CWTVKS Volume 2

6) Integral Yoga and Physical Immortality

[Reply to a letter.]

The question is raised if the achievement of physical immortality comes within the purview of the Integral Yoga. It may be supposed that the qualifying word employed to distinguish the Yoga should suffice to point to the direction of the answer. But let us first make certain what is meant by physical immortality. Does it mean as is remarked here “a perfectly healthy state of the body and nothing else”? If it were to signify only that, then there are a hundred means within the easy reach of many who have no particular partiality for Yoga and can yet seek this “perfect health” whatever it may mean. Elixirs abound in plenty; there are herbs, there are tonics whose health-giving properties are considerable and are so believed and known from times immemorial. There is thus no need to have recourse to Yoga, at any rate to a spiritual Yoga, to achieve this end; perhaps, Hatha Yoga is the last word so far for building up a strong physique that can store up and reinforce vitality in abundance.

It is obvious that that is not the import of ‘Immortality’ in the context. It means much more than sound health or a longer span of life. When the text of the Upanishad to which reference is made in the letter says, “For him there is no disease, no old age, no death”, it certainly means what it says and it is wrong to take it as hyperbole or rhetorical. The ancients had the intuition that once the Yogin is freed from the meshes of Ignorance and Falsehood and is reborn into the Truth and Knowledge, his being pulsates with the vibrations of the higher consciousness and his body can become one with the Flame of Yoga and resist the forces of decay, decrepitude and death.

It may be asked if it is implied that a Yoga-Siddha lives in the same body for ever. That is not what immortality means even when it is applied to the material body. It means a conquest of, not mere control over, the forces that bring about mortality through the agency of disease and age that are the emissaries of death. Conquest of mortality cannot and does not mean a helpless encasement of the soul for centuries in the same physical body scarcely distinguishable from the Egyptian mummy. The possibility apart, what use can there be for a soul, a perfected soul, to cling to the same vesture for eternity?

Is it then the immortality of the soul, the self in the embodied being that is aimed at? That would be meaningless. For the soul, jiva, in the sense of Spirit in the embodied being, is immortal, even as the Divine, the Atman of All Existence, is. It is deathless; it dies not when the body dies. If then immortality refers neither to the body physical nor to the spiritual being that is the soul which is immortal by right, what does it mean, to what does it apply?

The question of immortality concerns the whole man, not merely his soul, the spiritual being, that is embodied in him though that is the most important, because it is the central, part in the totality of his being; nor does it apply only to the material body which is gross and openly exposed to the attacks of forces that bring about disease and death. It applies also to those intermediate and connecting links of life and mind, in between Spirit and Matter, represented in man by the embodied spirit and the material body. Here comes in the Integral Yoga. Its attempt is directed towards the integration of the whole being of man in all its component parts which are the warring elements in the system of the human field. This integration is necessary because that is the right and only cure for the ills of disintegration caused by the disharmony working havoc in the various members of what must be a harmonic unit, a well-organised human system. From this it would follow that mortality is the ultimate result of disharmony in the different elements that constitute the human system and that it is not an inalienable property of matter, but is the result wrought by universal forces which operate on the physical sheath; but the gross body after all is just one part, though the basic part, taking the place of a pedestal in the world of Matter, on which the whole human structure is built. It is necessary, then, to note that before the forces of illness that are the messengers of mortality become tangible experience of the body, they were already active, using mostly the life-forces and to some extent the thought-forces as well to yield the result of the disharmonising influences to be borne by the physical sheath of the human soul.

How to combat these forces is the question. The Integral Yoga proceeds on the basis that there is a higher realm of Truth, Light, Power, Consciousness, above this mortal plane, while the latter is riddled with falsehood, suffused with darkness, subject to a many sided incapacity and ignorance. Something of that higher region can, through Yoga, be invoked to come down and set right the disorder and found here in the human being the rule of the Higher Consciousness and the Supreme Power. This is the sole and ultimate remedy for all human ills. A fairly good health of body, a large capacity of life, a wide mind, an awakened soul are all certainly favourable conditions for the Yoga Force to act on the human being. But ideal conditions to start the Sadhana are usually rare. But once it is started, whichever part is more developed than the rest receives the benefit more as a matter of course. But a good start, the true beginning, is possible only when the soul, the spiritual something that is at the core, which is central and radical in the human being, is awakened to the call of the higher life and soars high for the Light and Power of the Divine Being above the mortal mind and body and life.

The awakening of the soul is of course the cumulative effect of previous efforts in this life or other lives. But usually it comes at the touch of the Supreme Guide, by the Divine Grace directly or through the human representative of the Divine. Spiritual in essence, one in spirit with the Divine deep within itself, the soul can rise to the higher altitudes and come in direct contact with the Divine Splendour above; it can also receive the Divine in itself, in the heart, which is not the same as the emotional mind, but the secret chamber within for the Divine communion. The soul that can rise to the higher consciousness, to the plane of the Immortal Light, rises also above the mortal ignorance and falsehood, and can live independent of the mental coverings of all kinds that are charged with sensational impressions and thinkings, independent of the vital sheaths that are pierced through with desires and passions and other forces of darkness, independent also of the outermost sheath that is the gross body of the elements. The soul thus shakes off these coils of mortality that dominate the life of man, and lives in the Divine, in the higher consciousness, while the body may still continue to be subject to the forces of disorder that engulf the life and mind and penetrate into the very cells of the physical mechanism. The soul indeed wins immortality for itself, of which it is truly said in the Scripture which is cited in the letter, ‘one who is fit for embodiment in the higher worlds of His creations.'

But the aim of the Integral Yoga is not this immortality, though this great realisation constitutes a firm basis for its fruition. The immortality of the soul has to extend and apply itself to the members—mind, life, body—that have formed into and shaped the embodiment of the Spirit here on earth. Once this embodied spirit, the soul, emerges from the darkness and mortality below into the Light and Immortality above, it lives in conscious union with the Divine, and in the higher consciousness realises the unity of existence, the Divine behind all that exists, lives and thinks. And in this realisation, the Power and Light that flow from the Higher Consciousness come down into the mind, widening and universalising it so that it may reflect the Truth, the Immortal Spirit; to the life-sheath that links the mind to the body, enlarging and strengthening it so that it may cast off the dross of narrow and petty clingings to mortal existence; to the material body, making it strong and supple and in a way subtly luminous so that it may throw out the elemental forces of inertia and darkness.

The aim, then, of the Yoga is achieved when the soul that is in constant contact with the Divine turns with the vision, the Grace of the Divine High above, to the mortal instrument of thinking life in the body, calling upon the powers of the Immortal, the True Light, the True Knowledge, to take charge of the whole system so that all the parts may be put in right working order, harmony displacing disharmony, a natural effortless health unseating the forces of illness, an integrated finished product becoming a true and fit vessel and instrument and centre for God's immortal life on Earth.

This in terms of the Integral Yoga, is what is meant by Immortality in the physical sense also. It is an all-round immortality that is meant by the term. Integral Immortality is the aim of Integral Yoga. This Immortality is not accomplished until all the forces that are the causes of disintegration and death are not merely combated and controlled, but conquered. For Death comes not only through illness caused by the disorderly behaviour of vital desires and bodily life, not only through aging which is the work of time, but also through the workings of the hidden forces that bring about what we call accidents. To combat and conquer the last, demands the free unobstructed workings of the Higher Consciousness from the Plane of the Immortal. The other immediate causes of death may be combated and only controlled and therefore their effects postponed by a judicious handling of life, by mechanical devices and breath-control as are done in Hatha Yoga, or by some other means, including the aid of occult powers to some extent. The Integral Yoga resorts to the use of occult powers in its process to ward off many an evil including physical illnesses of many kinds that beset the path. But that is not the same as the working of the powers of Immortality which is possible only when the Higher Consciousness finds easy access to the lower plane. But Yoga cannot and does not wait mutely, because its force is dynamic, for the soul's hour of Divine realisation in order to proceed logically from above and bring down the Higher Light and Knowledge to the mind, strength and dynamic to the life, roundedness and lightness and harmony of all the parts to the physique. Therefore without set rules which can apply on all occasions to all Sadhakas, the Yoga proceeds with its work and deals with each as the occasion demands.

It must be noted that when immortality becomes an accomplished fact, it means that the soul with all the elements of its embodiment lives for ever in the Divine, in the Truth-consciousness, in the Immortal Light, one with the Divine Will and Knowledge. The Integral Yogin is free to live and move, and have or leave the particular embodiment at will, but is not bound or compelled to leave it by the forces that are now conquered but which were the causes of mortality.

This is just a sketch—more cannot be attempted here—of the broad lines of Yoga in its application to the question of immortality. The significance of ‘physical immortality’, then, is this that it is not a separate achievement of physical perfection, siddhi, but forms part of the integral immortality to which the Yoga applies itself. The aim is not to keep the body alive and intact for geological ages, but to make it fit to express the Divine intention in this creation. The material body therefore has to receive and assimilate the Divine substance of immortality, Amrita, from above and so change itself that it can hold the supreme life-force and become a living point of intimate contact for the Divine in His terrestrial manifestation.

The Yoga is of course called Integral Yoga, and there are other terms used to indicate the character, aim or means of the Yoga. But it is the substance that matters and there is not much in names. Yet there is very much in one name; and an humble worshipper at the shrine of this Yoga, I prefer to call it the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, for his is the perception of this truth, his is the discovery of the way to realise it, his is the kindly light that leads. The road may be long, but the longest distance starts with a single step. The faithful pilgrim who is steadfast and treads the path knows no failure, for even failures are bricks in the edifice of success. Every step taken forward is a gain. Every one may not meet with a fuller measure of success; still the ground covered is a precious acquisition. Never indeed does one come to grief who does the good, and that is auspicious:

Na hi kalyanakrit kashcit durgatim tata gacchati.