The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

IV

Love and Love

The Mother says: there is only one Love, there are not two. And it is Divine Love. The difference arises only in its expression, in its application. In its essential quality and substance it is always the same. Take for example human love; stripped of the mere human element, love remains the same original thing. Because the old ascetic orders of spiritual discipline, in the main, considered love essentially and wholly earthy and human, they rejected this limb altogether, cut it out as undivine. But that is an error.

We do not regard love, even human love, as an error but a power, a force and energy. Love, even human love, is not to be amputated or rooted out but like gold as ore, it has to be purified. The work is hard but it is worth the trouble.

As a matter of fact, however, all the divine qualities— supernals as they have been sometimes called—are of that nature, that is to say, all are universal they are never nonexistent, they are never and can never be negatived. Divine Consciousness, Divine Delight, Divine Power, indeed, Divine Being—they each and all exist as absolute and unitary realities, that is to say, one without a second. Even like Divine Love, there is only one Divine Consciousness, one Divine Power, one Divine Bliss, one Divine

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Being, however various they may appear in outward name and form.

But the physical consciousness, the physical body, this very material frame have for us upon earth, a divine significance. They are not to be despised or thrown out. On the contrary, our object is to take special care of the body, to cleanse it of its outward dross, make it sound and free from disease, to immortalise it if possible. And it is possible notwithstanding the old teachings. In their nature as a matter of fact, the cells of the body are immortal. Science today has discovered that each living cell is potentially deathless (a corn-seed of the age of the Pharaohs, unearthed from pre-historic tombs, they have succeeded in sprouting today). It is their aggregate and their milieu that cause wear and tear in the cells, exposing them to decay and disintegration. But in itself, each cell has an infinite vitality. Thus the problem is, if one cell is essentially immortal, then how can they be made, in their collective life, to avoid conflict and decay, undergo rejuvenation and youthfulness.

Science in a practical way through material means tries to prolong life as far as possible, as for us, we are not limited to that necessity. What we have to do is to clean the energy which is now obscure in the material cell, make it luminous. The way is the way of consciousness. Every human being has in him the possibility, the capacity of making his own consciousness come forth, pure, transparent, luminous and then in and through that pure light charge the body too with a transfiguring force or energy.

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This material body of man has the marvellous advantage of being united, of being able to unite itself with the Supreme Consciousness. Indeed as through his consciousness man has the privilege of ascending to the supreme consciousness, even so in and through the same consciousness, the physical cell also has the privilege of establishing a contact with the Supreme Substance. What is true of man's mind and life is true also of the material cell. Even as life impulses and mental knowings can be uplifted and transfigured, these physical cells too may achieve the same transfiguration because in man all these elements share equally in the Divine Substance lodged there. Of the animal, the lower creation, we cannot say the same thing for it does not possess overtly the Divine element that dwells in man. This Divine Element is what we call the psychic consciousness, the Divine himself formed secretly or framed in matter. It is that which comes in contact with the human mental and the human vital and the human body, and succeeds in remoulding them in the Supreme Nature.

Of course, there was always in the ancient days also, in some disciplines or others, an aspiration, an urge to immortalise the body, but the means they adopted, the instruments they chose for the operation were indirect and secondary. It was either through the force of a luminous mind influencing the body or through the pressure of concentrated vital force making the body an obedient and docile instrument. The former was the process followed by the Vaishanavas who envisaged a luminous body, the

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second was the aim of the Tantriks who sought to rejuvenate the body, possess it youthful and vigorous indefinitely. The Hatha yogis also in their turn through physico-vital exercises attempted to acquire a new body changing the modalities of the old. The ancient alchemists tried more material means, the use of alchemic substances for cleansing the body making it free from disease and, if possible, death. But the secret power lies in the body itself, that is, in the very self of the body, not anywhere else. The hidden consciousness lodged in the cell, the material cell, that is the key to the problem, that secret consciousness and its energy asleep in the cell, has to be awakened and brought into play. When the physical cell itself awakes and declares its purpose, the thing is done.

This secret consciousness-energy appearing as a material form is also intrinsically the delight of existence. Its other name is Divine Grace and Love.

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