The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XIII

MIND AND ITS PURIFICATION

PART II

THE entanglement of the parts and functions of the antaḥkaraṇa being bafflingly great, we have to fix upon something in it which will lend itself more easily and with a better grace than the others to the work of purification; but it must be something which is the most evolved in the nature and able to lead it to a higher poise and a more efficient working. For, the secret of dealing successfully with the instrumental nature is to use the most developed part of it as the grappling hook for the hauling and overhauling of the other parts, and steadily diffuse its influence everywhere. If one part is sufficiently purified, there is every possibility of the others following, suit sooner or later. But no part can be perfectly purified till all are perfectly purified, for even the slightest imperfection of one impinges upon the others, and affects the general working. Therefore, we have to find out the part which is most developed in us individually, and set about its purification, extending at the same time its. hold and influence upon the whole nature.

Page 237

THE PURIFICATION OF THE BUDDHI

In the majority of men it is the buddhi or the intelligence with its will, which is the most developed. Not that it is considerably developed in most men, but whatever its development, it can take the lead in the work of purification, inasmuch as it has the capacity to command a certain height and a certain detached superiority to the blind and knotted action of the lower members. Taking our stand in the buddhi, we can watch the movements of our nature and attempt to change or correct them. The initial, superficial perception of the sense-mind and the understanding can be developed into a crystal cognition, a detached observation and knowledge of at least something of what passes within. And the buddhi has not only the power of observing and knowing, but also of directing and controlling, which it can exercise upon the rebellious parts of nature. Its will is a potent means of purification. It can get beyond the data of the sense-mind and, by reflection and imagination, arrive at truths which are inaccessible to the sense-mind. It can correct and control the receptive sensational mind which lies at the mercy of the outer touches of things, and impose upon it a rhythm and a true law of perceptive and aesthetic enjoyment. It can teach the emotions of the heart a sense of symmetry and proportion, and cure them of their frothy effusions or violent heaving. It can put a brake on the random impulses of the reactive sensational mind and subject it to the rule of the ethical

Page 238

mind, bent upon achieving what is right and just in thought and word and deed.

But whatever the competence of the buddhi and its potentiality as the leader of the lower nature, it labours under many defects, some intrinsic and some contingent, which have to be overcome, if it is to be used as a primary ' agent of purification. The first defect is its subservience to the action of the vital, the prāṇa. This action is essentially infected with desire, so long as it takes place in the conditions of the ignorance. All the preferences, predilections and prejudices of the buddhi can be traced to the action of desire. It is true that a man of sufficient intellectual development can deliver himself from the crude cravings and hungers that beset the average men, especially those who live mostly in the vital-physical consciousness; but he too finds it extremely difficult to rid himself of the subtler desires, the subtler preferences, the universally approved and admired affiliations of his being to certain cherished mental principles which, though basically unsound, appear to claim allegiance as gospel truths. Indeed, it can very well be said that there is no thought or opinion or judgment formed in the normal human mind but is cankered or warped by some desire or other. But the buddhi, which is liable to be thus tarnished, has the power in it to detach itself from the lower antaḥkaraṇa and stand immune to the assaults of desire. It can, if it chooses, free itself even from the restless action of the senses and the turmoil of the heart's emotions, and refuse to be clouded or overborne by

Page 239

them. This power of detachment is the secret of the mastery by the intelligence, and the lever of the nature's ascent and purification.

The detachment from desire must be carried to an absolute perfection. "The intelligence coloured by desire is an impure intelligence and it distorts Truth, the will coloured by desire is an impure will and it puts a stamp of distortion, pain and imperfection upon the soul's activity."¹ Man's real manhood begins when the domination of desire ends. Whatever the power and scope of the intelligence, and whatever its brilliance, it cannot turn towards Truth or live in its light, so long as it allows desire to sully its purity and fetter its freedom —it remains a slave of the lower nature, in spite of its potential superiority. There is no dearth of examples of a developed intellect committing gross errors of judgment or glaring acts of injustice or perfidy, not unconsciously, but consciously, even deliberately, driven by the desires and passions of the lower nature. In such cases, the intellect, because it submits to the importunities of desire, has perforce to play second fiddle to the unregenerate prāṇa., and forfeit its prerogative of being the leader of the nature. It is his animal nature that leads man, and not his humanity, so long as desire has the whip hand of his being. His immaculate divinity remains sealed in his unsuspected depths.

The second defect of the average buddhi is its habitual

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

Page 240

dependence on the data of the senses. The intelligence that suffers limitation by the misleading impressions of the fugitive appearances of things cannot be an adventurer of new truths,—ideative, imaginative truths which tend to elevate and enrich life, and touch it into beauty and harmony. All the higher possibilities of life would remain unrealized, if the buddhi failed to transcend the reports and reactions of the sense-mind. The dreams of the poets and artists, the visions of the seers and prophets, all would be quenched and blown away by the chill breath of the sense-mind or the reasoning mind refusing to look beyond the physical facts of life. It is the tyranny of the reasoning mind, swearing by the exclusive reality of Matter, that is responsible for the poverty of the higher intelligence in modern man and the remarkable paucity of any outstanding intellectual creation, either in art or literature, music or philosophy. The remedy for this enslaving dependence lies in developing higher idealism, a yearning for the Infinite and Eternal, a tension towards the Absolute. A one-pointed aspiration for the Divine will release the mind from this thraldom of the senses, and launch it upon an exploration of the Infinite. And in proportion as it is delivered from its preoccupation with Matter and the gross pursuits of the material life, it will grow in lightness, limpidity and transparence, and develop its higher powers and faculties which will open to it new realms of vision and experience. An increasing power of stillness and silence, accompanying the power

of detachment, will go a long way to purify the mind

Page 241

and prepare it for the final transformation. But, let us insist, the most effective means to fortify the detachment and deepen the silence and widen it, is to intensify the upward look, the hunger and thirst for the Divine, and to dedicate all intellectual activities to Him. The buddhi has not to be left fallow, for it is an important instrument in the work of the reorganization of life; but it must be freed from all lower subjection, fully developed in all its parts and powers, and held up to the higher Light for its direct descent into it. "Mayyarpitamanobuddhi” is the formula prescribed by the Gitâ, after the Sâmkhya process of detachment has been practised, for the silencing of the mind and its turning to the Supreme. In the Integral Yoga, both detachment and surrender of the mind go hand in hand, and their conjoint action induces not only a turning to the Supreme, but also a potent purification and conversion of the mind's customary functions and energies.

Another serious defect in the buddhi is that, being the seat, pratiṣṭhā, of the ego, it labours under the fatal limitation of a separative consciousness, and in spite of all its attempts at self-enlargement, finds itself hopelessly spinning in the fixed orbit of a bounded perception and action. The ego is nowhere so powerful and dominant as in the buddhi, and nowhere so subtly, elusively and pervasively active. Whether it turns to the ways of light or of darkness, it has the power to constrain and lead the nature to its own separative ends. It is only when it opens to a higher light and surrenders itself,

Page 242

poignantly conscious of its crippling limitation, that the human mind, particularly the human intelligence, moves towards the discovery of the truth of existence and the recovery of the unity of its vision. But the truth and unity it seeks lie beyond its present ambit, and can be attained only by a self-transcendence. A conscious movement of self-transcendence and self-widening, polarised to the Supreme Being of infinite Light and Bliss and Power, the One without a second, the Omnipresent Reality, will be the greatest means of deliverance of the buddhi from the meshes of the ego.

There is yet another limitation in the buddhi. When it comes to perceive something luminous and high- uplifted beyond its petty circlings and futile strainings, it feels a double urge to advance towards it and reflect it in the nature. This double urge in the buddhi signifies a double intention in purification. For, the buddhi is at once a means of ascent and a medium of transmission— an ascent of the consciousness to the unsealed heights of the being, and a transmission of the Light and Power and Bliss and freedom of the heights to the nature parts below. But when it finds to its chagrin that the nature parts are much too opaque and obscure to be able to reflect the higher glory, it abandons its work of transmission and reflection and strives to shoot straight into the Beyond. "This it may do by seizing on some aspect, some principle, some symbol or suggestion or reality and pushing that to its absolute, all-absorbing, all-excluding term of realisation or by seizing on and realising some idea

Page 243

of indeterminate Being or Non-Being from which all thought and life fall away into cessation. The buddhi casts itself into a luminous sleep and the soul passes away into some ineffable height of spiritual being."¹

In the Integral Yoga this unilateral tendency of the buddhi is neutralised by a wide aspiration for an integral union with the Divine and for His manifestation in life, and a dynamic surrender of the whole nature to the Mother's transformative Force. The magnetism of the peaks is counter-balanced by the call of the base, and the Light that descends responds to the rays (the cows of the Vedas) that are released and ascend from below. The destiny of the buddhi is not to abolish itself in the Immutable, but to act as a bridge between the summits above and the plains below, and a channel of the splendours supernal. In order to fulfil this destiny, the buddhi must not only give up its basic egoism, but also its smug complacency in its own achievements, its petty thoughts and erring ideas and its bounded horizons of perception and imagination. There can be no hope for its progress if it does not become acutely conscious of its own besetting limitations, and the luminous infinitudes stretching far beyond.

A thorough purification of the buddhi—of its perfection we shall speak later—is an indispensable preliminary to the purification of the rest of the nature, so far as the majority of men are concerned; but it must not be thought that the purified buddhi is only a fully developed intellect, brilliant in its work of reasoning and discernment.

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga—by Sri Aurobindo

Page 244

It is more than intellect,—it is intelligence, in which there is less of intellection and more of light. In the sense in which it is used in the Upanishads, it is a calm, inner light, burning like a star in the dimness of the nature, and pointing to the supreme goal, paramadhāma. It is suffused with the sweetness of the heart, and athrob with the vibration of a potent will. Its guidance is a guarantee of purity and integrity, its steps are the steps of an un- faltering faith. To deliver this buddhi from the confused action of the lower nature is to be on the sure way to self- transcendence. A desireless, detached and high-aspiring buddhi is an ideal condition for the purification of the whole nature, but the ideal condition can be fulfilled only when the higher levels of consciousness begin to open and take up the action of the buddhi.

PURIFICATION OF THE SENSE-MIND

The sense-mind reacts to the contacts of the sense- objects by the dual response of mental pleasure and pain, which is a translation, in terms of the mind, of the primary duality of attraction and repulsion, whose action we have already noticed in the working of the basic citta. This reaction of the sense-mind is immediate and automatic, and often irrational or sub-rational. A man comes to me. As soon as I set eyes on him, there rises a sensation in me, immediate and automatic in its action, but nevertheless imperceptibly conditioned by many factors, such as the then state of my citta, the surface mood in which' I am at the moment, the active associations of my mind, the

Page 245

working of my sense of sight etc. All these factors combine to produce in me a sensation either of attraction or repulsion, that is to say, of mental sympathy or antipathy, which is a nervous-mental reaction, generated by the outer impact. Then the same reaction is reproduced in terms of the emotions of my heart, and I feel either pleased or displeased. All this tangled action of the antaḥkaraṇa goes on on the basis of the sense-impressions, and that is why very often we find that we have been betrayed into regrettable errors—the first impressions prove to be very deceptive. It is clear, then, that the very basis of our knowledge of the world is a shaky one, dependent upon many accidental factors, which preclude any right perception of truth. This erratic action of the sense-mind has to be replaced by a steady action of the buddhi in it. Instead of the sense-mind imposing its first impressions upon the buddhi and leading it into blind alleys, the buddhi must hold the reins of the mind and impose upon it a dispassionate calm and equality, and discountenance its habitual, irrational movement of automatic liking and disliking. The action of the sense-mind should be controlled and enlightened from above by the buddhi, and not left to be wire-pulled by the primitive citta, or obscured and bedevilled by the accretions in the surface consciousness. Delivered from the past samskāras and the habitual reactions, it will proceed in the developing light of the buddhi and help in the organic advance of the whole nature towards Truth. In the Upanishads the sense- mind has been likened to the reins, and the senses to the

Page 246

horses which run through the pastures of sense-object; and it is said that, if the soul which is the master of the chariot of the body, has to reach its destination, the Divine, it must have a purified buddhi as its charioteer holding the reins of the sense-mind and controlling the wild senses. If the buddhi lets go its hold on the bridle that is to say, the sense-mind, then the chariot goes tumbling and rolling into the nearest ditch. The buddhi, itself purified, must also reject the sense-mind's mechanical thoughts and ideas, its fruitless circling round its cherished objects, and establish in it a serene silence and a smiling readiness to serve the higher light.

As in the receptive, so in the active and reactive sense mind, the insidious influence of the obscure citta has to be completely inhibited. The impulses to action my come, not from any desires, overt or disguised, but from the will in the intelligence, till the divine Will reveals itself and takes up the guidance of the being. A vigilant control of the buddhi over the active sense-mind will minimise, if not obviate, the resurgence of the turbid stuff of the citta, which usually seeks to swamp our surface being and spurts out in sporadic action. But for a complete immunity of the sense-mind from the raids of the nether elements, a more systematic purification of the citta itself is indispensable.

Let us now consider in brief the purification of the citta with a particular reference to the emotional min which is such a prolific source of trouble and disappointment to the beginners in Yoga.

Page 247