Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

3

Bondage, Liberation and Perfection

ONE OF the greatest contributions of the Indian science of Yoga is that of the discovery of the state of bondage of the human soul, as also that of the fashioning of the various methods which would ensure liberation and its other consequences relating to perfection.

Every human being is required to deal with a given environment and a certain set of circumstances, and at a certain stage, a conscious feeling begins to grow that there is something in the human personality which needs to be distinguished from the environment and circumstances in an effort either to escape from the burden of life and its responsibilities or to refashion the inner psychological complexities of the being so as to control, master and perfect the inner life, outer life and the world. This feeling is, in the beginning, evanescent or temporary; but in due course, it grows under various pressures of experience, and one begins to suspect one's ignorance and one's state of bondage, accompanied by a growing aspiration to remove ignorance and to attain to liberation and perfection.

It has been rightly observed that a special characteristic of ignorance is that it does not suspect itself. To discover that one is ignorant is itself a sign of a certain growth of knowledge. It is only at that stage that one begins to ask some of the deepest questions about the riddle of the world and the intricacies of varieties of relationships in which one is entangled in one's commerce with the outer world.

At a farther stage, one is led to inquire into the questions as

Page 40

to whether sorrow and suffering, disabilities and death, dualities and incapacities can truly and effectively be removed altogether. The question, 'What am I?' assumes then great prominence, and one is led to a quest of the most Ultimate or of Something in which all afflictions and incapacities can be extinguished permanently.

A special feature of Indian philosophy is that it measures its own relevance in terms of the answers it provides to existential questions relating to bondage and quest for liberation. And, while the Indian philosophical inquiry is pure, impartial and thorough-going, the ultimate test that it imposes upon itself is not merely that of logical consistency and comprehensiveness but also of its ability to show the way to liberation from delusion and sorrow and even to total collective welfare by attainment of states and powers of perfection.

II

All Yogic disciplines maintain that the state of bondage is marked by identification of the experiencing consciousness with the instruments and objects that constitute for the experiencing consciousness its world of experience. Different systems of Yoga use different terms for the experiencing consciousness and for the experienced world. According to one system, the experiencing consciousness is called Purusha and the experienced world is called Prakriti, and it is maintained that the identification of Purusha with Prakriti constitutes the state of bondage; according to another system, the individual soul, which is called Jiva, when identified with the mind, is said to be in the state of bondage. According to a third system, the individual soul or jiva is nothing but a temporary conglomeration of perceptions and impressions, which by repetitive actions creates an apparent sense of self or ego-sense, which identifies itself with the experienced world, which, in turn, is also a conglomeration of perceptions and impressions. There is yet another view according to which the individual soul,

Page 41

which is in some way dependent on the supreme Reality, and which, when instead of dwelling in that Reality, identifies itself with the instruments of experience and objects of the experienced world, gets into the state of bondage.

Among these and similar views, what is commonly emphasised is that there are two elements in the psychology of bondage, which are central experiences of bondage. These are: desire and ego-sense. All systems of Yoga are fundamentally different ways by which desire and ego-sense can be eliminated. Again, all Yogic systems agree that the state of liberation is attained when desire and ego-sense are annihilated or extinguished.

All Yogic systems consider the state of bondage to be the result of Ignorance, which causes the confusion between the real and the unreal, super-imposition of the unreal on the real, or super-imposition of the not-self on the self, or else perception of fleeting impressions which are extinguishable but are not yet extinguished. The question as to how ignorance can be removed, has been answered differently by different systems of Yoga, although they have some common elements.

According to Rāja Yoga, ignorance can be eliminated by means of cessation of modifications of consciousness as a result of disciplined pursuit of an eight-fold path consisting of processes of purification, self-control and concentration leading up to Samādhi in which the mind is completely stilled. According to Jnāna Yoga, the intellect should be so trained that it can distinguish between the unreal and the real, and with the help of the intellectual conviction of this distinction, one should follow up a line of concentration, so that one dissociates oneself from identification with the unreal and arrives at identification with the Real. According to Bhakti Yoga, the individual needs to turn the entire complex of the emotional being in spirit of worship, adoration, service and love for the supreme Reality; and, by constant in-dwelling in the supreme Reality or rather in the supreme Person, one gets dissociated from everything else with which one was earlier identified.

Page 42

According to Karma Yoga, the discipline consists of a gradual elimination of desire and egoism, which are normally intertwined strongly with action, by means of a gradual process in which one dissociates oneself from the fruits of action and later on dissociates oneself from the sense of doership of action, and finally, one becomes a mere vehicle of action proceeding from the Supreme Reality. In the Yogic system of Jainism, the discipline consists of dissociating Jīva from matter by means of gradual or rapid exhaustion of action, karma, with the help of various practices that underline rigorous practice of truthfulness, non-violence, continence, non-covetousness and burning away of all attachments to possession. In the Yoga of Buddhism, the process of yoga consists of the eightfold path, namely, of right beliefs, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right mode of livelihood, right effort, right mindedness and right rapture. There are also many other systems of yoga which emphasise disciplines of the body, or of life-force and mind or else they combine various systems of yoga in some kind of synthesis. There are, of course, claims and counter-claims, in regard to the superiority of one system over the other, but, as stated above, they all agree that the state of liberation is impossible without the elimination of desire and ego-sense.

IlI

The state of the liberated soul has been described variously. But there are two important characteristics of this state which are commonly to be found among all these descriptions. First, the state of liberation is a state of recovery, recovery of a state which was always in a state of freedom. It is said that it is the state of nirvana or of the Purusha or Brahman which is for ever free. Secondly, it is a state beyond the mind-consciousness, which could be defined as consciousness that is discursive, successive, and centred on apprehensive as opposed to comprehensive point of view. If this state of liberation is that of

Page 43

consciousness or knowledge or bliss or all of them together, they are other than what they are at the mental level. It is fundamentally a state of stillness or peace that transcends understanding or of resignation or surrender, or of all of them together, and if there is any movement or dynamism or action, it is a movement of soul's relationship of unity and harmony of all things in a transcendence or with the transcendental and universal Reality or Being. In that state of freedom, the soul may merge into the infinite Being or choose to dwell in union with the supreme Being, and in that case, at the fall of the body, all connection with Nature or Prakriti is cut off without any possibility of return. However, as long as the bodily life continues, the psychology of a liberated soul is so poised that the inner freedom is not lost even when outer activities of Prakriti of the body, life and mind, continue by the momentum of the past. At the same time, even in the outer Prakriti, roof of desire and egoism are annihilated, and the activities of the gunas, as understood in the terminology of Sāmkhya, are harmonised in such a way that the sattwa predominates and rajas and tamas are subordinated, and all the three gunas reflect or carry out, in spite of their inherent limitations, something of the state of the liberated soul.

Among the numerous experiences which have been described in respect of the state of liberation, there are three experiences which are frequently mentioned, and each one of them appears as an experience so overwhelming that it excludes the other two, or even if admitted, they appear to be sublated.

The first of these experiences is that of the soul as Purusha in a state of silent witness that stands unaffected by the determinations which were earlier imposed upon it by the power and action of Prakriti. The second experience is that of an overwhelming awakening to Reality when the thought is stilled, when the mind withdraws from its constructions, and when one passes into a pure Selfhood void of all sense of

Page 44

individuality, empty of all cosmic contents. If the spiritualised mind then looks at the individual and the cosmos, they appear to it as an illusion, a scheme of names and figures and movements falsely imposed on the sole reality of the Self-Existent, or even the sense of Self becomes inadequate. Both knowledge and ignorance disappear into sheer consciousness and consciousness is plunged into a trance of pure superconscient existence. Or even existence ends by becoming too limiting a name for that which abides solely for ever. There is only a timeless Eternal, a spaceless Infinite, the utterness of the Absolute, a nameless peace and overwhelming single objectless Ecstasy. The third experience is that of the omnipresent Divine Person, Lord of a real Universe and the Lord of the supreme Shakti, of which the individual soul is a centre without circumference or a portion or a child that lives by mutuality with all and in utter ecstasy of union with the Lord and His Shakti.

There is also, it is claimed, an experience in which all the above three experiences are transcended into something that can be described as Shūnya, the Nihil, which is also sometimes described as the Permanent. Again, there is an affirmation of a supramental and integral experience in which all these experiences are held simultaneously and where the Supreme is realised, as in the Gitā, as Purushottama in His Absoluteness and Integrality uniting within Himself both the kshara and akshara purusha, the static and the dynamic purusha. This experience answers to the great pronouncements of the Upanishads where the Supreme is described at once as Brahman or Ātman, Purusha and Īshwara.

As the Ishopanishad declares:

'That moves and That moves not; That is far and same is near, That is within all this and That also is outside all this.

'But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self shrinks not thereafter from aught.

Page 45

"He in whom it is the Self-Being that has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness?' (5, 6, 7)

IV

In the Indian tradition there appears to be distinction between liberation and perfection, although these two terms are often understood to be interchangeable. Nonetheless, when we study the Vedic and Upanishadic concept of immortality, Gitā's concept of sādharmya in connection with the perfection of Karmayoga, and the Tantric view of siddhis including those of mental, vital and physical being, we are obliged to bring out full value of the idea of perfection as distinguished from that of liberation.

The Vedic Yoga may be looked upon as an earliest synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense of the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. This experience culminates in the ascent to the plane of Truth- consciousness (rita-chit) and its descent into lower planes of the mental, vital and physical consciousness in the human body up to a point where the physical consciousness becomes so vast that the truth-consciousness can dwell in it. The Vedic Rishis have called that state the state of immortality. Parāshara speaks of the path which leads to immortality in the following words: 'They who entered into all things that bear ripe fruit, formed a path towards immortality; earth stood wide for them by the greatness and by the Great Ones, the Mother Aditi with

Page 46

her sons came (or, manifested herself) for the upholding.'* (Rgveda 1.72.9).

Commenting on this, Sri Aurobindo states: 'That is to say, the physical being visited by the greatness of the infinite planes above and by the power of the great godheads who reigned on those planes breaks its limits, opens out to the Light and is upheld in its new wideness by the infinite consciousness, Mother Aditi and Her sons, the divine Powers of the supreme Deva. This is the Vedic immortality.' (The Secret of the Veda, pp. 191-92).

The Upanishads also speak of immortality, and as we study these great books of the profound masters of the spiritual knowledge, we find that, starting from the crowning experiences of liberation and perfection of the Vedic seers, they arrive at a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking.

The Gitā starts from the synthesis of the Upanishads and, on that basis, builds another harmony of the three great means and powers, love, knowledge and works, through which the soul of man can directly approach and cast itself into the eternal. It even goes farther and through its injunction to surrender totally to the Divine, it opens up the doors by which the spirit can take up the individual into the universal Power of higher Nature, parā Prakriti. In effect, this would be the method by which the concept of sdlokyamukti and sdyujyamukti is further extended into sādharmyamukti, the liberation and perfection of the lower nature of life, body and mind by infusion into it of the divine nature, the parā Prakriti, which is evidently the divine Aditi of the Veda. The Tantric Yoga has developed methods for a richer spiritual conquest that would enable the

* ā ye viśvā svapatyāni tasthuh krnvānāso amrtatvāya gātum;

mahnā mahadbhih prthivī vi tasthe mātā putrair aditih dhāyse veh.

Page 47

seeker to embrace whole of Life in his divine scope as the cosmic Play of the Divine. In other words, it grasps that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, which was possessed by the Vedic Rshis.

V

In the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo a new dimension is added to conceptions of bondage, liberation and perfection. It founds itself on a conception of the spiritual being as an omnipresent existence, the fullness of which comes not essentially by a transference to other worlds or a cosmic self-extinction, but by a growth out of what we now are phenomenally into the consciousness of the omnipresent reality which we always are in the essence of our being. To open oneself to the supracosmic Divine is an essential condition of the integral perfection; but to unite oneself with the universal Divine is another essential condition. Here the Integral Yoga coincides with the Yoga of knowledge, works, and devotion. Since human life is accepted as a self-expression of the realised Divine in man, the Integral Yoga insists on action of the entire divine nature in life. It is here that by a new effort of research and development of new Yogic methods, as also by bringing all the relevant materials from the synthetic yogas of the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavadgitā and Tantrathe aim of the supramental manifestation on earth is sought to be realised.

Sri Aurobindo equates the Vedic truth-consciousness with the supermind, with the Gitā's concept of parāprakriti and with the supreme Shakti of Tantra, and builds up a path of ascent to the supermind and of descent of the supermind right up to the mental, vital and physical parts of the being, the climax of which is reached when the supermind is made to permeate the cells of the body so that the perfection which is attained would result in transmutation of the human species for the evolution of a new species on the earth.

Three elements, a union with the supreme divine, unity

Page 48

with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, — constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being. In the Integral Yoga, what is called moksha or liberation from the ego and the will of desire is an essential step, but this liberation is enriched by the synthesis of knowledge, devotion, and action, and one is prepared for development of perfection of the instruments of prakriti. Mukti, and in this case jīvanamukti, brings with it a superiority to the qualitative modes of the inferior Nature, traigunyātītya. Liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss of the supreme is the first form of release. A farther liberation of the Nature into a divine quality and spiritual power of world experience fills the supreme calm with the supreme kinetic bliss of knowledge, power, joy and mastery. A divine unity of the supreme spirit and its supreme nature, which can be termed as a state of integral liberation, becomes the true foundation of farther consequences which constitute the six-fold perfection.

The first element of perfection is that of perfect equality and perfect action of equality.

The second element of perfection is attained by raising all the active parts of the human nature to that of higher condition of working pitch of the power and capacity on which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine action. This would mean the perfection of the powers and capacities of the mind, the vital and the physical. This would also imply the perfect dynamic force of the temperament, character and inmost soul-nature which would result in what Sri Aurobindo calls the perfection of the fourfold personality, the personality of knowledge, of strength, of harmony and love and of skill and service. This movement is further strengthened by called in the divine Power or Shakti to replace the limited human energy so that it may be shaped into the image of and filled with the force of a greater infinite energy.

Page 49

The third element of perfection is, according Sri Aurobindo, the evolution of the mental into the supramental gnostic being which would progressively take up all the terms of intelligence, will, sense mind, heart, the vital and sensational being and translate them by a luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a living existence.

The next element of perfection is that of the gnostic perfection in the physical body.

And the fifth element is arrived at when this perfection is pushed to its highest conclusion which, according to Sri Aurobindo, brings in spiritualising and illumination of the whole physical consciousness and divinising of the law of the body.

The sixth element is that of the perfect action and enjoyment of being on the supramental gnostic basis. And this integrality of perfection cannot remain confined to the individual, but would extend progressively to the development of the collective divine life on the earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

'The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort.'

VI

The treasure of knowledge that India possesses in its science of yoga is, it may be said, of direct relevance to the contemporary crisis through which humanity is passing today. Not only increasing number of individuals in the world are finding themselves in the grip of dilemmas, which have become impossible of solution through any of the ordinary known means at the disposal of humanity, but even the collective life of humanity has reached such as acute stage of mechanisation, standardisation and unbearable structuralisation that the ideals of progress which have been put forward, the ideals of

Page 50

liberty, equality and fraternity, can never be realised, even though it is clear that they must be realised by means of methods or trends which are being currently pursued.

It may be argued that the Yogic knowledge is too difficult, and it would be impossible for humanity to accept it. But when we examine in full the maladies of the contemporary humanity, it would be idle or even misleading to suggest that any lesser remedy is likely to work. It is best to propose to humanity what is known to us to be the best, however difficult it may be.

Page 51