The Destiny of the Body

Chapter IV

The Evolutionary Destiny

To minds bound to the present form of things the divine transfiguration of the human body, the golden dream of planting heaven here on the soil of Matter, may well appear as 'a senseless and impossible chimera'¹, the 'bright hallucination'² of an idealist's thoughts, a vain and ineffectual imagination and 'the noble fiction'³ of man's subconscious yearnings.

For, the problem at the base is this: how, through what mechanism, and by following what definite process, can this vision of the emergence of the transfigured body, this 'corps glorieux that would be plastic enough to be constantly remodelled by the deeper consciousness',⁴ be translated into shining reality and realised here on the face of the earth ? In the absence of any clear indication on this point, it may very well appear that, after all, 'the Ideal is a malady of the mind'⁵ and 'a bright delirium'⁶ of the visionary's 'speech and thought',⁷

And never shall it find its heavenly shape

And never can it be fulfilled in Time.⁸

For, is it not too much to expect ever seeing 'a face and form divine in the naked two-legged worm'⁹ otherwise called man?

But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother assure us that the transformation of the body as envisaged above is going to be the natural, logical and inevitable result of our destined evolution out of the present human ignorance and imperfection into a far greater truth and consciousness of the Spirit.

Indeed, in the inmost reality of things, the emergence of consciousness in an apparently inconscient universe of Matter and then a progressive growth of this consciousness and a concomitant growth of the light and power of the being has always been the essential purpose of the organic evolution and the key to the mystery

^{1 2 3} Expressions taken from Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri.

⁴ The Mother in the Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 3, p. 123.

^{5 6 7 9} Expressions taken from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.

⁸ Savitri, Book X, Canto II, p. 619.

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of its secret process. The development of the form and its functioning or the physical organism's fitness to survive in the conditions of the environment, although indispensable, are by no means the whole meaning or the central motive force of evolution.

Now, this emergence and growth of consciousness in evolution has by no means ended with the appearance of man on the earth-scene, with his characteristic mental consciousness. For, mind is too imperfect an expression and man too hampered and limited a creature to be the last terms of evolution. It must then imply a progressive ascent to higher and higher reaches of consciousness till it reaches the highest possible. As Nature has already evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, evolved beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must now evolve even beyond Mind — which seems as yet her last term — and manifest a supramental consciousness and power of our existence in which "there is no longer an ignorance seeking for knowledge but knowledge self-possessed, inherent in the being, master of its own truths and working them out with a natural vision and force that is not afflicted by limitation and error."¹ This would mean an entry into "a truth-consciousness self-existent in which the being would be aware of its own realities and would have the inherent power to manifest them in a Time-creation in which all would be Truth following out its own unerring steps and combining its own harmonies; every thought and will and feeling and act would be spontaneously right, inspired or intuitive, moving by the light of Truth and therefore perfect. All would express inherent realities of the spirit; some fullness of the power of the spirit would be there. One would have overpassed the present limitations of mind: mind would become a seeing of the light of Truth, will a force and power of the Truth, life a progressive fulfilment of the Truth, the body itself a conscious vessel of the Truth and part of the means of its self-effectuation and a form of its self-aware existence."²

Once we have grown into this Truth-Consciousness or into Supermind as Sri Aurobindo has termed it, once we have opened ourselves to its descent and unveiled action in us, its divinely potent truth of being will shape and determine everything in its victorious stride. No obscuration or limitation of the earth-nature will be able to prevail against its omniscient light and omnipotent force, for "light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous

^{1 2} The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 30-31. (Italics ours)

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right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit."¹

And if Matter — which has so far in the course of the long march of evolution taken into itself and manifested 'the power of life and the light of mind,' although in its original status it appeared to be lifeless and mindless — can once open itself to the action of the divine Supermind and allow a full play to this supreme power and light of the spirit, it would "in an earthly body shed its parts of inconscience and become a perfectly conscious frame of the spirit. A secure completeness and stability of the health and strength of its physical tenement could be maintained by the will and force of [the] inhabitant; all the natural capacities of the physical frame, all powers of the physical consciousness would reach their utmost extension and be there at command and sure of their flawless action. As an instrument the body would acquire a fullness of capacity, a totality of fitness for all uses which the inhabitant would demand of it far beyond anything now possible. Even it could become a revealing vessel of a supreme beauty and bliss, — casting the beauty of the light of the spirit suffusing and radiating from it as a lamp reflects and diffuses the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body."²

But one further question arises here: The evolutionary process upon the earth has been so far extremely slow and tardy, extending over thousands and millions of years; — what principle must intervene if there is to occur in the foreseeable future this envisaged transfiguration of the whole being of man?

The necessary clue can be found in the fact that with the appearance, upon the earth, of man with his developed thinking mind the evolution has decisively changed its course and process and become 'reflexively' conscious. Up till the advent of man the organic evolution had been effected through the automatic operation of Nature without the conscious participation of the organisms

¹ The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, p. 36.

² Ibid., pp. 32-33.

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involved, in the form of the latter's self-aware will or seeking, aspiration or endeavour. But in man the living creature has for the first time become 'awake and aware of himself'; he has felt that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; 'the aspiration to exceed himself is delivered and articulate within him'.¹ It has thus become conceivable and practicable that in man a conscious evolution may replace the subconscious and subliminal evolution to which Nature has so far taken recourse and a further growth of consciousness and change of being be effected through a process of conscious self-transformation.

As a matter of fact, "in the previous stages of the evolution Nature's first care and effort had to be directed towards a change in the physical organisation, for only so could there be a change of consciousness; this was a necessity imposed by the insufficiency of the force of consciousness already in formation to effect a change in the body. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable; for it is through his consciousness, through its transmutation and no longer through a new bodily organism as a first instrumentation that the evolution can and must be effected. In the inner reality of things a change of consciousness was always the major fact, the evolution has always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental; but this relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external Inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body."²

But here at this point we have to contend with a double denial arising out of two diametrically opposed views of existence: 'the materialist denial' and 'the refusal of the ascetic'.³

¹The Life Divine, p. 843.

²Ibid., pp. 843-44. (Italics ours)

³ These picturesque expressions form the titles of two of the chapters of The Life Divine.

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