THERE are as many kinds of divine union as there have been mystics to realise it. Any supra-sensible and decisive experience in the inner consciousness is called divine union. Some Yogins, descending into the deeps of their being, realise an ineffable peace and call it divine union, some find themselves engulfed in an illimitable ocean of bliss or receive the torrential influx of a mighty power and call it divine union. Some realise the immutable Self and think that they have identified themselves with the Absolute. Some, again, unite themselves with the Divine in their hearts, hṛddeśe, and cherish the belief that this is the highest possible union with the Master and Lover of all creatures. Instances like these could be multiplied ad infinitum, but that would hardly throw much light on the nature of the union we propose to deal with here. It is, of course, true that all these experiences and many more of the kind are genuine —not that there cannot be any faked ones—and that they are undoubtedly divine in so far as they are spiritual, but what is of capital importance is, first, whether all of them can be at all called union, and, second, whether they are union with the Divine.
We are, therefore, naturally led to a consideration of what we mean by the Divine and union with Him. Most philosophies and theologies agree to disagree on this point. We are not, of course, concerned here with those philosophies which are avowedly atheistic or materialistic; but even among the theistic ones, there are various conceptions of the Divine. Some postulate Him as the extra-cosmic Lord and Master of the universe; some regard Him as immanent in and coextensive with the universe; some envisage Him only as an all-pervading static Existence; and yet some as the inexpressible, incommunicable, transcendent Absolute; and so on and so forth. The connotation of the words "divine union", therefore, varies according to the conception one has of the Divine. And then various things are meant by union, as we have already said
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above. Even in cases of authentic divine union, there are differences, not only of degree but also of kind, entailing considerable differences in their effects upon the consciousness of those who realise it. It is a vast and extremely interesting subject, but as it does not lie within the scope of our present object, we shall just touch upon it and pass on to the Mother's experiences of the divine union as transcribed in the "Prayers and Meditations". And in order to obviate a possible misunderstanding, we shall make it perfectly clear at the very outset that the union the Mother aspired for and realised, is not the traditional union experienced and held in the depths of the being and strenuously guarded against the disturbing elements of the surface-self and the surrounding world. That is a comparatively easy achievement—the outer personality hushed, the deeper layers of the consciousness are released into activity, and the soul either plunges headlong into the eternal immobility of the silent Brahman or enters, thrilled and transported, into the beatific embrace of the Beloved. Or, it passes, swiftly or by slow stages, through various realms of the Spirit, bathing in their light and feeding on their delight, into the ineffable Absolute. Whatever consciousness persists in the outer personality —unless it is a complete trance, in which case there is a temporary suspension of all movements of the external nature-is left to itself and its helpless automatism. Or sometimes, in some Yogins of exceptional calibre, the rapturous state of inner union is reflected to a certain extent on the outer nature; there is a reproduction or radiation of the inner peace and purity and joyous freedom and, subject to certain conditions, a more or less conscious and direct play of the divine Force in the natural personality which undergoes, in consequence, a remarkable heightening and acquires a new and infinitely more perfect an potent dynamism. But great as these states are and equally glorious to the undiscriminating eye of mental intelligence, they are far from what the Mother has experienced and expressed in so many of her "Prayers and Meditations."
We shall now proceed to see what the Mother means by the Divine and the divine union. By the Divine she means—and that is
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exactly the view of Sri Aurobindo, as we shall see presently —the one infinite and eternal Person, Purusha, who is at once the transcendent Author and Lord of the universe of His own creation, which is but His own multiple self-extension and self- representation in Himself, and immanent in it as a sustaining, guiding and consummating static and dynamic Presence. The Upanishad describes Him with a comprehensive sweep and a penetrating vividness :—
"But the divine and unborn and formless Spirit that containeth the inward and the outward is beyond mind and life and is luminously pure, and He is higher than the highest Immutable.
"And of Him is born life and the mind and all the organs of sense and of Him are Ether and Air and Light and Water and Earth that holdeth all.
"Fire is the head of Him and His eyes are the sun and the moon and the quarters are His organs of hearing and the revealed scripture is His speech; Air is His life-breath and the universe is His heart and earth is at His feet. He is the inner Self within all creatures.
"And from Him is fire, of which the sun is the fuel, rain that arises from the wine of the gods, and herbs that grow upon the earth; as when a man pours his seed into a woman, many creatures are born from the Spirit.
"And from Him are many kinds of gods produced and the demi-gods and men and the beasts and the birds, and the breath and the nether breath, and grain of rice and grain of barley, and faith and truth and holiness and rule.
"And the seven breaths are born of Him, and the seven tongues ’ of the flame, and the seven kinds of fuel and the seven kinds of offering, and the seven worlds in which the breaths, whose chamber is in the secret heart, move and are placed within, seven and seven.
"And from Him are the seas and all the mountains and from Him flow all forms of rivers, and all herbs are from Him, and sensible delight which maketh the soul to abide with the material elements.
"The Spirit is all this that is here in the universe; He is works
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and self-discipline and Brahman and the supreme immortality.”¹
He is the eternal Ground of all things that were, are and will be. In Him there is no division, though He seems to be divided; no dualities and anomalies, though he creates them freely for the play of Ignorance with which evolution starts from Inconscience. He is the reconciliation of all differences and discords. He is the One, and He has become many; and this becoming is not an illusion, but a timeless fact of the divine Reality. And yet He is the ineffable, indefinable Absolute unconditioned, unqualified and featureless.
It is clear that this comprehensive conception of the Divine is the fusion of all the current conceptions of religions philosophies, and embraces and unifies the diverse experience of the mystics of all ages and climes. It does not negate or invalidate any truth of spiritual realization, or give the lie to sane and substantial finding of metaphysical speculation. I luminous amplitude Vedanta joins hands with Sankhya, Tantra with Vaishnavism, Paganism with Christianity, and even Materialism finds its essential quest justified, rightly interpreted and enlightened, and itself united with spirituality in a happy wedlock. It is a synthesis, not achieved by an intellectual or emotional eclecticism, but by an integral spiritual experience — a synthesis which reflects the manifold unity of all existence. It is an epitome of all the conceptions of the Divine, past and present, and bids fare to be the sovereign, dynamic spiritual conception of the future.
"An omnipresent Reality”, says Sri Aurobindo in "The Life Divine" (Vol. I, p. 51) "is the truth of all life and existence whether absolute or relative, whether corporeal or incorporeal, whether animate or inanimate, whether intelligent or unintelligent; and in all its infinitely varying and even constantly opposed expressions, from the contradictions nearest to our ordinary experience to those remote antinomies which lose themselves on the verges of the ineffable, the Reality is one and not a sum or concourse. From that
¹ Mundaka, II, Chap. I,
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all variations begin, in that all variations consist, to that all variations return. All affirmations are denied only to lead to a wider affirmation of the same Reality. All antinomies confront each other in order to recognise one Truth in their opposed aspects and embrace by the way of conflict their mutual Unity. Brahman is the Alpha and the Omega. Brahman is the One besides whom there is nothing else existent.”
Now, union with this Divine or omnipresent Reality will, of course, mean union with Him at once in all the states of His consciousness and all the modes of His Being and becoming. Anything short of it may be a partial, but can never be a complete or integral union. A seeker of integral union has to be identified with the Chatushpada Brahman of the Upanishad—the Brahman of the waking consciousness, the Brahman of the dream or subliminal consciousness, the Brahman of the sleep consciousness, and That of the transcendent, absolute consciousness. When one is fully identified with the Divine in all these states of consciousness, one can be said to have realised the most complete union. Thus identified, one becomes, so to say, like the Divine Himself, at once transcendent and immanent, universal and individual, static and dynamic, one and many, and yet—this point has to be carefully noted—it is not a self-annihilation of the individual in the Divine, for that would mean an extinction of the very centre of manifestation in the world. The individual persists as an eternal portion and aspect of the Transcendent in the universe, but liberated from all limitations and participating in the infinity and immortality of the Supreme. In a perfect union, one holds in a divine grip and balance all the four states described above. One is beyond all universe, inaccessibly poised in the inconceivable supracosmic silence, and yet moves in all the multiple movements of the world, guiding it to its ultimate destiny. No alternation of the states, but an unbroken and spontaneous simultaneity, a firm possession and a termless ecstasy of multitudinous enjoyment are the experience of the integral divine union.
It goes without saying that we hardly ever come across any
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record in the ancient and modern scriptures and mystical hagiography of the world of such a comprehensive realisation, such a fourfold perfection of divine union. There have been many cases of transcendent union, necessitating a deliberate or automatic diminution of the activities of the surface nature, or, more usually, a temporary abrogation or suspension of the active physical self. Light has often been wooed and won, but at the expense of Life, which has gone either pale or grey with neglect. But a fusion of Light and Life, of the One and the Many, of the Transcendent, the Universal and the individual, of utter silence and the stupendous stir and hum of the cosmic movement, of the Spirit and Matter in an integrated and divinised human consciousness, is an achievement yet unrecorded in the history of spiritual culture.¹
Let us now try to follow in the footsteps of the Mother as she proceeds from one realization of union to another till the integral union is attained. Almost in the beginning of her "Prayers and Meditations" the Mother declares that she has realized divine union : "I said yesterday to that Englishman who is seeking for Thee with so sincere a desire that I had definitively found Thee, that the union was constant. Such is indeed the state of which I am conscious. All my thoughts go towards Thee, all my acts are consecrated to Thee; Thy Presence is for me an absolute, immutable, invariable fact, and Thy Peace dwells constantly in my heart... how many times already when I pronounce, it (the word "I”) it is Thou who speakest in me, for I have lost the sense of separativity.”²
The reader will find in this description a beautiful and living example of divine union. "I have definitively found Thee", "All my thoughts go towards Thee, all my acts are consecrated to Thee", "I have lost the sense of separativity." All these words signify a state in which the Divine is not only discovered but embraced and served even in the minute details of the
¹ There is, it is true, the legend of Yajnavalkya who wished to possess both the worlds, ubhayameva, and also the Rajarshis (king-sages) and those "liberated in life" (Jivanmuktas); but the exact nature of their integral realisation has not been recorded.
² Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, November 19, 1912.
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Mother's life.. .And yet, she continues, "I know that this state of union is poor and precarious compared with that which it will become possible for me to realise tomorrow". She is not content with what would have been readily regarded by most mystics as the final attainment; she finds it "poor and precarious", for her aspiration is for something much higher and wider, something that is indissolubly bound up with the very mission of her life. And she gives expression to this aspiration in some of her Prayers:—
"I aspire for the day when I can no longer say "I", for I shall be Thou”.¹
"Let the pure perfume of sanctification burn always, rising higher and higher and straighter and straighter, like the ceaseless prayer of the integral being, desiring to unite with Thee so as to manifest Thee”. ²
In the second quotation we have the key-note of her sublime aspiration : "desiring to unite with Thee so as to manifest Thee." Not union in itself and for itself, for that has been already realised, but union for the sake of manifestation, that is to say, a permanent and active union in the whole consciousness and the whole nature. It is a union in which the Mother does not so much revel as reveal; it is a union for bridging "earth-hood and heavenhood" and making deathless "the Children of Time".
This, then, is the central truth of the Mother's aspiration, and unless we have a clear grasp of it, it would be difficult to follow in her footsteps through the Prayers which are a mounting symphony of dynamic union. There are many Prayers which may appear to us to be self-contradictory and self-repetitive, but that is a common experience of our human mind when it tries to follow the movements of an infinite consciousness and force whose incalculable flexibility and subtle self-modification
¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, November 2, 1912.
² ibid., March 13, 1913.
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baffles its comprehension. Most of the Prayers, especially the later ones, are a kaleidoscope of a difficult perfectioning of the physical being of the Mother, without which the union of her longing could not be realised. This physical transformation is a revolutionary conception, extremely intricate and arduous in its process, involving systematic exploration of the subconscient and the inconscient parts of the human being, and their eventual illumination and transfiguration. A complete union includes a union even of these parts with the superconscience and omniconscience of the supreme Reality.
It is true that transcendental union, which means union with the Reality in its timeless and spaceless self-existence, is the first necessity. Unless we attain to the Transcendent, we remain tied to Time, cooped up in the cosmic formula. Complete liberation implies transcendence of the universe and a secure superiority to the waves of Nature. But a naked, irrevocable retreat to the relationless Absolute cannot be the aim of the soul's incarnation in the world of relativities, it can only be an important episode in its spiritual evolution. If the soul has descended into Matter, it is only to transfigure it and manifest the Divine in its transmuted substance. If it has descended into the relativities, it is to realise and fulfil the Absolute in the very play of the relativities. If it has come down into Time it is only to reveal the Eternal in the very flux of Time. Therefore, after the transcendental union, the integral union, or, in other words, the perfect and permanent union of the whole being and consciousness of man with the Divine. In this integral union one does not lose the transcendental union, but only annexes to it the universal, dynamic union, and makes the integrality, thus attained, the base of an unfettered action in the world. The Mother expresses this idea in the following words : "Now I clearly understand that union with Thee is not an end to be pursued, so far as the present individuality is concerned; it is a fact accomplished long since. And that is why Thou seemest to tell me always. Do not revel in the ecstatic contemplation of the union, fulfil the mission I have confide to thee on the earth.’ ”
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"And the individual work to be pursued simultaneously with the collective work is the awareness and possession of all the activities and all the regions of the being and the definitive establishment of the consciousness in that highest point which will allow at once the prescribed action and a constant communion with Thee. The joy of perfect union can come only when what has to be done has been done.”
"We must preach to all, first, union, then work; but for those who have realised the union, each moment of their life must be an integral expression of Thy Will through them.”
Describing this union with a greater elaboration, the Mother says, "In all the states of being, in all the modes of activity, in all things, in all worlds, one can meet Thee and be united with Thee, for Thou art everywhere and ever present. He who has met Thee in one activity of his being or in one world in the universe, says: 'I have found Him’, and seeks no more for anything else; he thinks he has arrived at the summit of human possibility. What a mistake ! It is in all states, in all modes, in all things, in all worlds, in all elements that we have to discover Thee and be united with Thee; and if we leave out one element, however small it may be, the communion cannot be perfect, the realisation cannot be accomplished.
"And that is why to find Thee is only the first step in an ascent that is infinite”.¹
The Mother leaves no doubt in our minds as to the nature of the divine union she calls integral. Obviously, it is not a union only on the heights of the being, nor is it realised only in the distant depths. It enfolds each and every element in the infinite existence and remains the same, whatever the field and role of action assigned to the individual. The prevalent idea that "consciousness of the Many and consciousness of the One are mutually exclusive states” is so strongly fixed in men's minds that it does not occur to them that the state they describe as union or complete self-absorption or self-annulment of the
¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, July 12, 1914.
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individual soul in the Reality "in which all outward things are forgot", is but a partial, a truncated union. If Reality is everywhere, at once in all worlds, in all states, in all beings and in all elements as well as beyond all states, all worlds and all elements; then a complete union with It will surely never exclude the "outward things"; for, in fact, there is nothing that is outward, nothing that is not essentially divine and contained in the Divine. A union that causes a forgetfulness of the outward things is a kind of trance, a limited and localised intensive union, not an integral one. Tuned to an ampler key runs this other Prayer :—
"O Lord, Lord, a boundless joy fills my heart, songs of gladness surge through my head in marvellous waves and in the full confidence of Thy certain triumph, I find a sovereign peace and an invincible Power. Thou fillest my being. Thou animatest it, Thou settest in motion its hidden springs, Thou illuminest its understanding, Thou intensifiest its life, Thou increasest tenfold its love; and I no longer know whether the universe is I or I am the universe, whether Thou art in me or I am in Thee; Thou alone art and all is Thou; and the streams of Thy infinite Grace fill and overflow the world.”¹
Experience succeeding to richer and wider experience tends towards the final, dynamic identification. The path stretches interminable through the fields of inconscience. Often the gallop slows down to a trot and the trot to an amble; after the unspeakable rapture of a rapt union, a spell of "harsh solitude", "a desert, arid and bare", but a new Light emerges from the heart of the solitude, a fresh gust of Force sweeps the being again to the summits and plunges it into a union incomparably deeper and more comprehensive than ever before. Here a word of caution is necessary. Those who have studied Western mysticism may run away with the idea that it is the "dark night of the soul" that the Mother describes by the phrases, "harsh solitude" and "a desert, arid and bare", a state of inevitable
¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, May II, 1913.
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transition, of spiritual fatigue or of a desperate upsurge of the lower impurities before their final elimination. But even a cursory glance through the Prayers will belie this assumption. There is a transition, of course, but a transition in the long and difficult process of transforming the physical consciousness by a descent into the Subconscient and the Inconscient and their conquest and illumination. These obscure regions of the human consciousness, of which we know precious little, are still dominated by the twin principle of Ignorance and False-hood, and unless their universal base and dynamic are mastered and metamorphosed, unless Ignorance is turned into Knowledge, darkness into Light, Falsehood into Truth, and suffering into Ananda, there is no possibility of any individual, however spiritually great he may be, achieving a complete conversion and transformation of his physical being. It is this universal work that has engaged the whole of the Mother's attention and labour, because it is the work which the Divine has entrusted to her. It is, in fact, the mission, of her life.
"Thy will is that from the heart of this heavy and obscure Matter I must let loose the volcano of Thy Love and Light. It is Thy will that, breaking all old conventions of language, there must arise the right Word to express Thee, the Word that never was heard before, it is Thy will that the integral union should be made between the smallest things below and the sublimest and most vast above; and that is why, O Lord, cutting me off from all religious joy and spiritual ecstasy, depriving me of all freedom to concentrate exclusively on Thee, Thou hast said to me, 'Work as an ordinary man in the midst of ordinary beings; learn to be nothing more than they are in all that is manifesting; associate with the integral way of their being; for, beyond all that they know, all that they are, thou earnest in thyself the torch of the eternal splendour which does not waver, and by associating with them, it is this thou wilt carry into their midst.’ ” ¹
Sweeping through unimaginable experiences of ineffable
¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, January n, 1915.
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ecstasy and utter desolation, the Divine lands her at long last on the threshold of the "Marvellous Way", where the Mother feels that "in the perfect union I am this plan and this Will, and I taste the supreme bliss of the infinite, even while I play with ardour, precision and energy, in the world of division, the special play Thou hast entrusted to me."
"Thy power in me is like a fountain, strong and fertilizing, which clamours behind the rocks, accumulating its energies to break down the obstacle and gush forth freely to the exterior, pouring over the plain to fertilize it.”¹
A further progress through the "sombre night" and the Mother emerges into the sunlight of a deeper union which finds expression in the following : "Thou hast taken entire possession of this miserable instrument, and if it is not yet perfected enough for Thee to complete its transformation. Thou art at work in each one of its cells to knead it, and make it supple and illumine it, and to class, organise and harmonise it in the ensemble of the being.”²
Describing the detailed action of transformation leading to the integral union, the Mother says at one place :—
"Little by little, the vital being was habituated to find harmony in the most intense action, as it had found it in passive surrender. And once this harmony was sufficiently established, there was light again in all parts of the being, and the consciousness of what had happened became complete.
"Now the vital being has recovered in the midst of action the perception of Infinity and Eternity. It can, through all sensations and all forms, perceive Thy supreme Beauty and can live it. Even in its sensation, extended, active and fully developed, it can feel the contrary sensations at the same time and always it perceives Thee.”³
¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, July 31, 1915.
² ibid., January 22,1916.
³ ibid., June 7, 1916.
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"Thou hast willed, O Lord, that the being should become larger and greater. It could not do so without entering again, at least partially and temporarily, into ignorance and obscurity. It is this ignorance and this obscurity that it has come now to place at Thy feet as the most modest of ordeals.”¹
When the spire of the temple of perfection gleams in the distance, the Mother hears in the silence of her being :—
"By renouncing everything, even wisdom and consciousness, thou wert able to prepare thy heart for the role which was assigned to it: apparently the most thankless role, that of the fountain which always lets its waters flow abundantly for all, but towards which no stream can ever remount; it draws its inexhaustible force from the depths and has nothing to expect from outside. But thou feelst already beforehand what sublime felicity accompanies this inexhaustible expansion of love...
"Be this love in everything and everywhere, ever more widely, ever more intensely and the whole world will become at once thy work and thy estate, thy field of action and thy conquest.. Fight that thou mayst conquer and triumph; struggle to surmount all that has been up to this day, to make the new Light emerge, the new example which the world needs.”²
Another heroic advance through the darkness of Matter culminates in an experience of union of a unique depth and comprehensiveness :—
"My heart has fallen asleep, down to the very depths of my being.
"The whole earth is in a stir and agitation of perpetual change;
all life enjoys and suffers endeavours, struggles, conquers, is destroyed and formed again.
¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, December 4, 1916.
² ibid., December 25, 1916.
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"In all these innumerable and manifold elements, I am the Will that moves, the Thought that acts, the Force that realises, the Matter that is put in motion.
"My heart has fallen asleep down to the very depths of my being.
No more any personal limits, no more any individual action, no more any separative concentration creating conflict; nothing but a single and infinite Oneness.
"My heart has fallen asleep down to the very depths of my being”¹
We have called this experience unique, for, we believe there is nothing in the whole range of mystical literature to compare with it in depth and amplitude. Here there is a perfect, a divine combination of the abysmal silence of the Eternal and the stupendous movement of the Universal, There is sleep "down to the depths" of the being, a state of suṣupti, the third state of the fourfold consciousness of the all-comprehending Brahman, the state of the Consciousness of the supreme Lord of the world, Sarveshwara. And in the very midst of that sleep there is a perception of the stir and agitation of perpetual change. Is it only a perception ? Then it cannot be a total identification with the Lord of the universe. A total identification implies a participation, not only in the infinite Peace and Silence of the Lord, but also in the thrilled delight of the movement of His creative Force. And we have an illustration of the participation, a full and integral participation, in what follows :—
This is a complete dynamic identification. The Mother is identified with the Lord's Will, the Lord's creative Thought and the Lord's realising Force and, at the same time, with this inert and inconscient substance, this dark Matter which is being
¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, April 10, 1917.
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churned and redeemed, and in which the integral union is to be attained. And yet, implicit in the very grain of this identification, its inalienable base and sustenance, is the perfect identification of the Mother's consciousness with the Consciousness of the Absolute in its eternal Silence and Immutability. This combination constitutes what the Mother calls integral divine Union. And still there may be many more conquests to be made and consolidated in the rolling fields of inconscience—who knows ? Matter is not only obscure but obdurate. Life is complex and convulsed with desire, and the Light invincibly insistent. What will be the issue ? Who knows? Who cares to know ? Man is enamoured of the tinsel and preoccupied with it, and has little time and less inclination to follow the labours of one whose sole object in life has been to dig "a bed for the golden river's song" and bring "the fires of the splendour of God into the human abyss.” ¹
Not union with the Divine in the soul alone, not in the soul, mind and heart alone, but a union, a constant, dynamic, honey- dripping, life-transforming union even in the physical being, even in the cells of the body—a complete and creative union between the Summit and the Base—has been the labour of the Mother, not for herself alone, but for mankind.
Man will one day awake from the nightmarish reality he calls his life, and garner the golden harvest of a divine humanity upon earth, but he may know not who ploughed the fields and who sowed the seeds. God's Grace, even when it takes a human form, remains invisible to the fleshly eyes of material men.
¹ Poems Past and Present; Sri Aurobindo,
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