The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER XVI

THE PHYSICAL NATURE AND ITS

PURIFICATION

PART II

No purification of the physical being can be complete unless it deals effectively and radically with the subconscient and the inconscient; for, as I have already said, the roots of our physical being lie in them, and most of the habits, tendencies and impulses of our nature derive from them, and are fed and fortified by their force of inertia. If our physical being is irresponsive to any higher light or any supersensory truth, it is due to the grossness and denseness of its texture, which is mostly a product of the subconscient and the inconscient. If it is mechanical in its movements and has an. instinctive horror of any drastic or decisive change, that too is due to the same cause. Many of the obstinate illnesses to which our flesh is all too prone, many of the psycho- neuroses which disfigure or damage our manhood, most of the causes of decay and death can be traced to the blind and chaotic action of the subconscient and inconscient elements of our being. It is, therefore, imperative that in any yoga which seeks to effect a radical transformation, and not only a superficial purification, of the physical

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being, the subconscient and the inconscient must be completely conquered and illumined, and brought under ,jie direct sway of the central being. These nether domain of our being have to be made conscious and responsive to the higher Light.

The first thing to do is to exert a central will for the opening of the physical nature to the Mother's Light and Force. It will mean, in practice, the projection of a part of our most developed consciousness, and an infusion of its will and aspiration into the physical nature. The result may not be very encouraging at the beginning, for, the physical nature may repel the advances of the higher consciousness and refuse to be disturbed in its complacent darkness. But a quiet persistence is sure to prevail in making it open to the Mother's Light.

"The opening of the physical and the subconscient takes a long time as it is a thing of habits and constant repetition of the old movements, obscure and stiff and not plastic, yielding only little by little. The physical mind can be more easily opened and converted than the rest, but the vital-physical and the material-physical are obstinate. The old things are always recurring there without reason and by force of habit. Much of the vital-physical and most of the material are in the subconscience or depend on it. It needs a strong and sustained action to progress there."¹

The next thing to do is to call down the Mother's

¹ On Yoga—II. by Sri Aurobindo.

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Light and Force into the physical nature including the body and its constituent cells, and steadily direct them to its subconscient and inconscient bases below.

"The light brings the consciousness of what is there; the force has to follow and work on them (the obscure parts) till they change or disappear."

The mind of the sâdhaka may not be able to see how the Mother's Force works in the parts of the being which are veiled from it, but the central will, once kindled and concentrated upon a thing, can never fail of its objective. The will, exercised with a quiet persistence, calls down the Mother's Force, which begins to act on the inconscient and the subconscient for their purification and illumination. Mental knowledge does not count for much in spiritual life; more often than not it proves an impediment in that it bars the being's progress with its unenlightened constructions. It is the psychic conscious- ness that must take the lead, exercise its will, foster the growth of the right attitude and help the development of the inner perception in all parts of the nature. The sâdhaka should try to identify himself with his psychic being or soul, and "feel with the psychic nature and see with the psychic vision" the working of the Mother's Force in the submerged reaches of his being. In proportion as the purification of these reaches progresses, he will experience an increasing freedom from the compulsion of the lower appetites, the blind passions and the mechanical habits, which are so great an obstacle to the transformation of nature. When the psychic

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perception develops, he will be not only aware of the action of the Mother's Force, but also able to hold up the remote and recondite tracts of his nature to its transforming light. Purification renders the nature transparent, and develops in it many new perceptive faculties which usually lie dormant in the unpurified human nature.

In course of the purification of the physical nature, a time comes when one finds oneself almost identified with one's external physical personality, which is full of obscure and unregenerate elements. This is a stage which has to be passed through with the utmost care and vigilance. There is almost invariably an upsurge of the muck of the subconscient sewers, and a desperate repetition of the mechanical movements of the lower nature. Calm detachment, awareness of the Mother's Force working in oneself, patient vigilance, a persistent will, and a perfect surrender and plasticity are the most helpful during this period. At a further stage, one may find oneself in the subconscient itself, which is a most crucial state and a poignant experience. But armed with the Mother's Light and Force, and completely surrendered, one is always safe even there; and when one emerges from this experience, it is never without the laurels of a rare victory, and the joy of an exceptional dynamic freedom.

"When the physical consciousness has to be changed, it is of course essential to work in the subconscient, as it has a great influence on the physical which is very- dependent on it. The loss of consciousness, comes naturally at first when the subconscient is being worked

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upon. You have to be careful that it does not become habitual. If you react with a will for the change of this tendency (no struggle is needed) it will pass in time."¹

All kinds of lust, greed and sex-trouble usually stem from the subconscient, and have to be faced with perfect equanimity and offered to the Mother's Force for purification and transformation. It would be very helpful to remember in this connection Sri Aurobindo's instructions in regard to the means of dealing effectively with these obscure movements of the subconscient.

As a general rule, Sri Aurobindo lays down that in all matters, small or great, we have to take the Yogic attitude, and not that of the moralist or the religious man. In the Integral Yoga, in regard to the lower movements like greed or sex impulses, etc., the attitude should be "not one of forceful suppression but of detachment and equality". He makes a very illuminating remark that "forceful suppression (fasting comes under the head) stands on the same level as free indulgence; in both cases, the desire remains; in the one it is fed by indulgence, in the other it lies latent and exasperated by suppression." It is a very important and liberating truth of purification which, if practised with intelligence and steadfastness, will certainly obviate much of the wearing struggle and frustration the spiritual seekers have to pass through in their desperate efforts to purify themselves of the lower passions.

¹ On Yoga—II.

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Regarding food, Sri Aurobindo says, "It is the attachment to food, the greed and eagerness for it, making it an unduly important thing in the life that is contrary to the spirit of Yoga....One must be calm and equal, not getting upset or dissatisfied when the food is not tasty or not in abundance... eating the fixed amount that is necessary, not less or more. There should be neither eagerness nor repugnance."¹

"Do not trouble your mind about food. Take it in the right quantity (neither too much nor too little), without greed or repulsion, as the means given you by the Mother for the maintenance of the body, in the right spirit, offering it to the Divine in you..."²

To be preoccupied with food—its quality or quantity —is the wrong way to solve the problem of greed. Many yogis waste much of their time and care upon it on account of their ignorance of the right way of tackling it. They wrestle with greed, as with other desires and passions, and strive to strangle it by all sorts of ascetic excesses, which only entail repeated failures and disappointment.

"To be always thinking about food and troubling the mind is quite the wrong way of getting rid of the food- desire. Put the food element in the right place in the life, in a small corner, and don't concentrate on it but on other things." ³

¹On Yoga—11.

² ibid.

³ ibid.

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On the question of the sex impulse and sex-relations Sri Aurobindo is very emphatically definite. He does not countenance any the least laxity or camouflage in this matter. Sexual pleasure is a positive degradation and deformation of the divine Ananda, and those who seek to realise and express the latter in life must renounce all craving for the former. Sex enjoyment is absolutely incompatible with spiritual life. "...It is when one mixes up sex and spirituality that there is the greatest havoc. Even the attempt to sublimate it by turning it towards the Divine as in the Vaishnava madhura bhāva carries in it a serious danger, as the results of a wrong turn or use in this method so often show. At any rate in this Yoga (the Integral Yoga) which seeks not only the essential experience of the Divine but a transformation of the whole being and nature, I have found it an absolute necessity of the sadhana to aim at a complete mastery over the sex- force; otherwise the vital consciousness remains a turbid mixture, the turbidity affecting the purity of the spiritualised mind and seriously hindering the upward turn of the forces of the body.... One must, therefore, clear this obstacle (sex-desire) out of the way; otherwise there is either no safety or no free movement towards finality in the sâdhanâ"¹

It is a perilous error to think that, though the sexual act is forbidden and harmful in spiritual life, some kind of sexual or vital relation may be permitted. Dispelling

¹On Yoga—II.

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all doubts and disarming all subterfuges on the point, Sri Aurobindo says:

"In this Yoga...there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others, any such relation or inter- change immediately ties down the soul to the lower consciousness and its lower nature, prevents the true and full union with the Divine and hampers both the ascent to the supramental Truth-consciousness and the descent of the supramental Iśwarī Śakti. Still worse would it be if this interchange took the form of a sexual relation or a sexual enjoyment, even if kept free from any out- ward act; therefore these things are absolutely forbidden in the sâdhanâ"¹

Much of what is known and glorified as love is nothing but such a vital (prānic) relation tending to gravitate towards a sexual relation, and always a grave menace to the purity and sincerity of one's being. The initial aim in the Integral Yoga being an absolute surrender and dedication of the whole being to the Divine, any human relation of love between the sexes, however romantic it may appear to our lower nature, is a fatal counter-attraction, and cannot but end in spiritual disaster. It does not, however, mean that there will be no love amongst friends and relatives, but there must be no exclusive attachment,. none of those sweet-bitter spells of vital-emotional intoxication in which one gets glued to a person and cannot make the Divine, the Infinite, the Eternal, the sole object

¹ On Yoga—II.

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of one's love and adoration. For a seeker of the Infinite to remain tied down to a transitory finite object would indeed be nothing short of a spiritual tragedy.

There is again a very misleading notion prevalent among educated people and somewhat reinforced by modern medical science that sex is a "necessity like food and sleep and that its total inhibition may lead to unbalancing and to serious disorders." Sri Aurobindo exposes the extreme imbecility of the notion in the following words:

"It is a fact that sex suppressed in outward action but indulged in other ways may lead to disorders of the system and brain troubles. That is the root of the medical theory which discourages sexual abstinence. But I have observed that these things happen only when there is either secret indulgence of a perverse kind replacing the normal sexual activity or else an indulgence of it in a kind of subtle vital way by imagination or by an invisible vital interchange of an occult kind,—I do not think harm occurs when there is a true spiritual effort at mastery and abstinence. It is now held by many medical men in .Europe that sexual abstinence, if it is genuine, is beneficial; for the element in the retas which serves the sexual act is then changed into its other element which feeds the energies of the system, mental, vital and physical— and that justifies the Indian idea of brahmacarya, the trans- formation of retas into ojas and the raising of the energies upwards so that they change into a spiritual force."¹

¹ On Yoga—II.

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The purification of the physical being at its subconscient and inconscient roots will eliminate most of the causes of illness, decay and decrepitude, and make for health and longevity and a general vigour and expressional efficiency in the outer personality. But a transformation of the physical being will go immeasurably much farther—it will bring about a radical conversion of the very basic principles of its working. A complete immunity from disease and decay, and even from death, will be the eventual result of the supramental transformation of the physical being.

The physical being is the facade of the self-manifesting Spirit, and, as such, its purification and transformation are of the utmost importance in the manifestational Yoga of Sri Aurobindo; for, without them the manifestation of the Divine in Matter can never be perfect.

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