The Divine Collaborators

CHAPTER II

The Divine Union

We have proposed to ourselves, first, a consideration of the essential identity between the Mother's conception of the divine Union as enunciated by her before her meeting with Sri Aurobindo and that of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo's conception, evolved out of the all-embracing integrality of his realisation, is a global synthesis of all the concepts of the past crowned with his distinctive gospel of the constant, dynamic union and communion with the Divine in the physical being of man. This original contribution of his to the ideal of the divine Union opens up an infinite vista of spiritual perfection and explains and justifies the soul's descent into human birth.

"These three elements, a union with the supreme Divine, unity with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being."¹

The three highest forms of union aimed at respectively by the three great schools of Indian Yoga, Jnanayoga, Bhakti-

¹Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Vol. IV

Page 11

yoga and Tantra,—Sayujya, Samipya and Sarupya—are fused into one all-comprehending union which combines the rapt ecstasy of the embrace of the Eternal with the thrilled dynamism of His self-expression in Time. All nature and all life are included in the sweep of this integral union and every fibre of our complex being is meant to find in it its perfect fulfillment. This union is the sovereign means of reproduction, in the triple term of mind, Life and body, of the triple supreme principle of the transcendent Existence, Sat, Chit and Ananda, through the conscious and co-operating agency of the full-fledged psychic, the soul of man; of an unblemished transcription of the infinite glories of the Spirit in finite, living and thinking Matter. That which most impedes the attainment of this integral union is the dense physical being of man, entrenched in its obscurity and inert conservatism, and reluctant to open or respond to the higher light. Most initiates of Eternity have, therefore, sought to enjoy the transporting bliss of the divine union in the remote depths or on the lonely peaks of their being, leaving the physical part to vegetate in its habitual obscurity. It is only the rare heroic souls, the intrepid warriors of the Spirit, who have struggled to redeem the physical and render it capable of reflecting something of the light and power and ecstasy welling out of the union. But all that has been really achieved up to the present, by way of redemption, is a modicum of purification and illumination, but not a radical conversion and transfiguration; and without a total conversion and transfiguration of the physical being, the outer

Page 12

personality, it is impossible to have an integral and uninterrupted union with the Divine in active life—the surface self will either lie quiescent and sterile while the soul is entranced in the beatitude of the inner union, or dilute and distort and spill what is transmitted to it for expression. A perfect physical expression of the fruits of divine union has hardly been possible as yet in human life.

Sri Aurobindo's spiritual power has been bent on the achievement of the integral divine union and its undiminished and undistorted expression in the normal work-a-day life of humanity; but for this supreme consummation of the evolutionary effort of the human soul, two things are indispensable: a pioneer individual perfection and a progressive reproduction of the individual perfection in the general nature of the collectivity. But the individual, being a part of the collectivity, and not an isolated unit, cannot completely identify himself with the Divine until the rampant impurities of the collective nature have been to a certain extent eliminated. It is this dual work of individual and collective transformation that has been the mission and labour of Sri Aurobindo, and we shall miss all the significance, all the superlative greatness of it, if we lose sight of these two aspects of his ideal. No individual, however great he may be, can attain to the integral divine perfection through the integral divine union until the earth-consciousness itself has undergone a revolutionary transformation and the earth-conditions have definitely changed in its favour. The integral union with the Divine, as understood by Sri Aurobindo, is the

Page 13

ultimate and inevitable destiny of mankind, but it is an ideal that is to be striven for and attained, and not one that has ever been achieved in the spiritual history of humanity. It will come as the ultimate victory in a double war waged within man and without, individually and collectively.

If we bear the above salient points well in mind, we shall be able to follow the general trend of the Mother's aspiration and achievements and discover in them the same essential elements that constitute the ideal and the realisation of Sri Aurobindo, so far as the divine union is concerned.

In the very first Prayer of the "Prayers and Meditations", the Mother gives us a glimpse of the central aspiration of her being and the height of vision and experience to which she has already attained.

"I aspire for the day when I can no longer say I, for I shall be Thou."¹

***

"I have now a constant and precise perception of the universal unity determining an absolute interdependence of all actions."²

The first quotation embodies the Mother's aspiration, but the second, which is very significant, shows that the

¹ Prayer of November 2, 1912

Page 14

perfection of individual action depends to a great measure upon the conditions which make for the perfection of the universal action. This perception of the Mother of the interdependence of all actions is an index to the line her spiritual career has consistently taken—it is the dual line of individual and collective aspiration and conquest. It must have been a basic realisation of her consciousness, early in her life, that existence is one and indivisible, and that our individual perfection and fulfillment must include the perfection and fulfillment of all. The same idea is expressed by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis of Yoga, Book I:

"Accepting life, he (the sadhaka of the integral Yoga) has to bear not only his own burden, but a great part of the world's burden too along with it, as a continuation of his own sufficiently heavy load. Therefore his Yoga has much more of the nature of a battle than others'; but this is not only an individual battle, it is a collective war waged over a considerable country. He has not only to conquer in himself the forces of egoistic falsehood and disorder, but to conquer them as representatives of the same adverse and inexhaustible forces in the world. Their representative character gives them a much more obstinate capacity of resistance, an almost endless right to recurrence. Often he finds that even after he has won persistently his own personal battle, he has still to win it over and over again in a seemingly interminable war, because his inner existence has already been so much enlarged that not only it

Page 15

contains his own being with its well-defined needs and experiences, but is in solidarity with the being of others, because in himself he contains the universe."

It is evident, then, that the union the Mother aspires for in these Prayers is a progressive integral union, which, even when perfect at the centre, necessarily takes long to be perfect at the peripheries. But nothing short of it can satisfy the Mother's being any more than Sri Aurobindo's. In her Prayer of the 19th November, 1912, the Mother says to the Divine:

"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." A little farther on in the same Prayer, she says, "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."

She has found the Divine "definitively", the Union is "constant", she has lost "the sense of separativity"; and yet she calls this union "poor and precarious" in comparison with what it will be possible for her to "realise tomorrow." The inner union has been attained and stabilised: "...It is Thou who breathest, thinkest and lovest in this substance...",but the Mother would not rest till she has become "Thou", completely and irrevocably, from the highest summits of her being to its lowest plains.

Page 16

What is this becoming "Thou"? It is not a mere identification with the Divine in the soul and the mind,—it is a spiritual rebirth of the whole being, a remoulding of the entire apparatus of the surface and the subconscient human personality, and, above all, a radical transfiguration of the body, its consciousness and its mode of working, leading to an untrembling dynamic poise in the Divine and a constant union and communion with Him in active life.

"So long as one element of the being, one movement of the thought is still subjected to outside influences, not solely under Thine, it cannot be said that the true Union is realised; there is still the horrible mixture without order and light,—for that element, that movement is a world, a world of disorder and darkness, as is the entire earth in the material world, as is the material world in the entire universe."¹

That is why there is an intense, unceasing aspiration in the Mother's body—it is not a mental or vital aspiration imposed upon the body, but the body's own separate, individual, unquenchable aspiration—for a dynamic union with the Supreme through service...."This body whose will is to become Thy docile instrument and Thy faithful servant."² "...This substance which, being Thy-

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—Dec. 2,1912

² ibid., Nov. 3, 1912

Page 17

self, desires to be Thy willing servant."¹ This service, as the Mother understands it, is not a mere Karmayoga, a discipline of desireless and disinterested action, for the purification and liberation of the being; it has a double purpose and significance: I) the canalising of the supreme Love and Light into the material world and 2) the preparation and transformation of the physical being of man for the perfect Union and the eventual Manifestation. The Mother so much insists on service, because: I) Union with the Divine cannot be integral if the body is excluded from it; for, the body, as much as the heart or the mind, has a birthright to a constant and complete union with the Divine and a perfection in the expression of that union; and it is only when all the parts of the being of man are converted and transformed enough to enter into the union, abide in it and radiate its ineffable glory, that the Union can be called integral, and the entire being of man can have its completest fulfilment. 2) It is only through service that the Will of the Divine in the world can be victoriously fulfilled. In fact, in its advanced stages, service becomes another name for an unobstructed divine self-expression.²

Attuned to the same key, ring Sri Aurobindo's words: "Preserving and perfecting the physical, fulfilling the

¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—Nov. 19, 1912

²For further details on the subject, refer to my book, "In the Mother's Light" in 2

Page 18

mental, it is Nature's aim and it should be ours to unveil in the perfected body and mind the transcendent activities of the Spirit. As the mental life does not abrogate but works for the elevation and better utilisation of the bodily, so too the spiritual should not abrogate but transfigure our intellectual, emotional, aesthetic and vital activities."¹

The Mother does not regard an exclusive, unilateral tension of the mind or the heart or the will towards the Divine as capable of leading anywhere near the integral union; it is a narrow intensity within a restricted field of consciousness and barren of any enduring and transforming effect upon life in the world. It can initiate the Godward turn, but cannot by itself consummate and fulfil it in an integral union.

"Even he who might have arrived at perfect contemplation in silence and solitude, could only have done so by extracting himself from his body, by making an abstraction of himself; and thus the substance of which the body is constituted would remain as impure, as imperfect as before, since he would have abandoned it to itself; by a misguided mysticism, by the attraction of supraphysical splendours, by the egoistic desire of being united with Thee for his personal satisfaction, he would have turned his back upon the reason of his earthly existence, he would

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo—Book I

Page 19

have refused cowardlike to accomplish his mission to re-deem and purify Matter."¹

The same idea informs the following words of Sri Aurobindo: "Brahman expresses Itself in many successive forms of consciousness, successive in their relation even if coexistent in being or coeval in Time, and life in its self-unfolding must also rise to ever-new provinces of its own being. But if in passing from one domain to another we renounce what has already been given us from eagerness for our new attainment, if in reaching the mental life we cast away or belittle the physical life which is our basis, or if we reject the mental and physical in our attraction to the spiritual, we do not fulfil God integrally, nor satisfy the conditions of His manifestation. We do not become perfect, but only shift the field of our imperfection or at most attain a limited altitude. However high we may climb, even though it be to the Non-Being itself, we climb ill if we forget our base. Not to abandon the lower to itself, but to transfigure it in the Light of the higher to which we have attained, is true divinity of nature. Brahman is integral and unifies many states of consciousness at a time; we also, manifesting the nature of Brahman, should become integral and all-embracing."²

There must be an integration and harmonisation of all the parts of our being and a global turning of it to the Divine, if the integral union be the supreme objective.

¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—June 15,1913

²The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo, Chapter V

Page 20

Very often a partial union is so overwhelnring that it is easily taken for an integral one—the soul and mind and heart are immersed in bliss and peace, or the life parts vibrate with a mighty power; even the body reflects some-thing of its glow and thrill. But that is not what the Mother and Sri Aurobindo mean by Union. They mean, as we have already seen, something" more luminously and comprehensively complete, and more sovereignly effective; something in which the whole being of man, from his Self to the very cells of his body, permanently lives and moves and acts in the Divine. But this union cannot come about merely by an inner plunge and identification, or by any number of plunges and identifications. It includes also the union of our subconscient and inconscient parts with the Divine, which is possible only by the illumination and transformation of those nether regions by the direct action of the Supramental Force. It is a tremendous work, entailing a descent into the Subconscient and the Inconscient and a raising up of the dark elements which seethe or sleep there, so that they may be either destroyed or transformed into radiant spiritual energies and lend themselves to the total transformation of the physical personality of man. And, besides, according to them, union is not an end in itself,— that the soul never forfeits in its depths—it is the sole and supreme means to the ulterior end and reason of our existence, the object of the soul's descent into birth and its evolution, the purpose of the immanence of the Divine in the world, the aim of creation itself—the perfect

Page 21

Manifestation, the intended Epiphany of the Spirit in Matter. According to Sri Aurobindo, the aim of his Integral Yoga is not only to seek and realise the Divine but to call upon Him to manifest Himself in and through us in the material world. That is not only Union, but Union multiplied, universalised and dynamically self-revealed in its native glory in humanity. And in a sweet little Prayer, written on March 13,1913, when the Mother had not even heard of Sri Aurobindo, she too says,

"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."

We shall now consider the essential identity¹ existing between Sri Aurobindo's idea of physical transformation through service in an integral surrender and that of the Mother as expressed by her before her meeting with Sri Aurobindo.

¹ Really speaking, the identity is not only essential, it is also practical, and even literal, as the Mother's frequent use of the expressions, "integral union", "perfect manifestation," "transformation", "earthly transfiguration" etc., which are the key-expressions of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga and Philosophy, testifies.

Page 22