformation of the modes of Nature, Sri Aurobindo states:

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Here the disharmonies of the triple mode of our inferior existence are overpassed and there begins a greater triple mode of a divine Nature. There is no obscurity of Tamas or inertia. Tamas is replaced by a divine peace and tranquil eternal repose¹⁵⁰ out of which is released from a supreme matrix of calm concentration the play of action and knowledge. There is no rajasic kinesis, no desire, no joyful and sorrowful striving of action, creation and possession, no fruitful chaos of troubled impulse. Rajas is replaced by a self-possessed power and illimitable act of force,¹⁵¹ that even in its most violent intensities does not shake the immovable poise of the soul or stain the vast and profound heavens and luminous abysses of its peace. There is no constructing light of mind casting about to seize and imprison the Truth, no insecure or inactive ease. Sattwa is replaced by an illumination¹⁵² and a spiritual bliss identical with the depth and infinite existence of the soul and instinct with a direct and authentic knowledge that springs straight from the veiled glories of the secret Omniscience. This is the greater consciousness into which our inferior consciousness has to be transformed, this nature of the Ignorance with its unquiet unbalanced activity of the three modes changed into this greater luminous supernature. At first we become free from the three gunas, detached, untroubled, nistraigunya; but this is the recovery of the native state of the soul, the self, the spirit free and watching in its motionless calm the motion of Prakriti in her force of the Ignorance. If on this basis the nature, the motion of Prakriti, is also to become free, it must be by a quiescence of action in a luminous peace and silence in which all necessary movements are done without any conscious reaction or participation or initiation of action by the mind or by the life-being, without any ripple of thought or eddy of the vital parts: it must be done under the impulsion, by the initiation, by the working of an impersonal

cosmic or a transcendent Force. ... there is a transference or transmutation into a superior spiritual status, triguṇātīta,¹⁵³ in which we participate in a greater spiritual denomination; for the three lower unequal modes pass into an equal triune mode of eternal calm, light and force, the repose, kinesis, illumination of the divine Nature.¹⁵⁴

Eckhart's simple yet profound teaching, remarkably free from philosophical abstractions, does not make a distinction between liberation and transformation as Sri Aurobindo's yoga does. In Eckhart's teaching, the liberation from the mind-identified self is the same process as the transformation of consciousness. Similarly, Eckhart does not speak of mastery in the Gita's sense of the term, which implies, besides freedom of the Purusha, the inner being, the liberation of Prakriti, the outer being, also.

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