The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 6

THE EXPANDING BODY-CONSCIOUSNESS

The field of our physical activity is very limited. If you look at it closely you will find it indeed extremely narrow and our capacities confined within a small circle. We are bound by the outline of our material body. I cannot, for instance, be sitting in my room and at the same time doing gymnastics in the playground. If you wish to do one thing you cannot do another, if you are at one place you cannot be at another simul­taneously. How convenient it would be if while I was writing at the table, I could get there immediately a book from a far-off shelf for consultation without moving or taking anybody's help! And yet is the thing so very impossible? We know, for example, of extra­ordinary—at least, queer—things happening at what are called "spirit séances", things that cannot be ex­plained by the normal functioning of the body senses; they are explained as interventions from the spirit world. In reality, however, spirits or ghosts have, in general, very little to do in this matter. It is action not of disembodied beings but of the normal human ener­gies—especially the vital or life energy—freed from the body's control and exerting itself independently. An

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example, a true fact that happened, will best illustrate what I mean to say.

A young man, in Paris, a clerk at a railway station, used to receive there his fiancée and her mother from time to time. One day he was expecting them and waiting for the train time; they had to come by train. As he was busy with his work at the table, at about the appointed hour, people around saw him all on a sudden bending down his head with a loud shout and then resting it on the table; he lay unconscious. In the meantime, what happened on the other side was a terrible railway disaster: the two women were involved in it. The trains were smashed and all passengers killed or mortally wounded. But, curious to say, the young woman, the fiancee, was found, living and almost unscathed, in the midst of the debris, within a sort of cover made by a fallen beam that lay across over her. She was pulled out with only a few bruises upon her body. Here is, however, the young man's version of the story. He said that as he was working at the table, suddenly he heard the voice of his fiancee calling loudly for help and he saw in a flash, as it were, the situation she was in, he rushed out, not physically indeed, and ran and threw himself over the body of his fiancee to protect her; that is the only thing he could do. As a result he did in fact protect her. True, he did not rush out in his body, for that matter, if he had

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done, it would have been of no use. What rushed out of him was his vital body, a formation of that life energy which is most close to the body and almost as concrete as physical energy but much more powerful and effective. This vital power concentrated and projected out of him acted as a veritable shield over the woman. The young man himself, curious to say, bore marks of bruises upon his head as if a huge load had fallen upon it. A strong impact upon the vital can and does leave scars upon the material body: it is not an uncommon phenomenon. Many of the Christian saints (Saint Francis of Assisi, for example) are reported to have borne on their body the marks —the stigmata—of crucifixion of Christ's body; Rama-krishna too, it is said, once showed marks of scouring on his back when a boy was whipped in his presence.

All this means that the physical body is not man's sole means of action in the physical world. The physical extends and expands into more and more subtle modes of activity and all the more, not less, effective for that very reason. Behind the physical lies the subtle physical, behind which again is the vital physical and then the various grades of the vital. Indeed the vital or life energy as a whole is the real dynamism of all our physical activities and if it usually acts through its bodily instruments, it can act independently of them too; normally too it often acts in this way,

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only we are not conscious or observant enough to notice. A conscious concentration of the vital energy directed upon a material object can handle it with the effectivity of material energy. When it needs physical conditions it creates them, as the protective vital energy of the young man created the physical disposition of objects that formed a covert for the girl.

In the present case, the phenomenon happened automatically, without any premeditation on the part of the persons concerned; because the sympathy between the two was so strong, other considerations did not weigh in the balance against it. Needless to say, if one wishes to obtain conscious mastery of this occult power, one will have to go through a long and arduous discipline. But, if difficult, the thing is not impossible. In the matter of physical feats, for example, a particular development may seem for the moment beyond your reach; but with practice and persistence, stubborn will and wise guidance, you can not only arrive at your immediate end but do much more. The story of many who have broken Olympic records is revealing in this respect. In the same way, one can master the subtle forces, if one goes about the thing earnestly and in the right way. It is more difficult—much more perhaps—but the way is there provided the will is there.

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