Integral yoga and Evolutionary Mutation

Preface

Yoga has for long been conceived as the discipline that necessitates rejection of life and its activities. The Integral Yoga, on the contrary, maintains that all life is Yoga and that life can greatly be helped if we apply the principles of yoga to the problems of life. All life must be accepted, but all life must be transformed by the application of the Integral Yoga. It is further contended that the contemporary problems of life have reached a critical stage and that criticality can be resolved only if we apply principles of Integral Yoga to the problems of the contemporary crisis.

The purpose of this book is to elucidate this view of the Integral Yoga and to bring out how Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) and the Mother (1878-1973), while they were developing Integral Yoga, have confronted the problems of the contemporary crisis and have shown that the Integral Yoga can become an aid to humanity and it can even be used as an aid to the development of the next step of evolution itself.

According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the contemporary crisis of humanity is evolutionary in character and that the basic solution to the crisis requires, and even necessitates, evolutionary progression that leads to the emergence of the next species. In 13 volumes of 'Mother's Agenda', we find an evolutionary graph traced by the Mother between 1951 and 1973 of the descent of the Supramental Consciousness in how the problems of matter and life can be confronted and solved so as to bring about the mutation of

human species. During this process, the problem of the law of physical death has been questioned, and we have an account of the corporeal and psychological difficulties that stand in the way of transformation of the human body and the development of -a new instrumental structure of the Divine Body.

All this is directly relevant to all those whose interests extend beyond the present horizons of the current fields of physical and biological sciences as also of the psychological and spiritual sciences. The question of synthesis of science and spirituality is one of the problems that occupies the concerns of those researchers who want direction of science to be centered on the highest human welfare and who feel that spirituality can best sub-serve the highest aspirations for durable peace and new world-order of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The problems and concerns are, indeed, deeper. In this context Integral Yoga can be looked upon as a process by which the synthesis of science and spirituality can be expected to be realized.

This book invites the readers to study the original works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and particularly, Sri Aurobindo's book 'The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth' and 13 Volumes of 'Mother's Agenda.'

Kireet Joshi

-03_Yoga and Evolution.htm

PART ONE

Yoga and Evolution

Evolution can, when examined in its inner processes of development, be seen to be basically a process of yoga; and yoga can, when examined from the point of view of the instruments which are selected for application for purification and concentration, be considered to be a process of evolution. However, yoga and its processes aim at acceleration of the processes of natural evolution, and they eliminate more and more effectively the ordinary tardy method of slow and confused growth that we find in the processes of natural evolution. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

".. .the natural evolution is at its best an uncertain growth under cover, partly by the pressure of the environment, partly by a groping education and an ill-lighted purposeful effort, an only partially illumined and half-automatic use of opportunities with many blunders and lapses and relapses; a great portion of it is made up of apparent accidents and circumstances and vicissitudes — though veiling a secret divine intervention and guidance. In Yoga we replace this confused, crooked crab-motion by a rapid, conscious and self-directed evolution which is planned to carry us, as far as can be, in a straight line towards the goal set before us."

There are, according to Sri Aurobindo, three stages that cover the entire process of manifestation that is relevant to evolution. An involution of the spirit in the inconscience is

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the beginning; evolution in the ignorance with its play of possibilities of a partial developing knowledge is the middle; a consummation in a deployment of the spirit's self knowledge and self-power of its divine being and consciousness is the culmination. It may be argued that the two stages that have already occurred seem at first sight to deny the possibility of the later consummating state of the cycle, but it is stressed that logically they imply its emergence. For, it is argued, if the inconscience has evolved consciousness, the partial consciousness already reached must surely evolve into complete consciousness, considering that just as the impulse towards Mind ranges from the more sensitive reactions of Life in the metal and the plant up to its full organization in man, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. It is, therefore, contended that it is a supramentalised, perfected and divinized life for which the earth-nature is secretly seeking, and that a progressive manifestation of this kind can only have for its secret or significance, the evolution of a Being in a perfect Becoming.

The three stages of the development of manifestation and the movements can provide us a clue as to how the processes of evolution can be applied scientifically on the evolutionary process itself. This scientific application constitutes the central principle of yoga. For the development of yoga depends on a scrupulous examination of the level at which evolution has reached in our present human consciousness and whether the psychological workings of the human being can be so handled that the causes of the slowness of the natural functionings can be eliminated for the purposes of introducing into the evolutionary process those principles and methods which would facilitate its hastening or

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acceleration. Yoga, as Swami Vivekananda has said, may be regarded as a means of compressing one's evolution into a single life or a few years or even a few months of the bodily existence^.2

In this light, yoga no more remains as something mystic or abnormal which has no relation to the ordinary process of the World-Energy or the purpose she keeps in view in her subjective and objective self-fulfilment. Yoga reveals itself rather as an intense and exceptional use of powers that Nature has already manifested or is progressively organizing in her less exalted but more general operations. It may be said that all natural evolution and life is subconscious yoga, and all life can become in the human being a conscious yoga, as multisided and as integral as life itself, so that one can say in a more perfect and luminous sense: "All life is yoga". The integral yoga that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have proposed is, indeed, a yoga of evolution, based on the perception that the human being is a transitional being and that the human being can be consciously utilized as a thinking and living laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation a farther evolution can be worked out so as to bring about a willed mutation of the human species. The integral yoga is thus, by its very nature, connected with the progress of humanity, with the problems of humanity, and with the ideals that humanity is developing today towards creation of a new order of the world through the instrumentality of which highest state of humanity's fulfillment can be realized.³

Evolution and Human Progress

It may, however, be argued that even if there was an

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evolutionary stress in the animal kingdom as a result of which man has evolved, that stress must have sunk back into quiescence as soon as the object was fulfilled by man's appearance. It may further be argued that there is no evolutionary stress in humanity; it may be contended that the idea of human progress itself is very probably an illusion, for there is no sign that man, once emerged from the animal stage, has radically progressed during his race-history. It may be conceded that man has advanced in knowledge of the physical world, in Science, in the handling of his surroundings, in his purely external and utilitarian use of the secret laws of Nature. But it many be argued that despite the developments of science, man is what he always was in the early beginnings of civilization: he continues to manifest the same capacities, the same qualities and defects, the same efforts, achievements, frustrations. Again, even if it is contended that there has been progress, it may be argued that progress has been in a circle, at most perhaps in a widening circle. It may be pointed out that man today is not wiser than the ancient seers and sages and thinkers, not more spiritual than the great seekers of old, the first mighty mystics, not superior in arts and crafts to the ancient artists and craftsmen. It may be further contended that the old races that have disappeared showed their potent and intrinsic originality, invention, capacity of dealing with life and that, if modem man in this respect has gone a little farther, not by any essential progress but in degree, scope, abundance, it is because he has inherited the achievements of his forerunners. In any case, it may be argued that nothing warrants the idea that he will ever hew his way out of the half-knowledge, half- ignorance which is the stamp of his kind or, even if he develops a higher knowledge, that he can break out of the utmost boundary of the mental circle.⁴

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Sri Aurobindo has examined this argument and even formulated it in full sharpness. He has, therefore, provided basic facts of the urge in the mental man towards evolution of the spiritual man and contended that this evolution is marked by a long process of progression in four fields which are directly relevant to the evolution of spirituality: religion, occultism, philosophy and methodized spiritual effort or yoga. He has also pointed out that the very law of the human type manifests the impulse towards self-exceeding, and that the means for a conscious transition has been provided for among the spiritual powers of man. Sri Aurobindo concedes that what man has up till now principally done is to act within the circle of his nature, on a spiral of nature-movement, sometimes descending, sometimes ascending; Sri Aurobindo concedes that the history of humanity does not demonstrate a straight line of progress or any indisputable, fundamental or radical exceeding of his past nature. At the same time, Sri Aurobindo points out that man has, in due course of development of history, sharpened, subtilised, made more and more complex and plastic use of the natural capacities. Sri Aurobindo further points out that, "however great the ancients, however supreme some of their achievements and creations, however impressive their powers of spirituality, of intellect or of character, there has been in later developments an increasing subtlety, complexity, manifold development of knowledge and possibility in man's achievements, in his politics, society, life, science, metaphysics, knowledge of all kinds, art, literature; even in his spiritual endeavour, less surprisingly lofty and less massive in power of spirituality than that of the ancients, there has been this increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking."⁵

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Sri Aurobindo concedes that there have been falls from a high type of culture, a sharp temporary descent into a certain obscurantism, cessations of the spiritual urge, plunges into a barbaric natural materialism; but he points out that these are temporary phenomena, at worst a downward curve of the spiral of progress. Sri Aurobindo .acknowledges that the spiral of progress has not indeed carried the race beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being, but Sri Aurobindo points out that we have to judge the development of a species in terms of the law of the action of evolutionary Nature and that in terms of that law, the self exceeding and transformation of the mental being cannot be expected until the mental being has sufficiently developed up to its utmost capacity, and unless there has been sufficient integration of the powers of the mind with the powers of the lower phenomena of evolution. The action of evolution in Nature in a type of being and consciousness is, Sri Aurobindo points out,

"...first to develop the type to its utmost capacity by just such a subtilisation and increasing complexity till it is ready for her bursting of the shell, the ripened decisive emergence, reversal, turning over of consciousness on itself that constitutes a new stage in the evolution."⁶

Sri Aurobindo points out that if the animal being of the ape kind evolved into the human being because elements of humanity were already present in that animal being, then the appearance in the human being of a stress of spirituality and the appearance of a spiritual type in mental-animal humanity can be taken as a sign that there is an intention in Nature to evolve a spiritual and supramental being as a next step of the evolutionary movement.

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Evolutionary Appearance of the Supramental Being

Sri Aurobindo examines also the suggestion that even if the appearance of the supramental being could be admitted as an evolutionary culmination, and even if man is to be the medium of the next species of the supramental being, it will only be a few especially evolved human beings who will form the new type or move towards the new life, and that once done, the rest of humanity will sink back from a spiritual aspiration no longer necessary for Nature's purpose and remain quiescent in its normal status. In reply, Sri Aurobindo concedes at once that there is not the least probability or possibility of the whole human race rising in a block to the supramental level. As Sri Aurobindo points out,

"...what is suggested is nothing so revolutionary and astonishing, but only the capacity in the human mentality, when it has reached a certain level or a certain point of stress of the evolutionary impetus, to press towards a higher plane of consciousness and its embodiment in the being. The being will necessarily undergo by this embodiment a change from the normal constitution of its nature, a change certainly of its mental and emotional and sensational constitution and also to a great extent of the body-consciousness and the physical conditioning of our life and energies; but the change of consciousness will be the chief factor, the initial movement, the physical modification will be a subordinate factor, a consequence. This transmutation of the consciousness will always remain possible to the human being when the flame of the soul, the psychic kindling, becomes potent in heart and mind and the nature is ready. The spiritual aspiration is innate in man; for he is, unlike the animal, aware of imperfection and limitation and feels that there is something to be attained

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beyond what he now is: this urge towards self-exceeding is not likely ever to die out totally in the race. The human mental status will be always there, but it will be there not only as a degree in the scale of rebirth, but as an open step towards the spiritual and supramental status."⁷

According to Sri Aurobindo, the time has come in the evolutionary story of man when human progress demands imperatively an upward curve of the spiritual progress, and this progress impels the race to be carried beyond itself, into a self-exceeding, a transformation of the mental being and even mutation of the human species so as to establish on the earth the rule of the divine life in the divine body. But before the appearance of the divine body, there will have to come about a radical change of consciousness that can be effected by the ascent to the supermind and the descent of the supermind in the physical consciousness. Even in the previous developments of evolution, even when it appeared that the change in the physical organization preceded the change in the manifested power of consciousness, a change of consciousness, according to Sri Aurobindo, was always the major fact; evolution has, Sri Aurobindo points out, always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental, although that relationship 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," Sri Aurobindo states, "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. It has to be noted that the human mind has already shown a capacity

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to aid Nature in the evolution of new types of plant and animal; it has created new forms of its environment, developed by knowledge and discipline considerable changes in its own mentality. It is not an impossibility that man should aid Nature consciously also in his own spiritual and physical evolution and transformation."⁸

Significance of the Evolution of the Supermind for
Humanity and Its Problems

Sri Aurobindo contends that the evolution of the Supramental being would imply that the influence of the divine life on earth would fall upon the life of the Ignorance and impose harmony on it within its limits, and much that is disharmonious in human life would disappear. What is true in the mental ideals and dimly figured in them will tend to be triumphantly fulfilled. At the same time, in the light of supramental gnosis, the many mental idols, constructed principles and systems, conflicting ideals which man has created in all domains of his mind and life, could command no acceptance or reverence as a part of the vision of the divine life. Sri Aurobindo visualizes the development of a system of living which demands imperative rule of the principles of unity, perfect mutuality and harmony. Sri Aurobindo states:

"It is evident that in a life governed by the gnostic consciousness war with its spirit of antagonism and enmity, its brutality, destruction and ignorant violence, political strife with its perpetual conflict, frequent oppression, dishonesties, turpitudes, selfish interests, its ignorance, ineptitude and muddle could have no ground for existence. ...Life and the body would be no longer tyrannous masters demanding nine-

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tenths of existence for their satisfaction, but means and powers for the expression of the Spirit. At the same time, since the matter and the body are accepted, the control and the right use of physical things would be a part of the realized life of the Spirit in the manifestation in earth-nature."⁹

That spirituality and the manifestation of the supramental consciousness on the earth could provide solutions to the problems of humanity may be questioned; it may be argued that whatever has been achieved so far in the course of nature's evolution of the spiritual man in the human mental being cannot be regarded as the true evolution of consciousness; the evolution of spiritual consciousness may even be stigmatized as a sublimated crudity of ignorance deviating from the true human evolution. It may be contended that the right direction of human evolution should be solely an evolution of life-power, the practical physical mind, the reason governing thought and conduct and the discovery and organizing intelligence. In the contrast of our present celebration of the life of the mind in Matter, spiritual realization and experience can be discredited as a shadowy mysticism. It may be argued that the mystic turns aside into he unreal, into occult regions of a self-constructed land of chimeras. It may even be argued that the spiritual tendency n humanity has come to very little; it has not solved the problem of life or any of the problems with which humanity is at grips. It may be pointed out that the mystic either detaches himself from life as the other-worldly ascetic or as he aloof visionary and therefore cannot help life, or else he brings no better solution or result than the practical man or the man of intellect and reason. It may even be complained that the mystic by his intervention disturbs the human values, distorts them with his alien and unverifiable light obscure to

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the human understanding and confuses the plain practical and vital issues life puts before us.10

Sri Aurobindo has examined this entire chain of argument in detail. But, in brief, he points to the examination of the significance of the spiritual evolution of man, not from a judgment that proceeds from a view of things which in itself is bound to pass into discredit. For that judgment depends ultimately on the circular argument that the material is the only reality because reality is exclusively material, and this circularity and its consequent dogmatism stand refuted as soon as we begin to investigate the operations of mind and of supermind in themselves, and without the prejudgment that is dogmatically determined from the beginning to see in them only a subordinate term of Matter. Sri Aurobindo points out that the moment we recognize, as our enlarging experience compels us to recognize, that there are in the universe knowable realities beyond the range of the senses and in man powers and faculties which determine rather than are determined by the material organs through which they hold themselves in touch with the world of the senses, the very basis of the argument of the materialist collapses. Sri Aurobindo points out that not only are there physical realities which are supra-sensible, but, if evidence and experience are at all a test of truth, there are also senses which are supraphysical and can not only take cognizance of the realities of the material world without the aid of the corporeal sense organs, but can bring us into contact with other realities, supraphysical and belonging to another world.11

But even if the extreme materialistic view of things can be rejected in the light of experiences of various levels of existence, and even if in the light of the science of yoga, truth

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of spirituality may be admitted, it may still be argued that spirituality implies detachment from the world and has therefore no possibility of presenting solutions to the problems of human life. In reply, Sri Aurobindo points out that while there has been a strong tendency in mysticism towards asceticism and other-worldliness, that is not the total account of mysticism. It may even be argued that asceticism or other-worldly tendency can be looked upon, in the context of evolutionary experiments of Nature, as an experiment to examine how far the spiritual consciousness can transcend the world; and it can even be affirmed that the ascetic has succeeded in proving that he can transcend the limitations of the body-life-mind complex and can gain the capacity of voluntary escape from the limitations imposed by material Nature. It is true that this proof does not amount to the proof of the power of the Spirit to transform Nature; but it can be argued that the capacity of the Spirit to transcend Nature can serve as a basis for a farther possibility of transforming Nature and even of solving the problems of humanity. In the total view of spiritual history of humankind, it can be said that the spiritual man has not stood back altogether from the life of humanity. On the contrary, the sense of unity with all beings, the stress of a universal love and compassion, the will to spend the energies for the good of all creatures, are central to the dynamic out-flowering of the spirit.12

Spiritual leaders, seers, prophets and saints have turned to help and to guide, and they have even produced results which can be considered to be prodigious. It is true that human life has not come to be transformed, and the spiritual tendency has been to look more beyond life than towards life. It is also true that spirituality has been successful in the life of individuals but not in the field of collectivity. At the same

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time, it needs to be underlined that the solution of the problems of human life which spirituality offers is not a solution by external means, though these also have to be used, but by an inner change, a transformation of the consciousness and nature. Humanity normally expects political, social or other mechanical remedies; but these remedies succeed in altering outward environment, and the human beings continue to be moved by ego and governed by vital desires and passions of the needs of the body; and these are the basic causes of pain and suffering, and they cannot be remedied except by spiritual methods. To discover the spiritual being in oneself and to help others towards the same evolution is the real service that the spiritual leader can render to the race; outward help can indeed succor and elevate, but that is not enough; humanity needs a more radical help, but for that help to be effective, humanity itself has to develop much more than it has done so far. On the other hand, spirituality itself has to develop a higher instrumental dynamic power than what the mind can provide.

As Sri Aurobindo points out, the spiritual evolution of Nature is still in process and incomplete; its main preoccupation has been to affirm and develop a basis of spiritual consciousness and knowledge and to create more and more a foundation or formation for the vision of that which is eternal in the truth of the spirit. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, points out:

"It is only when Nature has fully confirmed this intensive evolution and formation through the individual that anything radical of an expanding or dynamically diffusive character can be expected or any attempt at collective spiritual life, —

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such attempts have been made, but mostly as a field of protection for the growth of the individual's spirituality, — acquire a successful permanence."13

Again, Sri Aurobindo points out that if it were the sole intention of Nature in the evolution of the spiritual man to awaken him to the supreme Reality and release him from Nature or Prakriti of the three gunas, or from the Ignorance in which Nature as the Power of the Eternal has masked herself, then the task of spiritual evolution has in essence been already accomplished. The ways have been built, the capacity to follow them has been developed, and all that is left is for each soul to reach individually the right stage and turn of its development, enter into the spiritual ways and pass by its own chosen path out of this inferior existence. But then the collectivity of humanity will have to remain confined to the perpetual conflict between the individual and the collectivity, within the circle of the ego and its dualities, and the evolutionary stress in humanity will have to be denied its urge to complete what is intended in the involution of the supermind in the Inconscience. That would mean at the present stage of evolution, a constant state of crisis and ultimate recourse to the transition to a new supramental species by means of leaving humanity aside and not fulfilling the human urge to exceed the limitations of humanity as an open passage. But as against this possibility, Sri Aurobindo points out that there is in Nature a farther intention, — not only a revelation of Spirit but a radical and integral transformation of Nature. According to Sri Aurobindo, this farther intention can be read in the evolutionary process itself, and from the point of view of that intention, it becomes obvious that not only is the Spirit to be liberated from Nature but Nature herself is to be liberated from her own limitations.

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What is to be attained is to secure a complete and radical ,of Nature which 'can establish a secure and settled new principle, a new creation, a permanent new order of being in the field of terrestrial Nature. The mind has evolved, but not the supermind, the spiritual man has evolved, but not the supramental being who shall thence forward be the leader of that Nature.14 According to Sri Aurobindo, the unaccomplished task has now to be worked out, and it is that unaccomplished task, in the process of its progression and high levels of accomplishment, that holds out the promise of an invaluable and indispensable aid to the solution of the problems of humanity.

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PART FOUR

The Problem of Death and Physical Immortality

In the beginning of 1970, the Mother spoke of the replacement of knowledge-processes in her body by a new perception which was total, something that comprehended at the same time hearing, vision and knowledge. There was, she said, no differentiation among her organs. She pointed out that the new consciousness insisted on surpassing all divisions and all exclusiveness, including the great division of life and death. The Mother discovered 'over-life', which is at once life and death or which is rather something that cannot be described either as life or as death, but some other third state in which the contradiction of life and death is overcome. The question of death had begun to receive the Mother's attention more and more pointedly during the last several years. In fact, as the Mother had said, the problem of death was the problem that was given to her to solve.

The question of death and immortality has been explored right from the Vedic times, and the aim of the attainment of immortality has been envisaged right from the Vedic times. According to one view, the human body is by its very nature mortal, and it is destined to get dissolved sooner or later, even though there are a number of examples where individuals have been able to prolong their lives beyond hundred years. According to another view, while death is inevitable, the timing of death could be controlled. According to still another view, the mortality of the body does not affect the immortality

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of the soul. Even when, in certain philosophies, the existence of the soul is denied, there is an affirmation of the immortal Eternal Spirit or Self, and the experience of that Self or Spirit is regarded as the experience of immortality and even of attainment of immortality. There is also a view that immortality need hot be pursued as an ideal, since the body gets worn out in due course of development and becomes afflicted with increasing disease and incapacity and, therefore, it is best to discard the body and to welcome the mortality of the body. It is true, it is acknowledged, that there is a great urge in most of the human beings to survive in the body as long as possible, and there has been also search for elixir, the administration of which would lead to continuous youthfulness of the body and immortality of the body. In the context of these conflicting views about mortality and immortality, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have confronted the issue centrally and come to the conclusion that the necessity of the death of the body implies deficiency in the manifestation of the spirit in the body and that the full manifestation of spirit in the body would imply optimality of the Will of the spirit to continue in the same body or to leave the body, ichachā mrtyu.50 In either case, the necessity of the death would have been overcome.

Ultimate Reality and Phenomena of Death, Desire and Incapacity⁵¹

According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the highest concept and experience of yoga has been that of the Ultimate
Reality, which has come to be conveyed through the word 'Sachchidananda', the inexpressible complex oneness of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss. Although ineffable, this ultimate reality can still be intellectually grasped through

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these three concepts and through two other concepts, namely, infinity and eternity as inevitably fundamental to the concept of Sachchidananda. It is seen that throughout the history of philosophy, Indian and Western, infinity and eternity, — these two concepts — have proved to be rationally inescapable, even though their intelligibility has often come to be questioned. Nonetheless, even when these two concepts have been declared to be intellectual fictions, they have still been found to be inescapable. The infinite existence and the eternal existence, even if intellectually declared to be incomprehensible, seem to impose upon ourselves as soon as we look at the universe and try to comprehend it. In yoga, however, the ultimate reality, at its highest, has come to be experienced and realized as infinite and eternal, both as the highest possibilities of extensions of consciousness and that which lies beyond all extensions. Even if, on a certain line of yogic experience, there is a farther attempt at transcendence, and even if, what is attained in the state of utter transcendence is described intellectually as Non-Being, the one inescapable truth of that experience is its permanence, and it can still be regarded as infinite and eternal and therefore immortal. Beyond all descriptions, That, which can be described as the utter Being or as Non being or both, being and a non-being and even beyond both being and non-being, has been affirmed by the Vedic and Upanishadic experience as imperishable and that, which having been attained, nothing further remains to be attained : that is the realization of immortality.

Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that That, which is described as ineffable Sachchidananda is the content of the loftiest experience of the reality, unsurpassed in the history of yoga and even unsurpassable, since That is the ultimate.

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Sri Aurobindo and the Mother confirmed that the attainment of That is the experience of immortality, and whatever other
meanings that may come to be attached to the word immortality must have their foundation in the experience of That unsurpassed and unsurpassable eternal and infinite X. The enigma for yoga, as also for any philosophical or intellectual enquiry, is the constant experience of impermanence and of constant formation and dissolution of forms, of birth and death.

The enigma is felt most acutely when an effort is made to arrive at the reconciliation between immortality and mortality. It was this enigma that the Vedic and the Upanishadic Rishis attempted to resolve, and the answer they came to propose is that although the ultimate Reality is eternal and infinite, the existence of that eternity and infinity is conscious and the consciousness of infinity and eternity has the power of eternal stability and constant mutability in terms of its formations. The eternal stability was experienced as the fullness of potency and therefore not incapable of formulating the endless forms of eternal infinite existence. And they further verified in their yogic experiences that the human being, too, in his consciousness can arrive at eternal stability as also its full potency capable of constant manifestation of endless forms. This Realization, on the part of the human being, arrived at by the pursuit of the methods of the fullest possible extension of his consciousness, can properly be called for the human being the experience of immortality. At the same time, they also pointed out that although that experience of immortality is always possible, the human being is at present found to be in his psychological state confined to relative finitude, which has taken the form of what can be described as the ego. How the consciousness of the human being has come to become

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finite and limited in the egoistic consciousness was for these seers a matter for experiential and experimental exploration of consciousness. Consciousness was for them a central object of yogic enquiry, and it was through that enquiry that they sought to answer the enigma of the experiences of immortality and mortality or death.

In fact, death, they found, is intimately connected with the phenomena of desire and incapacity. These phenomena, death, desire and incapacity, are directly linked with the finiteness of human consciousness. The mark of finiteness, they discovered, was the rigid confinement to the apprehension of multiplicity of formations accompanied by the absence of the comprehension of the unity and transcendence of infinity and eternity. That confinement to the exclusive apprehension of multiplicity was termed by the Vedic Rishis as aciti and by the Upanishadic Rishis as avidyā. According to them, confinement to aciti or avidyā was the cause of desire or hunger, and they equated hunger with Death (aśanāyā mrtyuh).

The individual, on account of limitation of his consciousness within the boundaries of his finitude or ignorance, does not know how to receive the infinitude of the ocean of life that is all around himself. On account of the ignorance, the individual finds himself incapable of receiving in his field the flow of the infinity. This incapacity is sought to be overcome by the finite consciousness, even when the individual does not normally know how to overcome that incapacity. The ignorant seeking of the
removal of the incapacity takes the form of desire. Desire is in its ultimate analysis, the ignorant effort of the finite to become the infinite, to receive the infinite and to relate properly with the infinite. But confined to the ignorance and

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finiteness, the individual seeks and seeks, — desires and desires, — and indeed, grows and aggrandizes himself, but fails to grow into infinity and to receive the infinity and to relate rightly with infinity. In his extreme effort, the individual gets dashed by the infinity and the finite form in which the individual remains confined gets dissolved, and it is that dissolution that we call death. But if the individual were only a finite form struggling with immense incapacity to embrace the infinity through the impulsion of desire, then the finitude must inevitably get dissolved, and death becomes the unsurpassable law for finite existence. But the Vedic and Vedantic knowledge discovers that the individual is himself an imperishable portion, an individual portion of the imperishable Reality that is at once static and dynamic, and this is the truth of the individual that the Gita formulates in clear terms when it describes the individual as the eternal and imperishable portion of the Supreme, mama eva amśah sanātanah.52 The individual remains always immortal, even though the finite forms in which it is embodied get dissolved.

The question is of ignorance and of the ego. If the ego ceases to be confined to its finitude and if the ego comes to learn and know the truth of the infinity, the imperishable infinity of stability as also the infinity of imperishable flow of Life, and if it comes to know and also applies its knowledge of the Immortal Reality and Immortal Life, then there is no inevitability of these three great deficiencies which seem to be the imperative yoke and law of human life, — incapacity, desire and death. The immortal and eternal portion of the Supreme does not need to remain confined to incapacity, if he knows and practises the truth that he is imperishably connected with the supreme infinite stability which is also imperishable source of Life. He does not need

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to desire and does not need to struggle to catch scattered portions from the flow of the infinity and to aggrandize his finitude, if he comes to know that he himself is the imperishable portion of all that is there in the universe and beyond. He does not need necessarily to die, he does not stand in an obligation to dissolve the forms in which he is at present confined, if he knows the art of connecting his finite forms with the rush of the infinite ocean of Life and if he renews his forms at will in accordance with the rhythm of the flow of the infinity of the ocean of life. He may then retain his constantly developing forms of expression; he may
enlarge them, contract them and even dissolve them and renew them in harmony with the flow of the universal life force. He does not need to be besieged constantly by the sting of Death, and he can constantly change his formations or enlarge his formations according to the need of the universal flow of life. He can vanquish the necessity of dissolving the form; he can live immortally with constant renewal of forms and be the master of Life, since he is indeed the imperishable portion of the Master of all existence, static and dynamic.

Indeed, the knowledge by which the individual can recover his awareness of immortality, of the immortality of the supreme of which he is a eternal portion and the Knowledge of the imperishable stability of the infinite and the eternal and the imperishable flow of the ocean of the eternity, — if that knowledge happens to be merely intellectual, it cannot bring about an effective dissolution of the operation of the twilight of the ignorance by which the individual is surrounded and to which he is tied. That knowledge is to be Yogic knowledge, and that Yogic knowledge can be developed by the process of rising upwards from the plane of the mind to the supermind; all this

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was known and affirmed by the Rishis of the Veda and the Upanishads. Even then, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother point out that there was still in their knowledge and in their yogic discipline incompleteness. According to them, there is a need of the descent of the supermind and its permanent establishment in the earth plane, if the full consequences of the premises of the knowledge of the Sachchidananda are to be concretely realized in the life of the earth. And it is here that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother conducted a fresh research, and they discovered that which had still remained undiscovered; and they opened the way by which the supermind can be manifested on the earth as a gradation of the earth-life, and, as a result, there could appear even in physical life, by the very process of transformation of matter itself, a divine body, which shall be free from the inevitability, even in the earth life, of the law of Death.

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-09_Integral Yoga.htm

PART SEVEN

Integral Yoga: Synthesis of Science and Spirituality

The integral yoga as developed by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is, although perfected in all its aspects, still an unfinished chapter opening itself to the future that is in the making. It is impossible to turn this yoga into a religion; it has no dogmas and rituals that can be mechanically believed in or practised. It is a multisided Way that is still being traversed; it is open to any individual for his or her free choice to traverse in the way that is suitable to his or her own law of nature and development; it is also available to humanity as an indispensable aid to its advance towards the highest ideals of unity and harmony that have come to be envisaged at this initial junction of its journey.

There are, however, two sections of humanity that are likely to study more readily this integral yoga with the highest degree of earnestness. These are: seekers who are wedded to scientific knowledge and scientific method, and the seekers who are wedded to the methodical quest of psychic, spiritual and supramental realization. Both these categories of seekers will find, in the Records of Experiments and Realizations left by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the required testimony of the promise that they are likely to cherish and to pursue for the fulfillment of their quest.

There are today an increasing number of scientists who have begun to open themselves, without abandoning their

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scientific rigour of quest, to the insights and illuminations that can come to them from the domain of spirituality and spiritual quest; on the other hand, there are increasing number of spiritual seekers who value greatly science and scientific method and who are keen to develop scientific and illumined synthesis of science and spirituality. It may even be said that the thesis of the synthesis of science and spirituality is gaining ground among increasing number of seekers as the most important thesis of our times. They are likely to ask whether that synthesis has been achieved in the results that have been accomplished in the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Both, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, look upon yoga as Science, and, as Sri Aurobindo points out, "Yogic methods have something of the same relation to the customary psychological workings of man as has the scientific handling of the natural force of electricity or of steam to the normal operations of steam and of electricity. And they, too, are formed upon a knowledge developed and confirmed by regular experiment, practical analysis and constant result.....

"All methods grouped under the common name of Yoga are special psychological processes founded on a fixed truth of Nature and developing, out of normal functions, powers and results which were always latent but which her ordinary movements do not easily or do not often manifest."⁹⁹

Sri Aurobindo has also stated in one of his letters with what scientific rigour he and the Mother have conducted their work of yogic research. He writes:

"....we do not found ourselves on faith alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing on our lives. I think I can say that I have been

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testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory and his method on the physical plane."100

There is, it can be said, no doubt that SriAurobindo's and the Mother's account of the integral yoga can successfully stand the most rigourous tests that can legitimately be applied in regard to their methods as also in regard to their results that have been achieved. Sri Aurobindo's 'Record of Yoga' and 'Mother's Agenda' are available to anyone who cares to study and inquire.

It can also be said that the body of knowledge that we find in the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother cover large areas of humanistic studies and whatever they have written about their studies of Matter, Life and Mind, and, particularly, on the theme of evolution, on which various sciences, philosophy and yogic systems converge today together, represent an ever growing mass of synthesis of knowledge. Considering this work, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have advanced the theme of synthesis of science and spirituality to a high level of maturity.

But it cannot be said, as yet, that their work represents the summit of the synthesis of science and spirituality. In one of her illuminating conversations with Satprem, while commenting upon two important Aphorisms from the writings of Sri Aurobindo, she has commented on the theme of synthesis of science and spirituality. What the Mother has said, in effect, is that only the fabrication of something that was the subject of her yogic research at that time, i.e.. May 24, 1962, would give that assurance that is required for the unshakable synthesis of science and spirituality. From the" context in which this conversation takes place, it can be said

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that the subject of her yogic research at that time was that of fabricating the supramentalised or divine body, and it can, therefore, be surmised that what science demands for its ultimate proof of utter objectivity of knowledge, and what spirituality ought to demand for its ultimate victory on the earth, can be fulfilled only if supramental consciousness can be demonstratively seen and touched in supramental physical body.

Let us refer to that conversation of the Mother of May 24,1962:

Satprem read out the following from Sri Aurobindo's Thoughts and Aphorisms'.

"73 - When Wisdom comes, her first lesson is, "There is no such thing as knowledge; there are only apercus of the Infinite Deity."

Very good.
No need for questions.

"74 - Practical knowledge is a different thing; that is real and serviceable, but it is never complete. Therefore to systematize and codify it is necessary but fatal."

It is real within its own realm — only within its own realm.

[The Mother comments:]

I have looked at this very, very often. There was even a time when I thought that if one could get a total, complete and perfect knowledge of the whole working of physical Nature as we perceive it in the world of Ignorance, then this might be a means to rediscover or reattain the Truth of things. After my last experience [of April 13] I can no longer think

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this way.

I don't know if I am making myself clear.... I thought for a time, a very long time, that if Science went to its furthest possible limits (if this is conceivable), it would join up with true Knowledge. In the study of the composition of matter, for example — by pressing the investigation further and further on — a point would be reached where the two would meet. But when I had that experience of passing from the eternal Truth-Consciousness to the individualized world, well... it appeared impossible to me. And if you ask me now, I think that this possibility of Science pushed to its extreme limits joining up with true Knowledge, and this impossibility of any true conscious connection with the material world are both incorrect. There is something else.

And more and more these days, I find myself facing the whole problem as if I had never seen it before.

Both paths may be leading towards a third point, and that third point is what I am at present... not exactly studying; I am rather in quest of it — the point where the two paths merge into a third that would be the TRUE thing.

But in any case, if it could be absolutely total (there's an "if here), objective, scientific knowledge pushed to its extreme limits would certainly bring you to the threshold. That's what Sri Aurobindo means. But he also says it's fatal, because all those who went in for that knowledge believed in it as an absolute truth, thus closing the door to the other approach. In this respect it is fatal.

From my own experience, though, I could say to all those who believe EXCLUSIVELY in the spiritual approach, the
approach through inner experience, that this —at least if it's

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exclusive — is equally fatal. For it reveals to them ONE aspect, ONE truth of the Whole — but not THE Whole. The other side seems just as indispensable to me, for when I was so utterly in that supreme Realization, this other falsified, outer realization was undeniably just a distortion (and probably accidental) of something EQUALLY TRUE.

This "something" is what our research is about. And perhaps not merely research — we may be taking part in the
FABRICATION of it.

We are being made use of in the manifestation of this "something."

Something none can yet imagine, for so far it hasn't come into being. It is an expression yet to come.

That is all I can say.

(silence)

This is exactly the state of consciousness I am living in now. It's as if I were facing the same eternal problem but... from a NEW POSITION.

These positions — the spiritual and the "materialist" (if you can call it that) positions — which consider themselves
exclusive (exclusive and unique, and so each one denies the other's value in the name of Truth) are inadequate, not only
because neither one will accept the other, but because even accepting and uniting them both won't solve the problem.
Something else is needed, a third position that isn't the result of these two but something still to be discovered, which will
probably open the door to total Knowledge.

Well, that's where I stand.
More I can't say — that's as far as I have come.

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One might wonder how to participate practically in this....

This discovery?

That.... Ultimately, it's always the same thing. It's always the same: realize your own being, enter into conscious contact with supreme Truth of your own being, in WHATEVER form, by WHATEVER path (that's totally irrelevant); it's the only way. We each carry a truth within ourselves, and we must unite with that truth; we must live that truth. And the path we have to follow to realize and unite with this truth is the very path that will lead us as near as we can possibly come to Knowledge.

Who knows? Perhaps the very multiplicity of approaches will yield the Secret — the Secret that will open the door.

I don't think any single individual on earth (as it is now)
no matter how great he may be, no matter how eternal his consciousness and origin, can all by himself change and realize.... Change the world, change the creation as it is, and realize that higher Truth, the Truth that will be a new world — a truer, if not absolutely true, world. A certain number of individuals (until now they seem to have come in succession, in time, but they might also come as a collectivity, in space) would seem indispensable for this Truth to be concretized and realized.

On a practical level, I am sure of it.

In other words, no matter how great he may be, no matter how conscious, how powerful, ONE avatar all alone cannot
realize the supramental life on earth. Either a group in time, a number of individuals staggered over a certain period of

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time, or a group spread out over a certain space — or maybe both — is indispensable for this Realization. I am convinced of it.

The individual can give the initial impulse, point out the path, WALK the path himself ( I mean show the path by realizing it)... but he can't bring the work to fulfilment. The fulfilment of the work depends on certain collective laws that are the expression of a particular aspect of the Eternal and Infinite — naturally, it's all one and the same Being! There aren't different individuals and personalities, it's all one and the same Being. But the same Being expressing itself in a particular way that for us translates as a group or a collectivity.

Well, then — any other questions on this?

I would like to ask you in what way your vision has changed since the experience of April 13¯ what exactly is the difference?

I repeat.

For a very long time it had seemed to me that a perfect union between the scientific approach pushed to its extreme and the spiritual approach pushed to its extreme, to its utmost realization, a merging of the two would naturally lead to the Truth we seek, the total Truth. But with the two experiences I have had. the experience of the outer life (with universalisation, impersonalization — all the yogic experiences you can have in a material body) and the experience of total and perfect union with the Origin ... now that I've had those two experiences and something has happened — something I can't yet describe — I know that knowing and uniting the two is what is ... in the making. The third thing is what can lead to the Realization, to the Truth we seek."101

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We may also refer to the Message that the Mother had given on 24th April, 1956, while declaring the manifestation of the supermind on the earth. The Mother had also proposed in that Message a farther goal that is yet to be fulfilled. She had said: "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 recognize it."¹⁰²

This message brings out clearly the rigour of the criterion of the final proof that is proposed by Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother. There are, indeed, many levels of proofs, and during the course of the progression of the research conducted by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we find various levels of proofs, philosophical, experiential and even scientific, which transcend limits of subjectivity and even the dichotomy of subjectivity and objectivity. But there is, as seen in this message, an approach which aims at testing the truth of the results of their work on the anvil of the most stringent demands of the materialistic mind.

In any case, it is for each one to make his or her demands of proof, and, in the meantime, to continue to sharpen and
sensitize oneself to higher and higher degrees of consciousness. In the pursuit of truth, there has to be no compulsion, and each one has to demand the proof that one needs. In the Records of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, one will find, it may be said quite confidently, the answer that he or she needs for the next stage of development, provided one seeks to make progress in the direction that one thinks is suitable to oneself. Nonetheless, the rigour of proof cannot

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be minimized, and Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have, as we have seen above, aimed at working out the fabrication of the Divine Body, the proof of which will be found to be clinching even for the utmost insensitive human mentality of consciousness. In fact, it is at that level of the proof that we may expect the synthesis of science and spirituality to arrive at its climactic perfection.

What we have presented here in regard to the relevant data, reflections and conclusions concerning the new synthesis of yoga, can be regarded only as an introduction; for the purposes of adequate understanding of the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, there is no substitute to the laborious task that one has to undertake to turn and study the original and voluminous writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

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-11_Bibliography.htm

Bibliography Sri Aurobindo, The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo - 37 volumes,
Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, 2005.

Vol. Titles

1 Early Cultural Writings

2 Collected Poems

3 Collected Plays and Stories -I

4 Collected Plays and Stories-I I

5 Translations

6 Bande Mataram -1

7 Bande Mataram - II

8 Karmayogin

9 Writings in Bengali and Sanskrit

10 Record of Yoga-I

11 Record of Yoga-II

12 Essays Divine and Human

13 Essays in Philosophy and Yoga

14 Vedic Studies

15 The Secret of the Veda

16 Hymns to the Mystic Fire

17 Isha Upanishad

18 Kena and Other Upanishads

19 Essays on the Gita

20 The Renaissance in India

21 The Life Divine -1

11 The Life Divine -11

23 The Synthesis of Yoga -1

24 The Synthesis of Yoga - II

25 The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, War and Self-Determination

26 The Future Poetry

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27 Letters on Poetry and Art

28 Letters on Yoga -1

29 Letters on Yoga - II

30 Letters on Yoga - III

31 Letters on Yoga - IV

32 The Mother

33 Savitri -I

34 Savitri - II

35 Letters on Himself and the Ashram

36 Autobiographical Materials

37 Reference Volume

Satprem, Institut de Recherches Evolutives, Paris and Mira Aditi, Mysore

Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, 1984.

By the Body of the Earth or the Sannyasin, 1976.

On the Way to Supermanhood, 1986.

Mother: I The Divine Materialism, 1987.

Mother: II The New Species, 1983.

Mother: III The Mutation of Death, 1987.

The Mind of the Cells, 1992.

My Burning Heart, 1989.
The Revolt of the Earth, 1991.

Mother's Agenda - 13 volumes,

Evolution II, 1992.

The Great Sense / Sri Aurobindo and the Future of the Earth, 1996.

The Tragedy of the Earth - From Sophocles to Sri Aurobindo, 1998.

Neanderthal Looks On, 1999.

The Veda and Human Destiny, 1992

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