The Practice of the Integral Yoga

XX

On the psychic Awakening

The path of spiritual sadhana has been compared to a razor 's edge, ksurasya dhārā; it is very very difficult to tread. At every turn of the way there is the possibility of an ambush; at every moment of the journey there arises the dilemma of how to choose the right course of action. Besides, there are a thou sand and one lure s and temptations to which the sadhaka is constantly exposed by the adverse forces opposed to the successful completion of his sadhana.

How is the seeker going to contend with this ceaseless battle of the path and come out successfully out of all the deceitful traps and dangerous pits? Is it through the valiant efforts put up by his mind and heart and will-power?

But is that not a vain hope based on an act of delusion? For the mind and the vital are themselves, in their normal functioning, seized and controlled by crass ignorance. And is not the potency of the egoistic will drastically limited and almost always ineffective in action? What should the sadhaka do then? If the Guru is present in his physical body, the problem may not arise; but if not? Who will guide the sadhaka then?

Herein comes the great role played by our psychic being, the luminous representative of the Divine, dwelling in the depths of the heart of every man and sending up its infallible warnings and indications from there. But the difficulty is that this psychic being remains mostly hidden behind the thick veils of the sadhaka' s ignorance and is practically inoperative in moulding the daily affairs of the sadhaka' s life.

But this situation has to be remedied, the psychic being brought to the front and made the constant guide of the sadhaka in all the crises of his sadhana-life. The capital importance of this psychic awakening will be obvious if we recapitulate here the principal stages of the Way that leads to the complete Siddhi of the Integral Yoga. The three following passages from Sri Aurobindo' s writings will make the position clear:

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(1) "In the spiritual knowledge of self there are three steps of its self-achievement which are at the same time three parts of the one knowledge.

"The first is the discovery of the soul, not the outer soul of thought and emotion and desire, but the secret psychic entity, the divine element within us. When that becomes dominant over the nature, when we are consciously the soul and when mind, life and body take their true place as its instruments, we are aware of a guide within that knows the truth, the good, the true delight and beauty of existence, controls heart and intellect by its luminous law and leads our life and being towards spiritual completeness.... This is the first step of self-realisation, to enthrone the soul, the divine psychic individual in the place of the ego.

"The next step is to become aware of the eternal self in us unborn and one with the self of all beings. This self-realisation liberates and universalises....

"The third step is to know the Divine Being who is at once our supreme transcendent Self, the Cosmic Being, foundation of our universality, and the Divinity within of which our psychic being, the true evolving individual in our nature, is a portion, a spark, a flame growing into the eternal Fire from which it was lit and of which it is the witness ever living within us and the conscious instrument of its light and power and joy and beauty."

(The Life Divine, pp. 630-31. Paragraphing ours.)

(2)"... the supramental change is difficult, distant, an ultimate stage;... it can only come into the View of possibility after much arduous self-conquest and self-exceeding... One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life;...

"Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our in-per and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our Mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul.

"Afterwards or concurrently we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowl-

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edge, freedom and wideness. It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the cosmic consciousness, realise the self, acquire a Spiritualised and universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness.

"Then only the passage into the supramental consciousness begins to become possible..." (The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 267-68 Paragraphing ours.)

(3) "This can be done only by the triple transformation... there must first be the psychic change, the conversion of our Whole present nature into a soul-instrumentation;

"on that or along with that there must be the spiritual change, the descent of a higher Light, Knowledge, Power, Force, Bliss, Purity into the whole being, even into the lowest recesses of the life and body, even into the darkness of our subconscience;

"last, there must supervene the supramental transmutation, — there must take place as the crowning movement the ascent into the Supermind and the transforming descent of the supramental Consciousness into our entire being and nature." (The Life Divine, p. 891. Paragraphing ours.)

From the three long passages from Sri Aurobindo' s writings quoted above it becomes abundantly clear that, for the successful completion of the sadhana of the Integral Yoga, the very first siddhi that is needed by the sadhaka is the awakening of his psychic being and, with its active help, the psychic conversion of our present nature.

But what exactly is meant by the psychic awakening? It is not that the psychic being has been sleeping all the time and it has to be aroused from its sleep. No, the 'psychic awakening' is a technical term used in Yogic nomenclature. Let us explain.

Since a very long time, for many many lives past, the psychic being of an individual has been exercising beneficial influence upon him, perhaps in slow and small doses, but from behind the opaque covering of the ignorant mind and heart and the physical self of man. But as a result of continuous evolutionary progression of

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consciousness, a moment comes in the life of every individual when his occultly dwelling psychic being steps out of its secrecy, becomes active in the fore front of the sadhaka' s consciousness and guides him directly from there on to the destination of spiritual realisation. In the nomenclature of sadhana, this is what is called 'psychic awakening' or 'the psychic being coming to the front'.

Many are the propitious contributions made by this psychic awakening to the sadhana-life of the seeker concerned. To cite only a few of them:

(i) Development of pure love and devotion for the Divine;(ii) concrete sense of the constant Presence of the Divine Mother; (iii) sure indications coming from within as regard s the way to be followed at any moment; (iv) quietening and purification of the mind and heart and the vital of the sadhaka; (v) opening of all the parts of the lower nature towards the spiritual consciousness reigning above; (vi) mixing of sweetness to the dry rigours of spiritual discipline; (vii) being able to recognise the undesirable impulses of the lower nature not as one 's own but alien influence s invading from outside. As a result it becomes psychologically easier for the sadhaka to wage a successful battle against the intruding influences and drive them away.

Such is the necessity and indispensability of the psychic awakening in the sadhana of the Integral Yoga. And it is because of this that Sri Aurobindo has reminded us in no uncertain terms that

"One may practise yoga and get illuminations in the mind and the reason; one may conquer power and luxuriate in all kinds of experiences in the vital; one may establish even surprising physical Siddhis; but if the true soul-power behind does not manifest, if the psychic nature does not come into the front, nothing genuine has been done." (Letters on Yoga , p. 1095)

The foregoing discussion over the last few pages has made clear to us the succession of the steps the sadhaka has to pass through in order to attain the final Siddhi in the Integral Yoga. Let us make once again a brief mention of the se step s, considering them in the reverse order, that is to say, starting from the consume-

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mating goal and descending step by step down the rungs of the stair:

(i)The supramental transformation of the being and nature of man is the ultimate Goal;

(ii)this has to be necessarily preceded by the psycho-spiritual transformation;

(iii)but that can be achieved only if the psychic being can be brought to the front and made active in the outer field of the sadhaka' s consciousness;

(iv)but this psychic emergence is not possible unless the sadhaka undertakes the sadhana of the inwardisation of his consciousness, reaches the psychic centre and is united with it;

(v)but this 'entry into the inner countries' is not feasible unless and until the mind and the vital of the sadhaka are sufficiently quietened and purified.

Now, this way to the psychic awakening is long and difficult and the programme of sadhana is quite arduous. In the words of the Mother, the path is "strewn with snares and problems to be solved, which demand an unfailing determination. It is like the explorer's trek through virgin forest in quest of an unknown land, of some great discovery. The psychic being is also a great discovery which requires at least as much fortitude and endurance as the discovery of new continents." (M C W, Vol. 12, p. 33)

Yes, the psychic being is also 'a great discovery'. For this soul or the psychic is a kind of individual concentration of the divine Grace; it is the Grace's individual representative in the human being. It is like a particular delegation of the Spirit in mankind, a special help to lead it faster and faster. It is, after all, the soul that makes the individual progress spiritually.

Hence it is incumbent on every sadhaka to make sincere efforts to bring forward his psychic to the forefront of his consciousness. For then and then only he will taste what is meant by true freedom and love and joy. Otherwise there is no other go for him except to lead the sordid and suffocating life of a prisoner in a dark dungeon.

Yet the tragedy is that most men are not aware at all of this state of imprisonment; they feel no urge to undo the prisoner's

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status. So the very first necessity for the sadhaka is to create in himself the proper psychological attitude which will inspire him to engage in the sadhana of psychic discovery. It is worth, in this connection, meditating on the following words of the Mother:

"... the vast majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and windows closed, so they suffocate, which is quite natural. But they have with them the key that opens the doors and windows, and they do not use it.... Certainly there is a time when they don't know they have the key, but long after they have come to know it, long after they have been told about it, they hesitate to use it, and doubt whether it has the power to open the doors and windows or even that it is a good thing to open them! And even when they feel I that 'after all, it might be good', there remains some fear: 'What will happen when these doors and windows are opened?...' and they are afraid. They are afraid of being lost in that light and freedom. They want to remain what they call 'themselves'. They like their falsehood and their bondage, something in them likes it and goes on clinging to it. They still have the impression that without their limits they would no longer exist." (M C W, Vol. 9, pp. 431-32)

It thus becomes clear that, in order that the sadhana for the discovery of the psychic being and its subsequent emergence to the front may arrive at its fulfilment, what is needed on the part of the sadhaka is a proper psychological preparation. And a principal element of this preparation should be that the seeker should learn to be guided in his daily life not by the impulses of his impure vital nor by the animal appetites of his blind physical consciousness but by a pure and free and enlightened reason. This reason is not the debating calculating reason of common men but the aspiring intelligence which seeks the truth and truth alone and yearns to know the Divine's Will at any price.

The quietening of the turmoil of the unregenerate mental and the vital and the establishment in oneself of the ever-awake, ever-vigilant, transparent intelligence: this then is the first step in the preliminary psychological preparation. For, as has already been pointed out, even now the psychic being of the sadhaka, in the

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midst of his functioning ignorance, has been sending its influences and indications to the surface consciousness of the seeker from its secret dwelling place within; but, because of the constant agitation created by the preferences of the mind, heart and body, much of this psychic influence and inspiration is getting deformed and deviated. The blind prejudices of the mind, the turbid desires of the vital and the tamasic demands of the body are almost blotting out the messages of light emanating from the psychic centre.

With a view to neutralise this nefarious interference, if the sadhaka takes some effective steps to free himself from the egoistic preferences and antipathies of his vital and the mental, he will find to his happy surprise that his secretly dwelling psychic being has started sending to his outer consciousness, in an unimpeded and regular way, its sacred injunctions and prohibitions.

And that it has been doing so can be recognised by the sadhaka by certain psychological signs. Here is what Sri Aurobindo has t0 say on this point:

"A certain sensitive feeling for all that is true and good and beautiful, fine and pure and noble, a response to it, a demand for it, a pressure on mind and life to accept and formulate it in our thought, feelings, conduct, character is the most usually recognised, the most general and characteristic... sign of the influence of this psyche." (The Life Divine, p. 893)

But even when the psychic begins sending its messages al-most in a more or less uninterrupted way, the sadhaka has to re-main vigilant so that he may not misinterpret the significance of these messages. For the risk is there that the psychic influence and action may get easily alloyed, stained and distorted in the earlier stages of sadhana. A twist is often given, a wrong direction imparted, a wrong formation made, and all these may easily lead to an erroneous result of what was in its essence and origin pure and spiritual.

Therefore, in order that the psychic message may be received in its distinct purity the sadhaka should stop agitating in his mind and heart all debating questions like "this?" or "that?", try to es-

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tablish qui et the re for the time being, and direct his silent but expectant attention inward to hear the voice of the psychic .

And if the preliminary conditions are properly fulfilled, the indication s from the psychic centre are bound to co me. If they do not, it may be because of two reason s: either the sadhaka' s consciousness is not sufficiently stilled, or he is not ye t inwardly read y to carry out in practice the psychic indication if it happens to go counter to his cherished wishes and formation s. In the Mother 's words:

"When you hesitate, when you wonder what to do in this or that circumstance, there come the desire, the preference both mental and vita l, that press, insist, affirm and impose themselves, and , with the best reasons in the world, build up a who le case for themselves ....

"But if you are truly sin cere in your will to find and live the truth, then you learn to listen better and better,... and even if it costs you an effort, even if it ca uses you pain , you learn to obey."(M C W, Vol. 10, p. 25)

Here at this point it is good to bear in mind the negative traits in the sadhaka' s character which may possibly frustrate his sadhana of inward turning in a safe and secure way and of discovering his psychic being. In Sri Aurobindo 's enumeration these baneful traits are :

(i) "Too much egoism in the nature of the seeker" ; (ii) " [any] strong passion"; (iii) "an excessive ambition, vanity or other dominating weakness" ; (iv) "an obscurity of the mind"; (v) "a vacillating will"; (vi) "a weakness of the life- force or an unsteadiness init or want of balance" ; etc. (See The Life Divine, p. 905)

If the sadhaka possesses any of these failings in a marked degree, he should take immediate steps to remedy them as soon as possible.

Elsewhere also in hi s writing Sri Aurobindo has mentioned a few disabling factors which militate against the full emergence of the psychic being and its unbarred overt action. Here are two representative passages:

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( I) "If the mind obeys the urge of the vital ego, then there islittle chance of the psyche at all controlling the nature or manifesting us something of its secret spiritual stuff and native movement; or, if the mind is over-confident to act in its own smaller light , attached to its own judgment, will and action of knowledge, then also the soul will remain veiled and quiescent and wait for the mind ' s farther evolution." (The Life Divine, p. 892)

(2) 'T hen only can the psychic being fully open when the sadhaka has got rid of the mixture of vital motives with his sadhana and is capable of a simple and sincere self-offering to the Mother. If there is any kind of egoistic tumor insincerity of motive, if the yoga is done under a pressure of vital demands, or partly or wholly to satisfy some spiritual or other ambition, pride, vanity or seeking after power, position or influence over others or with any push towards satisfying any vital desire with the help of the yogic force, then the psychic cannot open.... Also, if the mind takes the leading part in the yoga... or if the bhakti or other movements of the sadhana take more of a vital than of a psychic form , there is the same inability." (Letters on Yoga, pp. 1098-99)

We have been insisting so far on the negative trait s of character which go counter to the successful sadhana of psychic awakening. Now let us mention in the barest outline a few of the positive factors that are very much conducive to the psychic ' s emergence in a sadhaka:

"Purity, simple sincerity and the capacity of an unegoistic unmixed self-offering without pretension or demand are the condition of an entire opening of the psychic being." (Ibid. , p. 1099)

If a sadhaka attends to these conditions and, without getting impatient or discouraged at the delay, keep s the fire of his aspiration burning, learn s to concentrate on his heart -centre and go inward. if he maintains faith in the constant action of the Grace of the Mother. instead of relying too much on the efficacy of his own personal effort, if he develops in his heart a genuine love and devotion for the Divine Mother, if all the se concomitant conditions

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are fulfilled by the sadhaka, his psychic being will surely come out of its secret dwelling place within, be active in the outer field of the sadhaka' s working consciousness and engage itself in the task of bringing about the transformation of his nature.

And that it has started doing so will be made evident by the following changes occurring in the aspirant ' s nature:

(i) The heart of the sadhaka will be filled with an extraordinary causeless delight ; (ii) the whole of the sadhaka' s life will prove to be an arena of perpetual progress; (iii ) the mind and the vital will be enlightened with a new type of clear discrimination ;(iv) any mood of depression or discouragement will vanish altogether; (v ) the heart will be buoyed up with a sublime and unwavering faith and hope; (vi ) a feeling of universal love and generosity towards all will flood the consciousness of the seeker, and all rancour hatred and irritability will disappear from there; and finally (vii) a new attitude will develop vis-à-vis the dangers and difficulties of life: the sadhaka will not find them as before an intolerable misfortune but as deliberate opportunities for receiving the loving Grace of the divine Mother. In short , the life of the sadhaka will advance thenceforward along a sun-lit flower-bedecked cosy path .

In the next phase of sadhana the sadhaka' s psychic being will take its permanent station in the forefront of his consciousness and continue rectifying all the fault s and failings of his still unregenerate nature till the whole being in all its movements is spontaneously oriented towards divine Light , Love, Power and Ananda.

Sri Aurobindo has given a graphic description of this wonderful contribution of the psychic awakening to the life and sadhana of a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga . Here is a portion of what he has said:

'The soul , the psychic entity.... takes up its greater function as the guide and ruler of the nature. A guidance, a governance begins from within which exposes every movement to the light of Truth . repel s what is false, obscure, opposed to the divine realisation: every region of the being, every nook and come r of it. ever y movement. formation . direct ion . inclination of thought. will, emotion, sensation, action , react ion , motive, disposition , propensity. desire. habit

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of the conscious or subconscious physical. even the most concealed.camouflaged. mute. recondite. is lighted up with the unerring psychic light. their confusions dissipated. their tangles disentangled . their obscurities. deceptions self-deceptions precisely indicated and removed: all is purified. set right . the whole nature harmonised . modulated in the psychic key. put in spiritual order. This process may be rapid or tardy according to the amount of obscurity and resistance still left in the nature. but it goes on unfalteringly so long as it is not complete." ( The Life Divine, pp. 907-0S)

Thus will be achieved the psychic transformation. the first of the three transformations that constitute the entire course of our sadhana. This psychic transformation will be followed first by the ' spiritual transformation" and then by the ' supramental transformation' , But as these two last transformations do not fall within the purview of our present essay. we take the liberty of closing this chapter at this point.

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