The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XXVII

THE INTEGRAL TRANSFORMATION

PART I

WHAT IS TRANSFORMATION?

"SPIRITUAL experiences can fix themselves in the inner consciousness and alter it, transform it, if you like; one can realise the Divine everywhere, the Self in all and all in the Self, the universal śakti doing all things; one can feel merged in the cosmic Self or fall of ecstatic bhakti or ānanda. But one may and usually does still go on in the outer parts of Nature thinking with the intellect or at best the intuitive mind, willing with a mental will, feeling joy and sorrow on the vital surface, undergoing physical afflictions and suffering from the struggle of life in the body with death and disease. The change then only will be that the inner self will watch all that without getting disturbed or bewildered, with a perfect equality, taking it as an inevitable part of Nature, inevitable at least so long as one does not withdraw to the Self out of Nature. That is not the transformation I envisage. It is quite another power of knowledge, another kind of will, another luminous nature of emotion and aesthesis, another

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constitution of the physical consciousness that must come in by the Supramental change."¹

Very important words are these that throw a flood of light upon the capital distinction between the object of the Integral Yoga and the ideals and achievements of the other yogas. Sri Aurobindo says that the transformation of the inner consciousness, even if complete, is not the transformation aimed at in the Integral Yoga. "One can realise the Divine everywhere"—a realisation which is almost universally regarded as the summit experience of spiritual life—and yet remain untransformed in his nature. "One can realise the Self in all and all in the Self"; "one can realise the universal śakti doing all things"; "one can feel merged in the cosmic Self", and yet, paradoxical as it may sound, none of these realisations, not even the sum-total of them, will constitute the transformation Sri Aurobindo holds up before us as the highest object of spiritual discipline.

What, then, is transformation? In the case of a saint or a sage, as we know, his central consciousness remains detached from the movements of his nature, whether they are delightful or painful; and he regards them as the inevitable consequences of his past action, prāravdha. He is not troubled or disturbed by them in the depths of his being; he watches them with a perfect equality from -the serene peace of his liberated state. But, however much "we may have been accustomed to the sublimity of this

¹On Yoga—II by Sri Aurobindo.

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detached poise and the spiritual greatness of this stand- point, and whatever may be the weight of tradition in its favour, we cannot for ever shut our eyes to the fact that though there is freedom in the essential part of a saint's being, his active, phenomenal part remains more or less still shackled to the three gunas and in the grip of the ignorant world-forces. There is equality in his soul, but inequality in his nature; light in his depths, but darkness or twilight on the active surface. Even if he conquers a portion of this darkness, the conquest is never complete and conclusive. He has to live and labour under conditions of what appears as an insurmountable difficulty. Certainly, this is not transformation in any sense of the word. It is only the liberation of the soul and an intermit- tent reflex action of that liberated state in the nature. It cannot satisfy the aspiration implanted in us for a radical conquest and perfection in life.

Transformation, as it is understood in the Integral Yoga, is not moral or spiritual purification; it is a radical and integral transmutation of human nature. It implies, as Sri Aurobindo says in categoric terms, "another power of knowledge, another kind of will, another luminous nature of emotion and aesthesis, another constitution of the physical consciousness." It is not any moral perfection or yogic siddhi, as it is currently understood, any seerhood or sainthood, that is meant by transformation. It is not indefinitely prolonging one's youth and living an extraordinarily long life in perfect health and vigour, or possessing a cinmaya or transcendental body.

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It is a change of consciousness and being, more radical- and complete than what took place when "a mentalised being first appeared in a vital and material animal world." It is a victorious descent and manifestation of the Truth- Light (rtamjyotih) in the consciousness and nature of man, and of the highest creative principle and power of. knowledge marking a decisive advance in his evolution. It is true that a somewhat similar attempt was made by the Vedic Rishis, but it was confined to some parts of human. nature, and undertaken on an individual, and not a collective scale. The Tântrics also laboured towards some such- objective, but with nothing better than very partial and precarious, though often spectacular, results. The Al- chemists, at their very best, worked on these lines in- Egypt and Chaldea, and later, with a less intensity of vision, in Greece and medieval Europe. They sought to turn the base metal of human nature into the Prima Materia from which it is derived; so that its original purity and power could be restored to it. But all these intrepid endeavours of man, which bear eloquent testimony to the fundamental demand of his being and nature,. failed to achieve any enduring success for three important reasons: first, the spiritual vision behind the ideas was not deep and comprehensive enough to embrace the complex totality of human nature; second, the secret of transformation was sought for elsewhere than where it naturally belongs—the power that was employed for the work was not the supreme divine Power which alone can transmute,. without coercing or crippling, the teeming elements and.

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energies of human nature; third, the time was not ripe for such a global collective endeavour, and the evolutionary march of man had not yet arrived at the stage from which the culminating saltus could be confidently taken. But today, in spite of the materialist's denial of Spirit and his scepticism about the reality of the spiritual forces, there is a growing, an insistent, though a more or less imprecise, aspiration for a radical change, a perfect integration, and a complete and integral fulfilment of human life and nature. There is a fumbling attempt, now in one direction, now in another, sometimes—as in some latest trends of modem psychology and sociology—touching even the outer rim of the delivering solution, but always falling far short on account of a lack of the right knowledge and the right dynamic will to such a thorough self- transfiguration, which would necessarily entail a total renunciation of most of what constitutes our present ignorant human personality and its habitual way of living. But the ideal that is defining itself more and more clearly in the consciousness of man, and the thought and aspiration that are becoming increasingly articulate and insistent cannot be stifled or eclipsed for ever—they are sure to seek and find their ultimate fulfilment.

Sri Aurobindo's originality in the spiritual field lies in his focussing in himself this deepest and highest aspiration of humanity, and discovering the secret of its perfect fulfilment. He asserts—and his assertion breathes hope and confidence into the drooping heart of the modern man— that an integral transformation of human nature and

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life will be the ultimate redemption and perfection of man, the fallen Adam. His ascent will be as high and glorious as his fall has been painful and precipitous. An illumination in the depths of his being with a twilight in the parts of his nature will not satisfy him any longer. His inmost aspiration, obscure even to his outer mind today, is for an integral fulfilment in life, for the possession of a divine consciousness, freely expressing itself in a divine body. It is for the definitive conquest of all that has opposed his self-transcendence—his weaknesses, his incapacities, his impurities, the easy susceptibility of his body to disease and decrepitude and death—that he seems to aspire. The inertia of his body, the obscure desires and passions of his vital (prāna), the dim, vagrant thoughts and fancies of his mind he must, therefore, completely transform and convert, if he would use his instrumental being to any divinely creative end. His transformed consciousness must have a fully transformed instrument for its perfect self-expression in the world.

We have spoken of the descent of a new Light of consciousness and a new Force as the indispensable agents of this stupendous work of transformation. It must be clearly understood that without this supreme Light and this supreme Force the work can never be accomplished. The highest dynamic Force of Spirit, the native Light and Law of Truth must come down and effectuate this long and complex work, which will be the crowning achievement of human evolution. Vijñāna śakti or the supramental Force» as Sri Aurobindo calls it, is the supreme

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creative Force of the Divine, and it is only this Force with its Truth-Light that can new-create what it has created, new-mould what has gone out of shape, reconcile the highest status in knowledge with the fullest, unfettered play of Nature's dynamis, and convert the ignorance, the evil, the suffering, the thousand kinks and crookednesses the jangling discords of human nature into the unity and .harmony and light and bliss of the supramental nature. It is this supreme Force alone that can send its shafts of light into the caves of the panis ¹, the obscure subterranean regions of our being, and release from there the penned cows, gāvdh, the radiances of the submerged Spirit, and turn all darkness into light, all inertia into conscious electric energies, all incapacity into divine strength, and all inconscience into plenary consciousness.

The transformed human nature will be a temple housing the four supreme aspects of the divine Mother, Adyā Śakti: Maheśwari, Mahākālī, Mahālaksmī and Mahāsaraswatī. Maheśwari will occupy its parts of knowledge, widening and illumining them with Her all-revealing Light, Mahākālī will govern and guide its dynamic parts of will and power and creative impulsion, and use them for Her divine ends, imparting to knowledge "a conquering might" and to beauty and harmony "a high and mounting movement"; Mahālaksmī will turn its parts of emotion

¹ The Panis, according to the Veda, are the lords of the senseconsciousness who steal from us the brilliant herds (rays) of the sun and pen them up in the caverns of the subconscient and the dense hill (adrī) of Matter.

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and aesthesis into a poem of love and delight, overflowing them with Her sweetness and grace and charm and tender- ness, and upholding them with an unassailable creative harmony; and Mahāsaraswatī will impart to its active physical parts the right rhythm and the right spirit and technique of perfection in work, informing them with "the intimate and precise knowledge, the subtlety and patience, the accuracy of intuitive mind and conscious hand and discerning eye of the perfect worker."¹ This free and harmonious working of the four supreme aspects and powers of the Divine Mother in the transformed human nature will imply in its practical results a combined and perfectly coordinated action of the fourfold type of human temperament—Brāhman, Ksatriya, Vaiśya and Śūdra—in a single, integrated individual. It will be, in fact, a sublimation, transfiguration, and integration of the whole being of man with all its powers and faculties in full and unrestricted divine play. It will be a spontaneous, unified action of the caturvyūha of the ancient Vaishnavic tradition—a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, and a Power for works and labour and service. A divine fullness and glory flowing freely out of the integral being of man including even his body, is the state of transformation aimed at by the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It is a sovereign possession of soul and nature in the illimitable ecstasy of the divine union.

¹The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.

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