A Scheme for The Education of Bengal

VIII. TRANSFORMATION

WE want an integral transformation, the transformation of the body and all its activities. But there is a first step, absolutely indispensable, which has to be completed before anything else can be undertaken, it is the transformation of the consciousness. The starting-point, it goes without saying, is the aspiration towards this transformation and the will to realise it; without that nothing can be done. But if to the aspiration is added an inner opening, a kind of receptivity, then one can enter at a bound into this transformed consciousness and remain there. This change of consciousness is abrupt, so to say, when it happens, it happens all on a sudden, although the preparation for it might have been slow and long. I am not speaking of a simple change in the mental outlook, but a change of the consciousness itself. It is a complete and absolute change, a revolution in the basic poise; it is somewhat like turning a ball inside out. In the changed consciousness everything appears not only new and different, but almost the reverse of what it looked like to the ordinary consciousness. In the ordinary consciousness you move slowly, through successive experiments, from ignorance to some far-off and even doubtful knowledge. In the transformed consciousness, you start from knowledge, and proceed from knowledge to knowledge. Yet it is only a beginning, for the external consciousness, the different planes and parts of the external and active being are transformed only slowly and gradually as the result of an inner transformation.

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It is a partial change of consciousness that makes you lose all interest in things once held desirable; it is only a change of consciousness not what we call transformation, for transformation is something fundamental and absolute:

it is not merely a change, but a reversal of consciousness, the being wheeling round, as it were, and taking its stand in an altogether different position. In the reversed consciousness the being stands above life and things and from there deals with them; it is in the centre and from there directs its action towards the outside. But in the ordinary consciousness the being stands outside and below; from the outside it strains to reach the centre; from below crushed under the weight of its ignorance and blindness it struggles desperately to rise above them. The ordinary consciousness is ignorant of how things are in reality, it sees only the shell. But the true consciousness is at the centre, in the heart of reality, in the direct vision of the origin of all movements. Situated within and above, it knows the source, the cause and the effect of all things and forces.

I repeat, this reversal is abrupt. Something opens up in you and you find yourself all at once in a new world. The change may not be final and definitive from its inception. It requires time to settle permanently and become your normal nature. But once the change has been made, it is. there, in principle, once for all; and what is required there after is its gradual working out in concrete expression and detail.

The first manifestation of the transformed consciousness seems to be always abrupt. You do not feel that you are changing slowly and gradually from one thing to another, but that you are suddenly awakened or born into the new. No effort of the mind can bring it; because you cannot

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imagine with the mind what it is and no description of the mind can be adequate.

Such is the starting-point of all integral transformation."

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