Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects

A Letter On Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine

Even if Life Divine appears too difficult for you to understand, I can only ask you to persevere with it so that, light of understanding may dawn upon you one day. I am compelled to accept whatever Sri Aurobindo writes as true and authentic and have only to realise their truth by practice and practical application in life. Even if one understands his writings intellectually, they are of no use unless and until you practise them in actual day-to-day life. Otherwise, all remain in the intellectual domain and are useless for the purpose of life. You can never be sure of understanding the Life Divine in all' its details but you can have an idea of the principles.

There are two views of life, one materialistic and the other, spiritual and both of them are partially and not wholly true. But if you can synthesis them and unify them in a comprehensive understanding, then you can arrive at the integral knowledge. The materialistic view though true from the point of view of the external senses and objective knowledge is opposed by spiritual knowledge which is based on subjective experiences which are not verifiable by objective tests. Physical life suffers from the experience of dualities like heat and cold, hunger and thirst, pain and pleasure, attractions and repulsions etc. which are so true to ordinary human consciousness but there is the subjective way of evading or escaping them by complete detachment and living in the spirit. The spiritualists claim that theirs is an abiding and eternal reality while matter

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and material life are subject to constant change and are fleeting and transitory.

The sages have .found that there is an eternal Reality stable and unchanging behind this phenomenal world of constant change. Matter or material life is subject to birth, growth,, development and decay and nothing .can stop this process of creation, preservation and destruction. But what is matter ? It is only a form taken by energy in this eternal work of creation, preservation and destruction. This is the work of Chit-Shakti, the conscious Power of the Divine. Shiva and Kali are one, not two. When at rest, it is Shiva and when creating, it becomes Kali.

These phenomenal creations of trillions of names and forms are not outside itself for there is nothing except this sole abiding one Existence or the Existent which is described by the sages as Brahman. This Brahman has a triple character, 1) Transcendental or Absolute beyond the reach of mind and senses, of thoughts and words ; 2) Being or sat-chit-ananda and lastly, 3) Becoming of the Being which we call the. world of phenomena in which He hides himself for discovery by the supreme head of this creation, namely, men. He is no doubt the summit of the present creation and far exceeds the rest of it in intelligence. But he is still masked by the ignorance and obscurity of the material creation and only by a supreme effort at self-finding does he at last discover Ih is true nature, that is the nature of the Sat-chit-ananda. This is the divine play and all those have realised their true being have unanimously testified to this truth of creation.

Now with all this data of creation given, of involution and evolution of the -divine consciousness, it will not

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be difficult to follow the evolutionary process which is the sole theme of the Divine Life. Sat or existence becomes Matter, Chit or Consciousness hides itself in conscience and Ananda into its opposite insensibility. 'The first to emerge from this swoon of inconscience is matter, dull and insensitive, then slowly life emerges in the form of vegetable Kingdom with clearly discernible consciousness in plants and trees and afterwards in worms, insects, reptiles, birds and beasts and lastly, in animals of developed intelligence like cats" dogs, cows and horses etc. to be ultimately followed by hum in beings of dwarf intelligence, the intelligent human creator from its primitive appearance in cavemen, nomads and hunters and lastly, the developed intelligence of thinkers, writers, poets, artists, painters, sculptors, architects, musicians and scientists of different denominations. But all these at the summits of human mental intelligence have still to work under the shadow of the ignorance cast on them when the Divine created them and gave them freedom to separate their cortscrotrsriess from the supreme divine consciousness, that is, these intelligent human beings are still subject to the original inconscience illumined -to some extent by progressive growth of knowledge and consciousness culminating in the attainment of the supreme divine consciousness through various turns and vicissitudes of ignorance in several lives of continuous self-progression towards the supreme self-knowledge.

ADDENDUM

Further to the above letter, I thought of writing in some details about our traditional Yoga and Spirituality

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and Sri Aurobindo's supramental Yoga which is a complete departure from the tradition, so far, as the end and aim of this new Yoga is concerned, One without a second, our philosophical tenet has not been adequately matched by the other tenet. Which is ; Verily All this is Brahman—One and the Many, this is the starting point of all our philosophical disputes. We lose sight of the experience and realisation of the ancient sages that the One has become Many and the Many are One. When actual realisation comes we see that the One divine in All.

All are the Divine—and there is nothing else besides. If we forget that, He is not only in everything but is everything _? we lose all. The Non-being, Being and Becoming are the triple aspect£of the One Divine. The Infinite is manifested in Being as Sat-chit-ananda and He again is manifested as this .created world within His own being (Becoming).

It is the Mind in ignorance that makes all sorts of distinctions, divisions and separations such as, Being and Non-being (Sat-Asat). "The real "Monism-Adwaita" is that, which does not seek to bisect Its existence into two incompatible entities Brahman and Not-Brahman, Self and Not-Self, a real Self and an unreal, yet perpetual Maya. It it be true that the Self alone exists, it must be also true that all is the Self." (Life Divine—Reality omnipresent).

It is the mind in ignorance that makes division in the indivisible and sets up rigid dogmas like if it is One, it cannot be Many. But spiritual experience shows that both are true. There is nothing incompatible in the One becoming Many. At the core of everything is the One-the multiplicity, diversity are on the surface of

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the phenomena. That is why all those who look for truth must dive behind the surface to the depth. The truth of things lies in depth behind the surface.

All spiritual efforts have been to lead this creation to the Origin that is, the Creator. Many do not know that both Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Vivekananda helped Sri Aurobindo to this Yoga by their Occult Presence. He has himself testified to this truth.

Go on reading the Gita and the Gospels^Light will come. One should not despair.

Patience

All good abides with him who waited wisely." These words of Thoreau speak to the virtue of patience. Don't leave the dock before your ship comes in. Time has great power to solve problems. The person who has the wisdom to work and wait usually finds out that; this pays off. The patient person has conquered the malady of complaining. So just be patient today. Your calm endurance will pave the way for good to come into your life.

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