The Destiny of the Body

Foreword

As the Editor of Mother India, Monthly Review of Culture, published from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, I was happy to bring out most of the essays that make up this book. It is not always that an editor comes across plentiful evidence of an

understanding that grows bright Gazing on many truths.

Reading the series of studies contributed by Jugal Kishore Mukherjee I could not help being exhilarated not only by the scholarly thoroughness of its knowledge but also by the wide-ranging vitality of its insight.

The theme is one of the most challenging that the mind of man has faced: the evolutionary prospects of the human body. The human body is a bundle of opposites. It combines an ingenious system of interrelated life-serving functions with a fragility of overall balance seeming to invite death through many doors. It has an in-built process of growth, maturity and decline on the one hand while on the other it has the instinct of an interminable existence as if it wanted to wage constant war against its own mortality. Often it has harboured the mood in which

Life is a long preparedness for death,

but with equal frequency it has sought for an elixir which would banish all frailty from the flesh. Again, although its brain is only one of its numerous organs, it has a concentrated poise there by which it can ponder and affect its own organic processes as well as look behind or beyond them. This curious detachment and freedom shows it to be both subject and object at the same time and therefore the symbolic expression of some truth of physical being which is not exhausted by the present possibilities of living and conscious matter

. There is here a sense of

Infinite riches in a little room —

---

riches that could transfigure the limited-looking composite of solids, liquids and gases that ordinarily passes as the human body. Philosophers have attempted to understand the self-view and world-view from the brain-box as the result of a presence other than physical within the confines of that composite. They have also tried to explain away the search for the elixir of eternal youth as a misplacement of extra-terrestrial longings within a terrestrial context. "Not here and now but elsewhere and afar is your fulfilment": such has been the refrain of accredited wisdom. And indeed the masters of spirituality have found and revealed the Immortal who abides in the mortal and can fight free of his trammels. But a persistent voice rises from what appears to be mortal, crying: "I too am a god waiting to be found and revealed. Who shall free me from the disguise that disfigures my immortality ?"

Jugal Kishore Mukherjee brings the legitimacy of this utterance home to us by various interesting and illuminating routes. His exposition is a reminder to the champions of the spiritual life that the inner divinity is meant not to tear away from the outer form but to awaken that form to a natural kinship with it. It is also a reminder to the champions of the physical life that the ultimate source of this life's full flowering lies in that inner divinity and its awakening touch on matter.

Mukherjee's double reminder catches in a fine crystallisation of the intellect the light which Sri Aurobindo sheds in the closing couplets of two sonnets: The Guest and The Inner Sovereign. As I have said in the course of some notes on Sri Aurobindo's poems, these couplets —

He hears the blows that shatter Nature's house:

Calm sits he, formidable, luminous

and

Nature in me one day like Him shall sit

Victorious, calm, immortal, infinite —

summarise most pointedly, by a technique of varying sound-patterns and a few repeated expressions, the twofold movement necessary to the Aurobindonian Yoga: first the discovery of what the one poem calls "my deep deathless being" which is absolutely independent and then the forceful extension of the inner immortality to what the other poem terms "the blind material sheath"

---

which has so long been accepted as a thrall to limitation and imperfection, mutability and death.

The titles of the paired sonnets are very significant. The Guest indicates that the Divine is a grand sojourner, safe by the power of His eternity, in a house not His own, as it were. He lives and acts in it but is yet aloof as well as immune from its gradual breakdown at the hands of Time. The Inner Sovereign suggests that this same mighty resident is also a master of the house, capable of rebuilding and transforming it into a Nature-image of the perfect Spirit-reality.

Mukherjee's book should serve to carry to the all-scrutinising mind typical of our scientific age the conviction of the body's divine destiny.

Pondicherry, 19.10.1975

K. D. Sethna

(Amal Kiran)

Introduction

This book with an unusual title is offered to the readers with a sense of genuine humility. The author has no pretensions to act the role of an oracle for the future, nor does he seek to put forward his views and reflections in a superstitiously dogmatic way. What he sincerely wishes is to share with kindred spirits the very interesting findings that he has come across in course of his long researches in an area of knowledge rarely touched in the past. The author will feel his labour amply rewarded if he succeeds in communicating to at least a few among his readers the sense of thrill and sustained interest that he himself felt while exploring this untrodden field.

The title of the book may at first appear to be somewhat strange; but the content that we have sought to pack into it may very well seem absolutely preposterous. We earnestly request our readers not to pass any precipitate judgment but glance, instead, through any few pages chosen at random and see for themselves if this book contains or not anything interesting to engage their attention.

The author may be excused if he feels like introducing himself before his readers. He is a man of science by formal education and training; his fascination for metaphysics, the science of sciences, has been deep and entire even from his young days; finally, he is a humble seeker of the spirit walking with faltering steps on the path of self-perfection shown by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. With these meagre credentials — if they are credentials at all — he has ventured to approach and study in depth the evolutionary world-vision of these great spiritual Masters, in so far as it bears upon the ultimate glorious transformation of man's body and his physical life upon earth.

As is by now well-known, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo has for its objective among other things:

(i)to make spiritual experiences real to the whole consciousness of man including that of his outer being;

(ii)not only to experience the truth subjectively and in one's inner consciousness alone, but to manifest it even in full activity;

(iii)an integral possession of the integrality of the Divine in

---

the life of this world and not merely beyond it.

In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "It is the object of my Yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the Divine Truth ana its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a Yoga of world-shunning asceticism, but of divine life.... It aims at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object."¹

Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo asserts emphatically: "I am concerned with the earth, not with the worlds beyond for their own sake; it is a terrestrial realisation that I seek and not a flight to distant summits."²

Thus, this Yoga of Integral Self-Perfection as envisaged by Sri Aurobindo aims not at a release from embodied existence nor at a departure out of the terrestrial manifestation into some supraterrestrial world of heavenly bliss and spiritual enjoyment, but at a supreme change of earthly life and existence and at a divine fulfilment of life here upon earth. Also, "the object sought after is not an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to be gained for the earth-consciousness here."³

Now, since Matter is the foundation of all evolutionary efflorescence, our body obviously assumes a great importance in the total scheme of the achievement — the divine fulfilment of earthly life — that Sri Aurobindo envisages.

No doubt, the human body with its anatomy and physiology is a marvellous product of biological evolution. The anterior shifting of the eyes coupled with the adoption of the vertical station, the complete freeing of the hands from the task of locomotion, the possession of a fine array of ten supple fingers, the unique endowment of the human cerebrum, the greatest tool yet developed by Nature in her long course of organic evolution — all these and many other unique attributes have turned man into the summit product of evolution so far.

But are we not at the same time poignantly aware that in many of its basic features and dispositions the human body and man's physical being are not a whit better than any other animal body or existence? The grossness and limitations of our present physical

¹ Sri Aurobindo on Himself, pp. 99, 109.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 91.

³ Sri Aurobindo on Himself, p. 109.

---

life, the various inconveniences of our animal body, its proneness to diseases and to the decaying process, its constantly recurring subjection to fatigue and inertia, its total dependence for its very viability on material alimentation procured from outside, its final dissolution and disappearance at death, also its unregenerate earth-nature and impulses and appetites that tend to drag down man's soaring spirit and frustrate the winged visions of his soul — all these seriously detract from the glory of man the mental-spiritual being.

But the question is: Are these limitations and impediments of the body to be considered as something permanent and insuperable?

The Seer-Vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother assures us on the contrary that the disabilities of the body and the animal frailties of physical nature need not and will not be there for all time to come. For, the terrestrial manifestation being progressive and evolutionary, the present spectacle of earth-life afflicted with its heavy load of miseries and indignities cannot in any way represent the unalterable last act of the drama. Thus, with the further elaboration of this evolutionary process leading to the descent and concomitant emergence in earth-nature, of a supreme power and light of the spirit, of what Sri Aurobindo calls Supermind or the divine Gnosis, all these obscurities and ambiguities will be radically transcended and the transfigured human body will shine in the glories of a 'pure and spiritualised physical existence'. "The transformation of the physical being might follow [an] incessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a divine life on the earth something of [the] highest greatness and glory of the self-manifesting Spirit."¹

At this point the critic may interject: Is it 'practical politics' after all ? As an ideal it may be alluring, but has it not been posited that at their best, ideals are fictions, being no more than abstract, purely conceptual absolutes; and at its worst, what is an ideal if not 'a malady of the mind' and 'a bright delirium of speech and thought' ? Anyway, has not evolution come to an end with the appearance on the earth-scene of man the mental being?

But Sri Aurobindo is unequivocal and emphatic when he asserts that the divine destiny of the body as envisaged above

¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation,p. 74.

---

is going to be the natural, logical and inevitable result of our future evolution out of our present human ignorance and imperfection into a far greater consciousness of the Spirit.

One may pertinently ask at this point: What will be the nature of this future evolution of man as contemplated by Sri Aurobindo? For, has it not been contended by some biologists that physical evolution has been almost completely short-circuited by man as applied to himself, although it is quite imaginable that social, emotional and mental evolution may carry him on to ever greater complexity and awareness¹?

But a further — may be, virtually infinite — extension of the social, emotional and mental capacities and capabilities, is that all that is in store for the human race? Can there not be a far more glorious future for our wonderful species ? Can there not be a further phase of evolution ? Indeed, may we not pertinently raise the query: just as the inorganic phase of evolution was followed by the biological phase wherein 'life invaded the material sheath', just as towards the close of the biological phase the cerebral cortex began to be elaborated and with it 'earth-plasm first quivered with the illumining Mind', just as again at the end of the biological phase, with the development of the cerebrum, evolution started on a new course when 'man was moulded from the original brute', similarly now, with the attainment of sufficient maturity by man, may not the evolutionary process very well turn another leaf and pass on to an altogether new phase: the supramental sector of world-manifestation? For surely man as he is now constituted is too imperfect a creature to be the final product of evolutionary labour.

No doubt, man is the crown of all that has been achieved so far, but creation's travail cannot be finally justified with him; he can by no means be Nature's last possible poise:

"And if this were all and nothing more were meant, If what now seems were the whole of what must be, If this were not a stade through which we pass On our road from Matter to eternal Self, ... Well might interpret our mind's limited view Existence as an accident in Time,

¹ See G. R. Harrison, What Man May Be: The Human Side of Science, p. 125.

---

Illusion or phenomenon or freak."¹

Who is then there to answer our query? Least of all, the scientist. For, even if he may not become positively hostile and vociferous in his opposition to our suggestion of the fourth phase of evolution, the supramental, he will certainly remain mum over this question, for he cannot possibly venture to overstep his domain of immediately verifiable empirical facts. But there is needed, indeed, such an adventurous probe into the future — may be into the heart of the imminent future — which stands at our doorstep with its golden harvest of a marvellous Dawn. So we have to leave here the scientists' findings and fall back upon the vision of the seer. And whom else can we approach for the necessary light if not him who has not only demonstrated the theoretical possibility, nay the inevitability of this supramental phase of evolution, but actually made it his life's mission to hasten and actualise the glorious day when

"The world's darkness had consented to Heaven-light

And God needed no more the Inconscient's screen."²

Now, what is the destiny of man as revealed by this supreme prophet of super-humaniy ? According to the vision of Sri Aurobindo, man's importance in the world is that he gives to it that development of consciousness in which its transfiguration by a perfect self-discovery becomes possible. The real sense of man's progress does not lie in a mere restatement in different terms of what physical Nature has already accomplished. Nor can the ideal of human life be simply the animal repeated on a higher scale of mentality. Indeed, "Man has seen that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; the evolutionary oestrus is there in his parts of mind and life, the aspiration to exceed himself is delivered and articulate within him: he has become conscious of a soul, discovered the self and spirit. In him, then, the substitution of a conscious for a subconscious evolution has become conceivable and practicable, and it may well be concluded that the aspiration, the urge, the persistent endeavour in him is a sure sign of Nature's will for a higher

¹ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 166.

² Ibid., Book X, Canto IV, p. 664.

---

way to fulfilment, the emergence of a greater status."¹

And what is then that greater status ? "The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has, it is said, worked out man. Man himself may well be a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious cooperation she wills to work out the superman, the god. Or shall we not say, rather, to manifest God? For if evolution is the progressive manifestation by Nature of that which slept or worked in her, involved, it is also the overt realisation of that which she secretly is."² And here Sri Aurobindo sounds a note of warning to the race: "Mind is only a middle term of consciousness, the mental being can only be a transitional being. If, then, man is incapable of exceeding mentality, he must be surpassed and supermind and superman must manifest and take the lead of the creation. But if his mind is capable of opening to what exceeds it, then there is no reason why man himself should not arrive at supermanhood or at least lend his mentality, life and body to an evolution of that greater term of the spirit manifesting in Nature."³

But does not the goal held up by Sri Aurobindo seem to be too good and too glorious a prospect for humanity to realise? Indeed, resistance to this 'new Dawn's call' to build up divine manhood here upon earth itself may possibly come from two different ranks of humanity: from the traditional spiritualist as well as from the rationalist. The materialist basing himself on the past animal evolution of mankind ventures to equate man to nothing more than a glorified animal. He tries to explain away all of man's behaviour as an ingenious extrapolation of animal propensities. Is man, after all, anything but a somewhat complex physico-chemical machinery and processes and their epiphenomenon ?

The orthodox spiritualist may be no less dogmatic in his misgivings. To him the ideal of supermanhood is nothing but perverse and presumptuous on the part of man. For firstly, according to him, the Absolute can and need have no purpose in manifestation except perhaps the delight of an objectless Lila, world-play; secondly, even if we admit that there is an evolution, then, man must be the last stage of this process, because through him there

¹ The Life Divine (Centenary Edition), p. 843.

² Ibid., pp. 3-4.

³ Ibid., p. 847.

---

can be the rejection of embodied existence upon earth and a final escape or deliverance into some supraterrestrial plane of existence and experience otherwise termed 'heaven', or perhaps a dissolution into some utter and ineffable Nirvana.

Sri Aurobindo has discussed in detail and refuted all these arguments. He has proved that to say so is to miss the whole meaning of the terrestrial evolution. In fact, a progressive spiritual unfolding upon earth, as distinguished from an escape from this cosmic Lila, is the secret truth and significance of our material embodiment and it is fundamentally an evolution of consciousness that has been taking place in Nature. "If it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and apparent Nature is secret God, then the manifestation of the divine in himself and the realisation of God within and without are the highest and most legitimate aim posible to man upon earth."¹ And Sri Aurobindo is emphatic on this point that even if man refuses his high spiritual fate, 'yet shall the secret truth in things prevail'.

One further question may arise here. The past history of the evolutionary process upon earth testifies to its extremely slow and tardy progression extending over millions of years. So, even if theoretically valid, the dream of the emergence, on the earth-scene, of divine manhood and of a divinely transfigured body may perhaps be realised only at an indeterminate distant future, may be at the end of thousands of years from now. In that case any discussion of the divine destiny of the body is premature to say the least and therefore bereft of any immediate importance or relevance.

Here again Sri Aurobindo assures us that this need not be so. For it has to be noted that "the appearance of human body and mind on the earth marks a crucial step, a decisive change in the course and process of the evolution; it is not merely a continuation of the old lines. Up till this advent of a developed thinking mind in Matter, evolution had been effected not by the self-aware aspiration, intention, will or seeking of the living being, but subconsciously or subliminally by the automatic operation of Nature."² But with the emergence of man "the evolution has now become conscious and its method and steps need not be altogether

¹ The Life Divine, p. 4.

² Ibid., p. 843.

---

of the same character as when it was subconscious in its process. The integral knowledge, since it must result from a change of consciousness, can be gained by a process in which our will and endeavour have a part, in which they can discover and apply their own steps and method: its growth in us can proceed by a conscious self-transformation."¹ And this is bound to accelerate immensely the whole process of evolution: what would have normally required thousands of years may now be attempted and accomplished in a few centuries' time, if not in a few decades.

Thus, when we speak of the divine transfiguration of the body, to be brought about in the course of the future evolution of man, we are not indulging in a child soul's phantasy or its demands for arbitrary miracles nor are we visualising any impossible chimera that goes beyond or outside all forces of Nature and somehow becomes automatically effective. What we are contemplating is the control and conquest of the prevailing determinism of our bodily system by the higher determinism of the supernal grades and powers of our being and consciousness. Indeed, the desired transformation is going to be attempted through the action, upon body and matter, of a progressively growing consciousness acquired through the agency of Integral Yoga and rising higher and higher in the scale of its luminous potency till one reaches the absolute potency of what Sri Aurobindo calls Supramental Gnosis. Thus, it has become quite conceivable and practicable that, with man's conscious collaboration, "it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body."²

The Mother, the life-long collaborator of Sri Aurobindo in their herculean task of preparing the world and mankind for the supramental phase of evolution, is quite specific on this point. She says:

"We want an integral transformation, the transformation of the body and all its activities.... But when this was told to people, many thought that it was possible to transform the body and its activities without troubling oneself at all with what was happening within — which is of course not quite true. Before you take up the work of physical transformation, which is of all things the

¹The Life Divine, pp. 655-56.

²Ibid., p. 844. (Italics ours)

---

most difficult, you must have your inner consciousness firmly, solidly established in the Truth

Here are her forthright words uttered on another occasion: "You must begin from within. I have said a hundred times, you must begin from above. You must purify the higher region and then purify the lower."² Sri Aurobindo has warned us: "The transformation to which we aspire is too vast and complex to come at one stroke; it must be allowed to come by stages. The physical change is the last of these stages and is itself a progressive process. The inner transformation cannot be brought about by physical means either of a positive or a negative nature. On the contrary, the physical change itself can only be brought about by a descent of the greater supramental consciousness into the cells of the body."³

We should note that Sri Aurobindo is no speculative philosopher. He is not satisfied merely with painting in rainbow colours a gleaming picture of the ideal. He is a supreme scientist of life who proceeds to realise the ideal in himself and then to build up an integral method for others to follow. And what is the efficacy of this preconised method called the Integral Yoga of Self-Perfection? Well, let us listen to him (the unbiased rationalist might get an abundance of conviction from his significant utterance):

"I must remind you that I have been an intellectual myself and no stranger to doubts — both the Mother and myself have had one side of the mind as positive and as insistent on practical results and more so than any Russell can be.... We know well what is the difference between a subjective experience and a dynamic outward-going and realising Force. So although we have faith, (and who ever did anything great in the world without having faith in his mission or the Truth at work behind him?) we do not found ourselves on faith alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane.... I know that the Supramental Descent is inevitable — I have faith in view of my experience

¹ Bulletin, Vol. XV, No. 4, p. 51.

² See Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 102.

³ Letters on Yoga, p. 1473.

---

that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age."¹

To know more about this supremely potent dynamic status of spiritual consciousness that Sri Aurobindo has termed as Supermind, the readers are referred to relevant pages of this book.

Now, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have always declared that the earth-conditions are now ready to receive the Supramental Light and Force. In fact, the present-day ills of humanity are only the birth-throes of a new Dawn. The objective conditions favourable for the Descent are already there. But this in itself is a necessary but by no means sufficient factor. For the Supramental Descent to occur there must be someone to cooperate fully and occultly with the process and accelerate the march of evolution. What would have normally taken thousands of years should now be encompassed in a century or so, and this has precisely been the mission of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Single-mindedly they have engaged themselves in this supreme task for the last half a century; they have reared up step after step the ladder of transcendence and silently worked for the day when the process of evolution will take the next stride and the new Dawn will be heralded. They have not trumpeted their mission, for in the Mother's inimitable words: "The greatest victories are the least noisy. The manifestation of a new world is not proclaimed by beat of drum."

It was in 1932 that Sri Aurobindo wrote the afore-mentioned letter expressing his sense of certainty as regards the Supramental Descent occurring in our own time. Later on, in 1956 to be precise, the Mother declared that what he and she had assiduously worked to manifest in the field of earthly evolution, is not any more a mere possibility lying in the womb of distant future but a realised fact. Her actual words are: "The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no longer a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it."²

But the skeptic may raise his eye-brows and interject: "But where is the proof of this momentous event! I do not see any signs of it!"

¹ Sri Aurobindo on Himself, pp. 468-69. (Italics ours)

² The Mother's Message on April 24, 1956.

---

Quite so; for in the logic of things he has first to awaken his inner eye before he. can expect to take cognisance of this tremendous event; otherwise it would not be supermind but something which could be very well seized and comprehended by mind.

But this does not mean that this supramental Manifestation will have no effect on the visible field of evolution and will remain for ever aloof on the high peaks of mystic halo. Far from it; for it is no static knowledge that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have sought. After all, they have tried, through their unparalleled Sadhana, to make the Supermind overtly operative in earth-nature, because they have seen in their spiritual vision that it is the Supramental Gnosis that alone possesses a world-transfiguring potency capable of bringing the evolutionary march to its cherished goal. Has not Sri Aurobindo declared that "power of self is the sign of the divinity of self, — a powerless spirit is no spirit" ?¹ "If Knowledge brings not power to change the world,"² then "truth and knowledge are an idle gleam."³

And the Mother has reminded us: "We are right in the midst of this period of transition where the two [worlds — the old and the new] are entangled, — where the other still persists all-powerful and entirely dominating the ordinary consciousness, but where the new one quietly slips in, yet very modest, unnoticed — unnoticed to the point that outwardly it doesn't disturb very much, for the time being, that in the consciousness of the majority of men it is quite imperceptible. And still it is working, growing — till the moment it will be strong enough to assert itself visibly.... We are present at the birth of a new world, quite young, quite weak — not in its essence but in its outer manifestation — not yet recognised, not even felt, denied by the majority. But it is there, making an effort to grow up, quite sure of the result."⁴

Thus we shall see that as days pass by, Supermind or the dynamic Truth-Consciousness of Sachchidananda that has overtly emerged in the field of evolution to become from now on the governing principle there, will make its presence increasingly more manifest even to the outward eye. In fact, this supramental descent and intervention has ushered in an age of miracles — miracles, we repeat, to a mind

¹The Life Divine, p. 1024.

²³ Lines from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.

⁴ Questions and Answers, 1957 & 1958, pp. 129-30.

---

"That sees the empiric fact as settled law",¹

forgetting that so-called laws are nothing but long-standing "habits of the world" which can very well be changed, if the Spirit's self-vision and self-determination so will it.

The manifestation of Supermind in Earth-Nature has indeed marked a decisive transition from the evolution in Ignorance to a conscious evolution. The divine potency of this supreme Power of the Spirit has brought in an element of greatly accelerated speed in the whole process of evolutionary progression upon earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"The increased rapidity is possible ... because the conscious participation of the inner being is there and the power of the Super-nature is already at work in the half-transformed lower nature, so that the steps which would otherwise have had to be taken tentatively in the night of Inconscience or Ignorance can now be taken in an increasing light and power of Knowledge. The first obscure material movement of the evolutionary Force is marked by an aeonic graduality; the movement of life progress proceeds slowly but still with a quicker step, it is concentrated into the figure of millenniums; mind can still further compress the tardy leisureliness of Time and make long paces of the centuries; but when the conscious spirit intervenes, a supremely concentrated pace of evolutionary swiftness becomes possible.... An involved rapidity of the evolutionary course swallowing up the stages can ... come in when the power of the conscious spirit has prepared the field and the supramental Force has begun to use its direct influence."²

Now, this process of supramental transformation of the inner being and consciousness of man is bound to have its effect and repercussion on his physical being and system as well. The ascent of the individual from the physical-mental to the supramental consciousness must inevitably open out the possibility of a corresponding ascension in the grades of substance acting as the outermost vehicle, vāhana, of the transformed embodied being. "The conquest of the lower principles by Supermind and its liberation

¹A line from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.

²The Life Divine, p. 932

---

of them into a divine life and divine mentality must also render possible a conquest of our physical limitations by the power and principle of supramental substance."¹

Sri Aurobindo assures us that there will no doubt remain a material base for the New Body to appear in course of the contemplated supramental transformation, but it will be 'a new earth with divine structure', having for its stuff the supramental substance and for its organisation a divine functioning, in which the Earth-Mother will finally reveal her unshrouded supernal splendour. Thus will appear on the terrestrial plane 'a divinely human body' about which Sri Aurobindo has prophesied :

"Even the body shall remember God,

Nature shall draw back from mortality

And Spirit's fires shall guide the earth's blind force;

..........

The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze

And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face,

..........

These senses of heavenly sense grow capable,

The flesh and nerves of a strange ethereal joy

And mortal bodies of immortality.

..........

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine."²

But does this goal of the emergence of a 'glorious body', 'corps glorieux' seem to be too good a prospect to be at all actualised even in some remote future ? — far be it to speak of an imminent realisation. But, if this conscious self-evolutionary attempt, on the part of some pioneers, to score a total victory over all the present limitations of man's body and bodily life, looks like an act of folly, we may only quote what the Mother herself has said in another context — that of the physical conquest of death:

"That seems a madness. But all new things have appeared as madness until they become realities. The hour is come for this madness to be realised."³

¹The Life Divine, p. 261.

²Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, pp. 707, 709, 710, 711.

³Bulletin, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 85.

---

But let us clearly note that this seeking after a perfected physical body, this yearning for the release from the frailties and disabilities of our actually elaborated physical existence and incarnate life are not in any way related to the finite being's blind and ignorant, obscure and egoistic attachment to terrestrial corporeal life, or to the limited creature's fearful shrinking from the doom of physical decadence and ultimate dissolution.

Then, why do the Sadhakas of the Integral Yoga seek to collaborate consciously with the supramental process of evolution in the building up of a divinely transfigured New Mind, New Life and New Body upon earth? It is because we believe that a perfect self-expression of the Spirit is the object of terrestrial existence and it is a perfect and divinised life for which the earth-nature is in travail and this very seeking persistently maintained is a sure sign of the Divine Will in Nature. Indeed, the soul of significance of the whole process of earthly evolution stretching over millions of years can only be 'the revelation of Being in perfect Becoming'.

One more question remains to be answered. For, one may still point out that, after all, to-day or to-morrow, sooner or later, in the immediate future or at a far later date, one has to discard and leave behind the earthly embodiment: for, surely no one in his senses is going to assert that one will be bound to a not-to-be-discarded body for all eternity! In that case, why spend so much effort and labour on a vain attempt at the ushering in of a divinely transformed body ?

Here is Sri Aurobindo's rejoinder: "That is the argument of the Mayavadin to whom all manifestation is useless and unreal because it is temporary — even the life of the gods is of no use because it is in Time, not in the Timeless. But if manifestation is of any use, then it is worthwhile having a perfect manifestation rather than an imperfect one."¹

Here are some pertinent verses from Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri:

"Heaven in its rapture dreams of perfect earth,

Earth in its sorrow dreams of perfect heaven.

..........

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 1231.

---

Since God has made earth, earth must make in her God."¹

"O life, the life beneath the wheeling stars

For victory in the tournament with death,

For bending of the fierce and difficult bow,

For flashing of the splendid sword of God!

..........

Earth is the chosen place of mightiest souls;

Earth is the heroic spirit's battlefield,

The forge where the Arch-mason shapes his works."²

"Easy the heavens were to build for God,

Earth was his difficult matter, earth the glory

Gave of the problem and the race and strife."³

This, then, is the attitude of the Sadhakas of the Integral Yoga vis-à-vis the seeking after the perfection of the body and bodily life (kāyā-siddhi) including as its ultimate term the physical conquest over death as an outer physical symbol and sign of Spirit's total mastery over matter.

Now about this book. The series of essays comprising this research undertaking represents an honest attempt, for the 'sons of an intellectual age', to study in detail, in a few of its salient aspects, the divine transfiguration of the material body of man which is sure to come about in the future evolution of the race. We shall try to justify, on metaphysical as well as on scientific grounds, this glorious prospect of physical transformation and indicate in the light of the Supramental vision vouchsafed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, how far and in what way, the insistent problems of food and sleep, fatigue and inertia, disease and decay, sex and sensuality, and finally the sphinx-like problem of death and dissolution are going to be solved in the transformed divine body to appear in time.

We shall incidentally seek to find out — in however meagre and suggestive a measure — any corroborative evidence gleaned from the field of past biological evolution.

¹ Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, pp. 684, 93.

² Ibid., Book XI, Canto I, pp. 686-87.

³ Ibid., Book X, Canto IV, p. 653.

---

The painstaking investigation and search for necessary clues, extending over many months and culminating in the production of this book, necessitated the study of a couple of hundreds of books and periodicals. It is obvious that in the definitive preparation of the work, also to substantiate our thesis, we have drawn heavily upon the ideas and observations of numerous authors and thinkers, both ancient and modern, of the Orient as Well as of the Occident. We have cited the name of any particular author and given adequate references, each time we have quoted him or otherwise benefited from his findings.

It is my great privilege to record here my indebtedness to this galaxy of distinguished thinkers whose writings and researches have provided the sinews to the present work. The author craves the indulgence of any writer or publisher whose name he may have inadvertently forgotten to mention in the body of the book.

My deepest obligation is due to Mr. K.D. Sethna, the renowned Editor of the cultural monthly Mother India and a great poet, savant and authentic exponent of Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future, for agreeing to write a Foreword to this book.

How can I adequately express my gratitude to revered Nolinida (Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta, the life-long companion and the foremost disciple of Sri Aurobindo) for invoking on the most solemn and significant date, the seventeenth of November, the Blessings of the Mother for the author of this humble work?

August 15, 1975

JUGAL KISHORE MUKHERJEE

Part One

PROLEGOMENA

---

Chapter I

The Challenge

"Wilt thou claim immortality, O heart,

Crying against the eternal witnesses...

I only am eternal and endure....

I am a timeless Nothingness carrying all,...

I, Death, am He; there is no other God.

All from my depths are born, they live by death;

All to my depths return and are no more."

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book IX, Canto II, pp. 592-93)

"I bow not to Thee, O huge mask of Death,

Black lie of night to the cowed soul of man,

Unreal, inescapable end of things,

Thou grim jest played with the immortal spirit."

(Ibid, p. 588)

"Here a Mill and there a river, Each a glimpse and gone for ever!"¹: In these words Robert Louis Stevenson epitomizes for a child the transitoriness that characterizes the landscape seen on a railway journey. But do they not equally convey the sense of dismay that man feels in his insecure confrontation with this "wild and monstrous and sweet and terrible world" which, alas, seems to be so strongly marked with the stamp of transitoriness and inadequacy, suffering and evil? "A glimpse and gone for ever! sabbam aniccam — all is impermanent, just a passing show!" — so goes forth his wail of despair, under the afflicting burden of the twin shadow of Death and Time overhanging as it were the whole gamut of manifested existence.

An ultimate decay and dissolution appears to be the ineluctable end of all individual existence. For, everything here in this material world seems to pass inexorably through the sequenced procession of birth and growth, and decay and death, with a period of transient stability in between (jāyate, asti, bardhate, viparimiti, apakṣayati, naśyati). Did not Arjuna on the battle-

¹ R. L. Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses (quoted by Ian Ramsay in Prospect for Metaphysics).

Page 3

---

field of Kurukshetra get overwhelmed with his vision of Time the Destroyer and cry out in awe and wonder:

"O Form universal, enormous are thy burning eyes; thy mouths gape to devour, terrible with many tusks of destruction. People are hastening into thy terrible jaws and some are seen with crushed and bleeding heads caught between thy teeth of power. The nations are rushing to destruction with helpless speed into thy mouths of flame like many rivers hurrying in their course towards the ocean or like moths that cast themselves on a kindled fire. With thy burning mouths, O Form of Dread, thou art licking all the regions around."¹

Indeed, '...Death prowls baying through the woods of life'², and the spectre of the ever-approaching tread of this dire Doom is the most sombre hurdle before embodied existence. And this has naturally generated a horror of death that is verily universal among mankind. The pathos and horror do not spring so much from the physical pain that often accompanies dissolution as from the unbearable mystery of it, from the 'absence of freedom, the compulsion, the struggle, the subjection to something that appears to be Not-Self,'³ also from the emotional tragedy to the subject and to the survivors — the abrupt and irrevocable cessation of the old familiar relations between near and dear ones.

Yet, somehow, in his race consciousness, man has refused to reconcile himself to the all-too-evident fact that all embodied life has to end in death and dissolution. This race refusal, sometimes vague and subconscious, has given rise to various attempts,⁴ continually repeated in spite of the invariably dismal experience of failure, to somehow escape death and disintegration. "The picture thus presented," as E. S. Hartland has aptly remarked, "of the desperate refusal of mankind to accept what seems a cardinal condition of existence is one of the most pathetic in the history of the race."⁵

¹ Bhagavad Gītā, Chap. XI. (Adaptation from Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, Cent. Ed., pp. 365-66).

² Savitri, Book IX, Canto II., p. 587.

³Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (Centenary Edition), p. 194.

⁴Cf. the alchemist's search for the Elixir of Life, or, in Indian tradition, for the mythical plant Viśalyakaraṇī or for the ambrosia Mrtasañjīvanī deemed capable of restoring life to the departed.

⁶ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Ed. James Hastings), Vol. IV, p. 411.

Page 4

---

Man's mythical lore — very often the repository of his unrealised dreams and aspirations — bears ample witness to this universal incredulity of mankind as to the necessity or naturalness of Death as a sequel to life. The forms through which this stubborn denial of death has expressed itself are indeed many and varied. To glance at only a few amongst these :^l

(i)Myths and legends concerning the origin of death: The unsophisticated man has sought to assure himself through various mythical accounts that, after all, from the beginning death was not pre-decreed for him. This sombre Adversary could force his advent in the kingdom of the living simply because of some act of disobedience on the part of man to some Divine Command (e.g., to abstain from the fruit of a certain tree, in the Genesis story) or due to the enmity or slackness of one of the lower animals, or perhaps owing to the fact that the heavenly message of eternal life for man was on the way interrupted and thwarted or somehow wrongly transmitted to him.

(ii)Escape of the soul: Amongst the races of primitive culture, death is often ascribed to some inadvertent escape of the soul from the body and means are adopted in the fond hope of catching the errant soul in its wanderings abroad and bringing it back to its old habitat.

(iii)Myths about effective or quasi-effective return from the land of the dead: The Babylonian myth of Ishtar and Tammuz and the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice illustrate this type.

In the Babylonian myth, Ishtar descends into Aralu, or Hades, demands entrance to 'the land whence there is no return' and after a series of adventurous experiences rescues from the world of the dead Tammuz, her only son, who was taken away before his time.

The descent-myth of Orpheus depicts how, after the death of Eurydice, his beloved wife, Orpheus descended into Hades, moved Pluto and Persephone to pity with the sweet notes of his lyre, and sought and received their permission to bring back Eurydice to the land of the living but 'on one condition — that Orpheus should precede her and not look back till they arrived on earth.' But alas, 'just before reaching the final limit, his love overcame

¹ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Ed. James Hastings), Vol. IV, p. 411.

Page 5

---

him. He looked round and lost her for ever' (Virgil, Georg. iv).¹ In India we have similar accounts in the- mythical restoration of life to Satyavan through Savitri's intercession with Yama, the Lord of Death, and to Lakhindar as a result of the loving venture of Behula. The Nachiketas Upākhyān of the Kathopanishad is also a case in point.

(iv)Myths about legendary heroes' avoidance of death: In Indian tradition, Yudhishthira, the eldest among the Pandava princes, is supposed to have ascended to heaven in his material body, and heroes like Vibhishana and Ashwatthama are considered to be immortal, still existing somewhere in their earthly bodies.

(v)Assumption and ascension:² Instances are recorded of supposed bodily 'assumptions' into heaven. This assumption is claimed to have been granted to some exceptional individuals like Abraham and Isaiah so that they might be informed of some spiritual truth. 'Assumptions' of this kind are temporary only and as the vision ends, the person returns to earth.

But there are legends, too, representing heroes and saints being permanently transported to the world beyond the grave, without having to suffer the experience of death. In the Sumerian mythology, Ziusudra, the hero of the Deluge, and in Jewish literature, Enoch and Elijah stand out as having been granted this high privilege.

There is a third group of legends claiming for their heroes an assumption after death, the forsaken body too being removed from earth and caught up to heaven. A classical example is the legend of Hercules. A Christian legend of the same kind is that of the 'Assumption of Mary', according to which first the soul, and then the body, of the Virgin were assumed to heaven.

Be that as it may, these legendary accounts, although springing from the subconscious need of the race to combat the stark proposition of the inevitability of death, have remained as myths and myths alone. For, they cannot and do not carry any conviction or solace in the moments of actual personal crisis in the life of the individual. The sting of Death which lies in 'the sense of being

¹Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. IV (Article: "Descent to Hades").

²J. H. Bernard, "Assumption and Ascension" in Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 151-53.

Page 6

---

devoured, broken up, destroyed or forced away' is too real and painfully sharp to be abrogated or even mitigated by the implied assurance of these mythical sagas.

Thus arises for man the metaphysical inquiry, also his spiritual urge to effectuate an intrinsic escape from the hold of suffering and the poignant sense of death.

Page 7

Chapter II

The Seeking and the Escapist Urge

"All philosophies start in the contemplation of death."

(Schopenhauer)

Metaphysics arises from man's desire to know, in a world of change and transitoriness, just where he is journeying; it arises whenever man seeks 'to map the Universe and to plot his position within it'.¹

Indeed, "the one question which through all its complexities is the sum of philosophy and to which all human enquiry comes round in the end, is the problem of ourselves, — why we are here and what we are, and what is behind and before and around us, and what we are to do with ourselves, our inner significances and our outer environment".²

It has been said that 'an ant is never stricken with amazement, nor does a star consider itself a nonentity'.³ But a 'divine discontent' has seized man who occupies such 'a strange position in the great realm of being'.⁴ Eternal is his seeking for the meaning of existence, the meaning of life and the meaning of death, the meaning of himself and that of the universe. He wonders what he is: "An outcast of the universal order? an outlaw, a freak of nature ? a shred of yam dropped from nature's loom, which has since been strangely twisted by the way?"⁵

Man has been characterized as a subject in quest of a predicate: "He wonders whether, at the bottom, life is not like the face of the sun-dial, outliving all shadows that rotate upon its surface. Is life nothing but a medley of facts, unrelated to one another; chaos camouflaged by illusion?"⁶

Indeed, it is this 'perception of a certain illusoriness, a sense of the vanity of cosmic existence and individual being' that is in a way 'the starting-point of the spiritual urge'⁷ — at least for the

¹ Ian Ramsay, Prospect for Metaphysics, p. 153.

²Sri Aurobindo, The Problem of Rebirth (1952), p. 43.

^{3 4 5 6} A. J. Heschel, "The Concept of Man in Jewish Thought" in The Concept of Man (Eds. S. Radhakrishnan and P. T. Raju), p. 114.

⁷ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga (Centenary Edition), p. 24.

Page 8

---

great majority to whom the greater experience of Truth does not come 'spontaneously without being forced to it by the strong or overwhelming, the afflicting and detaching sense of the Shadow'¹ permeating the whole fabric of manifested existence.

Was not Gautama, the prince of Kapilavastu, awakened to a consciousness of anguish and sorrow by the universal sight of disease, old age, death and other miseries, to which man in his embodied existence is subject? Gautama considered within himself the ineluctable facts of disease, decay and death until he determined to escape them. His nibbida, 'disgust', for bodily existence culminated in his pabbaja — that is, 'going forth' from the life of the world to the life of spirituality — that was to lead him ultimately to Buddhahood, bodhi, the state of Enlightenment.

But what is the verdict of this Enlightenment and other allied states ? It is contended by most men of the Spirit that the essential character of all manifestation is transitoriness and suffering, anityam asukham, or so long at least as there is a physical world. And if this is so, "the desire of birth, the will to manifest or create has to be regarded as the original sin and withdrawal from birth or manifestation as the sole possible way of salvation".²

As a matter of fact, all those who have in their spiritual venture sought to grow and rise in consciousness and transcend the obscurations of the unregenerate earth-nature, have found to their discomfiture that bodily existence, in general, and the body in particular are 'the soul's great difficulty, its continual stumbling-block and rock of offence'. Therefore it is that "the eager seeker of spiritual fulfilment has hurled his ban against the body and his world-disgust selects this world-principle above all other things as an especial object of loathing. The body is the obscure burden that he cannot bear; its obstinate material grossness is the obsession that drives him for deliverance to the life of the ascetic. To get rid of it he has even gone so far as to deny its existence and the reality of the material universe. Most of the religions have put their curse upon Matter and have made the refusal or the resigned temporary endurance of the physical life the test of religious truth and of spirituality".³

The traditional spiritual seeker has found the earth a rather impossible place for any spiritual being; earth-nature appears to him

^{1 2} Letters on Yoga, p. 24.

³ The Life Divine, p. 232.

Page 9

---

in Vivekananda's simile as 'the dog's tail which, every time you straighten it, goes back to its original curl'¹. Hence, the only aim for a sane seeker should be — not to make any futile attempt at embodying or manifesting a higher consciousness here upon earth — but rather to escape from life, to get away from earth into some other higher world like Goloka, Brahmaloka, Shiva-loka, or perhaps to seek mukti and mokṣa in some supreme Absolute.

The spiritual history of man abounds in views, expressed in different terms, epitomizing this conception of metaphysical dualism that puts into sharpest antithesis the soul and the body, God and the world, the spiritual and the material parts of man. Examples are legion testifying to this widely prevalent attitude of denial and disparagement of body and bodily existence. To cite en passant just a few of them:

(i) In Buddhist tradition:² The Buddhist philosophy of life may be said to be based on the dual axiom, sabbam aniccam, sabbam dukkham ('All is impermanent, all is suffering'). And the Buddhist attitude towards the body has been summed up as follows:

(a)the body, whether of men or of higher beings, can never be the abode of anything but evil;

(b)a final deliverance from all bodily life, present and to come, is the greatest of all blessings, the highest of all boons and the loftiest of all aims (Monier Williams, Buddhism).

Indeed, 'the body is the sphere of suffering'; it is also 'the origin of suffering' (Milinda-pañha). Suffering, subjectively, is desire, tanhā; objectively, suffering lies in embodiment and matter. Consequently the human body is looked upon as a contemptible thing. The idea of nibbida, 'disgust', with the body is set forth in Gautama's 'burning fire sermon' delivered on a hill, Gayāsīsa, near Gaya. And the Vijayā Sutta is reflection on the worthlessness of the human body.

The body is regarded as an 'impure thing and foul, pūtikāya. It is likened to a wound, a sore. The body is the 'old worn-out skin of a snake' (Sutta Nipāta): It is a 'dressed-up lump, covered with wounds...wasted...full of sickness...a heap of corruption

¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 117.

² J. H. Bateson, "Buddhist Attitude towards Body" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. II.

Page 10

---

(Dhammapada). All evil passions proceed from the body (Sutta Nipāta). There is no pain like the body (Dhammapada).

A complete release from suffering is possible only by emancipation from body and matter; hence, the summum bonum of Buddhism and the constant endeavour and ultimate hope of the Buddhist is the absolute escape from corporeal existence.

(ii)In Jaina tradition¹: The suffering individual, for the Jaina, is a jīva or a living, conscious substance called the soul. This soul is inherently perfect, possessing infinite potentiality within; but due to its association with body and matter it has lost its shining glories and is subject to all kinds of miseries.

Bondage (bandha), in Jain philosophy, comes therefore to mean the soul's association with matter. This bondage is twofold: (a) the primary and internal cause of bondage for the soul is its passions and bad dispositions (bhāva): bhāva-bandha; and, as its secondary effect, (b) the material bondage (dravya-bandha) of the soul, that is, the influx of matter (āsrava) into the soul and the latter's actual association with a material body.

Liberation (mokṣa) must then mean for the Jaina the complete dissociation of the soul from matter. This can be attained by stopping the influx of new matter into the soul (the process called samvara) as well as by complete elimination (nirjarā) of the matter with which the soul has already become mingled.

(iii)In Judaism2: A. J. Heschel contests the supposition that Judaism is a world-view of unalloyed optimism. Except for the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, the rest of the Bible, as he remarks, does not cease to refer to the sorrow, sins and evil of this world. When the prophets look 'unto the earth', they behold 'distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish' (Isaiah 8:22).

According to Jewish tradition, "the design of the Creator was for a world that was to be good, very good; but then something happened, to which Jewish tradition alludes in many ways, and the picture of the world profoundly changed"3; so much so that "there is one line that expresses the mood of the Jewish man throughout

¹ S. C. Chatterjee and D. M. Datta, An Introduction to Indian Philosophy.

² A. J. Heschel in The Concept of Man (Eds. S. Radhakrishnan and P. T. Raju)

3 A. J. Heschel, op. cit.

Page 11

---

the ages: 'the earth is given into the hand of the wicked' (Job 9:24)".¹

This world is thus often compared to 'night'; it is even called 'the world of falsehood'. It is a "prelude, a vestibule,.a place of preparation, of initiation, of apprenticeship to a future life, where the guests prepare to enter tricitinium, or the banquet hall"².

(iv) In Graeco-Roman Philosophy:3 The Greek philosophy propounded, in the main, a dualistic antithesis between body and soul, matter and spirit. Thus in Philolaus' teaching, the human body was regarded as a house of detention wherein the soul expiates its guilt. Empedocles likewise accepts the doctrine of the soul's fall from its original divine condition into the corporeal state and shares the view that the human body is the disparate integument of the soul. In the Dionysian cult, psychical experiences of men in ecstasy gave rise to the conviction — presently appropriated by the adherents of Orphism — that the body is an intolerable fetter to the soul which can acquire hitherto unsuspected powers of the spirit once it is free from the trammels of the material form.

(a) The Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic doctrine of the body: the soul, a divine element, uncreated and imperishable, has been immured within the body which acts accordingly as its prison-house or even the grave: soma (body) is indeed the sema (tomb) for the soul.

Thus in Socratic thought, "the soul is a divine stranger inhabiting this world for a brief period, and yearning for death as the release by which it will return to its true home... the philosopher is the man who lives most for the soul and least for the body, so that he can be said to anticipate death and to lead here and now a dying life".⁴

Plato's standpoint in the Phaedo, as also in the Theaetetus and Gorgias, represents "a harsh and rigid dualism: here, the world of illusion and illusive values, beneath which nothing permanent exists; and there, the goods which never fade away".⁵ He

^{1 2} A. J. Heschel, op. cit.

³ W. Capelle, "Body and Asceticism (Greek)" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. II.

⁴ E. L. Allen, A Guide Book to Western Thought.

⁵W. Capelle, op. cit.

Page 12

---

considered "the body as the ultimate root of all, or at least of innumerable, evils in human life, as an enemy against which the soul must fight, and as an unclean and defiling thing from which she must rid herself as soon and as thoroughly as possible".¹

(b)Stoicism: Posidonius held that the body, that inutilis caro et fluida, receptandis tantum cibis habilis ("flesh useless and flaccid, so apt to be hungry and demanding": rendered from Greek into Latin by Seneca in Ep. 92, 110), is an impediment to the heaven-born soul, the daimon, that pines in her prison-house for a return to her celestial home, the Aether, where alone full knowledge and bliss can be her portion. To deliver the soul as far as possible from the body even in this life — this, then, is the paramount task of mankind.

The Dissertations of Epictetus reveals a curious scorn for the body. According to him, it 'does not belong to us, but is an allo-trion' (alien, foreign). Man is 'a soul carrying a corpse' (cf. Svava-puḥ kuṇapamiva dṛśyate.²)

For Seneca, too, — influenced as he was by the Platonizing bent of Posidonius — the body was a contemptible thing.

Marcus Aurelius, 'the last Roman who sat upon the throne of the Caesars', was also a professed Stoic. But he, too, "speaks repeatedly of the body in tones of passionate scorn. He reprobates it especially as the souree of carnal appetites, and as tending to inveigle the soul".³

(c)Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism: The characteristic feature of the Neo-Pythagorean sect (counting among its adherents Apollonius and others) was absolute dualism. Spirit is the principle of good while the body, like matter in general, is the principle of evil.

In his 'nobly planned and profoundly excogitated system' of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus aimed to get beyond the dualism of the Neo-Pythagoreans on both metaphysical and ethical principles. But through a curious turn of logic he too was led to declare that the 'supersensual' part of man, which was pre-existent and in union with God, has suffered disaster from having entered the body. From the union of soul and body springs all the irrationality

¹ W. Capelle, op. cit.

² "To consider one's body as though it were a decomposed corpse" (Vidya-ranyamuni, Jivanmukti Viveka).

³ W. Capelle, op. cit.

Page 13

---

and depravity of the soul. The great task for man is, therefore, to effectuate 'the complete withdrawal of the soul from the outer world to its own inner life'.

From this summary survey it becomes clear that the human body has been generally regarded as not possessed of any great spiritual possibility. It is rather an obstacle, a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature, and thus preventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfilment in the Supreme or to the spiritual dissolution of its individual being.

But why is this universal distrust and denial of the body? Is the spiritual disability of man's physical organisation in the nature of something intrinsic and radical? Or is it not something capable of redemption? We pass on to the consideration of these and allied questions in the light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Page 14

Chapter III

The Vision

"The Light now distant shall grow native here,

The Strength that visits us our comrade power;

The Ineffable shall find a secret voice,

The Imperishable burn through Matter's screen

Making this mortal body godhead's robe."

(Savitri, Book II, Canto II, p. IIO)

The Aitareya Upanishad opens with a semi-mythological narrative of the nature of a parable, the parable of the creation of more and more developed forms till one, namely, that of man, was formed that proved to be adequate and capable of housing a highly developed consciousness.

Atmā vā idameka evāgra āsit....sa īkṣata lokānnu sṛjā iti.¹ "In the beginning the Spirit was one and all this (universe) was the Spirit; there was nought else moving. The Spirit thought, 'Lo, I will make me worlds from out of my being.' "² He then created the upper and the lower worlds and the Spirit thought again, lokapālānnu srjā, "Now will I make me guardians for my worlds."³ And in due process the great Gods were created.⁴ These Gods wanted a habitat and sustenance: "Command unto us an habitation that we may dwell secure and eat of food."⁵ The Spirit first formed animal kinds and brought them unto the Gods, but these latter found them to be altogether insufficient vehicles, no'yamalam. The Spirit finally created the form of man upon which the great Gods exclaimed, "O well fashioned truly! Man indeed is well and beautifully made,"⁶ "sukṛtam...puruṣo vāva sukṛtam", and they entered the human frame to fulfil their cosmic functions.

Man thus became the habitat, the abode (āyatana), of the lords of the universe, the meeting point of their realms of activity and fields of enjoyment.

¹ Aitareya Upanishad, I. 1.

^{2 3 4} Sri Aurobindo's translations.

⁵ In the thought of the Upanishads the Gods represent powers of consciousness and powers of Nature.

⁶ Sri Aurobindo's translations.

Page 15

---

Indeed, from the point of view of organic evolution, the appearance of humanity in earth-nature marked a radical break with the past, signifying a crucial step, a decisive change in the course and process of evolution. The development of the highly complex and elaborate organisation that is the physical sheath, annamaya koṣa, of man, capacitated 'a reversal or turn-over of the consciousness, a reaching to a new height and a looking down from it at the lower stages',¹ also the development of greater and subtler powers proper to the new type of being: powers of complex observation and correlation of impressions, powers of reason and reflection, the evolution of systems of thought, and the invention of symbolic speech in which transmission is effected from 'speaker to speaker instead of through the germ line.'

And so far as the purely structural disposition of the human frame is concerned, it is by all accounts a marvel product of evolution. The anterior shifting of the eyes coupled with the adoption of the vertical station has freed man from the status of earth-gazing animals and enabled him to look upward and forward and round. The complete freeing of the hands from the task of locomotion and the possession of a fine array of ten wonderfully supple fingers with the added faculty of turning the hands, palms upward or palms downward, has enabled man to become a tool-making creature and wield an incalculable influence over his surroundings. Finally, the unique endowment of the human cerebrum, the greatest tool yet developed by Nature in her long course of organic evolution, has made it possible that man manifest the powers and potentialities of mind and thus truly become Man.

But who can affirm that the human body and man's physical being are in their actuality already an unalloyed boon and his physical organization a picture of perfection? For, are we not too poignantly aware of the grossness and limitation of our present physical life, the various inconveniences of our animal body, its unregenerate earth-nature and impulses and appetites that tend to drag down man's soaring spirit and frustrate the winged visions of his soul?

As a matter of fact, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out,² the material body of man confronts him with a dual difficulty, psychological and corporeal: psychological, because of its animal origin;

¹The Life Divine, p. 838.

²The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth (1952), pp. 43, 47.

Page 16

---

and corporeal, because of the particular type of structure and organic instrumentation that imposes its restrictions on the dynamism of man's higher nature. The human body even at its best brings "to the physical being...a bondage to the material instruments, to the brain and heart and senses,...to the bodily mechanism and its needs and obligations, to the imperative need of food and the preoccupation with the means of getting it and storing it as one of the besetting interests of life, to fatigue and sleep, to the satisfaction of bodily desire. The life-force in man also is tied down to these small things; it has to limit the scope of its larger ambitions and longings, its drive to rise beyond the pull of earth and follow the heavenlier intuitions of its psychic parts, the heart's ideal and the soul's yearnings. On the mind the body imposes the boundaries of the physical being and the physical life and the sense of the sole complete reality of physical things with the rest as a sort of brilliant fireworks of the imagination, of lights and glories that can only have their full play in heavens beyond, on higher planes of existence, but not here; it afflicts the idea and aspiration with the burden of doubt, the evidence of the subtle senses and the intuition with uncertainty and the vast field of supraphysical consciousness and experience with the imputation of unreality and clamps down to its earth-roots the growth of the spirit from its original limiting humanity into the supramental truth and the divine nature."¹

But the question is: Are the limitations imposed by man's body in its present state of development to be considered as something permanent and of the nature of insuperable impediments ? Cannot our physical being ever transcend its original earth-nature with its complement of unregenerate impulses and animal appetites? Will it "constantly oppose the call of the spirit and circumscribe the climb to higher things"?² Will our physical existence be for ever subject to the conditions of animal birth and life and death, of 'difficult alimentation' and facility of decay and disorder, disease and senescence, and a final dissolution in death? Will our mind and sense remain for ever shut up within the prison-"walls of the physical ego or limited to the poor basis of knowledge given by the physical organs of sense",³ and our life-force ever bound to its mortal inhibitions?

The Seer-Vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother assures us

^{1 2} The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 45-46.

³ The Life Divine, p. 261.

Page 17

---

that the disabilities of the human body and the animal frailties of man's physical nature will not be there for all time to come. These are in no way innate to animate Matter nor are they inexorable; they are rather of the nature of passing phenomena appearing in the as yet imperfect stages of the march of evolution and with the further elaboration of this evolutionary process leading to the descent and concomitant emergence in earth-nature, of a supreme power and light of the spirit, of what Sri Aurobindo calls Supermind or the divine Gnosis, these limitations and liabilities, 'obscurities and ambiguities' of the material body of man will be transcended, the animal propensities and cravings and drives overcome, the denials and resistances and the tardy responses of the physical being surmounted, even the inconscient and unregenerate parts illumined and transmuted into their divine counterparts.

Not only this: the supramental consciousness and light and force, once directly active in the field of earth-evolution, will in due course invade and take up the very substance of the body, transfigure its 'function and action', liberate the body from all possibility of disorders, derangements and maladies, "substitute subtler processes or draw in strength and substance from the universal life-force so that the body could maintain for a long time its own strength and substance without loss or waste, remaining thus with no need of sustenance by material aliments, and yet continue a strenuous action with no fatigue or pause for sleep or repose",¹ for the whole being will be flooded "with a supreme energy of Consciousness-Force which would meet, assimilate or harmonise with itself all the forces of existence, that surround and press upon the body".²

Also, "the present balance of interaction which allows physical Nature to veil the Spirit and affirm her own dominance"³ will be reversed and in "the changed communion of the Spirit with Matter"⁴, in the new relation between the Spirit and the body it inhabits, Matter will be seen and felt "to be the Brahman, a self-energy put forth by the Brahman, a form and substance of the Brahman" ⁵ In the supramental way of living and being, the body will discard its veil of apparent inconscience, its ignorant laws of mechanical movements and instead be luminously controlled and

¹ The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 68-69.

²The Life Divine, p. 988.

^{3 4 5} Ibid., p. 986.

Page 18

---

guided by the Truth-Will of the indwelling Spirit. Man's physical body will thus be turned by the power of the Supramental Consciousness into an entirely conscious, "a true and fit and perfectly responsive instrument of the Spirit".¹

As a result of this Gnostic evolution, a supreme power of self-protection will be brought into play, that will confer upon the body an absolute immunity and serenity of being and a total deliverance from all suffering and pain. "A spiritual Ananda [will] flow into the body and inundate cell and tissue; a luminous materialisation of this higher Ananda [would] of itself bring about a total transformation of the deficient or adverse sensibilities of physical Nature."²

The physical body of man will thus undergo a divine transfiguration and shine in the glories of "a pure and spiritualised physical existence".³

And finally, as if to crown all other achievements, there will come about for man the physical "conquest of death, an earthly immortality"⁴ - "in the sense not of attachment or of restriction to our present corporeal frame but an exceeding of the law of the physical body."⁵ For "from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature."⁶

¹ The Life Divine, p. 986.

² Ibid., p. 989.

³ Ibid., p. 991.

^{4 5 6} Ibid., p. 261.

Page 19

Chapter IV

The Evolutionary Destiny

To minds bound to the present form of things the divine transfiguration of the human body, the golden dream of planting heaven here on the soil of Matter, may well appear as 'a senseless and impossible chimera'¹, the 'bright hallucination'² of an idealist's thoughts, a vain and ineffectual imagination and 'the noble fiction'³ of man's subconscious yearnings.

For, the problem at the base is this: how, through what mechanism, and by following what definite process, can this vision of the emergence of the transfigured body, this 'corps glorieux that would be plastic enough to be constantly remodelled by the deeper consciousness',⁴ be translated into shining reality and realised here on the face of the earth ? In the absence of any clear indication on this point, it may very well appear that, after all, 'the Ideal is a malady of the mind'⁵ and 'a bright delirium'⁶ of the visionary's 'speech and thought',⁷

And never shall it find its heavenly shape

And never can it be fulfilled in Time.⁸

For, is it not too much to expect ever seeing 'a face and form divine in the naked two-legged worm'⁹ otherwise called man?

But Sri Aurobindo and the Mother assure us that the transformation of the body as envisaged above is going to be the natural, logical and inevitable result of our destined evolution out of the present human ignorance and imperfection into a far greater truth and consciousness of the Spirit.

Indeed, in the inmost reality of things, the emergence of consciousness in an apparently inconscient universe of Matter and then a progressive growth of this consciousness and a concomitant growth of the light and power of the being has always been the essential purpose of the organic evolution and the key to the mystery

^{1 2 3} Expressions taken from Sri Aurobindo's epic poem Savitri.

⁴ The Mother in the Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 3, p. 123.

^{5 6 7 9} Expressions taken from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.

⁸ Savitri, Book X, Canto II, p. 619.

Page 20

---

of its secret process. The development of the form and its functioning or the physical organism's fitness to survive in the conditions of the environment, although indispensable, are by no means the whole meaning or the central motive force of evolution.

Now, this emergence and growth of consciousness in evolution has by no means ended with the appearance of man on the earth-scene, with his characteristic mental consciousness. For, mind is too imperfect an expression and man too hampered and limited a creature to be the last terms of evolution. It must then imply a progressive ascent to higher and higher reaches of consciousness till it reaches the highest possible. As Nature has already evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, evolved beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must now evolve even beyond Mind — which seems as yet her last term — and manifest a supramental consciousness and power of our existence in which "there is no longer an ignorance seeking for knowledge but knowledge self-possessed, inherent in the being, master of its own truths and working them out with a natural vision and force that is not afflicted by limitation and error."¹ This would mean an entry into "a truth-consciousness self-existent in which the being would be aware of its own realities and would have the inherent power to manifest them in a Time-creation in which all would be Truth following out its own unerring steps and combining its own harmonies; every thought and will and feeling and act would be spontaneously right, inspired or intuitive, moving by the light of Truth and therefore perfect. All would express inherent realities of the spirit; some fullness of the power of the spirit would be there. One would have overpassed the present limitations of mind: mind would become a seeing of the light of Truth, will a force and power of the Truth, life a progressive fulfilment of the Truth, the body itself a conscious vessel of the Truth and part of the means of its self-effectuation and a form of its self-aware existence."²

Once we have grown into this Truth-Consciousness or into Supermind as Sri Aurobindo has termed it, once we have opened ourselves to its descent and unveiled action in us, its divinely potent truth of being will shape and determine everything in its victorious stride. No obscuration or limitation of the earth-nature will be able to prevail against its omniscient light and omnipotent force, for "light and bliss and beauty and a perfection of the spontaneous

^{1 2} The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 30-31. (Italics ours)

Page 21

---

right action of all the being are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very nature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the truth-conscious spirit."¹

And if Matter — which has so far in the course of the long march of evolution taken into itself and manifested 'the power of life and the light of mind,' although in its original status it appeared to be lifeless and mindless — can once open itself to the action of the divine Supermind and allow a full play to this supreme power and light of the spirit, it would "in an earthly body shed its parts of inconscience and become a perfectly conscious frame of the spirit. A secure completeness and stability of the health and strength of its physical tenement could be maintained by the will and force of [the] inhabitant; all the natural capacities of the physical frame, all powers of the physical consciousness would reach their utmost extension and be there at command and sure of their flawless action. As an instrument the body would acquire a fullness of capacity, a totality of fitness for all uses which the inhabitant would demand of it far beyond anything now possible. Even it could become a revealing vessel of a supreme beauty and bliss, — casting the beauty of the light of the spirit suffusing and radiating from it as a lamp reflects and diffuses the luminosity of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body."²

But one further question arises here: The evolutionary process upon the earth has been so far extremely slow and tardy, extending over thousands and millions of years; — what principle must intervene if there is to occur in the foreseeable future this envisaged transfiguration of the whole being of man?

The necessary clue can be found in the fact that with the appearance, upon the earth, of man with his developed thinking mind the evolution has decisively changed its course and process and become 'reflexively' conscious. Up till the advent of man the organic evolution had been effected through the automatic operation of Nature without the conscious participation of the organisms

¹ The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, p. 36.

² Ibid., pp. 32-33.

Page 22

---

involved, in the form of the latter's self-aware will or seeking, aspiration or endeavour. But in man the living creature has for the first time become 'awake and aware of himself'; he has felt that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; 'the aspiration to exceed himself is delivered and articulate within him'.¹ It has thus become conceivable and practicable that in man a conscious evolution may replace the subconscious and subliminal evolution to which Nature has so far taken recourse and a further growth of consciousness and change of being be effected through a process of conscious self-transformation.

As a matter of fact, "in the previous stages of the evolution Nature's first care and effort had to be directed towards a change in the physical organisation, for only so could there be a change of consciousness; this was a necessity imposed by the insufficiency of the force of consciousness already in formation to effect a change in the body. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable; for it is through his consciousness, through its transmutation and no longer through a new bodily organism as a first instrumentation that the evolution can and must be effected. In the inner reality of things a change of consciousness was always the major fact, the evolution has always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental; but this relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external Inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body."²

But here at this point we have to contend with a double denial arising out of two diametrically opposed views of existence: 'the materialist denial' and 'the refusal of the ascetic'.³

¹The Life Divine, p. 843.

²Ibid., pp. 843-44. (Italics ours)

³ These picturesque expressions form the titles of two of the chapters of The Life Divine.

Page 23

Chapter V

The Double Denial

God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;

For man shall not know the coming till its hour

And belief shall be not till the work is done.

(Savitri, Book I, Canto IV, p. 55)

(A) The Materialist Negation

Matter on the firm earth sits strong and sure.

It is the first-born of created things,

It stands the last when mind and life are slain,

And if it ended all would cease to be.

All else is only its outcome or its phase...

If Matter fails, all crumbling cracks and falls.

All upon Matter stands as on a rock.

(Savitri, Book X, Canto II, p. 615)

The materialist comes with his dour denial and asserts on the basis of his monism of matter and material energy assumed to be the sole ultimate principle sufficing for the explanation of every conceivable phenomenon in the universe — that man's body and mind, as well as all other animal and plant organisms extant or extinct, are but the products of organic evolution brought about through the action of "an inconscient Energy which acts automatically by mechanical processes and can have no element of purpose in it."¹ Thus, according to the scientific materialist line of thought, no spiritual significance need be sought in this process of evolutionary elaboration or, for that matter, in the emergence of life in the initially inanimate universe. For, according to the materialist view, the phenomenon of "life is of profound unimportance. Among the infinite permutations and combinations through which matter has passed, one has supervened in which matter has achieved consciousness. This consciousness by matter of itself is life. Life, then, is a chance product of material forces and substances, evolved under certain conditions, and doomed to

¹ The Life Divine, p. 833.

Page 24

---

disappear when those conditions no longer obtain."¹

And so far as the evolutionary process itself is concerned, leading to the appearance of new species with novel life-characteristics, in order to account for it, we need not postulate or admit therein any sort of teleology or finalism nor any creative oestrus or any intervention of consciousness. For, the sole agency of random genetic mutation leading to chance variation and natural selection seem to afford an adequate explanation of the whole process.

Thus "the appearance of life upon the earth, the evolution of life through an infinite variety of forms, the whole of the process which begins with the amoeba and ends with man"² is sought to be "explained not in terms of the operation of some purposive force or spirit, but as the result of the action of purely haphazard external agencies."³ And in this connection it is important to note that in this view "changes which occur in living organisms never spring from within, but are always imposed from without. In order to account for them we need postulate no spiritual force or purposive will, whether operating within the organism or directing it from outside."⁴

And so it is asserted that the liberating and transmuting action of consciousness upon the material body is a sheer figment of imagination. For the conception of a consciousness as a separate unity functioning or even existing independently of the physical brain, seems to lack in validity. Is consciousness really anything more than an aspect of the brain's reaction to the events occurring within the body?

According to the adherents of various schools of metaphysical materialism, consciousness is either an attribute or property of matter (attributive materialism), or a product and effect of matter (causative materialism), or else conscious processes are in reality material in character (equative materialism).⁵ Indeed, recent findings of physiological, psychological and pathological researches bear evidence to the "concomitance of psychical processes with physical, their dependence on material phenomena such as the functioning of the brain, the correlation of mental development throughout the animal kingdom with organization of

¹ C. E. M. Joad, Guide to Philosophy, p. 525. (Italics ours)

^{2 3} Ibid., pp. 522-23.

⁴Ibid., pp. 522-23. (Italics ours)

⁵Kulpe, Introduction to Philosophy, p. 23.

Page 25

---

complexity of brain-structure, the effects upon mind of injury or disease in brain-tissue, and so forth " ¹ Do we not know that a very serious attempt has been and is still being made, both in the field of human psychology and in the domain of animal behaviour, to demonstrate that all modes of behaviour can be adequately explained in terms of adaptation and natural selection on the phylogenetic scale, also in terms of underlying physiological and physico-chemical operations in the individual body? Thus all the life-processes starting with those in a protozoan organism and ending with those in man, all the body-rhythms like feelings of hunger and thirst, sleep-cycles and the rise of sex-impulses, all behaviour- patterns such as the nest-building by birds or the manifestation of 'affection' by mother animals towards their offspring, have been sought to be accounted for in terms of biophysical determinism.

Two conclusions follow by implication: first, there can be no such thing as 'free will' since mind can never function independently of bodily causation and, thus, nothing can occur in consciousness unless its neural-cerebral counterpart has first occurred in the brain; secondly, consciousness being a mere function of the brain — almost an epiphenomenon — it can in no way influence a physical happening. So, given the existing physical organization of the human cerebrum, how can there develop in man a greater supramental consciousness and how can it — even if the possibility of its existence is at all admitted — act upon his body to effect therein any transfiguration of structure or of functioning? For, is not the material body something autonomous in its operations, independent of any consciousness appearing to inhabit it, and solely governed by an inexorable chain of physico-chemical processes?

In brief, if the tenets of materialistic determinism have to be seriously considered, "we have to suppose that the body is constructed by the agency of chemical elements building up atoms and molecules and cells and these again are the agents and only conductors at the basis of a complicated physical structure and instrumentation which is the sole mechanical cause of all our actions, thoughts, feelings, the soul a fiction and mind and life only a material and mechanical manifestation and appearance of this machine which is worked out and automatically driven with a

¹ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VIII, p. 489.

Page 26

---

figment of consciousness in it by the forces inherent in inconscient matter."¹

(B) The Ascetic Refusal

How canst thou force to wed two eternal foes ?

How shall thy will make one the true and the false?...

The Real with the unreal cannot mate.

He who would turn to God, must leave the world;

He who would live in the Spirit must give up life...

(Savitri, Book X, Canto III, p. 635)

The denial of the exclusive spiritual seeker has been equally categorical. We have already had occasion to mention his scorn and disparagement of the body. In more moderate terms, in so far as the figured destiny of an evolutionary transformation of the human body is concerned, does there not exist — so he avers — a serious metaphysical objection to this notion of a teleological cosmos ? For, has not the Infinite and the Absolute everything in it already ? How, then, can it possibly have "something unaccomplished to accomplish, something to add to itself, to work out, to realise?"² Hence it follows that there cannot be in the so-termed evolutionary process any element of progress or for that matter any original or emergent purpose.

Also, even if we accept for the sake of discussion the dubious fact of a progressive evolution from type to higher type, then, man must be the last stage of this process, "because through him there can be the rejection of terrestrial or embodied life and an escape into some heaven or Nirvana."³ After all, as all evidence points out — so would the ascetic claim — that this manifested world is fundamentally and unchangeably a world of Ignorance, ajñānāt-maka visva, transient and full of suffering, anityam asukhaṁ lokam, devoid of any essential reality, saṁsārameva niḥsāram, the only sensible and legitimate task before man is to find out some way of escape from the discordant falsehood of this manifested world, saṁsāra, into the eternal bliss of some supraterrestrial heaven or in an eternal dissolution in Brahman or in Nirvana. And in the nature of things this spiritual evasion and escape must represent

¹The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 60-61.

²³ The Life Divine, p. 833.

Page 27

---

the only true end of the cycle of individual existence.

Indeed, throughout the ages, whether the spiritual seeker be an uncompromising absolutist who considers this manifested world to be an illusion, jaganmithyā, or an impermanence, sabbam aniccam, or he be a subscriber to some supraterrestrial view of existence, holding that the soul's true home lies beyond this terrestrial interlude, this latter representing no more than a spiritual fall and exile or a place of ordeal where to expiate the sins or at the best a temporary field of development of a single scene of the drama of soul's existence and experiences, his general verdict has been that this earth-life is a rather difficult liability for a spiritual being, full of obstinate and obscure resistances to the growth of the Spirit.

And thus a "war is declared between the spirit and its instruments and the victory of the spiritual Inhabitant is sought for in an evasion from its narrow residence, a rejection of mind, life and body and a withdrawal into its own infinitudes. The world is a discord and we shall best solve its perplexities by carrying the principle of discord itself to its extreme possibility, a cutting away and a final severance."¹

This 'revolt of Spirit against Matter', this metaphysical dualism, culminates in a second negation — at the other pole to the materialistic — of the eventual prospect of the divine transfiguration of the body and the physical existence of man. Indian thought, in particular, since the advent of Buddhism on the scene, has lived in the 'shadow of this great Refusal' and generally considered that the final end of life for all is the garb of the ascetic.² For "all voices are joined in one great consensus that not in this world of the dualities can there be our kingdom of heaven, but beyond, whether in the joys of the eternal Vrindavan³ or the high beatitude of Brahma-loka,⁴ beyond all manifestations in some ineffable Nirvana⁵ or

¹ The Life Divine, p. 233.

² Cf. Ekadanḍaṁ samgṛhya...sarvaṁ tyaktvā parivrajet (Vidyaranya Muni, Jīvanmukti Viveka): "Collecting a staff and renouncing everything, one should take the path of a wandering monk."

³ "Goloka, the Vaishnava heaven of eternal Beauty and Bliss." (Sri Aurobindo)

⁴ "The highest state of pure existence, consiousness and beatitude attainable by the soul without complete extinction in the Indefinable." (Sri Aurobindo)

⁶ "Extinction, not necessarily of all being, but of being as we know it..." (Sri Aurobindo)

Page 28

---

where all separate existence is lost in the featureless unity of the indefinable Existence."¹ After all,

...truth shines far from the falsehoods of the world;

How can the heavens come down to unhappy earth

Or the eternal lodge in drifting time?²

And the apparently indubitable evidence for this great denial lies in the fact that

The Avatars have lived and died in vain,

Vain was the sage's thought, the prophet's voice;

In vain is seen the shining upward Way.

Earth lies unchanged beneath the circling sun;

She loves her fall and no omnipotence

Her mortal imperfections can erase,

Force on man's crooked ignorance Heaven's straight line

Or colonise a world of death with gods.³

And hence goes the 'lofty and distant appeal' to renounce all 'longing to build heaven on earth' and accept the stern and dour message of "renunciation [as being] the sole path of knowledge, acceptation of physical life the act of the ignorant, cessation from birth the right use of human birth, the call of the Spirit, the recoil from Matter."⁴

These, then, are the two great denials — the materialist's negation and the refusal of the ascetic — and it is obvious that if either of these represented the true truth of existence, then "any divini-sation or transformation of the body or of anything else would be nothing but an illusion, a senseless and impossible chimera."⁵

But, as a matter of fact, this is not so. These views represent indeed aspects of the Truth but in no way the whole of the Truth nor the liberating integral Knowledge that would harmonise all

¹ The Life Divine, p. 23.

²Savitri, Book X, Canto II, p. 609.

³Ibid., pp. 609-10.

⁴The Life Divine, p. 23.

⁵ The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth, p. 61.

Page 29

---

partial and segmented views of existence and at the same time transcend them.

We shall endeavour to meet the arguments leading to these two great Negations and show in the light of the Integral Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo that, although some of the propositions held by the materialist and the exclusive spiritual seeker are indeed valid in their own way, their total view of things as well as the negating inferences they profess to arrive at lack altogether in conclusive cogency.

Page 30

Chapter VI

THEORIES OF EXISTENCE AND ATTITUDES

TOWARDS THE BODY

A mind looks out from a small casual globe

And wonders what itself and all things are.

(Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 167)

The Philosophy of Integralism arising out of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Vision of the Reality and world-process envisages "a divine life upon earth and liberation of earth-nature itself as part of a total purpose of the embodiment of the spirit here",¹ and the Yoga of supramental Transformation as brought into action by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo seeks to realise in the not too distant future this sublime ideal of total spiritual perfection of which the high watermark, the crowning achievement, so to say, will be a supreme and entire divine transfiguration of the body itself.

But in order to grasp and appreciate in full the import and importance of this dynamic seer-vision of the apotheosis of the material body here upon earth in the very conditions of the material Universe, we must try to have a perspective view of different attitudes to the physical body and diverse conceptions regarding its ultimate destiny, that have occupied the reflective mind and the yearning heart of man throughout the long gamut of his cultural-spiritual history.

But since one's whole conception of the importance or otherwise of the human body, also one's attitude to incarnate life in general, are in the last analysis determined by one's metaphysical view, implicit or explicit, of the fundamental truth of the universe and the meaning of existence, we propose to consider incidentally — although in a summary way — the divergent views advanced so far concerning the sense and significance of the world-process and man's place and role in it.

Each of these distinct ways of looking at Nature and world-existence has invariably determined its corresponding brand of attitude to life in general and to body and Matter in particular. Some of these views have led to a downright disparagement and

¹ The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, p. 43.

Page 31

---

denial of the physical being of man: some others recognise the importance of the body, even at times its essentiality and perfectibility, but not here upon earth in an earthly embodiment but elsewhere on some supraterrestrial plane of existence; the proponents of a few others have sought to achieve here in this embodied life some sort of physical perfection, but their supposed success in their undertaking has come down to posterity as a matter of tradition only, not verified or authenticated in fact, or at the most this has remained as a rare and imperfect, precariously maintained, individual siddhi or attainment, not as the natural law, dharma, of the body itself.

For the purpose of our present discussion we may broadly state that in the field of thought there are four main categories of conceptions regarding the fundamental truth of self-existence and world-existence. These may be termed, in the nomenclature of Sri Aurobindo, as (A) the cosmic-terrestrial, (B) the supracosmic, (C) the supraterrestrial or otherworldly, and finally (D) the integral or synthetic. Let us first consider in brief the first three views of existence in order to study and explore where they depart from the integral vision of life which is Sri Aurobindo's and how far the truths they stand on fit into its harmonising structure.

(A) The Cosmic-Terrestrial View

Earth only is there and not some heavenly source.

(Savitri, Book X, Canto II, p. 609)

The cosmic-terrestrial theory of existence considers the cosmic existence as the only reality and its view is ordinarily confined to life in the material world. Earth is the field of a great becoming and man is this becoming's highest possible form, albeit temporary and transient.

In this view of a sole terrestrial life, the one high and reasonable course for the individual human being is to study the laws of the Becoming and take the best advantage of them to realise its potentialities in himself or for himself or in or for the race of which he is a member; his business is to make the most of such actualities as exist and to seize on or to advance towards the highest possibilities that can be developed here or are in the making. Humanity and its welfare and progress provide the largest field and the

Page 32

---

natural limits for the terrestrial aim of our being. In the most materialist and individualistic view of existence, the only significance of life will be to achieve the individual's greatest possible perfection or make the most of his life in whatever way his personal nature demands, until it passes out of him in the course of inevitable and not so far-off individual annihilation.¹

To exemplify the attitudes to body and bodily life this cosmic-terrestrial theory of existence tends to engender in the mind and heart of its adherents, let us consider in turn two schools of thought one of which arising in ancient India even before the epoch of the great Upanishads, the other growing in the Occident and approaching its crescendo in our time.

(a) The Charvaka Metaphysics and Ethics

In Indian philosophy the word Charvaka signifies a materialist. This heterodox school of Indian metaphysical thinking, also known as lokāyata school, preached the Epicurean doctrine of 'eat, drink and be merry'.

The Charvakas assert the sole reality of perceptible objects alone. Matter, according to this view, being the only and fundamental reality and our existence an inconsequential freak of Matter itself or of some energy building up Matter, there cannot be any individual personal existence outside of the material body. Consciousness having no independent non-material source or support but being only an operation of material energy acting in and upon a particular structural pattern of Matter, must perforce cease to exist with the dissolution of the physical body. The survival of man in any form after death is untenable.

Since our personal existence is entirely dependent upon the persistence of the body and bodily life alone, we must regard — so runs the argument of the Charvakas — the carnal pleasures as the only desirable things of which we can be sure and certain. Also, simply because sense pleasures are irretrievably mixed up with their quota of pain, it would be the height of absurdity to forgo on that score all pleasures of bodily life; for it would then be like 'rejecting the kernel because of its husk'. (Cf. Ananda-bodhacharya, Pramāna-mālā: "One does not forsake eating for

¹ This paragraph is an adaptation from The Life Divine, pp. 670-71.

Page 33

---

fear of indigestion, nor does one forgo the use of a blanket for fear of the bugs."¹)

So the highest end of man's conduct and the summum bonum that an individual can achieve is the attainment of maximum amount of pleasure in this very life. A really good life is, according to the Charvakas, a life of maximum enjoyment. Let us recall in this connection the oft-quoted Charvaka maxim:

"Live merrily so long as you live; partake of butter even if by borrowing. Whence is the possibility of our coming back, once the body is reduced to ashes?'²

We would not have considered here the Charvaka theory of existence and the grossly hedonistic attitude to life that it entails, if not for the fact that this happens to be the philosophy of life, although very often camouflaged under the veneer of something more respectable, governing the daily conduct of most men in all times and climes. Even to-day, "the Philistine is not dead, — quite the contrary, he abounds."³ For, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, the mere participation in the benefits of civilisation is not enough to raise a man into the mental life proper. Hence it is that "the Philistine is in fact the modern civilised barbarian; he is often the half-civilised physical and vital barbarian by his unintelligent attachment to the life of the body, the life of the vital needs and impulses and the ideal of the merely domestic and economic human animal."⁴ He "lives outwardly the civilised life, possesses all its paraphernalia, ... [but] pulls the higher faculties down to the level of his senses, his sensations, his unenlightened and unchast-ened emotions, his gross utilitarian practicality."⁶

Leaving aside this Charvaka-Philistine attitude to body and bodily life we now proceed to the consideration of the scientifically controlled physical culture of the bodily system, so much prevalent in our day.

¹ "Na hi ajīrṇa-bhayāt āhara-parityāgo, yūka-bhayād vā prāvaraṇa-pari-tyāgaḥ."

² "Yāvaj jīvet sukhaṁ jīvet, ṛnaṁ kṛtvā ghṛtam pivet. Bhasmībhūtasya dehasya punarāgamanaṁ kutaḥ?" ³ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle (1962), p. 115. ^{4 5} Ibid., p. 114.

Page 34

---

(b) The Scientific Physical Culture and

the Perfection of the Body

The call for a well-planned and universal physical culture for all age-groups of men and women is one of the dominant traits of the cultural value-system of modern man. The benefits that have been actually-drawn arid are potentially realizable from a proper and well-coordinated training of the body through scientific means and procedure are indeed manifold and belong to more than one order. Let us pass on to a succinct consideration of these benefits, basing ourselves for that purpose mainly on the observations made by Sri Aurobindo himself in his lastly written work The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.

(i)Perfection of the body proper: For the body itself the perfection that can be developed through such activities as sports and physical exercises are those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the development of its instrumental fitness in the unhindered service of the human mind and will and dynamic life-energy.

What is thus gained by an extended and many-sided course of physical education and discipline is a general fitness of the body to rise to the occasion and meet adequately all possible situations in which it may find itself placed. Another happy result is "the formation of a capacity for harmonious and right movements of the body."¹

(ii)Mental and moral perfection: A systematic undertaking of a disciplined physical culture is apt to develop certain parts of the mind and contribute to the building up of character. Many forms of sports and competitive games help to form and even necessitate the essential qualities of "courage, hardihood, energetic action and initiative or call for skill, steadiness of will or rapid decision and action, the perception of what is to be done in an emergency and dexterity in doing it."²

Apart from the attainment by the individual participant of these laudable qualities, there accrues the great gain of discipline and order, obedience and the habit of team-work, so necessary for a successful living but in no way inconsistent with individual freedom and initiative.

(iii)Awakening of the body-consciousness: A careful observation

^{1 2} Sri Aurobindo, op. cit., p. 4.

Page 35

---

would reveal to us the fact that the human body possesses a consciousness of its own, independent of all mental or vital over-lordship, but in general concealed from the surface view. But this submerged self-concealment does not prevent it in any way from being astonishingly potent and efficient in many a domain of its activity. Its potentialities are, of course, as yet partly awake but for the most part latent and unmanifested.

Now, an all-round total perfection of the body should imply, not merely the building up of health and strength, but also the awakening and education of this "essential and instinctive body-consciousness...which is equivalent in the body to swift insight in the mind and spontaneous and rapid decision in the will. What is awake in it we have to make fully conscious; what is asleep we have to arouse and set to its work; what is latent we have to evoke and educate."¹

A trained and developed automatism in the execution of many complex physical movements and the elaboration of new and highly rich and efficient reflexes in our physical system are other desirable gains that we can expect to derive from a scientifically co-ordinated culture of the body.

Critique: Such then are the gains for the body and body-consciousness — and these are unquestionably valuable in their own domain — one may reap from a systematic physical culture undertaken in a scientific way. But in no way do they measure up to our conception of the total perfection of the body, nor are they ever capable of leading by themselves alone to the essential and intrinsic apotheosis of the human body that we have envisaged in one of our preceding chapters (Chap. III). For that we have to lean upon the other and higher end of the range of our being and set into motion another modus operandi.

As a matter of fact, in the pursuit of perfection one may possibly start at either end, the lower or the higher, of the possibilities and potentialities of the total constitution of our being and one has then to employ the means and methods proper to it. Thus, "if we start in any field at the lower end, we have to employ the means and methods which Life and Matter offer to us and respect the conditions and what we may call the technique imposed by the vital and the material energy. We may extend the activity, the

¹ The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 23-24.

Page 36

---

achievement, the perfection attained beyond the initial, even beyond the normal possibilities but still we have to stand on the same base with which we started and within the boundaries it gives to us."¹

And this is what is actually attempted and, under the most favourable circumstances, achieved in what may be termed scientific culture of the body. The means and methods adopted therein are necessarily limited and conditioned by the present nature and disposition of the body as elaborated by evolutionary nature and the goal envisaged is no more and no higher than a relative human perfection of the body's powers and capacities and its instrumental efficiency.

But, be it noted, "the most we can do in the physical field by physical means is necessarily insecure as well as bound by limits; even what seems a perfect health and strength of the body is precarious and can be broken down at any moment by fluctuations from within or by a strong attack or shock from outside: only by the breaking of our limitations can a higher and more enduring perfection come."²

And for this we have to turn to the dynamism of the spirit and consciously and deliberately open ourselves to the superior intervention of higher powers: psychic powers from within and powers of the spirit from above. We shall have occasion to deal with this question more fully later on. For the moment let us proceed to the succinct consideration of the second great category of theories and views concerning the fundamental truths of the cosmic becoming and of man's place in it.

(B) The Supracosmic View

O soul, inventor of man's thoughts and hopes,

Thyself the invention of the moments' stream, I

llusion's centre or subtle apex point,

At last know thyself, from vain existence cease.

(Savitri, Book VII, Canto VI, p. 535)

The supracosmic theory of existence³ may be taken to be the

¹ The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 13-14.

² Ibid., p. 24.

³ Adapted from The Life Divine, pp. 667-68.

Page 37

---

exact opposite of the cosmic-terrestrial view of reality. According to this theory the supreme and supracosmic transcendent Reality alone is to be considered entirely or essentially real. Everything else, whether individual being or cosmic existence, suffers from a certain sense of vanity and illusoriness. The supracosmic view has many variants of which the principal ones may be somewhat inadequately characterised as follows:

(1)In the extreme exclusive forms of this type of world-vision, human existence has no real meaning or significance at all; the only true truth is in the supracosmic alone. Somehow an error or ignorance has overcast the absolute Reality and it is because of this that the soul, if the soul exists at all, has ventured into the field of vain manifestation. It is no more than a mistake on the part of the soul or perhaps a delirium of its will to be.

(2)The Absolute, the Parabrahman, is at once the alpha and the omega, the origin and goal, of all existence; everything else is no more than a passing interlude and therefore devoid of any abiding significance.

(3)The Becoming is a reality. But for the individual soul, this temporal becoming is indeed temporary and of relatively minor importance. Thus the truth and law of its temporal becoming once fulfilled, the soul has to turn back to its final self-realisation, for its natural highest fulfilment is a release into its original being, its eternal self, its timeless reality.

Whatever may be the forms assumed by this supracosmic view of existence, the ultimate goal advocated by all of them is to get away from all living, whether terrestrial or celestial, and to obtain an escape into the ineffable and indefinable Absolute beyond all individual and cosmic being and existence. "A recoil of the life-motive from itself and ... a will to annul life itself in an immobile Reality or an original Non-Existence"¹ are the inevitable corollaries of this supracosmic vision of things, thus militating against all idea of the divinisation of life here in the conditions of the material universe.

Under this category we may mention en passant the two great schools of world-negating metaphysics — Buddhism with its doctrines of anicca and anāttā (the theory of impermanence and the theory of the non-existence of any soul or self), and Illusionism with its doctrine of Maya — that have weighed heavily on Indian

¹ The Life Divine, p. 415.

Page 38

---

thought and general mentality for the last two thousand years and more.

The Buddhist attitude to physical body and bodily life is a logical sequel to the Buddhist analysis of existence. As we have already pointed out (Chap. II), this may be summed up as follows:

(i)In the ultimate account the body can never be the repository of anything but evil;

(ii)a final and absolute deliverance from all corporeal existence is the loftiest of all aims.

To exemplify this attitude which is antipodal to our goal of the eventual divinisation of matter and physical body, we may adduce here a couple of extracts¹ picked up at random from a host of others:

"Seeing others afflicted by the body, O Pingiya, seeing heedless people suffer in their bodies, therefore, O Pingiya, shalt thou be heedful and leave the body behind that thou mayst never come to exist again." (Sutta Nipāta).

" 'Through countless births have I wandered', said Gautama, 'seeking but not discovering the maker of this my mortal dwelling house, and still, again and again, have birth and life and pain returned. But now at length art thou discovered, thou builder of this house (of flesh). No longer shalt thou rear a house for me. Rafters and beams are shattered, and, with destruction of tanhā [ thirst for existence ], deliverance from repeated life is gained at last.' " (Dhammapada, Ch. xi).

In the classical Illusionist theory of cosmic existence, a sole and supreme, self-existent and immutable Transcendence is accepted as the one and only Reality (Brahma satyam, jaganmithyā. Ekam eva advitīyam). The universe superimposed on this Reality is either a non-existence, a semblance or in some inscrutable way (anir-vacaniyā māyā) unreally real (sadasat), a cosmic illusion (jagat-bhrānti) that is yet not altogether an illusion.

Anyway, the only true Truth, the only abiding reality is the eternal and absolute pure Existence, for ever immutable, for ever void of names and forms, relations and happenings.

There is no true becoming of this supreme Existence (Brahman).

¹ These two extracts are taken from J. H. Bateson's article "Body (Buddhist attitude)" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. II.

Page 39

---

Although it is by its essentiality the Self of all, the natural beings of which it is the Self are only temporary appearances. "Brahman the Reality appears in the phenomenal existence as the Self of the living individual; but when the individuality of the individual is dissolved by intuitive knowledge, the phenomenal being is released into the self-being: it is no longer subject to Maya and by its release from the appearance of individuality it is extinguished in the Reality."¹

Thus, when the illusory distinction between the self and Brahman disappears at last (jiva brahmaiva nāparaḥ) and the unreal reality (prātibhāsika vyavahārika sattā) of cosmic existence is realised through the removal of Ignorance (avidyā-nivṛtti), the soul is said to attain mukti or liberation from its bondage.

From what we have stated above, it becomes quite clear that any attempt at or even the very conception of a divine transfiguration of the embodied physical existence here is repugnant to the Illusionist view. For, the body one perceives is like every other thing a mere illusory appearance, a product of ignorance. On the attainment of liberation, so avers the Illusionist, this unreal nature of the body becomes patent to the liberated soul. Is it not then the height of absurdity to have for one's ideal the divine transformation of something that does not really exist at all?

Of course, even on the attainment of liberation, the body of the mukta appears to continue for some shorter or longer time. But the explanation for this phenomenon lies elsewhere — in the complex Law of Karma (We shall revert to this topic later on while discussing the spiritual penury of our 'Waking State': see Part Two, Chapter VI).

We now proceed to consider the third category of theories, the supraterrestrial view of existence.

(C) The Supraterrestrial View

In spite of all superficial evidences to the contrary, man cannot easily shake off a sense implanted in him by Nature that, after all, this terrestrial figure of humanity cannot represent all that he really is or is capable of attaining to: there must be somehow something in his total composition that goes beyond this tentative and transitional

¹ The Life Divine, p. 462.

Page 40

---

earthly formation. "The intuition of a beyond, the idea and feeling of a soul and spirit in us which is other than the mind, life and body or is greater, not limited by their formula,"¹ returns upon man after every attempt at banishment and finally possesses his mind and heart.

Now, the supraterrestrial view of life has for its basic traits (i) the belief that the individual human soul, essentially immortal, can survive the dissolution of its physical embodiment and persist eternally, apart from the body or perhaps 'clothed' in some other type of non-earthly frame; (ii) also the idea — a natural corollary of the first tenet — that this material world, this earthly arena, this human life is not the only possible scene or habitation of the soul; indeed, there are other planes of greater consciousness, other worlds of higher existence which the soul can attain to, even while in the earthly physical body, and to which it retires in order to dwell there eternally or at least in a more permanent way, when the terrestrial body gets disintegrated at death.

Thus, according to this conception of existence, the true home of the human soul or spirit is beyond the earth in some other spiritually elevated supraterrestrial plane or world and this all too brief earthly life is, in some way or other, only an episode of his immortality or perhaps a deviation and a fall from a pre-existent celestial-spiritual into a sordid material existence. According to the view we choose to take of the matter, the earthly life in a material body will appear either as a place of ordeal, or as a necessary, albeit temporary, field of soul's development, or perhaps as a scene of spiritual exile. In any case, the sojourn upon earth is considered to be a passing phase, and an ultimate departure to a heaven beyond, which is supposed to be the soul's only true and proper habitation, is the only destiny awaiting the individual spirit.

It has to be noted that this supraterrestrial view of existence does not necessarily lead to the formulation of an attitude of indifference or disrespect to the body as such. For, most of the adherents of various schools of supraterrestrial theory of existence consider that, for the soul, the gross physical earthly body is not the only body possible. As a matter of fact, as there exist different planes of consciousness, different worlds of experiences, hierarchically arranged in an ascending order, similarly each individual soul is endowed with a series of 'sheaths' or 'bodies' (koṣas

¹ The Life Divine, p. 674.

Page 41

---

and śarīras) through which it can communicate with these various worlds, dwell therein and participate in experiences of corresponding orders.

This conception of concurrent existence of more than one type of embodiment for a soul has been variously expressed in different occult-spiritual traditions. Mention may be made of sthūla (or gross), sūksma (or subtle) and kāraṇa (or causal) dehas (or bodies) of Vedanta; auādrika, taijasa and kārmāna śarīras of the Jainas; and nirmāṇa-kāya, sambhoga-kāya and dharma-kāya of the Buddhists. The Sufis too sometimes make a distinction between what they call nafs-i-jāri or a 'wandering body' and nafs-i-muqīm or a 'stationary body'. Their jism-i-latīf i.e., a fine subtle body and jism-i-kasīf, i.e., a dense or gross body fall in the same category as the ātivāhika and ādhibhautika śarīras of Vedantic classification and the khecara-citta or sūkṣma-deha and sthūla-deha of the Pa-tanjali system of Yoga.

Be that as it may, the proponents of the supraterrestrial theory of existence and of its complementary conception of a plurality of bodies for the soul, do not generally credit our earthly physical body with any great spiritual possibility of its own. Indeed, the goal set before the aspirant is that he should seek to 'loosen' "the soul, ātivāhika deha, sūtkṣma-śarīra,jñāna-deha, nirmāṇa-kāya, nafs-i-jāri, nafs-i-latīf,jism-i-misāl, subtle body...from the physical body, sthūla-śarīra, ādhibhautika deha,jaḍa-deha, jism-i-kasif jism-i-shahāḍa, nafs-i-muquīm, gross or dense body, body of flesh, by regulated fasts and vigils, physical and psychical disciplines, and various subtle introspective processes,...under the guidance of a wise teacher...who has himself passed through the experience and achieved 'freedom' of subtle body from gross body."¹ The spiritual destiny for the individual soul is, of course, attained when it can effectuate its permanent release from this gross terrestrial body and depart to a desired supraterrestrial world of existence and experience at the fall of the present physical 'sheath'.

In this connection we may recall, for comparison, the Christian doctrine of the body — in particular, St. Paul's gospel of a 'glorious body'. In the Pauline anthropology, it is not the deliverance from the body as a body that the apostle longs for, but the deliverance from the natural body of corruption and mortality. As a matter of fact, he proclaims that, at resurrection, our 'nakedness'

¹ Dr. Bhagavan Das, Essential Unity of All Religions, p. 276.

Page 42

---

(i.e., the state of disembodiment) will be 'clothed upon', not surely with an earthly body of flesh and blood, but with a supernatural 'pneumatical' body.

Let us now proceed to the consideration of what may be termed the 'Integral View' of existence.

(D) The Integral View

To free the self is but one radiant pace;

Here to fulfil himself was God's desire.

(Savitri, Book III, Canto II, p. 312)

We have cursorily reviewed three distinct and different ways of looking at the world-existence and man's self-existence, also the characteristic attitudes to body and bodily life that these separate views tend to create in their adherents. Each of these divergent ways of regarding the Reality represents no doubt a core of truth, valid in its own field, but, when exclusively stressed, suffers from the error of absolute exaggeration to the point of not taking into account the equally valid truths contained in other possible views.

Indeed, all these views and conceptions, being partial approaches, embody only partial truths and therefore cannot in the very nature of things take into adequate account or satisfactorily explain the total rhythm and the entire process of this world-phenomenon. Hence arises the imperative need of the hour for an integral view of existence that will admit the valid truths of all other views but at the same time eliminate their unnecessary limitations and negations. What is needed is some largest and highest Truth in the bosom of which all the various seeings find their justification and get harmoniously reconciled. What is called for is some integral vision and knowledge which will illumine and integralise the significance of all one-sided knowledge and gather together all possible human experiences in the manifold Truth of a supreme all-reconciling oneness. As we shall presently see, Sri Aurobindo's vision of the world and of man answers fully to these demands.

Man finds himself to be suffering from all the painful consequences of a split-personality when he discovers to his utter discomfiture that he is under the sway of a 'triple attraction': earth

Page 43

---

and earthly life exercise an abiding attraction upon his mind and heart; he yearns after the far-off glories of heaven, that is to say, supraterrestrial realms of existence that may open their portals to him after the dissolution of his earthly physical life; finally, the supreme and supracosmic transcendent Reality enthralls him with its bare and solitary snowy grandeur. Thus he is confronted with a conflict of his life-motives and the simultaneous ill-reconciled clamours of various impulses and urges of his complex being. On the one hand, almost all men normally devote the major part of their energy to the pursuit of terrestrial needs, interests and ideals — whether for their individual existence or for the larger or smaller collectivity to which they belong. But at the same time man the individual vaguely or clearly feels that he is much more than his body, life and mind; he must be in his essential nature something transcending his terrestrial appearance in a human embodiment, Finally, there opens in man, with the deepening of his mental life and the development of subtle knowledge, "the perception that the terrestrial and the supraterrestrial are not the only terms of being; there is something which is supracosmic and the highest remote origin of our existence."¹

These then are the three fundamental urges ineradicably implanted in man: the terrestrial, the supraterrestrial and the supracosmic ; and any overstressing of one of them to the belittlement of the other two is bound to create some sort of an internecine war in his being. The reconciling equation can be found if we recognise the purport of our whole complex human nature in its right place in the total cosmic movement, and confer its just and legitimate value to each part of our complex being and many-sided aspiration.

The Yoga-Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, the Master-Mystic par excellence, embodies not simply a well-reasoned structure of thought, but, above all, the all-reconciling all-integrating truths of existence; for, it arises out of an integral spiritual vision and experience and is not merely the brilliant product of a speculative mind. Now, this integral vision of world-existence and self-existence views "our existence here as a Becoming with the Divine Being for its origin and its object, a progressive manifestation, a spiritual evolution with the supracosmic for its source and support, the other-worldly for a condition and connecting link and the

¹ The Life Divine, p. 675.

Page 44

---

cosmic and terrestrial for its field, and with human mind and life for its nodus and turning-point of release towards a higher and a highest perfection."¹

As a matter of fact, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "a spiritual evolution, an unfolding here of the Being within from birth to birth, of which man becomes the central instrument and human life at its highest offers the critical turning point, is the link needed for the reconciliation of life and spirit; for it allows us to take into account the total nature of man and to recognise the legitimate place of his triple attraction, to earth, to heaven and to the supreme Reality."²

In fact, the required solution of the problem of harmonisation of the threefold demand of human nature lies in the recognition of the fact that "the lower consciousness of mind, life and body cannot arrive at its full meaning until it is taken up, restated, transformed by the light and power and joy of the higher spiritual consciousness, while the higher too does not stand in its full right relation to the lower by mere rejection, but by this assumption and domination, this taking up of its unfulfilled values, this restatement and transformation, — a spiritualising and supramentalising of the mental, vital and physical nature."³

The terrestrial ideal on one side, the supracosmic urge on the other, and the supraterrestrial aspiration in between, all err through the overstress and exclusiveness of their separate content and thus miss the reconciling equation. According to the verdict of the all-embracing, all-transcending and all-fulfilling spiritual Illumination underlying the Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, "the supracosmic Reality stands as the supreme Truth of being; to realise it is the highest reach of our consciousness. But it is this highest Reality which is also the cosmic being, the cosmic consciousness, the cosmic will and life: it has put these things forth, not outside itself but in its own being, not as an opposite principle but as its own self-unfolding and self-expression. Cosmic being is not a meaningless freak or phantasy or a chance error; there is a divine significance and truth in it: the manifold self-expression of the spirit is its high sense, the Divine itself is the key of its enigma. A perfect self-expression of the

¹ The Life Divine, p. 667.

² Ibid., p. 677.

³Ibid., pp. 677-78.

Page 45

---

spirit is the object of our terrestrial existence."¹

But this self-expression is in its nature evolutionary and progressive. And evolution carries with it in its intrinsic sense the necessity of a previous involution. For the spiritual process of evolution is a self-creation, ātma-krti, not a making of what never was, but a bringing out of what was implicit in the Being and inherent in the very beginning. In fact, what is happening in the world in course of its evolutionary march is that the Ignorance is seeking and preparing to transform itself by a progressive illumination of its darkness into the Knowledge that is already inherent and concealed within it. And in this process of progressive self-revelation, all that evolves already existed involved, passive or otherwise active, but in either case concealed from the superficial view in the shroud of apparently acting material Nature. "Matter could not have become animate if the principle of life had not been there constituting Matter and emerging as a phenomenon of life-in-matter; life-in-matter could not have begun to feel, perceive, think, reason, if the principle of mind had not been there behind life and substance, constituting it as its field of operation and emergent in the phenomenon of a thinking life and body: so too spirituality emerging in mind is the sign of a power which itself has founded and constituted life, mind and body and is now emerging as a spiritual being in a living and thinking body.... Spirit is a final evolutionary emergence because it is the original involutionary element and factor. Evolution is an inverse action of the involution: what is an ultimate and last derivation in the involution is the first to appear in the evolution; what was original and primal in the involution is in the evolution the last and supreme emergence."²

Thus the true significance of the earthly existence is concealed at the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine reality, in an opaque material Inconscience. Here in this material world Sachchidananda or the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute has hidden himself in what seem to be his opposites: "a Void, an infinite of Non-Existence, an indeterminate Inconscient, an insensitive blissless Zero"³ out of which everything else has to evolve. When this inevitable evolution — this evolutionary emergence

¹The Life Divine, p. 679.

²Ibid., p. 853.

³The Human Cycle, p. 208.

Page 46

---

of the involved Being and Consciousness — begins its course of ascent, it first develops, as it is bound to develop in the inverse order, Matter and a material universe: in Matter, life appears and living physical beings: in Life, Mind manifests and embodied living and thinking beings. And this is the actual state of the evolutionary ascent with Mind and Man as its highest products.

But Sachchidananda has yet to emerge fully in manifestation. Therefore this evolution, this spiritual progression cannot stop short with Mind and with the imperfect mental being called Man. Mind is too imperfect an expression and man too hampered and burdened a creature to be the last terms of the evolutionary elaboration of life's destiny upon earth. So, in the very nature of things, following the logic of the inner significance of the whole process, evolution is bound to proceed on its upward and forward march and bring out in due course a far greater consciousness than what we call Mind, indeed a supreme Truth-Consciousness — or what the great Vedic mystics termed Rita-Chit and Sri Aurobindo calls Supermind — that by its full manifestation will liberate not partially, not imperfectly as at present, but radically and wholly the imprisoned Divine. This Supramental Gnosis manifesting the Spirit's self-knowledge and world-knowledge, will bring into overt action, by an inherent necessity and inevitability, the dynamic manifestation here upon our earth itself of Sachchidananda or the divine Existence, Consciousness and Delight of being and becoming.

It is this that is the inner significance of the plan and sequence of the terrestrial evolution and it is this spiritually inexorable necessity that has so far determined and must in future determine all its steps and degrees, its principles and processes. Such is then the evolutionary import attached by Sri Aurobindo to our cosmic existence. A perfect self-expression of the Divine in the frame of Time and Space being the ultimate secret of evolution and the sole raison d'être and the only object of our terrestrial existence, the earth-life, in Sri Aurobindo's all-reconciling Integral Vision, cannot be considered as merely an unfortunate lapse of the spirit into something essentially imperfect, vain and miserable, if not altogether undivine, offered to the embodied soul as a thing to be suffered and then ingloriously cast away from it, as soon as its own inner spiritual maturity or some inscrutable law of the spirit makes that exit or rejection possible; nor can it be viewed as an

Page 47

---

inexplicable dream or illusion or an intolerable impossible evil that has somehow yet become a 'dolorous fact'. Earth-life has for its sense and significance the evolutionary unfolding of the Divine's self-existent timeless perfection in terms of a time-creation.

To sum up: "An involution of spirit in the Inconscience is the beginning; an evolution in the Ignorance with its play of the possibilities of a partial developing knowledge is the middle, and the cause of the anomalies of our present nature, — our imperfection is the sign of a transitional state, a growth not yet completed, an effort that is finding its way; a consummation in a deployment of the spirit's self-knowledge and the self-power of its divine being and consciousness is the culmination: these are the three stages of the cycle of the spirit's progressive self-expression in life. The two stages that have already their play seem at first sight to deny the possibility of the later consummating stage of the cycle, but logically they imply its emergence; for if the inconscience has evolved consciousness, the partial consciousness already reached must surely evolve into complete consciousness. It is a perfected and divinised life for which the earth-nature is seeking, and this seeking is a sign of the Divine Will in Nature. Other seekings also there are and these too find their means of self-fulfilment; a withdrawal into the supreme peace and ecstasy, a withdrawal into the bliss of the Divine presence are open to the soul in earth-existence: for the Infinite in its manifestation has many possibilities and is not confined by its formulations. But neither of these withdrawals can be the fundamental intention in the Becoming itself here; for then an evolutionary progression would not have been undertaken, — such a progression here can only have for its aim a self-fulfilment here: a progressive manifestation of this kind can only have for its soul of significance the revelation of Being in a perfect Becoming."¹

Attitude towards body and bodily life: It is quite obvious that in this Vision of the integral fulfilment of terrestrial life, in this idea of the establishment of a divine life upon earth in an earthly body, our body is bound to assume a place of capital importance. For, is it not too patent a fact that man as a species has become man, as distinct from and superior to all other animal creation, simply because he has been endowed with a characteristic body and brain

¹ The Life Divine, pp. 681-82. (Italics ours)

Page 48

---

allowing him to receive and adequately manifest a progressive mental illumination? In order to seize the importance of the specially structured human body in relation to the subjective-objective development of man, we may for a moment try to visualise any subhuman animal body but somehow possessing mental consciousness within. We can then very well comprehend the enormous difficulties that this imaginary hybrid creature will encounter in the process of manifesting dynamically a truly mental human culture.

Now, the same rule is bound to hold in the case of a prospective divine transfiguration of terrestrial life. A supramental transformation even of what is called our 'physical sheath', annnamaya koṣa, is absolutely indispensable for a truly divine living in the world. As Sri Aurobindo has so trenchantly put it:

"It can only be by developing a body or at least a functioning of the physical instrument capable of receiving and serving a still higher illumination that he [man] will rise above himself and realise, not merely in thought and in his internal being but in life, a perfectly divine manhood. Otherwise either the promise of Life is cancelled, its meaning is annulled and earthly being can only realise Sachchidananda by abolishing itself, by shedding from it mind, life and body and returning to the pure Infinite, or else man is not the divine instrument, there is a destined limit to the consciously progressive power which distinguishes him from all other terrestrial existences and as he has replaced them in the front of things, so another must eventually replace him and assume his heritage."¹

But Sri Aurobindo assures us that this need not be so. For man has proved himself to be a creature that is capable of infinite self-transcendence through consciously guided efforts. Thus, if only man cares to collaborate, at the present juncture of the evolutionary history, with the secretly operative Force behind evolution and opens all his members — his mentality, his life and even his body — to the unveiled action of what we have referred to above as Supramental Gnosis, and allows them to be freely moulded and transfigured by that supremely potent power of the Spirit operating in Nature, there is no reason why he himself cannot attain to the status of divine manhood. For Supermind alone possesses the Knowledge and Power to effectuate a total and

¹ The Life Divine, p. 231.

Page 49

---

entire transformation of our physical being.

But what is the nature of this Supermind ? and what is its potency of action? The Supermind is the self-existent self-effulgent plenary Truth-Consciousness of the Divine Nature, far superior to all mental movement, by which the Divine knows not only his own essence and being but his manifestation also. Again, the supramental is not merely a static power of Knowledge; it is at the same time Chit-Shakti, an infinitely potent self-effectuating dynamic power of Will that is according to the Knowledge because always one with the Knowledge.

Now, in the as yet unaccomplished progressive march of evolution, this Gnostic Knowledge-Will is bound to emerge and be overtly operative in the field of earthly manifestation; and this supramental manifestation in its turn is sure to usher in its wake a divine life in a divine body in a material world, for which Nature, the Great Mother, has been in travail since ages past. This divine transfiguration of life in the field of matter will necessarily signify "a union of the two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the heights of the Spirit but does not cast away its base, it joins the heights and depths together. The Spirit descends into Matter and the material world with all its lights and glories and powers and with them fills and transforms life in the material world so that it becomes more and more divine. The transformation is not a change into something purely subtle and spiritual to which Matter is in its nature repugnant and by which it is felt as an obstacle or as a shackle binding the Spirit; it takes up Matter as a form of the Spirit though now a form which conceals, and turns it into a revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates, discloses their innate divinity."¹

In this changed communion of the Spirit with Matter, the Will of the Spirit will directly control and determine the movements and laws of the physical body. The subconscient will become conscious and "the basis of inconscience with its obscurity and ambiguity, its obstruction or tardy responses will have been transformed into a lower or supporting superconscience by the supramental emergence."² The new evolution will effectuate even for

¹ The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 9-10.

² The Life Divine, p. 985.

Page 50

---

the physical being of man as for his mind and life, the triple process of spiritualisation, perfection and utter fulfilment. As a result all the obscurities, frailties and limitations of the physical system of man will be overcome and eliminated; the body, rendered absolutely immune from all attacks of illnesses and disorders, will manifest a spiritual Ananda of its own; the bodily life will free itself from the now universal necessity of physical alimentation gathered from outside; sex and sensuality will depart from the scene and the spiritual aspirant's upsoaring consciousness will not be drugged and dragged down into the mire by the unregenerate and unresponsive waking physical consciousness. In short, there will come about indeed a divine apotheosis of body and the bodily life upon earth:

"The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze

And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face.

........

A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell

And take the charge of breath and speech and act

And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns

And every feeling a celestial thrill.

..........

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine."¹

In the present work we shall try to justify on metaphysical as well as on scientific grounds the sublime prospect of the transfiguration of the body with all that it implies, and indicate, in the light of the Supramental Vision vouchsafed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, how far and in what way the insistent problems of food and sleep, fatigue and inertia, sex and sensuality, animal impulses and appetites, diseases and decay, and finally the Sphinx like problem of death and dissolution are going to be tackled and solved in the transformed divine body to appear in the course of the future evolution of man.

We shall incidentally seek to find out — in however meagre and suggestive a measure — any corroborative evidence gleaned from the field of biological evolution so far, for after all, "evolution...

¹ Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, pp. 709-11.

Page 51

---

must have at any given moment a past with its fundamental results still in evidence, a present in which the results it is labouring over are in process of becoming, a future in which still unevolved powers and forms of being must appear till there is the full and perfect manifestation."¹ And so Nature, the Great Mother, must have left her clues of approach even in the earlier phases of the great World-Becoming that is being worked out through this process of terrestrial evolution.

End of Part One

¹ The Life Divine, p. 707.

Page 52

Part Two

THE SPIRITUAL DESTINY OF THE

WAKING STATE

---

Chapter I

The Bane of Oscillation

Obviously if one has not the Brahmisthiti in the waking state,

there is no completeness in the realisation.

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 109)

How is it, O Great One, that even we who have attained to

Knowledge get at times blind and benighted"?*

(Chandi Saptashati, I.30)

...Man evolving to divinest heights

Colloques still with the animal and the Djinn;

The human godhead with star-gazer eyes

Lives still in one house with the primal beast.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto VI, p. 541)

The subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements. It sustains and reinforces all in us that clings most and refuses to change, our mechanical recurrences of unintelligent thought, our persistent obstinacies of feeling, sensation, impulse, propensity, our uncontrolled fixities of character. The animal in us, — the infernal also, — has its lair of retreat in the dense jungle of the subconscience. To penetrate there, to bring in light and establish a control, is indispensable for the completeness of any higher life, for any integral transformation of the nature.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 734-35)

A total divine transformation of all our embodied existence, even to its most obdurate and unregenerate physical parts, and not simply a subjective liberation from the grip of the phenomenal Ignorance, Avidya, is the goal set before the Yoga of Transformation as envisaged and delineated by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Naturally enough this implies that our Prakriti part including in particular the waking physical consciousness must

* Tat kenaitanmahābhāga yanmoho jhāñlnorapi ?

Page 55

---

have to undergo the necessary spiritual transfiguration and be made capable of bodying forth in full the Chit-Tapas of the dynamic Sachchidananda.

But is this high goal feasible and at all realisable in practice ? Even if we set aside for the moment the trenchant assertion of the Illusionists that everything in this phenomenal universe not excluding the body itself is nothing but a false appearance devoid of all substantial reality and brought about by the power of Ignorance, and that it is thus absolutely pointless to talk about the divine transformation of the physical existence which is nonexistent after all and will vanish altogether with the dawn of Knowledge¹, we are still confronted with a chorus of dissident voices from other not so extremist spiritual seekers who would vehemently protest to say that far be it to seek to divinise our waking physical existence, it is not possible even to achieve a perfect self-knowledge and union or unity with the being, the consciousness and the bliss of the Supreme except in moments of total withdrawal from all trace of body-consciousness. Thus it is held that only the cataleptic state of Samadhi can offer itself as the most natural status of divine consciousness that an embodied soul can aspire after.

This so-claimed incapacity of our normal waking consciousness to allow of a complete spiritual illumination has often been cited as one of the most potent and pertinent grounds for the disparagement and denigration of the physical body. In ancient Greece and Rome, in the Dionysian cult and in the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus, such mystical-psychical experiences as men obtained in rare moments of exaltation described as ekstasis led to the conviction that it is the body alone that is the villain of the piece obstructing and fettering the soul in its ascent to the 'knowledge of divine things' and that the only sensible course would be to cast it off so that the soul might be 'purified' from a 'defiling encumbrance.²

If the physical body alone is at the root of the trouble, so may aver the unwary seeker, it should be a very easy propostion to escape the clutches of Illusion and Ignorance and attain to the status of spiritual liberation, simply by waiting long enough for the physical body to drop off and disintegrate on death, or better

¹ Cf. Yoga-Vāsiṣṭham (Upaśama-Prakaraṇam), IXC. 49-54.

² W. Capelle, "Ascetism (Greek)" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Ed. Hastings), Vol. 2, p. 80.

Page 56

---

still by committing suicide as Godhika(?) of the Buddhist tradition sought to do! But a little reflection would show that it is the height of absurdity to expect that the state of physical death alone might usher in liberation ('maraṇameva apavargaḥ': Brihaspati Sutra). For, as one of the Upanishads twits, 'birds and insects and animals, all mortal creatures without exception, are sure to die today or tomorrow; can one declare on that score that all of them become liberated through death?'¹

The fact of the matter is this that our body is not composed simply of what we perceive through the physical senses. In addition to this ephemeral gross physical body (liṅgaśarīra), we possess too a subtle one. While the gross body gets disintegrated on death, the subtle body or its seed persists and becomes the occasion for the sprouting of a new gross body and thus is maintained the continuity of the play in the Ignorance.

Now, according to the traditional spiritual vision, our subtle body as well as the gross one is a product of avidyā. On the attainment of liberation, through the annulment of this Ignorance, what happens is that all possibilities of further formation of bodies are altogether and once for all destroyed;² 'the seeds get fried out so that they fail to germinate any more.'³

Thus, it is not so much the dissolution of the present physical body as the prevention of the formation of further bodies in future (bhāvīdeha-nivṛtti), that is claimed to be brought about by the dawning of spiritual Knowledge.⁴ So far as the present gross body is concerned, its continued existence and functioning even after the attainment of liberation is sought to be explained in terms of what is called prārabdha-karma. Indeed, according to the Theory of Karma, karmas fall broadly into three categories: those that have started bearing their fruits (prārabdha-karma), those that still lie

¹Paśukukkuṭakitādyā mṛtiṁ saṁprāpnuvanti vai,

teṣāṁ kiṁ piṇḍapātena muktirbhavati padmaja? (Yogaśikhaopaniṣad, I. 161-62).

²Jñānasamakālamuktaḥ kaivalyaṁ yāti. (Sheshacharya, Paramārthasāra, sl. 81)

³Vivekajñānavahninā dahyante (Varāhopaniṣad, III. 24).

⁴Na yogī paśyate garbhaṁ pare brahmaṇi liyate (Dattatreya, Avadhūta Gitā. II, 29).

Bhūyojanmavinirmuktam (Yoga-Vāsiṣṭham, Upashama-Prakaranam, 90.18). Tathātmani samādadhyād yathā bhūyo na jāyate (Ibid., Mumukshu-Vyavahara-Prakaranam, 7.1).

Page 57

---

accumulated (sañcita-karma), and those that are being gathered in the present embodied existence (sañcīyamāna-karma). Spiritual knowledge, so it is asserted, destroys altogether the second kind¹ and prevents the third², thus rendering the assumption of a new body impossible. But the first type of karmas that have begun to germinate and produce their effects can by no means be infructified; the embodied soul must perforce exhaust them through sufferance alone and not by meditation or in any other wise³.

It follows then that the present physical body, the product of such karmas, runs its natural course even after the attainment of Knowledge and ceases to function only when the force of the karmas causing it becomes automatically exhausted in the fashion of the potter's wheel which, already set in motion, comes to a dead stop at the exhaustion of the imparted momentum (kulālaca-kravat). At the fall of the physical body, both the bodies, gross and subtle, perish and disintegrate and the liberated soul (jivan-mukta) is then said to attain to the status of disembodied liberation (videhamukti) whence there is no more return (yadgatvā na nivartante) to the ignorant play of cosmic existence.⁴

It is amply evident from what goes before that instead of seeking to dissolve the bane of Ignorance while still in the physical body, if a person ventures on an ill-conceived short-cut by voluntarily terminating his bodily life, it will utterly be of no avail to him; on the contrary, the misconceived act will add to the burden of his sañcīyamāna-karma which he will have to exhaust in a future body under conditions infinitely worse and unimaginably dolorous. From the spiritual point of view, suicide has thus been always considered to be one of the most abominable acts.

But this is not for any love or respect for the body as such. It is for the sole reason that this heinous act unwittingly delays the hour of ultimate liberation from the bondage of birth and the shackles of physical existence. And if this is so, the voluntary giving up of the body loses much of the stigma attached to it, if it is

¹Jñānāgninā sarvakarmāṇi bhasmasāt kurute. (Gitā)

² Karmaphalaiḥ sa na badhyate. (Shankara)

Na sa mūḍhavallipyate. Yathā raviḥ sarvarasān prabhuṅkte hutāśanaścāpi hi sarvabhakṣaḥ. Tathaiva yogi viṣayān prabhuṅkte na lipyate puṇyapāpaiśca śuddhaḥ. (Avadhūtopaniṣad, 6)

³ Asau naiva śāmyeddhyānasahasrataḥ. (Avadhūtopaniṣad, 6) Cf. mā bhuktā ksīyate karma kalpakotiśatairapi

⁴Punarāvṛttirahitaṁ kaivalyaṁ pratipadyate. (Shankara, Vākyavṛtti., 53)

Page 58

---

undertaken after attaining to Self-Knowledge. In our day, Sri Ramakrishna is very much explicit on this particular point. Thus he says:

"Suicide is a heinous sin, undoubtedly. A man who kills himself must return again and again to this world and suffer its agony. But I don't call it suicide if a person leaves his body after having the vision of God. There is no harm in giving up one's body that way. After attaining Knowledge some people give up their bodies. After the gold image has been cast in the clay mould, you may either preserve the mould or break it."¹

Elsewhere he says: "The kavirajas prepare [the medicine] makaradhvaja in a bottle....When the medicine has been made, what difference does it make whether the bottle is preserved or broken? ...After the realization of God, what difference does it make whether the body lives or dies?"²

But why is this attitude of indifference, even of disdain, towards the physical body ? In order to appreciate the reasons behind this almost universal sense of disparagement for the body, we must note that in the Sadhanas followed so far, it is the subjective realisation of the Purusha part and the inner experiences of the Self and the Supreme, as distinct from the spiritual transformation of the Prakriti part, of the instrumental Nature; that have been generally sought after. The Self separates from the Nature and, itself free and unaffected, views the turbid movements of the Prakriti as the continuance of an unsupported machinery that will surely drop off at the falling away of the body, leaving the Spirit free for ever.

Undoubtedly, while in the body, the untransformed instrumental Nature comes at times to becloud the vision and shut off the highest realisation as if behind an obscure veil. But this is the price one has to pay for the continued existence in a physical body and since this is a temporary and short-lived deficiency, it may not be very much grudged. After all, so it is averred, one may withdraw into the state of Samadhi in order to experience the highest realisation even while still in the body.

But the trouble is, one cannot continually remain in Samadhi,

¹ Swami Nikhilananda (Tr.), The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 95. (Italics ours)

² Ibid., p. 174.

Page 59

---

in the consciousness of the Supreme Truth; 'one cannot remain in bhāva for long',¹ as Sri Ramakrishna would say. So long as the body exists, one is perforce brought down² from the absorbed state of illumination, and a recurring rhythm of ascent and descent intervenes. This state of constant wavering, of soaring and descending, this oscillation between the withdrawn status of blissful realisation and the darkened status of waking existence, is not something that can be viewed with indifference by all, especially since our normal waking physical consciousness does not seem to have the spiritual capability of ever mirroring the highest or the deepest realisation. Is it not Sri Ramakrishna who cited his own case to declare: "Sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni: it is not good to keep the voice on 'ni', it is not possible to keep it there very long. I shall keep it on the next lower note" ?³

This supposed incapacity of our waking physical consciousness coupled with the gravitational pull exerted by the body-consciousness tending to bring down the embodied soul from its status of perfect union and illumination, often creates a sense of repugnance for the bodily existence. The aforesaid oscillation of consciousness comes as such a rude shock to some sensitive spiritual seekers that they do not flinch even from giving up their bodies as an irremediable malady. The apparently accidental dissolution of the bodies of Sri Chaitanya of Bengal, of the famous Pawahari Baba of Gazipur and of the Maharashtrian saint Tukaram may have its occult compelling factor in some such spiritual malaise.⁴

We thus encounter an all-round denigration of our physical existence. But what are after all the precise disabilities of the waking state, what is the character and content of its spiritual penury?

¹ Swami Nikhilananda (Tr.), op. cit., p. 614.

² Cf. jñānināmapi cetāṁsi devī bhagavati hi sā balādākṛṣya mohāya mahā-māyā prayacchati. (Caṇḍi Saptaśatī, 39)

³Swami Nikhilananda, op. cit., p. 524. (Italics ours)

⁴Vide Brahmarshi Satyadev, Sādhana Samara, I, pp. 159-60.

Page 60

Chapter II

The Traditional Challenge

Perfect knowledge must lead to the trance of Samadhi....

True Knowledge cannot be attained except in Samadhi.

(Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathasar, p. 247)

Nor is it enough for the Sadhaka to have the utter realisation

only in the trance of Samadhi or in a motionless quietude,

but he must in trance or in waking, in passive reflection or

energy of action be able to remain in the constant Samadhi

of the firmly founded Brahmic consciousness.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 349)

When the ego-sense gets completely dissolved, the body,

the product of ego, gets disintegrated too.

(Yogaśīkhopaniṣad, I.34)

When the root-cause of Avidyā is destroyed, the body must

perforce fall away.

(Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, III.92.6)

Without desires the body cannot live.

(The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 346)

After a man has attained samadhi all his actions drop away.

(Ibid., p. 80)

The ego-sense is not indispensable to the world-play.

(Sri Aurobindo, op. cit., p. 418)

Desire and ego and personal will and the thought of the mind are the motives of action only in the lower nature; when the ego is lost and the Yogin becomes Brahman, when he lives in and is, even, a transcendent and universal consciousness, action comes spontaneously out of that...

(Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, I, p. 303)

Page 61

---

Action without desire is possible, action without attachment

is possible, action without ego is possible.

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga p. 684)

Many are the spiritual seekers who would feel skeptic about the feasibility of the high goal of our spiritual endeavour which is no less than the dynamic divinisation of our total existence even to the dark dungeon of the subconscient. What the Yoga of Transformation seeks after is not "the perfection of introspective, indwelling or subjective spirituality"¹ but "the perfection of the whole nature in a dynamic, kinetic spirituality objectivised in the life, master of its environment, sovereign in its commerce with world-nature."² The integral transformation we envisage must thus embrace fully the dynamic being of action and creation, these latter remaining no more the expression of ego-bound desire-tainted ignorance as at present but becoming the perfect expression and flowering of the Truth, the Light and the Divine Ananda.

The realisation of this goal naturally implies that our waking state involving even its most physical functionings must be totally rid of all ego-trace, for in the epigrammatic utterance of the Mother:-

"Ego is that which helps us to individualise ourselves and that which prevents us from becoming divine. Combine the two together and you will know what the ego is. Without ego, as the world is organised now, there would be no individual, and with the ego the world cannot become divine."³

Similarly, desire in all its guises gross and subtle must be altogether extirpated from our waking consciousness, if we would like to acquire a divine life of action and creation firmly established in the consummated transcendence of the universal Ignorance; for, contrary to what is generally assumed, it is not desire that is the true creative principle. In fact, "desire has no place in the Supreme or in the All-Being.... Desire is the result of incompleteness, of insufficiency, of something that is not possessed or enjoyed and which the being seeks for possession or enjoyment. A supreme and universal Being can have the delight of its all-existence, but to that delight desire must be foreign, — it can only

^{1 2} The Life Divine, p. 960. (Italics ours)

³ Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Vol. XII, No. 1, p. 69. (Italics ours)

Page 62

---

be the appanage of the incomplete evolutionary ego..."¹

But is it at all possible to have an egoless desireless waking state? Is it practicable to possess a purposive dynamic life in which action will not lower the consciousness or becloud the vision of the soul?

Those spiritual seekers who emphatically assert the impossibility of these realisations and hence, a fortiori, the impossibility of a divinised waking physical existence, seek to do so basing themselves on their own personal experience. Therefore, it becomes incumbent upon us, if we would like to establish the validity of a possible divine transformation of our physical being and consciousness, to take note of these contrary findings, accept them at their face value and then clearly point out how these well-authenticated deficiencies can be rectified and remedied. Pointwise, the most important findings and some of their representative documentary evidences are as follows:

(A) The Waking State and the Highest Realisation

It is claimed that the highest heights of spiritual realisation are not compatible with the waking state; they can be acquired only by means of the Yogic trance or Samadhi. In this connection the case of Sri Chaitanya is often cited. According to the accounts given by his associates he alternated between three different states: (i) the state of the bhakta, (ii) the intoxicated state and (iii) the state of Nirvikalpa or 'seedless' Samadhi. In the narration of Sri Ramakrishna:

"Chaitanya Dev used to experience three different states: antardaśā or the indrawn state, ardhabāhya-daśā or the half-withdrawn state and bāhya-daśā or the waking state. In the antardaśā he would have union with the Divine in the cataleptic state of jaḍa-samādhi; in the ardhabāhya-dasa he would dance in the company of the devotees, when he retained some awareness of the external world; in the bāhya-daśā he was fully aware of his external environment and in the consciousness of a bhakta enjoyed singing the holy name of the Lord."²

¹ The Life Divine, pp. 769-70.

² Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathasar, pp. 305, 309.

Page 63

---

(B) The Ultimate Realisation Burns Out the Body

It is asserted that perfect Knowledge, generally attained in the deepest or the highest state of Samadhi, must lead inexorably to the dissolution of the body. It becomes thus pointless to talk of the dynamic divinisation of life. It is perhaps some such finding that is hinted at in those verses of the Upanishads where it is stated that it is impossible to pass through the gates of the Sun and yet retain an earthly body. As Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, it was because of this failure that the spiritual effort of India culminated in Mayavada.¹

Brahmarshi Satyadev is emphatic in his assertion that the highest state of Yogic trance in which all the bhâvas are scorched out of existence can occur only once² in the life-time of an embodied soul; for, once attained, there is no return (vyutthāna) therefrom. And he interprets, we would rather say 'unjustifiably', the following verse from the Gita to support his view:

"My highest status is that from which there is no more return."³

Sri Ramakrishna too never felt tired of stressing this particular point. According to him, except for some rare specially gifted souls, the Ishwarakotis, it is absolutely impossible for the majority of Sadhakas to return from the exalted state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi to the normal plane of relative consciousness. "When the Kundalini rises to the Sahasrara and the mind goes into samadhi, the aspirant loses all consciousness of the outer world. He can no longer retain his physical body.... In that state the life-breath lingers for twenty-one days and then passes out. Entering the 'black waters' of the ocean, the ship never comes back."⁴

In his inimitable way Sri Ramakrishna narrates a parable bearing upon the same theme:

"While on their way four friends chanced upon a spot surrounded by high walls. All four felt eager to know what was inside there. So one of them clambered up the wall and peeped in. But lo and wonder! he uttered a shrill cry of 'ha! ha! ha! ha!' and tumbled down inside the compound: he did not report back. Then the other three, one by one, followed suit and everyone

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 102.

² Sādhana Samara, Part I, p. 225.

³ yad gatvā na nivartante taddhāma paramaṁ mama.

⁴ The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 456.

Page 64

---

of them uttered 'ha! ha! ha! ha!' and vanished altogether. Who would report to whom then!"¹

(C) The Waking State not Compatible with the

Absence of Ego and Desire

It is often averred that it is futile to expect that while in the waking state one can be completely free from all trace of ego and desire. It is only in the highest state of Samadhi that this becomes possible. Thus we find in Sri Ramakrishna:

"To be sure, the ego does not disappear altogether.... In samadhi the ego totally disappears; then what is remains."² "The ego can disappear only when one goes into samadhi."³ "It is true that one or two can get rid of the 'I' through samadhi: but these cases are very rare. You may indulge in thousands of reasonings, but still the 'I' comes back. You may cut the peepal-tree to the very root today, but you will notice a sprout springing up tomorrow."⁴ "The 'I' cannot be effaced altogether.... It is like a goat that still bleats faintly and jerks its legs even after its head has been cut off."⁵

So, it is only in the highest state of Yogic trance that ego can be eliminated altogether. Conversely, on the elimination of ego-sense, a person must perforce leave the waking state and retire into Samadhi. And as we have mentioned above, for the general run of Sadhakas, this plunge into the trance-state is sooner or later followed by the dropping off of the body-sheath. For, it is claimed that it is the ego-sense that alone serves as the linchpin for the functioning of the body; so, with the eradication of ego, the body gets automatically disintegrated.⁶

The same remark holds for desires. In however subtle and attenuated a form desires must persist if the physical body has at all to function. For, as the Yoga-Vashishtha points out, desires form the supporting string for the formation of the garland of beads, which is no other than the physical body, and hence with the string gone, the body-garland vanishes in no time.⁷

¹Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathasar, p. 304.

^{2 3} The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, pp. 794, 101.

^{4 5} Ibid., pp. 102, 1014.

⁶ āhaṁkṛtiryadā yasya naṣṭā bhavati tasya vai dehastvapi bhavennaṣṭaḥ. ( Yogaśikhopaniṣad, I.34-35)

⁷ ayaṁ vāsanayā deho dhriyate bhūtapañjaraḥ tantunāntarniviṣṭena muktaughastantunā yatha. (Yoga-Vāsiṣṭham, I.3.10)

Page 65

---

But such is the case for the majority of Sadhakas whom Sri Ramakrishna would designate as jīvakoṭis. But what about those rare great souls, the īśvarakoṭis of Ramakrishnian terminology, who, like Narada, Janaka, Prahlada and others of tradition and Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and others of historical times, are reputed to have ascended to the Nirvikalpa state of Samadhi and then descended' therefrom for the welfare of the world, lokakālyaṇārtham? ¹

Even they, it is asserted, cannot come down to the waking state except through the mediation of some desire however trivial and innocent in appearance. Thus we read in the authoritative biography of Sri Ramakrishna:

"It is only a Ramakrishna who is able to come down and go to the Absolute at will, and even he assured his return to the ordinary consciousness by creating some desire of the simplest and most childlike nature before going into samadhi and repeating it insistently so that there was nothing left to chance. He would say, I-I-I shall smoke,' 'I shall have water to drink.' "²

And while remaining in the waking state for the welfare of others, the Ishwarakotis cannot of course be altogether free from all desires and ego-sense; they must retain what have been termed vidyāmāyā or the 'ego of Knowledge' and śuddha-vāsanā or 'pure desires', if they would like to have their bodies persist. As Sri Ramakrishna says:

"Returning to the relative plane after reaching the Absolute is like coming back to this shore of a river after going to the other side.... If one retains Vidya-Maya one comes back to this world. The Avatars keep this Vidya-Maya."³ "Some even after realizing God, retain the 'ego of Knowledge'. They retain this in order to teach others, taste divine bliss and sport with the devotees of God."⁴

Of course, this sort of ego-sense and these desires are not of

¹ Cf. "Generally the body does not remain alive after the attainment of samadhi. The only exceptions are such sages as Narada, who keep their bodies alive in order to bring spiritual light to others. It is also true of divine Incarnations, like Chaitanya.... The great souls who retain their bodies after samadhi feel compassion for the suffering of others." (The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 81)

² The Life of Sri Ramakrishna (Advaita Ashram, Almora), p. 182. (Italics ours)

^{3 4} The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, pp. 931, 935.

Page 66

---

much importance from the point of view of traditional spirituality, for they do not obstruct the return to the highest state of Knowledge. They are, in the imagery of Sri Ramakrishna, "like a sword turned into gold by touching the philosopher's stone; you cannot hurt anybody with it."¹ The Varāhopaniṣad and the Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha adopt the simile of fried seeds incapable of sprouting again, to designate the same truth;² and Acharya Sureshwara brings in the image of a snake whose venom has been extracted, in order to demonstrate the harmlessness of the appearance of Avidya posterior to Realisation.³

But ego is ego and desires are desires, and we for ourselves cannot be satisfied with this sort of compromise achievement in which one "runs a boat-race back and forth, as it were, between the sixth and the seventh planes."⁴

(D) A Really Dynamic Life not Compatible with the

Highest State of Realisation

It is often pointed out that for a really dynamic life with purposive action, a certain fall from the supreme state of spiritual realisation becomes inevitable. Simple actions meant for the maintenance of bodily life may be altogether innocuous, but other actions are sure to involve the embodied soul in some sort of bondage and obscurity. And since actions tend to carry the consciousness outward and downward, work is generally considered to be an operation of Avidya or Ignorance and hence incompatible with the highest status of realisation. Thus the Shanti-Gita declares :

"Desires engender Karmas and the Karmas in their turn create desires (vāsanayā bhavet karma karmanā vāsanā punaḥ)...Karmas do not allow a soul to withdraw from the play of Ignorance (saṁ-sṛterna nivartate). Karmas are therefore the source of all troubles

¹The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 1014.

²bhṛṣṭabijavat. (Yoga-Vāsiṣṭham, I.3.13)

utpādyamānā rāgādyā

vivekajñānavahninā

tadā tadaiva dahyante

kutasteṣāṁ prarohanam (Varāhopanisad III. 24-25)

³ utkhātadaṁṣṭroragavadavidyā kim kariṣyati? (Bhadāranyaka-Vārtika, I.4.1746)

⁴ The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 456.

Page 67

---

(duḥkhahetustataḥ karma) and act as the shackles for embodied souls (jīvānāṁ pādaśṛṁkhalam). Shun then all actions (sarvaṁ karma parityajya)."¹

It is thus that actions are supposed to fall off from the life of a traditional spiritual seeker as he advances on the way of Illumination. Sri Ramakrishna expresses this supposedly indubitable fact of all true spiritual life in the following two parables:

"In the Kirtan the devotee first sings 'Nitāi āmar mātā hāti' ('My Nitai dances like a mad elephant'). As the devotional mood deepens, he simply sings, 'Hati! Hati!' Next, all he can sing is 'Hati!' And last of all he simply sings, 'Ha!' and goes into samadhi. The man who has been singing all the while then becomes speechless."²

"Again at a feast given to the Brahmins, one at first hears much noise of talking. When the guests sit on the floor with the leaf-plates in front of them, much of the noise ceases. Then one hears only the cry, 'Bring some luchi!' As they partake of the luchi and other dishes, three quarters of the noise subsides. When the curd, the last course, appears, one hears only the sound 'soop! soop!' as the guests eat the curd with their fingers. Then there is practically no noise. Afterwards all retire to sleep and absolute silence reigns."³

That Sri Ramakrishna did not consider a dynamic life of action and creation to be at all compatible with the highest state of realisation, can be surmised from his utterances on the occasion of his favourite disciple Narendra (afterwards known the world over by the name of Swami Vivekananda) attaining for the first time the Nirvikalpa state of Samadhi. Let us quote in extenso from an authoritative work published by the Sri Ramakrishna Order:

"About nine o'clock at night Naren began to show faint signs of returning consciousness. When he regained full consciousness of the physical world...[and] presented himself to the Master, the latter said looking deep into his eyes, 'Now then, the Mother has shown you everything. Just as a treasure is locked up in a box, so will this realisation you have just had be locked up and the key shall remain with me. You have work to do. When you will have finished my work, the treasure-box will be unlocked again; and you will know everything then just as you do now.'

¹ Shanti Gita, V. 36-38.

^{2 3} The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 81.

Page 68

---

"Afterwards Sri Ramakrishna said to the other disciples, The moment he realises who he is, he will refuse to stay a moment longer in the body. The time will come when he will shake the world to its foundation through the strength of his intellectual and spiritual powers. I have prayed that the Divine Mother may keep this realisation of the Absolute veiled from Naren. There is much work to be done by him."¹

We have made a brief survey of some of the main grounds upon which most spiritual seekers would seek to contest the possibility of any divine transformation of our waking physical existence. And if in reality, as it is generally assumed, such is the destined state of spiritual penury of the waking consciousness, the traditional spirituality is justified in putting its sole stress on the inner Realisation, leaving the outer Nature-part to participate as much as it possibly can in the Illumination of the inner Being and then drop off definitively at death.

But although actually and pragmatically valid, we do not accept that our waking physical consciousness is intrinsically and potentially debarred from getting spiritually transformed. But it is never enough to assert a high goal and a laudable objective; it is necessary too to see whether they are at all realisable in practice. And for that we must now examine the actual state of our waking consciousness, its present penury and future possibilities and seek to disengage the conditions whose fulfilment will lead to its divine transformation.

¹ The Life of Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western Disciples (Advaita Ashram, Almora), p. 145. (Italics ours)

Page 69

Chapter III

THE WAKING STATE AND

THE 'WHY' OF THE SAMADHI-PLUNGE

Above us dwells a superconscient god

Hidden in the mystery of his own light:

Around us is a vast of ignorance

Lit by the uncertain ray of the human mind,

Below us sleeps the Inconscient dark and mute.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, p. 484)

Since mind-consciousness is the sole waking state possessed by mental being,...it cannot ordinarily quite enter into another without leaving behind completely both all our waking existence and all our inward mind. This is the necessity of the Yogic trance.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 379)

To enter into Samadhi is to pass into a state of which no

conscious memory remains on awakening....

When people speak of Samadhi, I tell them, " Well, try to develop

your inner individuality and you can enter into these very regions in

full consciousness, with the delight of communion with the highest

regions without losing consciousness for that and returning with

a zero instead of an experience."

(The Mother, Bulletin, Vol. XIV, No. 3, pp. 43-45)

Yes, they [all the states of higher realisation] can be attained

even in full activity. Trance is not essential.

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 744)

A thoroughgoing psychological self-investigation far transcending its present artificial bounds, an occult-spiritual exploration of the total field of our being, reveals the truth that what we normally know of ourselves is not all we are: it is no more than 'a bubble on the ocean of our existence.' Indeed, apart from the very insignificant and restricted part of our waking individual consciousness, we are normally perfectly ignorant of the whole of

Page 70

---

the rest of our being, 'the immense more', that lies hidden in apparently inaccessible "reaches of being which descend into the profoundest depths of the subconscient and rise to highest peaks of superconscience, or which surround the little field of our waking self with a wide circumconscient existence of which our mind and sense catch only a few indications."¹

As a matter of fact, following the ancient Wisdom of the Upanishads,² we can broadly divide the totality of our existence into four provinces or states: the 'waking state' (jāgrat), the subliminal or the 'dream-state' (svapna), the superconscient or the 'sleep-state' (suṣupti) and finally the state beyond or the 'ultimate state' (turīya). Corresponding to these four states of our existence, we have in us four selves or rather the four-fold status of the one Self that is Brahman: the waking self or Vaiśvānara, the Waker; the dream-self or Taijasa, the Dreamer; the sleep-self or Prājña, the Sleeper; and finally the supreme or absolute self of being, the Fourth (caturtha), the Incommunicable (avyavahārya), the One without second (advaita), of which the three before are derivations.

In less abstruse and mystical terms, we may state that the fourfold scale of being delineated above represents, so to say, the 'degrees of the ladder of being' that an embodied soul must successively attain if he would seek to climb back from his phenomenal and ignorant self-view towards the supreme superconscience of the highest state of his self-being. But what are the essential traits of these four statuses?

The Waking State: Our waking consciousness, the consciousness that we normally possess and that is dominated by the physical mind, is a limping surface consciousness shut up in the body limitation and within the confines of the little bit of personal mind. We are ordinarily aware only of our surface selves and quite ignorant of all that functions behind the veil. And yet "what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves and even believe that that is all we are, is only a small part of our being"³, and by far the larger part lies hidden "behind the frontal consciousness, behind the veil, occult and known only by an occult knowledge."⁴

While in. this normal waking consciousness, a man becomes

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 498-99.

² Vide, in particular, Mandukya Upanishad and Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

^{3 4} Letters on Yoga, p. 348.

Page 71

---

externalised and gazes outward and rarely if ever inward (paraṁ paśyati nāntarātmari)¹. Hence the self in this status of external wakefulness has been described as 'wise of the outward' (jāgaritasthā-no bahiḥprajñaḥ)². No spiritual life or any higher or deeper realisation becomes possible if one remains fettered to this waking state.

The Dream-State: This represents the subliminal condition of our conscious existence, the large luminous realm of interior consciousness, that corresponds to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane and even a subtle physical plane of our being. Indeed, behind our outer existence, our outer mind and life and body,

Our larger being sits behind cryptic walls:

There are greatnesses hidden in our unseen parts

That wait their hour to step into life's front:

Our inner Mind dwells in a larger light,

Its brightness looks at us through hidden doors;

A mighty life-self with its inner powers

Supports the dwarfish modicum we call life;

Our body's subtle self is throned within

In its viewless palace of veridical dreams.³

Thus, the subliminal reach of our being comprises our inner existence, that is to say, our inner mind, inner life and inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them all. It is of the nature of a secret intraconscient and circumconscient awareness in full possession of a brilliant mind power, a limpid life-force and an unclouded subtle-physical sense of things.

It is in this subliminal realm of our interior existence, the realm of subtle subjective supraphysical experiences and of dreams and visions and heavenly intimations, a veritable world of wonderful illuminations, that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw by inward-drawn concentration from their absorption in surface activities.

¹ Katha Upanishad, II. 1.1.

² Mandukya Upanishad, 3.

³ Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, pp. 484-85.

Page 72

---

It is because of its inward plunge bringing in its train a wealth of inner experiences, dreams and visions, that the self in this status has been termed the 'dream-self that is wise of the inward' (svapnasthāno'ntaḥprajñaḥ).¹

The Sleep-State: This corresponds to a still higher super-conscient status, a state of pure consciousness (prajñānaghana)², pure bliss (ānandamaya hyānandabhuk³) and pure mastery (sar-veśvara⁴). This exalted state of self-absorbed consciousness is called 'sleep' because all mental or sensory experiences cease when We enter this superconscience. This 'dreamless sleep state' (yata supto...na kañcana svapnaṁ paśyati)⁵, this status of massed consciousness and omnipotent Intelligence (sarveśvara sarvajña⁶), contains in it "all the powers of being but all compressed within itself and concentrated solely on itself and, when active, then active in a consciousness where all is the self."⁷ It is in this superconscient 'sleep-state' that we become "inherently and intrinsically conscious of our self and spirit, not as here below by a reflection in silent mind or by acquisition of the knowledge of a hidden Being within us; it is through it, through that ether of super-conscience, that we can pass to a supreme status, knowledge, experience."⁸

The Turīya State: This corresponds to the highest status far transcending the first three, being the status of pure self-existence and absolute being, where consciousness and unconsciousness as we actually conceive of both lose their validity. It is the supreme state of Sachchidananda, 'a state of superconscience absorbed in its self-existence, in a self-silence or a self-ecstasy.'

About the self of this fourth or the Turiya state, the Mandukya Upanishad speaks:

"He who is neither inward-wise, nor outward-wise, nor both inward and outward wise, nor wisdom self-gathered, nor possessed of wisdom, nor unpossessed of wisdom, He who is unseen and incommunicable, unseizable, featureless, unthinkable, and

¹Mandukya Upanishad, 4.

^{23 5} Ibid., 5.

^{4 6} Ibid., 6.

⁷ The Life Divine, p. 452 f.n.

⁸ Ibid., p. 561.

Page 73

---

unnameable, Whose essentiality is awareness of the Self in its single existence, in Whom all phenomena dissolve, Who is Calm, Who is Good, Who is One than Whom there is no other, Him they deem the fourth: He is the Self, He is the object of Knowledge."¹

Such is then the fourfold division of the totality of our existence, and true knowledge, that is to say, spiritual knowledge about our self-being as well as about the world-being becomes available to us only when we succeed in establishing a conscious rapport with the subliminal and the now superconscient realms of our being. But unfortunately our waking state is blissfully ignorant of its connection with or even the very existence of these supernal reaches. So the goal of Yoga which is essentially an attempt at arriving at an integral self-knowledge, an entire consciousness and power of being and a supreme union or unity with Sachchidananda, the Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute, can be attained only by a progressive ascension of the mind to higher and still higher planes or degrees of consciousness.

But here a serious and seemingly insuperable hitch presents itself. For mind is the sole waking consciousness actually possessed by man the mental being and this mind in its actuality completely fails to remain awake, beyond a certain line, in the really higher states of realisation where the heightened and intensified spiritual experiences are in the nature of things sought. This almost absolute incompatibility of our waking mentality with the highest ranges of spiritual consciousness is strikingly brought out in the following very interesting account of Sri Ramakrishna's repeated failures to remain physically awake on the summits of realisation. Swami Saradananda, one of the closest direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna and the writer of his authoritative biography, is reporting:

"In how simple terms the Thakur [i.e. Sri Ramakrishna] used to explain to us these abstruse truths of spiritual life:

" 'Well, something rises from my feet and climbs towards the head. So long as it does not reach the head, I retain consciousness ; but as soon as it reaches there, an utter forgetfulness overtakes me — then there is no more seeing or hearing, far be it to

¹ Mandukya Upanishad, 7. (Sri Aurobindo's translation).

Page 74

---

speak of talking.' Who would speak then ? — The very sense of 'I' and 'Thou' vanishes altogether! I often decide to speak everything to you, all about the visions and experiences that accompany this ascension. So long as that has reached so far (pointing to his heart) or even so far (pointing to his throat), reporting is possible and in fact I report; but as soon as that transcends this region (pointing to his throat), it seems somebody shuts my mouth and I fail to control my forgetfulness! (Pointing to his throat) when one ascends still further than this level, no sooner than I contemplate for a moment to speak of the visions and experiences there, the mind immediately shoots upwards and no reporting becomes any more possible!'

"Oh, innumerable are the occasions when the Thakur sought to exercise the utmost control over himself so that he could report to us about the types of experiences that one has when the mind transcends the throat-centre but each time he failed!... One day he emphatically stated:

" 'Today I must speak to you everything, not a bit would I hide' — and he started to speak. He could very well speak all about the centres upto the heart and the throat, and then pointing to the junction of his eye-brows he said, 'Whenever the mind ascends here, the embodied soul has a vision of the supreme Self and goes into Samadhi. Then there exists but a thin transparent veil between the individual Self and the Supreme. And there the soul experiences in this way —'. Speaking so far, as soon as he started detailing the realisation of the Supreme, he went into the Samadhi state. After coming out of his trance state, he recommenced reporting again, but again went into Samadhi. After such repeated attempts and failures he spoke to us with tears in his eyes:

" 'My sons, my intention is to report to you everything without hiding the least bit of it: but the Mother won't allow me to speak — She completely shut my mouth!'

"We wondered at this and thought: 'How strange! It is apparent that he is trying to report and that he is even suffering because of his failure to do so, but he seems to be altogether helpless in this matter. — Surely the Mother must have been very naughty indeed! He wants to speak about holy things, about the vision of God, and it is surely odd that She should shut his mouth!'

"We did not know at that time that the mind's range is indeed

Page 75

---

very much limited and that, unless one proceeds farther than its farthest reach, one cannot expect to have the realisation of the Supreme! In our innocence we could not understand at that time that out of sheer love for us the Thakur was attempting the impossible!"¹

Sri Ramakrishna himself in his inimitable style emphasised on more than one occasion this fact of the inability of our mind-consciousness to retain its 'power of conscious discernment and defining experience' when it rises to the superconscient heights. He said:

"What happens when the mind reaches the seventh plane [and goes into Samadhi] cannot be described. Once a boat enters the 'black waters' of the ocean, it does not return. Nobody knows what happens to the boat after that. Therefore the boat [i.e. Mind] cannot give us any information about the ocean.

"Once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean. No sooner did it enter the water than it melted. Now, who would tell how deep the ocean was?"²

So it is seen that in the actual state of our evolved waking existence the ascension and entry into the higher realms of our being becomes at all possible only by receding farther and farther from the waking mentality, by withdrawing from and losing touch with the dynamic surface life and taking a plunge into the immobile or ecstatic trance of absorbed superconscience. And herein lies for the spiritual seeker the necessity or even the inevitability of the Yogic trance state, so much so that it is emphatically asserted that Samadhi is "not only a supreme means of arriving at the highest consciousness, but...the very condition and status of that highest consciousness itself, in which alone it can be completely possessed and enjoyed while we are in the body."³

But in that case our goal of dynamic divinisation of life becomes foredoomed to failure. So we must now see whether the trance can be progressively transformed into a waking Samadhi and its spiritual gains made manifest and active even in our waking existence.

¹ Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna Lila-Prasanga (Gurubhava, Purvardha), pp. 64-66. (Italics ours)

² The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 101.

³ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 506. (Italics ours)

Page 76

Chapter IV

What is Samadhi or Yogic Trance?

In her own depths she heard the unuttered thought

That made unreal the world and all life meant.

"Who art thou who claim'st thy crown or separate birth,

The illusion of thy soul's reality

And personal godhead on an ignorant globe

In the animal body of imperfect man ?

...Only the blank Eternal can be true.

All else is shadow and flash in Mind's bright glass,

...........

O soul, inventor of man's thoughts and hopes,

Thyself the invention of the moments' stream,

Illusion's centre or subtle apex point,

At last know thyself, from vain existence cease."

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto VI, p. 535)

Beyond the realm of thought, transcending the domain of duality, leaving Maya with all her changes and modifications far behind, ... shines the glory of the Eternal Brahman in the Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Knowledge, knower and known dissolve in the menstruum of One Eternal Consciousness; birth, growth and death vanish in that infinite Existence; and love, lover and beloved merge in that unbounded ocean of Supreme Felicity.... Breaking down the ridge-poles of that tabernacle in which the soul has made its abode for untold ages — stilling the body, calming the mind and drowning the ego, comes the sweet joy of Brahman in that superconscious state. Space disappears in nothingness, time is swallowed up in Eternity ... [and] it is all stillness indefinable.... The Nirvikalpa Samadhi is the highest flight of Advaita Philosophy.

(Life of Sri Ramakrishna, Advaita Ashram, Almora, p. 181)

The acquisition of the highest spiritual consciousness, at least statically if not dynamically, is the goal of all spiritual endeavour. But, as we have noted before, the spiritual reaches of consciousness lie far behind and above our normal waking mentality. Now

Page 77

---

the question is: is it possible to possess the spiritual consciousness while still remaining embedded in the ordinary mental functionings? In other words, can the normal unregenerate surface consciousness and the spiritual one be concomitant and simultaneously operative? Seekers in all ages and climes, who have the necessary credentials to pronounce on this point, are universally agreed to deny this possibility.

So, broadly speaking, four alternatives may open out before those who aspire after spirituality:

(i)To create a division, a separation, a dissociation of consciousness and to be spiritual within or above while the outer consciousness and its ignorant movements are indifferently watched and felt to be something intrinsically foreign and disparate. This is the solution of the 'Witness Consciousness'.

(ii)To be satisfied with the indirect glories of the spiritual consciousness as reflected and refracted in the bosom of our normal mentality. This is what has been termed 'spiritual mental realisation'.

(iii)To still and withdraw from the mental consciousness and retire to the supra-mental reaches. This is what can be called the 'trance-solution.'

(iv)To transform the nature of the normal waking consciousness, to divinise it as we would say, by bringing down there the fullest wealth and splendour of the spiritual heights, so that its present opacity and refractoriness may be altogether rectified. This is the solution of 'divine transfiguration' as envisaged by our Yoga.

Evidently the 'Witness Consciousness' and 'spiritual-mental realisation' fall far short of our goal; for, be it once again stated, this goal is no less than the establishment of Life Divine upon earth, a dynamic waking existence embodying Sachchidananda in his fully manifested glories.

But since the yogic trance or Samadhi is so often held up not only as a supreme means of access to the higher possible spiritual consciousness but "as the very condition and status of that highest consciousness itself, in which alone it can be completely possessed and enjoyed while we are in the body,"¹ we must digress here for a while to examine the nature of Samadhi and find out its utility or otherwise in the pursuit of the Integral Yoga.

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 506.

Page 78

---

Samadhi or Yogic Trance; Since mind-consciousness is normally found to be incompatible with the highest state of spiritual realisation, a veritable yoga or union must almost by definition connote the cessation of all mental functions (yogaścittavṛtti-nirodhaḥ¹) or even of the mind itself (manonāśo mahodayaḥ²).

Now, to follow the terminology as used by Vyasa, the great commentator on the 'Yoga Aphorisms' of Patanjali, our mind-stuff may function in five different levels or conditions (cittabhū-mayaḥ). These, from down upwards or from out inward, are

(i)Kṣipta or restless, the dissipated condition in which the mind is active and externalised and runs after objects of various sorts;

(ii)mūḍha or torpid, the stupefied condition in which the mind under the influence of an excessive tamas gravitates downwards and wallows in the obscure depths of ignorance; (iii) vikṣipta or distracted, a condition in which the mind becomes relatively pacified and at times somewhat concentrated but thrown out again outwards because of the distracting movements; (iv) ekāgra or concentrated, a condition dominated by sattva in which the mind is able to concentrate for a prolonged stretch of time to the exclusion of all other thoughts, upon some particular chosen object or subject of concentration; and lastly (v) niruddha or stilled, a condition in which even the act or function of contemplation ceases and, all modifications of the mind being stopped, nothing whatsoever is known or conceived by the latter.

The first three conditions of the mind enumerated above are of course not at all conducive to the practice of spirituality (yoga-pakṣe na vartate); it is only the last two that make possible any spiritual illumination. As a matter of fact, in the parlance of the Patanjali System, "ekāgra or the state of concentration, when permanently established, is called samprajñāta Yoga or the trance of meditation, in which there is a clear and distinct consciousness of the object of contemplation. It is known also as samāpatti or samprajñāta samādhi in as much as citta or the mind is, in this state, entirely put into the object and assumes the form of the object itself. So also the state of niruddha is called asamprajñāta Yoga or asam-prajñāta samādhi,...because this is the trance of absorption in which all psychoses and appearances of objects are stopped...."³

¹ Pātanjala Sūtra, 1.2.

² Yoga-Vāsistha, IV. 5.18.

³ Chatterjee and Dutta, An Introduction to Indian Philosophy, p. 305.

Page 79

---

In more general terms we may say that Samadhi or yogic trance is that state of superconsciousness in which the aspirant, diving deep or soaring high in the search of the soul or the self, enters, when his consciousness, through an inward concentration, withdraws from the surface world as perceived by the senses and retires to progressively deeper interior realms of supersensuous experiences. In this process of inward withdrawal or upward ascension, the consciousness first enters the 'dream-state' and then proceeds to the 'sleep-state'. While in the dream-state, the outer mind of the Sadhaka becomes quiescent and his inner mind, separated from the outer and no longer covered up by it, ranges through a wonderful world of rich and variegated inner experiences.

To obviate any possible misunderstanding that the nomenclature 'dream-state' or 'sleep-state' may engender in an unwary spirit, we may forthwith state here that the yogic dream- or sleep-states have nothing to do with the physical states of dream and sleep. "In the Yogic dream-state...the mind is in clear possession of itself, though not of the physical world, works coherently, ... [is perfectly] awake...not with the out-going, but with an in-gathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its powers."¹

In the dream-state itself there is an infinite series of depths, starting with that for which the world of physical senses is almost at the doors though momentarily shut out, and reaching to depths not likely to be broken in upon by the impact or call of the sensuous physical world. As a matter of fact, "beyond a certain point the trance becomes complete and it is then almost quite impossible to awaken or call back the soul that has receded into them; it can only come back by its own will or at most by a violent shock of physical appeal dangerous to the system owing to the abrupt upheaval of return."²

With the increasing depths or heights of the degrees of consciousness attained by the soul, the experiences obtained become progressively remote and less and less communicable to the waking mind, until the trance becomes complete in an utter self-gathering of the being when the central consciousness separates from the last vestige of mentality. Then it becomes an absolute

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 500-01.

² Ibid., pp. 499-500.

Page 80

---

impossibility for any records or transcripts of the experiences therein to reach the portals of the normal waking consciousness. This is the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi claimed to be the highest status of spiritual attainment and assiduously sought after by every seeker after trance.

In this ultimate trance-state of pure superconscient existence, in this supra-mental immersion in the infinite being and the unconditioned bliss, time and space and hence the world of names and forms vanish into nothing, all action of mental awareness whether of outward or of inward things is altogether abolished and everything is drawn up into the supercosmic Beyond.

Once attaining this supreme state of Nirvikalpa trance, the soul finds it difficult, well-nigh impossible, to return again to the active life-consciousness, for "it loses the hold on the cord which binds it to the consciousness of life, and the body is left, maintained indeed in its set position, not dead by dissolution, but incapable of recovering the ensouled life which had inhabited it."¹

We have so far analysed in abstract terms the physiognomy of the Yogic trance. To complete the account we would now like to reproduce in brief the concrete cases of the sages Uddalaka and Ramakrishna to show how in fact the consciousness withdrawing inward passes through progressively deepening states of being to repose finally in the absolute state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

First the scriptural account of the trance of Uddalaka as depicted in the great work Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana:²

The Trance of Uddalaka: "One day the sage deliberated: 'When will you attain to eternal peace by reaching the status of mindlessness, for such is indeed the condition for getting freed from the bondage of repeated births?'...Then the Brahmin Uddalaka sat down to concentrate and withdraw his mind. But he could not succeed at once in attaining the Samadhi state, for his mind, in the fashion of a restless baboon, began to fleet from object to object.... At a later stage, the mind-monkey would at times leave outside contacts and felt eager for the enjoyment of the inner Sattwic bliss; but this was indeed an intermittent mood, for most often the mind would rush towards outward objects again, as if it was stung by a

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 500.

² Vide Yoga-Vasishtha (Upashama Prakarana), Sargas 51-54.

Page 81

---

venomous snake. At times, his inner state was being cleared of the obscurity of ignorance and Uddalaka visioned the glory of a sun; but in no time his Chitta became restless again and flew outward in the manner of a startled bird. Again, he withdrew inward and experienced at times a vacant space or the Zero of an impenetrable darkness....As a warrior in battle kills his enemies with a sword, Uddalaka started destroying one by one all the vikalpas that were appearing in his consciousness. The vikalpas gone, he saw in the inner space a green-black Sun but proceeded immediately to eradicate this inky darkness. Then the softness of a massed lustre greeted the sage Uddalaka. But that too he eliminated in no time following the way of an elephant calf that gets into a lotus-pond and tears away and devastates the lotuses all around. Once this massed splendour was gone, Uddalaka's mind succumbed to a spell of deep sleep just as a man highly intoxicated loses his sobriety and then gets into torpor; but the sage was prompt enough to annul this state of sleep. Then his mind was filled with the consciousness of vyoma; but just as the wind sweeps away the dew-drops, he too swept away from his mind this clear and stainless consciousness of vyoma. But, following that, some sort of dazed dullness overtook him as if he was a heavily drunk man who had just come out of his torpid state. Even this too he vanquished.

"Then, at long last, the sage Uddalaka reached the status of Nirvikalpa Samadhi, where there was neither any obscurity nor any ephemeral lustre." ¹

That, in the state of Nirvikalpa trance, the body becomes immobile like a painted image (citrārpita ivācalaḥ²) and even a violent sense-appeal fails to bring back the soul to the waking consciousness has been equally forcefully brought out by the Yoga-Vasishtha in the following account of the Samadhi of Shikhidhvaja:

"The queen Chudala went to the forest and found there the king Shikhidhvaja seated, like a sculptured tree, in the state of Nirvikalpa trance. She deliberated: 'I' must now seek to re-awaken the king, otherwise he will leave his body very soon.' Then the queen Chudala approached the king's body and shouted at the top of her voice. This loud sound and then the sound of the trumpet

¹Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, IV. 51-54.

²Ibid., IV. 37.2.

Page 82

---

frightened and startled the sylvan creatures, but the queen's repeated attempts failed to evoke any response from the king whose body remained tranced and immobile like a granite mass.¹ Chudala then laid her hands on the body of Shikhidhvaja and started violently agitating it. Thus shaken, the king's body fell down and rolled on the ground, but even then he did not recover his waking consciousness. Then the queen wondered and thought, 'It does not seem to be an easy proposition to awaken my King! Only if he still possesses the grain of a desire somewhere hidden in seed-form, that will help him to come back again to the waking state, in no other wise can he be aroused.' "²

The Trance-Experience of Sri Ramakrishna: Now we come to the very authentic historical case of the Sage of Dakshinesvara whose trance-experiences as depicted in his authoritative biography published by the Ramakrishna Order itself we reproduce below:

"Sri Ramakrishna's Samadhi covered a wide range of experiences from his perception of various visions to the annihilation of his mind in the infinite consciousness of Brahman. It had also many forms....Thus he entered into a 'world of power', or 'a world of beauty', or 'a world of spiritual grandeur'....He would commune with invisible beings — forms of the Divinity or Divine Incarnations of the past.

"Such visions however belong to the domain of Personality, which is not the last word in spiritual experiences. So long as a sadhaka is satisfied with this kind of samadhi, his attainments cannot be said to be complete. He has not reached unfathomable depths of the ocean, though undoubtedly he has gone far behind the surface, encountering the forms of life abounding there, but he has not yet ransacked the priceless treasures of the deep, which reveal themselves only to those who have the courage to dive on and on till they have touched bottom.

"So we find Sri Ramakrishna taking up another course of

¹ Cf. Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, p. 474:

"...her body became a stark

And rigid golden statue of motionless trance,

A stone of God lit by an amethyst soul.

Around her body's stillness all grew still."

² Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha (Nirvāṇa Prakaraṇa), 103.

Page 83

---

sadhana altogether different from his previous ones."¹

Then, a few pages further on, the biographer gives a vivid description of the first Nirvikalpa Samadhi-state of Sri Ramakrishna:

"Sri Ramakrishna passed into the ineffable glory of the Nirvikalpa Samadhi. In that rapturous ecstasy the senses and mind stopped their functions. The body became motionless as a corpse. The universe rolled away from his vision — even space itself melted away. Everything was reduced to ideas which floated like shadows in the dim backgrond of the mind. Only the faint consciousness of 'I' repeated itself in dull monotony. Presently that too stopped, and what remained was Existence alone. The soul lost itself in the Self, and all idea of duality, of subject and object, was effaced. Limitations were gone, and finite space was one with infinite space. Beyond speèch, beyond experience and beyond thought, Sri Ramakrishna had realised the Brahman — had become the Brahman.

"Totapuri [Sri Ramakrishna's Guru or the spiritual preceptor] sat for a long time, silently watching his disciple. Finding him perfectly motionless, he stole out of the room and locked the door lest anybody should intrude without his knowledge. Then he awaited the call from Sri Ramakrishna to open the door. The day passed on, the night came. Another day and still another — three days passed and there was no call. Totapuri was astonished and went to see what was wrong.

"He opened the door and entered the room. There sat Sri Ramakrishna in the very same position in which he had left him. There was no manifestation of life in the body, but the countenance was calm, serene and radiant. He saw that the disciple was still dead to the objective world, his mind absorbed in the Self, without a flicker — absolutely steady! ...

"With the utmost care he [Totapuri] determined if the heart was beating, or if there was the slightest trace of respiration. Again and again he touched the disciple's corpse-like body. There was no sign either of life or of consciousness.... It was undoubtedly a case of the Nirviklapa Samadhi — the culmination of Advaita practice!

"Totapuri immediately took steps to bring the mind of Sri Ramakrishna down to the world of phenomena."²

After Totapuri left Dakshineswar, Sri Ramakrishna decided to

¹Life of Sri Ramakrishna (Advaita Ashram, Almora), p. 183.

²Ibid., pp. 190-92.

Page 84

---

withdraw from the world of 'I' and 'Mine' and live constantly in unity with the Supreme. What followed then is very much revealing from our point of view and worth reproducing in the saint's own inimitable words:

"I stayed in that ineffable state for six months at a stretch, a state from which an ordinary soul knows no return, his body dropping off like a withered leaf from a tree! There was no sense of the passage of time, of how the days and the nights went by! Flies and insects used to get into the mouth and nostrils of my body as if in those of a corpse, but they evoked no response from me. Oftentimes I would ease nature involuntarily without being in the least aware of it! My body would not have remained viable for long, it would have surely dropped down dead, but for the circumstance of the arrival at this time of a Sannyasin with a heavy stick in his hand. He realised my state at the very first glance and felt that if this body could somehow be preserved, much good would be done to the world through its agency. It thus so happened that during meal-times he used to beat my body with the stick and no sooner did he find that a faint glimmer of awareness had come, he would push some morcels of food into the mouth. In this way, on some days, a little bit of food could reach my stomach while on other days even that much failed.

"Six months rolled by in this wise. Then I heard the Mother's Voice: 'Come down a bit and stay in Bhāva-Samādhi, do stay in Bhāva-Samādhi for the welfare of the world!' Then a serious disease assailed my bodily frame — blood-dysentry it was! I had then frequent bouts of griping pains and unbearable cramps and wrenches in the stomach! After I had suffered from such intense agony for long six months, my consciousness could come down little by little into my body and finally I regained the waking state of ordinary men."¹

So we have seen what Samadhi means and how the state of Nir-vikalpa Samadhi is eulogised as the spiritual status par excellence. Now we proceed to show that trance-experiences, however lofty or however deep, fail to meet the demands of our Yoga, and at the same time indicate how our goal of dynamic divinisation of the waking physical existence can be realised.

¹ Swami Saradananda, Sri Sri Ramakrishna Lila-Prasanga (Guru-Bhava Purvardha), pp. 56-57.

Page 85

Chapter V

The Critique of the Trance-Solution

The Voice replied: "Is this enough, O Spirit ?

And what shall thy soul say when it wakes and knows

The work was left undone for which it came ?

Or is this all for thy being born on earth

Charged with a mandate from eternity,

........

To pass and leave unchanged the old dusty laws ?

Shall there be no new tables, no new Word,

No greater light come down upon the earth

Delivering her from her unconsciousness,

Man's spirit from unalterable fate?

..........

Is this then the report that I must make,

My head bowed with shame before the Eternal's seat, —

His power he kindled in thy body has failed,

His labourer returns, her task undone?"

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, pp. 475-76)

"I am concerned with the earth, not with worlds beyond for their own sake; it is a terrestrial realisation that I seek and not a flight to distant summits."

(Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 124)

Trance-experiences are undoubtedly of great value in the pursuit of the spiritual goal as ordinarily understood, and the Nirvikalpa Samadhi taken in the specific sense in which the term is used, no doubt represents a supreme height of realisation that a seeker may aspire after. Naturally enough, this most elevated trance-state proves to be adequate if the goal is to pass away into the Superconscient and not to bring down the Power and Glory of the Superconscient into our normal waking consciousness. But Samadhi experiences cannot suffice in the least for the object of our Yoga of Transformation; for, our goal is no less than the dynamic divinisation of our total existence including the outermost parts of Prakriti. To be more specific, viewed from the

Page 86

---

perspective of our spiritual goal — the goal of embodying and manifesting the highest spiritual consciousness here upon earth itself — the trance-solution for the actual imperfections of our world-existence suffers, among others, from the following deficiencies:

(i)The supreme trance-state represents a state of consciousness or rather superconsciousness to which only a rare few can ordinarily attain. Thus, it has got no general validity so far as the goal of a wide-based terrestrial realisation is concerned.

(ii)Even when attained, there is no return for the majority of seekers from this supreme height of spiritual consciousness. It is only the exceptionally gifted Iswarakotis or "divine souls" who succeed in coming back to the waking state.

Cf. Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VI, p. 499: "When once they [ordinary Sadhakas] somehow attain to the direct realisation of Brahman, they cannot again come back to the lower plane of material perception. They melt away in Brahman — ksīre nīravat — like water in milk."

So the question of the divinisation of the waking existence becomes otiose and irrelevant.

(iii)Traditionally, it is averred that even those rare few who happen to return from the supreme state can do so only through the intermediary of a trace of ego and desires. Hence a certain "lowering of the key" becomes unavoidable which places it at a remove from the perfect divine realisation we aspire after.

Cf. Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VII, p. 140: "The conclusion of the Vedanta is that when there is absoluteSamadhi and cessation of all modifications, there is no return from that state; as the Vedanta aphorism says: anāvṛtti śavdāt....

But the Avatars cherish a few desires for the good of the world. By taking hold of that thread they come down from the superconscious to the conscious state." (Italics ours)

Narrating his own personal experience the Swami says in the same context:

"I had just a trace of the feeling of Ego, so I could again return to the world of relativity from the Samadhi." (Ibid., p. 139). (Italics ours)

(iv)In a more general way we may state that if the entry into the higher reaches of our being is effected only in the absorbed super-conscient state of trance, the experience cannot become real to the whole existence, being valid only for a remote part of it. Thus it

Page 87

---

militates against our goal of the complete spiritualisation of the totality of our existence.

(v)The Yogic trance helps us to fix the spiritual experiences in our inner consciousness alone; it cannot automatically lead to the spiritualisation of the outer waking consciousness. So for us who aim at a total spiritual And supramental change, even, and in particular, of the outer parts of our Nature, Samadhi as an instrumentation proves to be altogether inadequate and futile.

(vi)Because of the aforesaid inability to exercise anything but a relative and moderate elevating influence on the outer consciousness, it so happens that when the Samadhi ceases, the thread is broken and the soul returns once again to the "distractions and imperfections of the outward life."

As a matter of fact, since one cannot continually remain in the trance-state,¹ while leading an embodied existence, vyutthāna or the "return" from the superconscious state becomes unavoidable, and with this vyutthāna "the lower consciousness from which the ascent took place falls back to what it was, with only the addition of an unkept or a remembered but no longer dynamic experience."²

It is because of this persistence of the disabilities of the waking mentality even after attainment of Samadhi that it is sometimes asserted that an absolute eradication of Ignorance or a complete ascension of consciousness from the "mortal mentality" become feasible only when the body and the bodily life cease to function at death. (Cf. Yoga-Shikhopanishad, I.163: piṇdapātena yā muktiḥ sā muktirna tu hanyate.)

The foregoing discussion makes it clear that trance-experiences may be all right so far as the traditional Yogas are concerned; for, after all, according to them the true bondage is the very process of birth and the liability of the individual to rebirth in this "unhappy transient world" (anityamasukhaṁ lokam). Liberation achieved through the attainment of the knowledge of Reality should therefore have for its practical consequence the definitive stoppage of this cyclic process of birth-death-rebirth.

And if this is so, if the cessation from embodied existence is

¹ Cf. "Yes, this Samadhi...is a state not at all easy to attain. When very rarely it appears in somebody, it does not last for long."

(Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VII, p. 112)

² The Life Divine, p. 912.

Page 88

---

considered to be the summum bonum, one need concentrate only on an inner realisation of the inner Divine and not bother oneself with the possibility or otherwise of an integral terrestrial realisation. Also the body, although initially a necessary instrument for the realisation of our spiritual destiny (śarīramādyaṁ khalu dhar-masādhanam), may be allowed to disintegrate once that goal is achieved. (Cf. Sri Ramakrishna: "Take out the thorn with the help of a thorn"; and Yoga-Vasishtha: "Renounce that with which you renounce" (yena tyajasi taṁ tyaja).

But this can by no means be our attitude to the body and bodily life. For the Integral Yoga has for its objective:

(i)to make spiritual experiences real to the whole consciousness including that of the outer being;

(ii)to establish the highest possible realisation in the waking state and make it endure there;

(iii)not only to experience the Truth subjectively and in one's inner consciousness alone, but to manifest it even in full activity;

(iv)an integral possession of the integrality of the Divine in the life of this world and not only beyond it.

In short, in the words of Sri Aurobindo: "It is the object of my yoga to transform life by bringing down into it the Light, Power and Bliss of the Divine Truth and its dynamic certitudes. This Yoga is not a yoga of world-shunning asceticism, but of divine life ....It aims at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object."¹

Elsewhere Sri Aurobindo points out that "not only must the mind be able to rise in abnormal states out of itself into a higher consciousness, but its waking mentality also must be entirely spiritualised." ²

This then is our goal, and hence trance-experiences alone cannot help us much in achieving our objective. Moreover the Samadhi state as ordinarily realised suffers from another great disability which may not be considered as such when viewed from the standpoint of the goal of the traditional world-shunning Yogas but certainly so from our point of view. This is as regards the absence of any conscious memory of the trance-experience when one returns to the waking mentality again.

As a matter of fact the aim of the old Yoga is to pass away into

¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, pp. 99, 109.

² The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 453. (Italics ours)

Page 89

---

the Superconscient and not to bring back its dynamic riches to the waking outer existence with a view to effectuate a spiritual transformation there. Hence, as soon as the Yogin goes above the level of the spiritual mind, he does not seek to retain any continuity of awareness there; instead, he passes into the "mystic sleep" of Samadhi, a state of superconsciousness in which the human mind in its actually evolved condition cannot remain awake even with what has been termed the "inner waking" and hence passes into "the blank incomprehension and non-reception of slumber."¹ And as a result, because of the gulf of oblivion, the spiritual experiences of the superconscient trance-state lose all their dynamic value for the waking consciousness.

But this disability has to be remedied. Since we seek to bring down the Superconscient into our normal waking consciousness, we must somehow bridge the gulf, heighten and intensify our spiritual awakening even in the normally superconscient reaches of being and train our consciousness to bring back in full the dynamic memory "from the inner to the outer waking."

In this connection we feel tempted to reproduce in extenso what the Mother said in reply to the question "Is the state of trance or Samadhi a sign of progress?"²

"To enter into Samadhi is to pass into a state of which no conscious memory remains on awakening.

"In ancient times this was considered as a very high condition. It was even thought that it was the sign of a great realisation.... 1 have read in all kinds of so-called spiritual literature marvellous things about this state of trance or Samadhi; and it happened that I had never had it. I did not know if it was a sign of inferiority. And when I arrived here [at Pondicherry], one of my first questions to Sri Aurobindo was, 'What do you think of Samadhi, this state of trance which one does not remember? One enters into a condition which seems to be blissfull but when one comes out of it one never knows what happened.' He looked at me, he saw what I meant and told me, 'It is unconsciousness.....Yes, one enters into what is called Samadhi, when one comes out of one's conscious being and enters into a part of one's being which is completely

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga p. 453. (Italics ours)

² Vide Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Vol. XIV, No. 3, pp. 43-45. (Italics ours)

Page 89

---

unconscious or rather into a domain where one has no corresponding consciousness — one goes beyond the field of one's consciousness and enters into a region where one has no more consciousness. One is in the impersonal state. That is to say, a state in which one is unconscious; that is why naturally one remembers nothing, because one has not been conscious of anything'...

"So you have the reply. The sign of progress is when there is no more unconsciousness, when you can rise to the same regions without entering into a trance."

At the time of the publication of this Talk, the Mother added the following remark:

"There are people who enter into domains where they have a consciousness, but between this conscious state and their normal wakeful consciousness there is a gap: their individuality does not exist between the waking state and the deeper state; then in the passage they forget. They cannot carry the consciousness they had there into the consciousness here because there is a gap between the two. There is even an occult discipline which consists in building the intermediary fields, so that one may be able to remember things."¹

But even this does not suffice for our goal. For what we aim at is not the conscious bringing back of the impressions, the reporting back to the waking consciousness, in transcriptions more or less perfect, what one experiences in states at present superconscient to it: we want instead an integral supramental transformation of the waking existence itself. In the luminous words of Sri Aurobindo:

"If the control of [the] highest spiritual being is to be brought into our waking life, there must be a conscious heightening and widening into immense ranges of new being, new consciousness, new potentialities of action, a taking up — as integral as possible — of our present being, consciousness, activities and a transmutation of them into divine values which would effect a transfiguration of our human existence. For wherever a radical transition has to be made, there is always this triple movement, — ascent, widening of field and base, integration..."²

¹ Vide Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Vol. XIV, No. 3, p. 43. (Italics ours)

² The Life Divine, p. 737. (Italics ours)

Page 90

---

So we see that in order to have a divinely transformed waking existence, an ascension to the trance-state or even the building up of a conscious bridge between that and the waking state is not enough. Something much more revolutionary is needed: let us see what.

Page 91

Chapter VI

The Critique of the 'Jivanmukti'-Solution

The passage describes the state of consciousness when one is aloof from all things even when in their midst and all is felt to be unreal, an illusion. There are then no preferences or desires because things are too unreal to desire or to prefer one to another. But, at the same time, one feels no necessity to flee from the world or not to do any action, because being free from the illusion, action or living in the world does not weigh upon one, one is not bound or involved.

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, pp. 682-83)

When one sees a mirage for the first time, he mistakes it for a reality, and after vainly trying to quench his thirst in it, learns that it is a mirage. But whenever he sees such a phenomenon in future, in spite of the apparent reality, the idea that he sees a mirage always presents itself to him. So is the world of Maya to a Jivanmukta (the liberated in life).

(Swami Vivekananda, Collected Works, Vol. VI, p. 104)

I am neither the doer nor the enjoyer. Actions have I none, past or present or future. I possess no body nor does bodylessness characterise my state. How can I say what is mine and what is not?

(Dattatreya, Avadhuta-Gita, 1.66)

We have seen in the previous chapter why the Yogic trance even if it be of the supreme sort, the Nirvikalpa Samadhi, fails to meet the demands of the Yoga of Transformation. As a matter of fact what we envisage for our goal is very much wider in base, far superior in scope and loftier in its flight than the attainments Offered by the Nirvikalpa trance. In Sri Aurobindo's own words, "the realisation of this yoga is not lower but higher than Nirvana or Nirvikalpa Samadhi."¹ For, we do not want to be satisfied with inner psycho-spiritual experiences alone, we seek too the total and complete realisation of the Divine in the outer consciousness and in the life of action.

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 59.

Page 93

---

But the detractor may interject at this point: "The waking realisation that you are aiming at — has it not been already possessed by those who have been variously termed jīvanmukta ('liberated while still leading a bodily life'), sthitaprajña ('established in the true Knowledge and Wisdom'), ativarṇāśramī ('beyond all standards of conduct') or brahmavid ('one who has known and become the Brahman'¹) ?" — the implication of the question being that there is after all nothing essentially new in the ideal we pursue.

But a little reflection will suffice to show that the Jivanmukti realisation or realisations of the same genre fall far short of the goal of divinised waking physical existence that is the object of our own Yoga. After all, who is a Jivanmukta? And what essentially characterises his comportment vis-a-vis this world of dynamic manifestation? For a suitable answer let us fall back upon three citations, chosen at random from amongst a host of others and culled from ancient texts as well as from those of our day.

First from the great Monistic text Yoga-Vasishtha Ramayana:

"The Jivanmukta is one to whose consciousness only the undifferentiated Vyoma exists and this phenomenal world has lost all reality, although his organs may appear to function as before.... He maintains his body with whatever little comes to it naturally and effortlessly.... He is called a Jivanmukta who is no more awake to the world of senses although his sense-organs appear to be awake as ever.... He who has transcended the ego-sense and does not get involved in action is indeed a Jivanmukta whether he is active or not."²

Now from Sri Ramakrishna: "He who has attained this knowledge of Brahman is a Jivanmukta, liberated while living in the body. He rightly understands that the Atman and the body are two separate things.... These two are separate like the kernel and the shell of the coconut while its milk dries up. The Atman moves, as it were, within the body.... The kernel of a green almond or betel-nut cannot be separated from the shell; but when they are ripe, the juice dries up and the kernel separates from the shell. After the attainment of the Knowledge of Brahman, the 'milk' of worldly-mindedness dries up."³

¹ Cf. "Brahmavid brahma eva bhavati" ("one who knows the Divine becomes the Divine").

² Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha (Utpatti-Prakaraṇa), Sarga 9, Sls. 4,6,7,9.

³ The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (Advaita Ashram, Almora), p. 695.

Page 94

---

Finally a long excerpt from Swami Vivekananda: "...He has reached the perfection which the Advaitist wants to attain; and at that moment,...the veil of ignorance falls away from him, and he will feel his own nature. Even in this life, he will feel that he is one with the universe. For a time, as it were, the whole of this phenomenal world will disappear for him, and he will realise what he is. But so long as the Karma of this body remains, he will have to live. This state, when the veil has vanished and yet the body remains for some time, is what the Vedantist call Jivanmukti, the living freedom. If a man is deluded by a mirage for some time and one day the mirage disappears — if it comes back again next day or at some future time, he will not be deluded. Before the mirage first broke, the man could not distinguish between the reality and the deception. But when it has once broken, as long as he has organs and eyes to work with, he will see the image, but will no more be deluded. That fine distinction between the actual world and the mirage, he has caught, and the latter cannot delude him any more. So when the Vedantist has realised his own nature, the whole world has vanised for him. It will come back again, but no more the same world..."¹

The above three excerpts purporting, to characterise the status of a Jivanmukta make it abundantly clear that prima facie Jivanmukti in the specific sense in which it is generally understood can by no means measure up to our ideal of the divinely dynamic transformation of the whole of our waking existence. But before we pass the final judgment it would be better for us to examine, in however brief a manner, some of the principal traits of the Jivanmukti-realisation.

Jīvanmukti and Videhamukti: Jivanmukti is never considered to be the goal in itself; it is, so to say, no more than a stop-gap arrangement, a wayside inn, — the ultimate goal, the goal par excellence, being always videhamukti or the liberation that is attained with the dissolution of the body. But this videhamukti or "disembodied liberation" is sought to be effected in two stages: the first stage, the penultimate attainment as it were, is reached when through the gaining of the true Knowledge of Reality of one's own being as well as of the world-existence, the propensity to future births in this phenomenal universe is altogether stamped

¹ Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 365. (Italics ours)

Page 95

---

out; the second and final stage being the dropping off of the current body-formation and the attainment to the status of videhamukti. Jivanmukti represents the status of that seeker who has already attained Self-Knowledge but is still leading the present bodily life awaiting the day when this will cease for good and he will become "liberated in bodylessness" (videhamukta).

It follows then that the Jivanmukti status is the more valued, the more it approaches the character of Videhamukti even while the Siddha is still in his body. So the divine transformation of the bodily existence has here no relevance at all. As a matter of fact, the famous Vidyaranya Muni, one of the reputed authors of the Monistic Work Panchadashi, wrote a full treatise on Jivanmukti, called Jivanmukti-Viveka, only to prove at the end that after all Videhamukti is the summum bonum and Jivanmukti is a step towards this supreme goal.

But if this is so, the question arises: why, then, even after the attainment of Self-Realisation, should the Siddha agree at all to remain for some time in the body in the Jivanmukti status and not pass immediately and directly into Videhamukti, when the latter is the real objective sought after? The answer that is generally offered is in terms of the Theory of Karma which we have already discussed in Chapter I. Since Prarabdha Karmas¹ (that is to say, those that have started bearing their fruits) have produced our present body and since these cannot be infructified except through their exhaustion by sufferance, even on the attainment of liberation, the body may continue to remain viable for some time, but for some time only. When the Prarabdhas are over, the body automatically disintegrates and the Jivanmukti status gives place to Videhamukti.

Thus the Jivanmukti realisation appears almost as the virtue of a necessity and the waking physical existence in this phenomenal universe cannot be considered in this view to be a field specially worthy of spiritualisation.

In order to substantiate the points that we have made above, we adduce below a few observations drawn from different sources.

"...After realising that state described in the scriptures, the saint sees the Self in all beings and in that consciousness devotes himself to service, so that any Karma that was yet left to be worked out

¹ Vide Chapter I: The Bane of Oscillation.

Page 96

---

through the body may exhaust itself. It is this state which has been described by the authors of the Shastras (scriptures) as Jivanmukti, 'Freedom while living'. "(Italics ours)

(Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VII, pp. 112-113)

"A Devotee: 'Does the body remain even after the realization of God?'

Master: "The body survives with some so that they may work out their Prarabdha Karma or work for the welfare of others. ...Of course, he...escapes future births which would otherwise be necessary for reaping the results of his past Karma. His present body remains alive as long as its momentum is not exhausted; but future births are no longer possible. The wheel moves so long as the impulse that has set it in motion lasts. Then it comes to a stop.' "

(Italics ours)

(The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, p. 431)

"The ultimate liberation [from the chain of births] is attained with the dawning of the Knowledge itself." ("jñānasamakālamu- ktaḥ kaivalyaṁ yāti" : Sheshacharya, Paramārthasāra or Arya-pañcāśiti, 81).

"Once a Jivanmukta, one has no more future births", ("bhūyo-janmavinirmuktaṁ jīvanmuktasya tanmanaḥ" : Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Upashama-Prakarana, 90.18).

"He that has Knowledge...reaches that goal whence he is not born again" ("yastu vijñānavān bhavati...sa tu tatpadamāpnoti yasmād bhūyo na jāyate": Kaṭha-Upaniṣad, III.8).

"Even after attaining to the status of Jivanmukta, one continues for a while to remain in his body, merely to exhaust the momentum of the Prarabdha" ("prārabdhakarmavegena jīvanmukto yadā bhavet. Kañcit kālamathārabdhakarmavandhasya saṅkṣaye": Shankaracharya, Vākyavṛtti, 52).

"He has to wait [for his Videhamukti] only so long as he is not released from his body. At the fall of the body he attains to the supreme status" ("tasya tāvadeva ciraṁ yāvanna vimokṣe atha sampatsye": Chāndogya-Upaniṣad, 6.14.2).

"Once the Prarabdhas are experienced and gone through, one acquires the supreme liberation" ("bhogena tvitare kṣapayitvā sampadyate": Vyasa, Brahmasūtra, 4.1.19).

"Once the body gets consumed by Time, the Knower leaves his

Page 97

---

status of Jivanmukti and enters into the state of Videhamukti" ("jīvanmuktapadaṁ tyaktvā svadehe kālasātkṛte, viśatyadeha-muktatvam": Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, II.9 14).

"When he takes up his abode in it, he grieves not, but when he is set free from it, that is his deliverance"¹ ("anuṣṭhāya na śocati vimuktaśca vimucyate" : Kaṭha-Upaniṣad, V.I.).

"The Jivanmukta, even while he is still alive, has in reality no body at all" ("jīvato'pi aśariratvaṁ siddham": Shankar).

"The liberation that one gains at the fall of the body is indeed the highest one, for this liberation cannot be negatived any more" ("piṇḍapātena yā muktiḥ sa muktirna tu hanyate": Yogaśikho-paniṣad, 1.163).

"At the fall of his body the Yogi merges in his supreme self-being, just as the space inside an earthen pot vanishes in the great cosmic Space, when the pot is broken and gone" ("ghaṭe bhinne ghaṭākāśa ākāśe līyate yathā, dehābhāve tathā yogī svarūpe para-mātmani": Dattatreya, Avadhūta-Gītā; 1.69).

"Once one attains to Videhamukti, there is no more return to this phenomenal world" ("punārdvṛttirahitaṁ kaivalyaṁ prati-padyate": Shankaracharya, Vākyavṛtti).

"There is no more coming back for them" (tesāṁ na punar-āvṛtiḥ": Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 6.2.15).

"No more wheeling in this human whirlpool" ("imaṁ mānav-amāvartaṁ nāvartante": Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 8.15).

It is clear from what goes before that, contrary to our own attitude to the body and physical existence, the Jivanmukti ideal does not attach much importance to any terrestrial realisation as such; it only tolerates the bodily life so long as it has to be borne and thus tries, if we may say so, make the best of a bad bargain.

But whatever be the nature of the ideal sought, how does a Jivanmukta behave so far as his waking state is concerned? Does his dynamic life satisfy the criterion of a divinely purposive and active physical existence? Here too the answer is an unambiguous NO.

Jīvanmukta and the Dynamic Waking State: The goal we envisage for our sadhana is, as we have stressed so many times before, is "not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the

¹ Sri Aurobindo's translation (Eight Upanishads, p. 77).

Page 98

---

supramental power of that divine consciousness down into the ignorance of mind, life and body, to transform them, to manifest the Divine here and create a divine life in Matter."¹ It is thus almost an axiomatic truth that Yoga by works should form an indispensable part of our sadhana and an essential element of our realisation if we would seek to transplant the fullness of the spirit in the field of life and action. But the Jivanmukta does not in the least manifest this divine dynamis and thus does not measure up to our ideal.

As a matter of fact he is altogether indifferent to action (kurvato' kurvataḥ 2). For, although apparently still in his body, the Jivanmukta does not really participate in any of its workings. The world still appears before him, but he is no longer deceived by what he would call its māyā. Indeed he looks upon his body "a° if a corpse separated from his Self" ("svavapuḥ kuṇapamiva dṛśyate yatastadvapurapadhvastaṁ": Paramahaṁsa-Upaniṣad).

The result is that a Jivanmukta is indifferent to his bodily life. "Just as a person intoxicated with liquor is altogether oblivious of the absence or otherwise of his dress, so is the Jivanmukta of the state and location of his ephemeral body. Whether the body remains stationary at a place or gets displaced from there or even stumbles down is equal to him."³ Also, "the Brahmavid does never remember his body. It continues to be maintained by the Life-breath, prāṇa-vāyu, just as a trained horse goes on pulling the cart as ever even when the driver has withdrawn all his attention."⁴

Thus the bodily mechanism of a Jivanmukta may indeed continue to function because of the gathered force of Prakriti and he may apparently walk and speak and behave as before, but all this is like an empty machine in no way supported by any participating consciousness. The liberated spirit witnesses these actions (sākṣyahaṁ) but does not take part in them ("kṣīyante cāsya karmāṇi: Yoga-śikhopaniṣad, IV.45). There is no sense of personal action (na kurve nāpi kāraye⁵) hence for the Jivanmukta there is no bondage or responsibility (na sa muḍhavalli-pyate⁶; mamākarturalepasya⁷).

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 505.

² Yoga-Vāsistha, III.9.9.

³Bhāgavatam, XI. 13.36.

⁴ Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 8.12.3.

^{5 6 7} Avadhutopanisad, 25, 6, 22.

Page 99

---

As a matter of fact, it is the organs of sense and action that become automatically active for the continued maintenance of the body (cakṣurādīndriyaṁ svataḥ pravartate vahiḥsvārthe¹) and the Jivanmukta himself living all the while "in communion of oneness with the Transcendent" seems to the outward eye to be acting as a somnambulist (suptabuddhavat²). For "although he has eyes, he acts as the eyeless; although he has ears, he acts as the earless; although he has speech, he acts as the speechless; and although he has life, he acts as the lifeless.' "³

Thus there cannot be any dynamically purposive action in the life of a Jivanmukta. He participates, if at all, only in simple innocuous actions meant solely for the upkeep of the body (kevalam śārīraṁ karma⁴), or in those which are occasioned by his previous Samskaras ("purvācārakramāgataṁ ācāramācaranti"⁵) or at the most in those apparently significant actions which are brought about not through his personal initiation but only through the agency of the Prarabdha (yathāprāptaṁ hi kartyav-yam, kuru kāryaṁ yathāgatam⁶).

The foregoing analysis shows unmistakably that Jivanmukti as traditionally conceived cannot at all be equated to our ideal. What we aim at is something radically different from this status of inner liberation.

¹Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, III.52.59.

²Ibid., III.118.19, III.9.7, III.16.22, III.88.13, VII.1.8.

³"sacakṣuracakṣuriva sakarṇo' karṇa iva savāgavāgiva saprāṇo'prāṇa iva" (cited in Jivanmukti-Viveka by Vidyaranya Muni).

⁴Dattatreya, Jivanmukti Gītā, 8.

⁶ Ibid., III.88. 11-13.

Page 100

Chapter VII

The Issue - Status or Dynamis

I have met Spirit with spirit, Self with self,

But I have loved too the body of my God.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, p. 649)

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine.

(Ibid., Book XI, Canto I, p. 711)

Eternal status and eternal dynamis are both true of the Reality which itself surpasses both status and dynamis; the immobile and the mobile Brahman are both the same Reality.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 459)

We have...to possess consciously the active Brahman without losing possession of the silent Self. We have to preserve the inner silence, tranquillity, passivity as a foundation; but in place of an aloof indifference to the works of the active Brahman we have to arrive at an equal and impartial delight in them; in place of a refusal to participate lest our freedom and peace be lost we have to arrive at a conscious possession of the active Brahman whose joy of existence does not abrogate His peace, nor His lordship of all workings impair His calm freedom in the midst of His works.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 389)

The discussion in the preceding chapter has made the point clear that since our Yoga aims at the realisation of the Divine in the outer consciousness and life as well as in the inner one, the Jivanmukta with his aloof indifference to or at the best a benevolent tolerance for the dynamic waking existence can never be our ideal.

But what are after all the essential difficulties of spiritual realisation on the gross physical plane? Why is the life of action and creation viewed with so much misgiving by most of the traditional

Page 101

---

spiritual seekers? What makes our present worldly existence apparently so incorrigible in its nature as to induce even Sri Krishna, the propounder of the gospel of divine action, to almost admit at the end that to shun this transient and unhappy world is perhaps after all the best possible solution?¹

And what about that wonderfully dynamic saint Swami Vivekananda? Did he not at the end give the simile of a dog's tail in order to represent the impossibility of transformation? Alas, straighten it as much as you like, but release it—and the moment after, the wretched thing becomes curled again! It looks almost an irony of situation that this dynamic personality who did not flinch to declare in the earlier part of his Yogic life:

"I have lost all wish for my salvation, may I be born again and again and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum-total of all souls, — and above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species is the special object of my worship."²

— should almost abdicate and confess just two years before his passing away:

"I have bundled my things and am waiting for the great deliverer.

"Shiva, O Shiva, carry my boat to the other shore.

"After all, I am only the boy who used to listen with rapt wonderment to the wonderful words of Ramakrishna under the Banyan at Dakshineswar. That is my true nature; works and activities, doing good and so forth are all superimpositions. Now I again hear his voice; the same old voice thrilling my soul. Bonds are breaking — love dying, work becoming tasteless — the glamour is off life. Only the voice of the Master is calling. — I come, Lord, I come'. 'Let the dead bury the dead, follow thou me.' — 'I come, my beloved Lord, I come.'

"Yes, I come. Nirvana is before me. I feel it at times — the same infinite ocean of peace, without a ripple, a breath...

"The sweetest moments of my life have been when I was drifting; I am drifting again — with the bright warm sun ahead and masses of vegetation around — and in the heat everything is so still, so still, so calm — and I am drifting languidly — in

¹ anityamasukhaṁ lokam imaṁ tyaktvā.

² Quoted by Sri Aurobindo in The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 257-58.

Page 102

---

the warm heart of the river! I dare not make a splash with my hands or feet — for fear of breaking the marvellous stillness, still ness that makes you feel sure it is an illusion.

"Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the thirst for power! Now they are vanishing, and I drift. I come! Mother, I come! In Thy warm bosom, floating wheresoever Thou takest me, in-the voiceless, in the strange, in the wonderland, I come — a spectator, no more an actor."¹

Are then actions and creations such great binding elements as to be obligatorily left out at the end? Did not Sri Ramakrishna give the image of a pregnant woman whose work-load diminishes day by day?

But the difficulty experienced by a spiritual seeker in guarding the peace of the silent Self while engaged in dynamic activity is more incidental than intrinsic. It arises out of the mental being's exclusive concentration on its "plane of pure existence in which consciousness is at rest in passivity and delight of existence at rest in peace of existence."² Because of this exclusiveness, when the Mind seeks at times to ally itself to action, in the absence of adequate preparation it plunges headlong into the old obscuring movement of force instead of exercising a conscious mastery over it.

It is because of this ignorant relapse brought about by the dynamic play that the mental Purusha is so ready to condemn all action and dynamism. To its judgment, all dynamism must be foreign to the supreme nature of the Absolute whose only true and whole being must be a status silent and immutable, featureless and quiescent. Thus cancelling the dynamis of Brahman, the Mind goes on to assert that this supreme Reality can at all be realised only through a consciousness that has itself fallen non-active and silent and, what is more, "liberation must destroy all possibility of mental or bodily living and annihilate the individual existence for ever in an impersonal infinity."³

But we shall presently see that none of the foregoing assumptions is absolutely valid. As a matter of fact, all the difficulty

¹ Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VI, pp. 432-34. (Italics ours)

² The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 389.

³ Ibid., p. 421.

Page 103

---

disappears if along with the plane of pure existence one can embrace the plane of conscious force of existence, the Chit-Tapas, of Sachchidananda, in which "consciousness is active as power and will, and delight is active as joy of existence."¹

And this is possible. Because Brahman Itself is integral, It has an active aspect as well as a static one and both are equally real. The integral realisation demands the realisation of Sachchidananda in both His aspects, in the aspect in which He is "sovereign, free, lord of things, acting out of an inalienable calm pouring itself out in infinite action and quality out of an eternal self-concentration, the one supreme Person holding in himself all this play of personality in a vast equal impersonality, possessing the infinite phenomenon of the universe without attachment but without any inseparable aloofness, with a divine mastery and an innumerable radiation of his eternal luminous self-delight

—as a manifestation which he holds, but by which he is not held, which he governs freely and by which therefore he is not bound,"²

—as well as in that in which He is "silent passive quietistic, self-absorbed, self-sufficient,...one, impersonal, without play of qualities, turned away from the infinite phenomenon of the universe or viewing it with indifference and without participation."³

We have said that the eternal status of being as well as the eternal movement of being are both real of the supreme Reality. But the question arises: can these two statuses co-exist? Are these simultaneously realisable? Or, rather, one has to withdraw from one of the statuses in order to realise the other, so much so that, depending on the status on which one concentrates at the moment, one of these may appear to be the inertia of repose while the other the inertia of mechanical repetition of movement.

An integral spiritual realisation affirms that the eternal status and the eternal dynamis are not only both real but they are also simultaneous. 'The status admits of action of dynamis and the action does not abrogate the status.' Thus "all that is in the kinesis, the movement, the action, the creation, is the Brahman; the becoming is a movement of the being; Time is a manifestation of the Eternal. All is one Being, one Consciousness, one even in infinite multiplicity, and there is no need to bisect it into an

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga pp. 389-90.

² Ibid., p.375.

³ Ibid., p.375.

Page 104

---

opposition of transcendent Reality and unreal cosmic Maya."¹

But the difficulty is that it is often trenchantly asserted as a fact of spiritual experience that the Reality is indeed featureless and immutable and the universe of manifestation is brought about by the illusionary Maya-Power of the Supreme. Although this assertion that the only active Power the absolute Truth possesses is that of creating illusion and falsehood and 'dissolving and disowning' them in turn lacks in vraisimilitude, the rejoinder is made that this is not a question of vraisemblance or no, nor is it an issue that can be settled by means of logical validation or otherwise, for this is the ineffable mystery of Maya (anirvacanīyā) not to be comprehended by reason or mind.

And this position is sound indeed. For, whatever the merits or demerits, the strong or weak points, of a particular philosophical formulation, the spiritual experience that it seeks to represent remains in itself eternally valid and can only be integrated in the compass of another experience much more wide and much more lofty. For, as Sri Aurobindo has so forcefully pointed out, "a single decisive spiritual experience may undo a whole edifice of reasonings and conclusions erected by the logical intelligence."²

So, instead of engaging in sterile intellectual debates, in this matter of the reality or otherwise of the dynamis of the Absolute, let us listen to Sri Aurobindo describing his own personal spiritual realisation:

"The solution of the matter must rest not upon logic, but upon a growing, ever heightening, widening spiritual experience — an experience which must of course include or have passed through that of Nirvana and Maya, otherwise it would not be complete and would have no decisive value.

"Now to reach Nirvana was the first radical result of my own Yoga. It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought, unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world — only when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialised shadows without true substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That, featureless,

¹ The Life Divine, p. 461.

² Ibid., p. 469.

Page 105

---

relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realisation nor something glimpsed somewhere above, — no abstraction, — it was positive, the only positive reality — although not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying or rather flooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or space for any reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at all actual, positive or substantial....What it [the experience] brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous Silence, an infinity of release and freedom. I lived in that Nirvana day and night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at all, and the inner heart of experience, a constant memory of it and its power to return remained until in the end it began to disappear into a greater Superconsciousness from above. But meanwhile realisation added itself to realisation and fused itself with this original experience. At an early stage the aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion¹ is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and a supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of everything that had seemed at first only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this was no reimprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth; it was the Spirit that saw objects, not the senses, and the Peace, the Silence, the freedom in Infinity remained always with the world or all worlds only as a continuous incident in the timeless eternity of the Divine.

"...Nirvana in my liberated consciousness turned out to be the beginning of my realisation, a first step towards the complete thing, not the sole true attainment possible or even a culminating finale."²

The world is thus real, the Becoming is as real as the Being, the dynamis of Sachchidananda is as much a spiritual fact as His immobile status. Indeed, the Divine does not contain all only in 'a transcendent consciousness'. He is the one Self of all, sarvabhūtāntarātmā, He is the All, vāsudeva sarvam, not merely in the 'unique

¹ Sri Aurobindo's own note: "In fact it is not an illusion in the sense of an imposition of something baseless and unreal on the consciousness, but a misrepresentation by the conscious mind and sense and falsifying misuse of manifested existence."

² On Himself, pp. 101-02. (Italics ours)

Page 106

---

essence' but in the manifold names and forms. "All the soul-life, mental, vital, bodily existence of all that exists [is] one indivisible movement and activity of the Being who is the same for ever."¹ "All is one Being, one Consciousness, one even in infinite multiplicity."²

Thus action and creation cannot in the very nature of things be incompatible with the perfect and total realisation of the Supreme; a really dynamic living cannot go counter to the attainment of the supreme status of being; for "all that is in the kinesis, the movement, the action, the creation is Brahman."³

But still the doubting voice may not be altogether quieted. For there is a fundamental pragmatic misgiving that has first to be satisfactorily cleared before we can hope to establish the validity of our goal—the dynamic divinisation of our entire waking existence.

Granted that Brahman has two aspects equally real, equally true: an active one as well as a passive one. Granted that there is ample theoretical justification why the two aspects can be simultaneously embraced and realised. But still the question remains: Why is it that "in experience we find that...it is, normally, a quiescence that brings in the stable realisation of the eternal and the infinite: it is in silence or quietude that we feel most firmly the Something that is behind the world shown to us by our mind and senses. ?"⁴

It is thus reasoned that, in practice if not in theory, all action, all creation, all determining perception must in their very nature limit and obscure the stable realisation, and hence these have to diminish and disappear if we would seek to enter the indivisible consciousness of the Real.

Here too, as we shall presently see, the reasoning is fallacious. For it is not dynamism as such that binds and involves the soul of the seeker; it is the intrinsic incapacity of our mind-consciousness that is at the root of the trouble.

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 391.

^{2 3} The Life Divine, p. 461.

⁴ Ibid., p. 459.

Page 107

Chapter VIII

THE MIND-CONSIOUSNESS: ITS ACHIEVEMENTS

AND FAILURES

A black veil has been lifted; we have seen

The mighty shadow of the omniscient Lord;

But who has lifted up the veil of light

And who has seen the body of the King ?

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book III, Canto II, p. 311)

It is certain that you won't be able to know the Atman through the mind. You have to go beyond the mind. As there is no instrument beyond the mind — for only the Atman exists there — there the object of knowledge becomes the same as the instrument of knowledge....It is therefore that the Shruti says, 'Vijñātāramare kena vijānīyāt — Through what are you to know the Eternal Subject?'

(Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. VII, p. 142)

If the Mind were the last word and there were nothing beyond it except the pure Spirit, I would not be averse to accepting it [Mayavad with its sole stress on Nirvana] as the only way out.... But my experience is that there is something beyond mind; Mind is not the last word here of the Spirit.... There is a Truth-Consciousness, not static only and self-introspective, but also dynamic and creative...

(Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 103)

We have seen that for the seeker of the Integral Yoga the realisation of the 'passive Brahman', of the pure quiescent self-existence independent of all world-play, cannot be more than the necessary first basis. We cannot rest with an utter withdrawal in consciousness from the universal manifestation. We must instead return upon the world of action and creation and seek to repossess and remould our mind, life and body with the luminous dynamis of the 'active Brahman' and identify ourselves, freely and in the infinite self-delight of the Being, with all the outpouring of Chit-Tapas, of Consciousness and its creative Force, in Time and in Space.

Page 108

---

But the goal is easier stated than realised. For, almost on universal evidence, any great stress of dynamism generally obscures the inner vision, brings in a relative loss of the Peace and Silence of the soul, and otherwise tends to lower the status of spiritual attainment.

But this disability arises from the fact that attempts to possess the active Brahman have so far been made exclusively through the Mind-consciousness. And since Mind, the great divider, suffers from some intrinsic and irremediable limitations these attempts have been foredoomed to failure.

But the question may be raised: since Mind, in the actually evolved existence, is the highest possible instrument available and since there is no other still higher organised power through which to realise the Self or Brahman or to possess divinely the world, is it not almost axiomatic that the transformation of our dynamic waking existence as we envisage in our sadhana is an impossible proposition ?

Of course, if the above assumption is correct, the liberation and transformation of our embodied existence would be impossible here upon earth, and instead of running after the ignis fatuus it would be more sensible to pass away into the Superconscient and not to seek to bring down the Superconscient into the field of our waking consciousness.

As a matter of fact, this has been so far the general trend. For "in the ordinary Yoga...it is only necessary to recognise two planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and materialised mental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both, cuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the materialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and then the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this poise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme plane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and merges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual existence."¹

But a deeper and higher spiritual exploration reveals the fact that the above assumption is not correct after all. Mind is not the highest principle of cosmic existence, with only the pure Spirit, the Impersonal Absolute beyond itself. As a matter of fact, there is a hierarchy of superior principles far transcending the normal mind-

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 427.

Page 109

---

consciousness and consequently at present superconscient to it. A supreme Truth-Consciousness, Rita-Chit, which Sri Aurobindo terms as Supermind, tops the series and this is a Power not merely static and introspective but supremely dynamic and creative. It is this Supermind that must be consciously possessed and made to descend into our earth-nature if we would have a transformed waking existence. Otherwise a static release remains the sole possibility before the spiritual seeker.

Unfortunately, the knowledge of the existence of these supernal planes of our being has been almost lost to the spiritual memory of the race with all the adverse consequences attendant upon it. In ancient lore, "in the Upanishad (usually the Taittiriya) there are some indications of these higher planes and their nature and the possibility of gathering up the whole consciousness and rising into them. But this was forgotten afterwards and people spoke only of the Buddhi as the highest thing with the Purusha or Self just above, but there was no clear idea of these planes."¹

Now, so long as these higher spiritual planes of the mental being and finally the plane of Supermind are not consciously possessed and made active and organised in the normal consciousness of the embodied being, so long as the spiritualised mind approaches the Supreme directly and not passing through this Truth-Consciousness, the supramental Gnosis, one is bound to experience difficulties from the point of view of the realisation of our goal, both in the mind's ascent and in its attempted realisation of the active Brahman.

Let us have a bird's-eye view of some of the more salient difficulties encountered and, at the same time, of the achievements of Mind as well as of its failures.

The Ascent and Illusoriness: If Mind is taken to be the highest possible cosmic principle, since the Absolute is not seizable by the mind-consciousness, the seeker of the traditional Yogas tries to get away from the mortal failings of mind into the superconscient Infinite, by shedding all its activities and formations, making a blank of it and finally 'engulfing it in the Unmanifest,' param avyaktam.

In this progressive withdrawal from mind-consciousness, the sadhak comes to realise the Sad-Atman, the "pure, still, self-aware

¹ Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 114.

Page 110

---

existence, one, undivided, peaceful, inactive, undisturbed by the action of the world."¹

Although this Sad-Atman is the unique Origin and Sustainer of everything, sarvāni hyetad brahma,² being itself passive, the only relation it appears to have with this world of manifestation is that of "a disinterested Witness not at all involved in or affected or even touched by any of its activities."³

When one pushes farther this state of consciousness, one comes to realise 'an aloof and transcendent Real Existence' appearing to have no connection or commerce at all with the world-existence.

When the mental being seeks to go still beyond, it negates yet further and arrives at an Asat, "a Void of everything that is here, a Void of unnameable peace and extinction of all, even of the Sat, even of that Existent which is the impersonal basis of individual or universal personality."⁴ It is this Asat, arrived at by the absolute annulment of mind-existence and world-existence, that has been variously termed as Turiya or featureless and relationless Absolute by the monistic Vedantins, the Shunyam by the nihilistic Madhya-mika Buddhists, the Tao or omnipresent and transcendent Nihil by the Chinese, and as the indefinable and ineffable Permanent by the Mahayanists.⁵

Many Christian mystics too, notably St. John of the Cross with his doctrine of noche obscura, speak of 'a complete ignorance', 'a divine Darkness' through which the spiritualised Mind has to pass before one can expect to attain to the supreme experience. And it is because of this incompatibility of mind-consciousness with the experience of the Absolute that so many systems of spiritual discipline have come to condemn the cosmic play. As a matter of fact, it is this very incompatibility that is at the basis of the Illusionism that "takes such firm hold of the human mind in its highest overleapings of itself."⁶

If without any intermediate transitions, without awakening in the supernal reaches of our existence, of which we have already spoken, the Mind tries to take a short-cut and pass suddenly the 'gates of the Transcendent' where stands 'the mere and perfect

¹The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 385.

²Māṇḍukya Upaniṣad, 2.

³The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 384-85.

⁴ Ibid., p. 350.

⁵ Letters on Yoga, p. 64.

⁶The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 351.

Page 111

---

Spirit', the inactive Brahman, the transcendent Silence, a sense of utter unreality and illusory character of all cosmic existence seizes it in a most convincing and overwhelming experience. "The universe and all that is... appears [then] to the mind as a dream more unsubstantial than any dream ever seen or imagined, so that even the word dream seems too positive a thing to express its entire unreality."¹

But this universal Illusionism is not a necessary concomitant of the supreme spiritual experience. If instead of the mind's abrupt Samadhi-plunge into the mystic sleep state of suṣupti that is now superconscient and therefore inaccessible to it, one succeeds in acquiring spiritual wakefulness in the supernal states intervening between the Mind and the Spirit, one does not pass through the perception of an illusionary Maya, but rather has "the experience of the passage from Mind to what is beyond it so that our mental structure of the universe ceases to be valid and another reality of it is substituted for the ignorant mental knowledge. In this transition it is possible to be awake to all the states of being together in a harmonised and unified experience and to see the Reality everywhere."² Then we experience, as Sri Aurobindo has ṣo beautifully put, that it is not an unreal or real-unreal universe that is reposing on a transcendent Reality, but a real universe reposing on a Reality at once universal and transcendent or absolute.³

For even beyond the avyaktam, the Unmanifest, beyond the divine Darkness, tamasaḥ parastāt, is the Supreme One Existence, ekam advaitam, the Para Purusha who holds in His vast integral Reality the truth of cosmic consciousness as well as that of the Nirvana of world-consciousness. He is beyond the duality and the non-duality, parataḥ paraḥ⁴ and is ādityavarṇa in contrast to the darkness of the Unmanifest. He is the Light of lights, jyotiṣāṁ jyotiḥ,⁵ and lies in a supreme golden sheath, hiraṇmaye pare koṣe.⁶ Indeed, "the sun in the Yoga is the symbol of the supermind and the supermind is the first power of the Supreme which one meets across the border where the experience of spiritualised mind ceases and the unmodified divine consciousness begins the domain of the

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 417.

² The Life Divine, pp. 452-53.

³Ibid., p. 416.

⁴Muṇdaka Upanisad, II. 1.2.

^{5 6} Ibid., II.2.10.

Page 112

---

supreme Nature, Parā Prakṛti. It is that Light of which the Vedic mystics got a glimpse, and it is the opposite of the intervening darkness of the Christian mystics, for the supermind is all light and no darkness. To the mind the Supreme is avyaktāt param avyaktam, but if we follow the line leading to the supermind, it is an increasing affirmation rather than an increasing negation through which we move."¹

We have so far dwelt upon the disabilities that the mind-consciousness suffers from on its way of ascension to the summits of spiritual consciousness or rather superconsciousness. Now let us turn our gaze on the limitations that vitiate its attempt at complete possession of the active Brahman, when it seeks to return from the summit and embrace the life of action and creation.

The incomplete possession of the active Brahman: It is of course true that our normal consciousness, even at its waking moments, can become aware of Brahman through a process of inward concentration. But the point to note is that it is only the static and passive aspect of Brahman that is thus apprehended, not its active and dynamic side.

The result is that in its return upon world-existence the mental being finds a wall of non-communication between the passive and the active Brahman and all dynamic activity appears to its stilled and inactive consciousness either as a hallucination or a dream, or like a puppet show, or even as a purely mechanical action brought about by the play of Prakriti without any active participation of Purusha. The incommunicability may sometimes be so strong, the gulf separating the inner consciousness and the dynamic outer being so wide that to all outward appearances the seeker may "move about like a thing inert in the hands of Nature, jaḍavat, like a leaf in the wind, or otherwise [in] a state of pure happy and free irresponsibility of action, bālavat....The outer being [may] live in a God-possessed frenzy careless of itself and the world, unmattavat, or with an entire disregard whether of the conventions and proprieties of fitting human action or of the harmony and rhythms of a greater Truth. It acts as the unbound vital being, piśācavat, the divine maniac or else the divine demoniac."²

But this sort of 'static possession by the Self' or 'the unregulated

¹ Letters on Yoga, pp. 64-65. (Italics ours)

² The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 479.

Page 113

---

dynamic possession by the physical and vital Nature' is far removed from the goal of the Integral Yoga, for what we aim at is the "mastery of the Prakriti by the Purusha [and] the sublimation of Nature into her own supreme power, the infinite glories of the Para Shakti."¹

Confronted with this inability to participate actively in the dynamic manifestation without at the same time losing the possession of the freedom and peace of the silent Self, the mental being gets tempted to adopt the attitude of an indifferent and inactive witness of the world-play and at the best allow his organs of sense and motor-action a free play of their own unsupported by any conscious initiation on the part of the witnessing self. The ideal of course is to reduce action to the barest minimum possible compatible with the maintenance of the bodily life.

Of course, there is another possibility, an alternative choice. Through a proper discipline one may come to a state where a perfect inner passivity may co-exist with perfect outer dynamism but altogether independent of each other. In this situation it is not the willed motive of the conscious mind in the Sadhaka that initiates and effectuates the activity, but rather the universal intelligence and will of Nature that uses the living instrument and works flawlessly from centres superconscious or subliminal to the conscious mind.

But this too is not what we seek to realise in our Yoga of dynamic divinisation. For in this particular status of inner passivity and outer action by the mere organs, kevalair indriyair, "there is an evident absence of integrality; for there is still a gulf, an unrealised unity or a cleft of consciousness between the passive and the active Brahman. We have still to possess consciously the active Brahman without losing the possession of the silent Self. We have to preserve the inner silence, tranquillity, passivity as a foundation; but in place of an aloof indifference to the works of the active Brahman we have to arrive at an equal and impartial delight in them; in place of a refusal to participate lest our freedom and peace be lost, we have to arrive at a conscious possession of the active Brahman whose joy of existence does not abrogate His peace, nor His lordship of all workings impair His calm freedom in the midst of His works."² But the crucial question is: is it at all

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 478.

² Ibid., p. 389.

Page 114

---

possible for the mental being in his actually evolved status to embrace at once, equally and fully, both the world and the being, both consciousness and action?

The Intrinsic Incapacity: To answer the above question we must first note that between the normal consciousness of man the mental being and a truly spiritual supra-mental consciousness, there lies a thick veil, an almost impenetrable lid, satyasyāpihitaṁ mukham, and unless this veil is lifted and the lid removed, there is no possibility of knowing the divine, far be it to attain to it. But the difficulty is this that either through arduous Tapasya or by an act of Grace from above, when the mental being succeeds in putting off the veil, it sees the Divine "as something above, beyond, around even in a sense, but with a gulf between that being and our being, an unbridged or even an unbridgeable chasm. There is this infinite existence; but it is quite other than the mental being who becomes aware of it....There is this great, boundless, unconditioned consciousness and force; but our consciousness and force stands apart from it, even if within it, limited, petty, discouraged, disgusted with itself and the world, but unable to participate in that higher thing which it has seen. There is this immeasurable and unstained bliss; but our own being remains the sport of a lower Nature of pleasure and pain and dull neutral sensation incapable of its divine delight. There is this perfect Knowledge and Will; but our own remains always the mental deformed knowledge and limping will incapable of sharing in or even being in tune with that nature of Godhead." ¹

Now, in an attempt to bridge this chasm and heal the rift, the mental being seeks to rise through a Herculean all-forgetting effort out of itself into the Infinite above. But in this process "the mind has to leave its own consciousness, to disappear into another and temporarily or permanently lose itself...in the trance of Samadhi."² For obvious reasons this mindless absolute trance-state cannot be our objective (vide Chap.V: The Critique of the Trance-Solution). Our aim is to transform the waking mentality itself, and for that we have to invoke another possibility open to the mental being.

As a matter of fact, mind has a great reflecting capability, reflecting whatever it knows and contemplates. Thus if it pacifies

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 378. (Italics ours)

² Ibid., p. 411. (Italics ours)

Page 115

---

itself and calls down the divine into itself, it succeeds in reflecting the image of the divine and getting spiritualised. But the trouble is that in this operation "the mind does not entirely possess the divine or become divine, but is possessed by it or by a luminous reflection of it so long as it remains in...pure passivity."¹ The moment it becomes active, mind becomes turbid again and the reflection of the divine is lost.

Hence it is often declared that an absolute quietism and the cessation of all outer and inner action is the only way out of the above impasse. But evidently this fails to satisfy the demands of the Integral Yoga. What we seek is "a positive transformation and not merely a negative quiescence of the waking mentality."²

But the basic difficulty with the mind-consciousness is that it is an inveterate divider of the indivisible and dwells upon one aspect at a time to the exclusion of all others. For "mind in its essence is a consciousness which measures, limits, cuts out forms of things from the indivisible whole and contains them as if each were a separate integer....Mind may divide, multiply, add, subtract, but it cannot get beyond the limits of this mathematics. If it goes beyond and tries to conceive a real whole, it loses itself in a foreign element; it falls from its own firm ground into the ocean of the intangible, into the abysms of the infinite where it can neither perceive, conceive, sense nor deal with its subject for creation and enjoyment...Mind cannot possess the infinite, it can only suffer it or be possessed by it; it can only lie blissfully helpless under the luminous shadow of the Real cast down on it from planes of existence beyond its reach."³

It is because of this inherent propensity to divide and overstress that the Mind cannot hold at once Unity and Multiplicity, consciousness and action, being and becoming; it cannot possess simultaneously the active and the passive Brahman. And because of Mind's inability to possess the Infinite, if instead of being satisfied with the 'luminous shadow', golden lid, hiraṇmayapātra, one would seek to realise the utter Real, one has perforce to get rid of mind altogether and enter into the absolute mindless suṣupti. It is for this reason that so many seekers of the past have recommended manonāśa or the 'annulment of the Mind' as the via royal to the supreme spiritual experience.

^{1 2} The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 381.

³ The Life Divine, pp. 162-63.

Page 116

---

Thus we find Sri Ramakrishna declaring: "The Knowledge of Brahman cannot be attained except through the annulment of Mind. A Guru told his disciple, 'Give me your mind and I shall give you knowledge.' "¹

The Rajarshi Janaka of old declared, "Now I have awakened and discovered the thief that is Mind; I must kill it, must scorch it to death. For Mind is the root of this world of ignorance."²

According to the great sage Vasishtha, a great good comes out of the destruction of Mind, manaso'bhyudayo manonāśo mahodayaḥ³, and the Mind of the knower of the Truth verily gets annulled, jñānino nāśamabhyeti⁴ The Yoga-Shikhopanishad too declares that mindlessness is the supreme status, na manaḥ kevalaḥ paraḥ.⁵

Thus, almost on universal testimony, the ideal before the seeker after the Truth is to get to the state of mindlessness, amanastā, where the mind loses all its faculties, yadā na manute manaḥ and becomes non-mind so to say, unmanībhūyāt.

What is then the solution for us who aspire after the freedom of divine action as well as the liberation of divine rest ? If mind-consciousness inclusive of its highest spiritual reaches proves its inadequacy as an instrument and medium for the divine possession of our waking existence, what other cosmic principle is there that can help us to realise our goal ? For, for the proper fulfilment of our objective, "we have to review and remould the lower living in the light, force and joy of the higher reality. We have to realise Matter as a sense-created mould of Spirit, a vehicle for all manifestation of the light, force and joy of Sachchidananda in the highest conditions of terrestrial being and activity. We have to see Life as a channel for the infinite Force divine and break the barrier of a sense-created and mind-created farness and division from it so that divine Power may take possession of and direct and change all our life-activities until our vitality transfigured ceases in the end to be the limited life-force which now supports mind and body and becomes a figure of the all-blissful conscious force of

¹ Sri Sri Ramakrishna Kathasar, p. 296.

²Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇam, V.9.

³ Ibid., IV. 35. 18.

⁴Ibid.

⁵Yogaśikhopaniṣad, 6.60.

Page 117

---

Sachchidananda. We have similarly to change our sensational and emotional mentality into a play of divine Love and universal Delight; and we have to surcharge the intellect which seeks to know and will in us with the light of the divine Knowledge-Will until it is transformed into a figure of that higher and sublime activity." ¹

Such is then our high ideal, but how to realise it in practice, how to conquer the spiritual penury of our waking physical existence and embrace equally the active and passive aspects of the Divine ? If Mind fails, what else is there that saves the situation ?

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 403-04.

Page 118

---

Appendix

ASCENT FROM THE MIND-CONSCIOUSNESS *

" 'Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time's work,

Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.

Annul thyself that only God may be.'

Thus spoke the mighty and uplifting Voice,

And Savitri heard; she bowed her head and mused

Plunging her deep regard into herself

In her soul's privacy in the silent Night.

Aloof and standing back detached and calm,

A witness of the drama of herself,

A student of her own interior scene,

She watched the passion and the toil of life

And heard in the crowded thoroughfares of mind

The unceasing tread and passage of her thoughts.

All she allowed to rise that chose to stir;

Calling, compelling nought, forbidding nought,

She left all to the process formed in Time

And the free initiative of Nature's will.

⁂

Above the birth of body and of thought

Our spirit's truth lives in the naked self

And from that height, unbound, surveys the world.

Out of the mind she rose to escape its law

That it might sleep in some deep shadow of self

Or fall silent in the silence of the Unseen.

⁂

Then all grew tranquil in her being's space,

Only sometimes small thoughts arose and fell

* From Sri Aurobindo's Savitri, Book VII, Canto VI, pp. 538-49. (Italics ours)

Page 119

---

Like quiet waves upon a silent sea

Or ripples passing over a lonely pool

When a stray stone disturbs its dreaming rest.

Yet the mind's factory had ceased to work,

There was no sound of the dynamo's throb,

There came no call from the still fields of life.

Then even those stirrings rose in her no more;

Her mind now seemed like a vast empty room

Or like a peaceful landscape without sound.

This men call quietude and prize as peace.

But to her deeper sight all yet was there,

Effervescing like a chaos under a lid;

Feelings and thoughts cried out for word and act

But found no response in the silenced brain:

All was suppressed but nothing yet expunged;

At every moment might explosion come.

Then this too paused; the body seemed a stone.

All now was a wide mighty vacancy,

But still excluded from eternity's hush;

For still was far the repose of the Absolute

And the ocean Silence of Infinity,

Even now some thoughts could cross her solitude:

These surged not from the depths or from within

Cast up from formlessness to seek a form,

Spoke not the body's need nor voiced mind's call.

These seemed not born nor made in human Time,

⁂

Out of some far expanse they seemed to come

As if carried on vast wings like large white sails,

And with easy access reached the inner ear.

⁂

As yet their path lay deep concealed in light.

Then looking to know whence the intruders came

She saw a spiritual immensity

Pervading and encompassing the world-space

Page 120

---

As ether our transparent tangible air,

And through it sailing tranquilly a thought.

⁂

As smoothly glides a ship nearing a port,

..........

It came to the silent city of the brain

Towards its accustomed and expectant quay,

But met a barring will, a blow of Force

And sank vanishing in the immensity.

After a long vacant pause another appeared

And others one by one suddenly emerged,

Mind's unexpected visitors from the unseen

Like far-off sails upon a lonely sea.

But soon that commerce failed, none reached mind's coast.

Then all grew still, nothing moved any more:

Immobile, self-rapt, timeless, solitary

A silent spirit pervaded silent Space.

In that absolute stillness bare and formidable

There was glimpsed an all-negating Void supreme

That claimed its mystic Nihil's sovereign right

To cancel Nature and deny the soul.

Even the nude sense of self grew pale and thin:

Impersonal, signless, featureless, void of forms

A blank pure consciousness had replaced the mind.

⁂

Yet still her body saw and moved and spoke;

It understood without the aid of thought,

It said whatever needed to be said,

It did whatever needed to be done.

There was no person there behind the act,

No mind that chose or passed the fitting word:

All wrought like an unerring apt machine.

As if continuing old habitual turns,

And pushed by an old unexhausted force

Page 121

---

The engine did the work for which it was made:

Her consciousness looked on and took no part;

⁂

This seeing was identical with the seen;

It knew without knowledge all that could be known,

It saw impartially the world go by,

But in the same supreme unmoving glance

Saw too its abysmal unreality.

It watched the figure of the cosmic game,

But the thought and inner life in forms seemed dead

Abolished by her own collapse of thought:

A hollow physical shell persisted still.

⁂

Once sepulchred alive in brain and flesh

She had risen up from body, mind and life;

She was no more a Person in a world,

She had escaped into infinity.

⁂

Only some last annulment now remained,

Annihilation's vague indefinable step"

Page 122

Chapter IX

The Inwardization and the Ascension

His knowledge an inview caught unfathomable,

An outview by no brief horizons cut:

He thought and felt in all, his gaze had power.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book II, Canto XV, p. 301)

The thing to be gained is the bringing in of a Power of Consciousness (the Supramental) not yet organised or active directly in earth-nature, even in the spiritual life, but yet to be organised and made directly active.

(Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 109)

The overhead ascension is not indispensable for the usual spiritual purposes, — but it is indispensable for the purposes of this Yoga. For its aim is to become aware of and liberate and transform and unite all the being in the light of a Truth-Consciousness which is above and cannot be reached if there is no entirely inward-going and no transcending and upward-going movement.

(Ibid., pp. 179-80)

The Integral Yoga of Transformation has for its objective not merely the supreme realisation of Sachchidananda, but His divine self-expression, the flawless manifestation of the active Brahman, in our divinely transfigured embodied earthly existence.

But the question is: how to realise this goal of our Yoga and what it is that may possibly be the medium of these realising ascensions and world-possessing descents? For, in the actually elaborated evolutionary status of human consciousness, mind represents the highest cosmic principle and power of consciousness so far organised in man the mental being. But this mind-consciousness, even in its highest flights, is no more than a movement in the Ignorance: it is not inherently Truth-Conscious. And hence it is altogether incapable of possessing or even attaining to the Divine; at best it can immobilise itself and rest satisfied with

Page 123

---

Reflections of the sun in waters still¹

But it is far from our goal to be contented with "bright or shadowy photographs or films of a distant Reality"² that the mind can at most achieve for us: we want to ascend to the supreme Reality in full awareness and bring down its dynamic glories and splendours in the play of our waking state.

But we cannot but take note of the fact of spiritual experience certified by most seekers of the Truth that an immense hiatus seems to exist between the supramental Truth-Consciousness and the Mind-Consciousness we normally know of. And unless this seemingly unbridgeable gulf intervening between the two is satisfactorily bridged, we have to forego our dream.

...to plant on earth the living Truth

Or make of Matter's world the home of God.³

In that case, we shall have no other choice than to take a superconscient leap from the station of Mind into the Unknowable beyond and to agree willy-nilly to the following trenchant conclusion of the incredulous Darkness persuading Savitri to abandon her task of world-transformation:

He who would turn to God must leave the world;

He who would live in the Spirit, must give up life;

He who has met the Self, renounces self.

The voyagers of the million routes of mind

Who have travelled through Existence to is end,

Sages exploring the world-ocean's vasts,

Have found extinction the sole harbour safe.⁴

Indeed, mind fails as an instrument and medium both for our conscious ascension into the Infinite as well as for the dynamic descent and manifestation of the supreme powers of the Spirit. As has been so well said, mind cannot arrive at identity with the Absolute, it can only disappear into it in a swoon or extinction, into St.

¹Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, p. 659.

²The Life Divine, p. 272.

³Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, p. 646.

⁴Ibid., p. 635.

Page 124

---

John of the Cross's 'divine Darkness of the mystic Night.' Also, as a medium of divine expression and action, the mind plane cannot in its very nature allow of the supreme workings native to the divine Consciousness-Force. "The mind spiritualised, purified, liberated, perfected within its own limits may come as near as possible to a faithful mental translation, but...this is after all a relative fidelity and an imperfect perfection....The mind...can take its [the Infinite's] suggestions and act them out in its own way, a way always fragmentary, derivative and subject to a greater or less deformation, but it cannot be itself the direct and perfect instrument of the infinite Spirit acting in its own knowledge." ¹

It becomes imperative then for the fulfilment of our divine destiny upon earth that man should be able to raise himself much above the plane of mind and normally and permanently, even in his waking state, live in the supernal heights of the Spirit, also to manifest and organise in his embodied existence new planes and powers of consciousness other than and superior to mind, so that these may offer themselves as the proper media and instrumentation through which the divine Will and Wisdom can freely act and self-express.

But between the Mind and the Spirit, are there other superior planes of spiritual consciousness — not merely static and introspective, but creative and dynamic — which man can possibly hope to ascend? And is it at all possible for man to devlop and organise these supernal planes in his waking consciousness so much so that he may outgrow and transcend his present mental status and become something more than human?

The answer and hope lie in the process of evolutionary elaboration of manifested existence here upon the face of the earth. The results so far achieved by Evolution are indeed truly striking: it is surely a long march from the insentient Matter to the self-conscious mind of man. But who can say that the evolutionary nisus has exhausted itself with the emergence of man the mental being, so that the only possible course left for the embodied soul is how to make an exit from this not too perfect world-existence and take the transcendent leap into the Unknowable and Unmanifest?

As a matter of fact, the evolutionary oestrus is even now very much at work and it is not liable to annul itself until and unless the divine Sachchidananda is fully manifested here in our embodied

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 755-56. (Italics ours)

Page 125

---

existence and 'this earthly life become the life divine.'¹ For such is the original intended meaning of creation, this is the secret spiritual sense of the evolutionary march. Thus Savitri answered to refute the conjecture of the sophist Power of doubt and denial:

How sayst thou Truth can never light the human mind

And bliss can never invade the mortal's heart

Or God descend into the world he made ?

If in the meaningless Void the creation rose,

If from a bodiless Force Matter was born,

If Life could climb in the unconscious tree,

If green delight break into emerald leaves

And its laughter of beauty blossom in the flower,

If sense could wake in tissue, nerve and cell,

And Thought seize the grey matter of the brain,

And soul peep from its secrecy through the flesh,

How shall the nameless light not leap on men,

And unknown powers emerge from Nature's sleep?

Even now hints of a luminous Truth like stars

Arise in the mind-mooned splendour of Ignorance;

Even now the deathless Lover's touch we feel:

If the chamber's door is even a little ajar,

What then can hinder God from stealing in

Or who forbid his kiss on the sleeping soul ?"²

But the skeptic may still rejoin that the past is no sure guide to the future and plausibility is never equivalent to certainty. So, after establishing the plausibility of our goal of divine transformation of the waking existence, we must now specially point out the steps following which this goal can be realised in practice. And for this we must rely, surely not on philosophical speculation or logical surmisings, but solely on the verdict of the ever-ascending and ever-deepening spiritual exploration of our being and becoming. For, this alone has any real validity in this field.

Now, there are two types of movements of our consciousness through which it becomes possible for us to have access to the deeper and superior reaches of our being a movement inward and an upward ascension.

¹Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, p. 711.

²Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, pp. 648-49.

Page 126

---

By the first movement of inward penetration, we seek to break asunder the wall separating our subliminal self from our present surface existence, leave the surface consciousness and live entirely in the realm of our inner mind, inner life, inner subtle-physical and finally in the inmost soul of our being. This inmost soul or the psychic being is the Purusha in the secret heart, hṛdye. guhāyām, a portion of the Divine Self supporting the individual nature.

Now, an enlargement and completion of our actual evolutionary status becomes the very first consequence of such an inwardization of consciousness. For, our inner being is found to possess a dynamism and potentialities much superior to those of our surface mind and life and body. As a -matter of fact, "it is capable of a direct communication with the universal forces, movements, objects of the cosmos, a direct feeling and opening to them, a direct action on them and even a widening of itself beyond the limits of the personal mind, the personal life, the body, so that it feels itself more and more a universal being no longer limited by the existing walls of our too narrow mental, vital, physical existence. This widening can extend itself to a complete entry into the consciousness of cosmic Mind, into unity with the universal Life, even into a oneness with universal Matter."¹

But this first result is not all that can be desired. For, however cosmic in scope and perfected in dynamism, our being remains still embedded in the field of diminished cosmic truth, if not in total cosmic Ignorance. If we would transcend the limitations of our present evolutionary status, we must seek to become conscious in what is now superconscient to us and ascend to the native heights of the Spirit not at present accessible to our waking consciousness. Thus, "the psychic movement inward to the inner being, ...must be completed by an opening upward to a supreme spiritual status."²

Now, this is the second — and from our point of view, much more momentous — consequence of an accomplished inward living. For, it is found that once the entry into the inner subliminal realms is successfully undertaken, the inner being exerts a growing pressure on the "strong hard and bright lid of mind, — mind constricting, dividing and separative"³ — that clouds the superconscient from our waking consciousness. This pressure be-

¹The Life Divine, p. 276. (Italics ours)

²Ibid, p. 910.

³Ibid., p. 910.

Page 127

---

comes in the end so great that the lid of mind wears thin, opens and disappears, and our consciousness becomes privileged to have a vision of the supernal things. What we see by this upward opening is "an Infinity above us, an eternal Presence or an infinite Existence, an infinity of consciousness, an infinity of bliss, — a boundless Self, a boundless Light, a boundless Power, a boundless Ecstasy."¹

But even this 'wide awareness from below' is not sufficient. We must make an actual ascension to the height of the spirit above. Fortunately, this too is an alternative or subsequent result of the inward living. Our consciousness rises up towards the reaches of our being, much beyond the present mental level.

But here a very serious difficulty supervenes and unless this is successfully remedied in time, one may be very well led away from the path of divine transformation of Nature into the silent immobility of the Transcendent and Unmanifest.

Indeed, since the heights to which our consciousness attains in its upward ascension are in general superconscient to our mind, the latter fails to remain awake there and hence considers these ascents as only luminously blank. Thus, our mind-consciousness is tempted to effectuate a short-cut and take a straight jump to the Transcendent. On this line, "the first most ordinary result is a discovery of a vast static and silent Self which we feel to be our real or our basic existence....There may be even an extinction, a Nirvana both of our active being and of the sense of self into a Reality that is indefinable and inexpressible....It is possible to remain in a Nirvana of all individuality, to stop at a static realisation or, regarding all the cosmic movement as a superficial play or illusion imposed on the silent Self, to pass into some supreme immobile and immutable status beyond the universe."²

But fortunately this is not the only possible line of supernormal spiritual experience: the withdrawal from all participation in the world-existence and the immergence or extinction into the Unmanifest is not the only spiritual destiny decreed for the human soul. A supreme divine return from the verge of Nirvana into the world-play is equally possible and this with the undiminished splendours and potencies of all the spiritual wealth amassed at the summits. The choice is indeed hard and difficult. For, the ultimate

¹ The Life Divine, p. 911.

² Ibid., pp. 276-77.

Page 128

---

and definitive withdrawal into the Infinite and Eternity is too alluring a prospect to be easily rejected by the ascending soul. To have instead 'the supernal birth' one must have

...trod along extinction's narrow edge

Near the high verges of eternity.¹

This double alternative and the difficulty of choosing between the two have been beautifully depicted in the following passage of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri:

She had risen up from body, mind and life;

She was no more a Person in a world,

She had escaped into infinity.

.........

Only some last annulment now remained,

Annihilation's vague indefinable step:

A memory of being still was there

And kept her separate from nothingness:

She was in That but still became not That.

This shadow of herself so close to nought

Could be again self's point d'appui to live,

Return out of the Inconcievable

And be what some mysterious vast might choose.

Even as the Unknowable decreed,

She might be nought or new-become the All,

Or if the omnipotent Nihil took a shape

Emerge as someone and redeem the world.

Even, she might learn what the mystic cipher held,

This seeming exit or closed end of all

Could be a blind tenebrous passage screened from sight,

Her state the eclipsing shell of a darkened sun

On its secret way to the Ineffable.

Even now her splendid being might flame back

Out of the silence and the nullity,

A gleaming portion of the All-Wonderful,

A power of some all-affirming Absolute,

A shining mirror of the eternal Truth

To show to the One-in-all its manifest face,

¹ Savitri, Book II, Canto XV, p. 300.

Page 129

---

To the souls of men their deep identity.

Or she might wake into God's quietude

Beyond the cosmic day and cosmic night

And rest appeased in his white eternity.¹

But once we set aside the exit-solution as not conforming to our goal and try instead to become aware in those supernal realms where we could not remain awake before, we find that our consciousness rises to those ascending heights of the Spirit where its immobile status is but the necessary foundation for a greatly potent and luminous dynamism. Once the power to remain awake develops in us, once we rise out of the sphere of mortal mind and look deep and high and far, we discover the splendours of a graded series of planes and powers of consciousness — an intervening spiritual mind-range — serving as links and bridges between the now normal waking mind and 'the native heights of supramental and pure spiritual being.'

It is in these 'radiant altitudes' of the Spirit that "we find the secret we are seeking, the means of the transition, the needed step towards a supramental transformation; for we perceive a graduality of ascent, a communication with a more and more deep and immense light and power from above, a scale of intensities which can be regarded as so many stairs in the ascension of Mind or in a descent into Mind from That which is beyond it."²

In this incessant ascending gradation through which our consciousness rises towards the supramental Truth-Consciousness, four principal ascents may be distinguished. These gradations may be broadly described as 'a series of sublimations of the consciousness' through what Sri Aurobindo has termed Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuition and Overmind; "there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis.... All these degrees are gnostic in their principle and power; for even at the first we begin to pass from a consciousness based on an original Inconscience and acting in a general Ignorance or in a mixed Knowledge-Ignorance to a consciousness based on a secret self-existent Knowledge and....In themselves these grades are grades of energy-substance of the Spirit... they are

¹Savitri, Book VII, Canto VI, p. 549. (Italics Ours).

²The Life Divine, p. 277.

Page 130

---

domains of being, grades of the substance and energy of the spiritual being, fields of existence which are each a level of the universal Consciousness-Force constituting and organising itself into a higher status.... Each stage of this ascent is a general, if not a total, conversion of the being into a new light and power of a greater existence."¹

For the characterisation of this fourfold ascent and the dynamic-spiritual implications thereof, the reader is referred to Chapter XXVI, Book Two ("The Ascent towards Supermind") of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine. For the continuity of our discussion we content ourselves with only some broad hints about the nature of these four higher grades of our being.

The first ascent out of our normal mentality is into a Higher Mind of automatic and spontaneous Knowledge, where knowledge assumes the nature of Truth-Thought. Its most characteristic movement is "a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view;...this thought is a self-revelation of eternal Wisdom, not an acquired Knowledge."²

Beyond the Higher Mind of Truth-Thought is the Illumined Mind of Truth-Sight, a Mind where

There are vasts of vision and eternal suns,

Oceans of an immortal luminousness,

Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks,

There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;

A burning head of vision leads the mind,

Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;

The heart glows, an illuminate and seer,

And sense is kindled into identity.³

Thus the characteristic power of the Illumined Mind is not Thought but Vision; it is the field of "the outpourings of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff." And on the dynamic side there is here "a golden drive, a luminous 'enthousiasmos' of inner force and power,...almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation."⁴

¹Ibid., p. 938.

²The Life Divine, p. 940.

³Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, pp. 659-60.

⁴ The Life Divine, p. 944.

Page 131

---

Next in the order of ascension is the Intuitive Mind whose characteristic power is an intimate and exact Truth-perception which is much more than sight and conception. Intuition is in us "a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us....Intuition has a fourfold power. A power of revelatory truth-seeing, a power of inspiration or truth-hearing, a power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance,...a power of true and automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth."¹ Thus

Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack

Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,

Its fiery edge of seeing absolute

Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self,

Rummages the sky-recesses of the brain,

Lights up the occult chambers of the heart;

Its spear-point ictus of discovery

Pressed on the cover of name, the screen of form,

Strips bare the secret soul of all that is.

Thought there has revelation's sun-bright eyes;

The Word, a mighty and inspiring Voice,

Enters Truth's inmost cabin of privacy

And tears away the veil from God and life.²

Beyond the plane of the Intuitive Mind is a superconscient cosmic Mind, a principle of global knowledge which carries in it 'a delegated light from the supramental gnosis.' The Overmind is in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness and represents the 'highest possible status-dynamis' of the Spirit in the spiritual-mind range. 'The cosmic empire of the Overmind'³ represents 'the boundless finite's last expanse'⁴ and

Time's buffer state bordering Eternity,

Too vast for the experience of man's soul:

All here gathers beneath one golden sky:

The Powers that build the cosmos station take

¹ The Life Divine, p. 949.

² Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, p. 660.

^{3 4} Ibid., p. 660.

Page 132

---

In its house of infinite possibility;

Each god from there builds his own nature's world;

Ideas are phalanxed like a group of sums;

Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;

All Time is one body, Space a single book:

There is the Godhead's universal gaze,

And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:¹

The Overmind may be considered to be the delegate of Supermind to the lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance; it links the latter with that supramental Gnosis or Truth-Consciousness, "...while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight...This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance."²

With the Overmind we thus reach the line that parts and joins the lower and the upper hemispheres of existence. Here two possibilities open up before the soul. Either it may seek to reach the supreme supracosmic Sachchidananda direct from the spiritualised mind-range and in that process depart out of its cosmic formation into "the eternally static oneness of Sachchidananda or rather pure Sat (Existence), absolute and eternal or else a pure Nonexistence, absolute and eternal."³

But evidently this is not our line. Since we seek to possess divinely our world-being as well as our self-being, we must cross the borderline, pass into the upper hemisphere transcending even the highest reach of spiritual mind and seek to realise Sachchidananda on the plane of Supermind. For, supermind is Sachchidananda's "...power of self-awareness and world-awareness, the world being known as within itself and not outside....[It is] the Truth-Consciousness whether above or in the universe by which the Divine knows not only his own essence and being but bis manifestation also. Its fundamental character is knowledge by identity, by that the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, But also the truth of manifestation is known, because this too is That."⁴

Hence it becomes imperative for the soul to pass through the

¹ Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, p. 660.

² The Life Divine, p. 278.

³ Sri Aurobindo, On Yoga II, p. 261.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 261, 264.

Page 133

---

supramental realisation if, instead of departing into the Transcendence, it would simultaneously live in the transcendence of the supreme Sachchidananda and possess its world-view too.

But even these supreme ascents accomplished in full spiritual awareness do not prove sufficient for our purpose. These cannot cure our waking consciousness of its apparently irremediable spiritual penury. For that a supreme movement of descent should follow the supreme movement of ascension and Heaven should consent to come down upon Earth. But is that at all possible?

Page 134

Chapter X

The Descent of the Supermind

I know that I can lift man's soul to God,

I know that he can bring the Immortal down.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, p. 687)

The integral perfection can come only by a mounting ascent of the lowest into the highest and an incessant descent of the highest into the lowest till all becomes one at once solid block and plastic sea-stuff of the Truth infinite and eternal.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 478)

There are different statuses of the divine consciousness. There are also different statuses of transformation. First is the psychic transformation, in which all is in contact with the Divine through the individual psychic consciousness. Next is the spiritual transformation in which all is merged in the Divine in the cosmic consciousness. Third is the supramental transformation in which all becomes supramentalised in the divine gnostic consciousness. It is only with the latter that there can begin the complete transformation of mind, life and body — in my sense of completeness.

(Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 118)

In our attempt to chalk out the steps following which an embodied being here upon earth may hope to transfigure his waking existence so much so that a divinely dynamic life can flower out in the earthly garden, we have come to the finding that an essential preliminary condition is for our soul to consciously ascend to the supernal grades of being and power of the self-manifesting spirit, that intervene between our normal mind and the Truth-Consciousness of Supermind.

Of course, it is true that without actually ascending to these higher spiritual mental planes and permanently living there, if we can open ourselves from below to their knowledge and spiritual influences, we can somewhat spiritualise our normal waking being and consciousness. But the spiritual change effected in this way is

Page 135

---

never profound or wide in its scope. It touches only the fringe of our dynamic existence. In order to have an entire consciousness and power of Being, it is altogether indispensable that we gather up our consciousness and rise out of the sphere of ignorant mind into the radiant higher altitudes of the Spirit.

And these ascents must be made in full awareness and not merely in the immobile trance-state of absorbed superconscience. For in the latter case, on the return to the waking consciousness from these temporary sojourns, only an indeterminate spiritual impression may abide but not much of dynamic effect. In order to have the dynamis of the higher spiritual grades of being active and organised in our waking life, we must first effectuate "a conscious heightening and widening into immense ranges of new being, new consciousness, new potentialities of action."¹

But this ascension of our consciousness to these higher luminous planes, even if permanently centred there, does not suffice for the spiritual transformation of our being and nature. The permanent ascent from the lower to the higher consciousness must be followed by the complementary process of a permanent descent of the higher into the lower. The transmutation of our present modes of being and activities into spiritual values leading to the transfiguration of our waking existence necessitates then not merely an ascension to the planes above nor even the exertion from there of an indirect pressure and influence upon our lower being but the bringing down of the Power and Light of the supernal reaches in the very field of our normal being, consciousness and action. For "there is a dynamism proper to the spiritual consciousness whose nature is Light, Power, Ananda, Peace, Knowledge, infinite Wideness, and that must be possessed and descend into the whole being. Otherwise one can get mukti but not perfection or transformation (except a relative psycho-spiritual change)."²

The descent of the spiritual potencies and forces of the higher planes (from the Higher Mind to the Overmind) is thus the third necessary motion following the other two of ascension and permanent stationing above. In this process of percolation, downpour or influx, occur "an increasing inflow from above, an experience of reception and retention of the descending spirit or its powers

¹ The Life Divine, p. 737.

² Sri Aurobindo, On Himself, p. 114. (Italics ours)

Page 136

---

and elements of consciousness."¹ When this phase is more or less completed, we say that the being and nature has undergone spiritual transformation, a transformation that links the manifested existence with what lies beyond and above it.

But even this is not enough for our goal. For, the process of spiritualisation brings about mostly a subjective transformation, the instrumental Nature remaining as before full of many disabilities and deficiencies. Even the Overmind, the summit-reach of our spiritual mind-range, fails to effectuate a complete change of Nature, for this too is "subject to limitations in the working of the effective Knowledge, limitations in the working of the Power, subject to a partial and limited Truth."²

For the full and radical transformation what is indispensable is the direct intervention and the unveiled action of the supramental Gnosis in our earth-existence and earth-nature. But that can come about only when a prior ascent to the plane of Supermind is followed by the supramental descent in the field of terrestrial manifestation.

But what precisely are the difficulties offered by our present being and nature, that cannot be satisfactorily met even by the highest spiritual-mental powers ? What are the lacunae involved in the process of spiritual transformation? The essential difficulty comes from the fact that we are evolutionary creatures. Our evolution has started from the apparently blank bosom of Inconscience and this dark heritage of original Nescience is still weighing very heavily upon our nature. Our normal being is almost wholly moulded out of the Inconscience and "it is this substance of nescience that has to be transformed into a substance of super-conscience, a substance in which consciousness and a spiritual awareness are always there even when they are not active, not expressed....Till that is done, the nescience invades or encompasses or even swallows up and absorbs into its oblivious darkness all that enters into it; it compels the descending light to compromise with the lesser light it enters: there is a mixture, a diminution and dilution of itself, a diminution, a modification, an incomplete authenticity of its truth and power."³

It is because of this blind opposing Necessity, this dark attach-

¹ The Life Divine, p. 912.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 106.

³ The Life Divine, p. 961.

Page 137

---

merit to the already established and seemingly inexorable Laws of the Ignorance that the higher spiritual lights and powers, even those of the Overmind, coming down into the obscurity of our physical consciousness lose much of their transforming potency and become instead mutilated, circumscribed and not altogether dynamically effective.

Thus a perfect transfiguration of our lower nature is a far cry if we would rely on the spiritual-mental powers alone. We may feel indeed our inner consciousness luminous and liberated and ecstatic, but our outer being and nature will still go on in their old unregenerate way, bringing in periods of dull obscurations and unwanted reactions due to the play of the guṇas. "The power of divinely illumined mind may be immense compared with ordinary powers, but it will still be subject to incapacity and there can be no perfect correspondence between the force of the effective will and the light of the idea which inspires it. The infinite Presence may be there in status, but dynamis of the operations of nature still belongs to the lower Prakriti, must follow its triple modes of working and cannot give any adequate form to the greatness within it. This is the tragedy of ineffectivity, of the hiatus between ideal and effective will..."¹

This is the reason why it has been always found that a subjective spirituality concentrated on the change of the inner being alone, leaving the outer nature to go its old way, is much easier to accomplish than to objectivise this spirituality in the dynamic life of a free world-action. In the course of our Spiritual Sadhana, our totality of existence very soon and very easily dissociates into two fields, an inner one and an outer one. The inner being and nature has always a much less fettered gait: it awakens easily enough, receives freely the higher spiritual influences and gets more or less transformed. But the external surface self and nature are mostly moulded by the forces of the established Ignorance and the original Nescience. And hence they are tardy in awakening, sluggish in receiving and impervious to uninhibited assimilation. It is, for this reason, "always easier to spiritualise the inner self-sufficient parts than to transform the outer action; a perfection of introspective, indwelling... spirituality aloof from the world or self-protected against it is easier than a perfection of the whole nature in a dynamic, kinetic spirituality objectivised in the life, embracing

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 457. (Italics ours)

Page 138

---

the world, master of its environment, sovereign in its commerce with world-nature."¹

But whether easy of fulfilment or not, this is what we have placed before us as our goal: an integral transformation of our outer being and nature as well as that of the inner one, entailing the divinisation of our waking physical existence and of the dynamic life of action. And as we have mentioned before, it is only the overt intervention of the divine supermind in our earth-nature that can negative the dark Necessity of downward pull of our present evolutionary existence and usher in the establishment of the Life Divine.

And for that an ascent out of the lower hemisphere topped by the Overmind onto the plane of supramental Gnosis becomes the first necessity. For, the dynamic as well as the static realisation of Sachchidananda cannot be inseparably and simultaneously had except through the Supermind, the Truth-Consciousness of the divine Reality. "The universe is dynamism, movement — the essential experience of Sachchidananda apart from the dynamism and movement is static. The full dynamic truth of Sachchidananda and the universe and its consequence cannot be grasped by any other consciousness than the supermind, because the instrumentation in all other [lower] planes is inferior and there is therefore a disparity between the fullness of the static experience and the incompleteness of the dynamic power, knowledge, result of the inferior light and power of other planes. This is the reason why the consciousness of the other spiritual planes, even if it descends, can make no radical change in the earth-consciousness, it can only modify or enrich it."²

So we see that this sublime ascent from below, from out of the spiritual mind's sphere, into the supramental plane of being and consciousness, is the first radical step on the way to the fulfilment we have been seeking in our Yoga. But this ascension is not enough: it has to be completed by a supreme descent from above, the descent of the Supermind in earth-nature. For, it is only in the divine Truth-Consciousness or Supermind that the power of dynamic transformation can be integral and absolute.

As a matter of fact, "only the supermind can thus descend without losing its full power of action; for its action is always in-

¹ The Life Divine, p. 960.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 454.

Page 139

---

trinsic and automatic, its will and knowledge identical and the result commensurate: its nature is a self-achieving Truth-consciousness....¹ Only the supramental Force can entirely overcome [the] difficulty of the fundamental Nescience; for with it enters an opposite and luminous imperative Necessity which underlies all things and is the original and final self-determining truth-force of the self-existent Infinite. This greater luminous spiritual Necessity and its sovereign imperative alone can displace or entirely penetrate, transform into itself and so replace the blind Ananke of the Inconscience." ²

So, this is the second capital movement: the descent of the Supermind in earth-existence and earth-nature. But something much more has to be achieved before our goal of divine and dynamic life upon earth becomes a realised fact of existence. The involved Supermind has to emerge to meet the descending Supermind.

As a matter of fact, even now, the supramental principle is here secretly lodged in all existence, even behind the grossest materiality. It is the Supermind that is sustaining and governing this manifested lower worlds by its self-concealed power and law. But at present the Supermind is involved and hidden behind this lower triplicity of mind, life and matter: it cannot act overtly or in its own intrinsic power, because of the absence of proper instrumentation in the earth-nature. Its "power veils itself and [its] law works unseen through the shackled limitations and limping deformations of the lesser rule of our physical, vital, mental Nature."³

Now if the supramental change of the whole substance of our being and of all its modes and movements has at all to be made perfect and integral, this involved Supermind in Nature must be liberated upon earth, join with the descending Supermind, prepare the ground for the divine dynamic play of Supernature (parā prakṛti) and act as "an overtly operative power in the terrestrial workings..., — in the same way in which thinking Mind has been established through the human evolution as an overtly operative power in Life and Matter. This would mean the appearance in the evolution of a gnostic being or Purusha and a gnostic Prakriti, a gnostic Nature. There must be an emergent supramental Consciousness-Force liberated and active within the terrestrial whole

¹ The Life Divine, p. 917.

² Ibid., p. 962. (Italics ours)

³ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 454.

Page 140

---

and an organised supramental instrumentation of the Spirit in the life and the body...."¹

It is in this way that the spiritual penury of our waking existence can be radically remedied and one can enjoy a divine life here upon earth itself, even in the physical embodied existence, without any "need to shun existence or plunge into the annihilation of the spiritual Person in some self-extinguishing Nirvana."²

¹ The Life Divine, pp. 962-63.

² The Supramental Manifestation, p. 85.

Page 141

Chapter XI

The Conquest

The Spirit's tops and Nature's base shall draw

Near to the secret of their separate truth

And know each other as one deity.

The Spirit shall look out through Matter's gaze

And Matter shall reveal the Spirit's face.

Then man and superman shall be at one

And all the earth become a single life.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, p. 709)

A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is...inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or later. But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation, p. 80)

As the psychic change has to call in the spiritual to complete it, so the first spiritual change has to call in the supramental transformation to complete it.... This then must be the nature of the third and final transformation which finishes the passage of the soul through the Ignorance and bases its consciousness, its life, its power and form of manifestation on a complete and completely effective self-knowledge.... So must be created the supramental and spiritual being as the first unveiled manifestation of the truth of the Self and Spirit in the material universe.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 917-18)

We have almost come to the end of our long dissertation on how to remedy the spiritual penury of our waking physical existence. Not an escape or at the least a quietistic withdrawal from the world-consciousness, but rather the integral and victorious embracing of the life of action and creation and the divine transfiguration of the whole of our existence, is what we have placed before us as our goal.

But a further point remains to be elucidated here. A well-established

Page 142

---

line of spiritual experience shows that whenever our soul gets involved in action, it loses hold and becomes nescient of its immobile, passive and so-called true status, whereas a withdrawal from dynamism and an involution into passivity makes it totally oblivious of its active status which thus appears to be just a false superimposition upon the freedom and bliss of the soul.

Now, if this experience is the only or the ultimate experience possible, then we have perforce to admit that an active life cannot be compatible with the conscious experience and enjoyment of the soul-status. But fortunately this is not so. This alternation in the nescience of the active and the passive statuses occurs because it is only a part of our being and not the totality of it that shifts its centre and makes the alternative movements. But in reality there are not two distinct and separate statuses: there is instead only a unique dual status, a status that embraces at the same time both the aspects, the static one and the dynamic one.

We have already spoken of the active Brahman and the passive Brahman, but there are not two independent realities, one immobile, the other mobile. "The Reality is neither an eternal passivity of immobile Being nor an eternal activity of Being in movement, nor is It an alternation in Time between these two things. Neither in fact is the sole absolute truth of Brahman's reality.... There is not a passive Brahman and an active Brahman, but one Brahman, an Existence which reserves Its Tapas in what we call passivity and gives Itself in what we call Its activity. For the purposes of action, there are two poles of one being or a double power necessary for creation.... Brahman does not pass alternately from passivity to activity and back to passivity by cessation of Its dynamic force of being.... Integral Brahman possesses both the passivity and the activity simultaneously and does not pass alternately from one to the other as from a sleep to a waking."¹

The analogy of sleep and waking is a very apt one here. For, what we normally find is that in our waking state we forget about our sleep status and while in the sleep-state we become oblivious of our waking existence. But this is so only because a small part of our being makes the transition and oscillates between the two states of awareness. And since this part cannot embrace the totality of our existence, it becomes nescient of one or the other of the two statuses, depending on its particular station at the time. But

¹ The Life Divine, pp. 574, 575, 576. (Italics ours)

Page 143

---

through a proper self-discipline one can so widen the scope of one's conscious discernment that one has no more to make this abrupt and all-forgetting change-over, but can instead hold both the states in a single uninterrupted gaze.

It is the same thing with the experience of Brahman. Action and creation need not and should not externalise the consciousness and make one lose the silent freedom of the passive Brahman, nor should the experience of the immobile Brahman be incompatible with the free possession of its mobile status. This apparent incapability arises from the fact that ordinarily we identify ourselves with only a part of the totality of our consciousness — the mental or at its highest the spiritual-mental part of it — and seek to realise the Divine through this limited part alone.

And since this is just a part and not the integral consciousness, it cannot simultaneously embrace both the aspects. Thus dynamis obliterates the self of status from its awareness and passivity loosens its hold on the self of action. When this passivity becomes entire, our mind-consciousness falls asleep, so to say, enters into the trance-state of Samadhi or else is liberated into a spiritual silence. But evidently this is not the line which we would like to follow. For "though it is a liberation from the ignorance of the partial being in its flux of action, it is earned by putting on a luminous nescience of the dynamic Reality or a luminous separation from it: the spiritual mental being remains self-absorbed in a silent essential status of existence and becomes either incapable of active consciousness or repugnant to all activity."¹

But our goal is the integral fulfilment of our integral existence, the integral and simultaneous possession of both the static and dynamic aspects of the Divine, as is the case with Sachchidananda Himself. But this is possible only if we possess the integral consciousness. And this integral consciousness comes only with the attainment of the supramental Gnosis. For, as we have mentioned before, this Gnosis is a twofold Truth-Consciousness, an inherent and integral self-knowledge and at the same time an intimate and integral consciousness of the manifestation. As a matter of fact, Supermind is none other than Sachchidananda's power of self-awareness and world-awareness, and thus the dynamically integral liberation and fulfilment that we are seeking after can be achieved only in and through this supramental Vijñāna.

¹ The Life Divine, p. 574.

Page 144

---

We have seen how to retain the consciousness of the passive Brahman while at the same time participating in the consciousness of the active aspect of It. But that does not automatically signify that our nature-part as distinct from our inner soul-existence will also get transformed and be moulded in the image of the Divine. But this is what we precisely need for the fulfilment of our goal. For it is not merely the liberation of our soul, but the liberation and the divine transfiguration of the whole of our Nature, prakṛti-mukti, prakṛti-rūpāntara, enabling the establishment of a Life Divine upon earth, that is the total content of our aim. Let us n6w proceed to show how this Prakriti-Mukti and Prakriti-Rupantara can be integrally achieved through the Supermind.

But what is meant by soul or by Nature, by Purusha and his Prakriti ? Any relatively profound psycho-spiritual inquiry makes us aware of two elements of our being, a soul and a Nature. Purusha or soul, individual or universal, is the observing and experiencing conscious existence seemingly inactive but in relation with its becoming, while Prakriti or Nature, again individual or universal, is the principle and the powers of the becoming, appearing as "an executive Force or an energy of Process which is seen to constitute, drive and guide all conceivable activities and to create a myriad forms visible to us and invisible and use them as stable supports for its incessant flux of action and creation."¹

Apparently, Purusha and Prakriti seem to be two different and distinct Principles. Not only that: in the ordinary status of conscious existence, the action and influence of Prakriti seem to be deleterious to the progress of the soul. As a matter of fact, as Sri Aurobindo has so beautifully put it, the whole problem of life resolves itself into this one question:

"What are we to do with this soul and nature set face to face with each other, this Nature, this personal and cosmic activity, which tries to impress itself upon the soul, to possess, control, determine it, and this soul which feels that in some mysterious way it has freedom, a control over itself, a responsibility for what it is and does, and tries therefore to turn upon Nature, its own and the world's, and to control, possess, enjoy, or even, it may be, reject and escape from her?"²

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 113.

² Ibid., p. 410.

Page 145

---

It is because of this apparent tendency of the Purusha to get involved and self-lost in the obscuring action of Prakriti that the self-recovering soul feels a sort of aloof detachment if not total repugnance for the play of Nature and seeks to stand back from it and destroy all earthward tendencies so that it may securely possess its static infinity.

But this antagonism between Soul and Nature is more apparent than real. For in reality, they are not distinct and different Principles; the trenchant duality is fictitious, they represent in fact, the Two-in-One or rather the One-in-Two. Thus,

"There are two who are One and play in many worlds:

In Knowledge and Ignorance they have spoken and met

And light and darkness are their eye's interchange.

⁂

Thus have they made their play with us for roles:

Author and actor with himself as scene,

He moves there as the Soul, as Nature she.

⁂

This whole wide world is only he and she."¹

Thus, the Purusha-Prakriti duality, although separate in appearance, is in fact inseparable. "Wherever there is Prakriti, there is Purusha; wherever there is Purusha, there is Prakriti. Even in his inactivity he holds in himself all her force and energies ready for projection; even in the drive of her action she carries with her all his observing and mandatory consciousness as the whole support and sense of her creative purpose."²

But why is this so ? Because, in their essential nature and original aspect, Purusha and Prakriti arise from the being of divine Sachchidananda. As a matter of fact, "Self-conscious existence is the essential nature of the Being; that is Sat or Purusha: the Power of self-aware existence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its consciousness and force, its knowledge and its

¹ Savitri, Book I, Canto IV, p. 61.

² The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 114.

Page 146

---

will, Chit and Tapas, Chit and its Shakti, — that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda, is the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its conscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the inseparable duality of its two aspects, unrolling the worlds and viewing them, acting in them and upholding the action, executing works and giving the sanction without which the force of Nature cannot act, executing and controlling the knowledge and the will and knowing and controlling the determinations of the knowledge-force and will-force, ministering to the enjoyment and enjoying, — the Soul possessor, observor, knower, lord of Nature, Nature expressing the being, executing the will, satisfying the self-knowledge, ministering to the delight of being of the soul. There we have, founded on the very nature of being, the supreme and the universal relation of Prakriti with Purusha. The absolute joy of the soul in itself and, based upon that, the absolute joy of the soul in Nature are the divine fulfilment of the relation."¹

Thus the apparent duality vanishes and the Two-in-One reveals Himself or Herself in the divine Sachchidananda, the Sat-Chit-Ananda, for Sat is the Being, the Purusha, Chit is the conscious executive force or Prakriti and Ananda is the halo and aroma of their indissoluble union.

But this essential unity and union of Purusha and Prakriti are not overtly realised on the lower planes of existence, the lower planes of manifestation of the Spirit. The true intrinsic relation has been perverted there and a pragmatic division and separation with all their undesirable consequences have developed alongside.

After all, what is a plane of consciousness, a plane of existence ? A plane is nothing else than 'a general settled poise or world of relations' between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature. Now with the progressive involution or self-concealment of Sachchidananda, has ensued the progressive self-hiding of Soul and Nature, one from the other, the result being that the self-possession and the world-possession, svarājya and sāmrājya, have become difficult to achieve at the same time. Now, depending on the nature of the dominant cosmic Principle and power of being around which the Soul and the Nature decide to weave their game of hide and seek, we have different planes of consciousness and existence. Thus we have, in ascending order, a material plane,

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 415-16. (Italics ours)

Page 147

---

a life-plane and the planes of mind.

But even on the highest range of spiritual-mind planes, the absolute harmony of the union of Purusha-Prakriti is not fully recovered. Thus even though the separate liberation and static release of the soul become feasible there, the latter cannot freely possess Nature, become its conscious Lord and transform it into an effective and flawless instrument of divine manifestation.

For that we have to reach the plane of supermind, the vijñāna or gnosis of Sachchidananda, which is "not only the concentrated consciousness of the infinite Essence, [but] also and at the same time an infinite knowledge of the myriad play of the Infinite.¹ ...In the gnosis the dualism of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature,...disappears in their biune unity, the dynamic mystery of the occult Supreme. The Truth-being is the Hara-Gauri of the Indian iconological symbol (the biune body of the Lord and his Spouse, Ishwara and Shakti, the right half male, the left half female); it is the double Power masculine-feminine born from and supported by the supreme Shakti of the Supreme."²

But even then a last point remains. For, we do not want to withdraw from the material plane of existence into the Supermind's self-existent realm: we want instead the supramental union of Soul and Nature in the very bosom of the physically embodied existence here upon earth. Thus, what is essential for the fulfilment of our objective is not merely the ascent into the supramental Gnosis but the eventual transforming descent of its Consciousness-Force into our entire being and nature and a concomitant or subsequent emergence of the concealed Supermind at present involved here below. This influx from above and the unveiling from below will between them "remove what is left of the nature of the

¹ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 458.

² Ibid., pp. 480-81.

cf.:

"There he beheld in their mighty union's poise

The figure of the deathless Two-in-One,

A single being in two bodies clasped,

A diarchy of two united souls.

Seated absorbed in deep creative joy;

Their trance of being sustained the mobile world.

Behind them in a morning dusk One stood

Who brought them forth from the Unknowable."

(Savitri, Book II, Canto XIV, p. 295)

Page 148

---

Ignorance. The rule of the Inconscient will disappear: for the Inconscience will be changed by the outburst of the greater secret Consciousness within it, the hidden Light, into what it always was in reality, a sea of the secret Superconscience".¹

The supramental being, the gnostic soul, the Vijñānamaya Puruṣa, thus appearing in earth-existence will be the first unveiled manifestation of Sachchidananda in the material universe. Not a self-oblivion in the Infinite, but an integral self-possession and world-possession in the Infinite will be its characteristic movement. It will be the first to participate in world-action "not only in the freedom, but in the power and sovereignty of the Eternal. For it receives the fullness, it has the sense of plenitude of the Godhead in its action; it shares the free, splendid and royal march of the Infinite, is a vessel of the original knowledge, the immaculate power, the inviolable bliss, transmutes all life into the eternal Light and the eternal Fire and the eternal Wine of the nectar. It possesses the infinite of the Self and it possesses the infinite of Nature .... The gnostic soul is the child, but the King-child; here is the royal and eternal childhood whose toys are the worlds and all universal Nature is the miraculous garden of the play that tires never.... This biune being of Purusha-Prakriti is as if a flaming Sun and body of divine Light self-carried in its orbit by its own inner consciousness and power at one with the universe, at one with a supreme Transcendence. Its madness is a wise madness of Ananda, the incalculable ecstasy of a supreme consciousness and power vibrating with an infinite sense of freedom and intensity in its divine life-movements... —a dance this also, a whirl of mighty energies, but the Master of the dance holds the hands of His energies and keeps them to the rhythmic order, the self-traced harmonic circles of His Rasa-Lila."²

Thus, with the supramental transformation of our being and nature, this earthly life will flower into the Life divine and our waking physical existence will be a divinised existence of integral consciousness and dynamis. Neither will one then have to plunge into the superconscient trance-state in order to experience the Absoute Existence or Non-Existence, nor to content oneself with the Jivanmukti-status waiting all the while for the final release in Videha-Mukti. Because, then

¹ The Life Divine, p. 968.

² The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 480-82.

Page 149

---

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine.¹

In the words of the Mother:

"In the supramental creation there will be no more...what men now call gods.

"These great divine beings themselves will be able to participate in the new creation, but for that they must put on what we may call the supramental substance on earth. And if there are some who choose to remain in their world, as they are, if they do decide not to manifest themselves physically, their relation with the other beings of the supramental world on earth will be a relation of friends, of collaborators, of equal to equal, because the highest divine essence will have manifested in the beings of the new supramental world on earth.

"When the physical substance will be supramentalised, to be born on earth in a body will not be a cause of inferiority, rather the contrary, there will be gained a plenitude which could not be obtained otherwise".²

But the question is: when is this divine Supermind going to descend into the earth-existence or the involved Supermind going to emerge? The answer is that it is no longer a question of when in the future, it is already an established fact. The divine Supermind has descended in the year 1956 and a new world is already born, although not yet manifest to the gross physical consciousness of man. The Mother who along with Sri Aurobindo has 'luminously laboured' for decades for the descent of the Supermind has Herself vouchsafed us this assurance:

"The greatest thing that can ever be, the most marvellous thing since the beginning of creation, the miracle has happened".³

"The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it."⁴

¹ Savitri, Book XI, Canto I, p. 711.

²Towards February 29, 1960: Some Statements by the Mother (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1960), p. 16. (Italics ours)

³Ibid., p. 18.

⁴ Ibid., p. 9.

Page 150

---

Only, the involved Supermind has not yet emerged. "The emergence is for the future, but, of course, now it is merely a question of time: the process is natural and inevitable."¹ *

End of Part Two

¹ Towards February 29, 1960: Some Statements bp the Mother (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 1960), p. 1.

* Readers wishing to know more about the supramental descent and the course of its manifestation as it is being actually elaborated may consult the above booklet priced at Re. 1/- and follow the writings of the Mother that have been serialised in the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, India).

Page 151

Part Three

THE PROBLEM OF SLEEP AND FATIGUE

---

Chapter I

The Problem of Sleep

A darkness stooping on the heaven-bird's wings

Sealed in her senses from external sight

And opened the stupendous depths of sleep.

(Savitri, Book IV, Canto III, p. 376)

Out of her Matter's stupor, her mind's dreams,

She woke, she looked upon God's unveiled face.

(Ibid., Book VI, Canto I, p. 418)

Sleep, in the sense of an intermittent condition of apparent inanimation and suspense of all surface activity, appears to be a concomitant of all embodied life. For a human being, on an average, almost a third of his life's total duration is caught up in the inert dormancy of the body. Hence it is but proper and natural that the phenomenon of sleep should engage our careful scrutiny.

For man, sleep may be defined as the periodic state of more or less complete unconsciousness, during which all voluntary activity remains suspended and the functioning of the senses and the cerebrum or brain proper appears to be naturally and temporarily held in abeyance.

The conditions generally recognized to be conducive to the onset of sleep are:

(1)the diminution of afferent nervous stimuli (i.e., the impulses entering the central nervous system, CNS);

(2)fatigue, because of its depressing effect on the power of the CNS to respond to stimuli.

Sleep and the inwardization of consciousness: The question of sleep becomes all the more insistent in the case of Sadhakas striving for a progressive inwardization of consciousness. For, in general, man's mind is turned outwards, active only or mainly on and from the surface (vikṣipta); the whole gaze of his consciousness is externally orientated (bahirāvṛttacakṣuḥ). And the habitual trend of the physical mind whenever it gets divorced

Page 155

---

from the immediate contact with physical things is to fall into the torpor of sleep. For, this is the only type of inner consciousness to which it is ordinarily accustomed.

Now, there cannot be any spiritual life unless and until the individual being goes inward, lives within and from within, and transfers the immediate source of his dynamic becoming from out inward. "In men, says the Upanishad, the Self-Existent has cut the doors of consciousness outward, but a few turn the eye inward and it is these who see and know the Spirit and develop the spiritual being."¹

Thus, in the course of his Sadhana, almost as an immediate necessity, when the aspirant seeks to reverse the gear, turn his gaze inward (antarāvṛtta-cakṣuḥ), enter into himself and live within, the mind, by the sheer force of its habit, takes it as a pressure to fall into slumber (līyate). Here lies the root-cause of the overwhelming sense of sleepiness, and often of an actual intervention of physical sleep, bogging the attempts at meditation in the case of spiritual novices who have not yet learnt how to get rid of this prejudicial habit of the mind and accustom it to a state of "ingathered wakefulness in which, though immersed in itself, it exercises all its powers."²

Sleep and the subconscient plunge: A far more encompassing and devastatingly injurious after-effect of sleep, from the point of view of the progress of Sadhana, is the general falling down of consciousness to a lower level, during the period of the body's sleep. It is due to its subconscient foundation that sleep brings about this lowering of consciousness. And this is so on the physiological plane and much more so on the psycho-spiritual plane.

The change in the activity of the nervous system during sleep manifests itself in the abolition, or at least depression, of what has been termed critical reactivity to external events. "In the waking state the impulses coming from the different sense organs to certain areas of the cerebral cortex are analysed in the light of the individual's previous experience, and appropriate responses (which include movement as well as refraining from overt muscular activity) are elaborated or integrated in other cortical areas. Identical afferent impulses from sense organs will not elicit the

¹ The Life Divine, p. 1027.

² The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 502.

Page 156

---

same response in different persons. This individuality of reaction is lost during sleep and is replaced by stereotyped predictable reflexes from the lower centres of the nervous system."¹

Hence it has been said: "Un homme qui dort est un homme privé de ses deux hémisphères, c'est un animal."

From the occult-spiritual point of view, it is to a state of dark inertia, heavy and unremembering, that one retires in the course of one's physical sleep whenever "one goes deeply and crassly into the subconscient; this subterranean plunge is very undesirable, obscuring, lowering, often fatiguing rather than restful."²

This type of heavy subconscient sleep is most damaging for the simple reason that it engulfs and washes away, so to say, almost all the results of the previous day's effort. "Thus is destroyed in a few hours of the night the fruit of many efforts made by our conscious thought during the day. This is one of the principal causes of the resistance which our will to progress often encounters in ourselves, of difficulties which at times appear insurmountable and which we are unable to explain, so integral does our goodwill seem to us."³

The Mother Herself has given the explanation of. this strange and depressing phenomenon associated with sleep. Thus, in the Conversations of the Mother we read:

"Some are very anxious to perfect themselves and make a great effort during the day. They go to sleep and, when they rise the next day, they find no trace of the gains of their previous day's effort; they have to go over the same ground once again. This means that the effort and whatever achievement there was belonged to the more superficial or wakeful parts of the being, but there were deeper and dormant parts that were not touched. In sleep you fell into the grip of these unconscious regions and they opened and swallowed all that you had laboriously built up in your conscious hours."⁴

Thus do we see that the Sadhaka has somehow to prevent this nightly fall into the clutches of obscure subconsient and inconscient movements and finally to bring in the transforming light and consciousness of the spirit even into the folds of these nether

¹ N. Kleitman, "Sleep" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 20, p. 792.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 1484.

³ The Mother, Words of Long Ago, p. 35.

⁴ Ibid., p. 26. (Italics ours)

Page 157

---

regions of his being. A proper knowledge and mastery of the phenomenon of sleep thus becomes essential for the progress and fulfilment of the spiritual pursuit and especially so for our Sadhana where the goal envisaged is a total transformation of nature leading to the establishment of a divinely awake dynamic existence.

Let us then start with the inquiry how sleep is actually brought about, what is the compulsion behind its onset and what is its raison d'être.

Theories of sleep: Many a hypothesis has been put forward by the biological scientists to account for the state of sleep in its purely phenomenal aspect. But it is well to remember that no proposed theory of sleep as regards its immediate causation has met with universal acceptance, since none has withstood the rigorous exigences of experimental verification. As Kenneth Walker has so bluntly stated: "Although there may be many theories, we are still uncertain as to the real nature and cause of sleep...it is better to confess that we do not understand the mechanism of sleep."¹

However, theories partial, general, and complete, have been suggested from time to time. Partial theories seek to explain the 'how' of sleep, general theories deal with the 'why' of the phenomenon without very much attention paid to the mode of its onset, while complete theories try to solve both the questions of 'how' and 'why'.

Some of the suggested hypotheses attribute sleep to a lessened flow of blood through the brain, others to the production of certain chemical changes in the body system; according to a few others, sleep comes about as a result of the cessation of the stream of afferent impulses which reach the brain from the outside world. In outline, some of the principal theories of sleep may be stated as follows:

Neural theories: The neural theory belongs to the category of what may be termed biophysical theories of sleep; for, it postulates a physical break, during the state of sleep, in the chains of nerve cells (or neurons) of the higher centres of the brain. According to this theory, it is the mutual retraction of neighbouring dendrons that is at the basis of physical slumber.

The dendron is the shorter branch given off from the end of a nerve cell. Some cells have several dendrons and these many-

¹ Kenneth Walker, Human Physiology, pp. 124-25.

Page 158

---

branched dendritic 'processes' serve to form physical connections with the dendrons of the neighbouring cells, thus providing uninterrupted pathways along which travel afferent nerve impulses, from neuron to neuron, to reach the cortical cells of the brain. This is what is called the waking state.

The neural theory of sleep is based on the assumption that these dendritic 'processes' are contractile in their physical constitution and get occasionally retracted for some reason or other. This retraction and consequent separation of the dendrons of neighbouring neurons constitute a mechanical break in the pathways of the inflowing nerve impulses, thus isolating the cortical cells from external stimuli. All mental processes are thus brought to rest and there sets in the unconsciousness of sleep.

Although ingenious in appearance, this theory cannot however be supported by any incontrovertible observational evidence. For, firstly, it is still an open question whether there exists actual continuity, or only contact, between the dendrons of neighbouring cells; secondly, no dendritic contraction has till this date been histologically demonstrated.

Theories such as inhibitory theories and de-afferentation theories that are based on the implied assumption that it is the proper functioning of the cerebral cortex that is somehow instrumental in bringing about sleep, have proved to be equally inadequate, because they fail to explain the fact that "decorticated animals and new-born infants (whose cerebral cortex is not yet functioning) can sleep."¹

Biochemical theories: It has been observed that during the body's sleep as compared with its period of wakefulness, the composition of the blood changes, the metabolic processes in the tissues are modified and possibly there occurs some variation in the activity of the glands of internal secretion.

Humoral and chemical theories stem from the assumption that, during the waking hours because of continued body metabolism, either there are produced some specific toxic substances inhibitory to the irritability in the nerve cells or on the contrary certain specific chemicals necessary for the maintenance of the waking state undergo transformations and get exhausted. In either case the unconsciousness of sleep ensues and it is in this period of sleep that the toxic substances are removed from the system or,

¹ N. Kleitman, op. cit., p. 793.

Page 159

---

in the alternative, the helpful products are synthesized and replenished.

However, a very evident lacuna in the biochemical theories is the fact that "alertness and efficiency of performance are not at their best at the time of getting up in the morning, nor at their worst at bedtime at night"¹, a result contrary to what we should naturally expect if these theories were all-sufficient by themselves.

Anaemia theories: This type of theories attributes the periodic onset of sleep to the rhythmical loss of tone in the vasomotor centre in the medulla of the brain, caused by the fatigue due to its continued activity during waking hours. The action of this fatigued centre on blood pressure becomes ultimately insufficient to maintain an adequate supply of blood through the brain, thus resulting in the loss of consciousness.²

Whatever may be the individual strong points of these different theories in the field, it is probable that several factors combine to produce the state of sleep. In any case, no proposed or yet to be advanced scientific theory of sleep can do more than account for the bare physiological 'how' of the phenomenon. In the very nature of its field of investigation and of the physiognomy of its formulation, it cannot but leave unexplained the essential 'why' of the state of sleep.

Especially disconcerting for the scientist is the strange spectacle of "the rapid onset, the almost simultaneous involvement of all the conscious areas of the brain, irrespective of their state of fatigue and the sudden return to consciousness of the whole brain."³ Biological theories have therefore come round to the view that "sleep is a positive act and not just a mere cessation of wakefulness: it is an instinct."⁴

Yes, sleep is a positive act, but not in the superficial sense of an instinct as some investigators would like us to believe. Sleep plays a much profounder role with far-reaching implication and importance.

It is, in fact, in its essential nature an act of response to the demand and need of individual consciousness to go inward, even in the commonalty of men devoid as yet of any spiritual awakening

¹ N. Kleitman, op. cit., p. 794.

^{2 3} Vide Everyman's Encyclopaedia, Vol. II, pp. 383-84.

⁴ N. Kleitman, op. cit., p. 793.

Page 160

---

or of the systematically developed occult capacity to withdraw at will and in full awareness from the darkened half-light of the surface existence.

Also, it is worth remembering that the body's sleep cannot and does not necessarily mean a state of blank and total unconsciousness. It is rather of the nature of a transference of wakefulness from outside to inside.

But before we come to an elaborate discussion of these points drawn from the occult-spiritual view of the phenomenon of sleep, we must first make sure what we mean by sleep and wakefulness. The question may appear at first view too simple to require any elucidation. But is it really so easy to define the borderline between these two states of our existence or even to offer an unequivocal criterion that will distinguish one from the other? On the contrary, a little circumspection is apt to reveal the surprising fact that most men are in reality always asleep, partially if not in full. Let us explain ourselves.

Page 161

Chapter II

The Universal sleep

The soul must soar sovereign above the form

And climb to summits beyond mind's half-sleep.

(Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 171)

What distinguishes the state of wakefulness from that of sleep? Is it the execution of some purposeful movements, or the making of a coherent speech, or the capability of engaging in a meaningful conversation, or the successful completion of some delicate and hazardous physical undertaking, or at the least a tolerably good functioning of the organs of cognition?

As we shall presently see, none of these criteria nor for that matter any other ordinarily cited distinctive mark of the waking hours of men can adequately settle the question we have started with. Leaving aside the states of coma, general anaesthesia, alcoholic stupor and hibernant torpidity, that bear in certain respects a manifest resemblance to the state of natural sleep, let us only consider the conditions of semi-wakefulness such as somnambulism, postepileptic automatism and hypnotic trances, that are intermediate in character, possessing features both of sleep and of wakefulness. Indeed, it has been suggested that some of these states may have their physiological explanation in the fact of "different degrees of sleep in different parts of the cerebro-spinal nervous system."¹ Even a cursory survey of the characteristic traits exhibited by the states of somnambulism, hypnosis and psychomotor seizure in epilepsy is enough to establish the point that it is sometimes exceedingly difficult to decide whether a person is conventionally asleep or awake.

Postepileptic automatism: Epilepsy is a chronic clinical disorder involving the loss or impairment of consciousness, of varying degrees and duration, with or without a succession of tonic or clonic muscular spasms.

The epileptic seizures are of four types: (i) grand mal, or generalized seizures; (ii) local, or Jacksonian, seizures; (iii) petit

¹ The New Gresham Encyclopaedia, Vol. X, p. 2.

Page 162

---

mal characterized by a momentary loss of consciousness and of muscular tone; (iv) psychomotor attack.

This last type of seizure with its peculiar traits is very much germane to the topic under discussion. For, firstly, its onset is characterized by a "loss of consciousness with involuntary, apparently purposeful movements, such as chewing, swallowing, or expectorating, or with movements of the extremities."¹ Secondly, — and this is the most curious and illuminating part of the phenomenon, — the attacks are often followed by amnesia, mental clouding and fugue states, extending over hours or even days, during which the patient is seemingly conscious of his behaviour, but afterwards has no conscious recollection of what happened or what he did during this period of amnesia. In this state "the patient without provocation may wander from home or school, become destructive or negativistic, go into temper tantrums unexpectedly, become loquacious, apathetic or sullen. The victim may suddenly break into an aimless run up and down stairs or in a straight line and as suddenly stop with a return of consciousness."²

The tragedy of this seemingly wakeful but in reality 'sleepy' state of consciousness is that "misconduct of varying degrees of seriousness is at times attributable to this comparatively uncommon type of epileptic reaction."³

Dream consciousness⁴: Traditionally, dreams have been defined as 'states of consciousness taking place during sleep'. But, as Prof. D. B. Klein has pointed out, this definition proves to be inadequate in the light of critical reflection. For, sleep in the conventional sense of the term is not invariably necessary for the production of the dream consciousness. "An essential characteristic of the dream is...a manifest discrepancy between dream images and external reality. In other words, dreams are illusory or hallucinatory experiences... [but] such experiences can take

¹ The McGraw-Hill Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology, Vol: 5, p. 40. (Italics ours)

² Irvine McQuarrie, "Epilepsy and Epileptic Fit" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 8, p. 654. (Italics ours)

³ Ibid., p. 654.

⁴ We propose to come back, for a fuller discussion, to this question of dream-consciousness and dream-world, while dealing with the occult-spiritual view of sleep.

Page 163

---

place in the absence of ordinary sleep."¹

Cases are not rare where people, apparently awake, live in fact in the world of dreams and, what is all the more revealing, they 'act out their daydreams'.

Somnambulism: This is a particular state of consciousness in which the ideas and happenings of the dream-world dynamically impinge upon the organs of movement and produce various types of resultant action.

There are different degrees of somnambulism. Thus, depending on the case, there may occur:

(i)Speaking without acting, commonly observed in children of irritable nervous systems, who get disturbed in their sleep, cry and weep, comprehend the sense of the words of consolation addressed to them, even open their eyes and recognize persons present, but cannot for all that be easily pulled out from the grip of the tormenting dream of the moment;²

(ii)Acting without speaking, the most common type, in which a person, while still asleep, leaves his bed, walks hither and thither (hence the term 'somnambulism' from Latin somnus sleep and ambulare walk), and returns to bed, but has no recollection of any of these occurrences when he comes back to the fully awake state. Sometimes the activities performed in this somnambulist condition are very complex in character or involve situations extremely hazardous for the safety of the body (e.g., walking along dangerous paths like the cornices of lofty buildings), but all these delicate movements are executed with skill and precision, while the person is still in the state of sleep.³

(iii)Acting and speaking, with the auditory, visual and tactile sense organs properly functioning. This last type, evidently of the greatest interest to our present discussion, merges into the phenomenon of hypnotism to the consideration of which we now propose to turn.

Hypnotic phenomena⁴: Hypnosis is a special psychological state with certain physiological attributes resembling sleep.

¹ D. B. Klein, "Dreams" in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. 7, p. 638. (Italics ours)

²³ Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Quillet, p. 4452.

⁴This section is based on Prof. M. H. Erickson's article "Hypnotism" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12, pp. 23-24.

Page 164

---

When hypnotized, or in the hypnotic trance, the subject "can think, act and behave as adequately and often better than he can in the ordinary state of psychological awareness."¹ As a matter of fact, while in this state, the individual is persuaded to withdraw his interest in external events and "function at a level of awareness other than the ordinary state, a level of awareness termed, for convenience in conceptualization, unconscious or subconscious awareness."²

Hypnotic phenomena differ from one subject to another and from one trance to the next, depending upon the depth of the trance state, but always exhibit certain basic manifestations like rapport, suggestibility, catalepsy, amnesia and hypermnesia, regression, etc.

The rapport is the limitation of the subject's awareness to what is included in the hypnotic situation, usually directed by the hypnotist.

Catalepsy is a peculiar state of muscle tonus and balance which permits the subject to maintain, on suggestion, postures and positions, for unusually long periods of time, without appreciable fatigue response.

Suggestibility is a remarkable manifestation of the hypnotic state. "By the acceptance of suggestions, and acting upon them, the subject can become deaf, dumb, blind, hallucinated, disoriented or anaesthetized, or he can manifest any type of behaviour regarded by the subject as reasonable and desirable in the given situation."³

Amnesia signifies the loss of memory vis-à-vis certain things or happenings; hypermnesia is the converse phenomenon of the acquisition of an ability to remember, far transcending the everyday capability of remembering the past. Regression denotes the process of return to earlier and simpler patterns of behaviour.

In hypnosis there occurs an amnesia of an extensive character, whose experienced utilization along with that of regression may result, on the part of the subject, in the effective forgetting of "all experiences and learning subsequent to a chosen age level and the revivification of the actual patterns of behaviour, responses and understandings of the selected age level."⁴

^{1 2 3} Prof. M. H. Erickson's article "Hypnotism" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12, p. 24. (Italics Ours)

⁴ Ibid., p. 23.

Page 165

---

Through the converse process of hypermnesia, the subject in his trance state may be induced to "remember vividly long-forgotten, even deeply repressed experiences, recount them fully and still have a complete amnesia for them when aroused from the trance state."¹

A most fascinating phenomenon is that of the posthypnotic behaviour. By this is meant the execution, at some later date, of instructions and suggestions given during a hypnotic trance. Thus, for example "the subject may be instructed to read a certain chapter in a chosen book at a specified later time, hours, days, months and even years later, and at that time he performs the act without really understanding consciously why he does so."² Well, in this type of situation, should we say that the person is awake, executing some purposeful action, or on the contrary decide that he is in a state of sleep?

A phenomenon of profound interest from the point of view of our present discussion is that of hypnotic somnambulism. While in this state "the subject, seemingly awake in a state of ordinary awareness, behaves, within reasonable limitations, as if he were not hypnotized, but actually he is in a deep trance and capable of manifesting any desired hypnotic behaviour within his personal capabilities. Experience and training are often required even to recognize the somnambulist state."³

All the aforesaid behaviour patterns tending to obliterate the borderline between the states of sleep and wakefulness can be explained on the assumption — and this is not merely a conjectural assumption, it is a fact of occult-spiritual experience — that there is not just one unique level of awareness, that of the ordinarily understood waking hours of a man, but that there are many levels. And unless and until all these are mastered and integrated in one's consciousness, the person concerned, while seemingly awake on one of them is liable to be in a state of sleep in relation to the others. It is also possible that different parts of the being of one and the same person may be awake at the same time on different levels of awareness and thus be mutually ignorant each of the others' movements and experiences. In some other

^{1 2} Prof. M. H. Erickson's article "Hypnotism" in Encylopaedia Britannica, Vol. 12, pp. 23-24.

³ Ibid., pp. 23-24. (Italics ours)

Page 166

---

instances, a part of the being functioning at a higher level of awareness may dominate and direct the movements of another part wakeful only at a relatively lower level and hence in a state of sleep vis-à-vis the movements of the higher part.

Here at this point we may recall with profit what the Mother has said in one of her class-talks on the subject of somnambulism and the exteriorization of consciousness:

"When you leave one part of your being (for example, when you enter fully conscious into the vital world), your body...may go into trance.... It is what one calls a lethargic or cataleptic state. When it is at its maximum, it is a cataleptic state, because the part of the being which animates the body has gone out of it; then the body is half dead, that is to say, its life is diminished to that extent and its functions are almost abolished: the heart is slowed down and is hardly felt, the respiration hardly perceptible ....But you yourself during the time are fully conscious in the vital world. And even, by a discipline which is besides neither easy nor without danger, you can see to it that the body remains conscious independently with the minimum of forces that you leave in it. By a wholly methodical training, you can make the body keep its autonomy of movement even when you have totally exteriorised yourself. Thus in a state of almost complete trance, you can speak and narrate what is seen and done by the exteriorised part....

"There are examples, spontaneous and involuntary, of a state which is not altogether this but something analogous: such are the states of somnambulism. That is to say when you are in deep sleep, when you have gone out of your body and when the body obeys automatically the will and the action of the vital part which has gone out. Only because it is not the result of willed action, a regulated and progressive education, such a state is not desirable, for it may lead to disorders in the being. But this is an illustration of what I have just said, of a body that can, while three-fourths of it remains asleep, obey the part of the being which is itself fully awake and altogether conscious."¹

It is said that in the land of the blind everyone is credited with sight! In a similar way, since most men ordinarily function only at a particular level of awareness, the level of the so-called waking hours, we are apt to think that all of us are really and truly awake

¹ The Mother in Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Vol. XIV, No. 3, pp. 45-47. (Italics ours)

Page 167

---

while in this state. But this is nothing but a most serious error of perspective.

In fact, a consideration of the facts that have been adduced above and other facts of an allied nature leads us to make a far greater and profounder generalisation and formulate the query whether our so-called "waking state" can verily be considered a condition of wakefulness. Are we not after all profoundly asleep, even while we are in this state, as regards the total range and truth of our own self-being as well as that of world existence, of which only an insignificant little comes ordinarily into our ken and action, "the rest [remaining] hidden behind in subliminal reaches of being which descend into the profoundest depths of the subconscient and rise to highest peaks of superconscience, or which surround the little field of our waking self with a wide circumconscient existence of which our mind and sense catch only a few indications."¹

Is it then any wonder that we act and think and move about as so many veritable somnambulists, blissfully ignorant all the time of the greater and more meaningful part of our being? Is it not drowsy creatures like us, the seemingly awake but in truth sleeping souls in the Ignorance, whom the Upanishad has in view when it declares:

"They who dwell in the ignorance, within it, are wise in their own wit and deem themselves very learned, [but] men bewildered are they who wander about stumbling round and round helplessly like blind men led by the blind."²

But wherein lies the explanation for this sleep universal, what are its extent and essential character and ultimate destiny?

¹Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 498-99.

²Kaṭha Upaniṣad, I.2.5. (Adapted from Sri Aurobindo's translation.)

Page 168

Chapter III

The Sleep and the Waking

"The status he reaches is the Brahmic condition; he gets to firm standing in the Brahman, brahmi sthiti. It is a reversal of the whole view, experience, knowledge, values, seeings of earth-bound creatures. This life of the dualities which is to them their day, their waking, their consciousness, their bright condition of activity and knowledge, is to him a night, a troubled sleep and darkness of the soul; that higher being which is to them a night, a sleep in which all knowledge and will cease, is to the self-mastering sage his waking, his luminous day of true being, knowledge and power."

(Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, p. 140)

A psychological self-investigation far transcending its present artificial bounds, an occult-spiritual exploration of the total field of our being, reveals to us, as we have had occasion to point out before (Part Two, Chapter III), the truth that "we are not only what we know of ourselves but an immense more which we do not know; our momentary personality is only a bubble on the ocean of our existence." ¹

As a matter of fact, there are, broadly speaking, four clear and distinct elements in the totality of our being: (i) the waking consciousness, (ii) the subconscient, (iii) the intraconscient and circumconscient subliminal, and finally (iv) the superconscient. Apart from a very small and restricted part of our waking individual consciousness, we are normally perfectly ignorant of the whole of the rest of our being — so appalling indeed is the extent and intensity of our psychological sleep!

The waking consciousness: Our ordinary waking consciousness is a limping and cabined surface consciousness that is shut up in the body limitation and within the confines of the little bit of personal mind. In this part of our being, we receive consciously only the outer touches, know things in ourselves and in our surroundings only or mainly by the intellect and the outer mind and senses, and

¹ The Life Divine, p. 555.

Page 169

---

become aware of the cosmic forces and movements, ceaselessly playing through and around us, primarily by their outward manifestations and only secondarily — and that too in a highly insecure way — through inferences drawn from these data. The ordinary man is aware only of this surface self and quite unaware of all that functions from behind the surface. And yet "what is on the surface, what we know or think we know of ourselves and even believe that that is all we are, is only a small part of our being"¹ and by far the larger part of which our waking consciousness is no more than a wave or series of waves, lies hidden "behind the frontal consciousness, behind the veil, occult and known only by an occult knowledge."²

The subconscient: The subconscient part of our being represents an obscure unconsciousness or half-consciousness submerged below and inferior in its movements to our organised waking awareness. The true subconscious is "the Inconscient vibrating on the borders of consciousness, sending up its motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of which the origin is obscure to us, in dream, in mechanical repetitions of all kinds, in untraceable impulṣions and motives, in mental, vital, physical perturbations and upheavals, in dumb automatic necessities of our obscurest parts of nature."³

This subconscient evolutionary basis of our being is the root cause why things and movements one hoped to have got rid of for ever come back again and again at the least opportunity and lay siege to the waking consciousness so much so that it has given rise to the adage that character cannot be changed.⁴ "All seeds are there and all Samskaras of the mind, vital and body, — it is the main support of death and disease and the last fortress (seemingly impregnable) of the Ignorance. All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment."⁵

^{1 2} Letters on Yoga, p. 348.

³ The Life Divine, p. 559.

⁴ Cf. aṅgāraḥ śatadhautena malinatvaṁ na muñcati ("A piece of coal cannot forego its black even when it is washed a hundred times").

⁵ Letters on Yoga, p. 355.

Page 170

---

The subliminal: The subliminal proper in us comprises our inner being, that is to say, our inner mind and inner life and inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them. It is of the nature of a secret intraconscient and circumconscient awareness, only sub-conscious in the specific sense that it functions behind the veil and does not bring most of itself to the surface of our being. Otherwise, it is not at all of the subconscious character as depicted a little before. Rather, it is in full possession of a brilliant mind, a limpid life-force and a clear subtle-physical sense of things. It has "a consciousness much wider, more luminous, more in possession of itself and things than that which wakes upon our surface and is the percipient of our daily hours."¹

This concealed self and consciousness is in fact our inner being, our real or whole being, of which the outer waking existence is no more than an instrumental part and a phenomenon, a selective formation for a specific and delimited surface use. "Our waking mind and ego are only a superimposition upon a submerged, a subliminal self, — for so that self appears to us, — or, more accurately, an inner being, with a much vaster capacity of experience; our mind and ego are like the crown and dome of a temple jutting out from the waves while the great body of the building is submerged under the surface of the waters."²

It is really this subliminal element of our being, along with the lower subconscient end, that provides the whole material of our apparent being and "our perceptions, our memories, our effectuations of will and intelligence are only a selection from its perceptions, memories, activities and relations of will and intelligence; our very ego is only a minor and superficial formulation of its self-consciousness and self-experience. It is as it were the urgent sea out of which the waves of our conscious becoming arise."³

The superconscient: All that we have said so far as regards the total constitution of our being does not suffice to give an adequate account of what we really are. For, a whole line of supramental spiritual experiences testifies beyond any pale of doubt to the existence of a range of being superconscient to all the three elements we have so far spoken of. The subliminal proper is no more than the inner being, no doubt luminous, powerful and extended

¹ The Life Divine, p. 557.

² Ibid., p. 556.

³ The Life Divine, p. 557.

Page 171

---

in capacity but yet on the level of the Knowledge-Ignorance. Thus, "there is not only something deep within behind our normal self-awareness, but something also high above it: that too is ourselves, other than our surface mental personality, but not outside our true self; that too is a country of our spirit." ¹

Also, "if the subliminal and subconscient may be compared to a sea which throws up the waves of our surface mental existence, the superconscience may be compared to an ether which constitutes, contains, overroofs, inhabits and determines the movements of the sea and its waves. It is there in this higher ether that we are inherently and intrinsically conscious of our self and spirit, not as here below by a reflection in silent mind or by acquisition of the knowledge of a hidden Being within us; it is through it, through that ether of superconscience, that we can pass to a supreme status, knowledge, experience." ²

Whose sleep and whose waking?—Apart from our circumscribed waking existence, these then are the three great areas of our being and consciousness, the three occult sources of our actions and movements: the superconscient, the subliminal and the subconscient. But alas, in our so-called waking state, we are not even aware of any of these, not to speak of having any conscious control over them.

But aware or not, we cannot deny the fact of occult experience that all that we 'become and do and bear' in the physical life is prepared behind the veil within us. For it is a mistake to imagine that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life alone. As a matter of fact, "we are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us, upon our outer life."³

It follows then that our waking existence is no better than a state of immense and all-forgetting somnambulist sleep and it is a mere euphemism to call it 'waking'.

Indeed, one of the fundamental objects of all spiritual discipline is to cancel this sleep of the so-called waking status of man and

¹The Life Divine, p. 560.

²Ibid., p. 561.

³ Letters on Yoga, p. 993. (Italics ours)

Page 172

---

instead wake up more and more on the deeper and higher planes of our existence.

Yes, it is truly an 'awakening' into the superior and sublimer states (uttara-dhāma); for, after all, is not the normal run of our waking life whose essential badge is an ignorant and externalised turn of consciousness, verily a state of sleep for the illumined (prabuddha), just as the superior planes are but planes of sleep to our ignorant physical mind which is not at all at home in these planes ?¹

As a matter of fact, our apparent waking from a physical slumber is not a true waking at all; it is merely a full emergence into a gross external and objective sense of reality of the apparently stable but yet transient structures of the physical consciousness. According to a powerful and well-established line of spiritual Sadhana, the real and true waking should signify no less than a total "withdrawal from both objective and subjective consciousness...into the superconscience superior to all consciousness; for all consciousness and unconsciousness is Maya."²

Thus, it is asserted that with the progress of Sadhana the Sadhaka withdraws more and more from the defiling jagad-bhāva or the consciousness of the world of dualities and illusory appearances and retires as it were into a progressively deepening sleep-status vis-à-vis his awareness of the phenomenal world, although at the same time he acquires a greater awakening with regard to the reality of his self-existence.

It has even been suggested that one can very well categorize the stages of progress in Sadhana not in terms of the spiritual awakening, jāgaraṇa, but in terms of nidrā or the profundity of sleep attained in jagad-bhāva.

Thus we find in Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa, a well-known treatise on Advaita Vedanta, that the great sage Vasishtha has delineated an ascending sequence of seven statuses of consciousness (saptadhā jñānabhūmi), beginning with that of a spiritual seeker who has just set out on the path of spiritual ascension and reaching up to the highest turyagā status. These seven levels of consciousness in their ascending order are called: śubhecchā, vicāraṇā, tanumāna-sā, sattāpatti, asaṁsakti, padārthābhāvinī and finally turyagā.

¹ Cf. Gita: yā niśā sarvabhūtānāṁ tasyāṁ jāgarti saṁyamī,

yasyāṁ jāgrati bhūtani sā niśā paśyato maneh.

2 The Life Divine, p. 45

Page 173

---

Vasishtha groups the first three statuses under the generic name jāgrat or 'awake', since, while in these states, the seeker as yet in his sādhaka status perceives the world of dualities and the mental structures of the universe to be very much real to his consciousness (bhedasatyatva-buddhi).¹

Arriving at the fourth status of sattāpatti, the lowest level of siddha consciousness, the seeker (now called by Vasishtha brahmavid) still perceives the world of duality but is not any longer deceived by the appearances, since he knows these to be unreal and illusory (bhedamithyātva-buddhi). That is why Vasishtha has named this status svapna or 'dream-consciousness'.²

The last three levels having turyagā for their crown are variants of siddha-jīvanmukta status in an ascending degree of perfection. The seekers attaining to these stations, all being stations of suṣupti or sleep vis-à-vis the world and its illusory appearances, have been conferred by Vasishtha the respective designations of brahmavidvara, brahmavidvarīyān and brahmavidvarīṣṭha. What distinguishes these three states among themselves is that in the fifth station of asaṁsakti, a status of oscillation, the Siddha comes out occasionally, and of himself (svayaṁ vyutthita), from the condition of suṣupti into that of 'dream-consciousness'; arrived at the next station of padārthābhāvinī, a status of gāḍhasu ṣupti (deep sleep), the siddha can indeed be pulled out from this state of nonduality but only through the violent efforts of people around him (pārsvaśthajanavyutthāpita). But from the last status of turyagā, a status of pragādha-prasupti (intensely profound sleep), there is no return to the awareness of the world of appearances either by oneself or through the efforts of others (vyutthāna-rahita).

It is worth remembering in this connection that the terms 'dream-status' and 'sleep-status' are sometimes supposed to connote much more than their figurative symbolic senses. For, it is often asserted that with the progressive withdrawal from the status of the divisive external consciousness the Sadhaka may very

¹bhūmikātritayaṁ tvetad rāma jāgraditi sthitam yathāvadbhedabuddhyedaṁ jagajjāgrati drśyate

(Yoga- Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa, nirvāṇaprakaraṇa, 126.52)

²advaite sthairyamāyāte dvaite praśamamāgate paśyanti svapnavallokaṁ caturthīṁ bhūmikāmitaḥ.

(Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa, nirvāṇaprakaraṇa,126.60)

Page 174

---

well lose his hold over his dynamic becoming and his action upon the world around him. Thus, Vasishtha points out that the Siddha Yogi comes to abide always in a state of drowsiness, not merely in its figurative aspect but in a very much real and tangible way (nityaṁ nidrāluriva lakṣyate). And has not, in our own time, Sri Ramakrishna declared that the vital-physical demeanour of a Paramahansa becomes like that of an immature child (vālavat) or of a madman (unmattavat) or of a demon (piśācavat) or, in the extreme case, he may even be totally inert (jaḍavat).

Evidently, this sort of spiritual realisation, luminous inside and disjointed outside, cannot be compatible with the goal of the Integral Yoga which seeks to objectivise the inner spirituality in a divine and dynamic world-action. For that purpose, it is certainly not a laudable achievement to cancel the siege of sleep in one part of our being, only to court instead the siege of the same sleep in another part. The Sadhaka of the Yoga of Transformation must be "awake to all the states of being together in a harmonised and unified experience and...see the Reality everywhere."¹

We have already dealt with this topic while discussing the spiritual possibilities of the waking state of man; but, for the moment, what we would like to stress is the other fact that in a very deep and real sense we in our present natural state are in the grip of a profound sleep as to our inner and higher existence, so much so that we have been sometimes called 'gambhīrabhedī'² elephants vis-à-vis the whole truth of our self and nature.

Hence it is that throughout the ages the exhortation has gone forth to the somnolent souls to arise and awake (uttiṣṭhata jāgrata), for the heavenly dawn has come upon the scene with the opulent splendours of her spiritual light (uṭho jāgo, musāphir, bhora bhoil). It does not behove to sleep any longer (Dādū, aceta na hoiye) and the soul must bestir itself to awaken the mind in torpor (manuāṁ sūtā nīṁd bhori sāiṁ saṇg jagai).

But are we not digressing and becoming irrelevant? When the problem in hand is the problem of the physical conquest of sleep, why have we brought in the question of psycho-spiritual slumber?

¹The Life Divine, p. 453. (Italics owrs)

²In popular parlance an elephant is said to be of the gambhīrabhedī type if it cannot be aroused from its sleep even by piercing its epidermis or by cutting its flesh and shedding its blood.

Page 175

---

The reason is indeed threefold. For we shall see in the course of our study that

(i)the state of physical sleep is but a symbolic outer projection of what we have termed the Universal Sleep;

(ii)no conquest over this physical state of sleep is ever feasible unless and until the psycho-spiritual somnambulism is cancelled and replaced by a luminous wakefulness;

(iii)So long as lasts the psycho-spiritual slumber, the body's sleep is, or can be, when enlightened and transformed, the only available means of escaping, even if for brief periods, the sway of this slumber over our instrumental existence, and entering the inner and higher reaches of our being.

Page 176

Chapter IV

The Involutionary Sleep

"Is the material state an emptiness of consciousness, or is it not rather only a sleep of consciousness — even though from the point of view of evolution an original and not an intermediate sleep? And by sleep the human example teaches us that we mean not a suspension of consciousness, but its gathering inward away from conscious physical response to the impacts of external things. And is not this what all existence is that has not yet developed means of outward communication with the external physical world?"

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine p.86)

Sleep is in its widest and intrinsic sense a cosmic phenomenon, evolutionary in character. And man's psycho-spiritual sleep to which we have alluded in the foregoing chapter is but a phase of this great cosmic event. Indeed, a close but detached scrutiny of the terrestrial becoming shows unmistakably that this becoming represents the working out of an evolutionary process that is in its most fundamental aspect a progressive awakening of consciousness-force from its original status of a dense sleep in Matter. It has so far passed through the submental sense-awareness of the vegetable kingdom and lower animals to arrive at last at the somnambulist half-sleep of the mind of man. But the hold of sleep has not yet ended and the travail of the emerging consciousness has yet to continue till all becomes 'the Sun and the everlasting Day.'

This evolutionary aspect of sleep, — the fact that the state of sleep is indeed primordial while a progressively elaborated wakefulness in more and more advanced forms is a phenomenon of later development, —is borne out by evidences furnished by both its ontogenetic and phylogenetic manifestations, also by its grossly externalised form of the body's somnolence as well as by that of psycho-spiritual slumber of which the former is but a symbolic representation, phenomenally different but in essence the same. (We are concerned for the present with the phenomenon as it appears when viewed from outside; contemplated from inside

Page 177

---

the very same phenomenon takes upon itself the aspect of an eternal wakefulness with an exclusive and absorbed concentration on the surface. Did not the Rishis declare long ago that there is One that is awake for ever even in all that sleeps¹ and that its Eye oversees everything like the all-encompassing ether?²)

Let us then look at the phenomenon of sleep, first from the angle of the scientific theory of evolution, then against the background of the occult-spiritual account of the same process.

The Evolutionary Theory of Sleep:³ The evolutionary theory of sleep and wakefulness, as advanced by N. Kleitman and others, takes its clue from the manner in which the polyphasic sleep cycle gives way to the monophasic pattern 'as a function of both phylo-genetic and ontogenetic development.' Let us note in this connection that the pattern of the sleep-wakefulness rhythm of an organism is said to be polyphasic or monophasic according as the individual's total daily need of sleep is met at two or more separate times or in one uninterrupted sequence.

Now the evolutionary theory of sleep assumes that this transition from the polyphasic to the more advanced monophasic pattern is somehow dependent upon the progressive elaboration of the evolutionary process, especially on the side of the instrumental development. Thus, according to this theory, "sleep as a state of inactivity requires no explanation", for it is the basal state from which all evolution has started. It is rather the rarefaction and later modifications of this original sleep that need be investigated and accounted for.

As a matter of fact, anatomico-physiological studies have so far failed to locate any "sleep-centre" in the brain. No naturally occurring destruction in the brain stem or elsewhere in the nervous system has ever produced permanent insomnia (in other words, a state of permanent wakefulness), thus militating against the existence of a sleep-centre and, for that matter, against the possible assumption that the state of wakefulness might be the substratum on which the state of sleep is occasionally imposed.

¹ ya eṣa supteṣu jāgarti. (Katha Upanishad, V. 8)

² divīva cakṣurātatam.

³ Mainly based on the following articles:

(1)Prof. N. Kleitman, "Sleep" in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 20.

(2)Prof. R. A. M., "Sleep" in McGraw-Hill Encyclopaedia of Science and Technology, Vol. 12.

Page 178

---

On the other hand, pre-planned damages inflicted, through modern electro-coagulation procedures, on discreet and selected regions of the hypothalamus, without of course injuring the cerebral cortex at the same time, have invariably induced states of profound somnolence or frank sleep. A similar result has been observed in patients suffering from encephalitis or sleeping sickness in which the cerebral cortex remains uninjured but there are extensive lesions in the brain stem. All this points to the existence of a "wakefulness centre" in the hypothalamus, whose destruction is liable to bring the victim headlong down into the swoon of the basic sleep-state. Is it not significant that sufferers from sleeping sickness cannot maintain their wakefulness even if they are at times aroused?

Now, this hypothalamic centre and the cerebral cortex, the latter being a more recent instrumental development brought about by the process of organic evolution, play distinctly different roles in the maintenance of the waking state.

Thus wakefulness of the primitive type, associated with poly-phasic sleep cycles, as seen in animals at the bottom end of the evolutionary scale and in younger or decorticated (i.e., deprived of the cerebral cortex) members of the higher animal groups, is solely "designed to meet the minimum needs for keeping alive and for protoplasmic growth". Such short-term waking, which has been called "a wakefulness of necessity", is maintained by a subcortical, probably hypothalamic, mechanism which is in its turn activated by simple afferent sensory impulses arising in the viscera and the muscles, tendons and joints.

Contrastingly, the more advanced type of wakefulness — the longer-term one seen in monophasic sleepers like the adult specimens of all higher animals — with its attendant alertness, critical activity and wider interests, is a "wakefulness of choice". It is assumed to be a function of the cerebral cortex, a later product of evolution as we have already mentioned; as a result of acquired experience and adaptation, this cortex comes to exert some sort of control over the more primitive subcortical mechanism.

Thus the state of physical wakefulness has progressively risen on the scale of quality with the further march of the evolution of forms. And this is all that the scientific account of sleep, solely concerned with the outward aspect of instrumental elaboration, can reveal. For more, and indeed for the basic mystic rationale

Page 179

---

of the whole phenomenon, we have to turn to the occult-spiritual view of the great cosmic becoming whose other name is Evolution.

The Occult-Spiritual Account of the Involutionary Sleep

A progressive rarefaction of the sleep of consciousness, a gradual unclosing of the lids drooping over the orbs of the spirit dreaming in its body of Matter, resulting in the manifestation of growing intensities of self-awareness and world-awareness, — is this not what the process of evolution signifies in its most fundamental aspect?

As a matter of fact, if we look upon the world and consider the living physical forms appearing on the surface of our globe, we cannot but be struck by the wide variety of organisms in rising degrees of wakeful awareness, that have grown up in the course of the evolutionary march as a tapering superstructure upon the pyramidal base of apparently inanimate and viewless Matter. The last to come upon the scene has been

Man, sole awake in an unconscious world¹

who

Aspires...to change the cosmic dream.²

We have advisedly employed the word 'apparently' in order to denote the lifeless and inconscient state of Matter. For, contradicting our primary and superficial view of things, an integral spiritual vision affirms what even our enlightened Reason informed of the panoramic phenomenon of the emergence of consciousness may very well come to perceive: it is that there exists no form in the world which is altogether devoid of consciousness. For the Force that builds the universe and is at work in it, whatever be its appearance or particular poise of activity, is in essence Chit-Shakti, a conscious creative Force, and the Existence that is manifesting itself in this world of forms is conscious Being "that is awake in those who sleep".³

But what is then the difference between diverse forms in existence, between plants and animals and men, between inert and inanimate

^{1 2} Savitri, Book III, Canto IV, p. 336.

³ ya eṣa supteṣu jāgarti. (Katha Upanishad, V. 8)

Page 180

---

Matter, living physical bodies and a creature like man in whom the mind consciousness has emerged into the open to look around and wonder? The essential difference lies in "the more or less involved or more or less evolved condition of consciousness"¹ — quite involved and asleep in a state of self-oblivious absorption in inconscient Matter, "hesitating on the verge between involution and conscious evolution",² between a state of profound sleep and a dim unclosing of the eyes, in the first non-animal forms of life in matter, half-awake and somewhat consciously evolving in "mind housed in a living body"³, and destined to be fully evolved and awake "by the awakening of the Supermind in the embodied mental being and nature".⁴

Thus, what characterises Matter is not that it is bereft of all life or consciousness but that therein the involved consciousness is "in a full sleep"⁵ and has not developed any faculty or means of communication with the surface or the outside world. But it must be noted that this inconscience of matter is entirely superficial and phenomenal. It is no more real than the ignorance of exclusive concentration of man's waking mind or the inconscience or subconscience of his sleeping mind. Only, here, the self-limitation of consciousness and the "superficially exclusive self-forgetful concentration of Tapas, of the conscious energy of being in a particular line or section of its movement"⁶ has been so radical and total that the inconscience of Matter, although only phenomenal and not essentially real or integral, has been "the complete phenomenon."⁷ So complete is it that it is only by an impulsion of evolutionary consciousness emerging into other forms less imprisoned and less dormant that the involved consciousness can gradually come back to itself and recover its full and superficially conscious waking and working. Otherwise, "as in us, so in the atom, the metal, the plant, in every form of material Nature, in every energy of material Nature, there is...a secret soul, a secret will, a secret intelligence at work, other than the mute self-oblivious form, the Conscient — conscient even in unconscious things—of the Upanishad, without whose presence and informing conscious-force...no work of Nature could be done. What is inconscient is the Prakriti, the formal, the motional action of the energy absorbed in the working,

^{1 2 3 4} The Life Divine, p. 706.

⁵ Ibid., p. 185.

^{6 7} Ibid., p. 589.

Page 181

---

identified with it, to such an extent as to be bound in a sort of trance or swoon of concentration, unable to go back, while imprisoned in that form, to its real self, to the integral conscious being and the integral force of conscious being which it has put behind it, of which in its ecstatic trance of mere working and energy it has become oblivious. Prakriti, the executive Force, becomes unaware of Purusha, the Conscious Being, holds him hidden within herself and becomes again slowly aware only with the [evolutionary] emergence of consciousness from this swoon of the Inconscience."¹

But what is the sense and significance, the plan and order of this evolutionary awakening and ascension of consciousness from forms to higher forms, from intensity to greater intensity? To understand that, we have to take note of the fact that to the highest spiritual perception the supreme Reality of the Absolute reveals itself as a triune Sachchidananda (Sat-Cit-Ānanda), a Divine Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. This infinite and absolute Existence, infinite and absolute Consciousness, infinite and absolute Force and Will, infinite and absolute Delight of Being, this Sachchidananda, although a supracosmic and self-existent Reality, is also the secret truth underlying the whole manifestation, the origin and foundation of all truths, forces, powers and existences.

The universe is a self-creative process of the supreme Reality. But the present cosmic manifestation of which the evolving terrestrial cycle is a central and significant element, has for its secret goal the self-finding of Sachchidananda, of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss absolute, in other conditions than the supracosmic, indeed even in the apparent opposites of his being offered by the terms of an embodied material existence.

Thus, for Sachchidananda to trace the cycle of self-oblivion and self-discovery, the manifestation has taken the shape of a double movement, a prior involution of the spirit followed by a process of evolution. "Involution is the process of self-limitation or densification, by which the universal Consciousness-Force veils itself by stages until it assumes the appearance of a dense cosmic Inconscience".² Thus is reached the lowest stage of this downward plunge of the manifestation—a total involution of the manifested being of Sachchidananda into an apparent nescience of itself. But

¹ The Life Divine, p. 588.

² Sri Aurobindo, The Future Evolution of Man, p. 144.

Page 182

---

what is the essential nature of this nescience ? "The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig Veda, tama āsit tamasā guḍham, which makes it look like Non-Existence; instead of a luminous inherent self-awareness there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion, inherent in being but not awake in being."¹

Such then is the nadir point of the involutionary descent of the triune Reality, the 'divinity's lapse from its own splendours' into 'the Inconscient's boundless sleep', deliberately adopted for a great cosmic purpose: the dynamic manifestation of the divine Existence, Consciousness and Delight of Being here in the very mould of an apparently inconscient, insensible and viewless Matter.

¹ The Life Divine p. 550. (Italics ours)

Page 183

Chapter V

The Evolutionary Waking

"The Inconscient is a sleep or a prison, the conscient a round of...the wanderings of a dream: we must wake into the super-conscious where all darkness of night and half-lights cease in the self-luminous bliss of the Eternal."

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 640)

Following the purposeful involutionary plunge of Sachchidananda into "the Inconscient's boundless sleep"¹, commences the 'obverse manifestation', the inevitable process of evolution, by which the Consciousness-Force involved in the form and activity of inert material substance gradually wakes again and brings out by degrees all the hidden powers inherent in "the original self-existent spiritual Awareness."²

Evolution is no doubt an inverse action of the involution, but not in the sense of "a withdrawing, a subtilization, plane after plane, leading to a reabsorption into the One Unmanifest."³ It takes place in Matter itself; it is in essence the gradual emergence and heightening of the force of consciousness in the manifest being, leading to an ever greater manifestation of the divine Consciousness-Force in the manifested material universe. Thus in this progressive evolutionary awakening of the involved Consciousness and Force and its ascent from principle to principle, from grade to grade, from light to more light, "what is an ultimate and last derivation in the involution is the first to appear in the evolution, what was original and primal in the involution is in the evolution the last and supreme emergence."⁴

So it is that at the end of the involutionary phase of manifestation when Sachchidananda lay self-shrouded in 'the inconscient swoon of things', there took place 'a slow reversal's movement' and was begun the process of 'unmasking of the Spirit in

¹ The expressions put within quotation marks and bearing no specific references are all taken from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.

² The Life Divine, p. 552.

³ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Evolution of Man, p. 146.

⁴ The Life Divine, p. 853. (Italics ours)

Page 184

---

things.' Out of the Inconscient, Existence appeared in a first evolutionary form as substance of Matter, and an apparently inconscient Energy

...made in sleep this huge mechanical world¹

Thus

In this whirl and sprawl through infinite vacancy

The Spirit became Matter and lay in the whirl,

A body sleeping without sense or soul...

Still consciousness was hidden in Nature's womb,

Unfelt was the Bliss whose rapture dreamed the worlds.

Being was an inert substance driven by Force.²

'Lost in slumber, mute, inanimate', the material universe 'awaited life and sense and waking Mind.' The evolutionary nisus was at work to waken the 'earth-nature's heavy doze'. So, Matter's sleep was stirred by 'buried memories recalling the lost spheres' from which was taken

The wide and prone leap of a godhead's fall.³

Then,

A little the Dreamer changed his poise of stone.⁴

And

A scene was set for Nature's conscious play.

Then stirred the Spirit's mute immobile sleep;

The Force concealed broke dumbly, slowly out.

A dream of living broke in Matter's heart.⁵

Thus, in Matter Life appeared and living physical beings. Consciousness, asleep and non-apparent in Matter, emerged at first in the guise of 'tranced vibrations' of plant life:

An inarticulate sensibility...

Ran through its somnolent torpor and there stirred

¹ Savitri, Book II, Canto I, p. 101.

² Ibid., Book II, Canto V, pp. 154-55.

³ Ibid., Book II, Canto I, p. 99.

^{4 5} Ibid., Book II, Canto V, p. 156.

Page 185

---

A vague uncertain thrill, a wandering beat,

A dim unclosing as of secret eyes.¹

In this way

A godhead woke but lay with dreaming limbs;

Her house refused to open its sealed doors...

At first she raised no voice, no motion dared:...

Only she clung with her roots to the safe earth,

Thrilled dumbly to the shocks of ray and breeze

And put out tendril fingers of desire;...

Absorbed she dreamed content with beauty and hue.²

Then came a higher type of awareness, the desire-sense and the desire-thrill of the primary animal forms:

At last the charmed Immensity looked forth:

Astir, vibrant, hungering, she groped for mind;

Then slowly sense quivered and thought peered out;

She forced the reluctant mould to grow aware.³

But the evolutionary process was not to stop at this first imperfect formulation of conscient life. Consciousness strove towards self-finding through successive forms of animal organisms more and more adapted to its completer expression. These "luminous stirrings prompted brain and nerve" and

An animal creation crept and ran

And flew and called between the earth and sky.⁴

Thus the awakening Consciousness-Force manifested in developing animal forms "a life-mind perception...and at its back an obscure consciousness-sight and feeling of things."⁵ Then, under a further compulsion of the imprisoned consciousness struggling to come out to the surface, there emerged, topping everything else so far achieved, a conscious mentality in the form of mentally perceptible sensation and conceptual thought and reason comrehending and apprehending and combining its data of knowledge.

^{1 2 3} Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 157.

⁴ Ibid., p. 158.

⁵ The Life Divine, p. 610.

Page 186

---

Thus, "man was moulded from the original brute" and evolutionary Nature, in and through man, looked for the first time overtly upon the world and wondered at "the works wrought in her mystic sleep":

A Mind began to see and look at forms

And groped for knowledge in the nescient Night.¹

But the travail of the emerging consciousness has not yet ended; for, the awakening so far achieved in evolution is very much maimed and incomplete, and our journey back out of 'our long self-loss' in 'the swoon of the Inconscience' towards a superconscient Light and Sight, has not yet been accomplished. "In man the energising Consciousness [appearing] as Mind...is still a partial and limited, not an integral power of itself, but a first conceptive potentiality and promise of integral emergence is visible. That integral emergence is the goal of evolving Nature."²

Thus the cosmic sleep and the somnambulist dream-state have by no means terminated with man and his mind-consiousness. As a matter of fact, man's present condition is at best a state of half-sleep and half-waking, a state of veritable somnambulist torpor with 'inconstant blink of mortal sight.' For, spiritually, sleep denotes a poise of consciousness in which we are ignorant of the fundamental truths of existence — existence whether individual, cosmic or transcendent — and of the Reality that is at the basis of all things; while the dream state signifies that particular status in which we may be aware of this "reality" but only in a distorted, disfigured and topsy-turvy way.³ Man, thus, proves to be a creature asleep in most parts of his being and dreaming in the little in which he has gained partial awakening. As a matter of fact,

Our mind lives far from the authentic Light

Catching at little fragments of the Truth,⁴

and our normal human awareness which is really no better than

¹ Savitri, Book II, Canto I, p. 101.

² The Life Divine, p. 684.

³ Cf. anyathā grhṇataḥ svapno nidrā tattvamajānataḥ. (Gaudapadacharyya, Māṇḍukya-kārikā)

⁴ Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 161.

Page 187

---

'a bright body of ignorance' is, because of the very circumstance of a separative ego-centred existence in a material, spatial and temporal universe, reducible to a state of sevenfold blindness. Thus,

"We are ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence, — that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becoming in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence, — that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-self, — that is the third, the egoistic ignorance. We are ignorant of our eternal becoming in Time; we take this little life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space, for our beginning, our middle and our end, — that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of That in us which is superconscient, subconscient, intraconscient, circumconscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence, — that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming; we take the mind or life or body or any two of these or all three for our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to determine sovereignly by its emergence their operations, — that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoyment of our life in the world; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal, — that is the seventh, the practical ignorance."¹

¹ The Life Divine, pp. 654-55.

Page 188

---

We see then that, although undoubtedly 'the crown of all that has been done so far', man with his 'intelligence half-witness, half-machine' cannot possibly be the ultimate product of the process of evolution. For his

Mind's insufficient self-discovery,

An early attempt, a first experiment¹

is no better than 'a toy to amuse the infant earth'. But

...knowledge ends not in these surface powers

That live upon a ledge in the Ignorance

And dare not look into the dangerous depths

Or to stare upward measuring the Unknown.

There is a deeper seeing from within

And, when we have left these small purlieus of mind,

A greater vision meets us on the heights

In the luminous wideness of the Spirit's gaze.

At last there wakes in us a witness Soul.²

Mind-consciousness appears thus to be only an intermediate stage

...through which we pass

On our road from Matter to eternal Self,

To the Light that made the worlds, the Cause of things.³

The evolutionary awakening of consciousness has thus still to proceed until Supermind or Gnosis, the Power of Truth-Consciousness of Sachchidananda, emerges in evolution to become the governing principle of embodied material existence. For, then, the manifested being will be in secure possession of an integral consciousness and an integral Sight; there will then be no more a state of sleep but instead a state of permanent wakefulness, no longer a dividing line of demarcation compartmentalising the inner and outer domains of existence, no more any difference between the subjective and objective provinces of experience:

¹ Savitri, Book II, Canto V, pp. 167-68.

²Ibid., p. 168.

³Ibid., p. 166.

Page 189

---

all will then be fused into an unadulterated Unity, the evolving being will be fully aroused from the 'stone-grip' of an involutionary sleep, and the cycle of self-oblivion and subsequent self-discovery by the soul descended into ignorance will be accomplished. Sachchidananda will then stand fully revealed in his robe of Matter and

Nature steps into the eternal Light.

Then only ends the dream of nether Life.¹

But that Golden Dawn, the overt emergence of the Supra-mental Consciousness, heralding the annulment of the nescient sleep of Night, is still lying in the womb of the future. In the meantime, does man, the mind-conscient being, possess no possibility whatsoever of contacting those superconscient as well as subliminal ranges of being which rise high above and penetrate deep behind that particular psychological stratum to which we ordinarily ascribe the name of mentality? As we shall presently see, the situation is not so desperate as it appears at first sight, for we shall meet with the paradox that whereas our waking state is in fact a state of sleep, the sleep of our physical being opens the doors to a greater waking. And therein lies the most important function of sleep with normally untapped and undreamt-of possibilities.

¹ Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 154.

Page 190

Chapter VI

The Role and Function of Sleep

An inertia sunk towards inconscience,

A sleep that imitates death is his repose.

(Savitri, Book II, Canto V, p. 164)

Even in the tracts of sleep is scant repose;

He mocks life's steps in strange subconscient dreams,

He strays in a sublime realm of symbol scenes,

His night with thin-air visions and dim forms

He packs or peoples with slight drifting shapes

And only a moment spends in silent self.

(Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, p. 479)

We have stated that so long as the universal psycho-spiritual slumber is not definitively ended in man's being, his body's sleep, the sleep of common parlance, proves rather to be an effective aid in exploring those higher and deeper ranges of consciousness that are still awaiting their evolutionary emergence and hence for the moment lie beyond the reach of man's normal waking awareness.

To elucidate our point we now propose to examine, albeit in brief, the essential role and function of sleep in the total organisation of our being and consciousness.

Sleep in its Recuperative Role

In the prevailing economy of the interchange of energies with the universal forces, in the present imperfect constitution of man's physical being, none of its dynamic organs can function in a ceaseless way without succumbing after a lapse of time to a state of utter fatigue and dullness.

Thus "every activity occasions an exhaustion, demands an intermission and necessitates a reparation."¹ And the cerebral activity of man proves no exception to this general rule. Like all other organs in the body that are seats of active changes, the brain too

¹ Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Quillet, "Sommeil", pp. 4451-52.

Page 191

---

is subject to periodic exhaustion. Thus an encephalic excitation continued over a prolonged stretch of time whether through some intellectual activity or due to a sustained functioning of the 'animalistic life' (vie de relation) of the creature, provokes in the end a state of cerebral fatigue and depression. This brain fatigue manifests on the physiological plane in some definite degenerative changes in the cells of the cortex. Sleep affords the interval of repose and relaxation during which anabolic or constructive changes in the brain tissues are in excess of the katabolic or disruptive modifications. Hence the interregnum of physical sleep proves to be a period of encephalic recuperation in which the rest of the body indirectly participates.

This scientific account of the function of sleep may be true as far as it goes, that is to say, so far as the purely physical system of man is concerned; but it does not constitute the whole truth of the phenomenon. As we shall presently see, our body's sleep plays a much greater and profounder role than merely to help in the recuperation of our energies through the process of sustained relaxation.

But it is well to point out in this connection that even otherwise a state of complete relaxation conducive to a total restorative repose of the being is not feasible and in fact never achieved in the course of our ordinary untransformed sleep. The reason is twofold, physiological and occult-spiritual.

To grasp the physiological explanation of why the state of our normal sleep fails to produce total repose and relaxation, we should first have a cursory view of the constitution and functioning of our central nervous system (CNS).¹

The living web of the CNS is in a state of ceaseless activity. There is "an uninterrupted passage of sensation from all parts of the body towards the spinal cord and brain, and an unending procession of return messages in the opposite direction". For the web is a double one containing nerve fibres of two different types:

(1) efferent, motor, centrifugally conducting fibres, which carry outgoing impulses from the nervous system, resulting in muscular contractions; and

¹ The following account of the process of propagation of messages along nerve fibres is based on:

Kenneth Walker, Human Physiology, pp. 114-15; and N. Kleitman, "Sleep" in Encyclopaedia Britamica, Vol. 20, p. 792.

Page 192

---

(2) afferent, sensory, proprioceptive ("self-feeling") centripetally conducting fibres, which convey the incoming impulses.

These afferent nerves carrying incoming messages have their starting points widely scattered over the surface of the body and also amongst the muscles, joints and viscera. They form the intelligence agents which furnish to the spinal cord and the brain mentally conscious as well as unconscious information regarding the state of affairs in different parts of the body and also their mutual relation. These intelligence agents may be divided into external sense organs and internal sense organs. The former take note of conditions external to the body while the latter report on the state of the body itself. This "muscle sense, literally a sixth sense", has a major contribution to make to the continous stream of ingoing impulses rushing towards the cerebral cortex. Thus, "a person shuts off the streams of visual and auditory impulses by retiring to a dark, quiet room and decreases cutaneous impulses by lying down on a soft, smooth surface, but the proprioceptive impulses, coming as they do from the body itself, are still there, gradually decreasing only when and as the body musculature is relaxed. [But] muscular relaxation and immobility are never absolute".¹

It follows then that in ordinary sleep, although the doors of the external physical senses may be effectively sealed up, not so are those of the internal sense. The result is that the responsive activity of the nervous system or the brain never ceases completely, and the relaxation and repose never attain their desired maximum.

But even if this state of muscular relaxation and physiological repose could somehow be made total and complete, it would not automatically and necessarily convert our physical sleep into a state of perfectly recuperative blissful repose. For, as we have remarked more than once, our body's sleep does not entail the sleep of our whole being nor for that matter indicate a total abeyance of all consciousness. In fact, during the dormancy of our physical mind, our consciousness withdraws from its surface preoccupation and becomes instead awake and active in regions of our being as widely distinct as they are disparate in their consequences.

Thus, ordinarily, in sleep some activity or other is always going on in our mental or vital or some other plane; and, irrespective

¹ N. Kleitman, op. cit.

Page 193

---

of whether we retain any conscious recollection of it or not, a continuous and confused state of dream-activity involving much inner exertion and fatigue is the subjective transcription of this ceaseless agitation of our consciousness during the period of our body's sleep.

Not only this; quite often we slide down in sleep into some heavy and obscure and altogether unrefreshing folds of the sub-conscient, involving some distasteful and disastrous consequences. It becomes thus pertinent to examine here in however summary a way the occult-spiritual account of the phenomena of sleep and dreams.

Sleep in its Role of Inner Awakening

It is indeed a superficial assessment to suppose that our consciousness remains in total abeyance during the period of our physical sleep. "What is in abeyance is the waking activities, what is at rest is the surface mind and the normal conscious action of the bodily part of us."¹ But the inner consciousness is not in the least negatived or suspended. As a matter of fact what happens in sleep is that our consciousness withdraws from the field of its waking experiences and enters into inner realms of our being, of which we are not normally aware in our waking state, although they exist all the time and continue to exert their occult influences upon our life and thought and action. And this is so because "when we are awake,...all that is put behind a veil by the waking mind and nothing remains except the surface self and the outward world — much as the veil of the sunlight hides from us the vast worlds of the stars that are behind it. Sleep is a going inward in which the surface self and the outside world are put away from our sense and vision."² Our consciousness participates during this period in new inner activities of which, alas, only an insignificant portion — the portion actually occurring or getting recorded in the threshold of our surface consciousness — we somehow remember as imperfect and interpretative dreams of our night.

Now, as we have indicated in an earlier section of our essay [vide Part Three, Chapter III], only a very small part whether of world-being or of our own being ordinarily comes into our conscious

¹ The Life Divine, p. 422.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 1023.

Page 194

---

purview. "The rest is hidden behind in subliminal reaches of being which descend into the profoundest depths...and rise to highest peaks of superconscience, or which surround the little field of our waking self with a wide circumconscient existence of which our mind and sense catch only a few indications."¹ The ancient Indian wisdom expressed this fact by dividing our consciousness into three, or rather four, provinces: jāgrat or waking state, svapna or dream state, suṣupti or sleep state, and finally turīya transcending these all. "The waking state is consciousness of the material universe which we normally possess in this embodied existence dominated by the physical mind. The dream state is a consciousness corresponding to the subtler life-plane and mind-plane behind.... The sleep state is a consciousness corresponding to the supramental plane proper to the gnosis, which is beyond our experience because our causal body or envelope of gnosis is not developed in us.... The Turiya beyond is the consciousness of our pure self-existence or our absolute being."²

The sleep state and the dream state are thus seen to be the figurative names for the superconscient and the subliminal that lie beyond and behind our normal waking awareness. This last state, our waking state, is all the time blissfully ignorant of its occult connection with these higher and deeper reaches of consciousness, although it is receiving from them, without any overt knowledge of their source or secret nature, inspirations and intuitions, ideas and volitions, sense-suggestions and urges to action, streaming down from above or surging forward from behind.

Now, it is impossible for us in our normal consciousness to get back from our physical mind into these sublimer planes of consciousness without at the same time receding from the waking state and going in and away from its hold. This fact explains the tremendous importance generally attached in spiritual Sadhana to the phenomenon of yogic trance or Samadhi; for, this latter is considered to be a potent means — an almost unavoidable one, many would insist — of escape from the shackles and the obscuring glow of the physical nature and consciousness.

But sleep too like trance (and "trance [itself]...can be regarded

¹The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 498-99.

²Ibid., p. 499.

Page 195

---

as a kind of dream or sleep"¹), can very well open the gates of these superior planes of our being; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of our limited waking personality and "the surface mental consciousness...passes out of the perception of objective things into the subliminal and the superior supramental or over-mental status. In that inner condition it sees the supraphysical realities in transcribing figures of dream or vision, or in the superior status it loses itself in a massed consciousness of which it can receive no thought or image. It is through this subliminal and this superconscient condition that we can pass into the supreme superconscience of the highest state of self-being."²

The physical sleep becomes, or can be made to become, a highly valuable means of unloosening, however temporarily, the stone-grip of the ignorance of 'our waking that is sleep' and awakening instead in the superior states of consciousness and being. And herein lies the great role of 'sleep-trance' and 'dream-trance", to which we have alluded earlier in our discussion. Did not the Orphic doctrine that only when free from the body does the soul awake to its true life, lead naturally to the view that "in sleep the soul converses with eternal things and receives communications from Heaven to which it is not accessible by day" ?³ Thus "Pindar says that 'the soul slumbers while the body is active; but, when the body slumbers, she shows forth in many a vision the approaching issues of woe and weal.' And the poet Aeschylus declares that 'in slumber the eye of soul waxes bright'."⁴

But the situation is not as simple as we have painted it to be. For, we must not forget that our ordinary untransformed sleep suffers from two serious handicaps' which detract much from its value and, unless remedied in time, make of the state of physical sleep a veritable problem for the Sadhaka who seeks for the transformation of his entire nature.

The first of these limitations is that it is altogether unconsciously as it were that we make the passage to these higher and deeper realms of our being, so that when we come back to our waking consciousness we retain very little of the sublime experiences that

¹ The Life Divine, p. 452.

² Ibid.

³ A. E. Taylor, "Dream and Sleep", in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 5, p. 31.

⁴ Ibid.

Page 196

---

we may have had while in those regions.

Secondly — and this is all the more tragic — this movement of ascension or penetration into the subliminal or the superconscient realms is not the only or even the normal movement that we happen to make while in the state of our physical sleep. Most usually we enter into the subconscient darkness whose consequences are, to say the least, highly deleterious to the spiritual health of our being.

Hence arises the need to remain conscious in sleep itself and change by degrees its nature of Tamasic absorption into that of a luminous and blissful exploration of the inner and higher worlds and a state of yogic repose.

Page 197

Chapter VII

Dreams and the Dreamland

None knows himself well who does not know his free activities of the night and no man can call himself his own master if he is not perfectly conscious and master of the multifarious actions which he performs during his physical sleep.... Uncultivated fields produce weeds. We do not want weeds to grow in us, let us then cultivate the vast fields of our nights.

(The Mother, Words of Long Ago, pp. 37, 41)

We pass in waking into nescience of our sleeping condition, in sleep into nescience of our waking being. But this happens because only part of our being performs this alternative movement and we falsely think of ourselves as only that partial existence: but we can discover by a deeper psychological experience that the larger being in us is perfectly aware of all that happens even in what is to our partial and superficial being a state of unconsciousness; it is limited neither by sleep nor by waking.

(Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 575)

We have had occasion to mention more than once that our body's sleep by no means connotes the sleep of our whole being nor the total abeyance of all consciousness. As a matter of fact our inner being is always awake and it is only the surface physical mind's waking activity or its cessation that determines the waking or sleep of common parlance.

Thus, in ordinary sleep, when this activity ceases for a period, our physical body falls into slumber and only a subconscient residual consciousness is left in it. The rest of the being stands back and a part of its consciousness goes out into various planes and regions of existence. "In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happenings, come across formations, influences, suggestions which belong to these planes."¹ When these experiences of the wandering inner consciousness get transmitted to the obscure layer floating over the deep subconscience in which our physical being seems submerged for the time being and our physical mind,

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 1500.

Page 198

---

in a state of sleep-wakefulness, receives and records and translates them more or less perfectly, more or less coherently, depending on the state of development of our being, we are said to have dreams.

When we come back to our waking consciousness at the termination of the period of sleep, we may at times retain the memory of these dreams and at other times not. But since the movement of our consciousness in the state of our physical sleep is ceaseless and uninterrupted except for that occasional and brief interregnum when our being retires into Brahmaloka, into "a sort of Sachchidananda immobility of consciousness"¹, we are always dreaming at the time of sleep irrespective of whether we are mentally conscious of it or not.

In fact, what is sometimes erroneously called dreamless slumber is very often a state of dream-consciousness of which all record has been wiped away from the memory of the waking physical mind. And this obliteration may be due to any one of the following reasons.

Sachchidananda immobility: Given the most favourable circumstances, one passes in sleep through a succession of states of progressively deepening sleep-consciousness to reach at last "a pure Sachchidananda state of complete rest, light and silence"², a state of "suṣupti in the Brahman or Brahmaloka"³ and retraces one's way, after a brief stay there, to come back again to the waking physical state.

Referring to this state of "luminous and peaceful and dreamless rest",⁴ the Mother says: "There is the possibility of a sleep in which you enter into an absolute silence, immobility and peace in all parts of your being and your consciousness merges into Sachchidananda. You can hardly call it sleep, for it is extremely conscious. In that condition you may remain for a few minutes, but these few minutes give you more rest and refreshment than hours of ordinary sleep."⁵ But the Mother warns that this state of Sachchidananda immobility of consciousness cannot be attained in sleep by chance, "it requires a long training."⁶ We

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 578.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid., p. 577.

⁴ The Life Divine, p. 425.

^{5 6} The Mother, Conversations, pp. 27-28.

Page 199

---

pass on then to the consideration of the second factor giving rise to the phenomenon of apparently dreamless sleep.

Turn over of consciousness: Our waking consciousness is ordinarily externalised and gazes outward while our inner dream consciousness has its eyes turned inward. Thus the transition from the sleep state to waking state is very often associated with a reversal, a turning over, of the consciousness in which "the dream-state disappears more or less abruptly, effacing the fugitive impression made by the dream events (or rather their transcription) on the physical sheath."¹ If the return to waking consciousness is more composed and less abrupt, then perhaps the memory remains of the last of the dreams or of the one that was the most impressive during sleep. Otherwise everything experienced in sleep recedes from the physical consciousness leaving a state of blankness behind.

Absence of link bridge; We have stated that in sleep our being passes through a succession of states of consciousness. Now, so long as there is not the integral and synthetic awareness, these different states of consciousness appear each with its own realities, so much so that in our passage through them from one state to another, the consciousness of the previous state of things slips away from us and its contents are altogether lost or, even when caught in memory, seem illusory and uncertain and hence forgotten in no time.

Also, there is the fundamental disparity between the recording surface subconscient left in the sleeping body and the deeper realms of our consciousness. Thus when we enter in sleep our subliminal mental, vital or subtle-physical, the experiences therein are for all practical purposes lost to our waking consciousness because of the absence of any active connection with the surface parts of us. "If we are still in the nearer depths of these regions, the surface subconscient...records something of what we experience in these depths; but it records it in its own transcription, often marred by characteristic incoherences and always, even when most coherent, deformed or cast into figures drawn from the world of waking experience. But if we have gone deeper inward, the record fails or cannot be recovered and we have the illusion of dreamlessness; but the activity of the inner dream consciousness continues behind the veil of the now mute and

¹ Letters on Yoga, pp. 1493-94.

Page 200

---

inactive subconscient surface."¹

Plunge into subconscience: There is another and most usual blank state, the state "when one goes deeply and crassly into the subconscient."² The heavy and inert and altogether unrefreshing 'subterranean plunge' of our outer consciousness into the black pit of a complete subconscience leads to a state of "absolute unconsciousness which is almost death — a taste of death."³

These then are the principal contributing factors at the basis of the phenomenon of so-called dreamless slumber, and, except for the first one, — the Sachchidananda immobility, — which alone is a state of veritable dreamlessness and an achievement of profound value, the other three signify undesirable imperfections that must be remedied if we would establish a mastery over our dream-world. Especially so is the last one, the abysmal plunge of the body-consciousness into the torpid depths of the subconscience, and along with it its allied manifestation, the dream-wanderings of our inner sleep-consciousness in the dark and dangerous regions of our being where

There are occult Shadows, there are tenebrous Powers,

Inhabitants of life's ominous nether rooms,

A shadowy world's stupendous denizens.

................

The Titan and the Fury and the Djinn

Lie bound in the subconscient's cavern pit

And the Beast grovels in his antre den:

Dire mutterings rise and murmur in their drowse.⁴

As a matter of fact, apart from those vague incoherent and insignificant dreams that are occasioned by 'purely physical circumstances such as the state of health, digestion, position on the bed, etc.,' most of our ordinary sleep-existence is made up of dreams of which the subconscient is the builder. Now, as we have noted before (Chapter III), this subconscious in us is the extreme border of our secret inner existence; "it is the Inconscient vibrating

¹The Life Divine, p. 423.

² Letters on Yoga, p. 1484.

³The Mother, Conversations, p. 27.

⁴Savitri, Book VII, Canto II, p. 480.

Page 201

---

on the borders of consciousness, sending up its motions to be changed into conscious stuff, swallowing into its depths impressions of past experience as seeds of unconscious habit and returning them constantly but often chaotically to the surface consciousness, missioning upwards much futile or perilous stuff of Which the origin is obscure to us".¹

Now what happens ordinarily is that during the state of our body's sleep the surface physical part of us, which is an output from the inconscient, sinks back from the waking level and relapses towards the originating Inconscience. In this movement of retrogression it invariably enters into the subconscient substratum where "it finds the impressions of its past or persistent habits of mind and experiences, — for all have left their mark on our subconscious part and have there a power of recurrence."² The effect of this subconscious resurrection on our waking self is simply disastrous. For, as the Mother has pointed out,

"All the desires that have been repressed without being dissolved, — and this dissociation can only be arrived at after numerous analyses demanding a comprehensive rectitude of a high order, — try to seek satisfaction when the will is asleep.

"And as desires are veritable dynamic centres of formation, they tend to organise in and around us an assemblage of circumstances most favourable to their satisfaction.

"Thus is destroyed in a few hours of the night the fruit of many efforts made by our conscious thought during the day."³

Faced with this unpleasant situation of nightly falling down of consciousness below the level of what one has gained by Sadhana in the waking state, seekers of self-perfection are sometimes impelled, in a mood of desperation, to effect a drastic cut in the hours of sleep and keep awake at night. But this is a highly inadvisable procedure, the suggested remedy proving worse than the malady. For, unless and until our body becomes altogether transformed in all its functionings, a sufficient but not excessive amount of sleep, in the same way as the intake of food and water, is absolutely essential for its proper maintenance. Hence the injunction of the Gita to eat and sleep suitably — yuktāhāraḥ yuktanidraḥ

¹ The Life Divine, p. 559.

² Ibid., p. 423.

³ The Mother, Words of Long Ago, pp. 34-35.

Page 202

---

— when one does Sadhana, also that of the Upanishad to take a moderate quantity of easily digestible food and satisfy the body's indispensable need of sleep, samāpayya nidrāṁ sujīrṇālpabhojī.¹

In fact, scientifically conducted experiments on the subject of sleep privation have shown that after about 60-90 hours of enforced wakefulness, the most prominent effects observed are "muscular weariness,...irritability to the point of irascibility in normally even-tempered subjects, and a mental disorganization, leading to dreaming while awake, hallucinations and automatic behaviour, occasionally bordering on temporary insanity."²

In any case, the suppression of the needed sleep ration makes the nerves morbid, weakens the brain, strains the physical system and renders it unfit for the necessary concentration during the waking hours. And since the body and the nervous envelope form the twin plinth of our Sadhana, the prospect of their decay and degeneracy through ill-advised deprivation of sleep cannot certainly be nonchalantly viewed.

But what then is the solution to this insistent problem of nightly fall, what the procedure to counteract and annul the subconscient wanderings of our consciousness during the period of our body's sleep ?

As we shall see a little later on, in the prevailing conditions of our untransformed body and physical being, the right way is not to suppress sleep, the great restorer of our energies, but to transform its character. And this can be done only by becoming more and more conscious in sleep itself. "If that is done, sleep changes into an inner mode of consciousness in which the Sadhana can continue as much as in the waking state, and at the same time one is able to enter into other planes of consciousness than the physical and command an immense range of informative and utilisable experience."³

This last possibility opens up before our view a great line of the movement of our consciousness, — other than the subconscient one, — during the period of our physical sleep. This subliminal exploration of the inner planes of our being provides us occasionally with dreams from these planes, — or should we not rather say dream-experiences? — for these are transcripts direct

¹ Saubhagyalakshmi Upanishad, Kandika II.

² N. Kleitman, "Sleep", in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 20, p. 793.

³ Letters on Yoga, p. 1479.

Page 203

---

or symbolic of what we actually experience in us or around us while in those subliminal realms of our existence.

The subliminal in us, as we have mentioned before (Chapter III), is our concealed inner being comprising an inner mind and inner life and inner physical with the soul or psychic entity supporting them all. It "is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution.... [Thus] the subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience."¹

Now, sleep is one of the means — the other two being 'inward-drawn concentration' and the 'inner plunge of trance' — that give us an access to this large realm of interior existence that ordinarily functions behind the veil and thus remains mostly unknown to our waking consciousness. Although our dreams are very often constructions of our subconscient, when our inner being develops by Sadhana and we live more and more inwardly away from the madding to-and-fro run of our surface existence, a larger and richer and nobler dream-consciousness opens before us and our dreams take on a subliminal character.

When the subliminal thus comes to the front in our dream consciousness, "dreams would then take on the character of precise visions and, at times, of dream revelations. Then onwards it will be possible to acquire useful knowledge of an entire order of important things."²

But to gain this mastery of the sleep-world, to tap the resources of our subliminal dream-realms, to make our nightly sleep-existence as profitable as our waking one, what should we do and how should we proceed ?

¹ The Life Divine, p. 425.

² Words of Long Ago, p. 45.

Page 204

Chapter VII

The Mastery of the Nights

Sadhana can go on in the dream or sleep state as well as in the waking.

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 1481)

To make use of the nights is an excellent thing, it has a double effect: a negative effect, it prevents you from falling backward, losing whatever you have gained — that indeed is painful — and a positive effect, you make some progress, you continue your progress.

(The Mother, Bulletin, Vol. XII, No. 4, p. 91)

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo has for its goal the total transformation of our nature as well as the complete liberation of our being. But in our normal waking state we are conscious only of a very restricted field and action of our nature, the rest of it remaining and functioning behind the opaque veil of our surface personality. But, since all that we 'become and do and bear' in our outer life is prepared and governed by these concealed zones of activity subconscient and subliminal to our waking awareness, it assumes an "immense importance for a yoga which aims at the transformation of life to grow conscious of what goes on within these domains, to be master there and be able to feel, know and deal with the secret forces that determine our destiny and our internal and external growth or decline."¹

Now, as we have noted before, sleep like yogic trance opens the gate to these subliminal worlds and allows us an entry into the more significant realms of our existence. And although it is a fact that in the ordinary undeveloped state of our consciousness most of our sleep-experience remains unknown to our cognition and even the little that manages to reach our recording surface does so in the form of dreams and dream figures and "not in that condition which might be called an inner waking and which is the most accessible form of the trance state,"² through a proper and methodical

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 994.

² The Life Divine, p. 426.

Page 205

---

self-disciplining we may grow in consciousness in sleep itself so much so that in the end we may follow in uninterrupted awareness our passage through various realms of our inner being and the return journey therefrom. "At a certain pitch of this inner wakefulness this kind of sleep, a sleep of experience, can replace the ordinary subconscious slumber."¹

It is then that we have veridical dreams, dream-experiences of great value, conveying truths that are not so easy to get in our ordinary waking state. Thus problems are solved in our dream consciousness, which our waking consciousness could not possibly cope with; we are provided with warnings and premonitions and indications of the future and with "records of happenings seen or experienced by us on other planes of our own being or of universal being into which we enter."²

Our sleep-existence, if we are conscious in it, renders us another valuable service in the exploration of our subconscient nature that contains much that is obscure in us but not distinguishably active in the waking state. A conscious pursuit of the subconscient wanderings of our sleep-consciousness brings to our notice a class of dreams that "arise from the revenge of our inner being freed for a moment from the constraint that we impose on it. These dreams often allow us to perceive some of the tendencies, tastes, impulses and desires of which we would not otherwise be conscious so long as our will to realise our ideal held them down, hidden in some obscure recess of our being."³ For it is one of the most disconcerting discoveries made in Sadhana that what we have thought to have settled and done away with in the upper layers of our consciousness are obstinately retained by our glutinous subconscient. And just for that reason, as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, these dreams provide us with a useful indication, for "they enable us to pursue things to their obscure roots in this underworld and excise them."⁴

Hence we see that the fields of our sleep if properly cultivated can yield us a great and effective aid on our road towards self-knowledge and self-mastery, also in the pursuit of our nature-transformation. But how to acquire a cognition of the activities of our

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 1024.

² The Life Divine, p. 424.

³ Words of Long Ago, p. 36.

⁴ Letters on Yoga, p. 1490.

Page 206

---

nights? How to transform the nature of our sleep?

The procedure to deal with sleep and the dreamland may be said to have three main limbs: (i) how best to enter the state of sleep? (ii) how to remain conscious in sleep itself? and (iii) how to retain the memory of our dream-experiences even when we come back to the waking awareness?

In our quest for the answers to this triple query, to whom else would we turn than to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the supreme masters of the fourfold worlds of our being, jāgrat, svapna, suṣupti and tūriya? So we make no apology for quoting in extenso from their luminous writings in an attempt to offer some hints to aspiring seekers.

How Best to Enter the State of Sleep?

"You must lie flat on your back and relax all the muscles and nerves...to be like what I call a piece of cloth on the bed, nothing else remains. If you can do that with the mind also, you get rid of all stupid dreams that make you more tired when you get up than when you went to bed. It is the cellular activity of the brain that continues without control, and that tires much. Therefore a total relaxation, a kind of complete calm, without tension, in which everything is stopped. But this is only the beginning.

"Afterwards, a self-giving as total as possible, of all, from top to bottom, from the outside to the inmost, and an eradication also as total as possible of all resistance of the ego, and you begin repeating your mantra—your mantra, if you have one or any other word which has power over you, a word leaping from the heart, spontaneously, like a prayer and that sums up your aspiration. After having repeated a few times, if you are accustomed to it, you get into trance. And from that trance you pass into sleep. The trance lasts as long as it should and quite naturally, spontaneously you pass into sleep. But when you come back from this sleep, you remember everything, the sleep was but a continuation of the trance.

"Fundamentally the sole purpose of sleep is to enable the body to assimilate the effect of the trance so that the effect may be accepted everywhere, to enable the body to do its natural function of the night and eliminate the toxins. And when it wakes up, there is no trace of heaviness which comes from sleep and the effect of the trance continues.

Page 207

---

"Even for those who have never been in trance, it is good to repeat a mantra, a word, a prayer before going into sleep. But there must be a life in the words, I do not mean an intellectual signification, nothing of that kind, but a vibration. And on the body its effect is extraordinary: it begins to vibrate, vibrate, vibrate...and quietly you let yourself go as though you wanted to get into sleep. The body vibrates more and more and still more and away you go."¹

How to Retain the Awareness of Dreams?

The first part of this discipline should naturally deal with the question how to recognise our dreams and, above all, to distinguish between them; for as we have noted before, they vary greatly in their nature and quality. Often in the same night we may have several dreams which belong to different categories and thus have different intrinsic value. Now, as regards the procedure which we should adopt to retain the memory of our nights, let us listen to the words of the Mother:

"...There is almost always a considerable divergence between what our mental activity actually is and the way in which we perceive it, and especially the way in which we remain conscious of it. In its own sphere, this activity determines what vibrations are to be transmitted by repercussion up to the cellular system of our cerebral organ, but in our sleepy brain, the subtle vibrations from the suprasensible domain can only affect a very limited number of cells; the inertia of most of the organic supports of cerebral phenomena reduces the number of their active elements, impoverishes the mental synthesis and makes it unfit to reproduce the activity of the internal states other than by images, oftenest very vague and inappropriate....

"The cerebral rendering of the activities of the night is at times so much distorted that a form is given to phenomena which is the exact opposite of the reality....

"[But] if one knows how to translate in intellectual language the more or less inadequate images by which the brain reproduces these facts, one may learn many things which the too limited physical faculties do not permit us to perceive.

"Some even succeed, by a special culture and training, in acquiring

¹ Bulletin, November 1960, pp. 87-89. (Italics ours)

Page 208

---

and retaining the consciousness of the deeper activities of their inner being independently of their cerebral transcription and are able to recall and know them in the waking state in all the plenitude of their faculties....

"How [then] to cultivate this field of action? how to acquire a cognition of our activities of the night?...

"The same discipline of concentration which enables a man no longer to remain a stranger to his inner activities in the waking state, also furnishes him with the means of removing the ignorance of those, still richer, of the diverse states of sleep.

"Usually these activities leave only rare and confused memories behind them.

"One finds however that at times a fortuitous circumstance, an impression received, a word pronounced is enough to reawaken suddenly to consciousness the whole of a long dream of which the moment before there was no recollection.

"From this simple fact we may infer that our conscious activity participates very feebly in the phenomena of the sleeping state, as in the normal state of things they would remain lost for ever in subconscient memory....

"One who wishes to recover the memory of a forgotten dream should in the first place fix his attention on such vague impressions as the dream might have left trailing behind it and follow the indistinct traces as far as possible.

"This regular exercise would let him go farther every day towards the obscure retreat of the subconscient where the forgotten phenomena of sleep take refuge and thus mark out a route easy to follow between the two domains of consciousness.

"One practical remark to be made from this point of view is that the absence of memory is very often due to the abruptness with which the return to consciousness takes place. At this moment, in fact, new activities break into the field of consciousness, drive out forcibly all that is foreign to them and afterwards make more difficult the work of concentration necessary to recall the things thus expelled. This is facilitated, on the contrary, whenever certain mental and even physical precautions are observed for a peaceful transition from one state to another."¹

¹ The Mother, Words of Long Ago, pp. 38-44. (Italics ours)

Cf. Sri Aurobindo: "[The disappearance] of the dream consciousness [taking] away its scenes and experiences with it...can sometimes be avoided

Page 209

---

Thus, the slipping away of the memory of our nights can be greatly remedied and a power developed of going back in memory from dream to dream, from state to state, till a sufficiently coherent knowledge of our sleep life is built up.

But this training of the faculties of memory, as we shall presently see, does not prove sufficient to link the totality of our sleep-existence with our waking awareness. For that we have to grow conscious in the state of sleep itself.

How to Grow Conscious in Sleep

The training of our physical memory to follow back the thread of our dream-activities fails to give its full dividend for the simple reason that in this way we are "able to transform into conscious phenomena of the waking state those alone which were already so, be it most fleetingly, during sleep. For where there was no consciousness, there can be no memory."¹

We should therefore seek, in the second place, to extend the participation of consciousness to a greater number of activities in the sleeping state. Now, "the daily habit of going with interest over the various dreams of the night, thus transforming their vestiges little by little into precise memories as well as that of noting them down on waking are very helpful from this point of view.

"By virtue of these habits, the mental faculties will be induced to adapt their mechanism to the phenomena of this order and to direct upon them their attention, curiosity and power of analysis.

"It will then produce a sort of intellectualisation of dream, achieving the double result of interspersing the conscious activities more and more intimately in the play, hitherto disordered, of the activities of the sleeping state and of augmenting progressively the scope of these activities by making them more and more rational and instructive.

"Dreams would then take on the character of precise visions and, at times, of dream revelations."²

But along with this participation of mental consciousness,

by not coming out abruptly into the waking state or getting up quickly, but remaining quiet for a time to see if the memory remains or comes back." (Letters on Yoga, p. 1494.)

¹ Words of Long Ago, p. 44. (Italics ours)

² Ibid., pp. 44-45.

Page 210

---

this revelatory intellectualisation of dreams, we must try to cultivate a still higher and deeper mode of consciousness in sleep. In fact, our sleep-life should be as much a part of Sadhana as the waking one, and the developing consciousness that we attain in our waking state through spiritual endeavour and aspiration should extend itself fully and continuously also to the sleep state. It is true that at the beginning and for a long time it becomes difficult to maintain the consciousness at the same pitch at night, for "the true consciousness comes at first in the waking state or in meditation, it takes possession of the mental, the vital, the conscious physical, but the subconscious vital and physical remain obscure and this obscurity comes up when there is sleep or an inert relaxation."¹ But with the growth of an intense Sadhana in our waking state, when we develop our inner being, live from in without and our subconscient is enlightened and penetrated by the Mother's light, this disparity and this dislocation of consciousness disappears, and our "sadhana goes on in the dream or sleep state as well as in the waking."²

The Lure of the Dream-Consciousness

At this point of our discussion we would like to address a note of warning to the seekers after the mastery of their nights.

Through a proper cultivation of the fields of sleep-existence, when the inner sleep consciousness begins to develop and along with it appear dream experiences as distinct from ordinary dreams, there is often an irresistible pull on the consciousness to withdraw from its waking status, go within and follow the development there even when there is no fatigue or need of sleep — so alluring are the experiences of dream-consciousness, so overwhelming is the charm thereof!

But this attraction of the sleep-world must not be allowed to encroach on the waking hours and the "wanting to get back to something interesting and enthralling which accompanies the desire to fall into sleep"³ should be effectively curbed. Otherwise there may be an undesirable unbalancing and "a decrease of the hold on outer realities."⁴

¹ Letters on Yoga, p. 1480.

² Ibid., p. 1481.

^{3 4} Ibid., p. 1025.

Page 211

Chapter IX

The Conquest of Sleep

Thine is the shade in which visions are made;

sped by thy hands from celestial lands

come the souls that rejoice for ever.

Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass,

then beyond thee we climb out of Space and Time

to the peak of divine endeavour.

(Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems and Plays, Vol. II, p. 122)

He has seen God's slumber shape these magic worlds.

He has watched the dumb God fashioning Matter's frame,

Dreaming the dreams of its unknowing sleep,

And watched the unconscious Force that built the stars.

He has learnt the Inconscient's workings and its law...

Its somnolence founded the universe,

Its obscure waking makes the world seem vain...

He must call light into its dark abysms,

Else never can Truth conquer Matter's sleep

And all earth look into the eyes of God.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VI, Canto II, pp. 449-50)

We have seen in the course of our study of longue haleine on the occult nature and function of sleep that the periodic spells of dormancy of our body need not prove to be an unavoidable evil nor a handicap to our spiritual growth. In any case, our physical sleep does not necessarily mean an abeyance of consciousness of the whole of our dynamic being, nor a nightly falling down, nor even an interruption in the pursuit of our Sadhana. On the other hand, this may be transformed, if we know how to do it, into a sleep of experiences giving us an access to the inner domains of our being.

But whatever may be the value of the sleep-existence, to live in the dream-world at the price of the suspension of our waking awareness cannot be considered a laudable achievement in the Yoga of Transformation of Life. We have to bring out and call down the riches from our subliminal depths and superconscient

Page 212

---

heights and make these an acquisition of our waking life. Our physical consciousness has to be "spiritually awake"¹ and "as open in the waking consciousness as in sleep."² We have somehow to "arrive at a point when one remains outwardly conscious and yet lives in the inner being and has at will the indrawn or the outpoured condition."³

It is thus evident that the irresistible bouts of unconsciousness of sleep to which our body's waking status occasionally succumbs cannot but be viewed as a sign of imperfection in the prevailing organisation of our physical being. What is then necessary is that — and this must constitute an essential element in the total transfiguration of our bodily existence — sleep must be raised from the level of necessity to that of a free acceptance, as and when so willed, as an indrawn absorption of our consciousness.

Thus the mastery over our nights should be followed by the attempt at an absolute conquest of sleep. But is this total victory over physical sleep at all feasible in the present human body? And, if not, what are the essential conditions that have to be met before this prospect for bodily life enters the field of realisable possibilities ?

By way of answering these crucial questions we propose to put forward two related problems and venture some tentative solutions thereof.

How to Reduce the Hours of Sleep?

On the purely physico-vital plane, sleep has for its essential function the restoration of the nervous physical energies of our fatigued bodily system. But for an effective fulfilment of this function, it is absolutely necessary that our sleep-life should be calm and reposeful, relaxed and luminous. But very rarely do our nights measure up to this criterion: these are, more often than not, more fatiguing than even our days for reasons which often escape us.

But the Mother has warned us that if we get up not so well refreshed in the morning, it is because of a formidable mass of Tamas. "It is Tamas which causes bad sleep. There are two kinds of bad sleep: the sleep that makes you heavy, dull, as though you lose all the effect of the effort you put in during the preceding day;

^{1 2 3} Letters on Yoga, p. 1483.

Page 213

---

and the sleep that exhausts you as if you were passing your time in fight.

"...Two things you must eliminate: falling into the torpor of the inconscience, with all these things of the subconscient and of the inconscient that rise up, invade you, enter into you; and a vital and mental superactivity where you pass your time in fighting literally terrible battles. People come out of that state bruised, as if they had recived blows — and they did receive them, it is not 'as if'!"¹

(A)Relaxation: Now, since the total time interval needed for the recuperation of our energies is in inverse ratio to the quality of repose that we attain in our sleep, the very first procedure we must adopt to cut down the duration of our nightly sleep is to practise the art of complete relaxation of body and mind, a short period of which proving to be more refreshing than hours of restless sleep. In the recommendation of a Buddhist author: "Relax each portion of the body deliberately and consciously; then close the eyes and try to visualise utter darkness. Feel yourself floating in a silent void, and deliberately empty the mind of every thought and feeling by imagining such a condition as Swinburne's "Only a sleep eternal in an eternal night."² And the author concludes that, once the proper knack is acquired, even a short duration of this exercise will produce an abundance of fresh energy and a clean-swept and invigorated mind.

Be that as it may, this negative method of relaxation cannot take us very far on our road to the conquest of sleep. It should form rather the essential preliminary step to a far more effective and spiritually beneficial one: to become conscious in our sleep and deliberately utilise our nights for progress.

(B)Conscious utilisation of nights: At this point we would like to dispel a possible misunderstanding that may arise in connection with this suggestion for a conscious utilisation of our nights. There may be a lurking fear in some minds that this attempt at the cultivation of the vast fields of our nights, instead of bringing in a more reposeful and therefore a more invigorating sleep,

¹ Bulletin, Vol. XII, No. 4, pp. 87-91.

² The Buddhist Society (Compilers), London, Concentration and Meditation, p. 44.

Page 214

---

would on the other hand affect its depth and detract from the efficacity of our nightly rest which is so salutary and indispensable for our physical health.

But this fear and doubt have got no basis in fact. For, as the Mother has assured us, it is only the useless and uncontrollable and mostly subconscious activities in our sleep that make our nights more fatiguing than the day. On the contrary, "if our night granted us the acquisition of new knowledge, the solution of an absorbing problem, the establishment of contact in our inner being with some centre of life or of light, or even the accomplishment of some useful work, we should always get up with a feeling of vigour and well-being. It is the hours wasted in doing nothing useful or good that are the most fatiguing;"?

This conscious cultivation of our sleep-existence for reaping fruits for our inner growth is then the second essential element of our endeavour to make the state of physical sleep a real restorer of our energies.

But the gain acquired even in this way seems to be limited in its scope so far as our main problem of drastically reducing the hours of sleep is concerned. For that we have to become conscious masters of another significant phenomenon of our sleep-life: the possibility of entrance into the "suṣupti of Brahman or Brahmaloka."²

(C) Attainment of Sachchidananda immobility: Once before, we have already made a passing reference to this state of luminous rest in sleep. As a matter of fact, for sleep to be at all worth the name fulfilling its role of the restorer of energies, it must be either one "in which there is a luminous silence"³ or else one "in which there is Ananda in the cells."⁴ The rest of our sleep-life is an attempt at sleep, not sleep itself. To quote from the Mother a passage to which we have already referred:

"There is the possibility of a sleep in which you enter into an absolute silence, immobility and peace in all parts of your being and your consciousness merges into Sachchidananda. You can hardly call it sleep, for it is extremely conscious. In that condition you may remain for a few minutes, but these few minutes give you more

¹Words of Long Ago, p. 42. (Italics ours)

²Letters on Yoga, p. 1484.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 1483.

Page 215

---

rest and refreshment than hours of ordinary sleep."¹

Sri Aurobindo too has treated this topic on numerous occasions. Thus, to quote from him only one passage :

"In sleep one ... passes from consciousness to deeper consciousness in a long succession until one reaches the psychic and rests there or else from higher to higher consciousness until one reaches rest in some silence and peace. The few minutes one passes in this rest are the real sleep which restores, — if one does not get it, there is only a half rest."²

But, as a matter of fact, this brief Sachchidananda period of "luminous and peaceful dreamless rest"³ that "gives sleep all its restorative value"⁴ cannot be had "by chance; it requires a long training."⁵ Indeed, our ordinary sleep, even when it is of the best variety, is mostly taken up with our actual travelling towards this state of Sachchidananda immobility and our return journey to the waking awareness, without very often ever reaching the state at all.

And even if we reach this state on some rare occasions, "it is done unconsciously as it is. If one wants to do it consciously and regulate it, one has first to become conscious in sleep."⁶ And then alone can the prospect possibly open up before us of reducing the hours of sleep to a bare minimum.

But even this cannot altogether eliminate the necessity of sleep. The reason is twofold, physiological and occult-spiritual, to whose consideration we now turn.

How to Eliminate the Necessity of Sleep?

Physical precondition : On the purely physico-physiological plane, since sleep is the body's unavoidable response to its overstrain and exhaustion through an ill-balanced expenditure of energy, what is needed is the total annulment of all possibility of our body's fatigue. And this brings us to the general problem of incapacity and inertia of our present physical organisation. For, although it is a fact that "either the yogic or the vital energy can

¹ Conversations with the Mother, p. 27.

²Letters on Yoga, p. 1484. (Italics ours)

³ The Life Divine, p. 425.

⁴ Letters on Yoga, p. 1484.

⁵ Conversations with the Mother, p. 28.

⁶Sri Aurobindo, Elements of Yoga, p. 107.

Page 216

---

long keep at work an overstrained or declining physical system, a time comes when this drawing is no longer so easy nor perhaps possible"¹ and the bad results long held back from manifesting explode all at once and a breakdown ensues.

So the problem of incapacity has to be tackled and solved on the plane of the body itself. For "the body is the key, the body the secret both of bondage and of release, of animal weakness and of divine power, of the obscuration of the mind and soul and of their illumination, of subjection to pain and limitation and of self-mastery, of death and of immortality."²

But what is the inherent reason for this fatigue of our body? Why does our physical system get periodically tired? Why can it not work in a continuous way?

In the words of the Mother: "The fatigue of the body comes from an inner disharmony. There may be many other apparent reasons, but all amount to that fundamental circumstance."³

What is this want of harmony due to ? The answer lies in the fact of a limited life-force, lodged in the confines of a limited and ego-bound individualised existence, contending in vain with the universal All-Life and All-Force that seeks constantly to govern and master it. In the evolutionary emergence and development of life in material forms, it is true that as consciousness develops more and more, "as the light of its own being emerges from the inert darkness of the involutionary sleep, the individual existence becomes dimly aware of the power in it and seeks first nervously and then mentally to master, use and enjoy the play."⁴ But, even at our best, we mental beings are bound by a poor and limited life-power which is all that our body can bear or to which it can give scope. And "in the consequent interchange and balancing between the movement and interaction of the vital energies normally at work in the body and their interchange with those which act upon it from outside, whether the energies of others or of the general Pranic force variously active in the environment, there is a constant precarious balancing and adjustment which may at any moment go wrong."⁵

¹Letters on Yoga, p. 1480.

²The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 507.

³ Nolini Kanta Gupta, The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (Part Eight), p. 85.

⁴ The Life Divine, p. 191.

⁵ The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 509.

Page 217

---

Thus, in the very nature of things, our individualised life and force in the body cannot master the All-Force working in the world. On the contrary, the resistance which it offers through blind ignorance to the movement of the infinite universal Life "with whose total will and trend its own will and trend may not immediately agree",¹ subjects it to the law of incapacity and fatigue, one of the basic characteristics of individualised and divided Life in the body.

Hence to cure our physical system of all liability to fatigue, the limitation of ego has to be totally abrogated not only in the inner parts of our being, but in the very physical consciousness and the material organisation of the body. Our body has to be brought into complete harmony with the demands of our own inner consciousness and with the infinite cosmic rhythm.

But "that means", in the words of the Mother, "a work in each cell of the body, in each small activity, in each movement of the organs .... You have to enter into the disposition of the cells, your inner physical organisation if the body is to answer to the Force that descends .... You must be conscious of your physical cells, you must know their different functions, the degrees of receptivity in each, which of them are in good condition and which are not."²

But this cannot be attempted with the help of the insufficient and inefficient light of mind-consciousness. It is only through the descent and concomitant emergence of the divine Gnosis, Supermind, here in the midst of the evolutionary Becoming, that Matter and material body can be rid of their inertia and inconscience and a proper equation established between the life-energy playing in an individual formation and the surges of the embracing All-Force. For in the Supermind "alone is the conscious unity of all diversities; there alone will and knowledge are equal and in perfect harmony; there alone Consciousness and Force arrive at their divine equation."³

It is through the supramental transformation of our physical body, — that "is still a flower of the material Inconscience,"⁴ — down to its very cells and functionings that the law of incapacity and consequent fatigue will be finally abrogated and with it the

¹ The Life Divine, p. 196.

² Nolini Kanta Gupta, op. cit., p. 87.

³ The Life Divine, p. 215.

⁴ Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, p. 12.

Page 218

---

physiological compulsion for sleep.

But there remains a final hurdle, the occult-spiritual necessity of sleep, but that too will be completely annulled with the gnostic transformation of our waking existence.

Occult-spiritual precondition: We have seen that in its essential nature our body's sleep is the response to the demand of the individual consciousness to go inward and awake in planes of existence not at present accessible to the waking awareness which is still in the grip of an involutionary half-sleep. So, unless and until this spiritual slumber is totally eliminated from all parts of the being including our very physical consciousness, mother Nature will constrain our body to fall occasionally into the swoon of slumber so that the portals of the inner and higher life can open.

Now, as we have mentioned in Chapter V ("Evolutionary Waking"), when Supermind or Gnosis, the Truth-Consciousness of Sachchidananda, overtly emerges in the field of evolution to become the governing principle of our embodied material existence, the manifested being will be in secure possession of an integral Consciousness and an integral Sight, so that there will be no more a state of sleep in opposition to the state of permanent waking, nor for that matter a line of demarcation separating the inner and outer domains of existence. The evolving being will then be fully aroused from the self-oblivion of an involutionary sleep and, along with it, the spiritual compulsion behind the sleep of our body will altogether lose its occult support.

In that foreseeable Golden Dawn, the body will thrill with the fulfilment of its destiny, it will participate in full awareness in the glories of a divinised life upon earth and the law of the inexorable necessity of sleep will be for ever lifted from its head.

But in the meantime let us not forget even for a moment the great role that sleep can play in the present organisation of our life and being; for, does it not open to us the doors of the dream-land, the Yogic dream-world, if only we know how to put it to service?

And who can belittle the infinite charm and beauty and bliss that the Mother of Dreams may bestow upon us, if only we care to court Her favour?

Page 219

---

Appendix

THE MOTHER OF DREAMS*

Sri Aurobindo

Goddess supreme, Mother of Dream, by thy ivory doors when thou standest,

Who are they then that come down unto men in thy visions that troop, group upon group, down the path of the

shadows slanting ?

Dream after dream, they flash and they gleam with the flame of the stars still around them;

Shadows at thy side in a darkness ride where the wild fires dance, stars glow and glance and the random meteor glistens;

There are voices that cry to their kin who reply; voices sweet, at the heart they beat and ravish the soul as it listens.

What then are these lands and these golden sands and these seas more radiant than earth can imagine?

Who are those that pace by the purple waves that race to the cliff-bound floor of thy jasper shore under skies in which mystery muses,

Lapped in moonlight not of our night or plunged in sunshine that is not diurnal?

Who are they coming thy Oceans roaming with sails whose strands are not made by hands, an unearthly wind advances ?

Why do they join in a mystic line with those on the sands linking hands in strange and stately dances?

Thou in the air, with a flame in thy hair, the whirl of thy wonders watching,

Holdest the night in thy ancient right, Mother divine, hyacinthine, with a girdle of beauty defended.

Sworded with fire, attracting desire, thy tenebrous kingdom thou keepest,

Starry-sweet, with the moon at thy feet, now hidden now seen the clouds between in the gloom and the drift of thy tresses.

Only to those whom thy fancy chose, O thou heart-free, is it given to see thy witchcraft and feel thy caresses.

* Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems (Centenary Edition), Vol. 5, pp. 67-68.

Page 220

---

Open the gate where thy children wait in their world of a beauty undarkened.

High-throned on a cloud, victorious, proud I have espied Maghavan ride when the armies of wind are behind him;

Food has been given for my tasting from heaven and fruit of immortal sweetness;

I have drunk wine of the kingdoms divine and have heard the change of music strange from a lyre which our hands cannot master;

Doors have swung wide in the chambers of pride where the Gods reside and the Apsaras dance in their circles faster and faster.

For thou art she whom we first can see when we pass the bounds of the mortal,

There at the gates of the heavenly states thou hast planted thy wand enchanted over the head of the Yogin waving.

From thee are the dream and the shadows that seem and the fugitive lights that delude us;

Thine is the shade in which visions are made; sped by thy hands from celestial lands come the souls that rejoice for ever.

Into thy dream-worlds we pass or look in thy magic glass, then beyond thee we climb out of Space and

Time to the peak of divine endeavour.

End of Part Three

Page 221