Integral Yoga and Evolutionary Mutation - Its Aid to Humanity and Human Species - Stages of the Evolutionary Mutation of the Human

PART FIVE

Stages of the Evolutionary Mutation of the Human Body into the Divine Body

There are various factors to be considered for developing the yoga of the evolutionary process leading to the fabrication of the Divine Body, which will be the supramentalised robe for the eternal Spirit as its appropriate habitation. The development of the divine body, which will be free from the limitations of the human body subject to the necessity of dissolution and death, is implied, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, in the evolutionary urge embedded in the Inconscience. For Nature seeks complete harmony; life and matter have been harmonized in the evolutionary process, but not up to the point of its logical completeness; life and mind have also been harmonized, but still there is a vast room of conflict between the two; Nature is striving towards that complete harmony; the mind is seeking Truth and Light; but this seeking has behind it an urge to possess Truth and Light,— an urge that can be fulfilled by the evolution of the supermind which inherently possesses Truth and Light. Nature is, therefore, labouring to evolve supermind in living and thinking material life. As Sri Aurobindo points out, if it be true that Spirit is involved in Matter and, if apparent Nature has within it secret God, even though as a veiled state of Sachchidananda, then Nature must ultimately unveil and manifest Sachchidananda in its fullness. To discover and realize the immortal life in a body

that would manifest conscious delight of manifestation is, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the next step of the evolutionary future.

It is true that immortality of spirit and the immortality of the individual soul can be experienced and realized, even when the human body has not undergone the kind of transformation that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have envisaged. It is, therefore, often asked as to why, then, that radical transformation should inevitably be sought. The ultimate answer to this question is that that is the aim that the supermind embedded in the inconscient and the supermind that is acting upon evolutionary process wills it. The aim of evolution, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, is not merely to arrive at a point where spirit and soul can be realized as immortal; the intention is to manifest the immortality of the spirit and the soul in the body, and for that purpose, the human body as evolved so far is far too inadequate. The human body is imperfect, and cannot manifest the powers of the spirit or soul in their completeness. If the soul has entered into evolutionary process, it cannot be for returning from that process and for going back to its earlier state where it was already aware of its own immortality or of the immortality of the eternal Spirit. The soul has entered into evolutionary process as an aid to the full manifestation of Spirit in Matter. It is to create . out of Matter a temple of divinity, and therefore, even if its task is avoided by some or many, the original intention of evolution and the original reason of soul to descend in the evolutionary process will tend to prevail. According to some, the soul has fallen, by an error, into Nature and in the evolutionary movement. But the soul living originally in the company of the Supreme could not have fallen into an error;

it must be a deliberate will inspired by the Supreme Will for accomplishment of a special purpose. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"Not to return as speedily as may be to heavens where perfect light and joy are eternal or to the supracosmic bliss is the object of this cosmic cycle, nor merely to repeat a purposeless round in a long unsatisfactory groove of ignorance seeking for knowledge and never finding it perfectly, — in that case the ignorance would be either an inexplicable blunder of the All-conscient or a painful and purposeless Necessity equally inexplicable, — but to realize the Ananda of the Self in other conditions than the supracosmic, in cosmic being, and to find its heaven of joy and light even in the oppositions offered by the terms of an embodied material existence, by struggle therefore towards the joy of self-discovery, would seem to be the true object of the birth of the soul in the human body and of the labour of the human race in the series of its cycles. The Ignorance is a necessary, though quite subordinate term which the universal Knowledge has imposed on itself that that movement might be possible, — not a blunder and a fall, but a purposeful descent, not a curse, but a divine opportunity. To find and embody the All-Delight in an intense summary of its manifoldness, to achieve a possibility of the infinite Existence which could not be achieved in other conditions, to create out of Matter a temple of the Divinity would seem to be the task imposed on the spirit born into the material universe."⁵³

The building of the divine temple would mean the establishment of the Kingdom of God on the earth, and this kingdom would include living manifestation of harmony of fraternity, and as a foundation of it, the coming on the earth

of superhumanity governed by supramental consciousness. But this will also mean an evolving humanity under the guidance of the supermind. In that humanity, there could be gradations of more and more evolved consciousness represented by human beings whose minds, lives and bodies would be in the process of supramentalisation. This growing process of supramentalisation would presuppose a certain degree of generalization of what Sri Aurobindo has called the Mind of Light.

The Mind of Light is the mind, which is the last action of the supermind in its involutionary movement; supermind, leaning downward towards overmind, intuitive mind, illumined mind and higher mind, has in that gradation, the Mind of Light below the higher mind. In the involutionary process of descent, the Mind of Light is the stage where, at one downward move, the process of ignorance begins, and there is the formation of the involutionary ignorant mind. It is when this involutionary ignorance descended downwards that it reached the point of the Inconscience. The Inconscience is the base on which the evolutionary ladder begins to be built, and there is first the emergence or evolution of Matter, and this is followed by the evolution and
development of life; life is then established as a grade of the evolutionary ascent, and it is followed by the development and evolution of the mind. But every stage of evolutionary ascent is preceded by three stages: there is, first, multiplication of powers and capabilities of the grade of consciousness which has been established in the ascending order of evolution; there is, next, growing pressure of the higher grade of consciousness which is involved and struggling to evolve upwards; as a result, there is an upward ascent to the higher grade of consciousness in the form of

with an ever-ascending series in the power of its will-to-be. As a part of this process, a stage was reached when the Mind of Light came to be established, according to the Mother, when Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body. Let us try to understand this important stage of evolution.

When Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, the supermind was already working in the physical, but indirectly through intermediaries of the mind and the vital. The question was about the direct action of the Supermind in the physical. Sri Aurobindo said that it could be possible only if the physical mind received the Supramental light; the physical mind was the instrument for the direct action upon the most material. The Mother added that when Sri Aurobindo withdrew from his body, the physical mind received the supramental light. Then she further added that that was the moment when the Mind of Light got realized here.

Describing the Mind of Light, Sri Aurobindo has stated in his 'The Supramental Manifestation Upon Earth' , as follows:

"What we have called specifically the Mind of Light is indeed the last of a series of descending planes of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a self chosen limitation or modification of its self-manifesting activities, but its essential character remains the same: there is in it an action of light, of truth, of knowledge in which inconscience, ignorance and error claim no place."⁵⁴

It was this Mind of Light, which got established as a part of ascending order of the evolution. While describing the transition from Mind as it has evolved and as it is at work as a part of the evolutionary ascent towards the Mind of Light,

Sri Aurobindo states as follows:

"...in the ascending order of the evolution we reach a transition in which we see the light, are turned towards it, reflected in our consciousness and one further step carries us into the domain of the Light."⁵⁵

Sri Aurobindo speaks of the development of the mind of light on earth and points out that as it progresses, humanity of today will be led to a "new humanity" endowed with "mind of light" from among which will be recruited the race of supramental or divine beings on earth. Sri Aurobindo points out further that, "A new humanity means for us the appearance, the development of a type or a race of mental beings whose principle of mentality would be no longer a mind in the Ignorance seeking for knowledge but.. .it would be possessed already of what could be called mind of Light, a mind capable of living in the truth, capable of being truth conscious and manifesting in its life a direct in place of an indirect knowledge. Its mentality would be an instrument of the Light and no longer of the Ignorance. At its highest it would be capable of passing into the supermind and from the new race would be recruited the race of supramental beings who would appear as the leaders of the evolution in earth nature. Even, the highest manifestations of a mind of Light would be an instrumentality of the supermind, a part of it or a projection from it, a stepping beyond humanity into the superhumanity of the supramental principle."56

Sri Aurobindo points out that this advance like others in evolution might not be reached and would naturally not be reached at one bound but from the very beginning it would be inevitable. The new humanity, on account of its Possession of the Mind of Light, "would enable the human

being to rise beyond the normalities of its present thinking, feeling and being into those highest powers of the mind in its self-exceedings which intervene between our mentality and supermind and can be regarded as steps leading towards the greater and more luminous principle."⁵⁷

As noted above, the realization of the mind of light on the earth took place in 1950 when Sri Aurobindo left his body. The subsequent descent of the superman consciousness that took place, as the Mother recorded it in the Agenda, on the 1st January, 1969, may be regarded as the next gigantic step in the story of the ongoing evolution of humanity towards the realization that Sri Aurobindo envisages as inevitable in the steps where the supermind would be fully manifesting on the earth. The new humanity possessed of the mind of light would march forward towards the development of the race of the supramental beings, on the one hand, and towards the stage of the life of humanity when it would be enlightened, uplifted, governed, and harmonized, on the other. As Sri Aurobindo has further envisaged, even the body would become something much less powerless, obscure and animal in its propensities and capable instead of a new and harmonized perfection.⁵⁸

But these steps of evolution have to be followed by still greater gigantic steps. What the Vedic Rishis had attained in terms of the widening of physical consciousness by the visitation of the supramental consciousness59 and what they had declared of the state of immortality was itself a gigantic step in the history of human evolution; but when we study the story of the experiences and realizations of the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, we find that new and great discoveries were needed to avoid the incomplete results that the Vedic Rishis had arrived at. Widening and

universalisation of physical consciousness, which was the culmination reached by the Vedic Rishis, was not enough. As the Mother said:

"According to the ancient traditions, this universalisation of the physical body was considered the supreme realization, but it is only a foundation, the base upon which the Supramental can come down without breaking everything."⁶⁰

The universalisation of the bodily consciousness that is witnessed in the hymns of victory of the Vedic Rishis can be
considered to be a foundation, and even though that foundation could be rightly considered to be the state of immortality, what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have conceived as the new victory, even in terms of immortality, consists of what may be called perfect manifestation of the supermind in all parts of being and in every detail. The widening and universalisation of the physical consciousness by the descent of the supermind has to be followed, — and this was the new discovery of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, — by the penetration of the material mind by the supramental consciousness so that the supreme power and light of consciousness can be fixed and permanently established in the material mind and in the mind of the bodily cells.

The perfect manifestation is, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, implied in the unmistakable urge of the evolutionary force, and it has, therefore, to be worked out right up to the point where the human body and even its structure would evolve into a divine body capable of manifesting supermind and eventually Sachchidananda in Illness on the earth.

Immortality of the Spirit; Immortality of the Psychic Being, and Immortality of the Mind, Life and Body

Sri Aurobindo speaks of immortality in its essential meaning as also in its all comprehensive meaning. There is, first, the realization of immortality when one arrives at union with the immortal and eternal Divine Self or Divine Spirit or the Supreme Divine. And without that foundational realization of immortality, there cannot be the fullness of the immortality in all parts of the being and fullness of manifestation of the divine consciousness on the earth.

When we analyze this fullness of immortality, there is, in the Integral Yoga, the inescapable role of the psychic entity, which is the truth of all individualizing processes. Individualization and universalisation are mutual, in the sense that the true individual cannot realize his true individuality without universalisation, and the universal always tends to summarize itself in fullness through the individual. The true individual and the true universal are both representations in manifestation of the transcendental Supreme of whom the vast extension is the universal and whose eternal portion is the individual. Matter, Life and Mind and other planes of consciousness between the mind and the supermind are various gradations of the universal consciousness, and on each plane, there is a constant process of individualization which constantly proceeds by some degree of universalisation. The individual is as immortal as the universal and the transcendental, and the total manifestation of immortality cannot be attained without the realization of the immortality of the individual that is represented as psychic being, the evolving psychic entity in every individual human being; the psychic being is immortal

but evolving formation that constantly guides and inspires the body, life and mind to grow into its own image of immortality and to manifest that immortality. In human life, the central occupation of the immortal psychic being is to impart the truth of its own nature, particularly of its nature of divine love, to the mind, life and body. As a part of that work, the psychic consciousness, the true individual consciousness, strives to arrive at the individualization of the mind, life and body, and this individualization spreads from its inmost centre of consciousness to the outermost surface consciousness. According to Sri Aurobindo, immortality can be translated into the mental immortality, vital immortality and even physical immortality, when the mental, vital and physical in the human being can be individualized even on the outermost fringes of the surface consciousness and when these instruments (mental, vital and physical) can, by pschycisation and by supramentalisation, attain the power of continuous and harmonious progression in consonance with the highest movement of the indwelling Divine Will.

While explaining the complete sense of immortality, Sri Aurobindo states as follows:

"It is that secret Spirit or divinity of Self in us which is imperishable, because it is unborn and eternal. The psychic entity within, its representative, the spiritual individual in us, is the Person that we are; but the "I" of this moment, the "I" of this life is only a formation, a temporary personality of this inner Person: it is one step of the many steps of our evolutionary change, and it serves its true purpose only when we pass beyond it to a farther step leading nearer to a higher degree of consciousness and being. It is the inner Person that survives death, even as it pre-exists before birth; for this constant survival is a rendering of the eternity of our timeless

Spirit into the terms of Time.

"What our normal demand of survival asks for is a similar survival for our mind, our life, even our body;.. .But this aspiration could only succeed if the mind, life or body could put on something of the immortality and divinity of the indwelling Spirit."⁶¹

But what can we mean by the mind, life and body putting on something of the immortality and divinity of the indwelling Spirit? While elucidating this important point, Sri Aurobindo states as follows:

"There are certain circumstances in which the survival of the outer mental personality representative of the inner mental Purusha could be possible. It could happen if our mental being came to be so powerfully individualized on the surface and so much one with the inner mind and inner mental Purusha and at the same time so open plastically to the progressive action of the Infinite that the soul no longer needed to dissolve the old form of mind and create a new one in order to progress. A similar individualization, integration and openness of the vital being on the surface would alone make possible a similar survival of the life-part in us, the outer vital personality representative of the inner life-being, the vital Purusha. What would really happen then is that the wall between the inner self and the outer man would have broken down and the permanent mental and vital being from within, the mental and vital representatives of the immortal psychic entity, would govern the life. Our mind-nature and our life-nature would then be a continuous progressive expression of the soul and not a nexus of successive formations preserved only in their essence. Our mental personality and life-personality would then subsist without

dissolution from birth to birth; they would be in this sense immortal, persistently surviving, continuous in their sense of identity. This would be evidently an immense victory of soul and mind and life over the Inconscience and the limitations of material Nature."⁶²

But even then this would not be the consummation that is envisaged for the supramental manifestation and transformation of the physical life. For even then there will be the necessity of discarding the physical form. The law of death which is imposed on the bodily existence attached to all the forms of life and mind would still remain, and the Spirit would still remain under the obligation of discarding the physical body. And this obligation contradicts the sovereignty of the Spirit, the very nature of which is that of freedom and immortality. Immortality of the body consists, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, of the physical body capable of manifesting the sovereign divine will to manifest itself through the physical instrumentality as much as it wants, as long as it wants and the manner in which it wants. In other words, a condition must be attained where the law of obligation under which the body has to be discarded because it has become incapable of manifesting the sovereign will of the Divine Consciousness no more persists in its operation. Sri Aurobindo asks if there is any reason why the Spirit should not be able to liberate the bodily existence from the present obligation of the law of death, division and mutual devouring and use individualization of body as merely a useful subordinate term of the one divine Conscious-Existence made serviceable for the joy of the Infinite in the finite. Or, he asks, why should the Spirit not be free in a sovereign occupation of form, consciously
immortal even in the changing of its robe of Matter,

possessed of his self-delight in a world subjected to the law of unity and love and beauty? If man be the inhabitant of terrestrial existence through whom that. transformation of the mental into the supramental can at last be operated, is it not possible that he may develop, as well as a divine mind and a divine life, also a divine body?⁶³

In answer to these questions, Sri Aurobindo points out that the one thing that can stand in the way of that ultimate
terrestrial possibility is if the substance of matter as we see it today is the only substance that there could be for Matter. But there are, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, other states of Matter itself; there is undoubtedly an ascending series of the divine gradations of substance; there is, therefore, the possibility of the material being transfiguring itself through the acceptation of a higher law than its own which is yet its own because it was always there latent and potential in its own secrecies.⁶⁴

According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the material creature opens to a wider and wider play of the activities of the higher grades of consciousness in Matter, and all that is needed is a receptacle, medium, instrument. And that possibility is provided for in the body, life and consciousness of man. The ancient occult science had discovered and the oldest Vedantic knowledge tells us of five degrees of our being, the material, the vital, the mental, the ideal, the spiritual or beatific (annamaya, prānamaya, manomaya, vijnānamaya and ānandamaya), and to each of these grades, there corresponds a grade of our substance, a sheath (kosa) as it was called in the ancient figurative language of the Upanishad. Hathayoga and Tantricism, which had reduced this entire psychophysical knowledge to a science had discovered six nervous centres of life in the dense body

corresponding to six centres of life and mind faculty in the subtle, and they had found out subtle physical exercises by which these centres now closed could be opened up and even the physical and vital obstructions to the experience of the ideal and spiritual being would be destroyed. In this connection, Sri Aurobindo refers to the one prominent result that is claimed by the Hathayogins for their practices, and which is verified in many respects; this is the control of the physical life-force which liberated them from some of the ordinary habits or so-called laws which are considered to be inseparable from life, and the body. Indeed, these powers and achievements can be attained also by the methods of the integral yoga, in which the practices of Hatha yoga are optional. But what is important is to note that there is a greater and truer existence behind the forms and consciousness and power which are seen manifested in the material evolution. Our substance of the human body, thus, does not end with the physical body. As a result, subtler grades of substances with a finer law and a greater power can therefore impose their law on our dense matter and substitute their purer, higher, intenser conditions of being for the grossness and limitation of our present physical life and impulses and habits. Sri Aurobindo, therefore, concludes:

"If that be so, then the evolution of a nobler physical existence not limited by the ordinary conditions of animal birth and life and death, of difficult alimentation and facility of disorder and disease and subjection to poor and unsatisfied vital cravings ceases to have the appearance of a dream and chimera and becomes a possibility founded upon a rational and philosophic truth which is in accordance with all the rest that we have hitherto known, experienced or been able to think out about the overt and secret truth of our existence."⁶⁵

In terms of evolution, therefore, Sri Aurobindo envisages the evolution not only of states of untrammeled consciousness, of mental immortality and vital immortality, but even of a physical life fit for divine inhabitant and, — not out of the sense of attachment or of restriction to our present corporeal frame but an exceeding of the law of the physical body, — the conquest of death, an earthly immortality.

The difficulty of physical immortality is seen by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to be of enormous proportions. To connect supermind and human body where that body could ever arrive at a more perfect form and where it would become a more perfect vessel of a higher range of the expressive powers of divinity has rarely in the past been envisaged, except for the body which cannot exist here upon earth. There have been visions and imaginations of higher and subtler states of body, and they have been regarded as the privilege of celestial beings. Indeed, in certain forms of yoga there is the conception and realization of a spiritualized conscious body, chinmaya deha; there has been also the conception of a radiant or luminous body, which might be the Vedic jyotirmaya deha. A light has been seen by some, radiating from the bodies of highly developed spiritual persons, even extending to the emission of an enveloping aura. There have also been conceptions of extraordinary powers of the human body, as a result of which it can be seen physically, and in contradiction of the laws of the physical life on the earth, to be present at more than one place at the same time. But these experiences and these conceptions, which can be realized and are valid, do not fulfill the aim that Sri Aurobindo speaks in regard to the total transformation. There is no doubt that the attempt to transform the body by

the supramental power was attempted in the Vedic period, since we find references in the Veda and the Upanishads, but as the Mundaka Upanishad points out, one can enter into the higher realms of consciousness and can enter again into the physical life but one cannot return to the bodily life if one enters into the supramental Sun and arrive at the Immortal, the Spirit, the Self, undecaying and imperishable.66

That supermind can descend into the body and the body can become universalized has been affirmed in the Veda, but
something more radical and something which is much more difficult has to be worked out. For purposes of evolution, this task is inevitable, even though it can be attempted in the beginning only by a few and even though it can be accomplished successfully only by one or two individuals; it is, however, indispensable that it should be attempted and accomplished, first, by some rare individuals and then extended to larger collectivities and even subsequently generalized for humanity. For humanity, which is itself a product of evolution, will be required by the very logic of evolution to participate in the onward march of evolution or else to allow the growth of another species to grow and develop the highest perfection that evolution demands. As
Sri Aurobindo points out, man is a transitional being, and the law of transition will oblige man to evolve himself into the next step of evolution. Since the supermind is involved in the inconscience, and since evolution is a process of development of what is involved in the inconscience, supermind has to evolve, and this evolution will necessitate the Herculean labour to fix the supermind in matter and even transform the substance of matter into a substance which can bear the flow of immortalizing supramental bliss. As Sri Aurobindo states in the language of the Veda:

"For from the divine Bliss, the original Delight of existence, the Lord of Immortality comes pouring the wine of that Bliss, the mystic Soma, into these jars of mentalised living matter; eternal and beautiful, he enters into these sheaths of substance for the integral transformation of the being and nature."⁶⁷

Total transformation of mind, life and body by the discovery of a new method, an integral method, of fixing the supermind in the physical consciousness was therefore the aim that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother put before themselves, and they also envisaged the development of the Divine body as an eventual goal, even though the accomplishment would require centuries. In terms of evolution, two or three centuries are but minutes, and the whole humanity is ticking with the throb of evolution, and even if it refuses to collaborate, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother envisage that humanity will continue to tick the throb of evolution, and even if there is a crisis, that crisis can be overcome. They have therefore envisaged a number of steps through which the evolutionary process has to pass, and they have also envisaged the possibility and even inevitability of physical immortality. Indeed, physical immortality will be marked by the liberation of the yoke of the law of death, but at the same time, it would not mean the yoke of the obligation of the spirit to continue for ever and ever in the same physical body. Physical immortality will mean the capacity of the body to respond to all the demands of the will of the immortal spirit and also pliability by which the spirit can terminate its abode in a physical robe at will. The conditions of attaining this immortality will include the mental and vital immortality but also much more. As Sri Aurobindo states:

"The physical being could only endure, if by some means its physical causes of decay and disruption could be overcome and at the same time it could be made so plastic and progressive in its structure and its functioning that it would answer to each change demanded of it by the progress of the inner Person; it must be able to keep pace with the soul in its formation of self-expressive personality, its long unfolding of a secret spiritual divinity and the slow transformation of the mental into the divine mental or spiritual existence."⁶⁸

In the footnote to the above, Sri Aurobindo has pointed out: "Even if Science,—physical Science or occult Science, — were to discover the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself so as to become a fit instrument of expression for the inner growth, the soul would find some way to abandon it and pass on to a new incarnation. The material or physical causes of death are not its sole or its true cause; its true inmost reason is the spiritual necessity for the evolution of a new being."

The descent of the supermind and fixing of the supermind in the physical consciousness and the eventual development of the Divine Body would mean the consummation of a triple immortality, — (i) immortality of the mind, life and body or immortality of the nature, completing (ii) the essential immortality of the spirit and (iii) the psychic survival of death. This consummation, "might be the crown of rebirth and a momentous indication of the conquest of the material Inconscience and Ignorance even in the very foundation of the reign of Matter. But the true immortality would still be the eternity of the Spirit; the physical survival could only be relative, terminable at will, a temporal sign of the Spirit's victory here over Death and Matter."⁶⁹

Why is the conquest of the Law of Physical Death so difficult?

There are three conditions that combine together in the nature of Matter as we experience it which render acuteness of the opposition of Matter to Spirit. It is this acuteness of opposition that has been responsible for the development of asceticism and rejection of material life and for the declaration that spiritual life is inconsistent with material life and that ultimately the higher spiritual life can be lived only by transcending to some celestial plane of existence or by attaining supracosmic or acosmic spirit or the state of Nirvana. First of all, matter is found to be the culmination of the principle of Ignorance and it is thus completely opposed to the spirit, which is self-luminous, infinitely aware of itself behind all workings of force and their master. It is true that
out of the inconscience of matter, life and mind have emerged, and even if life struggles towards fullness and immortality, it is obliged to work under the law of matter, which appears to be insurmountable. Even if mind appears in the evolutionary movement, it cannot liberate itself from the threads of ignorance which are deep-rooted in the life of Matter. The second fundamental opposition that Matter offers to Spirit is that it is the culmination of bondage to mechanistic Law and opposes all that seeks to liberate itself. Matter is seen as a rigid chain that is fixed, mechanical and inert, not in the sense of absence of motion but in the sense of bondage. Thirdly, Matter offers fundamental opposition to Spirit because of the fact that it is the culmination of the principle of division and struggle. It is found that ignorance, inertia and division of matter impose on the vital and mental existence the law of pain and suffering and the unrest of dissatisfaction. And yet, when man becomes wholly self-conscious, pain and discord

of the world become finally too keenly sensible to be borne with contentment. As Sri Aurobindo points out, man is a finite -— seeming infinite — and cannot fail to arrive at a seeking after the infinite, and therefore, even if one is led to escape from the yoke of ignorance, inertia and division by means of rejection of material life, he cannot but lead the evolutionary process to bring into the material life infinite light, joy and power. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"He is the first son of earth who becomes vaguely aware of God within him, of his immortality or of his need of immortality, and the knowledge is a whip that drives and a cross of crucifixion until he is able to turn it into a source of infinite light and joy and power."⁷⁰

According to Sri Aurobindo, the descent of the supermind would not only liberate the mind and liberate the life but would also use the individualization of mind as a useful subordinate action of its all-embracing consciousness and would use the individualization of life as a useful subordinate action of the one Conscious-Force, but would also liberate the body and use the individualization of body as a useful subordinate term of the one divine Conscious-Existence made serviceable for the joy of the Infinite in the finite.

Supramental Transformation of the Human Body and Development of the New Instrumental Structure of the Divine Body

The transformation of the bodily life on the earth is indispensable, according to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, if humanity is to be led towards durable harmony and unity. Evolution has within itself the irresistible urge for the

manifestation of supramental perfection, and therefore, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have put forward the ideal of the Divine Life, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on the earth, —life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on the earth in the conditions of the material universe. This process of transformation would lead to the perfection of the body, and in the process of arriving at that perfection, there must come about the sovereign reign of a supramental truth consciousness to which all other forms of life would be subordinated and depend manifestly upon the supermind as the master principle and supreme power. In this context, the human body would need such a radical transformation that it would lead even to a change of what might be called its instrumental structure, its functioning and organization. Sri Aurobindo compares the evolution of the human body with a similar or even a more radical evolution of the divine body involving the modification of the previous animal form. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"Especially, as the human body had to come into existence with its modification of the previous animal form and its erect
figure of a new power of life and its expressive movements and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle of mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a conscious spirit. .. .In this progression the body also may reach a more perfect form and a higher range of its expressive powers, become a more and more perfect vessel of divinity."⁷¹

As Sri Aurobindo points out, the body has evolved out of the Inconscience; it is itself inconscient or only half conscious; in man the body, in its developed form, serves the

intellectual mind and more complete intelligence as the physical base, container and instrumental means of our total spiritual endeavour. Even then, its animal character and its gross limitations stand as an obstacle to the process of spiritual perfection. On the other hand, the body has also developed a soul or rather the soul has been able to evolve by its psychic powers higher and higher sheaths or kosas, the physical, vital and the mental, and it has also evolved a growing psychic being; this may indicate that the body is capable of further development and may become a shrine and expression of the spirit; the body may come to reveal a secret spirituality of matter. In that case, the body may be regarded as capable of becoming a complete instrument of divine life; but for arriving at that point of development, the inconveniences of animal body and its animal nature and impulses have to be overcome. This would imply full and fundamental liberation of the body from its inconscience or half-conscience, even transformation of the inconscience.

Sri Aurobindo has examined in detail the necessity of this . task and the difficulties of the task which seem to be almost
impossible. For the body binds the mind, soul and life-force ; to matter, to materiality of all kinds and to the call of the unregenerated earth-nature. The materiality of the body brings to the physical being a bondage to the material instrument, to the brain and heart and senses; this brings physical being to be tied to materialism of all kinds and to the bodily mechanism and its needs and obligations. The physical being is also tied to imperative need of food and preoccupation of the means of getting it and storing it as one of the besetting interests of life, to fatigue and sleep, to the satisfaction of bodily desire. These obligations and the obligation of the body to undergo infirmities and diseases of

the body and ultimately to death,—all these compulsions are inconsistent with the nature of the Spirit; and spiritual transformation of the body would imply a conquest of unprecedented dimensions. Sri Aurobindo' s and the Mother's
realizations of the powers of supramental truth and of the divine nature have led them to conclude that the conquest of obstacles on the path is possible and it must be carried out and can be carried out. As Sri Aurobindo states:

"These obstacles can be overcome, the denials and resistance of the body surmounted, its transformation is possible. Even the inconscient and animal part of us can be illumined and made capable of manifesting the god-nature even as our mental humanity can be made to manifest the superhumanity of the supramental truth-consciousness and the divinity of what is now superconscious to us and the total transformation made a reality here."⁷²

The difficulties are, however, psychological and corporeal; they arise from the unregenerated animality evidenced by the insistence of the body's gross instincts, impulses and desires. The corporeal difficulties arise out of our corporeal structure and organic instrumentation imposing its restrictions on the dynamism of the higher divine nature. As Sri Aurobindo points out, the psychological difficulties are easier to deal with and conquer; but difficulties arising out of our corporeal structure are of such a magnitude that major changes of that structure will need to be effected. The divine body will have a new corporeal structure and organic instrumentation appropriate to the divine nature, although it will retain all those aspects of structure and instrumentation of the human body which would be experimentally found to be capable of manifesting the divine nature.