Integral yoga and Evolutionary Mutation

-09_Integral Yoga.htm

PART SEVEN

Integral Yoga: Synthesis of Science and Spirituality

The integral yoga as developed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is, although perfected in all its aspects, still an unfinished chapter opening itself to the future that is in the making. It is impossible to turn this yoga into a religion; it has no dogmas and rituals that can be mechanically believed in or practised. It is a multisided Way that is still being traversed; it is open to any individual for his or her free choice to traverse in the way that is suitable to his or her own law of nature and development; it is also available to humanity as an indispensable aid to its advance towards the highest ideals of unity and harmony that have come to be envisaged at this initial junction of its journey.

There are, however, two sections of humanity that are likely to study more readily this integral yoga with the highest degree of earnestness. These are: seekers who are wedded to scientific knowledge and scientific method, and the seekers who are wedded to the methodical quest of psychic, spiritual and supramental realization. Both these categories of seekers will find, in the Records of Experiments and Realizations left by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the required testimony of the promise that they are likely to cherish and to pursue for the fulfillment of their quest.

There are today an increasing number of scientists who have begun to open themselves, without abandoning their

Page 124

scientific rigour of quest, to the insights and illuminations that can come to them from the domain of spirituality and spiritual quest; on the other hand, there are increasing number of spiritual seekers who value greatly science and scientific method and who are keen to develop scientific and illumined synthesis of science and spirituality. It may even be said that the thesis of the synthesis of science and spirituality is gaining ground among increasing number of seekers as the most important thesis of our times. They are likely to ask whether that synthesis has been achieved in the results that have been accomplished in the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Both, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, look upon yoga as Science, and, as Sri Aurobindo points out, "Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the natural force of electricity or of steam to the normal operations of steam and of electricity. And they, too, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result.....

"All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest."⁹⁹

Sri Aurobindo has also stated in one of his letters with what scientific rigour he and the Mother have conducted their work of yogic research. He writes:

"....we do not found ourselves on faith alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing on our lives. I think I can say that I have been

Page 125

testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory and his method on the physical plane."100

There is, it can be said, no doubt that SriAurobindo's and the Mother's account of the integral yoga can successfully stand the most rigourous tests that can legitimately be applied in regard to their methods as also in regard to their results that have been achieved. Sri Aurobindo's 'Record of Yoga' and 'Mother's Agenda' are available to anyone who cares to study and inquire.

It can also be said that the body of knowledge that we find in the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother cover large areas of humanistic studies and whatever they have written about their studies of Matter, Life and Mind, and, particularly, on the theme of evolution, on which various sciences, philosophy and yogic systems converge today together, represent an ever growing mass of synthesis of knowledge. Considering this work, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have advanced the theme of synthesis of science and spirituality to a high level of maturity.

But it cannot be said, as yet, that their work represents the summit of the synthesis of science and spirituality. In one of her illuminating conversations with Satprem, while commenting upon two important Aphorisms from the writings of Sri Aurobindo, she has commented on the theme of synthesis of science and spirituality. What the Mother has said, in effect, is that only the fabrication of something that was the subject of her yogic research at that time, i.e.. May 24, 1962, would give that assurance that is required for the unshakable synthesis of science and spirituality. From the" context in which this conversation takes place, it can be said

Page 126

that the subject of her yogic research at that time was that of fabricating the supramentalised or divine body, and it can, therefore, be surmised that what science demands for its ultimate proof of utter objectivity of knowledge, and what spirituality ought to demand for its ultimate victory on the earth, can be fulfilled only if supramental consciousness can be demonstratively seen and touched in supramental physical body.

Let us refer to that conversation of the Mother of May 24,1962:

Satprem read out the following from Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms'.

"73 - When Wisdom comes, her first lesson is, "There is no such thing as knowledge; there are only apercus of the Infinite Deity."

Very good.
No need for questions.

"74 - Practical knowledge is a different thing; that is real and serviceable, but it is never complete. Therefore to systematize and codify it is necessary but fatal."

It is real within its own realm — only within its own realm.

[The Mother comments:]

I have looked at this very, very often. There was even a time when I thought that if one could get a total, complete and perfect knowledge of the whole working of physical Nature as we perceive it in the world of Ignorance, then this might be a means to rediscover or reattain the Truth of things. After my last experience [of April 13] I can no longer think

Page 127

this way.

I don't know if I am making myself clear.... I thought for a time, a very long time, that if Science went to its furthest possible limits (if this is conceivable), it would join up with true Knowledge. In the study of the composition of matter, for example — by pressing the investigation further and further on — a point would be reached where the two would meet. But when I had that experience of passing from the eternal Truth-Consciousness to the individualized world, well... it appeared impossible to me. And if you ask me now, I think that this possibility of Science pushed to its extreme limits joining up with true Knowledge, and this impossibility of any true conscious connection with the material world are both incorrect. There is something else.

And more and more these days, I find myself facing the whole problem as if I had never seen it before.

Both paths may be leading towards a third point, and that third point is what I am at present... not exactly studying; I am rather in quest of it — the point where the two paths merge into a third that would be the TRUE thing.

But in any case, if it could be absolutely total (there's an "if here), objective, scientific knowledge pushed to its extreme limits would certainly bring you to the threshold. That's what Sri Aurobindo means. But he also says it's fatal, because all those who went in for that knowledge believed in it as an absolute truth, thus closing the door to the other approach. In this respect it is fatal.

From my own experience, though, I could say to all those who believe EXCLUSIVELY in the spiritual approach, the
approach through inner experience, that this —at least if it's

Page 128

exclusive — is equally fatal. For it reveals to them ONE aspect, ONE truth of the Whole — but not THE Whole. The other side seems just as indispensable to me, for when I was so utterly in that supreme Realization, this other falsified, outer realization was undeniably just a distortion (and probably accidental) of something EQUALLY TRUE.

This "something" is what our research is about. And perhaps not merely research — we may be taking part in the
FABRICATION of it.

We are being made use of in the manifestation of this "something."

Something none can yet imagine, for so far it hasn't come into being. It is an expression yet to come.

That is all I can say.

(silence)

This is exactly the state of consciousness I am living in now. It's as if I were facing the same eternal problem but... from a NEW POSITION.

These positions — the spiritual and the "materialist" (if you can call it that) positions — which consider themselves
exclusive (exclusive and unique, and so each one denies the other's value in the name of Truth) are inadequate, not only
because neither one will accept the other, but because even accepting and uniting them both won't solve the problem.
Something else is needed, a third position that isn't the result of these two but something still to be discovered, which will
probably open the door to total Knowledge.

Well, that's where I stand.
More I can't say — that's as far as I have come.

Page 129

One might wonder how to participate practically in this....

This discovery?

That.... Ultimately, it's always the same thing. It's always the same: realize your own being, enter into conscious contact with supreme Truth of your own being, in WHATEVER form, by WHATEVER path (that's totally irrelevant); it's the only way. We each carry a truth within ourselves, and we must unite with that truth; we must live that truth. And the path we have to follow to realize and unite with this truth is the very path that will lead us as near as we can possibly come to Knowledge.

Who knows? Perhaps the very multiplicity of approaches will yield the Secret — the Secret that will open the door.

I don't think any single individual on earth (as it is now)
no matter how great he may be, no matter how eternal his consciousness and origin, can all by himself change and realize.... Change the world, change the creation as it is, and realize that higher Truth, the Truth that will be a new world — a truer, if not absolutely true, world. A certain number of individuals (until now they seem to have come in succession, in time, but they might also come as a collectivity, in space) would seem indispensable for this Truth to be concretized and realized.

On a practical level, I am sure of it.

In other words, no matter how great he may be, no matter how conscious, how powerful, ONE avatar all alone cannot
realize the supramental life on earth. Either a group in time, a number of individuals staggered over a certain period of

Page 130

time, or a group spread out over a certain space — or maybe both — is indispensable for this Realization. I am convinced of it.

The individual can give the initial impulse, point out the path, WALK the path himself ( I mean show the path by realizing it)... but he can't bring the work to fulfilment. The fulfilment of the work depends on certain collective laws that are the expression of a particular aspect of the Eternal and Infinite — naturally, it's all one and the same Being! There aren't different individuals and personalities, it's all one and the same Being. But the same Being expressing itself in a particular way that for us translates as a group or a collectivity.

Well, then — any other questions on this?

I would like to ask you in what way your vision has changed since the experience of April 13¯ what exactly is the difference?

I repeat.

For a very long time it had seemed to me that a perfect union between the scientific approach pushed to its extreme and the spiritual approach pushed to its extreme, to its utmost realization, a merging of the two would naturally lead to the Truth we seek, the total Truth. But with the two experiences I have had. the experience of the outer life (with universalisation, impersonalization — all the yogic experiences you can have in a material body) and the experience of total and perfect union with the Origin ... now that I've had those two experiences and something has happened — something I can't yet describe — I know that knowing and uniting the two is what is ... in the making. The third thing is what can lead to the Realization, to the Truth we seek."101

Page 131

We may also refer to the Message that the Mother had given on 24th April, 1956, while declaring the manifestation of the supermind on the earth. The Mother had also proposed in that Message a farther goal that is yet to be fulfilled. She had said: "The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality.

It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognize it."¹⁰²

This message brings out clearly the rigour of the criterion of the final proof that is proposed by Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother. There are, indeed, many levels of proofs, and during the course of the progression of the research conducted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we find various levels of proofs, philosophical, experiential and even scientific, which transcend limits of subjectivity and even the dichotomy of subjectivity and objectivity. But there is, as seen in this message, an approach which aims at testing the truth of the results of their work on the anvil of the most stringent demands of the materialistic mind.

In any case, it is for each one to make his or her demands of proof, and, in the meantime, to continue to sharpen and
sensitize oneself to higher and higher degrees of consciousness. In the pursuit of truth, there has to be no compulsion, and each one has to demand the proof that one needs. In the Records of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, one will find, it may be said quite confidently, the answer that he or she needs for the next stage of development, provided one seeks to make progress in the direction that one thinks is suitable to oneself. Nonetheless, the rigour of proof cannot

Page 132

be minimized, and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have, as we have seen above, aimed at working out the fabrication of the Divine Body, the proof of which will be found to be clinching even for the utmost insensitive human mentality of consciousness. In fact, it is at that level of the proof that we may expect the synthesis of science and spirituality to arrive at its climactic perfection.

What we have presented here in regard to the relevant data, reflections and conclusions concerning the new synthesis of yoga, can be regarded only as an introduction; for the purposes of adequate understanding of the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, there is no substitute to the laborious task that one has to undertake to turn and study the original and voluminous writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Page 133