On Yoga
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ONE OF the areas of research promoted by the Dharam Hinduja International Centre of Indic Research is to explore Yogic knowledge contained in the Indian tradition and to examine how that knowledge is relevant to the needs of the contemporary world which Sri Aurobindo had characterised as those of 'evolutionary crisis'. The centre has set up a Working Group for 'Yoga as Science', which has been engaged in the study of various aspects of Yogic efforts recorded from the Vedic times to the present day. The papers collected in this volume are related to Sri Aurobindo and his Integral Yoga and were presented at the meetings of the Working Group during 1997. The paper on 'Bondage, Liberation and Perfection was presented at the international seminar held on 14> July 1997 under the auspices of another Working Group on 'Spiritual Experiences in the Indian Tradition of Philosophy' in collaboration with the Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi. A few relevant extracts from the writings and letters of Sri Aurobindo are presented in the appendix.
As the year (1997-98) happens to be the 125th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo, we are immensely gratified that the publication of this monograph synchronises with this important event. It is also significant that 1997-98 is the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence, particularly as we recall that Sri Aurobindo worked for independence right from the first decade of this century, when he emerged as one of the pioneering leaders of the nationalist movement.
This book is introductory in nature and, for a fuller account of the topics covered here, the reader is referred to such important works like Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga, The Life Divine, The Secret of the Veda, and Essays on the Gita, as well
as Mother's works, which include thirteen volumes of Mother's Agenda, containing the records of the latest developments of the Integral Yoga. The reader is also referred to Satprem's Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, and his biography of The Mother, in three volumes, Divine Materialism, The New Species and Mutation of Death.
I wish to thank all the scholars who participated in the meetings of the concerned Working Groups and especially those who chaired these meetings Dr T.N. Seshan, Professor S.P. Singh, Dr (Mrs) Shashi Sharma, Dr Ramarao Pappu, Mr Justice Shiv Dayal, and Professor S.R. Bhatt. I am also thankful to Professor M.M. Sankhdher who convened all these meetings.
MADHAV K. MANGALMURTI President, Hinduja Foundation
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SRI AUROBINDO was born on 15 August 1872 at Calcutta. At an early age of seven, he was taken along with his elder brothers to England for education, since his father wanted him to have no Indian influence in the shaping of his outlook and personality. And yet, even though Sri Aurobindo assimilated in himself richly the best of the European culture, he returned to India in 1893 with a burning aspiration to work for the liberation of India from the foreign rule. While in England, Sri Aurobindo passed the ICS examination, and yet he felt no call for it, and so he got himself disqualified by remaining absent from the riding test. The Gaekwar of Baroda happened to be there at that time, and Sri Aurobindo accepted the proposal to be his personal secretary, and returned to India.
Soon thereafter, however, Sri Aurobindo switched over to the Baroda College as Professor of French and then of English, and when in 1905, he left for Bengal, he was the acting Principal of the College. It was during the Baroda period that he assimilated in himself the spirit and culture of India and prepared himself for his future political and spiritual work. Indeed, his political work had already begun in Baroda, but it was behind the scenes, largely of the nature of a preparation for an armed revolution for the liberation of India.
Sri Aurobindo was the first among the Indian leaders to declare and work for the aim of complete independence of India. In 1905, when Bengal was divided, he left Baroda and invited by the nationalist leaders he joined at Calcutta the newly started National College as its first Principal. It was here that he, while working secretly for the revolution, chalked
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out also a plan of outer action. This plan consisted of the programme of Passive Resistance, Boycott and Swadeshi, which was later adopted as the policy of the struggle for freedom. It was here again that he wrote powerfully and boldly for Bande Mataram, and later for Karma Yogin, and electrified the nation and surcharged the people with a new energy which ultimately led the nation to her freedom. It was .therefore significant that when India attained her liberation in 1947, it was on 15 August, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo.
The pioneering work that Sri Aurobindo did for the liberation of India was evidently a part of his larger work for the entire humanity and indeed for the whole earth. For him, the liberation of India was an indispensable part of the new world- order. Moreover, the practice of Yoga, which he had started in 1902, led him, even while in the thick of intense political and literary activity, to major realisations of the Bramhic Silence, Nirvana and also of the universal dynamic presence of the Divine. And, in 1908, when he was in Alipore jail during his trial under the charge of sedition, he received through numerous experiences and realisations the assurance of the liberation of the country and also the knowledge of the initial lines on which his own future work was to proceed. For he saw that even in the field of Yoga something was still lacking, something radical that alone would resolve the problems of the world and would lead mankind to its next evolutionary stage. And so, in 1910, soon after his acquittal from the jail, he withdrew to Pondicherry to concentrate upon this new research work, to hew a new path. It has been a most dynamic work with the entire earth as its central field. It was in the course of this work that Sri Aurobindo declared that the Supramental is the Truth and that its advent on the earth is inevitable. To bring down the Supramental consciousness and power on the earth has been the central work of Sri Aurobindo.
Sri Aurobindo has explained the nature of this work, the nature of the Supermind, the necessity of its descent, the process of this descent and the dynamic consequences of this
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descent for the solution of the problems of mankind, in his voluminous writings most of which were written serially in the philosophical monthly, Arya, which was started in 1914, immediately after the first arrival of The Mother from France to Pondicherry. Some of the most important of these and other writings are: The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Human Cycle, The Foundations of Indian Culture, Essays on the Gita, On the Veda, The Upanishads, The Future Poetry, The Supramental Manifestation on the Earth, and the epic Savitri.
It is well known that Sri Aurobindo had a thorough western education, and he had a period of agnostic denial. But from the moment he looked at yogic phenomena, he could never take the attitude of doubt and disbelief which was for so long fashionable in Europe. Abnormal, otherwise supraphysical experiences and powers, occult or yogic, always seemed to him something perfectly natural and credible.
It was after a long stay in India at Baroda, that Sri Aurobindo turned decisively to Yoga in 1904. He had, however, a few spiritual experiences even in his pre-yogic period. The first was in London in 1892, the year of his departure from England. The next experience was when he set foot on Indian soil at Apollo Bunder, Bombay, on his return from England. A vast calm descended upon him and surrounded him and stayed with him for months afterwards.
Then, in the first year of his stay in Baroda in 1893, an experience came to him at the moment when there threatened to be an accident to his carriage. He has described this experience later on in the poem, 'The Godhead ¹.
'I sat behind the dance of Danger's hooves
In the shouting street that seemed a futurist's whim,
And suddenly felt, exceeding Nature's grooves,
In me, enslaving me the body of Him.
Above my head a mighty head was seen,
A face with the calm of immortality
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And an omnipotent gaze that held the scene
In the vast circle of its sovereignty.
His hair was mingled with the sun and breeze;
The world was in His heart and He was I:
I housed in me the Everlasting's peace,
The strength of One whose substance cannot die.
The moment passed and all was as before;
Only that deathless memory I bore.
Here is a description of a vision of Sri Aurobindo. 'Once when Sri Aurobindo was on a visit to Chanded he went to one of the temples of Kali on the bank of the Narmada. He went there because of the company. He never had felt attracted to image worship if anything, till then he was averse to it. Now when he went to the temple he found a presence in the image. He got a direct proof of the truth that can be behind image-worship.
Sri Aurobindo in one of his letters, written much later, seems to be referring to this experience in the following words:
'Or, you stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see what? — a sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but in a moment mysteriously, unexpectedly there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that looks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother'.¹
He has described this experience in the poem, 'The Stone Goddess'.²
'In a town of gods, housed in a little shrine,
From sculptured limbs the Godhead looked at me,-
A living Presence deathless and divine,
A Form that harboured all Infinity.
The great World-Mother and her mighty will
Inhabited the earth's abysmal sleep,
Voiceless, omnipotent, inscrutable,
Mute in the desert and the sky and deep.
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Now veiled with mind she dwells and speaks no word
Voiceless, inscrutable, omniscient,
Hiding until our soul has been, has heard
The secret other strange embodiment,
One in the worshipper and the immobile shape,
A beauty and mystery flesh or stone can drape.'
In 1901, Sri Aurobindo witnessed some occult phenomena during his younger brother Barin's experiments with the planchette. There were also some experiments of automatic writing. A direct proof of the power of Yoga came to him when a Naga sadhu cured Barin of mountain fever by mantra. The sadhu took a glass full of water and cut the water crosswise with a knife while repeating the mantra. He then told Barin to drink it saying he would not have the fever the next day. And the fever left him.
In April 1903, Sri Aurobindo was on a tour of Kashmir and he visited the hill of Shankaracharya (also known as the Takhti-Suleman-Seat of Solomon), and experienced the vacant Infinite in a very tangible way. He has described this experience in his poem, 'Adwaita'.³
'I walked on the high-wayed Seat of Solomon
Where Shankaracharya's tiny temple stands
Facing Infinity from Time's edge, alone
On the bare ridge ending earth's vain romance.
Around me was a formless solitude;
All had become one strange unnamable,
An unborn sole Reality world-nude,
Topless and fathomless, for ever still.
A Silence that was Being's only word,
The unknown beginning and the voiceless end
Abolishing all things moment-seen or heard,
On an incommunicable summit reigned.
A lonely Calm and void unchanging Peace
On the dumb crest of Nature's mysteries.'
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In 1904, Sri Aurobindo began practising Yoga on his own account, starting with prānāyāma, as explained to him by a friend, a disciple of Brahmananda. The purpose of this yogic practice was to find the spiritual strength which would support him and enlighten his way.
Explaining the results of this practice, Sri Aurobindo has written: 'What I did was four or five hours a day pranayama.. .. The flow of poetry came down while I was doing prānāyāma, not some years afterwards. If it is the flow of experiences, that did come after some years, but after I had stopped the prānāyāma for a long time and was doing nothing and did not know what to do or where to turn once all my efforts had failed.'4
'After four years of prānāyāma and other practices on my own, with no other result than an increased health and outflow of energy, some psycho-physical phenomena, a great outflow of poetic creation, a limited power of subtle sight (luminous patterns and figures, etc.) mostly with the waking eye, I had a complete arrest and was at a loss.'5
In another letter, Sri Aurobindo has explained an interesting aspect of the subtle sight experiences. 'I remember when I first began to see inwardly (and outwardly also with the open eye), a scientific friend of mine began to talk of after-images "these are only after-images", I asked him whether after-images remained before the eye for two minutes at a time he said, "no", to his knowledge only for a few seconds; I also asked him whether one could get after-images of things not around one or even not existing upon this earth, since they had other shapes, another character, other hues, contours and a very different dynamism, life-movements and values he could not reply in the affirmative. That is how these so-called scientific explanations break down as soon as you pull them out of their cloudland of mental theory and face them with the actual phenomena they pretend to decipher.'6
The first decisive turn and experience came to Sri Aurobindo in 1907, when he was groping for a way. At this juncture he was induced to meet a Maharashtrian Yogi, Lele, who showed him
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the way to silence the mind. Through meditation with him at Baroda, Sri Aurobindo attained complete silence of thought and feeling and freedom from all the ordinary movements of consciousness just within three days.
Describing this meditation and experience, Sri Aurobindo wrote in one of his letters: 'It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation", he said, "but do not think, look only at your mind, you will see thoughts coming into it; before they can enter throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence." I had never heard before of thoughts coming visibly into the mind from outside, but I did not think either of questioning the truth or the possibility; I simply sat down and did it. In a moment my mind became silent as a windless air on a high mountain summit and then I saw one thought and then another coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought as a labourer in a thought factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought empire.'7
Elaborating upon the same experience in another letter, Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'There was an entire silence of thought and feeling and all the ordinary movements of consciousness except the perception and recognition of things around without any accompanying concept or other reaction. The sense of ego disappeared and the movements of the ordinary life as well as speech and action were carried on by some habitual activity of Prakriti alone which was not felt as belonging to oneself. But the perception which remained saw all things as utterly unreal; this sense of unreality was overwhelming and universal. Only some underfinable Reality was perceived as true which was beyond space and time and unconnected with any cosmic activity, but yet was met wherever one turned. This condition remained
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unimpaired for several months and even when the sense of unreality disappeared and there was a return to participation in the world-consciousness, the inner peace and freedom which resulted from this realisation remained permanently behind all surface movements and the essence of the realisation itself was not lost.'8
In his poem, 'Nirvana', 9 we have vivid description of this experience.
'All is abolished but the mute Alone.
The mind from thought released, the heart from grief
Grow inexistent now beyond belief;
There is no I, no Nature, known — unknown.
The city, a shadow picture without tone,
Floats, quivers unreal; forms without relief
Flow, a cinema's vacant shapes; like a reef
Foundering in shoreless gulfs the world is done.
Only the illimitable Permanent
Is here. A Peace stupendous, featureless, still,
Replaces all, — what once was I, in It
A silent unnamed emptiness content
Either to fade in the Unknowable
Or thrill with the Luminous seas of the Infinite.'
This experience and realisation of the utter reality of the Brahman and the unreality of the world is a recognised culmination of the classical path of Knowledge and Adwaitic Mayavada. For Sri Aurobindo, however, this turned out to be only one of the foundational experiences, and a series of spiritual experiences and realisations that followed led him to a new exploration and a new discovery. This is how he explained in one of his letters:
'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
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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, relationless, sheer indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet supremely real and solely real. ... 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 illusion10 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.
'Now, that is the whole trouble in my approach to Mayavada. 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.'¹¹
Of the next major realisation we learn from Sri Aurobindo's Uttarpara Speech in which he has given a soul-stirring description of the experiences he had in the Alipore jail in which he was detained in May 1908 under a charge of sedition until May 1909 when he was acquitted. In the jail Sri Aurobindo spent almost all his time in reading the Gita and the Upanishads and in intensive meditation and practice of Yoga. It was here that the
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realisation which had continually been increasing in magnitude and universality and assuming a large place took him up entirely and his work became a part and result of it and besides far exceeded the service and liberation of the country and fixed itself in an aim, previously only glimpsed, which was world-wide in its bearing and concerned the whole future of humanity.
The major realisation that he had here was that of the Universal Presence of the Divine. As he says:
'I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me: I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Sri Krishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me his shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Sri Krishna around me, the arms of my Friend Lover. This was the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies. . . .
'I looked and it was not the Magistrate whom I saw, it was Vasudeva, it was Narayana who was sitting there on the bench. I looked at the Prosecuting Counsel and it was not the Counsel for the prosecution I saw; it was Sri Krishna who sat there, it was my Lover and Friend who sat there and smiled.'12
The following two interesting experiences in the Alipore jail may be noted:
'I... knew something about sculpture,' wrote Sri Aurobindo in one of his letters, 'but (I was) blind to painting. Suddenly one day in the Alipore jail while meditating I saw some pictures on the walls of the cell and lo and behold the artistic eye in me
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opened and I knew all about painting except of course the more material side of the technique. I don't always know how to express though, because I lack the knowledge of the proper expressions, but that does not stand in the way of a keen and understanding appreciation."13
His other experience, that of Levitation, he has described as follows:
'I was ... having a very intense sadhana on the vital plane and I was concentrated. And I had a questioning mind: "Are such siddhis as utthapana (levitation) possible?" I then suddenly found myself raised up in such a way that I could not have done it myself with muscular exertion. Only one part of the body was slightly in contact with the ground and the rest was raised up against the wall. I could not have held my body like that normally even if I had wanted to and I found that the body remained suspended like that without any exertion on my part.'14
While in the Alipore jail, Sri Aurobindo was also on his way in his meditations to two other realisations: that of the Supreme Reality with the static and dynamic Brahman as its two aspects, and that of the higher planes of consciousness above the Mind leading up to the Supermind.
It is a fact that Sri Aurobindo received help from Swami Vivekananda in regard to a transition to some of the planes of consciousness above the Mind. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: 'It is a fact that I was hearing constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation and felt his presence. . . . The voice spoke only on a special and limited but very important field of spiritual experience and it ceased as soon as it finished saying all that it had to say on the subject.'15
It was again in the Alipore jail that Sri Aurobindo received the messages from Sri Krishna which opened up before him a passage to a new work. And it was in this direction that he was moving after his release from the jail in May 1909 when he
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got the Divine ādeśa in early 1910 to go to Chandernagore, and later another ādeśa to go to Pondicherry where he reached on 4 April 1910.
What was the nature of the new work can be glimpsed from a letter that Sri Aurobindo wrote in 1910:
'I need some place of refuge in which I can complete my Yoga unassailed and build up other souls around me. It seems to me that Pondicherry is that place appointed by those who are Beyond, but you know how much effort is needed to establish the thing that is purposed upon the material plane.'
'What I perceive most clearly, is that the principal object of my Yoga is to remove absolutely and entirely every possible source of error and ineffectiveness, of error in order that the Truth I shall eventually show to men may be perfect, and of ineffectiveness in order that the work of changing the world, so far as I have to assist it, may be entirely victorious and irresistible. It is for this reason that I have been going through so long a discipline and that the more brilliant and mighty results of Yoga have been so long withheld. I have been kept busy laying down the foundation, a work severe and painful. It is only now that the edifice is beginning to rise upon the sure and perfect foundation that has been laid.'16
This was a period of intense search and exploration.
On 29 March 1914, The Mother came to Pondicherry and met Sri Aurobindo. And what she said much later about this meeting indicates what a momentous day it was. She said: 'I was in deep concentration, seeing things in the Supermind, things that were to be but which were somehow not manifesting. I told Sri Aurobindo what I had seen and asked him if they would manifest. He simply said, "Yes". And immediately I saw that the Supramental had touched the earth and was beginning to be realised: This was the first time I had witnessed the power to make real what is true.'17
In one of the letters, Sri Aurobindo has written the following:
'Mother was doing Yoga before she knew or met Sri Aurobindo;
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but their lines of Sadhana independently followed the same course. When they met, they helped each other in perfecting the Sadhana. What is known as Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is the joint creation of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. . . .'18
That the world is not an illusion, that the phenomena of ignorance, suffering and evil in the world are temporary results of the evolutionary movement of Nature in which is concealed the superconscient Light which is intended to be fully manifested, that this manifestation is dependent upon the descent of the Supermind on the earth, that this descent was thing to be achieved that had not yet been achieved, not yet clearly visualised, even though it was the natural but still secret outcome of all the past spiritual endeavour these are the chief affirmations of Sri Aurobindo based upon his abiding experiences and realisations.
Stressing the novelty of the aim and method of the supramental descent upon the earth, Sri Aurobindo has written in one of his letters: 'It is the descent of the new consciousness attained by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the Sadhana.". . . a method has been preconized for achieving the purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive. I have not found this method (as a whole) or anything like it professed or realised in the old Yogas. If I had, I should not have wasted my time in hewing out a road and in thirty years of search and inner creation when I could have hastened home safely to my goal in an easy canter over paths already blazed out, laid down, perfectly mapped, macadamised, made secure and public. Our Yoga is not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure.'19
Describing the difficulties of the hewing of the new Path, Sri Aurobindo has written in one of his letters: 'As for the Mother and myself, we have had to try all ways, follow all methods, to surmount mountains of difficulties, a far heavier burden to bear
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than you or anybody else in the Ashram or outside, far more difficult conditions, battles to fight, wounds to endure, ways to cleave through impenetrable morass and desert and forest, hostile masses to conquer a work such as, I am certain, none else had to do before us. For the Leader of the Way in a work like ours has not only to bring down and represent and embody the Divine, but to represent too the ascending element in humanity and to bear the burden of humanity to the full and experience, not in a mere play or Lila but in grim earnest, all the obstruction, difficulty, opposition, baffled and hampered and only slowly victorious labour which are possible on the Path.'20
The spirit in which Sri Aurobindo pursued the Path is described in a letter as follows:
'It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring down the Supermind. I care nothing for greatness or littleness in the human sense. I am seeking to bring some principle of inner Truth, Light, Harmony, Peace into the earth-consciousness; I see it above and know what it is -1 feel it ever gleaming down on my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should not follow my Truth-sense and Truth vision. ... It is a question between the Divine and myself whether it is the Divine Will or not, whether I am sent to bring that down or open the way for its descent or at least make it more possible or not. Let all men jeer at me if they will or all Hell fall upon me if it will for my presumption, -1 go on till I conquer or perish. This is the spirit in which I seek the Supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others.'21
Thus the aim that Sri Aurobindo pursued was to transform by the descent of the supramental Light the physical life into the
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life divine. Not merely the liberation of the Spirit, but also the liberation of Nature, the transmutation, radical and complete, of the Aparā Prakriti into the Parā Prakriti, of the lower Nature into the Supreme and supramental Nature, this has been the aim and also the achievement of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.
This achievement implies what Sri Aurobindo has called the triple transformation. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:'. . . there must first be the psychic change, the conversion of our whole present nature into a soul-instrumentation; on that or along with that there must be the spiritual change, the descent of a higher Light, Knowledge, Power, Force, Bliss, Purity into the whole being, even into the lowest recesses of the life and body, even into the darkness of our subconscience; last, there must supervene the supramental transmutation, there must take place as the crowning movement the ascent into the Supermind and the transforming descent of the supramental Consciousness into our entire being and nature.'22
This would also mean a complete synthesis of divine knowledge, divine love and divine action, leading to an integral perfection of all the members, parts and planes of being the divine supermind in the divine body, a temporal sign of the spirit's victory here over Death and Matter.
It is impossible to describe or even to give a faint or distant indication of the experiences and realisations of Sri Aurobindo that he had had in the pursuit of this aim. One may only refer to his works: The Synthesis of Yoga, The Life Divine, Letters on Yoga, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, and Savitri.
It needs to be stressed that Sri Aurobindo's Yoga is a collective Yoga, a cosmic Yoga. And so, every movement and experience and realisation of him has a most intimate connection with the world-movements and with the human progress. Not personal salvation, but the leading of the entire humanity to the surpassing of its limitations for a collective new order and harmony and unity, to fix the supramental consciousness in the earth-consciousness, to lead the evolutionary species of man to a new species, to lead man to the divine superman,- this wide,
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world-embracing and world-affirming power, compassion, action, nay, the very Divine in all its integrality embodying the human form for a new evolutionary status this has been the wonderful mystery of the realm of the presence and experience and work of Sri Aurobindo on the earth.
If Sri Aurobindo had to withdraw from the body, it was because of the world-condition. The humanity was not sufficiently receptive to the supramental light, and it was thought necessary in order to hasten the process to make the supreme sacrifice. As the Mother said: 'People do not know what a tremendous sacrifice He has made for the world. About a year ago, while I was discussing things I remarked that I felt like leaving this body of mine. He spoke out in a very firm tone, 'No, this can never he. If necessary for this transformation I might go, you will have to fulfil our Yoga of supramental descent and transformation.'
It was on 5 December 1950 at 1.26 a.m. that Sri Aurobindo left his physical body, and yet for 111 hours the body remained intact and undecomposed. As the Mother announced:
'. .. His body is surcharged with such a concentration of Supramental Light that there is no sign of decomposition and the body will be kept lying on his bed so long as it remains intact.'
In another message, the Mother said:
'When I asked him to resuscitate, he clearly answered: "I have left this body purposely. I will not take it back. I shall manifest again in the first supramental body built in the supramental way." '
In a prayer. The Mother said:
'Lord, this morning Thou hast given me the assurance that Thou wouldst stay with us until Thy work is achieved, not only as a consciousness which guides and illumines but also as a dynamic Presence in action. In unmistakable terms Thou hast promised that all of Thyself would remain here and not leave
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the earth atmosphere until earth is transformed. Grant that we may be worthy of this marvellous Presence and henceforth everything in us be concentrated on the one will to be more and more perfectly consecrated to the fulfilment of Thy sublime Work.'
It was on 9 December after the Light had begun to withdraw that the body was laid in a rosewood casket and placed in the Ashram courtyard.
A few days later, in one of the conversations with a disciple, the Mother said: 'As soon as Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, what he had called the Mind of Light got realised here....'
'The Supermind had descended long ago very long ago into the mind and even into the vital: it was working in the physical also but indirectly through those intermediaries. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said it could be possible only if the physical mind received the Supramental light; the physical mind was the instrument for direct action upon the most material. This physical mind receiving the supramental light Sri Aurobindo called the Mind of Light.'
Sri Aurobindo's withdrawal from the body has therefore been a self-chosen step to hasten the supramental descent upon the earth. And, indeed, it has been affirmed by The Mother that Sri Aurobindo has been working constantly towards this end.
And on 29 February 1956, the descent of the Supermind on the earth took place. The Mother described it as follows:
'This evening, the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there among you. I had a form of living gold, bigger than the universe and I was facing a huge and massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine. As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single moment of consciousness, that "the time has come", and lifting with hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single blow, on the door and the
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door was shattered to pieces. Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.'
On 24 April 1956, the Mother declared:
'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.'
It has been affirmed that the supramental force has now come to a stage of decisive action on events and people, and that it is Sri Aurobindo Himself who is in Action that is omnipotent and irresistible.
Let us conclude with the Mother's message on Sri Aurobindo:
'Sri Aurobindo does not belong to the past nor to history.
Sri Aurobindo is the Future advancing towards its realisation.
Thus we must shelter the eternal youth required for a speedy advance, in order not to become laggards on the way.'
NOTES
1. Collected Poems, Centenary Library, Vol. 5, p. 138.
2. Ibid., p. 139.
3. Ibid., p. 153.
4. Sri Aurobindo on Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, p. 77.
5. Ibid., pp. 78-79.
6. Ibid., p. 90.
7. Ibid., pp. 83-84.
8. Ibid., pp. 85-86.
9. Collected Poems, Centenary Library, Vol. 5, p. 161.
10. 'In fact it is not an illusion in the sense of an imposition of something baseless and unreal on the consciousness, but misinterpretation by the conscious mind and sense and a falsifying misuse of manifested existence.' (Sri Aurobindo's note).
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11. Sri Aurobindo on Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, pp. 101-2.
12. Uttarpara Speech, Centenary Library, Vol. 2, pp. 4-5.
13. Sri Aurobindo on Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, pp. 226-27.
14. Reported by A.B. Purani in The Life of Sri Aurobindo (1964), pp. 128-29.
15. Ibid., p. 129.
16. Sri Aurobindo on Himself Centenary Library, Vol. 26, pp. 423-24.
17. Words of the Mother, third series, 1959, pp. 31-32.
18. Sri Aurobindo on Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, p. 459.
19. Ibid., p. 109.
20. Ibid., p. 464.
21. Ibid., pp. 143-44.
22. The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 19, p. 891.
Page 19
2
YOGA is not a closed book. It is not a body of revelations made once for all, unverifiable and unsurpassable. It is not a religion; it is an advancing science, with its fields of inquiry and search always enlarging; its methods are not only intuitive but include also bold experimentation and rigorous verification by means of abiding experience and, finally, even physical change and transformation.
The Vedas and Upanishads have, in this sense, marked not a culmination, but a great beginning of the yogic endeavour. They are themselves records of subtle yogic processes, developing experiences, and enlargements of knowledge and power. They have been an original great synthesis, based upon some supreme realisations, and yet opening further gates of discoveries. In the words of the Vedic poet:
brahmānas tvā śatakrata
ud vamśam iva yemire /
yat sānoh sānum āruhad
bhūry aspasta kartvam // Rgveda l.10.1-2
'The priests of the word climb thee like a ladder,
O hundred-powered. As one ascends from peak to peak,
there is made clear the much that has still to be done.'
The later periods of history have witnessed in the yogic endeavour an increasing subtlety, plasticity, sounding of depths, extension of seeking, — even though this endeavour has been less surprisingly lofty and less massive in power. During the
Page 20
long stretch of time extending to several millennia Yoga has developed a number of methods, disciplines, techniques, numerous systems of knowledge and effective results, assured consequences of Yoga — Siddhi. Throughout this period there has been a spirit of research, and there have been systems of specialisation and systems of synthesis.
But there have indeed been also exclusive claims and counter-claims, claims of Sāmkhya against Yoga to use the terms in the sense in which the Gitā employs them claims of Jnāna against Karma, of Karma against Bhakti, and of Bhakti against Jnāna and Karma, trends of conflict between the Vedantic Yoga and the Yoga of the Buddhistic and Jain disciplines, sharp oppositions between Vedānta and Tantra. Among these conflicts, the one that came to be powerful and perilous has been the trenchant opposition between Yoga and Life itself.
In the recent past, towards the close of the seventeenth
century, there also came about a stagnation and an arrest, even an obscurity of the knowledge of Yoga, a misleading confusion between Yoga and religion, between Yoga and occultism, and a rise of numerous superstitions, ignorant practices, mechanical pursuits of rigid and fixed formulae, a lapse into darkness and inertia.
Yet a little light has always been burning, and with the renascent India, and the great churning in our age of continual crisis in the East and the West, this light is growing, and there is an attempt of Yoga to recover itself and to develop with fresh efforts a fundamental research to affirm itself on newer, bolder, loftier, and even, on unprecendented lines.
In this new endeavour, the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo marks a momentous programme and project of Yogic research taking within its sweep all the domains of life, all aspects of culture, a synthesis of the systems of Yoga based upon a new discovery resulting in an ever-growing methodised discipline for a transmutation of Man into a new transformed humanity or superhumanity.
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II
That new discovery is that of the Supermind, not merely in essence and in principle, but in its supreme ranges, and the possibility and the inevitability of its descent and manifestation upon the earth.
It is this discovery which is at the base of Sri Aurobindo's affirmation that 'spiritual liberation' or mukti is not the highest aim for Man on the earth, and that there is a farther aim imperatively demanded by the concealed intention of 'evolutionary' Nature. Not merely liberation of the Spirit from Nature, but also liberation of Nature itself from its limitations by a radical transformation; not merely an escape into the acosmic static Reality of featureless Nirvana or into superaterrestrial planes of heavenly existence, but establishment of the kingdom of the Spirit on the earth; not merely individual achievement but a collective one for the earth; not merely realisation of the Divine, but realisation of the integral Divine and its integral manifestation in the physical life, this is the aim which, according to Sri Aurobindo, is demanded of us, and it can be fulfilled only by the descent and manifestation of the Supermind.
This is the aim Sri Aurobindo puts forward as central to his Yoga.
But what is Supermind? What is its nature and character of its action? What is its locus? And why is its descent indispensable for the aim set forth in this Yoga?
In the following passage from Sri Aurobindo, we have a brief but illumining exposition of the concept of the Supermind:
'The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness has this knowledge inherent in it and this
Page 22
power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge; it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error; it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda.'¹
Supermind is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a grade of existence beyond, mind, life and Matter. And, between Mind and Supermind are the intermediate grades which Sri Aurobindo has termed the 'Higher Mind', 'Illumined Mind', 'Intuitive
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Mind', and 'Overmind'.² The Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and divine Nature. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, 'A Supramental Truth-Consciousness is at once the self-awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of self-determination inherent in that self-awareness, the first is its foundation and status, the second is its power of being, the dynamics of its self-existence. All that a timeless eternity of self-awareness sees in itself as truth of being, the conscious power of its being manifests in Time-Eternity.'³
In its own plane, Supermind already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being. Its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. The descent of the Supermind and its manifestation on the earth is, according to Sri Aurobindo, an inevitability of the 'evolutionary' process. Evolution is, according to Sri Aurobindo's Yogic knowledge, a gradual unfolding of higher and higher levels of consciousness through the necessary modifications of Matter, which in itself is a mode of consciousness. In Matter or below it in the Inconscient the higher levels of consciousness are involved, and evolution is a resultant process of a double pressure of the ascent of the involved levels of consciousness and the descent of the corresponding levels from above. In this vision, supermind is involved in the Inconscience, and it is bound to emerge or evolve in the gradual movement of Time, by an ascent of the supermind from below and by a descent of the supermind from above. As explained by Sri Aurobindo:
'In fact, supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity
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of our whole being: it is that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence.'4
IlI
It is significant that the modern trend in the theories of evolution is to stress the possibility of the emergence of newer and better terms of existence. Samuel Alexander speaks of the emergence of the Deity as the promise of the future; Whitehead speaks of the 'ingression' of the Godhead in evolution and of the God in the making. A French anthropologist and paleontologist, Father Teillhard de Chardin, has proposed a theory having a similar conclusion: the possibility for the human species to surpass itself and bring its evolution one step farther.
But, while these theories are mainly speculative and indicate only the general trends in the present civilisation which promise a new mutation, they do not offer any programme of scientific dealing with those trends to effectuate consciously and deliberately an advance in the evolutionary process. Sri Aurobindo, however, not only perceived the inevitability of the mutation of Man, but he made an intensive search into the means by which it can be aided and effectuated.
In this search, he discovered Yoga as a method of accelerating the evolutionary process. He found, however, that each system of Yoga is a specialisation in a more or less limited field of achievement, and therefore none of them sufficient for the total movement of Evolution. In his analysis of the systems of Yoga, he shows how an integrating principle of Yoga could be discovered, and how on the basis of this principle, a synthesis of Yoga could be so achieved that Yoga is fully equated with the total demands of Evolutionary movement. He shows how the evolutionary movement itself is a secret Yoga, the Yoga of Nature, and how this secret could be used as a clue to a
Page 25
conscious integral method in our effort to lead Nature as rapidly and perfectly as possible towards its next momentous evolutionary stage, viz., the radical and complete transmutation of the human being. All life is Yoga, declares Sri Aurobindo, but all life has been so far a subconscious Yoga of Nature. But we can study Nature consciously and apply scientifically the inner workings of Nature to our own evolution, and we can consciously make all life a conscious Yoga. As Sri Aurobindo puts it:
'The true and full object and utility of Yoga can only be accomplished when the conscious Yoga in man becomes like the subconscious Yoga in Nature, outwardly coterminus with life itself and we can once more looking out both on the path and the achievement, say in a more perfect and luminous sense: 'All life in Yoga".5
Each system of Yoga selects certain activities of Nature, purifies them, develops them, perfects them, and achieves a contact, a union with an Object that is at the source of these activities. Each system chooses an instrument in our psychological complex by which the selected activities can be dealt with. The essence of each system is the method of concentration on the Object in view; and by this concentration is achieved a conscious acceleration of the evolution of Nature. Thus, Hatha Yoga selects the body and vital functionings as its instrument of perfection and realisation. The method is a concentration and effort of energy released by Āsana and Prānāyāma in the outer and inner body for an object of physical perfection. Rāja Yoga selects the mental being in its different parts as its lever- power. It effects a change of the ordinary fleeting mind by a process of Yama, Nīyama, Āsana, Prānāyāma, Pratyāhāra, Dhāranā, Dhyāna and Samādhi, where it can dwell constantly in a fixed poise and reflect the luminosity of the object that is pursued. The triple Path of Works, Love and Knowledge uses some part of the mental being, will, heart or intellect as a starting-point and seeks by its purification, development and
Page 26
perfection by conversion, the liberating Truth, Beatitude and Infinity. Its method is a direct commerce, a direct contact, a direct concentration of the human individual or Purusha in the individual body with the Divine, the Purusha who dwells in every body and yet trascends all form and name.
This analysis of the systems of Yoga indicates a solution to the problem of their synthesis. The synthesis cannot be arrived at by a combination of these systems in mass. That is neither possible nor desirable, nor needed. Synthesis does not mean a successive practice of the various systems. It is effected by neglecting the forms and outsides of the Yogic disciplines and seizing rather on the central principle common to all which will include and utilise in the right place and proportion their particular principles. Since each system is a specific process of concentration, integral yoga would be based on the principle of integral concentration; since each system makes a selection from the activities of Nature for purification and perfection, integral yoga would admit all activities of Nature for their transformation and perfection; since each system aims at a specific object or poise or aspect of Reality of the Divine, the Object of the integral yoga would be the realisation of the Integral Divine. An integral concentration on the integral Divine through the whole of our being for a complete perfection by a union with and the manifestation of the Divine — this would be the natural formula of the Integral Yoga. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'The method we have to pursue, then, is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with the Divine and to call Him in to transform our entire being into His, so that in a sense God Himself, the real Person in us, becomes the Sadhaka of the Sadhana6 as well as the Master of Yoga by whom the lower personality is used as the centre of a divine transfiguration and the instrument of its own perfection.'7
In the integral yoga, the Divine Power in us uses all life as the means of our upward evolution. Every experience and outer
Page 27
contact with our world-environment, however, trifling or disastrous, is used as an occasion and opportunity for the yogic work, and every inner experience becomes a step on the path to perfection. 'And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.'8
By this integral method is proposed to achieve an integral realisation and perfection; the realisation of not only unity in the Self but also of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures, the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works, the perfection of freedom, purity, beatitude, and the perfection of the mind, life and body.
The integral yoga aims at an integral transformation. The word 'transformation' has a special meaning in the yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It does not mean merely what is known as conversion in the psychology of religion, where one becomes centrally occupied with a religious belief, which was previously absent or present only in the periphery. Nor does it mean a conversion that occurs as an inner change into sainthood or ethical perfection. Even what are known as Yogic Siddhis or mere spiritual experiences or realisations such as those of Mukti or Nīrvāna do not amount to 'transformation'. As Sri Aurobindo explains it in one of his letters:
'Transformation' is a word that I have brought in myself (like 'supermind') to express certain spiritual concepts and spiritual facts of the integral Yoga.... Purification of the nature by
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the 'influence' of the Spirit is not what I mean by transformation; purification is only part of a psychic change or a psycho-spiritual change the word besides has many senses and is very often given a moral or ethical meaning which is foreign to my purpose. What I mean by the spiritual transformation is something dynamic (not merely liberation of the Self or realisation of the One which can very well be attained without any descent). It is a putting on of the spiritual consciousness dynamic as well as static in every part of the being down to the subconscient. That cannot be done by the influences of the Self leaving the consciousness fundamentally as it is with only purification, enlightenment of the mind and heart and quiescence of the vital. It means a bringing down of the Divine Consciousness static and dynamic into all these parts and the entire replacement of the present consciousness by that. This we find unveiled and unmixed above mind, life and body. It is a matter of the undeniable experience of many that this can descend and it is my experience that nothing short of its full descent can thoroughly remove the veil and mixture and effect the fall spiritual transformation. . . . I may add that transformation is not the central object of other paths as it is of this Yoga — only so much purification and change is demanded by them as will lead to liberation and the beyond-life.'9
The transformation that is sought after in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo is that of Nature, Prakriti. The Spirit that is manifest to itself is to be made manifest to Nature and in Nature. The Prakriti of sattva, rajas, and tamas, has to be fully transformed by the Divine Nature, the Supramental Nature, so that Nature itself would be liberated from its limitations and be the direct and fall expression of the Divine Supermind. In the supramental transformation of Nature, there is not merely the transcendence of the three gunas but the three gunas themselves become purified, refined and changed into their divine equivalents: sattva becomes jyoti, the authentic spiritual light; rajas becomes tapas, the tranquilly intense divine force; tamas becomes
Page 29
shama, the divine quiet, rest, peace. But this can be done, according to Sri Aurobindo, in its fullness in the physical only when the physical life is finally transformed by the supramental power.
This is quite different from what is known as spiritual liberation or Mukti. Spiritual liberation is an important step in the integral Yoga towards transformation, but it is not its consummation. Spiritual liberation means the liberation of the Spirit from Nature, whereas transformation of Nature means the liberation of Nature itself from its own limitations. In the state of spiritual liberation, the spirit is realised as above and unaffected by Nature, and thus the bondage to Nature is broken, and spiritual freedom is achieved. It is true that to effect this liberation, there has indeed to be radical change of Nature, the mental nature is silenced, the vital is purified and falls quiescent, even the physical collaborates, the sattva becomes predominant and rajas and tamas become subordinated, the gunasdo not any more cloud or eclipse the spirit, desire and ego are eliminated from Nature, but still, the gunas themselves are not transmuted into their original divine attributes. The free spirit, as in the case of the jivanamukta, can act in the world, but still the instrument of action is not liberated from the gunas, and therefore the action is not yet the full and luminous expression of the will of the Spirit. In a complete transformation of Nature, the modes of Nature, the action of Nature, the total vibrations of Nature express automatically (not by virtue of an obligation of a regular practice of Siddhis) the law of the divine Nature. This is what is meant in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo as the sādharmya mukti, 'the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine.'
IV
The entire process of transformation is that of a triple transformation, the psychic, the spiritual and the supramental. Sri Aurobindo uses the word 'psychic', where it does not mean
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merely the inner psychological powers, but stands for the inmost soul. The psychic entity is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the true soul secret in us, screened behind the body, life and mind and its presence burns in the temple of the inmost heart. It is the flame of the Godhead always alight within us, inextinguishable even by the dense unconsciousness which obscures our outward nature. It is this psychic entity which puts forward gradually a psychic personality which changes, grows, develops. At first, the psychic being can exercise only a concealed and partial and indirect action through the mind, the life and the body, for it permits these parts of Nature to develop as its instruments of self-expression. But in due course, it can come forward and lead our entire growth, internal as well as external. 'It is', in the words of Sri Aurobindo, 'this secret psychic entity which is the true-original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature. It is the psychic personality in us that flowers as the saint, the sage, the seer; when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty, Love and Bliss, the divine heights and largenesses, and opens us to the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality, oneness.'10 The coming forward of the psychic person marks a momentous stage in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It then begins to govern overtly and entirely our outer nature of mind, life and body, and these can be cast into soul images of what is true, right and beautiful, and in the end the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory. A transformation of the mind, life and body by the presence and powers of the psychic being is effected. This process may be rapid or tardy according to the resistance in our developed nature. But ultimately, by the greater and greater infusion of the psychic light every part of the being is psychicised. As
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Sri Aurobindo describes it:
'Every region of the being, every nook and comer of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, mute, recondite, is lighted up with the unerring psychic light, their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentangled, their obscurities, deceptions, self-deceptions precisely indicated and removed; all is purified, set right, the whole nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order.'11
The psychic transformation is the one necessary condition of the total transformation of our existence, but that is not all that is needed for the largest spiritual change. As explained by Sri Aurobindo:
'.. . since this is the individual soul in Nature, it can open to the hidden diviner ranges of our being and receive and reflect their light and power and experience, but another, a spiritual transformation from above is needed for us to possess our self in its universality and transcendence. By itself the psychic being at a certain stage might be content to create a formation of truth, good and beauty and make that its station; at a further stage it might become passively subject to the world-self, a mirror of the universal existence, consciousness, power, delight, but not their full participant or possessor. . . .'12
While the psychic is the inmost and deepest being in us, the spiritual is the higher and transcendental. While the psychic life is the life immortal, endless time, limitless space, ever progressive change, unbroken continuity in the world of forms, the spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live in the infinite and the eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation beyond time and space. When we go deeper behind the mental, we enter into the field of the psychic, when we go above the
Page 32
mental, we enter into the domain of the spiritual experiences of the transcendental self or of the wide cosmic consciousness or of the One and the Supreme as the upholder of time-space.
For purposes of transformation, it is not enough in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo to have even these spiritual experiences and realisations. The realisations of the One and of the Unity, of the Cosmic and Transcendental Peace, Knowledge, Power, Bliss, — these need to be expressed in our dynamic Nature. And for that, according to Sri Aurobindo, there is to be an ascent into the planes of the higher dynamic action and the descent of the powers of these planes into our mind, life and body. These planes are those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, and Overmind preparing the ascent and descent of the Supermind.13 It is this process that is specifically called in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo the process of spiritual transformation.
This process is extremely complex and it is impossible to give any idea of it here. Sri Aurobindo has written extensively on this subject, but in the following passage from one of his letters, we have some indications of this process:
'The Self governs the diversity of its creation by its unity of all the planes from the Higher Mind upwards on which the realisation of the one is the natural basis of consciousness. But as one goes upward, the view changes, the power of consciousness changes, the Light becomes ever more intense and potent. Although the static realisation of Infinity and Eternity and the Timeless One remains the same, the vision of the workings of the One becomes ever wider and is attended with a greater instrumentality of Force and a more comprehensive grasp of what has to be known and done. All possible forms and constructions of things become more and more visible, put in their proper place, utilisable. Moreover, what is thought- knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition. But the Intuition sees in flashes and combines through a constant play of light through revelations, inspirations, intuitions, swift
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discriminations. The overmind sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally; it creates and acts in the same way it is the world of the great Gods, the divine Creators. Only, each creates in his own way; he sees all but sees all from his own view-point. There is not the absolute supramental harmony and certitude. These, inadequately expressed, are some of the differences. I speak, of course, of these planes in themselves — when acting in the human consciousness they are necessarily much diminished in their working by having to depend on the human instrumentation of mind, vital and physical. Only when these are quieted, they get a fuller force and reveal more their character.'14
The descent of the Overmind and the consequent transformation of the lower instruments of the mind, life, body and the inconscient mark a further decisive stage in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It is the final consummating movement of what Sri Aurobindo has called the dynamic spiritual transformation. And yet, there are certain reasons arising from its status and power that prevent it from being the final possibility of the spiritual evolution. As Sri Aurobindo explains it:
'In the terrestrial evolution itself the overmind descent would not be able to transform wholly the Inconscience; all that it could do would be to transform in each man it touched the whole conscious being, inner and outer, personal and universally impersonal, into its own stuff and impose that upon the Ignorance illumining it into cosmic truth and knowledge. But a basis of Nescience would remain; it would be as if a sun and its system were to shine out in an original darkness of Space and illumine everything as far as its rays could reach so that all that dwelt in the light would feel as if no darkness were there at all in their experience of existence. But outside that sphere or expance of experience the original darkness would still be there and, since all things are possible in an overmind structure, could reinvade the island of light created within its empire. Moreover, since overmind deals with different possibilities, its natural action
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would be to develop the separate possibility of one or more or numerous dynamic spiritual formulations to their utmost or combine or harmonise several possibilities together; but this would be a creation or a number of creations in the original terrestrial creation, each complete in its separate existence. The evolved spiritual individual would be there, there might evolve also a spiritual community or communities in the same world as mental man and the vital being of the animal, but each working out its independent existence in a loose relation within the terrestrial formula. The supreme power of the principle of unity taking all diversities into itself and controlling them as parts of the unity, which must be the law of the new evolutionary consciousness, would not as yet be there. Also by this much evolution there could be no security against the downward pull or gravitation of the Inconscience which dissolves all the formations that life and mind built in it, swallows all things that arise out of it or are imposed upon it and disintegrates them into their original matter. The liberation from this pull of the Inconscience and a secured basis for a continuous divine or gnostic evolution would only be achieved by a descent of the Supermind into the terrestrial formula, bringing into it the supreme law and light and dynamics of the Spirit and penetrating with it and transforming the inconscience of the material basis. A last transition from Overmind to Supermind and a descent of Supermind must therefore intervene at this stage of evolutionary Nature.'15
Only the supremental Force can, according to Sri Aurobindo, entirely overcome the difficulty of the resistance of the Inconscience. Only the luminous Supermind and its sovereign imperative can descend into the Inconscience without any diminution of its omnipotent Power and thus displace or entirely penetrate and transform into itself the Inconscience.
'Only the Supermind', writers Sri Aurobindo, 'can thus descend without losing its full power of action; for its action is always intrinsic and automatic, its will and knowledge identical
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and the result commensurate: its nature is a self-achieving Truth-Consciousness and if its limits itself or its working, it is by choice and intention, not by compulsion; in the limits it chooses its action and the results of its action are harmonious and inevitable. .. . The whole radical change in the evolution from a basis of Ignorance to a basis of Knowledge can only come by the intervention of the supramental power and its direct action in earth-existence.'16
V
The results of the descent of the Supermind on the earth and the consequent supramental transformation of the mind, life body and the inconscient would mean a momentous stage in the evolutionary process. It would mean the mutation of the human species into what Sri Aurobindo has termed the 'gnostic' species. It would mean a step which would radically alter even the human body, its structure and the principle of its working. It would mean the appearance of what Sri Aurobindo has termed the Divine Body, an ever-youthful physical envelope of the unveiled Spirit.
'For the manifestation or building of a divine body on earth,' writes Sri Aurobindo, 'there must be an initial transformation, the appearance of a new, a greater and more developed type, not a continuance with little modifications of the present physical form and its limited possibilities. What has to be preserved must indeed be preserved and that means whatever is necessary or thoroughly serviceable for the uses of the new life on earth; whatever is still needed and will serve its purpose but imperfect, will have to be retained but developed and perfected; whatever is no longer of use for new aims or is a disability must be thrown aside. The necessary forms and instrumentations of Matter must remain since it is in a world of Matter that the divine life has to manifest, but their materiality must be refined, uplifted, ennobled, illumined, since Matter and the
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world of Matter have increasingly to manifest the indwelling Spirit.'17
According to Sri Aurobindo, the present crisis through which mankind is passing today has in it truly the evolutionary nisus to transmute Man. And, the varied problems of mankind which perplex us beyond any hope of solution would find their true solution when we, as the human race, would take a firm step towards this evolutionary transmutation. 'Man is,' says Sri Aurobindo, 'a transitional being; he is not final. For in man and high beyond him ascend the radiant degrees that climb to a divine supermanhood. There lies our destiny and the liberating key to our aspiring but troubled and limited mundane existence.'18
But the idea of the Superman as we find it in Sri Aurobindo is to be clearly distinguished from the Nietzschean idea of the Superman. While the former is that of the divine Superman, the latter is that of the Asuric or Rakshasic Superman. The Nietzschean superman is the most dominant egoistic immense Man who would trample under his feet of Power a submissive and meek humanity. But the divine superman reconciles and harmonises in him the absolute of Power with the absolute of Love and Knowledge. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'When the full heart of Love is tranquillised by knowledge into a calm ecstasy and vibrates with strength, when the strong hands of Power labour for the world in a radiant fullness of joy and light, when the luminous brain of knowledge accepts and transforms the heart's obscure inspirations and lends itself to the workings of the high-seated will, when all these gods are founded together on a soul of sacrifice that lives in unity with all the world and accepts all things to transmute them, then is the condition of man's integral self-transcendence. This and not a haughty, strong and brilliant egoistic self-culture enthroning itself upon an enslaved humanity is the divine way of supermanhood.'19
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The descent of the Supermind and the appearance of the superman on the earth would, according to Sri Aurobindo, have immense influence on mankind as a whole. In his Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth, Sri Aurobindo has given us some glimpses into the consequences for humanity of the descent of the Supermind on the earth. As he points out:
'The descent into the earth-life of so supreme a creative power as the Supermind and its truth-consciousness could not be merely a new feature or factor added to that life or put in its front but without any other importance or only a restricted importance carrying with it no results profoundly affecting the rest of earth-nature. Especially it could not fail to exercise an immense influence on mankind as a whole, even a radical change in the aspect and prospect of its existence here, even if this power had no other capital result on the material world in which it had come down to intervene. One cannot but conclude that the influence, the change made would be far reaching, even enormous: it would not only establish the Supermind and supramental race of beings upon the earth, it could bring about an uplifting and transforming change in mind itself and as an inevitable consequence in the consciousness of man, the mental being and would equally bring about a radical and transforming change in the principles and forms of his living, his ways of action and the whole build and tenor of his life.'20
This and much more would be the significance of the results of the Yoga of Transformation for humanity. It is in this context that Sri Aurobindo has previsaged the coming of world unity and of the spiritual age for mankind. The advent of the supramental at the present critical hour is for Sri Aurobindo the key to the gates of the New Future. And the present hour is for him the Hour of God, the hour of decisive change, advent and manifestation. Indeed, it has been affirmed that the descent of the supermind has already been effected and the supramental is at work in the earth-conditions. A new call is upon humanity.
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1. Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth, Centenary Library, Vol. 16, pp. 41-2.
2. For a description of these grades, see Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 19, pp. 939-63.
3. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 18, p. 312.
4. Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth, Centenary Library, Vol. 16, p. 43.
5. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 20, p. 4.
6. Sādhanā, the practice by which perfection, Stddht, is attained; sādhaka, the Yogin who seeks by that practice the Siddhi.
7. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 20, p. 40.
8. Ibid., p. 42.
9. Sri Aurobindo on Himself, Centenary Library, Vol. 26, pp. 109-10.
10. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 18, p. 226.
11. Ibid., Vol. 19, pp. 907-8.
12. Ibid., Vol. 18, p. 227.
13. For some adequate idea, see The Life Divine, Vol. 19, p. 389-918.
14. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 24, p. 1154.
15. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 19, pp.953-4.
16. Ibid., pp. 917-18.
17. Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth, Centenary Library, Vol. 16, p. 39.
18. Sri Aurobindo, The Hour of God, Centenary Library, Vol. 17, p. 7.
19. Sri Aurobindo, The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth, Centenary Library, Vol. 16, p. 281.
20. Ibid., p. 50.
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3
Bondage, Liberation and Perfection
ONE OF the greatest contributions of the Indian science of Yoga is that of the discovery of the state of bondage of the human soul, as also that of the fashioning of the various methods which would ensure liberation and its other consequences relating to perfection.
Every human being is required to deal with a given environment and a certain set of circumstances, and at a certain stage, a conscious feeling begins to grow that there is something in the human personality which needs to be distinguished from the environment and circumstances in an effort either to escape from the burden of life and its responsibilities or to refashion the inner psychological complexities of the being so as to control, master and perfect the inner life, outer life and the world. This feeling is, in the beginning, evanescent or temporary; but in due course, it grows under various pressures of experience, and one begins to suspect one's ignorance and one's state of bondage, accompanied by a growing aspiration to remove ignorance and to attain to liberation and perfection.
It has been rightly observed that a special characteristic of ignorance is that it does not suspect itself. To discover that one is ignorant is itself a sign of a certain growth of knowledge. It is only at that stage that one begins to ask some of the deepest questions about the riddle of the world and the intricacies of varieties of relationships in which one is entangled in one's commerce with the outer world.
At a farther stage, one is led to inquire into the questions as
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to whether sorrow and suffering, disabilities and death, dualities and incapacities can truly and effectively be removed altogether. The question, 'What am I?' assumes then great prominence, and one is led to a quest of the most Ultimate or of Something in which all afflictions and incapacities can be extinguished permanently.
A special feature of Indian philosophy is that it measures its own relevance in terms of the answers it provides to existential questions relating to bondage and quest for liberation. And, while the Indian philosophical inquiry is pure, impartial and thorough-going, the ultimate test that it imposes upon itself is not merely that of logical consistency and comprehensiveness but also of its ability to show the way to liberation from delusion and sorrow and even to total collective welfare by attainment of states and powers of perfection.
All Yogic disciplines maintain that the state of bondage is marked by identification of the experiencing consciousness with the instruments and objects that constitute for the experiencing consciousness its world of experience. Different systems of Yoga use different terms for the experiencing consciousness and for the experienced world. According to one system, the experiencing consciousness is called Purusha and the experienced world is called Prakriti, and it is maintained that the identification of Purusha with Prakriti constitutes the state of bondage; according to another system, the individual soul, which is called Jiva, when identified with the mind, is said to be in the state of bondage. According to a third system, the individual soul or jiva is nothing but a temporary conglomeration of perceptions and impressions, which by repetitive actions creates an apparent sense of self or ego-sense, which identifies itself with the experienced world, which, in turn, is also a conglomeration of perceptions and impressions. There is yet another view according to which the individual soul,
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which is in some way dependent on the supreme Reality, and which, when instead of dwelling in that Reality, identifies itself with the instruments of experience and objects of the experienced world, gets into the state of bondage.
Among these and similar views, what is commonly emphasised is that there are two elements in the psychology of bondage, which are central experiences of bondage. These are: desire and ego-sense. All systems of Yoga are fundamentally different ways by which desire and ego-sense can be eliminated. Again, all Yogic systems agree that the state of liberation is attained when desire and ego-sense are annihilated or extinguished.
All Yogic systems consider the state of bondage to be the result of Ignorance, which causes the confusion between the real and the unreal, super-imposition of the unreal on the real, or super-imposition of the not-self on the self, or else perception of fleeting impressions which are extinguishable but are not yet extinguished. The question as to how ignorance can be removed, has been answered differently by different systems of Yoga, although they have some common elements.
According to Rāja Yoga, ignorance can be eliminated by means of cessation of modifications of consciousness as a result of disciplined pursuit of an eight-fold path consisting of processes of purification, self-control and concentration leading up to Samādhi in which the mind is completely stilled. According to Jnāna Yoga, the intellect should be so trained that it can distinguish between the unreal and the real, and with the help of the intellectual conviction of this distinction, one should follow up a line of concentration, so that one dissociates oneself from identification with the unreal and arrives at identification with the Real. According to Bhakti Yoga, the individual needs to turn the entire complex of the emotional being in spirit of worship, adoration, service and love for the supreme Reality; and, by constant in-dwelling in the supreme Reality or rather in the supreme Person, one gets dissociated from everything else with which one was earlier identified.
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According to Karma Yoga, the discipline consists of a gradual elimination of desire and egoism, which are normally intertwined strongly with action, by means of a gradual process in which one dissociates oneself from the fruits of action and later on dissociates oneself from the sense of doership of action, and finally, one becomes a mere vehicle of action proceeding from the Supreme Reality. In the Yogic system of Jainism, the discipline consists of dissociating Jīva from matter by means of gradual or rapid exhaustion of action, karma, with the help of various practices that underline rigorous practice of truthfulness, non-violence, continence, non-covetousness and burning away of all attachments to possession. In the Yoga of Buddhism, the process of yoga consists of the eightfold path, namely, of right beliefs, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right mode of livelihood, right effort, right mindedness and right rapture. There are also many other systems of yoga which emphasise disciplines of the body, or of life-force and mind or else they combine various systems of yoga in some kind of synthesis. There are, of course, claims and counter-claims, in regard to the superiority of one system over the other, but, as stated above, they all agree that the state of liberation is impossible without the elimination of desire and ego-sense.
The state of the liberated soul has been described variously. But there are two important characteristics of this state which are commonly to be found among all these descriptions. First, the state of liberation is a state of recovery, recovery of a state which was always in a state of freedom. It is said that it is the state of nirvana or of the Purusha or Brahman which is for ever free. Secondly, it is a state beyond the mind-consciousness, which could be defined as consciousness that is discursive, successive, and centred on apprehensive as opposed to comprehensive point of view. If this state of liberation is that of
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consciousness or knowledge or bliss or all of them together, they are other than what they are at the mental level. It is fundamentally a state of stillness or peace that transcends understanding or of resignation or surrender, or of all of them together, and if there is any movement or dynamism or action, it is a movement of soul's relationship of unity and harmony of all things in a transcendence or with the transcendental and universal Reality or Being. In that state of freedom, the soul may merge into the infinite Being or choose to dwell in union with the supreme Being, and in that case, at the fall of the body, all connection with Nature or Prakriti is cut off without any possibility of return. However, as long as the bodily life continues, the psychology of a liberated soul is so poised that the inner freedom is not lost even when outer activities of Prakriti of the body, life and mind, continue by the momentum of the past. At the same time, even in the outer Prakriti, roof of desire and egoism are annihilated, and the activities of the gunas, as understood in the terminology of Sāmkhya, are harmonised in such a way that the sattwa predominates and rajas and tamas are subordinated, and all the three gunas reflect or carry out, in spite of their inherent limitations, something of the state of the liberated soul.
Among the numerous experiences which have been described in respect of the state of liberation, there are three experiences which are frequently mentioned, and each one of them appears as an experience so overwhelming that it excludes the other two, or even if admitted, they appear to be sublated.
The first of these experiences is that of the soul as Purusha in a state of silent witness that stands unaffected by the determinations which were earlier imposed upon it by the power and action of Prakriti. The second experience is that of an overwhelming awakening to Reality when the thought is stilled, when the mind withdraws from its constructions, and when one passes into a pure Selfhood void of all sense of
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individuality, empty of all cosmic contents. If the spiritualised mind then looks at the individual and the cosmos, they appear to it as an illusion, a scheme of names and figures and movements falsely imposed on the sole reality of the Self-Existent, or even the sense of Self becomes inadequate. Both knowledge and ignorance disappear into sheer consciousness and consciousness is plunged into a trance of pure superconscient existence. Or even existence ends by becoming too limiting a name for that which abides solely for ever. There is only a timeless Eternal, a spaceless Infinite, the utterness of the Absolute, a nameless peace and overwhelming single objectless Ecstasy. The third experience is that of the omnipresent Divine Person, Lord of a real Universe and the Lord of the supreme Shakti, of which the individual soul is a centre without circumference or a portion or a child that lives by mutuality with all and in utter ecstasy of union with the Lord and His Shakti.
There is also, it is claimed, an experience in which all the above three experiences are transcended into something that can be described as Shūnya, the Nihil, which is also sometimes described as the Permanent. Again, there is an affirmation of a supramental and integral experience in which all these experiences are held simultaneously and where the Supreme is realised, as in the Gitā, as Purushottama in His Absoluteness and Integrality uniting within Himself both the kshara and akshara purusha, the static and the dynamic purusha. This experience answers to the great pronouncements of the Upanishads where the Supreme is described at once as Brahman or Ātman, Purusha and Īshwara.
As the Ishopanishad declares:
'That moves and That moves not; That is far and same is near, That is within all this and That also is outside all this.
'But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self shrinks not thereafter from aught.
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"He in whom it is the Self-Being that has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness?' (5, 6, 7)
In the Indian tradition there appears to be distinction between liberation and perfection, although these two terms are often understood to be interchangeable. Nonetheless, when we study the Vedic and Upanishadic concept of immortality, Gitā's concept of sādharmya in connection with the perfection of Karmayoga, and the Tantric view of siddhis including those of mental, vital and physical being, we are obliged to bring out full value of the idea of perfection as distinguished from that of liberation.
The Vedic Yoga may be looked upon as an earliest synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense of the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. This experience culminates in the ascent to the plane of Truth- consciousness (rita-chit) and its descent into lower planes of the mental, vital and physical consciousness in the human body up to a point where the physical consciousness becomes so vast that the truth-consciousness can dwell in it. The Vedic Rishis have called that state the state of immortality. Parāshara speaks of the path which leads to immortality in the following words: 'They who entered into all things that bear ripe fruit, formed a path towards immortality; earth stood wide for them by the greatness and by the Great Ones, the Mother Aditi with
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her sons came (or, manifested herself) for the upholding.'* (Rgveda 1.72.9).
Commenting on this, Sri Aurobindo states: 'That is to say, the physical being visited by the greatness of the infinite planes above and by the power of the great godheads who reigned on those planes breaks its limits, opens out to the Light and is upheld in its new wideness by the infinite consciousness, Mother Aditi and Her sons, the divine Powers of the supreme Deva. This is the Vedic immortality.' (The Secret of the Veda, pp. 191-92).
The Upanishads also speak of immortality, and as we study these great books of the profound masters of the spiritual knowledge, we find that, starting from the crowning experiences of liberation and perfection of the Vedic seers, they arrive at a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking.
The Gitā starts from the synthesis of the Upanishads and, on that basis, builds another harmony of the three great means and powers, love, knowledge and works, through which the soul of man can directly approach and cast itself into the eternal. It even goes farther and through its injunction to surrender totally to the Divine, it opens up the doors by which the spirit can take up the individual into the universal Power of higher Nature, parā Prakriti. In effect, this would be the method by which the concept of sdlokyamukti and sdyujyamukti is further extended into sādharmyamukti, the liberation and perfection of the lower nature of life, body and mind by infusion into it of the divine nature, the parā Prakriti, which is evidently the divine Aditi of the Veda. The Tantric Yoga has developed methods for a richer spiritual conquest that would enable the
* ā ye viśvā svapatyāni tasthuh krnvānāso amrtatvāya gātum;
mahnā mahadbhih prthivī vi tasthe mātā putrair aditih dhāyse veh.
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seeker to embrace whole of Life in his divine scope as the cosmic Play of the Divine. In other words, it grasps that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, which was possessed by the Vedic Rshis.
In the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo a new dimension is added to conceptions of bondage, liberation and perfection. It founds itself on a conception of the spiritual being as an omnipresent existence, the fullness of which comes not essentially by a transference to other worlds or a cosmic self-extinction, but by a growth out of what we now are phenomenally into the consciousness of the omnipresent reality which we always are in the essence of our being. To open oneself to the supracosmic Divine is an essential condition of the integral perfection; but to unite oneself with the universal Divine is another essential condition. Here the Integral Yoga coincides with the Yoga of knowledge, works, and devotion. Since human life is accepted as a self-expression of the realised Divine in man, the Integral Yoga insists on action of the entire divine nature in life. It is here that by a new effort of research and development of new Yogic methods, as also by bringing all the relevant materials from the synthetic yogas of the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavadgitā and Tantrathe aim of the supramental manifestation on earth is sought to be realised.
Sri Aurobindo equates the Vedic truth-consciousness with the supermind, with the Gitā's concept of parāprakriti and with the supreme Shakti of Tantra, and builds up a path of ascent to the supermind and of descent of the supermind right up to the mental, vital and physical parts of the being, the climax of which is reached when the supermind is made to permeate the cells of the body so that the perfection which is attained would result in transmutation of the human species for the evolution of a new species on the earth.
Three elements, a union with the supreme divine, unity
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with the universal Self, and a supramental life action from this transcendent origin and through this universality, but still with the individual as the soul-channel and natural instrument, — constitute the essence of the integral divine perfection of the human being. In the Integral Yoga, what is called moksha or liberation from the ego and the will of desire is an essential step, but this liberation is enriched by the synthesis of knowledge, devotion, and action, and one is prepared for development of perfection of the instruments of prakriti. Mukti, and in this case jīvanamukti, brings with it a superiority to the qualitative modes of the inferior Nature, traigunyātītya. Liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss of the supreme is the first form of release. A farther liberation of the Nature into a divine quality and spiritual power of world experience fills the supreme calm with the supreme kinetic bliss of knowledge, power, joy and mastery. A divine unity of the supreme spirit and its supreme nature, which can be termed as a state of integral liberation, becomes the true foundation of farther consequences which constitute the six-fold perfection.
The first element of perfection is that of perfect equality and perfect action of equality.
The second element of perfection is attained by raising all the active parts of the human nature to that of higher condition of working pitch of the power and capacity on which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine action. This would mean the perfection of the powers and capacities of the mind, the vital and the physical. This would also imply the perfect dynamic force of the temperament, character and inmost soul-nature which would result in what Sri Aurobindo calls the perfection of the fourfold personality, the personality of knowledge, of strength, of harmony and love and of skill and service. This movement is further strengthened by called in the divine Power or Shakti to replace the limited human energy so that it may be shaped into the image of and filled with the force of a greater infinite energy.
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The third element of perfection is, according Sri Aurobindo, the evolution of the mental into the supramental gnostic being which would progressively take up all the terms of intelligence, will, sense mind, heart, the vital and sensational being and translate them by a luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a living existence.
The next element of perfection is that of the gnostic perfection in the physical body.
And the fifth element is arrived at when this perfection is pushed to its highest conclusion which, according to Sri Aurobindo, brings in spiritualising and illumination of the whole physical consciousness and divinising of the law of the body.
The sixth element is that of the perfect action and enjoyment of being on the supramental gnostic basis. And this integrality of perfection cannot remain confined to the individual, but would extend progressively to the development of the collective divine life on the earth. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'The divinising of the normal material life of man and of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort.'
VI
The treasure of knowledge that India possesses in its science of yoga is, it may be said, of direct relevance to the contemporary crisis through which humanity is passing today. Not only increasing number of individuals in the world are finding themselves in the grip of dilemmas, which have become impossible of solution through any of the ordinary known means at the disposal of humanity, but even the collective life of humanity has reached such as acute stage of mechanisation, standardisation and unbearable structuralisation that the ideals of progress which have been put forward, the ideals of
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liberty, equality and fraternity, can never be realised, even though it is clear that they must be realised by means of methods or trends which are being currently pursued.
It may be argued that the Yogic knowledge is too difficult, and it would be impossible for humanity to accept it. But when we examine in full the maladies of the contemporary humanity, it would be idle or even misleading to suggest that any lesser remedy is likely to work. It is best to propose to humanity what is known to us to be the best, however difficult it may be.
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4
Psychology of Integral Yoga
ALL METHODS 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. Each specialised system of Yoga selects one or two or more faculties of human psychology and uses them as its instruments, develops them, purifies them and employs through them a certain special method of concentration on the object that is sought to be realised. In the Integral Yoga, all powers and faculties are combined, developed and purified, and there is a progressive integral concentration upon the object of integral perfection.
The first stage in the Integral Yoga is to put our whole conscious being into relation and contact with all that we consider to be true, good and beautiful, all that we consider to be perfect and divine. In the second stage, there is a wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of all that we are in our ordinary lower nature to receive and to become the higher nature. It is only in the third and the last stage, which can be wholly rapid and blissful, that there can come about the eventual transformation and perfection which is the object of the Integral Yoga.
The centre of our ordinary consciousness is the ego, which seems to be our basic entity but which, when analysed, turns out to be only a sense arid centre of a finite consciousness that considers itself erroneously to be self-existent. Of this ego we
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are conscious as the surface desire-soul which works in our vital cravings, our emotions, aesthetic faculty and mental seeking for power, knowledge and happiness. The egoistic ignorance in the mind of thoughts, in the heart of emotions and in the senses responds to the touch of things not by a courageous and whole-hearted embrace of the world, but by a flux of reachings and shrinkings, cautious approaches or eager rushes and sullen or discontented panic or anger according to whether the touch pleases or displeases, comforts or alarms, satisfies or dissatisfies. We identify ourselves mentally, vitally, physically with this superficial ego-consciousness which is our first insistent self-experience.
So long as we are content with what we ordinarily are and content with our round of movements in our complex mass of mental, nervous and physical habits held together by a few ruling ideas, desires and associations, we are not yet ready for the conscious adventure of Yoga. For, no yoga can be successfully undertaken and followed unless there is a strong awakening to the necessity of a higher spiritual consciousness and a greater and diviner being. There are many ways by which the individual is awakened strongly to the necessity of a larger spiritual existence. As Sri Aurobindo points out:
'The soul that is called to this deep and vast change, may arrive in different ways to the initial departure. It may come to it by its own natural development which has been leading it unconsciously towards the awakening; it may reach it through the influence of a religion or the attraction of a philosophy; it may approach it by a slow illumination or leap to it by a sudden touch or shock; it may be pushed or led to it by the pressure of outward circumstances or by an inward necessity, by a single word that breaks the seals of the mind or by long reflection, by the distant example of one who has trod the path or by contact and daily influence. According to the nature and the circumstances the call will come."¹
But this call must be distinguished from a mere idea or
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intellectual seeking of something higher beyond. This call is truly a decision of the mind and the soul and has, as its results, a complete and effective self-consecration. This call is a unifying single-mindedness of the being. For Yoga contemplates a revolutionary change of consciousness and such a great change cannot be effected by a divided will or by a small portion of the energy or by a hesitating mind. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'He who seeks the Divine must consecrate himself to God and to God only.'²
The first steps of Yoga present us serious difficulties and obstacles. We begin to look within ourselves and we are brought face to face with the extraordinary complexity of our own being, the stimulating but also embarrassing multiplicity of our personality, 'the rich endless confusion of Nature.' The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every part of us has each its own complex individuality and nature formation independent of the rest; it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor with the representative ego. We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities and each has its own demands and differing nature. We find ourselves to be a roughly constituted chaos and we are called upon to introduce the principle of a divine order.
As we begin to live more and more inwardly we begin to find that we do not exist in ourselves, we do not really live apart in an inner privacy or solitude. We find that the sharp separateness of our ego was no more than a strong imposition and delusion, that a large part comes to us from others or from the environment. We also discover that there are other worlds and their beings and powers and influences and that we are over- topped and environed by other planes of consciousness, mind planes, life planes, subtle matter planes, from which our life and action here are fed, or fed on, pressed, dominated, made
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use of for the manifestation of their forms and forces. As Sri Aurobindo says:
'Of all this we have to take account, to deal with it, to know what is the secret stuff of our nature and its constituent and resultant motions and to create in it all a divine centre and a true harmony and luminous order.³
In dealing with the complexity of our nature, it would be greatly helpful if we have clarity of the various constituents of our complexity. The three important parts of our ordinary nature are, what Sri Aurobindo calls, the mental, the vital and the physical.
The mind proper is divided into three parts thinking Mind, dynamic Mind and externalising Mind. The vital is divided into three parts, the emotional vital, the central vital and the lower vital. The physical refers to the material or physical consciousness and to the physical body.
The thinking Mind is concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right. It reasons and perceives with ideas of infinity, eternity, unity, identity and self-contradiction. It considers and finds out the value of things. The dynamic Mind is concerned with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea. The externalising Mind is concerned with the expression of ideas and knowledge and mental forces in life, not only by speech, but by any form it can give.
The emotional vital is the seat of various feelings, such as love, joy, sorrow, hatred and the rest. The central vital is the seat of the stronger vital longings and reactions, such as ambition, pride, fear, love of fame, attractions and repulsions, desires and passions of various kinds and the field of many vital energies. The lover vital is occupied with small desires and feelings, such as food desire, sexual desire, small likings, dislikings, vanity, quarrels, love of praise, anger at blame,
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little wishes of all kinds and a numberless host of other things.
The physical consciousness is mechanical and repetitive in character, and it is limited to the purely bodily needs, and it is this consciousness which insists on the mind to seek the evidence of physical senses and the physical sense-organs. The purely bodily consciousness is largely sub-conscious and unconscious.
These three, the mental, the vital and the physical, are interrelated in the complexity of our being. As a result, there is in us what Sri Aurobindo calls the mental-vital (vital mind), mentalphysical (physical mind), vital-mental, vital-physical and physical-vital. The mental-vital or the vital mind is the mind which is at the service of vital desires and vital emotions. It is a so-t of mediator between vital emotion, desire, impulsion, etc., and the mental proper. It expresses the desire, feelings, emotions, passions, ambitions, possessive and active tendencies of the vital and throws them into mental forms. Finding arguments in support of vital movements such as rationalisations of all kinds is also an activity of the mental-vital or of the vital mind. Other activities include pure imaginations or dreams of greatness, happiness, etc., in which men indulge very often. The mental-vital or vital mind plans or dreams or imagines what can be done. It makes formations for the future which the will can try to carry out if opportunity and circumstances become favourable or even it can work to make them favourable. In men of action this faculty is prominent and a leader of their nature; great men of action always have it in a very high measure. At a lower stage of the mental-vital, the vital passions, impulses and desires rise up and get into the pure Thought and either cloud it or distort it. The mental-vital (the vital Mind) should be distinguished from the dynamic Mind. While the mental-vital is limited by the vital view and feelings
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of things, the dynamic Mind is not, for it acts by idea and reason.
The emotional vital and the central vital are sometimes taken together and referred to as the higher vital, in contrast to the lower vital which is concerned with the bottom movements of action and desire and stretches down into the vital-physical. The vital-physical is the vital at the service of the physical. It is the nervous being, and it governs all the small daily reactions to outward things. It governs also reactions of the nerves and the body consciousness and reflects emotions and sensations; it motivates much of the ordinary actions of man and joins with the lower parts of the vital proper in producing lust, jealousy, anger, violence, etc. In its lowest parts, where it can be called vital-material, it is the agent of passion, physical illness, etc.
The physical-vital supports the life of more external activities and all physical sensations, hungers, cravings, satisfactions. It is foil of desires and greeds and seekings for pleasure on the physical plane.
The vital-physical is below the mental-physical, but above the material. However, they inter-penetrate each other. The body-energy is a manifestation of material forces supported by a vital-physical energy which is the vital energy precipitated into matter and conditioned by it.
The mental-physical or the physical Mind is the mind at the service of the physical. It is the mind conditioned by the physical, and it is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty respond to the higher forces. Left to itself, it is sceptical of the existence of supra-physical things, of which is has no direct experience and to which it can find no clue. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and supramental planes is one of the important objects of the integral Yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human self-development, civilisation and culture.
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The gross material part has also a consciousness of its own, the consciousness proper to the limbs, cells, tissues, glands and organs. To make this consciousness luminous and directly instrumental to the higher planes and to the divine movement is what is meant in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga making the body conscious, that it to say, full of a true, awakened and responsive awareness instead of its own obscure, limited halfsubconscience.
The sub-conscient is below the level of mind and conscious life, inferior and obscure, and it covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constituent bodily being, unmentalised and unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action. It can be held to include the corporeal mind, the mind or dumb occult consciousness, dynamic but not sensed by us, which operates in the cells and nerves and all the corporeal stuff and adjusts their life-processes and automatic responses. The mind of the cells is distinguishable from the mental-physical or the physical mind. The mental-physical is the mind at the service of the physical, whereas the mind of the cells is the consciousness working in the cells themselves. It is something like the submerged sense-mind which is highly operative in animal and plant life but is also obscurely at work below our conscious nature.
According to Sri Aurobindo, a plunge into the sub-conscient when we are not yet sufficiently ready is unsafe, and would not help us to explore this region, for this would lead us into incoherence, sleep or dull trance or comatose torpor. Our first concern must be with all that we are conscious of, and it is only when there has been already a good deal of harmonisation of our conscious being and an ascent to high levels of consciousness that it becomes easier and safer to deal with the subconscient. The higher we rise the greater the capacity we acquire to deal with the lower. The lower and the higher have
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correspondences and the highest superconscient and the lowest inconscient are in a sense nearest to each other. The lowest inconscient can effectively be dealt with the transformed only by the highest powers of the supramental superconscient.
As Sri Aurobindo explains:
'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. ... In all material things resides a mute and involved Real-Idea, a substantial and self-effective intuition, an eyeless exact perception, an automatic intelligence working out its unexpressed and unthought conceptions, a blindly seeing sureness of sight, a dumb infallible sureness of suppressed feeling coated in insensibility, which effectuate all that has to be effected. All this state and action of the Inconscient corresponds very evidently with the same state and action of the pure Superconscience, but translated into terms of self-darkness in place of the original self-light.'4
In the evolutionary process, as explained by Sri Aurobindo, the Inconscience seems to be the beginning of the upward movement towards the emergence of the subconscient, the conscient and the superconscient, but the subconscient, the conscient and the superconscient emerge out of the Inconscient because they are already involved in it. And evolution is in essence a heightening of the force of consciousness in the manifest being so that is may be raised into greater intensity of what is still unmanifest. In this evolutionary process, our conscious being stands as a middle term, which is neither unconscious nor superconscious. Our consciousness is normally unaware of all that is subconscious and unconscious of all that is superconscious. It is conscious only-of certain operations of the physical, the vital and the mental, and even of them only of their outer or overt activities and manifestations. For behind
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our conscious physical, vital and mental operations there is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a deeper and inner consciousness, which we need to look into in some detail.
The inner consciousness is, in fact, what can be-called the subliminal consciousness, because it is behind the threshold of our outer consciousness. It includes the large action of the inner mind, inner Intelligence and inner sense-mind, of an inner vital, and of an inner subtle-physical being which upholds and embraces our waking consciousness but is not brought to the front.
Our subliminal being is not, like our surface 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. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal, unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses.
"There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being's direct consciousness of things than its informants: the subliminal is not dependent on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to its direct experience of objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind's documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. 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
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serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience. It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw from the surface activities whether by sleep or inward-drawn concentration or by the inner plunge of trance.'³
The intelligence of the subliminal being preserves the accurate form and relation of all its perceptions and memories and can grasp immediately their significance. And its perceptions are not confined to the scanty gleanings of the physical senses but extend far beyond and use, as telepathic phenomena of many kinds bear witness, a subtle sense the limits of which are too wide to be easily fixed. The relations between the surface will or impulsion and the subliminal urge have not been properly studied except in regard to unusual and unorganised manifestations and in regard to certain morbidly abnormal phenomena-of the diseased human mind. But if we pursue our observation far enough, we shall find, as Sri Aurobindo points out, that cognition and will or impulsive force of the inner being really stand behind the whole conscious becoming; the latter represents only part of its secret endeavour and achievement which rises successfully to the surface of our life. To know our inner being is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the first step towards a real self-knowledge.
There is an inner sense in the subliminal nature, a subtle sense of vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. This inner sense can create or present images and sounds that are symbolic rather than actual or that represent possibilities in formation, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, intentions of other beings, image-forms also of powers or potentialities in universal Nature. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties. The operations of this subliminal sense add immensely to our possible scope of knowledge and widen the narrow limits in which our sensebound outer physical consciousness-is circumscribed and imprisoned.
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One of the more important powers of this subliminal level is to enter into direct contact of consciousness with other consciousness or with objects, to act without the outer instrumentation, by an essential sense inherent in its own substance, by a direct mental vision, by a direct feeling of things, even by a close envelopment and intimate penetration and a return with the contents of what is enveloped or penetrated, by a direct intimation or impact on the substance of mind itself, not through outward signs or figures, — a revealing intimation or a self-communicating impact of thoughts, feelings and forces. As Sri Aurobindo explains:
'It is by these means that the inner being achieves an immediate, intimate and accurate spontaneous knowledge of persons, of objects, of the occult and to us intangible energies of world-Nature that surround us and impinge upon our own personality, physicality, mind-force and life-force.'6
A still farther power of the subliminal is seen in the changes which take effect in our dealings with the impersonal forces of the world that surround us. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'The inner being not only contacts directly and concretely the immediate motive and movement of these universal forces and feels the results of their present action, but it can to a certain extent forecast or see ahead their farther action; there is a greater power in our subliminal parts to overcome the time barrier, to have the sense or feel the vibration of coming events, of distant happenings, even to look into the future.'7
It must, however, be noted that although the subliminal consciousness opens out to us wider vistas of knowledge and action, much surer and much more intimate than our external physical, vital and mental consciousness, still the subliminal consciousness, no less than our external consciousness, is a mixture of knowledge and ignorance and it is capable of erroneous as well as of true perception. It may also be noted
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that the knowledge proper to the subliminal being is not complete. According to Sri Aurobindo, knowledge, in order to be true and complete, must be a knowledge by identity. The subliminal knowledge is a knowledge by direct contact but not knowledge by identity. Therefore, a deeper and higher consciousness is needed to cure the deficiencies and mixtures of ignorance and knowledge that we obtain at the level of subliminal consciousness.
VII
That which is still deeper behind the subliminal consciousness is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the psychic entity and its representative soul personality which supports our individual life, mind and body. The relation between that entity and other parts of our being is explained by Sri Aurobindo as follows:
'There is indeed a soul-personality, representative of this entity, already built up within us, which puts forward a fine psychic element in our natural being: but this finer factor in our normal make-up is not yet dominant and has only a limited action. Our soul is not the overt guide and master of our thought and acts; it has to rely on the mental, vital, physical instruments for self-expression and is constantly overpowered by our mind and life-force, but if once it can succeed in remaining in constant communion with its own large occult reality, and this can only happen when we go deep into our subliminal parts, — it is no longer dependent, it can become powerful and sovereign, armed with an intrinsic spiritual perception of the truth of things and a spontaneous discernment which separates that truth from the falsehood of the Ignorance and Inconscience, distinguishes the divine and the undivine in the manifestation and so can be the luminous leader of our other parts of nature. It is indeed when this happens that there can be the turning-point towards integral transformation and integral knowledge.'8
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The discovery of the psychic being, its experience and its development is a decisive stage in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo. It is then that we are liberated from our small individuality and our ego-sense which binds us to the normal rounds of the desire-soul, which is not really a soul but which erroneously regards itself as the centre and entity of our individuality. On the other hand, the psychic entity is, according to Sri Aurobindo, that by which we exist and persist as an individual being in Nature. While other parts of our natural composition are not only mutable but perishable, the psychic entity in us persists and is fundamentally the same always. It contains all the essential possibilities of our manifestation but is not constituted by them. It is an ever-pure flame of the divinity in things and nothing that comes to it, nothing that enters into our experience can pollute its purity or extinguish the flame.
The psychic entity is not an evolute of lnconscience although it accompanies the evolution of our being and evolves and develops as a spark grows and develops as fire. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'It is a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice of the mystic. It is what which endures and is imperishable in us from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption, an indestructible spark of the Divine.'9
In its undeveloped state, the psychic being is called the soul. The developed soul is properly termed the psychic being. The psychic being is also termed as the central being for the purposes of the evolution, for it grows and develops, and it is that which can effectuate a harmonious integration of the mental, vital and physical personality. The term 'central being' is also used for Jivatman, the individual Self which presides unseen over the evolution and of which the psychic being is the representative in the manifested nature. The Jivatman
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has been described by Sri Aurobindo as the multiple Divine manifested here as the individualised self or spirit of the created being.' The Jivatman in its essence does not change or evolve, but stands above the personal evolution. Within evolution itself, as noted above, it is represented by the evolving psychic being which supports all the rest of the Nature. The Tivatman is distinguished from Atman or Paramatman. Atman, or the Self is transcendental and universal (Paramatman, Atman) When it is individualised and becomes a central being, it is then the Jivatman. The Jjivatman feels his oneness with the universal but at the same time is centrally experienced as a portion of the Divine.
In other words, the Jivatman is the central being which is itself unborn but which presides over the individual evolution. The soul is the representative of the central being. It is a spark of the Divine supporting individual existence in Nature. A conscious form of the soul, the psychic being, grows in the evolutionary process. The soul supports the Nature in its evolution through ascending grades, but is itself not any of these things. When the inmost knowledge begins to develop, we become aware of the psychic being within us and it comes forward as the leader of our Yoga. We become aware also of the Jivatman, the undivided Self or Spirit above the manifestation of which the psychic is the representative here.10
According to Sri Aurobindo, the psychic being (also known as Chaitya Purusha) has a spontaneous aspiration for the opening of the whole lower nature, mind, vital, body to the Divine, for the love and union with the Divine, for its presence and power within the heart, for the transformation of the mind, life and body by the descent of the higher consciousness into our nature. This aspiration of the psychic being is essential and indispensable for the fullness of the integral Yoga. When the psychic imposes its aspiration on the mind, vital and body, they too aspire and this is what is felt as the aspiration from the level of the lower being. The seeking of the lower being is necessarily at first intermingled and oppressed by the
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ordinary consciousness; however by Yogic practice it becomes clear, constant, strong and enduring.
In the integral Yoga, it is necessary to have a clear idea and perception of the different planes and parts of the being, and each part has to get the Truth in it from the psychic or above. What is above the mental consciousness is the superconscient, which has also several grades leading up to the supramental consciousness and supreme integral Divine. It is-the Truth acting from the psychic and descending from the superconscient which will harmonise more and more the action of the different parts of the our being, though the perfect harmony can come only when there is the supramental fulfilment.
VIII
In the Yogic psychology of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the word 'superconscient' is used to include the planes beyond our present level of awareness, namely, those of the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind, Supermind, and the other heights of the pure spiritual being. A basic sense and knowledge of unity is the general characteristic of all the grades of the Superconscience. They are not only states of consciousness but also grades of being and power. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
In themselves these grades are grades of energy-substance of the Spirit: for it must not be supposed, because we distinguish them according to their leading character, means and potency of knowledge, that they are merely a method or way of knowing or a faculty or power of cognition; they are 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. When the powers of any grade descend completely into us, it is not only our thought and knowledge that are affected, the substance and very grain of our being and consciousness, all its states and activities are touched and
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penetrated and can be remoulded and wholly transmuted. Each stage of this ascent is, therefore, a general, if not a total, conversion of the being into a new light and power of a greater existence.' ¹¹
The Higher Mind is a mind which is no longer subject to mingled light and obscurity or half-light. Its basic substance is a unitary sense of being with a powerful multiple dynamisation capable of the formation of multitude aspects of knowledge, ways of actions, forms and significances of becoming, and in all of which there is a spontaneous inherent knowledge. Its special character, its activity of consciousness is dominated by Thought. It is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a luminous Thought-Mind, 'a mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge'. It can freely express itself in single ideas, but its most characteristic movement is a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeking at a single view, the relations of idea with idea, of truth with truth, are not established by logic but are preexistent and emerge already self-seen in the integral whole. Large aspects of truth come into the view of the Higher Mind, and the structures of the view can constantly expand into a larger structure or several of them combine themselves into a provisional greater whole on the way to a yet unachieved integrality. In the end, there is a great totality of truth known and experienced, but still a totality capable of infinite enlargement because there is no end to the aspects of knowledge.
As we go beyond the Higher Mind or what may also be called Truth-Thought, there is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a greater illumination instinct with an increased power and intensity and driving force, a luminosity of the nature of Truth- Sight with thought formulation as a minor and dependent activity. If, as Sri Aurobindo points out, we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a steady sunshine, the knowledge of the Illumined Mind beyond it can be seen as an outpouring of massive lightnings of a flaming sun-stuff.
Beyond the Illumined Mind is the Intuitive Mind. It has a still greater power of Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth
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vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action. The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision, and the Intuitive Mind is more than sight, more than conception. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; it is when the consciousness of the subject meets the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting. The intuitive perception is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. According to Sri Aurobindo, Intuition has a four-fold power. To use his own words:
'A power of revelatory truth-seeing, a power of inspiration or truth-hearing, a power of truth-touch, or immediate seizing of significance, which is akin to the ordinary nature of its intervention in our mental intelligence, a power of true and automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth, these are the four-fold potencies of Intuition.'¹²
But still the intuitive light and power is only the edge of a delegated and modified Supermind, and does not bring in the whole mass or body of the identity knowledge.
At the source of the intuitive mind, there is, according to Sri Aurobindo, a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supermind. This cosmic Mind is not a mind as we know it, but, in the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'... an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.'¹³
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The Overmind is the occult link. It is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.
According to Sri Aurobindo, Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities but leaves it to formulate them in a movement. But this formulation is done by the Overmind by an awareness of the things which, according to Sri Aurobindo, is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance.
Comparing the action of the Supermind and the Overmind, Sri Aurobindo says:
'The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual Cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. ... At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all inter- changes and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.'14
Beyond the Overmind is the plenary supramental consciousness. If Overmental consciousness is global in character, the
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supramental consciousness is integral. The Overmental consciousness is compared by Sri Aurobindo to a sun and its system shining out in an original darkness of Space, and illumining everything as far as its rays could reach so that all that dwelt in the light would feel as if no darkness were there at all in their experience of existence. But outside that sphere or expanse of experience the original darkness would still be there. In the supramental consciousness there is, on the other hand, a plenitude of light, and if it so wills, it can illumine everything integrally. The supramental consciousness is also termed by Sri Aurobindo as Truth-Consciousness, since it is at once the self-awareness of the Infinite and Eternal and a power of self-determination inherent in that self-awareness. As Sri Aurobindo says:
'In Supermind being, consciousness of knowledge and consciousness of will are not divided as they seem to be in our mental operations; they are a trinity, one movement with three effective aspects. Each has its own effect. Being gives the effect of substance, consciousness the effect of knowledge, of the self-guiding and shaping idea, of comprehension and apprehension; will gives the effect of self-fulfilling force. But the idea is only the light of the reality illumining itself; it is not mental thought nor imagination, but effective self-awareness. It is Real-Idea."5
According to Sri Aurobindo, Supermind starts from unity, not division. It is primarily comprehensive; differentiation is only its secondary act. Therefore, Sri Aurobindo points out, whatever be the truth of being expressed, the idea corresponds to it exactly, the will-force to the idea, and the result to the will. In the Supermind, the idea does not clash with other ideas, the will or force with other will or force as in man and his world. The Supermind is, in the words of Sri Aurobindo:
"... one vast Consciousness which contains and relates all ideas in itself as its own ideas, one vast Will which contains and relates all energies in itself as its own energies. It holds
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back this, advances that other, but according to its own preconceiving Idea-Will.'16
The supramental consciousness is founded, according to Sri Aurobindo, upon the supreme consciousness of the timeless Infinite but has too the secret of the deployment of the Infinite Energy in time. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'It can either take its station in the time consciousness and keep the timeless infinite as its background of supreme and original being from which it receives all its organising knowledge, will and action, or it can, centred in its essential being, live in the timeless but live too in a manifestation in time which it feels and sees as infinite and as the same Infinite, and can being out, sustain and develop in the one what it holds supernally in the other.'17
But this unified and infinite time consciousness and this vision and knowledge are, according to Sri Aurobindo, the possession of the supramental being in its own supreme region of light and are complete only on the higher levels of the supramental nature. But the human mind developing into supermind has to pass through several stages and in its ascent and expansion it may experience many changes and various dispositions of the powers and possibilities of its time-consciousness and time-knowledge.
IX
The passage from the lower to the higher is the aim of Yoga. And this passage may effect itself by the rejection of the lower and escape into the higher. This escape is the ordinary point of view. But the passage by the transformation of the lower and its elevation to the higher Nature is the aim of the integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. This passage and this transformation is a complex process, involving a profound evolution and revolution of the being. There is, first, as ascension to the next higher stage of development. This is followed
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by the descent of the powers of the higher stage into the lower by means of which the lower is further purified, developed and elevated upwards. There is also a simultaneous widening of the faculties and powers of the already achieved higher level, which is again preparatory for a still higher stage of development. And this process is a long and ever progressive curve moving upwards and downwards, proceeding from stage to stage until our human nature is supramentalised, culminating in rapid and blissful divine progression. In the following passage from Sri Aurobindo, we have a brief description of this entire process:
'First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts. When one has made the inward conversion, one psychicises the whole lower nature so as to make it ready for the divine change. Going upwards, one passes beyond the human mind and at each stage of the ascent, there is a conversion into a new consciousness and an infusion of this new consciouness into the whole of the nature. Thus rising beyond intellect through illuminated higher mind to the intuitive consciousness, we begin to look at everything not from the intellect range or through intellect as an instrument, but from a greater intuitive height and through an intuitivised will, feeling, emotion, sensation and physical contact. So, proceeding from Intuition to a greater overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the Overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact. But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and conversion of consciousness is no longer needed, though a farther divine progression, even an infinite development is still possible.'18
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X
The aim of integral Yoga is integral perfection. This perfection includes an integral realisation of the Divine, not only of its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects. It includes also an integral liberation and the perfect harmony of the results of Knowledge, Love and Works. There has to be also an integral purity and integral beatitude. Perfection includes perfection of mind and body, so that the higher results of Raja Yoga and Hatha Yoga should be contained in the widest formula of the synthesis finally to be effected.
There are, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, several elements of perfection. The first is a perfect equality, samatā. It is a fundamental poise of the soul while meeting the impact and workings of Nature. Equality is a term of consciousness which brings into the whole of our being and nature the eternal tranquillity of the Infinite.
But equality does not mean, as Sri Aurobindo points out, a fresh ignorance or blinding; it does not call for and need not initiate a greyness of vision and a blotting out of all hues.
'Difference is there, variation of expression is there and this variation we shall appreciate, far more justly than we could when the eye was clouded by a partial and erring love and hate, admiration and scorn, sympathy and antipathy, attraction and repulsion. But behind the variation we shall always see the Complete and Immutable who dwells within it and we shall feel, know or at least, if it is hidden from us, trust in the wise purpose and divine necessity of the particular manifestation, whether it appear to our human standards harmonious and perfect or crude and unfinished or even false and evil.'19
At the same time, we have to note that everything indeed here in this imperfect world has to be changed. We should not take imperfection as our resting-place. We must strive after perfection, and we must make not evil but the supreme good as the universal aim.
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But what we do has to be done with a spiritual understanding and knowledge, and it is a divine good, beauty, perfection, pleasure that has to be followed after, not the human standards of these things.
There are certain semblances of equality which must not be mistaken for the profound and vast spiritual equality. As Sri Aurobindo points out:
'There is an equality of disappointed resignation, an equality of pride, an equality of hardness and indifference: all these are egoistic in their nature. Inevitably they come in the course of the sadhana, but they must be rejected or transformed into the true quietude. There is too, on a higher level, the equality of the stoic, the equality of a devout resignation or a sage detachment, the equality of a soul aloof from the world and indifferent to its doings. These too are insufficient; first approaches they can be, but they are at most early soul-phases only or imperfect mental preparations for our entry into the true and absolute self-existent wide equal one-ness of the spirit.'20
The second necessity of perfection is to raise all the active of the human nature to that higher condition of working pitch of their power and capacity (shaktī) on which they become capable of being divinised into true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and divine action. This would mean the perfection of the powers and capacities of the mind, the vital and the physical. At the same time, there is the need to perfect the dynamic force (virya) in us of the temperament, character and our inmost soul-nature. This contributes to the power of our members in action and gives them their type and direction. Our temperament, character and nature have to be freed from limitations, they have to be enlarged and rounded so that the whole manhood in us may become the basis of a divine manhood. In more concrete terms, this would mean perfection of the four-fold personality, the personality of knowledge, of strength, of harmony and love and of skill and service. These personalities become progressively united, each assisting and
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entering into the other, and all becoming one. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'The full consummation comes in the greatest soul most capable of perfection, but some large manifestation of this four-fold soul-power must be sought and can be attained by all who practise the integral Yoga.'²¹
The divinisation of the perfected nature can, however, come about by calling in the divine Power, or shakti to replace our limited human energy so that this may be shaped into the image of and filled with the force of a greater infinite energy (daivī prakriti, bhāgavatī shakti). Again, this perfection will grow in the measure in which we can surrender ourselves, first, to the guidance and then to the direct action of that Power and of the Master of our being and our works to whom it belongs. And for this purpose, what is essential is faith, which is the great power of our being in our aspiration to perfection.
These four things are the essentials of this second element of perfection, the full powers of the members of the instrumental nature, the perfected dynamis of the soul nature, the assumption of them into the action of the divine Power, and a perfect faith in all our members to call and support that assumption, shakti, vīrya, daivi prakriti, śraddhā.²²
The third element of perfection is, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the evolution of the mental into the supramental gnostic being. For it is the supramental gnosis which, once effectively called into action, will progressively take up all the terms of intelligence, will, sense-mind, heart, the vital and sensational being and translate them by a luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of the truth, power and delight of a living existence. It is the power also of overcoming physical limitations and developing a more perfect and divine instrumental body.
The next element of perfection is that of the gnostic perfection in the physical body. The physical body is a basis of action, which cannot be neglected or excluded from the spiritual
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evolution. A perfection of the body as the outer instrument of a complete divine being living on earth will be necessarily a part of the supramental transformation. 'Pushed to its highest conclusion', says Sri Aurobindo, 'this movement brings in spiritualising and illuminations of the whole physical consciousness and a divinising of the law of the body.'²³
The next element is that of the perfect action and enjoyment of being on the supramental gnostic basis. And-this last element, which is the highest, is, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, ever-widening life and activity in union with the supreme, blissful and conscious self-existent Being, Purushottama. The perfected individual will be conscious in the supreme that is the All, in the supreme infinite in being and infinite in quality, in the supreme as self-existent consciousness and universal knowledge, in the supreme as the self- existent bliss and universal delight of being. And all this experience will be in all parts of his being. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'His physical being will be one with all material Nature, his vital being with the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind, his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge and will both in itself and as it pours itself through these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will be changed to him in that unity and revealed in the secret of its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual bliss and being he will be one with That which is the origin and continent and inhabitant and spirit and constituting power of all existence. This will be the highest reach of self-perfection.'24
The integrality of perfection cannot become real, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, if it were confined to the individual. Since our perfection embraces the realisation of our self in being, in life and in love through others as well as through ourselves, the expansion of our liberty and all its results in others would be the inevitable outcome as well the
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broadest utility of our liberation and perfection. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:
'The divinising of the normal material life of man of his great secular attempt of mental and moral self-culture in the individual and the race by this integralisation of a widely perfect spiritual existence would thus be the crown alike of our individual and of our common effort.'25
An immense wealth of psychological knowledge pertaining to Integral Yoga is to be found in the thirteen Volumes of 'Mother's Agenda', which is particularly related to that part of Integral Yoga which is concerned with the discovery and transformation of the mind of the cells, supramentalisation of the physical body, evolution of the next species, and mutation of death. This vast knowledge needs to be further explored. For the present, the reader may be referred to these Volumes as also to Satprem's biography of The Mother in three volumes, entitled: 'Mother or Divine Materialism', 'Mother or the Next Species', and 'Mother or Mutation of Death'.
1. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 20, p. 63.
2. Ibid., p. 64.
3. Ibid., p. 70.
4. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 18, p. 550.
5. Ibid., p. 426.
6. Ibid., pp. 536-37
'7. Ibid., p. 539.
8. Ibid., pp. 539-40.
9. Ibid., p 225.
10. For a metaphysical discussion on the Jivatman, see the chapter entitled, The Eternal and the Individual', in The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 18. For a psychological account of the Atman, Jivatman and psychic being, see Letters on Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 22, pp. 265-307.
11. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Centenary Library, Vol. 19, p. 938.
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12. Ibid, p. 949.
13. Ibid., Vol. 18, p. 278.
14. Ibid., pp. 279-80.
15. Ibid., p. 130.
16. Ibid., p. 131.
17. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 21, p.854.
18. Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Part I, Centenary Library, Vol. 22, p.251.
19. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, Centenary Library, Vol. 20, p.212.
20. Ibid., p. 96.
21. Ibid., Vol. 21, p. 723.
22. Ibid., p. 666.
23. Ibid., p. 668.
24. Ibid., pp. 669-70.
25. Ibid., Vol. 20, p. 44.
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Sri Aurobindo on Integral Yoga
The way of yoga followed here has a different purpose from others, for its aim is not only to rise out of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness into the divine consciousness, but to bring the 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. This is an exceedingly difficult aim and difficult yoga; to many or most it will seem impossible. All the established forces of the ordinary ignorant world-consciousness are opposed to it and deny it and try to prevent it, and the sadhak will find his own mind, life and body full of the most obstinate impediments to its realisation. It you can accept the ideal whole-heartedly, face all the difficulties, leave the past and its ties behind you and are ready to give up everything and risk everything for this divine possibility, then only can you hope to discover by experience the Truth behind it.
The sadhana of this yoga does not proceed through any set mental teaching or prescribed forms of meditation. Mantras or others, but by aspiration, by a self-concentration inwards or upwards, by self-opening to an Influence, to the Divine Power above us and its workings, to the Divine Presence in the heart and by the rejection of all that is foreign to these things. It is only by faith, aspiration and surrender that this self-opening can come. (Letters on Yoga, Vol. 23, p. 505.)
* * *
________________
A few extracts from Sri Aurobindo's writings and letters are presented here. SOURCE: Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo, Birth Centenary Library Edition, Pondicerry, 1970.
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The aim of the yoga is to open the consciousness to the Divine and to live in the inner consciousness more and more while acting from it on the external life, to bring the inmost psychic into the front and by the power of the psychic to purify and change the being so that it may become ready for transformation and be in union with the Divine Knowledge, Will and Love. Secondly, to develop the yogic consciousness, i.e., to universalise the being in all the planes, become aware of the cosmic being and cosmic forces and be in union with the Divine on all the planes up to the overmind. Thirdly, to come into contact with the transcendent Divine beyond the overmind through the supramental consciousness, supramentalise the consciousness and the nature and make oneself an instrument for the realisation of the dynamic Divine Truth and its transforming descent into the earth-nature. (Letters on Yoga, p. 509.)
The object of the yoga is to enter into and be possessed by the Divine Presence and Consciousness, to love the Divine for the Divine's sake alone, to be tuned in our nature into the nature of the Divine, and in our will and works and life to be the instrument of the Divine. Its object is not to be a great yogi or a Superman (although that may come) or to grab at the Divine for the sake of the ego's power, pride or pleasure. It is not for Moksha though liberation comes by it and all else may come, but these must not be our objects. The Divine alone is our object. (Letters on Yoga, p. 503.)
To come to this yoga merely with the idea of being a superman would be an act of vital egoism which would defeat its own object. Those who put this object in the front of their preoccupations invariably come to grief, spiritually and otherwise. The aim of this yoga is, first, to enter into the divine consciousness by merging into it the separative ego (incidentaly, in doing so
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one finds one's true individual self which is not the limited, vain and selfish human ego but a portion of the Divine) and, secondly, to bring down the supramental consciousness on earth to transform mind, life and body. All else can be only a result of these two aims, not the primary object of the yoga. (Letters on Yoga, p. 503.)
To find the Divine is indeed the first reason for seeking the spiritual Truth and the spiritual life; it is the one thing indispensable and all the rest is nothing without it. The Divine once found, to manifest Him, that is, first of all to transform one's own limited consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, to live in the infinite Peace, Light, Love, Strength, Bliss, to become that in one's essential nature and, as a consequence, to be its vessel, channel, instrument in one's active nature. To bring into activity the principle of oneness on the material plane or to work for humanity is a mental mistranslation of the Truth these things cannot be the fist true object of spiritual seeking. We must find the Self, the Divine, then only can we know what is the work the Self or the Divine demands from us. Until then our life and action can only be a help or means towards finding the Divine and it ought not to have any other purpose. As we grow in the inner consciousness, or as the spiritual Truth of the Divine grows in us, our life and action must indeed more and more flow from that, be one with that. But to decide beforehand by our limited mental conceptions what they must be is to hamper the growth of the spiritual Truth within. As that grows we shall feel the Divine Light and Truth, the Divine Power and Force, the Divine Purity and Peace working within us, dealing with our actions as well as our consciousness, making use of them to reshape us into the Divine Image, removing the dross, substituting the pure gold of the Spirit. Only when the Divine presence is there in us always and the consciousness transformed, can we have the right to say that we are ready to manifest the Divine on the
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material plane. To hold up a mental ideal or principle and impose that on the inner working brings the danger of limiting ourselves to a mental realisation or of impeding or even falsifying by a half-way formation the true growth into the full communion and union with the Divine and the free and intimate outflowing of His will in our life. This is a mistake of orientation to which the mind of today is especially prone. It is far better to approach the Divine for the Peace or Light or Bliss that the realisation of Him gives than to bring in these minor things which can divert us from the one thing needful. The divinisation of the material life also as well as the inner life is part of what we see as the Divine Plan, but it can only be fulfilled by an outflowing of the inner realisation, something that grows from within outwards, not by the working out of a mental principle.
You have asked what is the discipline to be followed in order to convert the mental seeking into a living spiritual experience. The first necessity is the practice of concentration of your consciousness within yourself. The ordinary human mind has an activity on the surface which veils the real Self. But there is another, a hidden consciousness within behind the surface one in which we can become aware of the real Self and of a larger deeper truth of nature, can realise the Self and liberate and transform the nature. To quiet the surface mind and begin to live within is the object of this concentration. Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual. This being unveiled begins to come forward, to govern the nature, to turn it and all its movements towards the Truth, towards the Divine, and to call down into it all that is above. It brings the consciousness of the Presence, the dedication of the being to the Highest and invites the descent into our nature of a
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greater Force and Consciousness which is waiting above us. To concentrate in the heart centre with the offering of oneself to the Divine and the aspiration for this inward opening and for the Presence in the heart is the first way and, if it can be done, the natural beginning; for its result once obtained makes the spiritual path far more easy and safe than if one begins the other way.
That other way is the concentration in the head, in the mental centre. This, if it brings about the silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. But once concentrated here one must open the silent mental consciousness upward to all that is above mind. After a time one feels the consciousness rising upward and in the end it rises beyond the lid which has so long kept it tied in the body and finds a centre above the head where is it liberated into the Infinite. There it begins to come into contact with the universal Self, the Divine Peace, Light, Power, Knowledge, Bliss, to enter into that and become that, to feel the descent of these things into the nature. To concentrate in the head with the aspiration for quietude in the mind and the realisation of the Self and Divine above is the second way of concentration. It is important, however, to remember that the concentration of the consciousness in the head is only a preparation for its rising to the centre above; otherwise, one may get shut up in one's own mind and its experiences or at best attain only to a reflection of the Truth above instead of rising into the spiritual transcendence to live there. For some the mental concentration is easier, for some the concentration in the heart centre; some are capable of doing both alternately but to begin with the heart centre, if one can do it, is the more desirable.
The other side of discipline is with regard to the activities of the nature, of the mind, of the life-self or vital, of the physical being. Here the principle is to accord the nature with the inner realisation so that one may not be divided into two discordant parts. There are here several disciplines or processes possible
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One is to offer all the activities to the Divine and call for the inner guidance and the taking up of one's nature by a Higher Power. If there is the inward soul-opening, if the psychic being comes forward, then there is no great difficulty there comes with it a psychic discrimination, a constant intimation, finally a governance which discloses and quietly and patiently removes all imperfections, brings the right mental and vital movements and reshapes the physical consciousness also. Another method is to stand back detached from the movements of the mind, life, physical being, to regard their activities as only a habitual formation of general Nature in the individual imposed on us by past workings; not as any part of our real being; in proportion as one succeeds in this, becomes detached, sees mind and its activities as not oneself, life and its activities as not oneself, the body and its activities as not oneself, one becomes aware of an inner Being within us inner mental, inner vital, inner physical silent, calm, unbound, unattached which reflects the true Self above and can be its direct representative; from this inner silent Being proceeds a rejection of all that is to be rejected, an acceptance only of what can be kept and transformed, an inmost Will to perfection or a call to the Divine Power to do as each step what is necessary for the change of the Nature. It can also open mind, life and body to the inmost psychic entity and its guiding influence or its direct guidance. In most cases these two methods emerge and work together and finally fuse into one. But one can begin with either, the one that one feels most natural and easy to follow.
Finally, in all difficulties where personal effort is hampered, the help of the Teacher can intervene and bring about what is needed for the realisation or for the immediate step that is necessary. (Letters on Yoga, pp. 516-19.)
By transformation I do not mean some change of the nature -1 do not mean, for instance, sainthood or ethical perfection or yogic siddhis (like the Tantrik's) or transcendental (cinmaya)
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body. I use transformation in a special sense, a change of consciousness radical and complete and of a certain specific kind which is so conceived as to bring about a strong and assured step forward in the spiritual evolution of the being of a greater and higher kind and of a larger sweep and completeness than what took place when a mentalised being first appeared in a vital and material animal world. If anything short of that takes place or at least if a real beginning is not made on that basis, a fundamental progress towards this fulfilment, then my object is not accomplished. A partial realisation, something mixed and inconclusive, does not meet the demand I make on life and yoga.
Light of realisation is not the same thing as Descent. Realisation by itself does not necessarily transform the being as a whole; it may bring only an opening or heightening or widening of the consciousness at the top so as to realise something in the Purusha part without any radical change in the parts of Prakriti. One may have some light of realisation at the spiritual summit of the consciousness but the parts below remain what they were. I have seen any number of instances of that. There must be a descent of the light not merely into the mind or part of it but into all the being down to the physical and below before a real transformation can take place. A light in the mind may spiritualise or otherwise change the mind or part of it in one way or another, but it need not change the vital nature; a light in the vital may purify and enlarge the vital movements or else silence and immobilise the vital being, but leave the body and the physical consciousness as it was, or even leave it inert or shake its balance. And the descent of Light is not enough, it must be the descent of the whole higher consciousness, its Peace, Power, Knowledge, Love, Ananda. Moreover, the descent may be enough to liberate, but not to perfect, or it may be enough to make a great change in the inner being, while the outer remains an imperfect instrument, clumsy, sick or unexpressive. Finally, transformation effected by the sadhana cannot be complete unless it is a supramentalisation of the
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being. Psychicisation is not enough, it is only a beginning; spiritualisation and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by the individual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness to take the definitive stride forward it must take at one time or another.
I have never said that my yoga was something brand new in all its elements. I have called it the integral yoga and that means that it takes up the essence and many processes of the old yogas its newness is in its aim, standpoint and the totality of its method. . . .
I know very well also that there have been seemingly allied ideals and anticipations the perfectibility of the race, certain Tantric sadhanas, the effort after a complete physical siddhi by certain schools of yoga, etc. I have alluded to these things myself and have put forth the view that the spiritual past of the race has been a preparation of Nature not merely for attaining the Divine beyond the world, but also for this very step forward which the evolution of the earth-consciousness has still to make. I do not therefore care in the least even though these ideals were, up to some extent parallel, yet not identical with mine whether this yoga and its aim and method are accepted as new or not; that is in itself a trifling matter. That it should be recognised as true in itself by those who can accept or practise it and should make itself true by achievement is the one thing important; it does not matter if it is called new or a repetition or revival of the old which was forgotten. I laid emphasis on it as new in a letter to certain sadhaks so as to explain to them that a repetition of the aim and idea of the old yogas was not enough in my eyes, that I was putting forward a thing to be achieved that has not yet been achieved, not yet clearly visualised, even though it is the natural but still secret outcome of all the past spiritual endeavour.
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It is new as compared with the old yogas:
1. Because it aims not at a departure out of world and life into Heaven or Nirvana, but at a change of life and existence, not as something subordinate or incidental, but as a distinct and central object. If there is a descent in other yogas, yet it is only an incident on the way or resulting from the ascent the ascent is the real thing. Here the ascent is the first step, but it is a means for the descent. It is the descent of the new consciousness attained by the ascent that is the stamp and seal of the sadhana. Even the Tantra and Vaishnavism end in the release from life; here the object is the divine fulfilment of life.
2. Because the object sought after is not a an individual achievement of divine realisation for the sake of the individual, but something to the-gained for the earth-consciousness here, a cosmic, not solely a supra-cosmic achievement. The thing to be gained also 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.
3. Because a method has been procognised for achieving this purpose which is as total and integral as the aim set before it, viz., the total and integral change of the consciousness and nature, taking up old methods but only as a part action and present aid to others that are distinctive. I have not found this method (as a whole) or anything like it professed or realised in the old yogas. If I had, I should not have wasted my time in hewing out a road and in thirty years of search and inner creation when I could have hastened home safely to my goal in an easy canter over paths already blazed out, laid down, perfectly mapped, macadamised, made secure and public. Our yoga is not a retreading of old walks, but a spiritual adventure. (Letters on Yoga, Vol. 22, pp. 98-101.)
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In psychological fact this method translates itself into the progressive surrender of the ego with its whole field and all its apparatus to the Beyond-ego with its vast and incalculable but always inevitable workings. Certainly, this is no short cut or easy Sadhana. It requires a colossal faith, an absolute courage and above all an unflinching patience. For it implies three stages of which only the last can be wholly blissful or rapid, the attempt of the ego to enter into contact with the Divine, the wide, full and therefore laborious preparation of the whole lower Nature by the divine working to receive and become the higher Nature, and the eventual transformation. In fact, however, the divine Strength, often unobserved and behind the veil, substitutes itself for our weakness and supports us through all our failings of faith, courage and patience. It 'makes the blind to see and the lame to stride over the hills.' The intellect becomes aware of a Law that beneficently insists and a succour that upholds; the heart speaks of a Master of all things and Friend of man or a universal Mother who upholds through all stumblings. Therefore this path is at once the most difficult imaginable and yet, in comparison with the magnitude of its effort and object, the most easy and sure of all.
There are three outstanding features of this action of the higher when it works integrally on the lower nature. In the first place, it does not act according to a fixed system and succession as in the specialised methods of Yoga, but with a sort of free, scattered and yet gradually intensive and purposeful working determined by the temperament of the individual in whom it operates, the helpful materials which his nature offers and the obstacles which it presents to purification and perfection. In a sense, therefore, each man in this path has his own method of Yoga. Yet are there certain broad lines of working common to all which enable us to construct not indeed a routine system, but yet some kind of Shastra or scientific method of the synthetic Yoga.
Secondly, the process, being integral, accepts our nature such as it stands organised by our past evolution and without
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rejecting anything essential compels all to undergo a divine change. Everything in us is seized by the hands of a mighty Artificer and transformed into a clear image of that which it now seeks confusedly to present. In that ever-progressive experience we begin to perceive how this lower manifestation is constituted and that everything in it, however seemingly deformed or petty or vile, is the more or less distorted or imperfect figure of some element or action in the harmony of the divine Nature. We begin to understand what the Vedic Rishis meant when they spoke of the human forefathers fashioning the gods as a smith forges the crude material in his smithy.
Thirdly, the divine Power in us uses all life as the means of this integral Yoga. Every experience and outer contact with our world-environment, however, trifling or however disastrous, is used for the work, and every inner experience, even to the most repellent suffering or the most humiliating fall, becomes a step on the path to perfection. And we recognise in ourselves with opened eyes the method of God in the world, His purpose of light in the obscure, of might in the weak and fallen, of delight in what is grievous and miserable. We see the divine method to be the same in the lower and in the higher working; only in the one it is pursued tardily and obscurely through the subconscious in Nature, in the other it becomes swift and self-conscious and the instrument confesses the hand of the Master. All life is a Yoga of Nature seeking to manifest God within itself. Yoga marks the stage at which this effort becomes capable of self-awareness and therefore of right completion in the individual. It is a gathering up and concentration of the movements dispersed and loosely combined in the lower evolution.
An integral method and an integral result. First, an integral realisation of Divine Being; not only a realisation of the One in its indistinguishable unity, but also in its multitude of aspects which are also necessary to the complete knowledge of it by the relative consciousness; not only realisation of unity in the
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Self, but of unity in the infinite diversity of activities, worlds and creatures.
Therefore, also, an integral liberation. Not only the freedom born of unbroken contact of the individual being in all its parts with the Divine, sāyujyamukti, by which it becomes free even in its separation, even in the duality; not only the sālokyamukti by which the whole conscious existence dwells in the Same£ status of being as the Divine, in the state of Sachchidananda; but also the acquisition of the divine nature by the transformation of this lower being into the human image of the divine, sādharmyamukti, and the complete and final release of all, the liberation of the consciousness from the transitory mould of the ego and its unification with the One Being, universal both in the world and the individual and transcendentally one both in the world and beyond all universe. {Synthesis of Yoga, Vol. 20, pp. 41-43.)
There have been other syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking. The Gita starts from this Vedantic synthesis and upon the basis of its Essential
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ideas builds another harmony of the three great means and powers, Love, Knowledge and Works, through which the soul of man can directly approach and cast itself into the Eternal. There is yet another, the Tantric¹ which though less subtle and spiritually profound, is even more bold and forceful than the synthesis of the Gita, for it seizes even upon the obstacles to the spiritual life and compels them to become the means for a richer spiritual conquest and enables us to embrace the whole of Life in our divine scope as the Lila² of the Divine; and in some directions it is more immediately rich and fruitful, for it brings forward into the foreground along with divine knowledge, divine works and an enriched devotion of divine Love, the secrets also of the Hatha and Raja Yogas, the use of the body and of mental askesis for the opening up of the divine life on all its planes, to which the Gita gives only a passing and perfunctory attention. Moreover it grasps at that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, possessed by the Vedic Rishis but thrown into the background by the intermediate ages, which is destined to fill so large a place in any future synthesis of human thought, experience and aspiration.
We of the coming day stand at the head of a new age of development which must lead to such a new and larger synthesis. We are not called upon to be orthodox Vedantins of any of the three schools or Tantrics or to adhere to one of the theistic religions of the past or to entrench ourselves within the four corners of the teaching of the Gita. That would be to limit ourselves and to attempt to create our spiritual life out of the being, knowledge and nature of others, of the men of the past, instead of building it out of our own being and potentialities. We do not belong to the past dawns, but to the noons of the future. A mass of new material is flowing into us; we have not only to assimilate the influences of the great theistic religions of India and of the world and a recovered sense of the meaning
¹. All the Puranic tradition, it must be. remembered, draws the richness of its contents from the Tantra.
². The Cosmic Play
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of Buddhism, but to take full account of the potent though limited revelations of modem knowledge and seeking; and, beyond that, the remote and dateless past which seemed to be dead is returning upon us with an effulgence of many luminous secrets long lost to the consciousness of mankind but now breaking out again from behind the veil. All this points to a new, a very rich, a very vast synthesis; a fresh and widely embracing harmonisation of our gains is both an intellectual and a spiritual necessity of the future. (Essays on the Gita, Vol. 13, pp. 7-8.)
There have been times when the seeking for spiritual attainment was, at least in certain civilisations, more intense and widespread than now or rather than it has been in the world in general during the past few centuries. For now the curve seems to be the beginning of a new turn of seeking which takes its start from what was achieved in the past and projects itself towards a greater future. But always, even in the age of the Vedas or in Egypt, the spiritual achievement or the occult knowledge was confined to a few, it was not spread in the whole mass of humanity. The mass of humanity evolves slowly, containing in itself all stages of the evolution from the material and the vital man to the mental man. A small minority has pushed beyond the barriers, opening the doors to occult and spiritual knowledge and preparing the ascent of the evolution beyond mental man into spiritual and supramental being. Sometimes this minority has exercised an enormous influence as in Vedic India, Egypt or, according to tradition, in Atlantis, and determined the civilisation of the race, giving it a strong stamp of the spiritual or the occult; sometimes they have stood apart in their secret schools or orders, not directly influencing a civilisation which was sunk in material ignorance or in chaos and darkness or in the hard external enlightenment which rejects spiritual knowledge.
The cycles of evolution tend always upward, but they are
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cycles and do not ascend in a straight line. The process therefore gives the impression of a series of ascents and descents, but what is essential in the gains of the evolution is kept or, even if eclipsed for a time, re-emerges in new forms suitable to the new ages. The creation has descended all the degrees of being from the Supermind to Matter and in each degree it has created a world, reign, plane or order proper to that degree. In the creating of the material world there was a plunge of this descending Consciousness into an apparent Inconscience and an emergence of it out of that Inconscience, degree by degree, until it recovers its highest spiritual and supramental summits and manifests their powers here in Matter. But even in the Inconscience there is a secret Consciousness which works, one may say, by an involved and hidden Intuition proper to itself. In each stage of Matter, in each stage of Life, this Intuition assumes a working proper to that stage and acts from behind the veil, supporting and enforcing the immediate necessities of the creative Force. There is an Intuition in Matter which holds the action of the material world from the electron to the sun and planets and their contents. There is an Intuition in Life which similarly supports and guides the play and development of Life in Matter till it is ready for the mental evolution of which man is the vehicle. In man also the creation follows the same upward process, the Intuition within develops according to the stage he has reached in his progress. Even the precise intellect of the scientist, who is inclined to deny the separate existence or the superiority of Intuition, yet cannot really move forward unless there is behind him a mental Intuition, which enables him to take a forward step or to divine what has to be done. Intuition therefore is present at the beginning of things and in their middle as well as at their consummation.
But Intuition takes its proper form only when one goes beyond the mental into the spiritual domain, for there only it comes fully forward from behind the veil and reveals its true and complete nature. Along with the mental evolution of man
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there has been going forward the early process of another evolution which prepares the spiritual and supramental being. This has had two lines, one the discovery of the occult forces secret in Nature and of the hidden planes and worlds concealed from us by the world of Matter and the other the discovery of man's soul and spiritual self. If the tradition of Atlantis is correct, it is that of a progress which went to the extreme of occult knowledge, but could go no farther. In the India of Vedic times we have the record left of the other line of achievement, that of spiritual self-discovery; occult knowledge was there but kept subordinate. We may say that here in India the reign of Intuition came First, intellectual Mind developing afterwards in the later philosophy and science. But in fact the mass of men at the time, it is quite evident, lived entirely on the material plane, worshipped the Godheads of material Nature, sought from them entirely material objects. The effort of the Vedic mystics revealed to them the things behind through a power of inner sight and hearing and experience which was confined to a limited number of seers and sages and kept carefully secret from the mass of humanity — secrecy was always insisted on by the mystic. We may very well attribute this flowering of Intuition on the spiritual plane to a rapid reemergence of essential gains brought down from a previous cycle. If we analyse the spiritual history of India we shall find that after reaching this height there was a descent which attempted to take up each lower degree of the already evolved consciousness and link it to the spiritual at the summit. The Vedic age was followed by a great outburst of intellect and philosophy which yet took spiritual truth as its basis and tried to reach it a new, not through a direct Intuition or occult process as did the Vedic seers, but by the power of the mind's reflective, speculative, logical thought; at the same time processes of yoga were developed which used the thinking mind as a means of arriving at spiritual realisation, spiritualising this mind itself at the same time. Then followed an era of the development of philosophies and yoga processes which more
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and more used the emotional and aesthetic being as the means of spiritual realisation and spiritualised the emotional level in man through the heart and feeling. This was accompanied by Tantric and other processes which took up the mental will, the life-will, the will of sensations and made them at once the instruments and the field of spiritualisation. In the Hathayoga and the various attempts at divinisation of the body there is also a line of endeavour which attempted to arrive at the same achievement with regard to living Matter; but this still awaits the discovery of the true characteristic method and power of Spirit in the body. We may say therefore that the universal Consciousness after its descent into Matter has conducted the evolution there along two lines, one of ascent to the discovery of the Self and Spirit, the other of descent through the already evolved levels of mind, life and body so as to bring down the spiritual consciousness into these also and to fulfil thereby some secret intention in the creation of the material universe. Our yoga is in its principle a taking up and summarising and completing of this process, an endeavour to rise to the highest possible supramental level and bring down its consciousness and power into mind, life and body.
The condition of present-day civilisation, materialistic with an externalised intellect and life-endeavour, which you find so painful, is an episode, but one which was perhaps inevitable. For if the spiritualisation of the mind, life and body is the thing to be achieved, the conscious presence of the Spirit even in the physical consciousness and material body, an age which puts Matter and the physical life in the forefront and devotes itself to the effort of the intellect to discover the truth of material existence, had perhaps to come. On one side, by materialising everything up to the intellect itself it has created the extreme difficulty of which you speak for the spiritual seeker, but on the other hand, it has given the life in Matter an importance which the spirituality of the past was inclined to deny to it. In a way it has made the spiritualisation of it a necessity for spiritual seeking and so aided the descent movement of the evolving
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spiritual consciousness in the earth-nature. More than that we cannot claim for it; its conscious effect has been rather to stifle and almost extinguish the spiritual element in humanity; it is only by the divine use of the pressure of contraries and an intervention from above that there will be the spiritual outcome. (Letters on Yoga, Vol. 22, pp. 1-4.)
In the former yogas it was the experience of the Spirit which is always free and one with the Divine that was sought. The nature had to change only enough to prevent its being an obstacle to that knowledge and experience. The complete change down to the physical was only sought for by a few and then more as a siddhi than anything else, not as the manifestation of a new Nature in the earth-consciousness. (Letters on Yoga, p. 104.)
Wonderful! The realisation of the Self which includes the liberation from ego, the consciousness of the One in all, the established and consummated transcendence out of the universal Ignorance, the fixity of the consciousness in the union with the Highest, the Infinite and Eternal is not anything worth doing or recommending to anybody-is 'not a very difficult stage'!
Nothing new! Why should there be anything new? The object of spiritual seeking is to find our what is eternally true, not what is new in Time.
From where did you get this singular attitude towards the old yogas and yogis? Is the wisdom of the Vedanta and Tantra a small and trifling thing? Have then the sadhaks of the Ashram attained to self-realisation and are they liberated Jivanmuktas, free from ego and ignorance? If not, why then do you say, 'it is not a very difficult stage', 'their goal is not high', 'is it such a long process?'
I have said that this yoga is 'new' because it aims at the
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integrality of the Divine in this world and not only beyond it and at a supramental realisation. But how does that justify a superior contempt for the spiritual realisation which is as much the aim of this yoga as of any other? (Letters on Yoga, p. 97.)
As for the depreciation of the old yogas as something quite easy, unimportant and worthless and the depreciation of Buddha, Yajnvalkya and other great spiritual figures of the past, is it not evidently absurd on the face of it? (Letters on Yoga, p. 97.)
The realisation of the Spirit comes long before the development of overmind or supermind; hundreds of sadhaks in all times have had the realisation of the Atman in the higher mental planes, buddheh paratah, but the supramental realisation was not theirs. One can get partial realisations of the Self or Spirit or the Divine on any plane, mental, vital, physical even, and when one rises above the ordinary mental plane of man into a higher and larger mind, the Self begins to appear in all its conscious wideness.
It is by full entry into this wideness of the Self that cessation of mental activity becomes possible; one gets the inner Silence. After that this inner Silence can remain even when there is activity of any kind; the being remains silent within, the action goes on in the instruments, and one receives all the necessary initiations and execution of action whether mental, vital or physical from a higher source without the fundamental peace and calm of the Spirit being troubled.
The overmind and supermind states are something yet higher than this; but before one can understand them, one must first have the self-realisation, the fall action of the spiritualised mind and heart, the psychic awakening, the liberation of the imprisoned consciousness, the purification and entire opening of the Adhar. Do not think now of those ultimate
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things (overmind, Supermind), but get first these foundations in the liberated nature. (Letters on Yoga, pp. 106-7.)
Your statement about the supramental evolution is correct except that it does not follow that humanity as a whole will become supramental. What is more likely to happen is that the supramental principle will be established in the evolution by the descent just as the mental principle was established by the appearance of thinking Mind and Man in earthly life. There will be a race of supramental beings on the earth just as now there is a race of mental beings. Man himself will find a greater possibility of rising to the planes intermediary between his mind and supermind and making their powers effective in his life, which will mean a great change in humanity on earth, but it is not likely that the mental stage will disappear from the ascending ladder and, if so, the continued existence of a mental race will be necessary so as to form a stage between the vital and the supramental in the evolutionary movement of the Spirit.
Such a descent of higher beings as you suggest may be envisaged as a part of the process of the change. But the main part of the change will be the appearance of the supramental being and the organisation of a supramental nature here, as a mental being has appeared and a mental nature organised itself during the last stage of the evolution. I prefer nowadays not to speak of the descent of the higher beings because my experience is that it leads to a vain and often egoistic romanticism which distracts the attention from the real work, that of the realisation of the Divine and the transformation of the nature. (Letters on Yoga, p. 10.)
What the supramental will do the mind cannot foresee of lay down. The mind is ignorance seeking for the Truth, the supramental by its very definition is the Truth-Consciousness,
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Truth in possession of itself and fulfilling itself by its own power. In a supramental world imperfection and disharmony are bound to disappear. But what we propose just now is not to make the earth a supramental world but to being down the supramental as a power and established consciousness in the midst of the rest to let it work there and fulfil itself as Mind descended into Life and Matter and has worked as a Power there to fulfil itself in the midst of the rest. This will be enough to change the world and to change Nature by breaking down her present limits. But what, how, by what degrees it will do it, is a thing that ought not to be said now when the Light is there, the Light will itself do its work when the supramental Will stands on earth, that Will will decide. It will establish a perfection, a harmony, a Truth-creation for the rest, well, it will be the rest that is all. (Letters on Yoga, p. 13.)
The whole of humanity cannot be changed at once. What has to be done is to bring the Higher Consciousness down into the earth-consciousness and establish it there as a constant realised force. Just as mind and life have been established and embodied in Matter, so to establish and embody the supramental Force. (Letters on Yoga, p. 13.)
It would not be possible to change all that in a moment we have always said that the whole of humanity will not change the moment there is the Descent. But what can be done is to establish the higher principle in the earth-consciousness in such a way that it will remain and go on strengthening and spreading itself in the earth-life. That is how a new principle in the evolution must necessarily work. (Letters on Yoga, p. 14.)
It is first through the individuals that-if [the supramental consciousness] becomes part of the earth-consciousness and
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afterwards it spreads from the first centres and takes up more and more of the global consciousness till it becomes an established force there. (Letters on Yoga, p. 15.)
All that is absurd. The descent of the supramental means only that the Power will be there in the earth-consciousness as a living force just as the thinking mental and higher mental are already there. But an animal cannot take advantage of the presence of the thinking mental Power or an undeveloped man of the presence of the higher mental power so too anybody will not be able to take advantage of the presence of the supramental Power. I have also often enough said that it will be at first for the few, not for the whole earth, only-there will be a growing influence of it on the earth-life. (Letters on Yoga, p. 15.)
It (the descent of the supermind into the earth-consciousness) would not necessarily be known by everybody. Besides, even if the descent were here one would have to be ready before one could get the final change. (Letters on Yoga, p. 15.)
Not in their entirety — for that [the transformation of the Cosmic Mind, Life and Matter] is not our business. It is ourselves that we have to transform and change the earth-consciousness by bringing in the supramental principle into the evolution there. Once there it will necessarily have a powerful influence in the whole earth-life as mind has had through the evolution of men, but much greater. (Letters on Yoga, p. 15.)
It is not possible for a force like the supramental to come down without making a large change in earth-conditions. It does not follow that all will become supramentalised and it is not necessary but mind itself will be influenced as life has been
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influenced by the development of mind on earth. (Letters on Yoga, p. 16.)
Nothing permanent can be done without the real supramental Force. But the result of its descent would be that in human life intuition would become a greater and more developed force than it now is and the other intermediate powers between mind and supermind would become also more common and develop an organised action. (Letters on Yoga, p. 16.)
How do you know that it (our yoga) will have no effect on the ordinary people? It will inevitably increase their possibilities and even though all cannot rise to the highest, that will mean a great change for the earth. (Letters on Yoga, p. 16.)
It would no the contrary be impossible for them [the ordinary people] not to feel that a greater Light and Power had come on the earth. (Letters on Yoga, p. 16.)
It is not for considerations of gain or loss that the Divine Consciousness acts that is a human standpoint necessary for human development. The Divine, as the Gita says, has nothing to gain and nothing that it has not, yet it puts forth its power of action in the manifestation. It is the earth-consciousness, not the supramental world that has to gain by the descent of the supramental principle that is sufficient reason for it to descend. The supramental worlds remain as they are and are in no way affected by the descent. (Letters on Yoga, p. 16.)
This transformation cannot be done individually or in a solitary way only. No individual solitary transformation uncon
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cerned with the work for the earth (which means more than any individual transformation) would be either possible or useful. Also no individual human being can by his own power alone work out the transformation, nor is it the object of the yoga to create an individual superman here and there. The object of the yoga is to bring down the supramental consciousness on earth, to fix it there, to create a new race with the principle of the supramental consciousness governing the inner and outer individual and collective life.
That force accepted by individual after individual according to their preparation would establish the supramental consciousness in the physical world and so create a nucleus for its own expansion. (Letters on Yoga, p. 14.)
The descent of the supramental can hasten things, but it is not going to act as a patent medicine or change everything in the twinkle of an eye. (Letters on Yoga, p. 35.)
It is darkest nights that prepare the greatest dawns and it is so because it is into the deepest inconscience of material life that we have to bring, not an intermediate glimmer, but the full play of the divine Light. (Letters on Yoga, p. 35.)
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ādeśa 12
Advaita 5
after-images 6
Alexander, Samuel 25
ānanda 23
aparā prakriti 15
Ārya 3
āsana 26 .
Bhagavadgītā (Gitā) 9, 21, 45, 47,
48,90,91, 101
Bhagavad shakti 75; see also shakti bhakti 21
Bhakti Yoga 42
beatitude 27, 28
beauty 31
beyond-ego 88; see also ego Brahman or Ātman 11, 43, 45, 65, 97
Bramhic silence 2
Buddha 97
Buddhism 92; the Yoga of 43
Chinmaya 84
concentration 28; a certain special method of 52; the method of 26; a line of 42; specific process of 27
daivī prakriti 75; see also prakriti de Chardin, Teillhard 25
death 15
deity, the emergence of 25
desire-soul 64
dhāranā 26
dhyāna 26
Divine Consciousness 29,
development of 14
Divine Knowledge 80; see also Knowledge
Divine Nature 29; see also Nature
earth-consciousness 14,15,86,87, 96,99, 100
earth evolution 14; see also evolution
earth-life 100
earth-nature 80; see also Nature
ego 54,80,88,90,96
ego-consciousness 53
ego-sense 42, 43
eightfold path 43
energy-substance, grades of 66 Essays on the Gitā 3, 92
evolution 24, 26, 48, 50, 59, 60, 64, 65, 71, 76, 77, 85, 88, 89, 100; lower 28; of divine life 23;
supramental 98; the cycles of 92-93; theories of 25; upward 27
evolutionary, consciousness 35; process 24, 25, 36,59, 65
(The) Foundations of Indian Culture 3
(The) Future Poetry 3
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God 89
(The) Godhead 3, 25, 31
HathaYoga 26,73,91,95 higher consciousness 99 (The) Human Cycle 3
idea-will 71
(The) Ideal a/Human Unity 3
ignorance 42, 63,64,69,71,96
immortality, the Vedic4'7; the Vedic and Upanishadic concept of 46
inconscience 59, 61, 63, 64, 94
infinite energy, the development of 71
integral concentration, the principle of 27; see also concentration
integral divine, the realisation of 27
intuition 72, 93, 94; the fourfold potencies of 68
Ishopanishad 45
Ishwara 45
Jainism, the Yogic system of 43
jīva 41, 43
jīvanmukti 49
jivanmukta(s) 30,96
Jivātman 64, 65
Jnāna 21
JnānaYoga 42
Kālī 4
knowledge 7, 15, 22, 23, 26, 28,
33,36,37,44,49,53,55,62,63,
64,66,67,68,69,70,73,83,85,
91,92
knowledge-ignorance 68
karma 21, 43
karma yoga 43; the perfection of 46
(The) Life Divine 3, 15
Lele (a Maharashtrain Yogi) 6, 7
Letters on Yoga 15, 79, 80, 81, 84,
87,96,97,98,99,100,101,102
levitation (utthapana) 11
light 14,15,16,17,18; mind of 17
life planes 54
līlā 91
love 26, 28, 31, 37, 73,'80, 81,85, 91
man, a transformation of 21; the mutation of 25
matter 15, 23, 25, 36, 37, 43, 57, 79, 93, 94, 95, 99, 100; modifications of 24
matter planes, subtle 54
Māyāvāda 9
meditation, intensive 9
mental-physical (physical mind) 56,57, 58
mental-vital (vital mind) 56
mind 11,98,99,100; dynamic 55, 56,57; externalising 55; higher 23, 33, 66, 67; illumined 23, 33, 66, 67, 68; intuitive 23-4, 33, 66, 67, 68; thinking 55; universal 7
mind-consciousness 43
mind planes 54
moksha 49, 80
(The) Mother 12, 13, 16, 17,18
Mother or Mutation of Death 77
Mother or the Next Species 77
Mother's Agenda 77
mukti 49
Nārāyana 10
Nature 15, 24, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 44,49,64,65,71,73,76,84,86, 88, 89, 94, 96, 99; evolutionary 22; liberation of 22; the activity
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of 26, 27; the rich endless confusion of 54; the subconscious in 28; the Yoga of 25-6, 28; transformation of 30; universal 61
nirvāna 2, 9, 22, 28, 87; the state of 43; see also mukti
Nietzsche 37
niyama 26
occultism 21
On the Veda 3
Overmental consciousness 69,70
Overmind 24, 33, 34, 66, 68, 69, 72,97,98
parā prakriti 15, 47;
the Gitā's concept of 48; see also prakriti
Paramātman 65
Parāshara 46
Perfection 73-77; sixfold 49-50
physical consciousness 55, 61
physical-vital 56, 57
Prakriti 7, 29, 41, 44, 85; the instruments of 49
prānāyāma 6, 26
pratyāhāra 26
psychic, change 15; transformation 32; we also transformation
psychicisation 86
psycho-physical phenomena 6
Pumsha 27, 41, 43, 44, 45, 85
Purushottama 45, 76
Rāja Yoga 26,42,73,91 rajas 29
Real-Idea 59, 70
(The)Rigveda 20, 47
Sachchidānanda 90
sādhaka(s) 27, 39n., 79, 97
sādhanā 11, 13, 27, 39n., 79, 85, 86,88
sādharmya, Gītā's concept of 46
sādharmya mutki 30, 47, 90
sālokyamukti 90; the concept of 47
samādhi 26, 42
samatā 73
Sāmkhya 21, 44
Satprem's biography of the Mother 77
sattva 29
Savitri 3, 15
sāyujyamukti 47, 90
(The) Secret of the Veda 47
shakti 45,49, 74, 75; of Tantra 48
shūnya (nihil) 45
siddhis 11, 21,30, 39w., 84,86,96;
the Tantric view of 46; Yogic 28
soul-instrumentation 15
soul-personality 63
spirit 15,29,30,36,37,65,66,81, 95, 96, 97, 98; liberation of 22
spirit-born conceptual knowledge 67; see also knowledge
spiritual change 15
spiritual consciousness 29, 96
spiritual evolution 34; see also evolution
spiritual liberation 22, 30; see also mukti, nirvāna
spiritual transformation 34; the process of 33
spiritualisation 86, 95
śraddhā 75
Sri Krishna 10, 11
(The) Synthesis of Yoga 3, 15, 90
subliminal consciousness 60, 63
subtle sight 6
superconscience 59,61,66
superconscient 66, 68
Superman 15, 38, 80, 102
Supermind 11-15, 17, 22, 28, 33,
35, 36,' 38, 48, 66, 68-71, 93,
97,98,100,101; the concept of
22-25; the nature of 2
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Supramental 2,12,13,18, 24, 30, 48-50, 87, 92, 94, 95, 97-102;
consciousness 2, 15, 66, 69, 70, 71, 86, 99, 102; Nature 29;
power 30, 36; superconscient 59; the advent of 38; transformation 15, 36
(The) Supramental Manifestation on the Earth 3, 15, 38
supra-physical things 57
supreme reality 11, 43
tamas 29
Tantra 21, 48, 87
Tantric (the) 91,95
Tantric Yoga 47
thought-mind 67
time-eternity 24
traigunyātītya 49
transformation 27, 28-33, 38,52;
triple 15
transcendental peace 33
truth 2,4,7,9, 12,23,27,31,66, 69,81,82,83,98
truth-action 68
truth-consciousness 22,23,36,38, 46, 48, 68, 70, 98; Supramental 24
truth-creation 99
truth-feeling 68
truth-force 67
truth-sense 14, 68
truth-sight, the nature of 67
truth-thought 67,68; see also mind, higher
truth-vision 67
universal consciousness 60,66,95
(The) Upanishads 3, 9, 20, 45, 47,48,90
Vaishnavism 87
Vedānta 21
VedānticYoga 21
(The) Vedas 20; synthetic yogas of 48
Vedic Rishis 89, 90, 91
Vedic Yoga 46
virya 74, 75
vital, central 55,57; emotional 55,57; lower 55, 57
vital-material 57
vital-mental 56
vital-physical 56, 57
Vivekananda (Swami) 11
Whitehead, A.N., 25
world-consciousness 8, 79
world-knowledge 22; see also knowledge
world-nature, intangible energies, of 62; see also Nature
Yājnavalkya 97
yama 26
Yoga 21, 29; collective 15; cosmic 15; the conscious adventure of 53: the first steps of 54
Yogic consciousness 80
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