The Destiny of the Body

Chapter VIII

THE MIND-CONSIOUSNESS: ITS ACHIEVEMENTS

AND FAILURES

A black veil has been lifted; we have seen

The mighty shadow of the omniscient Lord;

But who has lifted up the veil of light

And who has seen the body of the King ?

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book III, Canto II, p. 311)

It is certain that you won't be able to know the Atman through the mind. You have to go beyond the mind. As there is no instrument beyond the mind — for only the Atman exists there — there the object of knowledge becomes the same as the instrument of knowledge....It is therefore that the Shruti says, 'Vijñātāramare kena vijānīyāt — Through what are you to know the Eternal Subject?'

(Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VII, p. 142)

If the Mind were the last word and there were nothing beyond it except the pure Spirit, I would not be averse to accepting it [Mayavad with its sole stress on Nirvana] as the only way out.... But my experience is that there is something beyond mind; Mind is not the last word here of the Spirit.... There is a Truth-Consciousness, not static only and self-introspective, but also dynamic and creative...

(Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 103)

We have seen that for the seeker of the Integral Yoga the realisation of the 'passive Brahman', of the pure quiescent self-existence independent of all world-play, cannot be more than the necessary first basis. We cannot rest with an utter withdrawal in consciousness from the universal manifestation. We must instead return upon the world of action and creation and seek to repossess and remould our mind, life and body with the luminous dynamis of the 'active Brahman' and identify ourselves, freely and in the infinite self-delight of the Being, with all the outpouring of Chit-Tapas, of Consciousness and its creative Force, in Time and in Space.

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But the goal is easier stated than realised. For, almost on universal evidence, any great stress of dynamism generally obscures the inner vision, brings in a relative loss of the Peace and Silence of the soul, and otherwise tends to lower the status of spiritual attainment.

But this disability arises from the fact that attempts to possess the active Brahman have so far been made exclusively through the Mind-consciousness. And since Mind, the great divider, suffers from some intrinsic and irremediable limitations these attempts have been foredoomed to failure.

But the question may be raised: since Mind, in the actually evolved existence, is the highest possible instrument available and since there is no other still higher organised power through which to realise the Self or Brahman or to possess divinely the world, is it not almost axiomatic that the transformation of our dynamic waking existence as we envisage in our sadhana is an impossible proposition ?

Of course, if the above assumption is correct, the liberation and transformation of our embodied existence would be impossible here upon earth, and instead of running after the ignis fatuus it would be more sensible to pass away into the Superconscient and not to seek to bring down the Superconscient into the field of our waking consciousness.

As a matter of fact, this has been so far the general trend. For "in the ordinary Yoga...it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence."¹

But a deeper and higher spiritual exploration reveals the fact that the above assumption is not correct after all. Mind is not the highest principle of cosmic existence, with only the pure Spirit, the Impersonal Absolute beyond itself. As a matter of fact, there is a hierarchy of superior principles far transcending the normal mind-

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 427.

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consciousness and consequently at present superconscient to it. A supreme Truth-Consciousness, Rita-Chit, which Sri Aurobindo terms as Supermind, tops the series and this is a Power not merely static and introspective but supremely dynamic and creative. It is this Supermind that must be consciously possessed and made to descend into our earth-nature if we would have a transformed waking existence. Otherwise a static release remains the sole possibility before the spiritual seeker.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of the existence of these supernal planes of our being has been almost lost to the spiritual memory of the race with all the adverse consequences attendant upon it. In ancient lore, "in the Upanishad (usually the Taittiriya) there are some indications of these higher planes and their nature and the possibility of gathering up the whole consciousness and rising into them. But this was forgotten afterwards and people spoke only of the Buddhi as the highest thing with the Purusha or Self just above, but there was no clear idea of these planes."¹

Now, so long as these higher spiritual planes of the mental being and finally the plane of Supermind are not consciously possessed and made active and organised in the normal consciousness of the embodied being, so long as the spiritualised mind approaches the Supreme directly and not passing through this Truth-Consciousness, the supramental Gnosis, one is bound to experience difficulties from the point of view of the realisation of our goal, both in the mind's ascent and in its attempted realisation of the active Brahman.

Let us have a bird's-eye view of some of the more salient difficulties encountered and, at the same time, of the achievements of Mind as well as of its failures.

The Ascent and Illusoriness: If Mind is taken to be the highest possible cosmic principle, since the Absolute is not seizable by the mind-consciousness, the seeker of the traditional Yogas tries to get away from the mortal failings of mind into the superconscient Infinite, by shedding all its activities and formations, making a blank of it and finally 'engulfing it in the Unmanifest,' param avyaktam.

In this progressive withdrawal from mind-consciousness, the sadhak comes to realise the Sad-Atman, the "pure, still, self-aware

¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 114.

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existence, one, undivided, peaceful, inactive, undisturbed by the action of the world."¹

Although this Sad-Atman is the unique Origin and Sustainer of everything, sarvāni hyetad brahma,² being itself passive, the only relation it appears to have with this world of manifestation is that of "a disinterested Witness not at all involved in or affected or even touched by any of its activities."³

When one pushes farther this state of consciousness, one comes to realise 'an aloof and transcendent Real Existence' appearing to have no connection or commerce at all with the world-existence.

When the mental being seeks to go still beyond, it negates yet further and arrives at an Asat, "a Void of everything that is here, a Void of unnameable peace and extinction of all, even of the Sat, even of that Existent which is the impersonal basis of individual or universal personality."⁴ It is this Asat, arrived at by the absolute annulment of mind-existence and world-existence, that has been variously termed as Turiya or featureless and relationless Absolute by the monistic Vedantins, the Shunyam by the nihilistic Madhya-mika Buddhists, the Tao or omnipresent and transcendent Nihil by the Chinese, and as the indefinable and ineffable Permanent by the Mahayanists.⁵

Many Christian mystics too, notably St. John of the Cross with his doctrine of noche obscura, speak of 'a complete ignorance', 'a divine Darkness' through which the spiritualised Mind has to pass before one can expect to attain to the supreme experience. And it is because of this incompatibility of mind-consciousness with the experience of the Absolute that so many systems of spiritual discipline have come to condemn the cosmic play. As a matter of fact, it is this very incompatibility that is at the basis of the Illusionism that "takes such firm hold of the human mind in its highest overleapings of itself."⁶

If without any intermediate transitions, without awakening in the supernal reaches of our existence, of which we have already spoken, the Mind tries to take a short-cut and pass suddenly the 'gates of the Transcendent' where stands 'the mere and perfect

¹The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 385.

²Māṇḍukya Upaniṣad, 2.

³The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 384-85.

⁴ Ibid., p. 350.

⁵ Letters on Yoga, p. 64.

⁶The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 351.

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Spirit', the inactive Brahman, the transcendent Silence, a sense of utter unreality and illusory character of all cosmic existence seizes it in a most convincing and overwhelming experience. "The universe and all that is... appears [then] to the mind as a dream more unsubstantial than any dream ever seen or imagined, so that even the word dream seems too positive a thing to express its entire unreality."¹

But this universal Illusionism is not a necessary concomitant of the supreme spiritual experience. If instead of the mind's abrupt Samadhi-plunge into the mystic sleep state of suṣupti that is now superconscient and therefore inaccessible to it, one succeeds in acquiring spiritual wakefulness in the supernal states intervening between the Mind and the Spirit, one does not pass through the perception of an illusionary Maya, but rather has "the experience of the passage from Mind to what is beyond it so that our mental structure of the universe ceases to be valid and another reality of it is substituted for the ignorant mental knowledge. In this transition it is possible to be awake to all the states of being together in a harmonised and unified experience and to see the Reality everywhere."² Then we experience, as Sri Aurobindo has ṣo beautifully put, that it is not an unreal or real-unreal universe that is reposing on a transcendent Reality, but a real universe reposing on a Reality at once universal and transcendent or absolute.³

For even beyond the avyaktam, the Unmanifest, beyond the divine Darkness, tamasaḥ parastāt, is the Supreme One Existence, ekam advaitam, the Para Purusha who holds in His vast integral Reality the truth of cosmic consciousness as well as that of the Nirvana of world-consciousness. He is beyond the duality and the non-duality, parataḥ paraḥ⁴ and is ādityavarṇa in contrast to the darkness of the Unmanifest. He is the Light of lights, jyotiṣāṁ jyotiḥ,⁵ and lies in a supreme golden sheath, hiraṇmaye pare koṣe.⁶ Indeed, "the sun in the Yoga is the symbol of the supermind and the supermind is the first power of the Supreme which one meets across the border where the experience of spiritualised mind ceases and the unmodified divine consciousness begins the domain of the

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 417.

² The Life Divine, pp. 452-53.

³Ibid., p. 416.

⁴Muṇdaka Upanisad, II. 1.2.

^{5 6} Ibid., II.2.10.

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supreme Nature, Parā Prakṛti. It is that Light of which the Vedic mystics got a glimpse, and it is the opposite of the intervening darkness of the Christian mystics, for the supermind is all light and no darkness. To the mind the Supreme is avyaktāt param avyaktam, but if we follow the line leading to the supermind, it is an increasing affirmation rather than an increasing negation through which we move."¹

We have so far dwelt upon the disabilities that the mind-consciousness suffers from on its way of ascension to the summits of spiritual consciousness or rather superconsciousness. Now let us turn our gaze on the limitations that vitiate its attempt at complete possession of the active Brahman, when it seeks to return from the summit and embrace the life of action and creation.

The incomplete possession of the active Brahman: It is of course true that our normal consciousness, even at its waking moments, can become aware of Brahman through a process of inward concentration. But the point to note is that it is only the static and passive aspect of Brahman that is thus apprehended, not its active and dynamic side.

The result is that in its return upon world-existence the mental being finds a wall of non-communication between the passive and the active Brahman and all dynamic activity appears to its stilled and inactive consciousness either as a hallucination or a dream, or like a puppet show, or even as a purely mechanical action brought about by the play of Prakriti without any active participation of Purusha. The incommunicability may sometimes be so strong, the gulf separating the inner consciousness and the dynamic outer being so wide that to all outward appearances the seeker may "move about like a thing inert in the hands of Nature, jaḍavat, like a leaf in the wind, or otherwise [in] a state of pure happy and free irresponsibility of action, bālavat....The outer being [may] live in a God-possessed frenzy careless of itself and the world, unmattavat, or with an entire disregard whether of the conventions and proprieties of fitting human action or of the harmony and rhythms of a greater Truth. It acts as the unbound vital being, piśācavat, the divine maniac or else the divine demoniac."²

But this sort of 'static possession by the Self' or 'the unregulated

¹ Letters on Yoga, pp. 64-65. (Italics ours)

² The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 479.

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dynamic possession by the physical and vital Nature' is far removed from the goal of the Integral Yoga, for what we aim at is the "mastery of the Prakriti by the Purusha [and] the sublimation of Nature into her own supreme power, the infinite glories of the Para Shakti."¹

Confronted with this inability to participate actively in the dynamic manifestation without at the same time losing the possession of the freedom and peace of the silent Self, the mental being gets tempted to adopt the attitude of an indifferent and inactive witness of the world-play and at the best allow his organs of sense and motor-action a free play of their own unsupported by any conscious initiation on the part of the witnessing self. The ideal of course is to reduce action to the barest minimum possible compatible with the maintenance of the bodily life.

Of course, there is another possibility, an alternative choice. Through a proper discipline one may come to a state where a perfect inner passivity may co-exist with perfect outer dynamism but altogether independent of each other. In this situation it is not the willed motive of the conscious mind in the Sadhaka that initiates and effectuates the activity, but rather the universal intelligence and will of Nature that uses the living instrument and works flawlessly from centres superconscious or subliminal to the conscious mind.

But this too is not what we seek to realise in our Yoga of dynamic divinisation. For in this particular status of inner passivity and outer action by the mere organs, kevalair indriyair, "there is an evident absence of integrality; for there is still a gulf, an unrealised unity or a cleft of consciousness between the passive and the active Brahman. We have still to possess consciously the active Brahman without losing the possession of the silent Self. We have to preserve the inner silence, tranquillity, passivity as a foundation; but in place of an aloof indifference to the works of the active Brahman we have to arrive at an equal and impartial delight in them; in place of a refusal to participate lest our freedom and peace be lost, we have to arrive at a conscious possession of the active Brahman whose joy of existence does not abrogate His peace, nor His lordship of all workings impair His calm freedom in the midst of His works."² But the crucial question is: is it at all

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 478.

² Ibid., p. 389.

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possible for the mental being in his actually evolved status to embrace at once, equally and fully, both the world and the being, both consciousness and action?

The Intrinsic Incapacity: To answer the above question we must first note that between the normal consciousness of man the mental being and a truly spiritual supra-mental consciousness, there lies a thick veil, an almost impenetrable lid, satyasyāpihitaṁ mukham, and unless this veil is lifted and the lid removed, there is no possibility of knowing the divine, far be it to attain to it. But the difficulty is this that either through arduous Tapasya or by an act of Grace from above, when the mental being succeeds in putting off the veil, it sees the Divine "as something above, beyond, around even in a sense, but with a gulf between that being and our being, an unbridged or even an unbridgeable chasm. There is this infinite existence; but it is quite other than the mental being who becomes aware of it....There is this great, boundless, unconditioned consciousness and force; but our consciousness and force stands apart from it, even if within it, limited, petty, discouraged, disgusted with itself and the world, but unable to participate in that higher thing which it has seen. There is this immeasurable and unstained bliss; but our own being remains the sport of a lower Nature of pleasure and pain and dull neutral sensation incapable of its divine delight. There is this perfect Knowledge and Will; but our own remains always the mental deformed knowledge and limping will incapable of sharing in or even being in tune with that nature of Godhead." ¹

Now, in an attempt to bridge this chasm and heal the rift, the mental being seeks to rise through a Herculean all-forgetting effort out of itself into the Infinite above. But in this process "the mind has to leave its own consciousness, to disappear into another and temporarily or permanently lose itself...in the trance of Samadhi."² For obvious reasons this mindless absolute trance-state cannot be our objective (vide Chap.V: The Critique of the Trance-Solution). Our aim is to transform the waking mentality itself, and for that we have to invoke another possibility open to the mental being.

As a matter of fact, mind has a great reflecting capability, reflecting whatever it knows and contemplates. Thus if it pacifies

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 378. (Italics ours)

² Ibid., p. 411. (Italics ours)

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itself and calls down the divine into itself, it succeeds in reflecting the image of the divine and getting spiritualised. But the trouble is that in this operation "the mind does not entirely possess the divine or become divine, but is possessed by it or by a luminous reflection of it so long as it remains in...pure passivity."¹ The moment it becomes active, mind becomes turbid again and the reflection of the divine is lost.

Hence it is often declared that an absolute quietism and the cessation of all outer and inner action is the only way out of the above impasse. But evidently this fails to satisfy the demands of the Integral Yoga. What we seek is "a positive transformation and not merely a negative quiescence of the waking mentality."²

But the basic difficulty with the mind-consciousness is that it is an inveterate divider of the indivisible and dwells upon one aspect at a time to the exclusion of all others. For "mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer....Mind may divide, multiply, add, subtract, but it cannot get beyond the limits of this mathematics. If it goes beyond and tries to conceive a real whole, it loses itself in a foreign element; it falls from its own firm ground into the ocean of the intangible, into the abysms of the infinite where it can neither perceive, conceive, sense nor deal with its subject for creation and enjoyment...Mind cannot possess the infinite, it can only suffer it or be possessed by it; it can only lie blissfully helpless under the luminous shadow of the Real cast down on it from planes of existence beyond its reach."³

It is because of this inherent propensity to divide and overstress that the Mind cannot hold at once Unity and Multiplicity, consciousness and action, being and becoming; it cannot possess simultaneously the active and the passive Brahman. And because of Mind's inability to possess the Infinite, if instead of being satisfied with the 'luminous shadow', golden lid, hiraṇmayapātra, one would seek to realise the utter Real, one has perforce to get rid of mind altogether and enter into the absolute mindless suṣupti. It is for this reason that so many seekers of the past have recommended manonāśa or the 'annulment of the Mind' as the via royal to the supreme spiritual experience.

^{1 2} The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 381.

³ The Life Divine, pp. 162-63.

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Thus we find Sri Ramakrishna declaring: "The Knowledge of Brahman cannot be attained except through the annulment of Mind. A Guru told his disciple, 'Give me your mind and I shall give you knowledge.' "¹

The Rajarshi Janaka of old declared, "Now I have awakened and discovered the thief that is Mind; I must kill it, must scorch it to death. For Mind is the root of this world of ignorance."²

According to the great sage Vasishtha, a great good comes out of the destruction of Mind, manaso'bhyudayo manonāśo mahodayaḥ³, and the Mind of the knower of the Truth verily gets annulled, jñānino nāśamabhyeti⁴ The Yoga-Shikhopanishad too declares that mindlessness is the supreme status, na manaḥ kevalaḥ paraḥ.⁵

Thus, almost on universal testimony, the ideal before the seeker after the Truth is to get to the state of mindlessness, amanastā, where the mind loses all its faculties, yadā na manute manaḥ and becomes non-mind so to say, unmanībhūyāt.

What is then the solution for us who aspire after the freedom of divine action as well as the liberation of divine rest ? If mind-consciousness inclusive of its highest spiritual reaches proves its inadequacy as an instrument and medium for the divine possession of our waking existence, what other cosmic principle is there that can help us to realise our goal ? For, for the proper fulfilment of our objective, "we have to review and remould the lower living in the light, force and joy of the higher reality. We have to realise Matter as a sense-created mould of Spirit, a vehicle for all manifestation of the light, force and joy of Sachchidananda in the highest conditions of terrestrial being and activity. We have to see Life as a channel for the infinite Force divine and break the barrier of a sense-created and mind-created farness and division from it so that divine Power may take possession of and direct and change all our life-activities until our vitality transfigured ceases in the end to be the limited life-force which now supports mind and body and becomes a figure of the all-blissful conscious force of

¹ Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathasar, p. 296.

²Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇam, V.9.

³ Ibid., IV. 35. 18.

⁴Ibid.

⁵Yogaśikhopaniṣad, 6.60.

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Sachchidananda. We have similarly to change our sensational and emotional mentality into a play of divine Love and universal Delight; and we have to surcharge the intellect which seeks to know and will in us with the light of the divine Knowledge-Will until it is transformed into a figure of that higher and sublime activity." ¹

Such is then our high ideal, but how to realise it in practice, how to conquer the spiritual penury of our waking physical existence and embrace equally the active and passive aspects of the Divine ? If Mind fails, what else is there that saves the situation ?

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 403-04.

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Appendix

ASCENT FROM THE MIND-CONSCIOUSNESS *

" 'Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time's work,

Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.

Annul thyself that only God may be.'

Thus spoke the mighty and uplifting Voice,

And Savitri heard; she bowed her head and mused

Plunging her deep regard into herself

In her soul's privacy in the silent Night.

Aloof and standing back detached and calm,

A witness of the drama of herself,

A student of her own interior scene,

She watched the passion and the toil of life

And heard in the crowded thoroughfares of mind

The unceasing tread and passage of her thoughts.

All she allowed to rise that chose to stir;

Calling, compelling nought, forbidding nought,

She left all to the process formed in Time

And the free initiative of Nature's will.

⁂

Above the birth of body and of thought

Our spirit's truth lives in the naked self

And from that height, unbound, surveys the world.

Out of the mind she rose to escape its law

That it might sleep in some deep shadow of self

Or fall silent in the silence of the Unseen.

⁂

Then all grew tranquil in her being's space,

Only sometimes small thoughts arose and fell

* From Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, Book VII, Canto VI, pp. 538-49. (Italics ours)

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Like quiet waves upon a silent sea

Or ripples passing over a lonely pool

When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest.

Yet the mind's factory had ceased to work,

There was no sound of the dynamo's throb,

There came no call from the still fields of life.

Then even those stirrings rose in her no more;

Her mind now seemed like a vast empty room

Or like a peaceful landscape without sound.

This men call quietude and prize as peace.

But to her deeper sight all yet was there,

Effervescing like a chaos under a lid;

Feelings and thoughts cried out for word and act

But found no response in the silenced brain:

All was suppressed but nothing yet expunged;

At every moment might explosion come.

Then this too paused; the body seemed a stone.

All now was a wide mighty vacancy,

But still excluded from eternity's hush;

For still was far the repose of the Absolute

And the ocean Silence of Infinity,

Even now some thoughts could cross her solitude:

These surged not from the depths or from within

Cast up from formlessness to seek a form,

Spoke not the body's need nor voiced mind's call.

These seemed not born nor made in human Time,

⁂

Out of some far expanse they seemed to come

As if carried on vast wings like large white sails,

And with easy access reached the inner ear.

⁂

As yet their path lay deep concealed in light.

Then looking to know whence the intruders came

She saw a spiritual immensity

Pervading and encompassing the world-space

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As ether our transparent tangible air,

And through it sailing tranquilly a thought.

⁂

As smoothly glides a ship nearing a port,

..........

It came to the silent city of the brain

Towards its accustomed and expectant quay,

But met a barring will, a blow of Force

And sank vanishing in the immensity.

After a long vacant pause another appeared

And others one by one suddenly emerged,

Mind's unexpected visitors from the unseen

Like far-off sails upon a lonely sea.

But soon that commerce failed, none reached mind's coast.

Then all grew still, nothing moved any more:

Immobile, self-rapt, timeless, solitary

A silent spirit pervaded silent Space.

In that absolute stillness bare and formidable

There was glimpsed an all-negating Void supreme

That claimed its mystic Nihil's sovereign right

To cancel Nature and deny the soul.

Even the nude sense of self grew pale and thin:

Impersonal, signless, featureless, void of forms

A blank pure consciousness had replaced the mind.

⁂

Yet still her body saw and moved and spoke;

It understood without the aid of thought,

It said whatever needed to be said,

It did whatever needed to be done.

There was no person there behind the act,

No mind that chose or passed the fitting word:

All wrought like an unerring apt machine.

As if continuing old habitual turns,

And pushed by an old unexhausted force

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The engine did the work for which it was made:

Her consciousness looked on and took no part;

⁂

This seeing was identical with the seen;

It knew without knowledge all that could be known,

It saw impartially the world go by,

But in the same supreme unmoving glance

Saw too its abysmal unreality.

It watched the figure of the cosmic game,

But the thought and inner life in forms seemed dead

Abolished by her own collapse of thought:

A hollow physical shell persisted still.

⁂

Once sepulchred alive in brain and flesh

She had risen up from body, mind and life;

She was no more a Person in a world,

She had escaped into infinity.

⁂

Only some last annulment now remained,

Annihilation's vague indefinable step"

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