The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XXV

THE INTEGRAL LIBERATION

PART I

No ideal produces in the majority of spiritual seekers so great a thrill, such an inspiring sense of exaltation as the ideal of liberation. All rigour of self-discipline, all stress of a sustained, high-uplifting endeavour, and even all harsh austerities seem little enough price for the priceless state of spiritual freedom, if they can but contribute to its attainment. Difficulties are resolutely met and dangers courageously braved by those who are bent upon realising the essential freedom of their soul. What appears even as self-mortification or an extreme self-denial to others, may be, to a spiritual aspirant, a means of awakening his soul's fire, and a step towards the mastery of his lower nature. He does not count the cost when he embarks upon self-discovery. If he fails to achieve his object in his present life, unwearied and undejected, he looks forward to pursuing his quest in lives to follow, for, he knows that the bonds of aeons cannot be cut asunder with the same rapidity and ease with which Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot. A relentless fight with his lower self, renewed from hour to hour, sustained through long years of unrelaxed vigilance and unremitting

Page 387

labour, and supported and fortified by the divine Grace can alone lead him to liberation.

But what is liberation? The average man knows little about it, and and has no definite desire for it; for, a desire for liberation presupposes an agonised awareness of one's own bondage. The born slave does not feel the pangs of his slavery—he is content with it. Rather, if he is suddenly set free, he is sure to find his freedom unbearable, like the old prisoner who, on being released, wanted to be sent back into the prison where he had spent forty long years of his life without a break. We know our ordinary life of desires and passions, struggles and sufferings, pleasures and pains, and cannot think of an existence completely devoid of these conflicting elements. What will remain of life, we wonder, if desires and passions are extinguished for ever, and the dramtic dualities of pleasure and pain, honour and dishonour, success and failure .are done away with ? Would it not be something savourless, insipid, inert, and drained of all sap and substance? If desires do not drive us into action, if passions do not toss and heave our being, if envy and jealousy do not rankle in our hearts, if the heady wine of ambition is snatched away from our lips, life would, indeed, be a dreary affair for most of us. We have not only become habituated to slavery, we are not even conscious that it is slavery. We are not aware that our vaunted freedom—freedom of will and freedom of action—is a deplorable delusion; we do not know that it is always the goad of a desire or the lash of a passion

Page 388

that determines our choice and dictates our action. Even what we regard as a reasoned or rational choice is, in the last analysis, found to have been determined by a subtle, hidden desire. We are bound in our thoughts, involved in our emotions, torn by our desires, glued to our sensations, and caged in our body. It is a manifold and consolidated servitude that is our common lot in the material world. "The perception of the ignorance of our assumption of freedom while one is all the time in the meshes of this lower nature, is the view-point at which the Gita arrives and it is in contradiction to this ignorant claim that it affirms the complete subjection of the ego-soul on this plane to the gunas. 'While the actions are being entirely done by the modes of Nature,' it says 'he whose self is bewildered by egoism thinks that it is his "I" which is doing them.' "¹

To awake to the agony of this servitude, and to be conscious that we are yoked to the leaden rule of our lower nature, is the first step towards our soul's freedom. But this perception or awareness comes only when our real being, our psychic personality, awakes to its inherent liberty. In proportion as it awakes, we begin to feel with a growing poignancy how cramped and constricted we live in the rigid mould made for us by Nature. There is no freedom in this total subjection. For our very existence we are dependent upon the world. If the contacts of the world do not stir our senses, we do not feel our

¹ Essays on the Gitâ by Sri Aurobindo.

Page 389

existence—we faint or fall asleep; for our life is nothing but a series of sensations, and most of our thoughts and feelings are but various responses of our cognitive reflective and affective personality to the primary reactions of our senses. It is a pathetic fact that for our pleasure and happiness we are almost wholly at the mercy of the touches of the world. If a man gives me something I feel pleased, but if he fails to give me what I expected from him, I feel displeased or disappointed—my peace if I had any, is disturbed. If I am honoured or praised, I feel very happy, and am gentle and grateful to those who praise or honour me, but if I am criticised or ridiculed, all my gentleness vanishes in a moment and the unreclaimed savagery of my nature betrays itself. My sense of justice and equality, my kindness and sympathy for others, my courtesy and amiability, all are contingent upon factors over which I have no control. It is circumstances that determine the trend of my nature, the direction of my thoughts and the form and quality of my action. If I muster courage enough to revolt and react against circumstances, I find to my bewilderment that I am swept by forces within me which defy all control. I become a sport of them. I painfully realise my inner slavery even while I struggle to assert my outer freedom. If we would but pause to consider the abject slavery in which we live! We feel secure in our happiness when everything goes well with us— when we have health and wealth and fame and honour, and everything else that we normally covet, but, all of a

Page 390

sudden, something may surge up from the subsoil of our being, and we are overwhelmed with a sense of despair or frustration, and a dark cloud settles upon our being. The sunshine and laughter are suddenly eclipsed by lamentation and gloom. Or, even when we are at the height of our powers, some unforeseen calamity may strike us down and make havoc of our life and its achievements. A mere turn of events, a casual word or gesture from somebody, a sudden eruption from the deep wells of memory, a passing physical ailment or affliction, and our happiness is engulfed in misery. A smile from a person we love and adore sends us into raptures, and a frown or a frigid look of indifference casts us into the pit of despair. It is the world that makes us smile or weep, rejoice or repine. It is the world's baubles that we run madly after, delighted, if we snatch them for a moment, miserable if they elude our grasp. We are beside ourselves when we are attacked by grief or anger, lust or greed, and we hardly suspect that we are moved by forces which are in no way native to our essential being. It is only when our soul awakens within us that we begin to feel the agony of our bondage and realise our utter helplessness in the hands of the universal forces of ignorance. A ray of light seems then to glint in the darkness, a gentle breath of hope seems to steal into our hearts, and an intuition of something within us which is immortally free, pure and blissful, springs up into our consciousness. That is a fateful experience which eights up the secret sense of our fettered wanderings in the

Page 391

darkness, and makes us press forward towards liberation. Hypnotised bond-slaves of Nature, we awake at Ions last to our soul's innate freedom.

When we thus awake, we are seized with a consuming hunger for the Infinite. We chafe at the fetters which bind us, and dash against the barriers that impede our progress. The contrast between the luminous self- existence we perceive within us and the ignorant, shackled life we lead without, becomes increasingly painful and turns us into spiritual revolutionaries. We yearn to "break all chains, to tread upon all crippling conditions, to transcend all limitations and—be free. We yearn to "breathe infinity, to soar in eternity,...escape from Time and Space." The fiery intensity of this yearning has been movingly expressed by Sri Aurobindo in his poem,

"The Vedantin's Prayer":

Spirit Supreme

Who musest in the silence of the heart,

Eternal gleam,

Thou only art!

Ah, wherefore with this darkness am I veiled,

My sunlit part

By clouds assailed?

Why am I thus disfigured by desire,

Distracted, haled,

Page 392

Scorched by the fire

Of fitful passions, from Thy peace out-thrust

Into the gyre

Of every gust?

Betrayed to grief, o'ertaken with dismay,

Surprised by lust?

Let not my grey

Blood-clotted past repel Thy sovereign ruth,

Nor even delay,

O lonely Truth!

Nor let the specious gods who ape Thee still

Deceive my youth.

These clamours still;

For I would hear the eternal voice and know

The eternal Will.

This brilliant show

Cumbering the threshold of eternity

Dispel,—bestow

The undimmed eye,

The heart grown young and clear. Rebuke,

O Lord,

These hopes that cry

Page 393

So deafeningly,

Remove my sullied centuries, restore

My purity.

O hidden door

Of knowledge, open! Strength, fulfil thyself !

Love, outpour!¹

According to the Gita, there are four causes of our bondage: ego, desire, the dualities, and attachment to the three gunas, (sattwa, rajas and tamas) of the lower Nature. But it can be said that the principal cause is the ego, and that emancipation from the ego is true liberation. It is the ego that makes us identify ourselves with the perishable objects of the world and undergo the fate of their mutations. It makes us identify ourselves with our mind, life and body, which have only an instrumental value. To get beyond the ego, to identify oneself with no finite form, physical, vital or mental, to live in the limitless consciousness of the Self or Spirit, is the essence of liberation.

The liberated state is a state of absolute freedom and equality. It is a sovereign independence of the world and its touches. Neither sensations nor emotions nor thoughts can impinge upon the stirless silence of the soul's unconditioned self-existence. Liberated, we live in the inalienable peace and purity, light and joy, power

¹ Collected Poems and Plays of Sri Aurobindo Vol - I.

Page 394

and plenitude of our spiritual being. The world's din cannot raise a single ripple in that fathomless peace and silence, it remains impregnable, the world's pleasures. and sufferings cannot trouble that serene and limpid joy, it abides unassailable; the world's darkness cannot cast any shadow over that self-existent Light. We are poised high above all disturbing sense of honour and dishonour, gain and loss, success and failure, victory and defeat. Disease and decrepitude cannot affect us, and even death loses all its reality for us, for, our boundless spiritual consciousness knows no infirmity, no sleep, no cessation. Nature's dualities may still persist in our phenomenal parts, the habitual reactions may continue by their past momentum, calamities may come, and even death, but nothing can shake our inner poise—we stand imperturbable in the luminous calm of our soul, independent of the whole world, like the limitless sky watching unmoved the stormy tumult of the sea below. Liberated, we have gone beyond the slavery of hunger and thirst, heat and cold, comfort and discomfort, life and death. We live in our soul, in its native light and peace and bliss, and no longer in the succession of the moments of Time or the illusory divisions of Space. Our conscious- ness remains untouched by the turmoil of the gunas, and our freedom inviolable. We are plunged in the termless bliss and blessedness of our infinite and immortal existence.

The above description may be said to represent the essence of liberation as it is understood by most schools

Page 395

of spiritual discipline. It is a transcendence of the ego and the turbid working of the lower nature, and a tranquil poise in the purity and freedom of the Self. But this transcendence, if it is attained by a flight or defensive self-withdrawal, does not lead to a complete mastery and transformation of the lower nature. It is true that the liberated man is not affected by the turmoil of his lower nature, but the turmoil persists, in however diminished a form, and he endures it in the hope that it will end with the end of his material life. The imperfections of the nature and the evils of life are suffered with a calm fortitude as indispensable elements of human existence, and a release from the wheel of karma and the painful process of birth and death is awaited with an almost religious eagerness. This is the general conception of mukti, kaivalaya or nirvana.¹ In the ideal of the jīvanmukta, there is an extension of the concept of liberation —the liberated man need not, perhaps should not, abstain from all action, or long for an escape from the labour of life, he should preserve his spiritual poise even in the midst of all life's activities, and, by personal example and influence, help the world on its onward march. The nature of the jīvanmukta is irradiated with the light of his liberated soul, there is greater purity and freedom and flexibility in Iris natural instruments than in those of the sâdhakas who seek only personal salvation and an escape

¹ The traditional orthodox conception, much discounted today, is that Mukti or Nirvana can be attained only after death.

Page 396

from the ills of life. But even a jīvanmukta cannot be said to possess a transformed nature. He enjoys perfect freedom in his soul, and a reflected and relative freedom in his nature. His soul is liberated, his inner conscious- ness is liberated, but not his nature, which still labours in bondage, though, of course, it is a modified bondage, greatly relieved of much of its normal rigour. There is a considerable development of the sattwa guna in his nature, and its effective predominance over the other gunas, but there is no radical conversion of the gunas themselves into their divine counterparts—sattwa into jyotih, rajas into tejas or tapas, and tamas into śānti. The ideal of the jīvanmukta is, therefore, even at its best, an ideal of a semi-liberation of the human being—liberation in the soul or the Self, but a modified and attenuated bondage in the parts of nature. The ancient ideal of the liberation and transformation of nature has long been lost sight of in the spiritual culture of humanity.

There is another thing to consider in this connection. There is always the possibility of one's being liberated. into the absolute of what one's inmost being ardently aspires for with a resolute will; for the Absolute is the beginning and the end of our soul's journey. If I aspire only for peace, I can be liberated into an absolute of peace. I can, likewise, be liberated into an absolute of silence, or an absolute of bliss, if I aspire for them. Though there is no basic difference, there is a substantial difference of emphasis between the nirvana of the Buddhists and the moksa of the Jainas, the kaivalya of the

Page 397

Sānkhyas and the mukti of the Vedântins. The Buddl speaks of the nirvāna or self-extinction in the infinite Void the Gitâ of nirvāna in the Brahman, Brahma-nirvāna and Jainism of nirvāna in the citswarūpa of the soul The sâdhaka, if he is sincere, is sure to end by realising .that which his consciousness has fixed upon as the supreme goal from the beginning of his sâdhanâ. The crown of attainment lies casketed in the seed of aspiration.

But by liberation Sri Aurobindo means liberation into :the Divine, the Supreme Being, the Omnipresent Reality. .In the Integral Yoga, we do not aspire exclusively for peace or silence or power or bliss, though they do come as auxiliary and contributory experiences, but solely for the Divine. Transcending the limitations of Nature, we long to reach no "infinite inane" (śūnyam), but the eternal Master and Lover of our being. We take all the experiences that come our way, but proceed, undeflected and firm, towards the single goal of our endeavour—the Divine. Liberation means for us, then, liberation into the Supreme Purusa.

Again, by liberation Sri Aurobindo means liberation 'both of the soul of man and of his nature. This conception of a double liberation has not been familiar to spiritual seekers for many a long century. The endeavour to purify human nature, so that it may not stand in the way of the soul's liberation, is universally regarded as an indispensable discipline; but it is hardly ever thought possible that even this nature of the three gunas can be .liberated from its lower poise and working, and

Page 398

transmuted into the divine Nature. But this double liberation is the very base of the supramental manifestation as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo. The Integral Yoga really begins where the other yogas usually end.

We shall now pass in brief review the nature and potentiality of this double or integral liberation.

Page 399