The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XXII

KNOWLEDGE—THE LIGHT THAT FULFILS

PART I

WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE

IN yogic parlance and spiritual philosophy knowledge does not mean mental knowledge. Mental knowledge is a knowledge of objects taken as separate integers or aspects, and not viewed as indivisible parts of a universal whole. Even when it arrives at a synthesis, it is an aggregate or a sum-total that it grasps, and never the essential unity of things. Besides, the mind can know only the surface of things, their appearances, and not their essential substance and reality. "Mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer. Even with what exists only as obvious parts and fractions. Mind establishes this fiction of its ordinary commerce that they are things with which it can deal separately and not merely as aspects of a whole.... It conceives, perceives, senses things as if rightly cut out from a back- ground or a mass and employs them as fixed units of the material given to it for creation or possession...! Mind may divide, multiply, add, subtract, but it cannot get

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beyond the limits of this mathematics.... Mind cannot possess the infinite..."¹

Real knowledge, on the contrary, is knowledge by identity. I cannot really know a person unless I identify myself with him. An observation of his ways of life his nature and speech and manners and dealings with others, can give me only a superficial idea of him; and it often happens that my idea is found in the end to be erroneous, being based on the misleading data of the senses, and an illegitimate use of imagination and conjecture. Tricked by appearances, I sometimes mistake a saint for a scoundrel, and a scoundrel for a saint. Many a betrayal in love and friendship can be rightly traced to the cheat of the senses. But when I identify myself with a person spiritually, that is to say, when my consciousness becomes one with his consciousness, I know his real nature; not only what is overt and superficially or deceptively evident, but also what is deep down in him, vibrant or latent in his being, and subtly influencing his thoughts and feelings. There is no possibility of error in this identification: for, it gives me a knowledge of the man as he is, and not only as he appears to be. In identifying myself with him, I become his self and his nature; the major and minor vibrations of his consciousness rise in my consciousness, and I can easily know them for what they are. The truth behind this knowledge by identity is that existence is one. Being is one, consciousness is

¹ The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo.

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one, and when I go down to the all-pervading bedrock consciousness, I become united with anything and everything that it contains, the depth and range of this identification depending upon the development and power of my own consciousness. The less the dominance of the ego in me, the greater the possibility of my union with the world and with God; for. God is my own supreme Self and the world is nothing but His manifestation in Himself in terms of His own multiplicity. Indeed, I can know only myself and nothing else. I can have no knowledge of an object which is fundamentally alien to my nature and consciousness—two disparates having nothing in common between them can never meet; and without such a meeting and contact there can be no knowledge. If contradictories are found to meet and unite in life, it is because fundamentally they are one, meant to act as complementaries in the manifold patterns of Nature. The Upanishads say that the Atman or Self has become all these beings and things (becomings)— ātmā abhūt sarvabhūtāni; and, basing their ontology on this truth, they declare that when That is known all is known, tasmin vijñāte sarvamidam vijñātam bhavati. And indicating the way to this knowledge by identification, they inculcate a plunge into the depths of our being, away from the confused din of the surface and its trenchant divisions and differences. Not that the appearances are unreal or illusory, but they are passing, transitory and delusive—they do not reveal the" indivisible and imperishable Reality that dwells in them.

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It is only by being āvrttacaksu, by turning round our eyes inwards, that we can discover the guhāhitam, the dweller of the cave, the purānam, the Ancient of days who has become all this that is, idam sarvam, and is yet beyond them, vahiśca. "The method of Yoga m knowledge must always be a turning of the eye inward and, so far as it looks upon outer things, a penetrating of the surface appearances to get at the one eternal reality within them."¹ The core and essence of things and creatures, the basic harmony and unity of their existence, the truth and purpose of their becoming in Time and Space, the meaning of their mutations, and the significance of their interrelation and interaction, all lie beyond the farthest confines of our waking mind, and inaccessible to our normal thought and reason. We may, if we like, deny their reality in the overweening pride of our sense-bound mind, but truth cannot be thus denied for ever with impunity. Besides, there is no possibility of a permanent denial; for the same truth shines in the heart of each one of us, and, when the clouds of doubt and denial roll away, and the mind learns to perceive its own inherent limitations and its crippling bondage to the superficial aspects of life, is bound to emerge and change the denial into an ardent and grateful acceptance. The incompetent pride of the intellect falls to the ground as the indwelling divinity rises into self-expression.

¹The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

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Sri Aurobindo speaks in "The Life Divine" of a fourfold order of knowledge from which our surface cognition derives. "The original and fundamental way of knowing, native to the occult self in things, is a know- ledge by identity; the second, derivative, is a knowledge by direct contact associated at its roots with a secret knowledge by identity or starting from it, but actually separated from its source and therefore powerful but incomplete in its cognition; the third is a knowledge by separation from the object of observation, but still with a direct contact as its support or even a partial identity; the fourth is a complete separative knowledge which relies on a machinery of indirect contact, a knowledge by acquisition which is yet, without being conscious of it, a rendering or bringing up of the contents of a pre- existent inner awareness and knowledge. A knowledge by identity, a knowledge by intimate direct contact, a knowledge by separative direct contact, a wholly separative knowledge by indirect contact are the four cognitive methods of Nature".¹ The last is the normal method of our mind, which is incapable of entering into the objects of its perception and identifying itself with them. Our mind cannot know the external objects in the same way as it knows its own inner movements—its thoughts, feelings and sensations—with the same immediacy and intimacy. It contacts the objects through the senses, and in so doing, it meets with only figures,

¹The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo.

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images and representations of them, and not their essential reality. It is this inherent deficiency of the separative knowledge by indirect contact that gives a certain plausibility to the theory of Phenomenalism.¹ The third method is characterised by a simultaneity of direct con- tact and separation between the knower and the object of knowledge, sometimes or partially sustained by identity. It is typically illustrated in our knowledge of our own subjective movements, in which there is a direct contact and at the same time a detached observation; but it is the reason that observes the inner workings of the being, and in so observing, it leans more on the side of the workings than on the essential identity, which remains behind as a subtle, supporting awareness. In the second method the direct contact is at once more intimate and effective, and the separation entailed in the observation is not so clear-cut as in the third. There are ample possibilities and even an obvious certainty of error in the fourth method, which pivots upon a trenchant separation between the knower and the object of knowledge. It depends upon the misleading data of the senses, and deals only with the appearances of things. There are possibilities of error even in the second and third methods, but they are fewer, and the chances of arriving at truth much greater. But it is only by the first method, the

¹This was also the starting point of the radical change Kant's mind underwent in regard to the unknowability of the Things- in-themselves.

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method of identity, that the truth of a thing can be realised and its knowledge gained. In identity there is a union between the consciousness of the knower and that of the object of knowledge—for there is consciousness, evolved or involved, in every object—and the knower knows his object of knowledge in himself, the barriers of material Space melting away in the spiritual extension of his consciousness. "They see the Self in the Self by the Self", is the Gitâ's description of the highest form of knowledge by identity. So long as there is separation between the knower and the object of his knowledge, the knowledge acquired cannot but be indirect, and what it brings to the knower is not truth, but only half- truth or even falsehood.

If we study the lives of the mystics, we come across innumerable instances of the knowledge by identity. Compared with this knowledge, our scientific, psycho- logical and philosophical knowledge appears as pale mental constructions, shaky improvisations of the analytical or speculative intellect, a tenuous network of mere hypotheses. When Christ says, "I and my Father in Heaven are one," it is his inmost consciousness identifying itself with the infinite Consciousness of the Supreme that expresses the spiritual oneness, and not his philosophic mind or even his intuitive intellect. When Sri Chaitanya enters into the mahābhāva, he feels himself so much identified with the Supreme that he visibly appears divinely transfigured, his normal consciousness of the devotee of God being eclipsed and swallowed up

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in the all-mastering consciousness of the Supreme Being. Sri Ramakrishna on his mystic journey through the higher planes to the highest transcendence of saccidānanda identifies himself successively with the planes of Power and Light and Bliss to such an extent that he becomes at the moment of identification nothing but Power or Light or Bliss.

Describing his identification with the plane of universal Power, he says, "I was so much identified with that (universal) Power that I felt I could tear the sun from its orbit and dash it to atoms." When he was identified with the plane of Light, he felt as if he was immersed in an ocean of Light—it was Light and Light everywhere. Once, when a man was treading over a lawn, Sri Râmakrishna felt in himself the pain of the trampled grass, and shrieked out in agony. When he saw some of his foremost disciples for the first time, he at once recognised each of them and knew who they had been in their past lives, and what they had come for again to the earth. And his predictions about them proved absolutely true. If we turn to the experiences of the Mother as transcribed in her Prayers and Meditations, we get graphic descriptions of the knowledge by identity.

"As from a summit which has been attained, one discovers a vast horizon, so, O Lord, when one's consciousness is identified with this intermediate realm between Thy unity and this manifested world, one participates at once in Thy Infinitude and the realisation of the world. It is as though one were at a centre in which the consciousness,

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wholly steeped in Thy effective Power, may direct the ray of Thy forces upon the lowest instrument moving centrally amidst its brother instruments. From the height of these transcendent regions, the unity of the physical substance is very evidently visible, and yet the body which serves as a particular instrument in the material realm, appears with a special precision and clearness like a more vigorous point in the midst of this whole, at once multiple and unique, in which the forces circulate equally.

"This perception has not left me since yesterday. It has installed itself as something definitive, and all the outer activity which, in appearance, continues as usual, has taken the mechanical character of a marvelously articulated and animated toy moved from the height of its seat by my consciousness which is no longer individual but is still universal, and that means that it is not yet completely immersed in Thy Oneness. All the laws of the individual manifestation clearly appeared to me, but in a manner so synthetic, so global, so simultaneous, that it is impossible to express it in our ordinary language."¹

It is evident from the above quotation that the Mother is speaking of her experience of that plane of consciousness which is intermediate between the featureless unity of the Divine Existence and the multitudinous flux of the manifested world. The experience is born of identification, and it gives her a perfect knowledge of the transcendent

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—May 15, 1914.

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Infinitudes above and the universal forms and forces below Another example will give the most conclusive evidence of the knowledge that is attained by identity:

"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.

"My heart has fallen asleep down to the very depths of my being.

"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 personal limits, no more any individual action, no more any separatist concentration creating conflict; nothing but a single and infinite Oneness.

"My heart has fallen asleep down to the very depths of my being."¹

In this experience the Mother has been completely identified with the material universe, its life and its innumerable and manifold elements. This identification gives her a perfect knowledge of the inner and outer workings of the material world. But that is only a tiny part of the experience.

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother—-April 10, 1917.

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Beyond the material world, she is identified with the Will that moves it, the Thought that acts in it, and the Force that realises itself. And even beyond all this, she is identified with the fathomless silence of the ineffable Absolute. She commands all knowledge in this integral experience, for she is identified with the One in all the ways of His Being and in all forms of His self- manifestation. She knows at once the essential and phenomenal truths of existence as truths of her own self and its becomings, for, it is an experience in which "it is not a second or other than and separate from himself that he sees, speaks to, hears, knows."¹

In spiritual life the ultimate aim of knowledge is not mental understanding or enlightenment, but being and becoming. One can know the Brahman only by becoming the Brahman; or, to put it inversely, (which is the same thing), one becomes the Brahman by knowing the Brahman—brahmavid brahmaiva bhavati. Therefore, it can be said that knowledge begins only when we have passed beyond all mental knowings. So long as we cherish our mental knowledge and depend upon our intelligence .and reason and imaginative reflection in our search for Truth, we remain imprisoned in our mental constructions, severed from the Infinite. To transcend the mind is an imperative necessity of our evolution, unless, of course, we elect to describe a downward curve of culture and

¹ Brhadāranyaka Upanisad.

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allow our mental faculties to be employed in the service of our blind desires, and the god-like elements in us to be darkened and disfigured by our animal appetites and passions. There is already a great danger of such a devolution in human culture, which must be obviated before it has undone the labours of the ages. Salvation lies in knowledge —knowledge which is the Light of Spirit illumining its own Truth. "There is nothing in the world as pure as knowledge," says the Gitâ. "Even if thou art the worst of sinners, thou wilt cross over the ocean of sin by the boat of knowledge." "As a blazing fire consumes a whole heap of wood, so does the fire of knowledge burn up all actions and their consequences." "Therefore, O Bharata (Arjuna), by the sword of knowledge cut off this doubt of your mind born of ignorance, and bestir yourself to practise Yoga." When the Light of knowledge shines out in our being, the mask of our mortal humanity drops away from our consciousness, and we realise the infinity and eternity of our essential Self and Spirit. Knowledge delivers us from all bondage and suffering, and ushers us into the freedom and bliss of our spiritual existence. It illumines and widens our love for the Divine, and impeccably guides our action into the channels of a divine fulfilment. Without knowledge, love, however intense, would be narrow and fanatical, and our action, however disinterested, would lack the authentic drive of the divine Will in us- it would not be God's direct action in us. The Light of knowledge is the herald of freedom and the prophecy of divine fulfilment.

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We shall now proceed to consider the means, grades and object of knowledge, as taught by Sri Aurobindo, and conclude this chapter with an indication of the harmonious fulfilment knowledge is meant to bestow upon the sâdhaka of the Integral Yoga.

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