The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XV

THE PHYSICAL NATURE AND ITS PURIFICATION

PART I

BY physical nature Sri Aurobindo means the physical mind, the physical part of life, called the physical-vital or nervous being, and the body. Before we enter upon the process of their purification, we had better be clear about what these terms signify. As I have already indicated elsewhere, there is no Hegelian obscurity about Sri Aurobindo's philosophy, nor an indefinite fluidity in the connotation of the terms he uses. There is, on the contrary, a remarkably scientific precision and definiteness, which disarms all fear of incomprehension in those who have the will, a subtle and flexible intelligence, and the necessary concentration to follow him in his expositions.

THE PHYSICAL MIND

The physical mind is that part of our mind which is linked to our physical and nervous organism through the brain and preoccupied with the gross objects of sense. It is the lowest and most materialised part of our mind, par- taking more or less of the density, obscurity and inertia

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of Matter, and incapable of breathing in any rarefied ether. ft is the stronghold of all doubt and scepticism in us. It delights in material pursuits and feels proudly at home in them. It has an innate contempt for anything that is abstract, imaginative or visionary—anything, indeed, that is removed from its all too narrow orbit of perception. Lift it as much as you can, it will gravitate back to its normal level and spin round its cherished or accustomed objects of sense. It has a settled distrust of the supra- physical realities of existence, and seeks its heaven in the possession and enjoyment of the material objects and amenities of life.

The physical mind in itself is the typical Shudra mind. It knows no eagle-flights of thought and vision, like the mind of the Brahmin, nor the high courage and noble strength of the Kshatriya, nor the adventures and achievements of the Vaishya, who seeks to turn life into a thing of joy and beauty and harmonious abundance. It is burdened with the lowest of the three qualitative modes of prakṛti, tamas. It is mechanical and self-repetitive, rigid and wary in its movements, always a prisoner of its bounded horizons and customary ruts. It is practical, in the sense that it has a more or less sure grasp of the material forces, and a steady eye on the main chance, and a certain deftness in the handling of material objects and opportunities. It is pragmatic and utilitarian, inasmuch as it is rivetted to the earth and the human body, and avid of material success. It has, and can further develop, an aesthetic sense, a perception of beauty and rhythmic

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proportion, but it can hardly extend this sense beyond the material plane of existence—it cannot make it operative in the deeper regions of thought and feeling with which it has no intimate contact. It can only endeavour to build a life of limited material ease and well-being and a brief lived symmetry, which is never quite secure against the assaults of the uncontrolled forces and the progressive elements of life.

One of the main traits of the physical mind is its conservatism. It is attached to the traditional, the conventional and the habitual—to all that keeps up the mechanical nature of its movements—and is reluctant to admit any change or departure from its safe moorings. Inertia is at the bottom of this congenital conservatism, this natural proneness to submit to the yoke of Matter. Left to itself, the physical mind will oppose all new ideas and reforms, regarding them as a menace to its very existence, and branding them as rash and dangerous. Its main concern is to preserve the status quo, the fixed and hedged pathways, the unalterable tenor. It is instinctively afraid of the new, the unexpected, and the hazardous. When a man shies at an innovation or a decisive departure in the realm of thought or in the field of action, it is usually his physical mind that is responsible for it. It advances all kinds of arguments in support of its inert adherence to the beaten track and the ragged routine. In religion, in education, and in general life and culture, it is always un- progressive, narrowly sectarian, and fanatically loyal to "the letter that killeth." It is an ardent advocate of the

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past, and would fain live in it, if that were possible, wilfully blind to the forward march of time. But time flows on, unheedful of its protests, and dragging it along through a series of constrained and painful self-adaptations; for, in this world of change and progress, nothing can afford to remain for long sterile and stagnant—it must either submit to the universal law, or vanish out of existence. The physical mind exposes itself to the hard knocks of evolutionary life by its obstinate refusal to change.

Another chief characteristic of the physical mind is doubt, to which we have already referred. It doubts everything except what is concrete, materially objective, and well within the range of its crude perceptions. The Johnsonial kick is its stock test of the reality of things. It doubts not only what is of uncertain validity, but even what it has known to be true; it questions even its cherished convictions. There are many typical instances of promising men held back again and again from higher spiritual experiences by the besetting doubts of their physical mind; or, having once had those experiences, forgetting, minimising or denying them altogether afterwards. If only they knew the secret of silencing or transcending the physical mind, faith would return as naturally as dawn returns after the night; but they cling to its obscurity which they mistake for light. And when the reasoning mind is allied to the physical mind, we have the dogmatic scepticism which proves a great bar to the progress of knowledge by its wilful shutting out of the unexplored levels of human consciousness and the

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unawakened faculties of human nature. Its vaunted rationalism is a stubborn blindness to the higher light.

The physical mind is not the whole of the human mind, but in many men it is the most dominant. In the modern age of materialism, it is almost deified,¹ and Marxist communism dreams of bringing all mankind down to the level of the vital-physical being, and achieve there an equality which will do away with all differences and disparities of life and establish a reign of unity, both physical and mental. It is a dream which runs counter to the ideal of ancient culture, which was to raise the physical being of man, by progressive stages, towards the glories of the infinite spiritual consciousness, delivering him more and more from the ignorance and obscurity of his gross mind, and make him realise the unity and harmony of all in the eternal omnipresence of Spirit. The ancient endeavour was the exalting of the Shudra to the knowledge, freedom, peace and purity of the Brahmin, whereas the modern labours—which is vain, because against the evolutionary spirit in man—is to pull all grades of men. Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vashyas, down to the level of the Shudra and unite them there by economic, social and political bonds. If the philosophy of communism carries the day, it will be the end of all higher hopes and ideals of mankind, and its relapse into the Shudra-type, the

¹ The typical modem mind is a combination of the vital mind and the physical, exploiting the intellect for its own ends.

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merely physical, economic being, the human animal. It will be a reversion to the dead uniformity of a mechanised society, bound up with its material needs and their satisfaction, and harnessing the intellect to the service of Matter. But the soul and the higher mind of man will not consent to immolate themselves on the altar of the body, or barter away their boundless riches for a mess of pottage. Diversity in unity is the basic principle of creation—diversity not only on the physical plane, but on all the other planes of existence as well—and whenever there is a suppression of diversity, there is the implied threat of an explosion and a disruption of the social fabric,, resulting in a return to healthier conditions of individual freedom and high-soaring aspiration. Man's pilgrimage is from untruth to Truth, from darkness to Light, and from mortality to immortality; or, in other words, from Matter to Spirit. But his ascent is both a sublimation and an integration, so that when man reaches the glories of his spiritual existence, he does not necessarily die to his mental - and material life, but can bring those glories down into his earthly nature, and achieve a dynamic harmony of divine existence. Therefore, any philosophy or culture that clips his spiritual wings and chains him to the material- life is, by the very logic of evolution, an obscurantism,, a reactionary movement doomed to a disastrous defeat.

The physical mind, the sense-mind, the vital mind and the mind proper with its triple order of the understanding, reason and higher intelligence are the different planes of the human mental consciousness. Man, in his evolution,,

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starts perforce from the lower levels, but has to ascend to the higher. He should, therefore, arrange and regulate his life and nature and environment in such a way that they may help him in this evolutionary ascent to the higher planes of consciousness, for, beyond the intelligence there are still higher planes of the spiritual mind to which also he has to climb, and through which he has to pass on his way to the infinitudes of Spirit.

Our consciousness is in constant flux and movement. It rises or falls according to the quality of our thought and feeling and action. Each thought, each feeling, each action of ours has a corresponding effect upon our consciousness, and consequently upon our life and nature. This is a truth which the seekers of perfection should never lose sight of. But there is another complementary truth which has also to be borne in mind, that it is our consciousness that determines our thought, feeling and action. Everything in our life and nature is an instrumental working of our consciousness. If we take into consideration these two complementary truths or dynamic principles of our being, we are led to conclude that our consciousness is a developing evolutionary thing, struggling up Through a maze of myriad forces, favourable and unfavourable, towards its own luminous vastness above. But even in the midst of its variations and fluctuations, it seems to preserve in itself a more or less fixed status, a relatively stable foothold, balancing its ups and downs. This transitional foothold gives its distinctive character "to our consciousness. We may call a man a physical man,

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if the foothold of his consciousness is in the physical being; or a vital man, if he lives predominantly in the tossing desires and ambitions and passions of his life- being or vital being. Similarly a man may be called mental or intellectual, if he lives not so much in his physical and vital as in his mental being. But a physical man. may have vital desires and ambitions and also mental interests and pursuits, or a vital man may have the latter and may also be susceptible to spells of physical inertia and material preoccupation; or, again, a mental or intellectual man may have occasional lapses into the obscurity of the physical or the turmoil of the vital consciousness. Yet in spite of these oscillations and overlappings, each. human being keeps a certain temporary station of his evolutionary consciousness, which determines his distinctive nature, and should also determine his place and function in society. The origin of the four-fold order in Hindu society was an intuitive perception of the truth of this transitional station of the evolving consciousness of man. A man who lived mainly in the physical consciousness was called a Shudra, for whom an obedient, . faithful and conscientious service, in whatever walk of life it might be, was the best possible means of self- development. If a zealot humanitarian placed him on a higher status and trained him for a different vocation, he would be transplanting him from his swadharma to a paradharma, from the self-law of his nature to an alien law, and creating in him a psychological confusion, varṇśankara. The ancient order was not rigid, nor had it

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anything to do with birth, as it is commonly supposed, but was a subtle recognition of a man's poise of consciousness, and a furnishing of flexible means and opportunities for his growth and self-transcendence. There were other deeply psychological factors that necessitated ;and justified the ancient system, but it would be going beyond our scope to dwell upon them here. But times have changed, and the evolution of humanity has reached a stage at which the old ways and systems have to be replaced by others, more embracing and synthetic, which would do justice to the increasing demand for a harmonious development and perfection of man, and the realisation of the universal unity in his consciousness and life.

The physical mind, because of its obscurity and attachment to Matter, has always been the despair of the spiritual seekers. The intense yearning for a self- annihilating absorption in the unconditioned Absolute derives a part of its stimulus from the apparently irredeemable character of the physical mind, and the constant resistance it opposes to the expansive movement of the inner being. An increasing resort to meditation and a withdrawal from the activities of life are the usual means adopted for an escape from the dull bondage of the physical mind and its engrossing material cares. But as an escape is ruled out in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo — its aim being a perfect self-fulfilment and divine Manifestation in life—the physical mind has to be accepted fully and just as it is, and then purified, enlightened,

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and finally transformed into a flexible medium of the self-expressing Spirit.

What are the means of purifying and enlightening the physical mind? Sri Aurobindo lays particular stress on detachment. The inner consciousness, seeking identification with the soul, must detach itself from the physical mind and refuse to give sanction to its mechanical, self-repetitive movements, which are an obstacle to sadhana. First of all, its preoccupation with the body and its needs and demands and comforts must be studiously renounced. This does not mean that the body has to be despised or neglected, but the mind's morbid obsession with it must be discarded, otherwise there would be no further evolution of consciousness. In the Integral Yoga, the body is regarded as an indispensable instrument of the self-manifesting Spirit, and as much important as any other part of our nature; but to be attached to it is to remain tied only to the gross material principle of our being, and forfeit our birthright to the light and bliss and freedom of our spiritual existence. Detachment from the physical mind gives us a release from the grossness of the material consciousness; it gives wings to our inner consciousness to soar into the Spirit- skies. Referring to the recurrence of material thoughts and the consequent obscuration of consciousness, which is a common enough experience in sadhana the Mother says in her Prayer of January 4, 1914:

"The tide of material thoughts lies always in wait for

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the least weakness, and if we relax our vigilance even for a moment, if we are negligent, to however small an extent, it rushes forward and invades us from all sides submerging sometimes under its heavy flood the result of innumerable efforts. Then the being enters into a sort of torpor, its physical needs of food and sleep in- crease, its intelligence is obscured, its inner vision is veiled, and in spite of its feeling little real interest in these superficial activities, they occupy him almost exclusively. This condition is very troublesome and fatiguing, for nothing is more fatiguing than thoughts about material things, and the wearied mind suffers like a caged bird unable to spread its wings yet aspiring for the power to take its free flight.'¹

Expressing herself on the same subject, the Mother says elsewhere (Prayer of August 17, 1913):

"Nothing can be more humiliating, nothing more depressing than these thoughts turned always towards the preservation of the body, this preoccupation with health, with our subsistence, with the framework of our life."

A constant and loving concentration of our thought on the Divine is another potent means of freeing ourselves from the hold of the physical mind. Whenever

¹ "Prayers and Meditations of the Mother.

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the mind turns towards the objects of sense, or towards the body and its urges, it has to be directed with love towards the Divine, the infinite and Eternal Master and Author of our being. The higher the aspiration, the less the chance of the consciousness sinking down into the morass of material cares. And along with concentration and aspiration, there must be an opening to the Mother's Force, so that it may come down and effect the purification and release of the physical being from its own grossness. "The higher consciousness and its force have to work long and come again and again before they can become constant and normal in the physical nature."¹

Another very common experience of the sâdhaka is. that the physical mind harasses him with its swarms of mechanical thoughts during the time of meditation or concentration. These thoughts in themselves have no interest for him—they are trite and futile and tediously self-repetitive; they only buzz about and disturb his; meditation. Sri Aurobindo advises a very quiet rejection of this mechanical buzzing of the physical mind. He deprecates all restlessness, all feverish effort to smother the buzzing, or shut it out, and teaches a serene withdrawal of sanction and attention from it. The quieter one is, the easier it becomes to get rid of this mechanical action of the physical mind; for, the will of the puruṣa is a calm will of irresistible force, which can never fail; but the secret of its power lies in its masterful calmness. Another experience is that the intensities of the deeper

¹ On Yoga, II by Sri Aurobindo.

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and higher parts of the being that sweep into the physical mind and fire it into spells of love and devotion and surrender, do not abide long in it—they are soon covered up or fade away. The sâdhaka feels drained and depleted.

When one falls into the physical consciousness, one finds it so dull and stupid, so cold and wearying. Depression, disappointment, and even despair usually follow this fall, and one feels, as it were, lost in a dreary desert. Or, there is the agonised sense of a stalemate or stagnation, as if the spiritual journey had come to a standstill, and no further progress was being made. Or, one is, overwhelmed with a sense of one's own impurities and incapacity, and tortures oneself with exaggerated repentance and lamentation. Or, there is a sudden irruption of doubts, which darken the intelligence and eclipse the memory of past experiences. One feels as if the very ground were cut away from under one's feet, and that one had nowhere to turn to for solace or encouragement. One comes sometimes even to think of giving up the yogic life and returning to the ordinary ways of worldly desires. All this is a state of bleak forlornness and corroding gloom.

What is the remedy? The remedy lies in not brooding over the fall and its disheartening results, but in recovering contact with the psychic being and infusing its fire and light into the physical mind. Once the rays of the soul penetrate and permeate the physical mind, it will tend to lose its habitual tendency to doubt and depression, and develop the capacity for sustained aspiration,

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devotion and self-offering. There is another remedy which may prove more immediately effective: it is to step back from the unpurified physical mind, which is the home of doubt and despondency, and try to take one's stand in the inner consciousness. Those who have practised the technique of self-withdrawal—it is a primary, fundamental technique in the Integral Yoga— will find it very helpful in such cases. As soon as they step back, they can breathe freely in an atmosphere which is impervious to doubt.

The purification of the physical mind, as, indeed, of the whole physical nature, depends considerably on the conquest and enlightenment of the subconscient. If a passive peace were the sole objective, the physical mind could be left to spin and buzz till it fell into a wearied quiescence, but for a radical purification one has to tackle the base upon which it stands and from which it derives its obstinate habits and associations and its irrational impulses. We shall touch upon this subject at the end of this chapter.

The object of purifying the physical mind is not to reduce it to an inert automaton, but to release it from its doped slavery to Matter, enlighten its native grossness by bringing down into it more and more of the higher light, and finally open it to the direct influx of the Supramental Consciousness, so that, liberated and illumined, it can sense and contact the Divine everywhere, in all men and creatures and things, and express His Light and Bliss, and fulfil His Will and purpose in all its movements.

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