The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER X

The Higher Nature and the Lower

The relation between the higher nature and the lower is of capital importance in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. If a shuffling off of all nature were the aim, the postulate of the higher Nature would not be called for-the Sânkhya position would be perfectly valid for the purpose. The Nature of the three gunas would be regarded as the sole Nature responsible for life and creation and the soul's bondage to them, and a withdrawal of the soul from her its final release and salvation. The passive status of the liberated individual soul, as in the Sânkhya, or its traceless merger in the eternal Immutable, as in the later Vedanta, would be the crowning achievement of all spiritual endeavour.

But the aim of the Integral Yoga is not a rejection, but a transformation of Nature for the manifestation of the Divine in the material world. A naked soul, divested of all nature, cannot surely manifest either itself or the Divine. It must have a nature through which it can pour out into life the inexhaustible riches of the Spirit it holds within itself - it must have an executive and expressive medium.

But how can this bounded Nature of the three gunas (qualitative modes of sattwa, rajas and tamas'), afflicted

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with perpetual instability and working within narrow confines, reflect or reveal the infinite Divine? Even sattwa, the highest of her gunas, is a limited and limiting principle, it binds the being by the modicum of happiness and the modified light it imparts to it, as the Gita puts it. Within the cramping formula of this Nature of the three gunas, there can, therefore, be no freedom, no recovery and expression of the soul's universal and transcendent attributes. This Nature of the three gunas has to be Transcended.

Where will this transcendence lead? Is there a dynamic principle above this Nature of the three guṇas-a principle of divine dynamism, unfettered by the lower gunas, and working in the infallible light of an infinite knowledge? If there were no such principle, transcendence would only lead to self-extinction in a limitless Void or a world less Immutable. But the Gitâ, following the Vedic and the Upanishadic tradition, speaks of a higher Nature, Parā prakṛti, which is superior to the three guṇas, and by which this entire universe is sustained and upheld. The lower Nature is a derivative of the higher, controlled by the Will and Force of the higher, and yet given sufficient autonomy to work out, in its own way, the tangled possibilities of its evolutionary ignorance. The control is veiled and indirect, the lower must go seeking and blundering through darkness till, surrendered and consecrated, it is washed clean of its impurities, and caught up in the freedom and glory of the higher.

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Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga is based upon the essential truth of this double Nature—the higher and the lower, Parā and aparā. His contention against the world-shunning ascetic tendency is that, if this lower Nature that binds and darkens the soul is derived from the higher, it can certainly be converted back into that; and, instead of the dualities and discords that it displays, it can be made to manifest the Light and Peace and Bliss, the Unity and Harmony of the Nature of the Divine. To cast away Nature because, in its present formulation, it is ignorant and discordant, is to cast away altogether the possibilities of God's manifestation in life. Divisions and dissonances are the transitional terms of a life which is evolving from a base of dark in conscience. They have to be faced, grappled with, conquered, and converted to their spiritual counterparts, and not fled away from and left in their undisputed sway over human life. Death, division and discord are the legacy of our origin in the Ignorance; we have to pass through them so long as we live in the Ignorance, in the separative consciousness of the ego—avidyayā mṛtyum tīrtwā. But is it not partly because of them that we aspire and yearn for an existence of unity, harmony and immortality? Is it not the recurrent wrench of death, the distressing limitation and incapacity resulting from division, and the confusing and tormenting discords of life that drive us towards their very opposites? But where is that existence of unity, harmony and immortality to be found? Is it to be discovered and attained

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beyond all Nature and life? Then the solution of life's problems, if there be any, can only lie in an extinction of life itself, and not in its conquest and transfiguration. The persistent instinct of mankind has, however, always been towards the discovery of a solution of life's problems in life itself, whatever may have been the aspiration and endeavour of exceptional individuals impatiently avid of the Beyond. The one solid good they have done for humanity is to point again and again towards the essential and eternal truth of its existence. But the instinct of man for a victorious solution of all life's problems can be fulfilled, not by a discarding of Nature, but by an ascent to the Supernature, and a radical transformation of the lower by the power of the higher. In the very heart of division lies the secret of unity, behind the black mask of death is the unfading light of immortality, and suffering is only "a violent backwash of the waters of universal delight." An ascent of the human consciousness to the Supernature, and a descent of the Supernature into human consciousness and nature can alone release these divine principles and accomplish the evolutionary' purpose of the material existence.

WHAT IS THE HIGHER NATURE?

By the higher Nature to which we have to climb and by the power of which we have to transform the lower, Sri Aurobindo does not mean the spiritualised mental nature. It is not a perfect flowering of the sāttwic nature

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of a relative poise and purity and light and happiness which is the common idea of it. Sattwa, even at its best, is a mental quality, belonging to the lower nature; it can be a wide gate opening on the Infinite, but in itself it is a dealer in finite virtues, and cannot move in the infinitudes of Spirit. By Supernature Sri Aurobindo means the authentic, eternal Nature of the Supreme, the Consciousness-Force of saccidānanda as the creatrix of the world. Supernature is the supramental Nature, the self-Nature (prakṛtim swām) of the Divine. In Super-nature there is no duality of puruṣa and prakṛti—they are one. Consciousness and Force, Knowledge and Will, status and dynamism form the warp and woof of the same infinite and indivisible existence. The Super- nature or Parā prakṛti contains the spiritual counterparts of the three lower guṇas—what is sattwa in the lower Nature is there jyotiḥ or prakāś, rajas is there tejas or tapas, a self-flowing force of all-achieving potency, and tamas or inertia is there śānti or śama, an eternity of fathomless peace. The three lower guṇas are, therefore, derived from jyotiḥ, tejas and śānti. In the Supernature these three spiritual qualities are not in constant instability, as are the lower gunas in our ignorant nature; they form a creative trinity, acting in a luminous harmony.. Interminable activity wells out of an impregnable peace and calm, the Creative Word leaps out of an eternal silence.

In the higher Nature all knowledge is knowledge by identity. The object of knowledge is one with the subject itself, a part or aspect or facet of the subject, or a principle

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of its infinite being, or a form of its Manifold self-becoming. It is perceived in the subject, and not outside it; and this perception is not only of the invariable essence of the object, but also of the truth of its varying appearances. Unity and diversity do not stand out as contraries in that all-comprehensive knowledge of the higher Nature, they represent and reveal an indivisible existence at once one and multiply self-reproducing. Nothing can be hidden from this knowledge, because it embraces all existence, phenomenal and eternal. To it past, present and future are not separate segments of time, but one continuous flow arising from the Timeless and disappearing in it. Unlike the essential knowledge, jnāna, attained by absorbed contemplation or trance, in which me relativities of the world are drowned and lost in the blinding lustre of the bare Absolute, the knowledge in the higher Nature or Supernature reveals also the truth of the dynamic principles and potentialities of life, the secrets and mysteries of creation, and sees in each finite object, each little ripple of energy, the living Face and Force of the Infinite. It is for this comprehensiveness of its vision that it is called vijnāna, in which the Divine is known not only in His immutable being, but also in his mobile and multitudinous becoming.

In the higher Nature there is no disparity between knowledge and will, as we find in our mortal nature. Knowledge and Will are both ingrained in the very stuff and substance of its infinite consciousness. Whatever truth of the eternal existence floats up in its knowledge,

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finds an omnipotent Will ready to realize and express it in terms of Time and Space. It never happens that the Will falls short of the full realization, or that the Knowledge lacks the plenary force. But the Will works through a Law and a network of self-imposed conditions and limitations, which are inscrutable to the human mind, but impeccably designed to further and fulfill its universal ends. There is nothing capricious or arbitrary in its action, but there is certainly a sovereign freedom in the creation of materials and conditions, and in the adoption. of the means which are intended to work upon them. An unfailing Light guides the steps of an unfaltering Force.

In the higher Nature all action is a spontaneous self- expression, an emergence and a deployment of the possibilities inherent in the infinite Being. It is a free and flexible play of illimitable energies, faultlessly following the rhythms of the dynamic Truth and the silent impulsion. of the supreme Will, the Truth-Will. Therefore, action, instead of being a bondage, is there the thrilled self- expression of an infinite freedom. It is an undammed flow of the self-manifesting Force of the Divine. There being no separative ego, there is no desire, or attachment to any action and its result. All individual action is an indivisible part of the universal action, and inevitably contributes to the self-fulfillment of the All-Being. And yet the individual persists as one of the multiple centers of the transcendent Consciousness, participating at once in the transcendent freedom and the universal movement, in unity and.

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multiplicity, and finding its own fulfillment in the fulfillment of all. Light, Force, Bliss and Beauty reveal their inexhaustible riches in a mounting harmony of varied relations, and descend towards the earth for a progressive self-embodiment in Matter. Absolute freedom, absolute purity and absolute peace base the incalculable movement of the rapture-drunk Force of the Supernature.

This, then, is the higher Nature, Parā prakṛti, from which our lower Nature of evolving ignorance is derived, and into which it is destined to be converted. Once we accept this truth, we realise the sublime folly of the ascetic repression and eventual rejection of all Nature. The precipitate impatience of the human mind, defeated and distracted by the complex problems of life and its conflicting forces, assumes a spectacular loftiness when. it drives straight towards the cutting of the Gordian knot. —the complete sundering of puruṣa and prakṛti. The individual soul's retreat into itself or into the inactive Brahman is regarded as its release, and Nature is left unredeemed in her triumphant darkness, swaying the destinies of countless captive souls. But the truth of the two Natures, the higher and the lower, which Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga affirms and uses as a lever of ascent into the fullness of the Life Divine, is not unfamiliar to the central body of Indian spiritual thought. It is implicit also in the thought of some of the old religions and philosophies of the world. But its practical application to spiritual life, which was the core of the Vedic spiritual culture, has long been forgotten or ignored, with the result that

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by Nature is meant only the lower Nature of the three guṇas, which fetters and obscures the soul; and, naturally enough, the souls that feel the agony of this shackled existence strive to slough off this Nature and depart into their incorruptible essence. It is a pregnant recovery of the ancient knowledge to insist, as Sri Aurobindo does on the momentous truth of the higher dynamic Nature and the inevitable sublimation and transformation of the lower into it as the end of evolution. In the light of this truth, the theory of illusionism (māyāvāda) itself becomes illusory, and life is affirmed as not only real, but divinely and fruitfully real—real in its emergent values, real in its developing powers, and creatively real in the fullness of self-expression to which it leads the evolving soul. Starting from the darkness of Matter, the lower Nature justifies her existence by an eventual conversion of herself into the higher, and an unobscured revelation of the in- finite and immortal Spirit, her indwelling Master and Playmate. The individual soul then enjoys infinity and immortality in its uninterrupted union and communion with the Divine, even while it manifests Him in the setting of the material existence and fulfils His Will in every "detail of its earthly life.

This ascent to the higher divine Nature is the supreme "work of human life, both individual and collective. The collective lower Nature of the mental man has to be transformed and converted into the higher, so that man as a race may take the next higher step in evolution, and live sad. work on earth as a supramental being, a vessel of the

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gnostic Truth and Light and Bliss, instead of struggling and suffering in the dim light of his half-enlightened, egoistic mental consciousness. This divine perfection of the human race is the logical outcome of our acceptance of two truths upon which the whole conception of the Life Divine is founded: (1) the truth of the soul's evolution from the in conscience of Matter to the super- conscience of Spirit and (2) the truth of the sublimation and transmutation of the lower Nature into the higher. The unquenchable aspiration in the human- mind for a harmonious perfection in individual and corporate life points to such a consummation; for, man, by" the sole power of his mind, has not been able to achieve any perfection in his life. "We seek to construct systems of knowledge and systems of life by which we can arrive- at some perfection of our existence, some order of right- relations, right use of mind, right use and happiness and beauty of life, right use of the body. But what we achieve is a constructed half-rightness mixed with much that is wrong and unlovely and unhappy; our successive constructions, because of the vice in them and because mind and life cannot rest permanently anywhere in their seeking, are exposed to destruction, decadence, disruption of their order, and we pass from them to others which are not more finally successful or enduring, even if on one side or another they may be richer and fuller or more rationally plausible. It cannot be otherwise, because we can construct nothing which goes beyond our nature; imperfect., we cannot construct perfection, however wonderful.

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may seem to us the machinery our mental ingenuity invents, however externally effective. Ignorant, we cannot construct a system of entirely true and fruitful self- knowledge or world-knowledge: our science itself is a construction, a mass, of formulas and devices; masterful in knowledge of processes and in the creation of apt machinery, but ignorant of the foundations of our being and of world-being, it cannot perfect our nature and therefore 'cannot perfect our life.¹

"It is only if our nature develops beyond itself, if it becomes a nature of self-knowledge, mutual understanding, unity, a nature of true being and true life that the result can be a perfection of ourselves and our existence, a life of true being, a life of unity, mutuality, harmony, a life of true happiness, a harmonious and beautiful life... .If an evolution of being is the law, then what we are seeking for is not only possible but part of the eventual necessity of things. It is our destiny to manifest and become that Supernature,—for it is the nature of our true .self, our still occult, because unevolved, whole being.²

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, because it seeks the perfection and fulfillment of the whole being of man, provides for the liberation and supramentalisation of his soul, on the one hand, and the liberation and supramental transformation of his nature, on the other. It is aware of the tremendous difficulty of its endeavour. It is fully

¹The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo.

² ibid.

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aware of the fate that overtook the powerful and prodigious experiment of Tantra. But it has hitched its wagon to the supramental Sun, and, by a perfect use of the right relation between the two natures, promises to achieve its end, which is the inevitable end of evolution itself. What appears impossible to the limited capacity of the human mind need not be impossible to the omnipotence of the divine Force, the supreme Mother. What our personal effort may fail to achieve, the Mother's force will surely accomplish, if we can realise an integral surrender to it; for, that Force is no other than the vijnāna śakti or the creative Force of the Divine Himself.

And still the fact remains that the work of purifying and transforming the lower nature into the higher is a long and extremely arduous work, entailing, as it does, first, the purification of each element, each fibre, each energy of the complex human nature by a synthetic self- discipline through knowledge, love and works in a growing attitude of self-surrender; and, next, the transformation of them all by the descent of the authentic supramental Force and a raising of the whole integrated nature into the Supernature.

We shall now proceed to consider the elaborate work of the purification of human nature as it is done in the Integral Yoga.

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