Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy And Yoga - Some Aspects

The Gita And The Mother

Sri Krishna's Gita is well-known to the spiritual seekers all over the world from time immemorial and has been acclaimed by the elite as one of the best spiritual guide whose value remains unimpaired to this day because of the eternal verities it contains. Sri Aurobindo's Mother is not so well-known to the present-day spiritual seekers as his more renowned Magnum Opus, the Life Divine to the elites, the intellectuals and others who are interested in philosophical literature. From the point of view of practical guidance to spiritual or more properly speaking, the supramental Truth, this has an abiding value not only for the present but for all times to come in the future.

This is all the more true that while the Gita insists upon the separation of the Soul from Prakriti or nature as the ultimate goal of human life in this world of ignorance, sorrow and suffering, of birth and death, of old age, disease and ultimate decay and personal salvation and escape from re-birth as the highest object of life, Sri Aurobindo, on the contrary teaches that while realisation of the Soul is the first and primary object of human life, the mere separation of the Purusha or Soul from Prakriti is only one, that is, the first step towards the real goal of human existence which is complete union with the Divine both in soul and nature. And the motives of personal salvation and escape from rebirth are tabooed in his Yoga. These two primary objects of human life, whatever their values and utilities in the past, are no longer sufficient to meet the demands

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of an age which are quite opposite to those of an earlier age when withdrawal from life after spiritual illumination was considered the goal of life a£*er the destined fall of the body. In the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo there has to be a total and radical transformation of the material world to warrant the full manifestation of the Divine in matter and that requires a higher spiritual effort and performance than the mere separation of the Purusha consciousness or Soul from Prakriti or executive nature to which the soul is subject from its very birth in a mortal body.

The separation of the soul from nature may give us a certaito mastery over the movements of our ignorant and egoistic nature, mental, vital and physical but mastery is not transformation. A certain but not complete mastery. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, insists that we have to go deeper after this first realisation of the soul to the Psychic entity lying dormant in the deepest recesses of our being. This psychic transformation has been achieved by only a limited number of human beings up to the present. But this is only a first step in his yoga, the triple transformation of psychic, spiritual and supramental change will achieve a complete and radical change of human nature so as to usher in a new birth, a new life and a new consciousness in the human life. Speaking of the evolutionary growth and ascent of consciousness from inert and inconscient matter, he traces how life consciousness developed out of the inconscience first in the vegetable kingdom, then in insects, worms, reptiles, birds and beasts and lastly in the developed mental consciousness of developed animals and human beings. The mental consciousness

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of human beings is not the last term of the evolutionary progression of consciousness. It will exceed Mind as mind has exceeded the life consciousness of animals and culminate in supramental consciousness—its ultimate goal in terrestrial life. From a world of ignorance, sorrow and suffering, full of strife and discord, we shall enter a new world of peace, harmony, bliss and love. The Divine omniscience and omnipotence will reign in the transformed human beings, the supermen in the new creation and the whole world order will be one of peace and harmony because of the superior race of men who will be the leaders of the terrestrial life.

"The supramental change is a thing decreed and inevitable in the evolution of earth-consciousness ; for its upward ascent is not ended and mind is not its last summit." And again : "As there has been established on earth a mental consciousness and power which shapes a race of mental beings, so now there will be established here a gnostic consciousness and power which will shape a race of gnostic spiritual beings and take up into itself all of earth nature that is ready for this new transformation." Since this was what he foresaw in his spiritual vision, he dedicated all his life to bring the supramental change in himself and in the Mother, his divine collaborator in this stupendous work of earthly transformation and wrote some letters to a disciple in answer to his queries which have been collected and published in what is known as Sri Aurobindo's, "The Mother". It contains all the practical guidance needed for supramental realisation on the part of the spiritual seekers. His Yoga is called the yoga of Transformation or the Integral yoga and the way to it is perfect and unreserved surrender to the Divine Mother who

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is the Divine Shakti and the mystery behind the whole creation.

"Those who wish to help the Light of Truth to prevail over the forces of darkness and falsehood can do so by carefully observing the initiating impulses of their movements and action, and discriminate between those that come from the Truth and those that come from the falsehood, in order to obey the first and to refuse or reject the others.

This power of discrimination is one of the first effects of the Advent of the Truth's Light in the earth's atmosphere.

If we allow a falsehood, however small, to express itself through our mouth, or our pen, how can we hope to become perfect messengers of Truth ? A perfect servant of Truth should abstain even from the slightest inexactitude, exaggeration or deformation."

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