The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XXX

The Integral Perfection

"A DIVINE perfection of the human being is our aim." It is not only the perfection of the soul—the soul is, indeed, eternally perfect in itself—but the harmonious perfection of the whole being, inner and outer, that is sought in the Integral Yoga. In the last chapter, we have traced the long, meandering course of the triple trans- formation. We can now say that the victorious consummation of that transformation is the perfection and fulfilment we aim at in this Yoga. "To be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect" is not an idle dream of the religious visionary, but the deepest, ineradicable urge of the human consciousness, and its most irrepressible aspiration; and the spiritual endeavour of man cannot cease till this integral perfection is attained and expressed in his life. Life is expression, and a complete perfection in expression is the ultimate object of human living. Any spiritual discipline that draws us away from this rightful expression of our evolving soul defeats the very purpose of the soul's descent here, and disturbs the balance of individual and social economy. And since man is a complex being, multiple in his aspects and attributes, his perfection must needs be a manifold perfection, fully expressive of the infinite potentialities of his nature. His

Page 441

spiritual, mental, emotional, volitional and physical parts must all attain to their utmost perfection, if they are meant to be instruments of the divine manifestation in the material world.

Perfection really means a growth into the nature of the Divine Being. It is to be one with the Divine in His divine Nature, sārūpya or sādharmya. Oneness in consciousness with the Divine, sāyujya, or closeness to the divine Presence, sāmīpya, has always been the usual object of spiritual seeking; but oneness in nature, the assumption of the dynamic divine nature, Parā-prakrti, is an achievement rarely aspired for, and never yet fully realised. And if some such perfection has been at all aimed at, it was confined to the mind, the heart and the vital being, the body's divine potentialities were not fully explored, the traditional contempt for its grossness and inertia standing in the way of such an exploration. In the Integral Yoga the body is considered as important as any other instrument, and its divine perfection is sought with a most thorough and scrupulous care. A divine being in a divine body is the formula of perfection in the Integral Yoga.

There are four prerequisites for the work of perfection: śākti, vīrya, daivī prakrti and śraddhā. Śakti means the fully developed powers of the members of the instrumental nature; vīrya, the perfected dynamis of the soul- nature; daivī prakrti, the assumption of these powers into the working of the divine Power; and śraddhā, a perfect faith in all the parts of our being to invoke and

Page 442

sustain the action of the divine Power. A fundamental active equality supporting the play of the gnosis or the supramental Light-Force in the human nature is the best condition for the divine perfection we seek. "The gnosis once effectively called into action will progressively take up all the terms of intelligence, will, sense-mind, heart, the vital and sensational being, and translate them by a luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a divine existence. It will lift into that light and force and convert into their own highest sense our whole intellectual, volitional., dynamic, ethical, aesthetic, sensational, vital and physical being."¹

THE HEIGHTENING OF THE CAPACITIES

OF THE INSTRUMENTS

Let us take the body first. We do not know, we do not even care to inquire, what incalculable powers slumber in the depths of our physical being, and what potentialities are involved in its relation with the subtle and the causal body. All spiritual experience testifies to the existence of a subtle body behind our gross physical frame; and a causal body behind the subtle. This causal body is made of the very substance of light and bliss, and contains all the principles of perfection which our earthly body is destined to embody and express. Our mortal form is.

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

Page 443

not cut off from its causal prototype; it is, on the contrary, intimately connected with it; and if the centres that link our gross body with the subtle and the causal could be opened up, there would be no end to the perfection of the physical body—the infinite potentialities of the kārana or causal sheath would be automatically actualised in the gross. Hathayoga, Râjayoga, Tantra etc. opened Tip some of these centres, but the highest ones still remained sealed, and the supreme principles of a dynamic divine perfection could not be brought down and established here in Matter for a general realisation in humanity. All that could be achieved, all that was intended to be achieved, was the realisation of some of the marvellous possibilities of the subtle physical in the gross body; and the ultimate aim of these yogas being the renunciation of the material life, no further perfection of the body was thought either necessary or possible. But the Integral Yoga makes the bringing down of these dynamic principles of perfection its chief objective. The opening up of the gnostic sheath, the vijñāmaya kosa., in us, and the canalising of its powers and potentialities into the gross body is the secret of the physical perfection promised by the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo.

The Gnosis or vijñāna spontaneously opens into the Bliss-Self or the ānandamaya purusa. The Bliss of the Divine has a dual aspect in regard to the worlds and beings it creates—it is at once Love and Beauty, upheld by delight and instinct with Power. When we awake in the Bliss-sheath and its powers of transfiguring

Page 444

love and creative harmony descend into our whole being, it will be the bursting out of the splendour of a divine spring, a carnival of apocalyptic revelation. Ānanda is the supreme creative Force, and its direct and unhindered action in the human nature is the guarantee of the highest divine perfection.

The preliminary fourfold perfection of the body is the development of the qualities of mahattwa, bala, laghutā and dhārana-sāmarthya. This development will make the body an apt instrument of the Spirit. Mahattwa is "the presence of a greatness of sustaining force"; bala is "an abounding strength, energy and puissance of out- going and managing force"; laghutā, "a lightness, swift- ness and adaptability of the nervous and physical being",. and dhāranā-sāmarthya, "a holding and responsive power in the whole physical machine and its driving springs." The body will be filled with the majesty and might of the spiritual force, which is the conscious transcendental and universal śakti, accomplishing Her Will and Purpose in the individual frame by a perennial supply of strength and executive energy. The body will shed all its impeding heaviness and sloth and slow- ness of movement, and become wonderfully light and agile and readily responsive and adaptable in its cells and nerves and tissues to all the demands of Spirit. It will develop an unlimited capacity to hold without spilling all the torrents of power and energy that will pour into it from above, and respond with a glad freedom. and flexibility to the impulsion of the divine Will in it.

Page 445

There are many other possible achievements of the body which the human mind in its inveterate bondage to the so-called laws of Nature is hardly capable of considering as within the province of concrete reality. There is a tradition of spiritual culture that testifies to the development of the subtle senses and the assumption of an ethereal body, supple and radiant, by the initiates of some special types of yoga. But what distinguishes the Integral Yoga from the other yogas in its ideal of the physical perfection is its absolute insistence on the invulnerability of the gross physical body to all attacks of the forces of disruption and disintegration in the material world. It is not any kind of dematerialisation that is held up as the ideal, or the assumption of a bright, etheric body, but the divinisation of the physical body itself in all its cells and nerves and constituting elements and energies. It is rendering the body immune to decay and death and perfectly plastic to the touch of the Spirit —a conscious vessel of the self-manifesting Truth-Light.

The fourfold perfection of the prāna or the vital being will be pūrnatā, prasannatā, samatā and bhogasāmarthya. Pūrnatā is fullness. The prāna must be fall of strength and agility and a tireless drive of radiant energies. It is for the fairness and brimming wealth of the vital that the Vedic Rishis invoked the aid of the Aswins, "the twin divine powers whose special function is to perfect the nervous or vital being in man in the sense of action and enjoyment." The sacrifice of aśwamedha¹ was also a

¹ The horse is a symbol of the life-energy.

Page 446

symbolic offering of the life-energy to the Divine, so that He could pour His riches into it and perfect it for the fulfilment of His Will in the world. A full prāna is the most important condition for divine action and manifestation. Nothing great can be achieved in life except by the force and fervour of prāna . Prasannatā is a crystal purity and gladness. The prāna must not be a restless, passionate force, spilling or frittering itself on unworthy pursuits, or discouraged and depressed by any ascetic severity. It must be full of joy and buoyancy, and a profound, inviolable placidity. Samatā is equality. The prāna must not be swayed by the fickle likes and dislikes of the surface nature, but remain serene and unperturbed in the face of all experiences. Freedom from all desire is the surest means of establishing samatā in the prāna . An equal prāna will accept whatever comes to it from the Divine, without any of the disturbing reactions that accompany the normal vital movements of desires and preferences. And it must develop the power of an illimitable possession and enjoyment, sarvabhogasāmarthya, which is, indeed, its main function. The prāna is not meant to be a "slain or mortified thing, dull in its receptive power, dreary, suppressed, maimed, inert or null. It must have a full power of possession, a glad power of enjoyment, an exultant power of pure and divine passion and rapture." It must feel a spiritual rapture in all the movements of the nature and all the experiences, relations and contacts of its existence.

The fourfold perfection of the heart is saumyatwa,

Page 447

tejas, kalyān-śraddhā and prema-sāmarthya. Saumyatwa is a large and limpid sweetness, a beaming and benign gentleness, and a winning grace and lovable candour. A smiling heart of illimitable love and tenderness and sweetness is a fit temple for Mahālaksmi, as we have already seen. But there must not go with this sweetness and grace any emotional weakness or limpness, any flaccid or florid sentimentality. There must be an abounding Rudra-power in the heart, a high strength and force "capable of supporting without shrinking an insistent; an outwardly austere, or even where need is, a violent" action." This is tejas. It is the flaming force of īśān or Mahākālī that strikes out of love and compassion, and beats into suppleness and symmetry the elements of nature that rebel against the action of Light. But both saumyatwa and tejas must be broad-based on an un- trembling equality of the soul. Kalyān-śraddhā is "a faith in the heart, a belief in and will to the universal good, an openness to the universal ananda." This faith and will must be founded upon the inner perception that the Divine is everywhere, not only in passive immanence, but as an active, all-ordaining and all-achieving Presence as a supreme, unfailing, guiding Power. All processes of the yoga, all experiences, inner and outer, all contacts and dealings of the world must be viewed in the light of the truth that the Divine is the sole omnipotent Master of the whole universe, and that nothing can happen, within us and without, without His Will and sanction. One has to see even in the worst of calamities and dangers

Page 448

the sustaining and succouring hand of the Supreme, and His dispensation of infinite love and compassion. Grief, suffering, disgrace, defeat—everything is so decreed and so arranged by the divine Love that it cannot but conduce to the spiritual progress of the sâdhaka, if he can remain unwavering in this Kalyān-śraddhā. Prema-sāmarthya is a limitless capacity for love. The main function of the heart being love, it is through the heart alone that we can enter into a dynamic oneness with the Divine and with all beings. This capacity for love has to be developed to such an extent that nothing in the world and beyond the world would remain outside its embrace. The Divine has to be loved in Himself and in all His myriad forms and representations, irrespective of their phenomenal differences. Friend and foe, saint and sinner, the high and the low, the ugly and the beautiful—all have to be loved as oneself, as selves of the one Self, as the many self-figurations of the eternal Identical. This is the highest perfection of the heart of the human being before it is supramentalised, this unlimited capacity for widest and closest and most intense, rapturous love.

The fourfold perfection of the buddhi is viśuddhi, prakāś vicitrabodha, and sarva-jñāna-sāmarthya. The intelligence must become pure and wide and crystal-clear. It must be washed clean of all prânic desire mixing with its search for truth. It must remain constantly open to Truth, and nothing but Truth, undeflected by the insistences of the vital. It must likewise be kept absolutely free from the riot of the emotions, which distort, falsify

Page 449

and darken Truth. It must also be liberated from its own defects, "inertia of the thought-power, obstructive narrowness and unwillingness to open to knowledge, intellectual unscrupulousness in thinking, prepossession and preference, self-will in the reason and false determinations of the will to knowledge." ¹ "Its sole will must be to make itself an unsullied mirror of the truth, its essence and its forms and measures and relations; a clear mirror, a just measure, a fine and subtle instrument of harmony, an integral intelligence."² If it becomes calm and vast and clear, it will be able to reflect the higher light without deflecting or distorting it. It will then become "a serene thing of light, a pure and strong radiance emanating from the sun of Truth." "But, again, it must become not merely a thing of concentrated dry or white light, but capable of all variety of understanding (vicitra-bodha), supple, rich, flexible, brilliant with all the flame and various with all the colours of the manifestation of the Truth, open to all its forms."³ This is vicitra-bodha—a various and many-sided capacity of the buddhi. Sarva-jñāna-sāmarthya is the comprehensive, manifold capacity for acquiring and assimilating all forms of knowledge, unobstructed by any habitual or normal bias. A wide catholicity and coordinating power of the intelligence will abolish the narrow moulds and rigid formulas, which stand in the way

¹The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

² ibid.

³ ibid.

Page 450

of the expansion of our mental horizons and hold us captives of our own limited thoughts. The buddhi must become large and luminous, and freely open to all revelations, intuitions and inspirations that stream down from the heights of Spirit.

The perfection described above is the preliminary perfection of the instruments, which has to be linked to the manifest power of the soul and lit up and exalted by it. The soul-force, pouring into the instruments, will raise the perfection from the normal levels of the nature to the spiritual, and galvanise it with its native dynamis. All the powers of the instruments will undergo a soul-change, and develop towards universality and impersonality. They will no longer remain and function as mind-powers, life- powers and powers of the physical constitution of the individual, but work as overt powers of the liberated soul, instinct with its fire and revealing its pure light and bliss.

The final perfection will come when the Divine and His śakti will be revealed behind the action of the soul- force and raise all the working of the instruments into the fullness and glory of the supramental Power. Earth has not seen, man has not yet conceived of this supramental perfection—it is unimaginably vast and glorious, it is the infinite perfection of the Divine Himself. All parts of the sâdhaka's nature with all their functioning will be taken up by the Supreme and His śakti. There are three stages of this perfection, at the last of which, when our union with Him is integral, the Divine manifests Himself in all our being and action. "He is felt in us as the possessor

Page 451

of our being and above us as the ruler of all its workings and they become to us nothing but a manifestation of Him. in the existence of the Jiva. All our consciousness is His. consciousness, all our knowledge is His knowledge, all our thought is His thought, all our will is His Will, all our feeling is His Ananda and form of His delight in being, all our action is His action. The distinction between the Shakti and the Ishwara begins to disappear, there is only the conscious activity in us of the Divine with the great self of the Divine behind and around and possessing it; all the world and nature is seen to be only that, but here it has become fully conscious, the Maya of the ego re- moved, and the Jiva is there only as an eternal portion of His being, amśa sanātana, put forth to support a divine individualisation and living now fulfilled in the complete presence and power of the Divine, the complete joy of the Spirit manifested in the being. This is the highest realisation of the perfection and delight of the active one- ness; for beyond it there could only be the consciousness of the Avatâra, the Ishwara Himself assuming a human name and form for action in the Lila."¹

Before we conclude this chapter, let us attempt a brief outline of the supramental perfection as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo. The first characteristic of this perfection will be its transcendence of all human achievements, and a secure sovereignty over Nature; the second, its harmonious comprehensiveness, its inviolable integrality; and the third, its all-accomplishing divinity.

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

Page 452

The buddhi in its supramental perfection will not only be wide and luminous and capable of all knowledge, but it will undergo a radical conversion in the very way and method of its operation. Its truth will be the direct Truth-idea, and not a symbol or representation of truth as seen in the rushlight of the human mind. It will realise Truth and its various forms by an inmost revealing identity with them. The gnostic intuition, inspiration, discrimination and revelation are the fourfold process of the perfected thought called respectively Saramā, Saraswatī, Daksinā and Ilā by the Vedic Rishis. "The range of knowledge covered by the supramental thought, experience and vision will be commensurate with all that is open to the human consciousness, not only on the earth but on all planes."¹ The supramental thought will embrace from a dominating altitude of consciousness the entire stream of Time, past, present and future. Its vision v/ill be what was known to the ancient mystics as trikāladrsti ² All its operations will proceed on the basis of unity and harmony. It will take all the incalculable multiplicities of existence in its sweep, but never lose for a moment the perception of their essential oneness. Its knowledge will be a comprehensive knowledge, which sees every object as an aspect and attribute of the indivisible One. It will regard not only the essential unity but also the developing diversities of that unity in a single, immediate vision and

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

²Simultoneous vision of the three aspects of Time—past, present and future.

Page 453

experience. The supramental will in the sâdhaka will be the Will of the Supreme, unified and irresistible, fulfilling itself through whatever conditions it has itself decreed. There will be no hesitancies, no falterings, none of the confusions and conflicts that beset our human will, and no paralysing weakness in the face of resistance or opposition. The supramental will will be like a flame-shaft of the gnostic Force shooting straight at its target. The supramental feelings and emotions will be currents and waves and ripples of, the unebbing divine love and delight, and even in their most intense and impetuous movements, they will preserve their inherent rhythm and play in perfect tune with all the movements of the nature. They will impart a throb and a thrill to the light of knowledge and the force of the will. The supramental perfection of the senses will be a seeing and hearing and touching of the Divine everywhere and in all beings and objects. Our senses are the external material means of contacting the objects of the world, but, as yogic experience shows, they are not indispensable, our mind can see and hear and touch the objects even without the help of the outer senses. It is for this reason that the mind is called the sixth sense—it is, in fact, the only sense in the present economy of our nature, and the outer senses are only its instruments and conveniences. It can contact the objects without using the senses as the media, and it can also contact and know the inner relations, forces and vibrations of the objects, which are not at all accessible to the outer senses. It is only habit that has made the mind dependent upon

Page 454

the physical senses and circumscribed by their natural limitations. But the mind also, as a higher yogic experience reveals, is not the supreme and original sense; it too is an instrument and a habitual convenience. The real and original sense is beyond the mind, which it uses as a medium, it is "a direct and original activity of the infinite power" of the spiritual consciousness. "The pure action of sense is a spiritual action and pure sense itself is a power of the Spirit." ¹ This pure and original sense is called sanjñāna. Sanjñāna makes us see, hear, touch, smell and taste the Divine Being, saccidānanda, as concretely as we sense the material objects. Its action is direct, immediate and intimate. It makes us contact the substance of the divine Existence, the substance of the divine Consciousness, the substance of the divine Force, and the substance of the divine Delight. "The supermind acting through sense feels all as God and in God, all as the manifest touch, sight, hearing, taste, perfume, all the felt, seen, directly experienced substance and power and energy and movement, play, penetration, vibration, form, nearness, pressure, substantial interchange of the Infinite." ² The supramental sense sees no object as an isolated unit, cut off from others; it sees the All, the One, in all objects—it embraces the Infinite in each finite thing. It can know all things by a direct sensation, all things in this or any other world; and its

¹The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo. ,

² ibid.

Page 455

sensation is a luminous, revealing sensation of the essential being and the phenomenal becoming of the Divine. It makes us drink the soma of the divine bliss, which is the eternal sap of everything in the universe.

The sanjñān acts not only in itself, but it profoundly changes even the physical senses. "As soon as the sight, for example, becomes altered under the influence of the supramental seeing, the eye gets a new and transfigured vision of things and of the world around us.... It is as if the eye of the poet and artist had replaced the vague or trivial unseeing normal vision, but singularly spiritualised and glorified,—as if indeed it were the sight of the supreme divine Poet and Artist in which we were participating and there were given to us the full seeing of his truth and intention in his design of the universe and of each thing in the universe. There is an unlimited intensity which makes all that is seen a revelation of the glory of quality and idea and form and colour. The physical eye seems then to carry in itself a spirit and a consciousness which sees not only the physical aspect of the object but the soul of quality in it, the vibration of energy, the light and force and spiritual substance of which it is made. Thus there comes through the physical sense to the total sense consciousness within and behind the vision a revelation of the soul of the thing seen and of the universal spirit that is expressing itself in this objective form of its conscious being."¹ It is, in short, an infusion of the supramental sense, the

¹The Synthesis of Yoga by Sri Aurobindo.

Page 456

sanjñāna, into the physical sense, resulting in the latter's total transformation and perfection.

The opening of the vijñāna and the ānanda sheath in us will make for a complete transfiguration of the substance of the body. It will bring about, in effect, a trans- substantiation, a radical conversion of the very stuff and texture of the physical organism. The atoms that go to the making of the body will become conscious and radiant particles of matter, centres of a luminous force expressing itself in the scheme of material existence. And this direct working of the Truth-Force will eliminate from the body all causes of decay and wasting away, and establish in it a serene stability of health and power. "The supramental consciousness is not a fixed quantity but a power which passes to higher and higher levels of possibility until it reaches supreme consummations of spiritual existence fulfilling supermind as supermind fulfils the ranges of spiritual consciousness that are pushing towards it from the human or mental level. In this progression the body also may reach a more perfect form and a higher range of its expressive powers, become a more and more perfect vessel of divinity."¹ There may even take place many "unforeseen fundamental changes in the structure and functioning of the organs themselves as a result of the un- fettered action of the supreme Will-Force in the human body, and a falling into disuse of some of the physiological processes which, however indispensable they may appear

¹ The Supramental Manifestation by Sri Aurobindo.

Page 457

today, will have outlived their utility and been replaced by those of a far greater, because supramental, effectivity. The body, filled with the gnostic light and the gnostic force, vijñāna -jyoti and vijñāna-sakti, its cells illumined and electrified, and its consciousness fully developed to respond even to the least call of Spirit, may acquire "new means and ranges of communication with other bodies, new processes of acquiring knowledge, a new aesthesis, new potencies of manipulation of itself and objects. It might not be impossible for it to possess and disclose means native to its own constitution, substance or natural instrumentation for making the far near and annulling distance, cognising what is now beyond the body's cognisance, acting where action is now out of its reach or its domain, developing subtleties and plasticities which could not be permitted under present conditions to the needed fixity of a material frame."¹ But all these powers and perfections of the body, let me repeat, will be a supramental evolution from within it, a manifold flowering of its divine possibilities, and not an imposition of the potencies of the etheric body or intermittent fire- works of the prânic energies. The body will develop its spiritual powers by the opening up of the gnostic and bliss sheaths and its transfiguration into their luminous substance.

Radiant with a creative consciousness, vibrant with an inexhaustible force, poised in a fathomless peace, and

¹The Supramental Manifestation by Sri Aurobindo.

Page 458

steeped in happiness and harmony, the supramentalised body will reveal the beauty and glory of the Divine in the material world, wiping away its immemorial stigma of grossness. For many a long century, the body has been a pathetic object of the yogi's contempt, spurned as the greatest obstacle to the freedom and progress of his soul. Its supramental perfection will negative that con- tempt, and prove that it has been made of the same substance as Spirit (sat) and meant to serve here as a transparent form of the Formless.

Page 459