The Destiny of the Body

Part Two

THE SPIRITUAL DESTINY OF THE

WAKING STATE

Chapter I

The Bane of Oscillation

Obviously if one has not the Brahmisthiti in the waking state,

there is no completeness in the realisation.

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 109)

How is it, O Great One, that even we who have attained to

Knowledge get at times blind and benighted"?*

(Chandi Saptashati, I.30)

...Man evolving to divinest heights

Colloques still with the animal and the Djinn;

The human godhead with star-gazer eyes

Lives still in one house with the primal beast.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto VI, p. 541)

The subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements. It sustains and reinforces all in us that clings most and refuses to change, our mechanical recurrences of unintelligent thought, our persistent obstinacies of feeling, sensation, impulse, propensity, our uncontrolled fixities of character. The animal in us, — the infernal also, — has its lair of retreat in the dense jungle of the subconscience. To penetrate there, to bring in light and establish a control, is indispensable for the completeness of any higher life, for any integral transformation of the nature.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 734-35)

A total divine transformation of all our embodied existence, even to its most obdurate and unregenerate physical parts, and not simply a subjective liberation from the grip of the phenomenal Ignorance, Avidya, is the goal set before the Yoga of Transformation as envisaged and delineated by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Naturally enough this implies that our Prakriti part including in particular the waking physical consciousness must

* Tat kenaitanmahābhāga yanmoho jhāñlnorapi ?

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have to undergo the necessary spiritual transfiguration and be made capable of bodying forth in full the Chit-Tapas of the dynamic Sachchidananda.

But is this high goal feasible and at all realisable in practice ? Even if we set aside for the moment the trenchant assertion of the Illusionists that everything in this phenomenal universe not excluding the body itself is nothing but a false appearance devoid of all substantial reality and brought about by the power of Ignorance, and that it is thus absolutely pointless to talk about the divine transformation of the physical existence which is nonexistent after all and will vanish altogether with the dawn of Knowledge¹, we are still confronted with a chorus of dissident voices from other not so extremist spiritual seekers who would vehemently protest to say that far be it to seek to divinise our waking physical existence, it is not possible even to achieve a perfect self-knowledge and union or unity with the being, the consciousness and the bliss of the Supreme except in moments of total withdrawal from all trace of body-consciousness. Thus it is held that only the cataleptic state of Samadhi can offer itself as the most natural status of divine consciousness that an embodied soul can aspire after.

This so-claimed incapacity of our normal waking consciousness to allow of a complete spiritual illumination has often been cited as one of the most potent and pertinent grounds for the disparagement and denigration of the physical body. In ancient Greece and Rome, in the Dionysian cult and in the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus, such mystical-psychical experiences as men obtained in rare moments of exaltation described as ekstasis led to the conviction that it is the body alone that is the villain of the piece obstructing and fettering the soul in its ascent to the 'knowledge of divine things' and that the only sensible course would be to cast it off so that the soul might be 'purified' from a 'defiling encumbrance.²

If the physical body alone is at the root of the trouble, so may aver the unwary seeker, it should be a very easy propostion to escape the clutches of Illusion and Ignorance and attain to the status of spiritual liberation, simply by waiting long enough for the physical body to drop off and disintegrate on death, or better

¹ Cf. Yoga-Vāsiṣṭham (Upaśama-Prakaraṇam), IXC. 49-54.

² W. Capelle, "Ascetism (Greek)" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Ed. Hastings), Vol. 2, p. 80.

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still by committing suicide as Godhika(?) of the Buddhist tradition sought to do! But a little reflection would show that it is the height of absurdity to expect that the state of physical death alone might usher in liberation ('maraṇameva apavargaḥ': Brihaspati Sutra). For, as one of the Upanishads twits, 'birds and insects and animals, all mortal creatures without exception, are sure to die today or tomorrow; can one declare on that score that all of them become liberated through death?'¹

The fact of the matter is this that our body is not composed simply of what we perceive through the physical senses. In addition to this ephemeral gross physical body (liṅgaśarīra), we possess too a subtle one. While the gross body gets disintegrated on death, the subtle body or its seed persists and becomes the occasion for the sprouting of a new gross body and thus is maintained the continuity of the play in the Ignorance.

Now, according to the traditional spiritual vision, our subtle body as well as the gross one is a product of avidyā. On the attainment of liberation, through the annulment of this Ignorance, what happens is that all possibilities of further formation of bodies are altogether and once for all destroyed;² 'the seeds get fried out so that they fail to germinate any more.'³

Thus, it is not so much the dissolution of the present physical body as the prevention of the formation of further bodies in future (bhāvīdeha-nivṛtti), that is claimed to be brought about by the dawning of spiritual Knowledge.⁴ So far as the present gross body is concerned, its continued existence and functioning even after the attainment of liberation is sought to be explained in terms of what is called prārabdha-karma. Indeed, according to the Theory of Karma, karmas fall broadly into three categories: those that have started bearing their fruits (prārabdha-karma), those that still lie

¹Paśukukkuṭakitādyā mṛtiṁ saṁprāpnuvanti vai,

teṣāṁ kiṁ piṇḍapātena muktirbhavati padmaja? (Yogaśikhaopaniṣad, I. 161-62).

²Jñānasamakālamuktaḥ kaivalyaṁ yāti. (Sheshacharya, Paramārthasāra, sl. 81)

³Vivekajñānavahninā dahyante (Varāhopaniṣad, III. 24).

⁴Na yogī paśyate garbhaṁ pare brahmaṇi liyate (Dattatreya, Avadhūta Gitā. II, 29).

Bhūyojanmavinirmuktam (Yoga-Vāsiṣṭham, Upashama-Prakaranam, 90.18). Tathātmani samādadhyād yathā bhūyo na jāyate (Ibid., Mumukshu-Vyavahara-Prakaranam, 7.1).

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accumulated (sañcita-karma), and those that are being gathered in the present embodied existence (sañcīyamāna-karma). Spiritual knowledge, so it is asserted, destroys altogether the second kind¹ and prevents the third², thus rendering the assumption of a new body impossible. But the first type of karmas that have begun to germinate and produce their effects can by no means be infructified; the embodied soul must perforce exhaust them through sufferance alone and not by meditation or in any other wise³.

It follows then that the present physical body, the product of such karmas, runs its natural course even after the attainment of Knowledge and ceases to function only when the force of the karmas causing it becomes automatically exhausted in the fashion of the potter's wheel which, already set in motion, comes to a dead stop at the exhaustion of the imparted momentum (kulālaca-kravat). At the fall of the physical body, both the bodies, gross and subtle, perish and disintegrate and the liberated soul (jivan-mukta) is then said to attain to the status of disembodied liberation (videhamukti) whence there is no more return (yadgatvā na nivartante) to the ignorant play of cosmic existence.⁴

It is amply evident from what goes before that instead of seeking to dissolve the bane of Ignorance while still in the physical body, if a person ventures on an ill-conceived short-cut by voluntarily terminating his bodily life, it will utterly be of no avail to him; on the contrary, the misconceived act will add to the burden of his sañcīyamāna-karma which he will have to exhaust in a future body under conditions infinitely worse and unimaginably dolorous. From the spiritual point of view, suicide has thus been always considered to be one of the most abominable acts.

But this is not for any love or respect for the body as such. It is for the sole reason that this heinous act unwittingly delays the hour of ultimate liberation from the bondage of birth and the shackles of physical existence. And if this is so, the voluntary giving up of the body loses much of the stigma attached to it, if it is

¹Jñānāgninā sarvakarmāṇi bhasmasāt kurute. (Gitā)

² Karmaphalaiḥ sa na badhyate. (Shankara)

Na sa mūḍhavallipyate. Yathā raviḥ sarvarasān prabhuṅkte hutāśanaścāpi hi sarvabhakṣaḥ. Tathaiva yogi viṣayān prabhuṅkte na lipyate puṇyapāpaiśca śuddhaḥ. (Avadhūtopaniṣad, 6)

³ Asau naiva śāmyeddhyānasahasrataḥ. (Avadhūtopaniṣad, 6) Cf. mā bhuktā ksīyate karma kalpakotiśatairapi

⁴Punarāvṛttirahitaṁ kaivalyaṁ pratipadyate. (Shankara, Vākyavṛtti., 53)

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undertaken after attaining to Self-Knowledge. In our day, Sri Ramakrishna is very much explicit on this particular point. Thus he says:

"Suicide is a heinous sin, undoubtedly. A man who kills himself must return again and again to this world and suffer its agony. But I don't call it suicide if a person leaves his body after having the vision of God. There is no harm in giving up one's body that way. After attaining Knowledge some people give up their bodies. After the gold image has been cast in the clay mould, you may either preserve the mould or break it."¹

Elsewhere he says: "The kavirajas prepare [the medicine] makaradhvaja in a bottle....When the medicine has been made, what difference does it make whether the bottle is preserved or broken? ...After the realization of God, what difference does it make whether the body lives or dies?"²

But why is this attitude of indifference, even of disdain, towards the physical body ? In order to appreciate the reasons behind this almost universal sense of disparagement for the body, we must note that in the Sadhanas followed so far, it is the subjective realisation of the Purusha part and the inner experiences of the Self and the Supreme, as distinct from the spiritual transformation of the Prakriti part, of the instrumental Nature; that have been generally sought after. The Self separates from the Nature and, itself free and unaffected, views the turbid movements of the Prakriti as the continuance of an unsupported machinery that will surely drop off at the falling away of the body, leaving the Spirit free for ever.

Undoubtedly, while in the body, the untransformed instrumental Nature comes at times to becloud the vision and shut off the highest realisation as if behind an obscure veil. But this is the price one has to pay for the continued existence in a physical body and since this is a temporary and short-lived deficiency, it may not be very much grudged. After all, so it is averred, one may withdraw into the state of Samadhi in order to experience the highest realisation even while still in the body.

But the trouble is, one cannot continually remain in Samadhi,

¹ Swami Nikhilananda (Tr.), The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 95. (Italics ours)

² Ibid., p. 174.

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in the consciousness of the Supreme Truth; 'one cannot remain in bhāva for long',¹ as Sri Ramakrishna would say. So long as the body exists, one is perforce brought down² from the absorbed state of illumination, and a recurring rhythm of ascent and descent intervenes. This state of constant wavering, of soaring and descending, this oscillation between the withdrawn status of blissful realisation and the darkened status of waking existence, is not something that can be viewed with indifference by all, especially since our normal waking physical consciousness does not seem to have the spiritual capability of ever mirroring the highest or the deepest realisation. Is it not Sri Ramakrishna who cited his own case to declare: "Sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni: it is not good to keep the voice on 'ni', it is not possible to keep it there very long. I shall keep it on the next lower note" ?³

This supposed incapacity of our waking physical consciousness coupled with the gravitational pull exerted by the body-consciousness tending to bring down the embodied soul from its status of perfect union and illumination, often creates a sense of repugnance for the bodily existence. The aforesaid oscillation of consciousness comes as such a rude shock to some sensitive spiritual seekers that they do not flinch even from giving up their bodies as an irremediable malady. The apparently accidental dissolution of the bodies of Sri Chaitanya of Bengal, of the famous Pawahari Baba of Gazipur and of the Maharashtrian saint Tukaram may have its occult compelling factor in some such spiritual malaise.⁴

We thus encounter an all-round denigration of our physical existence. But what are after all the precise disabilities of the waking state, what is the character and content of its spiritual penury?

¹ Swami Nikhilananda (Tr.), op. cit., p. 614.

² Cf. jñānināmapi cetāṁsi devī bhagavati hi sā balādākṛṣya mohāya mahā-māyā prayacchati. (Caṇḍi Saptaśatī, 39)

³Swami Nikhilananda, op. cit., p. 524. (Italics ours)

⁴Vide Brahmarshi Satyadev, Sādhana Samara, I, pp. 159-60.

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