In the Mother's Light

REASON—ITS UTILITY AND LIMITATION

The Utility of Reason

REASON is our best guide and mentor so long as we live in the mind. It is the one faculty in us that distinguishes our mind from the mind of the animal. In the lower forms of animal life, it is the instinct that leads, instinct which has more of drive in it than light. Whatever light is in it is buried in the turbid waters of life. Instinct works within a very restricted field and under certain fixed conditions; but it has a sort of automatic sureness, a precision and resourcefulness in its movements which are really amazing. Scientific studies of the bees and the white ants have revealed with what marvellous ingenuity and exactitude their instinct works within its narrow orbit. In higher animals there is a development of the sense-mind which at once supplements and somewhat impairs the automatic action of the instinct. Cosmic intelligence appears to be working in the animals from behind a thick veil of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness. But in man, a part of his mind detaches itself more and more from the surges of life and the impulsions of desire. It learns to watch, distinguish between the good and the bad, the beneficial and the harmful elements and energies of human nature, and strives to acquire a deciding and determining voice in the complex play of the forces. This part of his consciousness tries to know and understand, to rescue his being from the helpless goad of automatic instincts and appetites, and exercise a sort of control, very partial and precarious in the beginning, over the disorderly elements of his nature. In the language of Yoga we can say, it is the first, initial, tentative release of the mental Purusha from the hypnotic spell, the inexorable thralldom of Prakrit ! or Nature. The mental being or Purusha can now say "No", at least to some of tin impulses of the lower nature, though his refusal of consent is more often than not, overridden by the impetuous urges of the prāna or vital nature.

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Reason is a function of this detached part of the mind. Its chief office is to arrange the concepts of the mind, reduce them to order, survey the field of thought and, clearing it of weeds and outgrowths, arrive at conclusions and judgements by a process of induction or deduction from the concepts arranged. It imparts to the mind a certain clearness, lucidity and subtlety, and to our thoughts and ideas some coherence and compactness; and corrects the errors of our perceptions. It helps us to seek the truth for itself, and guards us against the intrusion of our habitual preferences and prejudices, our emotional partialities and entanglements, and our proneness to take appearances for facts. Reason, at its best, is a sentinel warning us against the pitfalls of life and the ambushes of desires, and showing us the right road to follow. Sattwic reason, enlightened and poised reason, is a safeguard against many of the delusions to which our fancies, passions and emotions so often betray us.

"Sri Aurobindo places reason at the top of the human mind, In fact, reason is, during the whole period of the growth of the mind, the arbiter of its activity, the safest guide, the master, one might say, who controls, and so long as you resort to mental activities, even those that are most speculative, it is reason that must guide you, prevent you from going astray, taking the wrong road or being beguiled by more or less erratic and unhealthy imaginations.”¹

It is generally thought that in spiritual life one should discourage the development of reason and not allow it to interfere with the free play of the heart's emotions and intuitions. Though there is some truth in this view, it must not blind us to the fact that uncontrolled emotions and pseudo-intuitions spell a greater danger to spiritual life than the intervention and domination of reason. We all know to what depths of demoralisation they usually descend who spurn the admonitions of reason, disregard its counsels, and elect to follow the obscure lead of their unchastened emotions. Vivekananda had once to

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lash out against some of his brother disciples who had given themselves up to extravagant emotional paroxysms in the mistaken belief that such swoons and wailings were a sign of intense love and devotion for God. Vivekananda branded them as hysterics and neurotics, and charged them to put an immediate end to all that imbecile, unmanly blubber.

The Mother is very emphatic in regard to the utility of reason up to a certain stage of mental evolution. She considers it dangerous to give up the help of reason so long as one lives in the mind and acts from the mind. "It is possible”, she says, "to give up reason only when you have passed beyond the mental activity. It is possible only when you have given yourself totally to the Divine. It is possible only when you have no more desires. Reason must be the ruler until you have gone beyond the state where it is indispensable or merely useful.”¹ It would be well to remember how categorically she commends reason and warns against its abandonment: "So long as there is an ego, so long as there are desires, so long as there is a personal will, so long as there are impulses and passions, preferences and attractions and repulsions, you cannot give up reason without falling into an unbalance.”²

There is another point to consider in this connection. Those who have gone far in the study of human nature and acquired an insight into the working of the subtle forces of the supra- physical worlds surrounding our material existence, know that influences and suggestions are always streaming into us from them. We do not see where these influences come from, and we take their suggestions as being our own, springing from some part of our own being. Desires, cravings, all sorts of impulses pour into us pell-mell from these environing regions. Some of the suggestions are good and helpful, while others are evil and harmful; and it is this medley of heterogeneous elements that renders our life so confused and miserable. Reason is our only safeguard against the inroads of the unfriendly or unhelpful forces. Its discrimination protects us from many a dangerous snare. It is true that our reason itself is often deluded,

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bribed or blackmailed, but whatever its faults and shortcomings, it is still the best guide we possess so long as we are not in the hands of the Divine.

"There is another condition altogether indispensable for you to be able to do without reason. And that is, not to be open at any point to the suggestions of the hostile world. As a matter of fact, if you are not completely freed from the habit of answering to adverse suggestions, then by giving up your reason, you give up reason itself, that is to say, common sense, and you begin to behave here also in such an incoherent manner as may lead you to a dangerous lack of balance. And if the adverse suggestions are not to touch you any more, you must be exclusively under the influence of the Divine”¹

"You see now that the problem is not so easy. It means that unless you are completely illumined and transformed, it is always much safer to act by your reason. It may be a limitation, indeed it is a great limitation, but it is also a check which prevents you from becoming one of those half-crazy people who are too many in the world.”²

It is evident that the Mother is not one of those who regard reason as the highest possible faculty of man and the only leader of his life. It is only a guide so long as he lives in the mind—it bridges the gulf between instinct and intuitive knowledge. It leads and enlightens human consciousness during a particular period of transition in its evolution. But for it, man would have remained a bond slave of his desires and passions, and a sport of his lower impulses. He could not have advanced a step beyond his aboriginal animality.

"Reason is a very respectable person, and like all respectable persons, it has its limitations and partialities; but none the less it is of great utility. There are many things you would have done, if you had no reason, and which would have led you straight to

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your ruin, because so long as you have not reached the highest regions, your best means for discrimination is reason.

Naturally it is neither the ideal nor the peak, it is only a guide to lead you through life, a check that protects you from extravagances, excesses and disordered passions, and above all from such impulsive acts as may lead you to the abyss.

One must be quite sure of oneself, quite free from ego and perfectly surrendered to the Divine Will if one is to dispense with reason safely.”¹

The Mother's words are very clear and incisively definite in regard to the role reason plays in our life. So long as the ego and the desires are there in us, so long as we are swayed by passions and attachments, preferences and prejudices, the guidance of reason is indispensable. To surrender reason is to surrender to darkness and invite disaster.

Reason as a Bar

But man arrives at a stage in his evolution when reason becomes the greatest bar to his further advance. What would have happened if our being had refused to outgrow the rule of instincts and impulses and develop the mind of reason ? It would have condemned itself to the vicious circle of desires and suffering, and there would have been no escape from it. But fortunately it was made to forego the easy guidance of instincts and impulses and press forward towards a more developed mind of reason and discrimination and reflection, and evolve the higher potentialities of its consciousness and nature. Now that it has developed reason, it must be its constant aspiration and effort to purify it of all alloy, foster its growth towards perfection, and then proceed beyond it in search of higher instruments of knowledge. It would be as irrational for it to cling on to reason in spite of its intrinsic deficiencies and limitations and refuse to advance in evolution," as it would have been if it had clung on to the sense-mind of

¹ Bulletin of Physical Education, Feb. 1937.

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the animal and refused to rise towards the life of reason. And, strange to say, it is this very thing, this irrational refusal to transcend reason, that is one of the basic causes of the present crisis in civilisation. One notices with wonder a certain un- canny dread, even in the most enlightened elite of humanity, of trying to rise beyond reason and seek for a better instrument of knowledge than this blinkered arbiter of our life. Kant's mind sought to reach after intuition, but could not cut its moorings in reason. The same dread is discernible in Jung, the leading psychologist, who, at times, appears to be almost touching the fringes of the psychic and the spiritual, and then recoiling in sudden alarm lest he should lose the safe anchorage of reason and find himself floundering in the uncharted unknown. It must be borne in mind that an endeavour of our consciousness to transcend reason does not mean surrendering our reason to the sub-rational forces of our nature. Transcendence is the law of all earthly beings. Not to aspire and strive for self-transcendence is to obstruct the onward march of evolution. The present impasse is partly due to this evolutionary bottleneck. But more of this later on. For the moment let us see what are the inherent limitations of our reason.

The Limitations of Reason

Reason is, as the Mother says, only a guide in the ignorance. It has no sure knowledge of anything. It is characterised by two incurable propensities—the propensity to doubt and the propensity to divide. Doubt always dogs its conclusions, and it cannot know anything without first dividing and analysing it. It works on the basis of the data furnished by the physical senses and are, therefore, more or less fettered to them in all "s operations. It can grow in purity and develop towards freedom and perfection only if and as it detaches itself from the insistence of the desires, passions and attachments of the lower prānic or vital nature. It has also to liberate itself from the meshes of the sense-mind and its preferences and predilections, its habitual, mechanical thoughts and ideas. Reason can thus

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purify itself to some extent and acquire a certain balance and detachment, a certain impartiality and disinterestedness. But there is always a fatal limit to its development. Mental reason cannot get completely beyond the fundamental limitations of f the physical brain out of which it has grown and to which it is tied. Its purity is always a qualified purity, exposed to surprise assaults from the passions and emotions of the unregenerate vital nature; behind its professed disinterestedness there lurk swarms of subtle, selfish interests, which cloud its perception and distort its judgement. It takes a regular training in self-culture or spiritual discipline to render reason even tolerably pure and free from the crippling and obscuring influences of the lower nature. Those who swear by reason and extol it as the highest possible faculty of man, capable of guiding him to his ultimate destiny, betray an ignorance of the complexity of human nature and the constitutional incompetence of reason to deal with the problems of the heart and life. Reason usually imposes stringent rules, represses and desiccates our feelings and emotions, and coerces many of the movements of the nature which it fails to understand or reduce to order; and, since it is never in possession of any assured knowledge, it cannot promote a harmonious development of our whole being. Either it is itself swayed by desires and passions, or it represses them so long as it can. But there is always the risk of the repressed energies erupting and swamping it with their burning lava.

Greek culture attained a great development of the mental reason, but in spite of its signal achievements, it was poor in the riches of Spirit. It neglected and discouraged its old tradition of mysticism, and tended more and more towards rationalism and humanism, with the result that, from Aristotle downwards, it began to describe a curve of steady decline and increasingly react to empiricism and scientific materialism till it ceased to exist except in its considerable but diluted contribution to Christian thought and Western life in general.

Reason may continue to help the growth of our being and consciousness, if it surrenders to intuition and opens to the higher light. The more it emancipates itself from the yoke of

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the physical mind, the more it can expand and brighten up with an unwonted light. But it finds it very difficult to do so —the knot of the ego is strongest in the intellectual mind. An exaggerated development of the mental reason without a concomitant refinement and deepening of the feelings and an openness and surrender to the higher light is harmful to our harmonious growth. Agnosticism, scepticism, utilitarian humanism, pragmatism, dialectical materialism, and last but not least, logical positivism are the natural brood of the hypertrophied mental reason. When reason refuses to widen beyond its normal sphere of work and rise to higher regions of consciousness, it begins to look down and occupy itself with the passing objects and interests of life, and forgets its higher idealism. It becomes a self-deluded tool of the desires and preferences of the lower nature. It loses whatever light it had, its discrimination is eclipsed, and it is so much engulfed in the obscurity of the lower nature that it turns into its very opposite, unreason, supporting its specious judgements and erring decisions by unabashed quibbles and sophistry. It becomes then an agility gymnast, as the Mother characterises it.

"Reason is an agility gymnast. It can move in all varieties of ways, make infinite twists, the most impossible contortions with equal ease and skill... What Reason does and can do is to justify, find arguments for whatever position it is put in or called upon to support. Its business is to supply "proofs" : it can do so as the spider brings out of itself the whole warp and woof of the cobweb. There is no truth, that is to say, no conclusion which it cannot demonstrate with equal cogency...”¹

What is indispensable for our reason to function in the right way and in the best interest of our integral development is rectitude, mental integrity. But that is not an easy thing to achieve. It presupposes a considerable purification of the lower nature. Unless reason rises above the surges of desires and attachments, unless it becomes more or less impersonal, it

¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo by Nolini Kanta Gupca, Part 7.

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cannot lead us far on our evolutionary march. That is why it is said in the Upanishad that the soul cannot be realised by reason. A deliverer of our being from the obscure instincts of life, reason must grow mature enough to learn how to seek its own fulfilment in a spontaneous surrender to the higher light.

There is another disabling limitation under which reason labours. It proceeds by division and analysis, as we have already seen, for it inherits the basic function of the mind, Which is to divide, to separate, to analyse into parts. It cannot deal with an undivided whole. When it synthesises, it does nothing better than putting the discrete parts together, agglomerating or assembling the diverse elements into a whole. But it often finds to its surprise that its syntheses abound with discrepant elements and anomalies.¹ Then it eliminates what it cannot harmonise and retains only those elements that agree with its preconceptions and cherished conclusions. When it deals with the ideas and views of other minds, its personal .preferences and incapacity to reconcile apparently conflicting elements vitiates all its judgments. In philosophy its defects show conspicuously. It erects admirable fabrics of thought, trim, logical, and symmetrical, but founded on uncertain postulates derived from the sense data and expanded and buttressed by inference and speculation. That is about the high waters mark of its achievement. It can catch some broken reflections .of truth, but not truth itself. Its theories are feats of intellectual speculation, but they do not lead human consciousness beyond the confines of the mind, they do not open doors upon infinity and eternity, they do not make us experience and live Reality. The basal differences between the speculative structures of the philosophers are the measure of the incapacity of mental reason to envisage truth in all its aspects and reconcile its apparent incompatibles and contradictions. If it accepts the impersonal aspect of Reality, it rejects the personal; if it regards Reality as static and inactive, it dubs all creation and action as illusion; or if, like Heraclitus and Bergson, it perceives

¹"It is not in the mental consciousness that things can be harmonised and synthesised". The Mother

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the exclusive reality of the universal flux, it considers the status and immutability of Reality as myth and moonshine. If Brahman is Nirguna or devoid of all qualities and attributes, it cannot be at the same time Saguna or possessor of qualities. These are the usual trenchant oppositions created by human reason, even at its best, in the all-harmonising unity and integrality of Reality. It is baffled by the paradoxical nature of Reality, by its simultaneous possession of radical contraries. "It is a malady of the ordinary human intelligence which comes necessarily from separation, from division, that things must be either this or that. If you choose this, you turn your back on that."¹

Reason and Intuition

It is only intuition that sees things in the whole. It commands an immediacy of knowledge which views the whole and the parts at the same time, and embraces their apparent contradictions in a vast sweep of unifying- and harmonising vision. It is only intuition that can very well affirm, like the Upanishad :

"That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That is outside all this.”...—Isha

The action of intuition is diametrically opposed to that of reason—it sees the One, the Indivisible, and the multiplicity as the manifold aspect or self-representation of the same One. It has not to analyse or divide in order to know. It knows by identity, by becoming what it wants to know. Reason, on the other hand, tries to know, now one aspect of truth and now another, now in one way, and now in another; but it never succeeds in knowing except in a very partial and fragmentary manner, for it creates an artificial gulf between itself and the object of its knowledge. All its action proceeds upon the basis °f division, differentiation and separation. By dividing the

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indivisible, it renders the object of its knowledge unknowable. That is why agnosticism is the last word of reason's quest of knowledge. What it thinks it knows, is only the prismatic spectrum of appearances, the perpetual flux of changing forms, not Reality. And not knowing Reality, it does not know the truth of appearances either.

Reason and Faith

"Faith,” says the Mother, "is the movement of the soul whose knowledge is spontaneous and direct. Even if the whole world denies and brings forward a thousand proofs to the contrary, still it knows by an inner knowledge, a direct perception that can stand against everything, a perception by identity”.¹ It knows, but it cannot give reasons for what it knows. "It does not believe after proofs are given.”² Faith originates from the very centre of our being. True faith is as deep and strong as life itself. But reason cannot understand it. It scouts and chills it. It insists on proofs, on factual and objective evidences; and it peremptorily rejects all that eludes its objective tests. Thus it shuts out an infinite range of knowledge from itself. The action of reason is mostly negative. It surveys and sifts, detects and rejects, watches and warns, checks and corrects. It is only rarely that it acts in a positive and constructive way. But faith is always positive and creative in its action. It possesses a confidence and a certitude which sharply contrast with the habitual doubt and scepticism of reason. Faith is a reflection of the knowledge of the soul, and has all the power of the soul behind it to fortify and support it in its self-fulfilment. Loss of faith is the greatest loss modern man has suffered on account of his exclusive reliance on reason.

Reason and Revelation

The greatest scriptures of the world, those that have given spiritual strength and sustenance, light and joy to humanity

¹ & ² Words of the Mother.

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through the ages, are words of revelation, and not of reason. The Veda, the Upanishad, the Bible, the Avesta, for example, are so powerfully revealing, because they embody direct revelation. They are perennially fresh and creative, inspiring and ennobling and exalting, because they were not manufactured in the mind of reason, in the shadow of human ignorance, but flashed as revelation in the deeper or higher consciousness of man, which can be attained only by silencing and over- passing reason. Denouncing all mental judgements as ignorant and erroneous, and describing the way to receive the higher light, the flash of revelation, the Mother says :

"If you wish to be a little wiser, observe things attentively record them without pronouncing any judgment. When you will have contemplated them quietly within yourself, place them before the highest part of your consciousness, trying to keep yourself silently attentive and wait.

Then perhaps, slowly, as if coming from very far and from very high, something like a light will manifest itself. And you will know a little more of the truth.”

That is the ancient, traditional way of attaining knowledge—by vision, by inspiration, by revelation, when thought has ceased, the mind of reason has been lulled to sleep, and an inner or higher level of consciousness has awakened in a spirit of intent receptivity. "There are higher regions of conscious- ness beyond the intellect; and you have to stop all intellectual activity, make your mind a total blank before you can reach there. And indulgence in even so-called higher or philosophical speculations can only block the way to the true consciousness and knowledge”.¹

The Fetish of Reason

Modem man has made a fetish of his intellect and reason, and that is why the evolutionary progress of his consciousness

¹ The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo by Nolini Kanta Gupta—Part VI.

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has been arrested. According to the Mother "the intellect that believes too much in its own importance and wants satisfaction for its own sake, is an obstacle to the higher realisation... People do not regard an all-engrossing satisfaction of the vital desires or the animal appetites as a virtue; the moral sense is accepted as a mentor to tell one the bounds that one may not transgress. It is only in his intellectual activities that man thinks that he can do without any such mentor or censor!”¹ Man's moral and spiritual sensibilities have been starved and atrophied by the arrogant autocracy of his intellectual reason. He cannot get away even for a moment from its frowning and withering look, though, it must be admitted, its frowns have sometimes a sobering and salutary effect upon our lower nature. His imagination ² cannot soar as far and as freely as it could before, for reason damps its ardour and clips its wings. Even his intelligence has lost its ancient sweep and depth, its keenness, suppleness and creative vigour for want of moral and spiritual sustenance. Its activities have become hectic and desultory, flurried and shallow. It has ceased to delight in the ideal, the glory that can be, the inspired thought and far- reaching reflection, but revels in petty details and niggling technicalities; and even wallows in the ugly and the repulsive, the coarse, the squalid, and the sordid. Alexis Carrel paints a true, though somewhat lurid, picture of the decay of reason and intelligence in modern man.

"In modern civilisation the individual is characterised chiefly by a fairly great activity, entirely directed towards the practical side of life, by much ignorance, by a certain shrewdness, and by a kind of mental weakness which leaves him under the influence of the environment wherein he happens to be placed. It appears that intelligence itself gives way when character weakens. For this reason, perhaps, this quality, characteristic of France in former times, has so markedly failed in that country. In the United States the intellectual standard remains low, in spite of

¹Words of the Mother.

² Blake rejects reason as an enemy of imagination.

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the increasing number of schools and universities... Modern civilisation seems to be incapable of producing people endowed with imagination, intelligence and courage. In practically every country there is a decrease in the intellectual and moral calibre of those who carry the responsibility of public affairs... It is chiefly the intellectual and moral deficiencies of political leaders, and their ignorance, which endanger modem nations.”¹

Degeneration of Reason

It is evident that human reason has darkened and degraded itself by refusing to evolve, to extend its horizons, and open to the higher light; and that it is unreason and its cohort, irrational desires, passions and mean selfishness, that have the whip hand of human nature today. This unreason is reason inverted and perverted and fallen from its high office. Like a fallen angel turned into a malignant devil, it is dragging mankind down into a kind of civilised barbarism, which is the greatest menace to human culture, and even human existence. This civilised barbarism is capable of brutalities from which even the hardened conscience of the Chenghiz Khans and Timurs of the past would have sunk in spontaneous horror—brutalities perpetrated from day to day, not in sudden fits of uncontrollable violence or vindictive passion, but in cold blood, with calm, calculated cruelty and self-justifying callousness; scientific tortures and massacres, devised and carried out with unblushing atrocity and sovereign nonchalance, and without any qualms of conscience, but rather with an imposing array of ostensible reasons disguising their revolting inhumanity. In the previous ages of human culture, passion and perfidy, cruelty and rapacity did not know how to hide their contorted features—they were self-exposed in all their unrelieved hideousness but today human intellect and ingenuity have woven such deceptive masks over them that they play the butcher and the vandal in the name of civilisation and culture, in the best interests of world peace and security. They maul and mutilate, ravage

¹ Man the Unknown by Alexis Carrel,

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and destroy all higher values and the priceless legacies of the past; they lay waste vast areas of productive earth and poison the health and happiness of millions of men; they pollute the very air we breathe and the very water we drink, with strident professions on their lips of the welfare of mankind and the advance of civilisation.

A Crucial Choice

It is a crucial choice that confronts man today : whether he should elevate and exceed reason and explore the vaster and luminous reaches of his consciousness, or let his reason pander to the base interests and brutish hungers of his animal nature. On the one hand, there is the hope of an infinite expansion of human consciousness in light and peace and creative harmony, and unimpeded flowering of man's immortal Spirit, and a radical transformation of his human into divine nature; and, on the other, the rampant chaos and anarchy of his animal appetites and blind impulses, rendered immensely more powerful and destructive by the subtlety of his intellect and reason. The very existence of man on earth is at stake. To be or not to be is the sole question of the hour. Mind is at the end of its tether. Shall man cling on to his collapsing reason and find himself broken in the bottomless pit, or ascend to the supramental heights and renew his life and nature in its transforming light ?

Sublimation of Reason

Man is a pilgrim of eternity, and must not settle down at any wayside inn, however snug and secure it may seem to be. As he has been endeavouring to transcend the subrational stage of impulse and instinct, so too he must strive to ascend beyond reason to whatever higher powers and faculties await the exploration of his evolving consciousness. But reason can be transcended only when it is fully developed. It is dangerous to attempt a premature leap.

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The Mother says that knowledge is above and beyond the mind of thought, but the mind of thought and reason has to be fully developed before one can hope to transcend it in order to attain knowledge. She enjoins on everybody the duty of developing his reason, for it is only after he has risen to his full stature as a mental being that he can aspire to scale the spiritual heights.

"The first thing that is to be taught to every human being as soon as he is capable of thinking is that he must obey reason which is a kind of super-instinct of the species. And I repeat that it is not a question of spiritual life, but the very elementary wisdom of human, purely human, life. Every child must know that he is created to become a mental being, and if he is to manifest his human nature, reason must govern his life and not vital impulses. That is the elementary education that should be given everywhere.

The reign of reason should not end until the coming of the psychic law which manifests the Divine Will.”¹

Reason must not be thrown overboard, but purified and raised to its full stature and held up to the higher light. Instead of remaining a henchman of our desire-soul, it must achieve a control over it and help our being to offer all itself to the Divine.

¹ Bulletin of Physical Education, Aug. 1957.

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