Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga - Integral Yoga

Integral Yoga

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:

brahmāṇaḥ tvā  śatakrato ud vaṃśam-iva yemire ǁ

yat sānoḥ  sānum  āruhad  bhūry  aspaṣṭa  kartvam ǀ Rigveda 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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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 Nirvāṇa 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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

NOTES

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.