The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XXVI

THE INTEGRAL LIBERATION

PART II

"A DIVINE unity of supreme Spirit and its supreme nature is the integral liberation."¹ In these words Sri Aurobindo indicates the essence of the liberation we aim at in the Integral Yoga. It is not only liberation from the lower nature of the three gunas into the peace and silence of the immutable Self that we seek, but liberation in the Divine, the supreme Spirit, and it cannot be rally achieved so long as our nature is not also liberated from its inferior modes into the luminous Consciousness-Force of the Supemature, para prakrti. For, in the Divine there is an eternal harmony between Light and Force, silence and action, status and dynamis; and unless our nature's movements are transformed and attuned to the rhythms of the Supernature, our liberation will remain only partial —liberation only in the divine cit (consciousness) and not in His tapas (Force), only in His silence and not in His cosmic action. But an initial liberation of the purusa is indispensable for the work of transformation and perfection; for, this work depends upon the fullness of

¹The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

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the sâdhaka's self-surrender to the Divine Mother, and the fullness or integrality of surrender is possible only when the sâdhaka detaches and knows himself as separate from the nature he surrenders. All offering implies previous possession of the thing offered, and possession argues some amount of control and transcendence. The initial liberation of the soul is, therefore, an important condition of the integral self-surrender. Most of the current spiritual disciplines stop at this initial liberation. When the soul can stand aloof from the whirl of Nature and unaffected by it; when it lives in an immortal infinity of consciousness —radiant, full of repose and tranquillity, and impervious to any trouble or disturbances; when it finds in itself an inexhaustible fount of peace and serenity and bliss, and has not to depend for them upon the fugitive touches of the world; when it is equal to all beings and neither attracted nor repelled by anything in the world; when it is free from the ego and does not identify itself with the mutable formations of its nature;—it can be said to be liberated. This is the initial liberation. The sâdhaka, in whom the soul-consciousness has been liberated, has then to promote the growth and ascent of his liberated consciousness towards the universality, transcendence and integrality of the divine Consciousness, and offer his nature into the hands of the divine Mother, so that She may transform and perfect it for Her work in the world. His ascent from one status of the Spirit to another, from knowledge to higher knowledge, from power to fuller power, from bliss to deeper bliss, will be his

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further liberation into the universality and transcendence i the Divine. And the higher he ascends, the better can he unite his will with the Will of the Divine Mother for the liberation and transformation of his nature.

The main difficulty, which, however, proves after a certain time to be a great help and opportunity, is that the sâdhaka of the Integral Yoga is debarred by the very nature of his ideal to retreat into the inner quiescence of his being by a deliberate rejection or diminution of the works of his nature, as is done in most other yogas. He has to give battle to his enemies in the true ksatriya spirit—challenge and face them when and where they are most alert and active. His dealings with them are guided by two very important truths of nature: first, that what binds by the agency of the ego and desire, becomes the most potent means of release in the conditions of desirelessness and unegoistic self-surrender; second, that most of the enemies of our nature are, in fact, our friends in disguise, and have only to be won over and converted, and not to be stamped out of existence. They have not to be repressed or throttled, but held up before the Mother's Light, and transmuted and converted into their divine counterparts. The very obstacles of the spiritual life are thus turned into so many aids by the spirit of self-consecration in the attitude of the sâdhaka. The active life of dedicated service, in which all the dynamic elements and energies of his being are given over into the hands of the Divine Mother, becomes at once a means of his liberation and transformation. The path

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may be long—the transformation of every fibre and every faculty of our nature cannot certainly be done in a day —but each firm step taken in advance gives an increasing foretaste of freedom, and a spur and speed to our progress.

The liberation of nature as distinct from the liberation of the purusa essentially means liberation from the dwandwas, the dualities, and the working of the three gunas. But the dualities and the mixed working of the three gunas are not confined to our waking nature, they have their roots spreading down into the subconscient and inconscient layers of our being. A complete liberation of our nature from these basic impurities can be effected only by the process of a radical transformation, which we shall study in the next chapter. In the traditional yogas what is usually done is that the sāttwic quality of the nature is developed to a great extent, and when- ever there is an uprush of rajas, tamas or the quality of inaction and inertia is resorted to; and preponderating sattwa with a modicum of tamas makes what is readily taken as a saintly nature. But in the Integral Yoga one does not seek to quell rajas by calling in the aid of tamas and taking refuge in a partial or complete inaction. One seeks, first, to transcend the gunas, to be trigunātīta, and then transform them. All the parts, faculties and functions of the nature are given free play, without any imposition of repressive inhibitions and taboos, so that whatever is obscure crooked or perverse in them and resistant to the soul's divine flowering may be detected

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and offered up to the fire of the Mother's Force for a radical transmutation. No part is maimed or atrophied for each is an indivisible portion of the whole organism and essential to the fullness of its perfection. A complete freedom from the dwandwas or dualities cannot be achieved on the basis of an imperfect sāttwic equilibrium, for the three lower gunas are so inextricably involved in each other that none of them can exist singly without the others' harassing or hampering its action. Even in the most developed sāttwic nature there is always the possibility of sporadic incursions of rajas, or slow, insidious penetrations of tamas—there can neither be a perfect immunity nor a perfect equilibrium. The gunas are locked in a constant strife for mastery. It is a perception of this perpetual swing or unstable balancing of the struggling gunas that generates the impatient ascetic tendency towards the eternal immobility of moksa or the soul's liberation through the renunciation of Nature herself. But "the strife of the gunas is only a representation in the imperfection of the lower nature; what the three gunas stand for are three essential powers of the Divine which are not merely existent in a perfect equilibrium of quietude, but unified in a perfect consensus of divine action. Tamas in the spiritual being becomes a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of action, but a perfect power, śakti, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law of calm even the most stupendous and enormous activity, rajas becomes a self-effecting, initiating

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sheer Will of the Spirit, which is not desire, endeavour, striving passion, but the same perfect power of being, śakti, capable of an infinite, imperturbable and blissful action. Sattwa becomes not the modified mental light, prakāś, but the self-existent light of the divine being, jyoti, which is the soul of the perfect power of being and illumines in their unity the divine quietude and the divine will of action. The ordinary liberation gets the still divine light in the divine quietude, but the integral perfection will aim at this greater triune unity."¹

The philosophy underlying this aim and ideal of the triune unity and dynamic utilisation of the transformed gunas is that we have a dual being, one essential and the other derivative and instrumental. The instrumental being is called in Indian philosophy karana. It has two aspects: inner and outer, antahkarana and bāhyakarana, subjective and objective. The word karana or instrument indicates that it has a purpose to serve. What is the purpose behind the creation of this instrumental being? What should man do with his nature of the three gunas? Should he condemn his instrument to atrophy and futility ? Or use it only to reduce it to immobility and have done with it for ever? Or should he employ it only to extricate his essential being from it, and prove by this release the utter senselessness of its creation? These are no solutions of the problem of its use, but a clumsy escape and evasion from it. The Upanishads declare that all that is there

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

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above is also here below, and that all that is here is also there. This is a definite affirmation of the truth, the right use and utility, the teleological purpose of all that constitutes our essential and instrumental being. An instrument has been created not for the purpose of condemning and scrapping it, but for serving some definite end. It is fatuous to call a thing an instrument and deny its utility in the same breath. If our nature, subjective and objective, is an instrument, what is its destined use, and how best can it be served? Sri Aurobindo looks the problem squarely in the face, and asserts with the Vedic Rishis that the instrument has not only a use, but a divine use—it is created for the progressive expression or manifestation of the Divine. Evidently, then, a fettered instrument, fettered with its limited and defective qualities, cannot fulfil the purpose for which it is made. It has to be purified, transfigured and liberated into its divine principle. Its play of the lower qualities is a legacy of its inconscient origin, a result of its creation in the Ignorance; but the march of evolution shows that the instrument goes on refining itself and becoming more and more conscious and efficient as our essential being awakes to its inherent divinity and mastery. The liberation of our essential being is the most important condition of the liberation of our instrumental being, unless, of course, we choose to shuffle off the latter altogether and say to the Divine, "We renounce the instrument you have given us, because we find it intrinsically impure and imperfect, and we retire into our essential Self. We do not care what happens to

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your Will and purpose in the world." This exclusive tension towards personal salvation,¹ this intense, intolerant, passionate thirst for individual release by the rejection of nature, mumuksutwa, we have to renounce, and renounce utterly, if we aspire to realise the integral liberation in the Divine, and fulfil His Will and purpose in the world. We have to become bhogamoksanirākānksī, desirous neither of bhoga nor of moksa, but totally consecrated to the supreme Reality and His omnipotent Will. When our nature is liberated, there will be no longer any possibility of obscuration, neither in our soul nor in our phenomenal parts, from any cause whatever—our entire being will be in the Being of the Divine, and moved by it. Our liberated nature, transformed in its parts and energies, will attain its perfection when the supramental Will initiates and accomplishes all its movements. The distinction of birth and death will then disappear for ever in the termless bliss of immortality—immortality in the soul and immortality in the nature. Our union with the Supreme will be at once sāyujya and sādharmya, identity in being and a dynamic identity in nature—

"Light and might and bliss and immortal wisdom Clasping for ever."²

¹"The desire of exclusive liberation is the last desire that the soul in its expanding knowledge has to abandon; the delusion that it is bound by birth is the last delusion that it has to destroy". Sri Aurobindo

²Collected Poems and Plays of Sri Aurobindo.

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