The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo

CHAPTER IV

The Triple Aim

THE CONCEPTION OF THE INFINITE AND ETERNAL

UNION with the Infinite and Eternal can be said to be the aim of all Yogas. But this is a general description, which easily lends itself to various interpretations. The aim of the Sânkhyayoga is the release of the immaculate Purusha from his false self-identification with the mechanical workings of Nature into the immobile peace and silence of his unfettered self-existence. Jnânayoga aims at a union with the Infinite and Eternal in Its ineffable transcendence; Bhaktiyoga with the infinite and eternal Lord of Love and Bliss and Beauty; and Tantra, first with the infinite and eternal Mother of the universe as the supreme Shakti, and, as the culminating movement of its Yoga, with the infinite and eternal Brahman beyond all names and forms. The difference in the conception of the Infinite and Eternal determines the difference in the conception of the methods of Yoga and their practice.

The one distinctive feature of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo is that its conception of the Infinite and Eternal is different from that of all the schools of Yoga in India, except of the Vedas, the Upanishads and the Gitâ. The Infinite and Eternal to whom it claims to lead is the

Page 58

One without a second, the omnipresent Reality, the immanent and transcendent Purusha, who is every being, every thing, every happening, the Creator and Master of the whole universe, which is His phenomenal self- extension in Himself, and at the same time the inconceivable, unutterable, supracosmic Abslolute. The organic unity of all these aspects and states of being constitutes the Purusha or Deva of the Vedas, or the Purushottama of the Gitâ. This integrality of its conception of the infinite and eternal Brahman makes the philosophy of the Integral Yoga the most rational, perfect and comprehensive monism ever formulated by spiritual experience. Here there is no Maya or Karma or Satan to cut across or cast a shadow on the all-constituting and all-exceeding; unity of Brahman. All is Brahman, the mutable as well as the Immutable, the finite as well as the Infinite, the many as well as the One.

"The Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes,, a thousand feet; encompassing the earth on all sides. He stands ten fingers' width above." {Śvetāśvatara: 3,14.)

"Divine, formless is the Purusha, He is without and He is within, unborn, breathless, mindless and luminously pure. He is higher than the highest Immutable.

"And of Him is born life and the mind and all the organs of sense, and of Him are Ether and Air and Light and Water and Earth' that holdeth all." (Mundaka:2,I.)

Page 59

THE SUPREME TRUTH-CONSCIOUSNESS OR SUPERMIND

This all-embracing monism being the philosophical foundation of the Integral Yoga, the means and method of its practice and the way of its attainment must necessarily be comprehensive and all-inclusive, a synthetic and unifying movement, progressing through the complexity of the human being towards the integral divine fulfilment. But what is the nature of this unifying movement of progress, and what is that plane of consciousness on which the final reconciliation between the One and the many, between Time and Eternity, silence and activity, and Spirit and Matter can be effected? We are awake on the physical, vital and mental planes of consciousness, all of them planes of the separative ignorance, which makes us see and feel things, not in their essential unity, but as distinct units and divided fragments. This is a false seeing and a false feeling. We do not see the truth, because we do not see the whole of things. The discords of the surface elements disturb or depress us, because we do not perceive the underlying harmony. And when we travel beyond the triple separative consciousness, we enter by trance into a state of absorbed immersion in the unconditioned Infinite, which excludes all awareness of the normal waking state .and its movements. Both of these states are mutually exclusive, the ksara¹ and the aksara,² and a simultaneous possession of them has been held to be extremely difficult,,

¹, ² Mobile and immobile

Page 60

if not impossible. But if God possesses them together in Himself, it stands to reason that a perfect union with Him must naturally make us participate in that simultaneous possession. What then is the secret of God's possession. of both?

The supreme Divine includes and transcends the ksara¹ and the aksara² at the same time, because He is greater than the universe of His own creation and "higher than the highest Immutable". He takes His stand upon the plane of the Truth-Consciousness, the rta-cit of the Vedic description, the plane of the Truth, the Right and the Vast, which is the eternal home of unity and harmony. Basing this plane of the creative Truth-consciousness is His own being of Sat, Chit and Ananda, which is the ultimate definition of the utter and absolute Ineffable. Below are the worlds of His becoming, of flux and formation and manifold self-expression. It is this plane of the all-creating and all-governing Truth-consciousness, called the Supermind by Sri Aurobindo, that is the secret of the fusion and unity of all the aspects and attributes of Brahman, and the final harmonisation of all universal opposites. It alone permits of a full realisation of the catuspāda or integral Brahman without causing any exclusiveness of concentration on the part of our being, or an abeyance of any layer of its consciousness or movement of its force. This all-comprehending Supermind is the principal target of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo.

¹, ² Mobile and immobile

Page 61

THE ASCENT TO THE SUPERMIND—THE FIRST AIM

The foremost aim of the Integral Yoga being the Super- mind, it cannot rest satisfied with any realisation short of the very highest and widest which the Supermind alone can give. It accepts and profits by all important wayside experiences: the Sânkhya experience of detached freedom, the silence of the Nirvana of Buddhism, the unfathomable peace of the immanent Immutable, or the thrilled power of the universal Divine, but it proceeds beyond all these to the great goal of its difficult endeavour—the solar illumination and all-harmonising unity of the creative Super- mind. It is not by trance or an exclusive awakening in the depths or on the heights of the being, accompanied by a partial or complete sleep of the surface parts and a temporary suspension of their natural movements, that it ascends towards its goal; its process is rather one of inclusion and synthesis, and a raising of the integrated being of man into the glories of the Supermind. It insists on an increasing expansion of the waking human consciousness, and its ascent beyond the mind, beyond even the spiritual ranges of the mind, to that plane where Sachchidânanda stands as at once the transcendent Absolute and the timeless Creator of the universe. This ascent is a superhuman labour, impossible of achievement except by the Grace of the Divine; for, it involves an opening of the "higher layers of our being and an awakening into all the states and ranges of our consciousness in which we are at present fast asleep. According to ancient knowledge, the

Page 62

individual soul lives simultaneously in five sheaths or koshas, but in most human beings, it is awake only in the three lower sheaths—the material or the food sheath, the vital sheath, and the mental; it has yet to awake in the supra- mental or Vijnâna sheath, and the sheath of Bliss (ānanda- maya kosa). This awakening, unaccompanied by any ataxy or catalepsy in any part of the lower being, is what is known as ascent in the Integral Yoga. Sri Aurobindo says that as man has risen from the life-mind of the animal, wrapped up in the chaotic cravings and appetites of the lower nature, into the comparative clarity and control of the mind of reason and reflection, so one day, by the force of the evolutionary élan of his soul, he will rise to the Truth-conscious Supermind and live in its all-revealing Light. It is not stray sallies into the Spirit-skies that are meant by the term "ascent", in its widest sense, in the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. By ascent is meant, first, a climb to a higher plane of consciousness, and then a more or less secure establishment in its characteristic principle and power. Every such ascent gives a new poise to the being and, opening up sealed horizons of vision, imparts a new rhythm to its movements. But the culminating evolutionary ascent is that to the Supermind, in which the human consciousness undergoes a complete reversal and an unprecedented transformation. Instead of the mental ignorance, a plenary knowledge; instead of division, a perfect, manifold unity; instead of discord, an unassailable harmony; and instead of the besetting limitation? of the human existence, an unwalled infinity, are the basis of the

Page 63

life in the Supermind. All that the human soul yearns for, all that the human nature is meant to incarnate and reveal, and all that is the ultimate sense and destiny of the human birth are found in the ṛtam jyotiḥ or Truth-Light of the Supermind. If an ascent to a higher consciousness is a new birth, an ascent to the supramental consciousness is a birth into the Supernature, parā prakrti.

The ascent has two stages, initial and final. At the initial stage, the most developed part of the consciousness of the Yogi rises to the Higher Mind, which is "a luminous thought-mind, a mind of Spirit-born conceptual know- ledge." "An all-awareness emerging from the original identity, carrying the truths the identity held in itself, conceiving swiftly, victoriously, multitudinously, formulating and by self-power of the Idea effectually realising its conceptions, is the character of this greater mind of knowledge."¹ From the Higher Mind it rises to the Illumined Mind, which is a mind not of Truth-thought, but of Truth-vision. "Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the Spirit."² From the Illumined Mind it climbs to the Intuition, which is a "power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity."³ Its perception is "more than sight, more than conception:

¹ The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo.

² ibid.

³ ibid.

Page 64

it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence."¹ The next step of the ascent takes the, consciousness to the Overmind, which is "a principle of global knowledge." In it "intuition, illumined sight and thought enlarge themselves; their substance assumes a greater substantiality, mass, energy, their movement is more comprehensive, global, many-faceted, more wide and potent in its truth-force: the whole nature, knowledge, aesthesis, sympathy, feeling, dynamism become more catholic, all-understanding, all-embracing, cosmic, in- finite."² This is the highest that the human consciousness can achieve, sustained and aided by the divine Force;

but the next step beyond, the crucial step into the Truth, the Right, the Vast (satyam, rtam, brhat) van only be a gift of the divine Grace, a crowning boon and blessing of the supreme Mother, and never an achievement of the will and force of man. The ascent to the Supermind is an ascent to the eternal home of the supernal Light and Force, the all-comprehending and all-controlling status of Sachchidânanda, the sun-realm of Purushottama.

This initial ascent is answered at every step by a descent of the characteristic power of the plane attained, which performs a dual work of liberation by purification and transformation, on the one hand, and integration and sublimation, on the other. The liberation meant here is

¹ The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo.

² ibid.

Page 65

not only the liberation of the soul, but also of the whole nature in all its parts. But it is only a partial and preliminary work of liberation and transformation that can be done by this initial ascent.

The final ascent implies an irrevocable transformation, integration and sublimation of the whole being of man consequent upon a series of initial ascents and descents. It consummates the establishment of the entire conscious- ness of man upon the infinite pedestal of the Knowledge- Will of the Divine. It unites the human consciousness with the divine consciousness in a permanent, integral and dynamic identification. On the sun-bathed heights of the Supermind, the Yogi enjoys at once the invariable bliss of the transcendent Sachchidânanda, and the variable, multifarious delight of the cosmic existence. He walks. in the steps of the supreme Truth, and works by the Will of the supreme Force, and wears his humanity as a transparent vesture of the unveiled Divine.

This ascent to the Supermind or the Vijâna was attempted individually by some of the Vedic Rishis, but there is no record of a collective endeavour for such aa ascent, nor was any systematic descent of the Supermind for the transformation of the earth-consciousness envisaged in their aim. But the most outstanding feature of the aim of the Integral Yoga is that it seeks to raise the collective human consciousness into the divine consciousness of the Supermind, and bring the Light and Force of the latter for the transformation and divinisation of the whole nature of man, including even his surface

Page 66

physical nature and its movements. I shall consider the conditions of this ascent and its implications and results when I come to dwell upon the details of the Integral Yoga.

THE DESCENT OF THE SUPERMIND—THE SECOND AIM

We have seen that the ascent to the Supermind has to be achieved by a progressive heightening and expansion of our being and its manifold consciousness, and not by the traditional method of trance. The difficulty of this kind of waking ascent loomed so large before some of the Upanishadic Rishis that they declared that one could not pass through the gates of the Sun (meaning the Supermind or the supreme Gnosis) and yet retain the human body. But Sri Aurobindo asserts that all that is involved here in the Inconscience must necessarily evolve. As Matter, Life and Mind have evolved, so in due and inevitable course, the Supermind too must evolve and become the foundation and governing principle of the human consciousness. We shall live in the supramental consciousness and work with the supramental force, even as we now live in the mental consciousness and work with the mental force. The revolutionary nature of the transition from the mind to the Supermind need not paralyse our aspiration with doubt or distrust, for the transitions from stones or minerals to plants, and from plants to animals, and from animals to our present humanity have not been any the less revolutionary.

Page 67

But an ascent to the Supermind, however great an achievement it may be, cannot be the end of evolution, which is not only an emergence for ascension, but an emergence for manifestation. If the Superconscient has descended here and masked itself as the Inconscient, if the soul has come down into birth and assumed the nature of ignorance and limitation, it is only to bring down and reveal, in the triple term of the human consciousness, the infinite splendour of the Supreme. Here below the splendour is evolving, there above it is ever unveiled; the evolutionary urge from below is aided and accelerated, first by an intermittent and indirect influence bf the splendour above, and next by its direct and transforming descent below. The descent is an invasion of the finite by the Infinite, of the Ignorance by Knowledge, and of darkness and death by Light and

Immortality.

The descent of the Supermind into the human mind will transform the latter from a groping and stumbling seeker of knowledge into a crystalline channel of the divine Wisdom. Not by strenuous reasoning on the misleading data of the senses and the dubious output of imagination and inference, but by a direct intuitive vision and an intimate identity will the transformed mind know the truth, and order its faculties in accordance with its rhythm. Its thoughts will be truth-thoughts, its ideas will be shining formations of truth, its discrimination an assured perception of the distinctions of things whose diversity is but a prismatic presentation of the essential

Page 68

unity, and its imagination a true imaging of the various aspects of truth.

The descent of the Supermind into the human heart will transform all emotions into gleaming waves of bliss, and all feelings into feelings of love and devotion for the Divine in all beings and all things. The relations of life will not be abolished, but become widened and illumined figures of our infinite relations with the Divine, the diverse ways of our meeting and embracing Him in all.

Similarly the descent of the Supermind into the human life will liberate it from all desire and craving, and convert it into an instrument of unlimited force and enjoyment. Unhungering and unattached to anything, it will enjoy the delight of all its movements and all their results. And all its movements will be the unfaltering movements of the divine Will fulfilling itself in the terms of human life.

The body too, transformed by the supramental force, will be released forever from the obscure hold of the Subconscient and the Inconscient, and, based on Light, filled with Light, and moved by Light, become a flexible means of divine action.

MANIFESTATION OF GOD IN MATTER—THE THIRD AIM

The ascent to the Supermind and the descent of the Supermind lead inevitably to the third aim of the Integral Yoga—the full and unblemished manifestation of the Divine. Though we have called it the third aim, it is, in

Page 69

fact, the sole aim; but because by manifestation we mean the supramental manifestation and no other, we think we are justified in calling the ascent to the Supermind and the descent of the Supermind the first and second aims respectively. But the three together in an indissoluble unity form the great aim of the Integral Yoga. Manifestation or the divine self-revelation is the key to the riddle o¹ the world. A progressive manifestation starting from the creation of dumb Matter, and culminating in the perfect Epiphany in man is the ultimate sense and significance o terrestrial existence. The soul's wandering from birth to" birth and assumption of form after form is a long and complex preparation of its instrumental nature for the perfect manifestation of the Divine. Creation can have no other purpose, the aeonic travail of Nature can have no other goal. Delight? But it must be the varied delight of a harmonious self-expression, not the chaotic joy of an aimless drift. Knowledge? But it must be the all-seeing and all-: revealing Knowledge which guides with its impeccable¹ Will of Force the developing harmonies of the worlds. This supreme delight and this supreme Knowledge-Will, creative and consummative of the universal movements, are found only in the vijñāna or the Supermind, which is the eternal abode of the essential unity of existence, embracing and deploying its eternal multiplicity. Therefore, the supramental manifestation is the crown of terrestrial evolution, and it is this that is the definite aim of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. The Creator self-revealed in His supernal splendour in transformed and perfected

Page 70

human individualities, is the formula of the supramental manifestation.

The foregoing elaboration of the triple aim must have made it clear that it is not any kind of contact or union with the Divine that is regarded by Sri Aurobindo as the ultimate objective of his Integral Yoga. He does not think that the realisation of the immobile, impersonal Brahman is the highest realisation. This impersonal Brahman is at once immanent and transcendent, and can be realised as either, separately or both together; but the highest and widest realisation, what Sri Aurobindo calls integral, is that of the supreme Purusha who unifies in Himself all poises and aspects of His ineffable existence, and is higher than the Immutable, aksarādapicottamah. A union with the integral Brahman or Purushottama is possible only on the supramental plane, and can be made a constant experience of the whole human being by its integral supramental conversion; and this integral union is the secret of the perfect manifestation of the Divine in Matter. A definite integral aim and a definite integral path are offered to man for the fulfilment of his divine destiny upon earth.

Page 71