Supermind in Integral Yoga - Problem of Ignorance Bondage, Liberation and Perfection - Notes and References

NOTES AND REFERENCES

¹Vide, Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, particularly, Letters on Yoga [Vols. 23-24, Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (SABCL), 1971, Pondicherry], and Sri Aurobindo's The Synthesis of Yoga (SABCL, Vols. 20-21, 1971, Pondicherry).

²Vide, Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, Chapters XIII, XIV and XV.

³Ibid., p. 312.

⁴Vide, Ibid., pp. 311-2.

⁵Ibid., p. 122.

⁶Vide, The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, Vol. X10, 1971, p. 34. Sri Aurobindo's discovery of the supermind was, thus, prior to his knowledge of what the Veda had contained of that highest faculty of consciousness and power. He 'did not learn of it from the Veda, but based upon his discovery, he deciphered the Vedic knowledge of the supermind, which had been lost since millennia.

⁷Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 18, 1971, p. 124.

⁸Vide, Ibid., p. 125.

'Bhagavad Gita (BG), Chapter VII.4,5.

^l0Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 18, 1971, pp. 146-8. "Ibid., pp. 156-7. ^l2Ibid., p. 117.

¹³Ibid., pp. 316-7.

¹⁴Ibid., p. 149.

¹⁵Ibid., p.320.

¹⁶Vide, Ibid., Book II Part One, Chapters IV-XIV. ¹⁷Rig Veda (RV), III. 39.5.

^,8/?V,II.24.4.

¹⁹Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, pp. 318-9.

²⁰Vide RV, V.62.1. In this verse, the word Sun symbolizes supramental

truth- consciousness where all the multiple rays of light and knowledge are united in a vast comprehensiveness. Reference to the truth hidden by the truth indicates the transition from the overmind to the supermind. The same idea of the Truth hidden by the truth and the same idea of the supermind in which all the multiple rays of light are held together in comprehensiveness is to be found in the following verses of the Isha Upanishad:

"The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for Sight. O Fosterer, 0 sole Seer, of illumining Sun, 0 power of the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light; the Luster which is thy most blessed form of all, that in Thee I behold. The Purusha, He am I." (Verses 15.16)

Once again, it will be seen that these two verses speak of the face of Truth as covered with a brilliant golden lid, even as the face of the supramental consciousness is covered with the overmental consciousness, which can be compared to a brilliant golden lid. These verses also indicate the yogic effort of the Seer to cross the overmind so that he can realize the supramental law of the Truth-Consciousness. It can also be seen that it is in the illumining Sun that the scattered rays of light of lower levels of consciousness are drawn together in the supreme supramental light, since the supramental consciousness is totally comprehensive. Finally, it is in the supramental light that the Supreme, the Purusha, the One without the second, is beheld.

In the inner sense of the Veda, Surya or the Sun represents the supramental illumination which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. The same sense of the Sun is carried also in the Upanishads. As in Veda, so in the Upanishads, the principal power of the Sun is self-revelatory knowledge and it is termed "Sight". As in the Veda, so in the Upanishads, the realm of the Sun or supramental consciousness is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man's dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is described as the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, who leads the seeker to the highest Sight. He is Yama, Controller or Ordainer; for he governs man's action and manifested being by the direct Law of the Truth, satyadharma, and therefore the right principle of our nature, a luminous power proceeding from the Father of all existence; he reveals himself as the divine Purusha of whom all beings are the manifestations. His

rays are the thoughts that proceed luminously from the Truth, the Vast, but become deflected and distorted, broken up and disordered in the ranges from the overmind to the mind. They form there the golden lid which covers the face of the Truth. The seer, the Rishi, who seeks the supermind prays to Surya to cast them into right order and relation and then draw them together into the unity of revealed truth. The result of this inner process is the perception of the oneness of all beings in the divine Soul.

²¹RV, VII.60.5.

²²Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, pp. 489-90.

²³Ma Upanishad, 9, 10, 11. ²⁴Ibid., 6,7, 8.

As in the Veda, so in the Upanishads, there is a clear distinction between kavi, the seer, and manīsī the thinker. The word 'seer' indicates the divine supramental Knowledge which by direct vision and illumination sees the reality and the principles and forms of things in their true relations. On the other hand, the word Thinker refers to the laboring mentality, which works from the overmental and mental consciousness. The Supreme Reality, visioned supramentally, is at once the impersonal Brahman, bodiless and pure, and the Ishwara, the dynamic lord, who spreads out and becomes everywhere and orders objects comprehensively and perfectly according to their nature. The manifestation is seen, first, in a comprehensive consciousness of the Seer and then further manifested downward by lower functionings of consciousness; thus the entire world of manifestation is seen as a ladder from the highest to the lowest and spread out in the one self-existent Brahman.

The integrality of the supramental vision of the ultimate reality is reiterated in all the principal Upanishads. Shwetaswatara Upanishad describes the ultimate reality as "The One, without form and hue; and He, by Yoga of His own might, became manifold." Addressing that reality, the Upanishad says: "Thou art woman and Thou art man also; Thou art the boy, or else Thou art the young virgin, and Thou art yonder worn and aged man that walkest bending upon a staff. Lo, Thou becomest born and the universe groweth full of Thy faces." (IV. 1, 3)

The Mundaka Upanishad describes the integral ultimate reality as follows:

"He who is the Omniscient, the all-wise, He whose energy is all made

of knowledge, from Him is born this that is Brahman here, this Name and Form and Matter. .. .This is That, the Truth of things: as from one high-kindled fire thousands of different sparks are born and all have the same form of fire, so, O fair son, from the immutable manifold becomings are born and even into that they depart. He, the divine, the formless Spirit, even He is the outward and the inward and he the Unborn; He is beyond life, beyond mind, luminous, Supreme beyond the immutable." (I. I. 9, II. I. 1,2)

Speaking of the integral knowledge of the ultimate reality as we find it in the Upanishads, Sri Aurobindo states:

"The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman, Life is Brahman, Matter is Brahman;... .Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the Force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the timeless and Time; he is Space and all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in

Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge." (Sri Aurobindo, SABCL, Vol. 18, pp. 324-5)

The integrality of the Ultimate Reality that we find in the Veda and the Upanishads is reiterated in the philosophy and yoga of the Gita. The Ultimate Reality, according to the Gita, is One but complex and integral and this integrality is the highest object of knowledge and manifestation which we can attain by transcendence of the mental consciousness and by rising into various higher and highest levels of consciousness corresponding to the overmental and supramental consciousness. The principal ideas of the Gita which are woven into its complex harmony can be considered to be the enduring truths of spiritual experience, verifiable facts of our highest psychological possibilities, which no attempt to read deeply the mystery of existence can afford to neglect. As Sri Aurobindo points out, the wide, undulating, encircling movement of the exposition of the ideas of the Gita manifests a vast synthetic consciousness and a rich integral experience. It moves upwards from the lower nature, Apara Prakriti, to the higher peaks of supramental nature, which is called Para Prakriti. It recognizes the experiences of the Sankhyan Purusha as also the experience of Vedantic Brahman and Ishwara, — the experiences that one can attain when one crosses the level of the Mind; but it also rises much farther in the supramental consciousness of Para Prakriti in which all these experiences get integrally related and transcended. As a result, it maps out, but does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our vision. Describing the synthetic and integral view of reality and its integral monism, Sri Aurobindo states as follows:

"The thought of the Gita is not pure Monism although it sees in one unchanging, pure, eternal Self the foundation of all cosmic existence, nor Mayavada although it speaks of the Maya of the three modes of Prakriti omnipresent in the created world; nor is it qualified Monism although it places in the One his eternal supreme Prakriti manifested in the form of the Jiva and lays most stress on dwelling in God rather than dissolution as the supreme state of spiritual consciousness; nor is it Sankhya although it explains the created world by the double principle

of Purusha and Prakriti; nor is it Vaishnava Theism although it presents to us Krishna, who is the Avatar of Vishnu according to the Puranas, as the supreme Deity and allows no essential difference nor any actual superiority of the status of the indefinable relationless Brahman over that of this Lord of beings who is the Master of the universe and the Friend of all creatures. Like the earlier spiritual synthesis of the Upanishads this later synthesis at once spiritual and intellectual avoids naturally every such rigid determination as would injure its universal comprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the opposite to that of the polemist commentators who found this Scripture established as one of the three highest Vedantic authorities and attempted to turn it into a weapon of offence and defence against other schools and systems. The Gita is not a weapon for dialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of spiritual truth and experience and the view it gives us embraces all the provinces of that supreme region." (Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, SABCL, Vol. 13, p. 6)

In the supramental view, the ultimate reality which the Gita presents to us is Purushottama, who is both static and dynamic and reconciles the inactive Brahman and the dynamic Ishwara. The Purushottama is described by the Gita as follows:

"There are two purushas as far as this world is concerned: kshara (mobile) and akshara (immobile). All these existences of the world are called kshara; and kutastha (immobile) is called akshara. The Highest Purusha is different from these two. He is called the Supreme Being, who though immutable, permeates the three worlds, and is the Lord and controls and sustains them....." (Bhagavad Gita, XV. 16, 17, 18)

This Purushottama is both the unmanifest and the manifest, and all manifestation proceeds from the Divine Nature. The Divine Nature is described in the Gita as Para Prakriti. This Para Prakriti is distinguished from Apara Prakriti, the lower nature. The lower nature consists of matter, life and mind, and the higher nature transcends the limitations of the mind and it is through the higher nature that Purushottama manifests in the world and as the world but the world of our experience is normally limited to be the world of Matter, Life and Mind; but this is not the entirety of the world. There are higher planes of the world, and Para Prakriti is seen manifest as a supramental world. An important aspect that is explicitly stated in the Gita is that of the higher nature which has manifested as the individual soul (jīva hhūtā). Sri Krishna,

the teacher of the Gita, who is described as the Avatar of the Supreme, describes the idea of lower nature and the higher nature and their interconnection in the following words:

"Earth, water, fire, ether, mind, intellect and ego—this is the eight-fold Prakriti, which is My nature. That is My lower nature, O Mighty-armed Arjuna! Other than this, know My higher nature which has manifested as the individual souls, and it is that higher nature by which this entire world is sustained. ... O Arjuna, there exists nothing else that is higher than Me. All this is woven upon Me like rows of gems upon a string." (Ibid., VII.4, 5, 7)

The reality of the individual soul and its relationship with the higher Nature is further elaborated in XV.7 where it is pointed out that it is the eternal portion of the Purushottama himself that has become the individual in this world of individual souls (mama eva amśah sanātanah).

Integral reality that is presented in the Gita is thus the transcendental, who abiding in himself inactively, manifests dynamically by his all-pervading and all-creative divine nature, and is thus universal who puts forth his eternal portion as individual souls through higher Prakriti. The integralism of the Gita thus places the complexity of the relationship between the transcendental, the universal and the individuality in its full complexity.

Vide, Taittiriya Upanishad, Brahmanandavalli, chapters I-V.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, pp.560-1.

Tapas and Ignorance:

An important concept that is centrally related to the phenomenon of the Ignorance is that of Tapas. Again, this concept is to be found as far back as Veda. (Vide, for instance, the Rigvedic 'aghamarśana mantra' RV X.190.)

Tapas means literally heat, but in due course of time, it came to mean every kind of energism, askesis, austerity of conscious-force acting upon itself or its object. As Sri Aurobindo points out, absolute consciousness is in its nature absolute power; the nature of Chit is Shakti: Force or Shakti concentrated and energized for cognition or for action is a realizing power effective or creative; it is the power of conscious-being dwelling upon itself and bringing out, as it were, by Tapas, the heat of its incubation, the seed and development of all that is within it or of all

its truths and potentialities. Chit-Shakti by the means of Tapas has created or rather manifested the universe. Tapas is the nature of action of consciousness, and in the indivisible Existence, the power of integral consciousness is the integral Tapas. It may, therefore, be said that it is by energy of Tapas that the dispensing of Force of being in the world-action is accomplished; but the force of Tapas can be of various degrees, and it is by the energy of Tapas that the drawing back of that force of being is accomplished. In the integrality of the Chit-Shakti, Tapas manifests as power of concentration, and this concentration can be varied and the supreme integrality holds all the states of powers of concentration of consciousness together as a single indivisible being looking at all itself in manifestation with a simultaneous self-vision. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"The concentration may be essential; it may be even a sole indwelling or an entire absorption in the essence of its own being, a luminous or else a self-oblivious self-immersion. Or it may be an integral or else a total-multiple or a part-multiple concentration. Or it may be a single separative regard on one field of its being or movement, a single-pointed concentration in one centre or an absorption in one objective form of its self-existence. The first, the essential, is at one end the superconscient Silence and at the other end the Inconscience; the second, the integral, is the total consciousness of Sachchidananda, the supramental concentration; the third, the multiple, is the method of the totalizing or global overmental awareness; the fourth, the separative, is the characteristic nature of the Ignorance. The supreme integrality of the Absolute holds all these states or powers of its consciousness together as a single indivisible being looking at all itself in manifestation with simultaneous self-vision." (Sri Aurobindo, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, pp.582-3)

The process by which the ignorance arises in the unfolding of the supramental consciousness can be traced to the action of Tapas, the power of concentration, which can be total, global, multiple and even exclusive. And in the action of the supramental consciousness, Tapas can act in all manners of concentration, including a concentration of separative or exclusive absorption on a limited field of formations. The basic premise of the explanation of the process of the appearance of Ignorance is that the Divine is an infinite being, and that Infinite Being has a possibility of assuming a poise of exclusive concentration of

consciousness when the Divine in the Oneness manifests the Divine in the Many. It is in the nature of Being to be able to grade and vary its powers of consciousness and determine according to the grade and variation its world or its degree and scope of self-revelation. Among many possibilities of manifestation, there is also the possibility of manifestation where the exclusive concentration of consciousness could operate effectively; and if that possibility is to operate, an effective lid or wall can be erected in such a manner that on the upper side of the lid, the supramental or total concentration of consciousness can continue to operate, while on the other side of the wall the separative and exclusive concentration of consciousness would come into operation. That wall or lid is not brought into being by any external agency, but it is produced effectively by the downward exclusive concentration of consciousness which concentrates more and more fully on multiplicity so that it ignores the underlying unity which is behind its operations; it is that act of ignoring that becomes more and more opaque, and the act of ignoring or ignorance becomes more and more thick.

Sri Aurobindo explains the process of the origin of Ignorance as follows:

"Where does that development take place, in what principle of being does it find its opportunity and starting-point? Not, certainly, in the infinite being, the infinite consciousness, the infinite delight which are the supreme planes of existence and from which all else derives or descends into this obscurer ambiguous manifestation. There it can have no place. Not in the Supermind; for in the Supermind the infinite light and power are always present even in the most finite workings, and the consciousness of unity embraces the consciousness of diversity. It is on the plane of mind that this putting back of the real self-consciousness becomes possible. For mind is that power of the conscious being which differentiates and runs along the lines of differentiation with the sense of diversity prominent and characteristic and the sense of unity behind it only, not characteristic, not the very stuff of its workings. If by any chance this supporting sense of unity could be drawn back, — it is possessed by mind not in its own separate right, but because it has the Supermind behind it, because it reflects the light of the Supermind of which it is a derivative and secondary power, — if a veil could fall between mind and Supermind shutting off the light of the Truth or letting it come through only in rays diffused, scattered, reflected but with distortion and division, then the phenomenon of the Ignorance would

intervene. Such a veil exists, says the Upanishad, constituted by the action of Mind itself: it is in Overmind a golden lid which hides the face of the supramental Truth but reflects its image; in Mind it becomes a more opaque and smoky-luminous coverture. That action is the absorbed looking downward of Mind on the diversity which is its characteristic movement and away from the supreme unity which that diversity expresses, until it forgets altogether to remember and support itself by the unity. Even then the unity supports it and makes its activities possible, but the absorbed Energy is unaware of its own origin and greater, real self. Since Mind forgets that from which it derived, because of absorption in the workings of formative Energy, it becomes so far identified with that Energy as to lose hold even on itself, to become totally oblivious in a trance of work which it still supports in its somnambulist action, but of which it is no longer aware. This is the last stage of the descent of consciousness, an abysmal sleep, a fathomless trance of consciousness which is the profound basis of the action of material Nature." (Ibid., pp. 592-3)

The abysmal sleep of consciousness is what Sri Aurobindo calls the Inconscience, and it is itself a result of the involutionary ignorance, which has its origin in the last action of the Supermind where the consciousness of diversity is more predominant than the underlying consciousness of unity. That movement is involutionary because it is a movement that falls away from the consciousness of unity on account of the action of Tapas which acts in the operation by its power of exclusive concentration of consciousness on diversity. Again, it is involutionary because this exclusive concentration of consciousness does not and cannot abolish the operation of the unity of consciousness but can only hold it back. This holding back of the integrality of the consciousness of unity results in the process of involution; for involution implies implicit working of consciousness, and even though held back, it supports and manifests to the extent to which the frontal exclusive concentration of consciousness would allow its operation through the opaque wall which it has created by its downward and absorbed look on the diversity of which alone it takes cognizance. At the level of the mind (not the evolutionary mind, but mind, which is above as the last operation of the third status of the Supermind), the involutionary movement of the consciousness becomes gradually more and more ignorant of unity. This involutionary Ignorance, by virtue of its more and more acute action of exclusive concentration of consciousness,

results in the phenomenon of the Inconscience, the complete involution of consciousness,—a complete trance in which consciousness is totally lost.

But still the Inconscience is basically a phenomenon of consciousness and it has involved in it all the powers of consciousness. Hence, Sri Aurobindo describes the Inconscience as follows:

"The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig Veda, tama āsīt tamasā gūdham, which makes it look like Non-Existence; instead of a luminous inherent self-awareness there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion, inherent in being but not awake in being. Yet is this involved consciousness still a concealed knowledge by identity; it carries in it the awareness of all the truths of existence hidden in its dark infinite and, when it acts and creates, — but it acts first as Energy and not as Consciousness,—everything is arranged with the precision and perfection of an intrinsic knowledge. In all material things reside 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 Super-conscience, but translated into terms of self-darkness in place of the original self-light. Intrinsic in the material form, these powers are not possessed by the form, but yet work in its mute subconscience." (Ibid. p.550)

The journey of the evolution that we witness in the world begins from this cosmic abysmal sleep or consciousness, from the cosmic Inconscience; that inconscience, because it is involved consciousness, evolves in gradual developing forms which are capable of manifesting higher and higher degrees of consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo points out, evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Matter should evolve out of the Inconscience and why Life should evolve out of material

elements or Mind out of living form unless Matter is involved in the Inconscience and Life is already involved in matter and Mind in Life. And on the same basis, it would become intelligible why Supermind can evolve in Mind. In this process of evolution, we find that the material existence has only a physical, not a mental individuality. But as the evolution proceeds farther, the phenomenon of individuality becomes more and more visible, and it is in evolution of human consciousness that the body, life and mind within the limits of which the human consciousness seems to be operating in states of great imprisonment of confinement that individuality becomes more and more manifest in particular forms of body, life and mind. Human consciousness is a field of limited functionings of consciousness in which there is, as it grows, increasing pressure towards a real self-knowledge. In technical terms, it can be said that it is the human consciousness progressing towards or groping towards real self-knowledge that can be called evolutionary Ignorance, distinguishable from involutionary Ignorance, which was the parent of the Inconscience. In the working of the evolutionary Ignorance, therefore, there is behind it the entire past history of the involutionary Ignorance, of the Inconscience, of the gradual evolution of consciousness culminating in the imprisoned groping consciousness which tends to enlarge itself by increasing world-knowledge, and along with it increasing pressure towards deeper and deeper self-knowledge.

²*Katha Upanishad, 1.2.5, 6.

²⁹ Vide, Mandukya Upanishad, III.7.

³⁰Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 20, pp. 500-3.

³¹ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, p. 426. ³²Mandukya Upanishad, 5, 6.

³³Vide, Sri Aurobindo,, The Life Divine, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, pp. 501-23.

³⁴Ibid, p. 559.

Katha Upanishad, II. 1.12. ³⁶Ibid., II.1.5. ³⁷BG,XV7.

³⁸Ibid., VII.5.

³⁹Vide., Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 20, p. 419.

⁴⁰Vide, Ibid., The Life Divine, Vol. 18, pp. 225-30.

⁴¹Ibid, pp. 591-2.

⁴²Ibid., The Synthesis of Yoga, Vol. 20, p. 283.

⁴³Ibid, The Life Divine, Vol. 18, p. 170.

⁴⁴Ibid.

⁴⁵Ibid., pp. 171-2.

⁴⁶Ibid., Vol. 19, pp. 654-5.

⁴⁷Integral knowledge as described by Sri Aurobindo as sevenfold knowledge, the full statement of which is given in The Life Divine, Vol. 19, pp. 726-41.

⁴⁸In the light of the data of the knowledge gained in the supramental consciousness, it is affirmed that there is a fundamental truth of existence, an Omnipresent Reality, omnipresent above the cosmic manifestation and in it an immanent in each individual; it is further affirmed that there is also a dynamic power of this Omnipresence, a creative or self-manifesting action of its infinite Conscious-Force; finally, it is further affirmed that there is a phase of the movement of the self-manifestation, a phase of descent into an apparent material inconscience, followed by an awakening of the individual evolving out of the Inconscient, and a further evolution of his being into a spiritual and supramental consciousness and power, and into his own universal and transcendental Self and source of existence. It has, however, been argued that, even granting the immanence of the Divine, even granting our individual consciousness as a vehicle of progressive evolutionary manifestation, the individual cannot be accepted as eternal or that there can be any persistence of individuality after the individual has attained liberation from the bondage to ignorance by means of Self-knowledge and unity with the Supreme.

If the difficulty is presented in the context of spiritual experience, it can only be met by a wider resolving experience. The fact is that there is in the domain of spiritual experience a wide variety, and as Sri Aurobindo has explained, as long as spiritual experience takes place at the level of mental consciousness, whether in a state of silence of the mind as in the process of Jnana yoga, or in the mind which is greatly quieted by overwhelming love of the Divine, as in the Bhakti yoga, or as else in the mind which is turned into an unobstructed channel of the Divine

Will, as in the Karma yoga, the Infinite, who is the object with which the unity is experienced or effected, there will remain some kind of remoteness or penultimateness from the experience of the Infinite in its supramental all-comprehensiveness. There have, therefore, been in the history of yoga, claims and counter-claims regarding the nature of ultimate reality, and even claims and counter-claims in regard to the efficacy of the methods which are employed in different systems of yoga. At the same time, there have been also affirmations of supramental experiences as well in which the difficulties of affirmations and negations of spiritual experiences have been met and overcome. There is, for instance, the following statement of supramental experience, in the Isha Upanishad which, in its entire text dwells upon synthesis, integrality and all-comprehensiveness:

"But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self, shrinks not thereafter from aught. 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?" (6, 7)

There are several other similar statements in Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita in which the individual's liberation from bondage has been described, and there is this agreement that in the supramental vision of Reality, persistence of individuality and the eternity of individual stand affirmed.

However, in all the statements of supramental experiences, a distinction is made between the individual and ego, and it is pointed out that the ego is the individual only so long as the true individual is in a state of bondage of ignorance, and that the true individual effects the annihilation of the ego when it recovers its freedom and its true relationship with all other individuals which is not egoistic or self-separative, but of which the essential character is practical mutuality founded in essential unity. As Sri Aurobindo points out, once again, based upon his own supramental experience, this mutuality is founded in unity, and that is the whole secret of the divine existence in its perfect manifestation.

In fact, the entire basis of the integral yoga, which not only aims at the integral realization of the Infinite but also at the full manifestation of the supramental consciousness in Matter and at the total transformation of matter and material life to which the name of the divine life is given,

is to be found in the persistence of the individual even after liberation is attained by unity and self-knowledge.

For the normal Reason, difficulties arise in several ways. First of all, we have to use the word individual and speak of ego as individual and yet distinguish it from what we really mean by real individual. The ego is the sense of finite formation created by the movement of Energy or Prakriti, which, on account of exclusive concentration of consciousness in a limited fluctuating field, considers and has a sense of itself to be an independent observer, initiator and determiner of action within the field that it perceives, — a sense which has nothing corresponding to it in reality, since no finite formation in the movement of Prakriti is or can be independent. The real individual has another connotation as we shall see a little later. Secondly, egoistic consciousness and egoistic sense fluctuates between retaining its limitation and expanding the boundaries of that limitation; but even when it expands, it can never attain its ideal of universality. The ego does not correspond to what is experienced as the true eternal individual or individual soul or individual self. Pointing out that the true individual is nothing of the kind that obtains as individualized mental, vital, and physical being separate from all other beings and incapable of unity with them by its very ego-sense, Sri Aurobindo states that by the true individual is meant "a conscious power of being of the Eternal, always existing by unity, always capable of mutuality. It is that being which by self-knowledge enjoys liberation and immortality." (The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 18, p. 373)

In order to clarify further the concept of true individual, Sri Aurobindo adds: "When we speak of the true individual as a conscious power of being of the Eternal, we are still using intellectual terms, — we cannot help it, unless we plunge into a language of pure symbols and mystic values of speech, — but, what is worse, we are, in the attempt to get away from the idea of the ego, using a too abstract language. Let us say, then, a conscious being who is for our valuations of existence a being of the Eternal in his power of individualizing self-experience; for it must be a concrete being, — and not an abstract power, — who enjoys immortality. And then we get to this that not only am I in the world and the world in me, but God is in me and I am in God; by which yet it is not meant that God depends for His existence on man, but that He manifests Himself in that which He manifests within Himself; the individual exists in the Transcendent, but all the Transcendent is there concealed in the

individual. Further I am one with God in my being and yet I can have relations with Him in my experience. I, the liberated individual, can enjoy the Divine in His transcendence, unified with Him, and enjoy at the same time the Divine in other individuals and in His cosmic being. Evidently we have arrived at certain primary relations of the Absolute and they can only be intelligible to the mind if we see that the Transcendent, the individual, the cosmic being are the eternal powers of consciousness, — we fall again, this time without remedy, into a wholly abstract language, — of an absolute existence, a unity yet more than a unity, which so expresses itself to its own consciousness in us, but which we cannot adequately speak of in human language and must not hope to describe either by negative or positive terms to our reason, but can only hope to indicate it to the utmost power of our language." (Ibid., pp.373-4)

The normal mind has no experience of these things, although they are powerfully real to the individual who has attained to liberation by unity and self-knowledge. The normal mind may, therefore, well revolt against the above statement of the experience of liberated consciousness and regard it as a mass of intellectual contradictions. Sri Aurobindo has expounded with supreme clarity the argument of the normal reason as follows:

"I know very well what the Absolute is; it is that in which there are no relations. The Absolute and the relative are irreconcilable opposites; in the relative there is nowhere anything absolute, in the Absolute there can be nothing relative. Anything which contradicts these first data of my thought, is intellectually false and practically impossible. These other statements also contradict my law of contradictions which is that two opposing and conflicting affirmations cannot both be true. It is impossible that there should be oneness with God and yet a relation with Him such as this of the enjoyment of the Divine. In oneness there is no one to enjoy except the One and nothing to be enjoyed except the One. God, the individual and the cosmos must be three different actualities, otherwise there could be no relations between them. Either they are eternally different or they are different in present time, although they may have originally been one undifferentiated existence and may eventually re-become one undifferentiated existence. Unity was perhaps and will be perhaps, but it is not now and cannot be so long as cosmos and the individual endure. The cosmic being can only know and possess

the transcendent unity by ceasing to be cosmic; the individual can only know and possess the cosmic or the transcendent unity by ceasing from all individuality and individualisation. Or if unity is the one eternal fact, then cosmos and individual are non-existent; they are illusions imposed on itself by the Eternal. That may well involve a contradiction or an unreconciled paradox; but I am willing to admit a contradiction in the Eternal which I am not compelled to think out, rather than a contradiction here of my primary conceptions which I am compelled to think out logically and to practical ends. I am on this supposition able either to take the world as practically real and think and act in it or to reject it as an unreality and cease to think and act; I am not compelled to reconcile contradictions, not called on to be conscious of and conscious in something beyond myself and world and yet deal from that basis, as God does, with a world of contradictions. The attempt to be as God while I am still an individual or to be three things at a time seems to me to involve a logical confusion and practical impossibility." (Ibid, pp.374-5)

Sri Aurobindo has considered the above argument in detail (vide The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 18, ch. 3, (Part I, Vol. II) pp. 375-87.) and pointed out that that argument of the normal reason commits a triple error, the error of making an unbridgeable gulf between the Absolute and the relative, the error of making too simple and rigid and extending too far the law of contradictions, and the error of conceiving in terms of Time the genesis of things which have their origin and first habitat in the eternal. In brief, Sri Aurobindo points out, our mistake lies in defining the absolute by an all-exclusive negation, even when the absolute is in reality a supreme positive and the cause of all positives. Hence, if a positive term is used in regard to the absolute, it should be met by a corresponding negative which brings in the rest of its absolute positivity by which its limitations to the positive statement is denied. The absolute, Sri Aurobindo contends, is not a blank or a zero; it is the infinite Spaceless and Timeless existent, and this existent can properly be described in its large primary relations such as the infinite and finite, the conditioned and the unconditioned; the qualified and the unqualified; in each pair the negative conceals the whole power of the corresponding positive which is contained in it and emerges from it: there is no real opposition. Similarly, Sri Aurobindo points out that in a less subtle order of truth, the transcendental and the cosmic, the universal and the individual, each member of these pairs is contained in its apparent

opposite. In reality, the universal particularizes itself in the individual; the individual contains in himself all the generalities of the universe; the universal consciousness finds all itself that the variations of the numberless individuals, not by suppressing variations; the individual consciousness fulfils all itself when it is universalized in sympathy and identity with the cosmic, not by limiting itself in ego; so too the cosmic contains in all itself and each thing in it the complete immanence of transcendence; it maintains itself as a world-being by the consciousness of its own transcendent reality, it finds itself in each individual being by the realization of the divine and transcendent in that being and in all existences. Finally, the transcendent contains, manifests, constitutes the cosmos and by manifesting it manifests or discovers its own infinite harmonic varieties. In actual experience, cosmos and individual go back to something in the Absolute which is the true truth of the individuality, the true truth of the cosmic being. There is no gulf between the infinite and finite, no gulf between the transcendental and universal, between the universal and the individual or vice versa. The absolute is the supreme existent so utterly and so infinitely positive that no finite positive can be formulated which can exhaust or bind it down to its definition. As for the argument which supports itself on the law of contradiction, Sri Aurobindo points out that we can find no solution by an original unreconciled contradiction which is to explain all the rest; at the same time, the human reason is wrong in attaching a separate and definitive value to each contradiction to itself or getting rid of one by altogether denying the other. Sri Aurobindo, however, acknowledges that human reason is right in refusing to accept as final and as a last word the coupling of contradictions which have in no way been reconciled together or else found their source and significance in something beyond their opposition. If the absolute is at once the transcendental, universal and the individual, there is no mutual cancellation because the commonality and individuality are the true eternal powers of essentiality; that is why we see that there is everywhere an essentiality of things, a commonality of things, and individuality of things, and we find essentiality transcends both commonality and individuality, and yet the three together and not one by itself are the eternal terms of existence. Sri Aurobindo acknowledges that a diamond and a pearl, each belongs to its own class, and a diamond is a diamond and a pearl is a pearl. But each has properties and elements which are common to both and others, which are common to material things in general, and we get back to the very basis and

enduring truth of all material things only when we find that all are the same thing, one energy, one substance, and that if we can gain that knowledge and control of the elements and common properties of the class to which they belong, we may arrive at a power of either making a diamond or a pearl at our pleasure. To see superficially the transcendental, the universal and the individual in complete isolation of each other, we may perhaps succeed in discerning distinctiveness of each, but that distinctiveness does not abrogate the essential unity in which all three find their right relationship, where essentiality is the source and cosmic and individuality are true and eternal powers of essentiality. Thus, we find the source and significance of the universe and the individual in essentiality which is beyond their distinctiveness and opposition.

In regard to the argument that if the transcendental, cosmic and the individual are conceived as Unity, then unity was perhaps and will be perhaps, but it is not now and cannot be so long as cosmos and the individual endure, Sri Aurobindo points out that that argument is an attempt to effect a reconciliation or explanation of the original contradictions of existence by taking refuge in our concept of Time. In reply to that argument, Sri Aurobindo points out that Time, as we know or conceive it, is only our means of realizing things in succession, it is a condition and cause of conditions, it varies on different planes of existence, it varies even for beings on one and the same plane. In other words, Time is not Absolute and cannot explain the primary relations of the Absolute. These primary relations work themselves out in detail by Time and seem to our mental and vital being to be determined by it; but that seeming does not carry us back to their sources and principles. "We make the distinction of conditioned and unconditioned," Sri Aurobindo points out, "and we imagine that the unconditioned became conditioned, the Infinite became finite at some date in Time, and may cease to be finite at some other date in Time, because it so appears to us in details, particulars or with regard to this or that system of things. But if we look at existence as a whole, we see that infinite and finite coexist and exist in and by each other... .The first source and the primary relations lie beyond our mental divisions of Time, in the divine timelessness or else in the indivisible or eternal Time of which our division and successions are only figures in a mental experience.... We see then that there are three terms of the one existence, transcendent, universal and individual, and that each of these always contains secretly

or overtly the two others. The Transcendent possesses itself always and controls the other two as the basis of its own temporal possibilities; that is the Divine, the eternal all-possessing God-consciousness, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, which informs, embraces, governs all existences." (Ibid., pp.384-6)

'Ibid., Vol. 18, pp. 386-7.

¹ One of the most important elements of knowledge relating to the objects and methods of yoga, particularly in connection with bondage and liberation of the soul and attainment of perfection, is connected with the distinction between Purusha and Prakriti. In the synthesis of yoga that we find in the Gita, this distinction is of pivotal importance, and although its roots are to be found in the Veda and the Upanishads, the clarity and complexity of this distinction that we find in the Gita is perhaps unparalleled. In the Veda, we have in the legend of Shunahshepa, a revelatory parable in terms of which the distinction between Purusha and Prakriti can be clearly derived. Shunahshepa is described as a victim to the sacrificial post, who was bound by three ropes or cords; the bondage of Shunahshepa is symbolic of the bondage of the human soul or individual Purusha; the three ropes represent, respectively, limited mind, inefficient life, and obscure physical mentality; these three ropes may also be regarded as the ropes of Prakriti with its threefold qualities of sattwa, rajas and tamas. It is significant that the method by which Shunahshepa attains his liberation from the bondage of three ropes consists of his concentration and prayer to Varuna, a cosmic power and being of the Supramental consciousness, who is described as one "who puts on his golden robe of light and whose scouts are all around" (RV,

In due course, it appears that another method also was employed; and in the Kena Upanishad, it is clearly mentioned that there are two methods. It is mentioned in that Upanishad (II. 1): "If thou thinkest that thou knowest it (Brahman) well, little indeed dost thou know the form of the Brahman. That of It which is thou, that of It which is in the gods, this thou hast to think out. I think It known." Elaborating upon these two

methods, we find in verses four and five the following:

"Now this is the indication of That, — as is this flash of the lightning upon us or as is this falling of the eyelid, so in that which is of the gods. Then in that which is of the Self, — as the motion of this mind seems to attain to That and by it afterwards the will in the thought continually remembers It." (Kena, IV.)

In other words, the Upanishadic yoga continues to employ the Vedic method of concentration on the cosmic powers of the supramental consciousness (or of the consciousness of the gods), but the other method is also added, viz., that of concentration on the self of the living and thinking creature, the human being. In fact, these two methods do not appear to be alternative methods, but both these methods are utilized in an integrated manner.

Sri Aurobindo, while explaining the first method, states as follows:

"The cosmic functionings through which the gods act, mind, life, speech, senses, body, must become aware of something beyond them which governs them, by which they are and move, by whose force they evolve, enlarge themselves and arrive at power and joy and capacity; to that they must turn from their ordinary operations;... What happens then is that this divine Unnameable reflects Himself openly in the gods. His light takes possession of the thinking mind, His power and joy of the life, His light and rapture of the emotional mind and the senses. Something of the supreme image of Brahman falls upon the world-nature and changes it into divine nature." (Ibid., Vol. 12, p. 221.)

Explaining further the landmarks of this process of realization, Sri Aurobindo states:

"All this is not done by a sudden miracle. It comes by flashes, revelations, sudden touches and glimpses; there is as if a leap of the lightning of revelation flaming out from those heavens for a moment and then returning into its secret source; as if the lifting of the eyelid of an inner vision and its falling again because the eye cannot look long and steadily on the utter light." (Ibid., Vol. 12, p. 221)

As Sri Aurobindo explains further, it is by repetition of these touches and visitings from the Beyond that one realizes in the cosmos itself and in all its multiplicity the truth of the One besides whom there is no other or second.

While explaining the other method, namely, the method of discovering the Supreme through concentration on the Self of the human being, Sri Aurobindo states as follows:

"This the self of man, since it is the essentiality of a mental being, will do through the mind. In the gods the transfiguration is effected by the Superconscient itself visiting their substance and opening their vision with its flashes until it has transformed them; but the mind is capable of another action which is only apparently movement of mind, but really the movement of the self towards its own reality. The mind seems to go to That, to attain to it; it is lifted out of itself into something beyond and although it falls back, still by the mind the will of knowledge in the mental thought continually and at last continuously remembers that into which it has entered. On this the Self through the mind seizes and repeatedly dwells and so doing it is finally caught up into it and at last able to dwell securely in that transcendence. It transcends the mind, it transcends its own mental individualisation of the being, that which it now knows as itself; it ascends and takes foundation in the Self of all and in the status of self-joyous infinity which is the supreme manifestation of the Self. This is the transcendent immortality, this is the spiritual existence which the Upanishads declare to be the goal of man and by which we pass out of the mortal state into the heaven of the Spirit." (Ibid, p. 224)

When we come to the Gita, it will be found that there is the acceptance and incorporation of the distinction that is to be found in the parable of the two birds, both clinging to the same tree, one eating the fruit of the tree and the other watching but indifferent. This parable is to be found in the Rig Veda itself, (1.164.20), and it is repeated in the Mundaka Upanishad, (III. 1.1,2,3) and also in Shwetashwatara Upanishad (IV.5, 6,7,10). Since this parable forms the basis of the Gita's insistence and development of the distinction between Purusha and Prakriti, it would be extremely useful to study the relevant verses in their original formulation. These verses are as follows, which are taken from the Mundaka Upanishad:

'Two birds, beautiful of wing, close companions, cling to one common tree: of the two one eats the sweet fruit of the tree, the other eats not but watches his fellow.

"The soul is the bird that sits immersed on the one common tree; but

because he is not lord he is bewildered and has sorrow. But when he sees that other who is the Lord and beloved, he knows that all is His greatness and his sorrow passes away from him.

"When, a seer, he sees the Golden-hued, the maker, the Lord, the Spirit who is the source of Brahman, then he becomes the knower and shakes from his wings sin and virtue; pure of all stain he reaches the supreme identity." (III. L 1.-2. 3)

In the history of Indian yoga, there was an interval between the period when the principal Upanishads developed and the period to which the episode of the Gita took place. During that interval, one of the principal schools of philosophy which developed was a system of the Sankhyan philosophy. The Sankhyan philosophy seems evidently to have been derived from the Vedic and Upanishadic concepts of Purusha, Aditi, Mahat and several psychological principles such as those of buddhi, manas, and others. But while the Vedic and Upanishadic concept of Purusha is integral in the sense that it included or cohered with the concepts of Brahman and Ishwara, the Sankhyan concept of Purusha is trenchant and even exclusive. Similarly, while the concept of the Vedic and Upanishadic Aditi is integral in the sense that it included and cohered very well with the concepts of Shakti, Prakriti and Maya, the concept of Sankhyan Prakriti is equally trenchant and exclusive. Again, while the Vedic and Upanishadic concepts of the ultimate reality were synthetic and pointed to underlying oneness of the principles of Being and Becoming, the Sankhyan position is dualistic and it explains existence not by one, but by two original principles whose inter-relation is the cause of the universe, — Purusha, the inactive, Prakriti, the active. Whereas the Vedic and Upanishadic concept of Purusha had three dimensions, transcendental, universal, and individual, the Sankhyan Purusha was purely individual, and whereas the Vedic and Upanishadic concept of Purusha was both inactive and active and even beyond, the Sankhyan Purusha who was conceived as a pure conscious Being is immobile, immutable and self-luminous. Prakriti in the Sankhya is not conscious, whereas Aditi, Maya, Prakriti, Shakti are in the Veda and the Upanishads conscious. In the Sankhya, while Prakriti is the Unconscious Energy and its processes, Purusha, the Conscious one, does nothing, but it reflects the action of Energy and its processes; Prakriti is mechanical, but by being reflected in Purusha, it assumes an appearance of consciousness in its activities, and thus there are created

those phenomena of creation, conservation, dissolution, birth and life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness, action and inaction, happiness and suffering. These phenomena are attributed by Purusha, under the influence of Prakriti, to itself although they belong not at all to itself but to the action or movement of Prakriti alone.

Prakriti, according to the Sankhya, is constituted of three Gunas or essential modes of energy. These three gunas are, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas. Sattwa is the seed of intelligence, and it conserves the workings of energy; Rajas is the seed of force and action; and it creates the workings of energy; Tamas is the seed of inertia and non-intelligence, it is the denial of Sattwa and Rajas and dissolves what they create and conserve. When these three powers of the energy of Prakriti are in a state of equilibrium, all is in rest, there is no movement, action or creation and there is, therefore, nothing to be reflected in the immutable luminous being of the conscious Purusha. But when the equilibrium is disturbed, then the three gunas fall into a state of inequality in which they strike with and act upon each other and the whole inextricable business of ceaseless creation, conservation and dissolution begins, unrolling the phenomena of the cosmos. This continues so long as the Purusha consents to reflect the disturbance which obscures his eternal nature and attributes to himself the nature of Prakriti; but when the Purusha withdraws his consent, the gunas fall into equilibrium and the Purusha returns to his eternal, unchanging immobility; Purusha attains to his liberation from phenomena. This reflection and his giving or withdrawal of consent seems to be the only Powers of Purusha; these powers are attributed to the Purusha by the Sankhya rather inconsistently, because the Sankhyan Purusha is in its nature entirely immobile. The Purusha is, however, conceived in the Sankhya as a witness of Prakriti or Nature by virtue of reflection and the giver of the sanction, sāksī and anumantā. According to the Sankhya, Purusha and Prakriti co-exist, and they are the dual cause of the universe, a passive Consciousness and an active Energy.

Indeed, there are certainly plenty of things in the world, which the Sankhya does not explain at all or does not explain satisfactorily; but it has been said that the Sankhyan metaphysical position presents an adequate framework for the phenomena of the bondage of Purusha to Prakriti and of the liberation of the Purusha from Prakriti. The Purusha in the Sankhya is individual, and there is not one Purusha but many

individual Purushas, considering the fact that liberation of Purusha from Prakriti is an individual phenomenon, and this would not happen if there were ultimately only one Purusha. The Sankhya is obliged to concede plurality of Purushas because it is noticed that only a few beings among innumerable millions attain to liberation or move towards it; the rest are in no way affected, nor is cosmic Nature in a play with them inconvenienced when an individual realizes his liberation from Prakriti.

The entire background of the Vedic and Upanishadic experience as also the Sankhyan account of the liberation of the individual Purusha from Prakriti, need to be clearly grasped, if we are to understand the richness of the yogic experience that is described in the Gita. The Gita restates the Vedic and Upanishadic concepts of the ultimate integral reality and while it admits the Sankhyan position in several respects, it modifies it in several important aspects. The gospel of Karma yoga, as laid down in the Gita, would be inadmissible within the limited premises of the Sankhyan metaphysics and the Sankhyan account of the bondage and liberation. If Purusha is in its very nature immobile, the only way by which that immobility would be logically realized would be by way of renunciation of all mobility and action. If all mobility and action belongs to Prakriti or energy, which is fundamentally unconscious, no mobility of action can be consistent with the status of consciousness or knowledge. Similarly, the capital importance that is laid down in the Gita for the path of Bhakti or Divine Love can have no place, if each individual Purusha is independent of all the other Purushas or any Supreme Purusha to whom divine love can be offered and continued to be offered in the state of liberation. The Gita, on the other hand, admits the reality of the individual but it declares its utter dependence on the supreme Purusha and its inalienable unity with all the Purushas or individuals. The Gita's integral yogic experience is therefore articulated in a larger framework.

The first important new element that we find in the Gita is in the conception of Purusha itself. According to the Sankhya, Prakriti conducts her activities for the pleasure of Purusha; but this is basically inconsistent with the Sankhyan position that Prakriti is unconscious and therefore even if it is active, it cannot be for any teleological reason; again, Purusha is entirely immobile and at the most a silent witness; it cannot therefore have any will, and that, too, any will towards pleasure; Prakriti could not therefore be expected to perform her activities for the pleasure of Purusha. The Gita, however, admits the contention that Prakriti does

carry out the will of the Purusha, and therefore it can genuinely be said that the activities of Prakriti depend entirely on the will of the Purusha and for the fulfilment or pleasure of the Purusha. But then the Gita's view of Purusha and Prakriti is quite different from that found in the Sankhya. The Gita admits that wherever there is the movement of Prakriti, there is always behind it the will of the Purusha; in the highest yogic experience which is described in the Gita, this relationship between Prakriti and Purusha is affirmed, but not only between the Prakriti and the individual Purusha, but more fundamentally between, — and here the new elements of the Gita are clearly indicated,—Purushottama and Para Prakriti, which are not two independent principles but which constitute a complex unity of oneness. This implies a radical departure from the Sankhyan metaphysical position and its yogic experience. In the Sankhyan analysis, Purusha and Prakriti in their dualism are the cause of the cosmos; but in the integral philosophy and yoga of the Gita, Purusha or rather Purushottama by His Para Prakriti is the cause of the cosmos.

The Gita affirms the one self immutable, immobile, and eternally free. But these epithets, — immutability, immobility and eternal freedom — are not directly applicable to the individual Purusha but to that status of Purusha which is higher than all that is mutable and mobile and higher than any individual mobility, whether in its eternal freedom or in its temporary bondage. That immutable immobile and eternally free status of Purusha is also referred to in the Gita (which follows the Upanishads), as the Brahman, the reality in its essence which is capable of extension or manifestation and by which all the cosmic manifestation is extended. As in the Upanishad, so in the Gita, the immutable, immobile and eternally free Purusha or Brahman (akśara), is further shown to be a status beyond which there is still a higher status which is realizable and realized, aksarāt paratah parah (Mundaka Up. II. 1.2). In other words, the Gita affirms the highest status of Purusha, which is higher than the immobile, which is itself higher than the mobile. That status is named Purushottama. It is the Purushottama, who even while retaining eternal immobility, has the capacity of willing and thus originating the manifestation of his conscious force of which all the cosmic manifestations are various activities. That conscious force is given by the Gita a new name, Para Prakriti, since it is higher and distinguishable from the Prakriti which has been described in the Sankhya. The Gita, while describing and accepting the Sankhyan Prakriti, describes it as

astadha Prakriti or Apara Prakriti (lower nature), since the Sankhyan principle of Prakriti has eight elements, earth, water, fire, air, ether, intellect, mind and ego-sense (VII.4), and because that Prakriti is unconscious and riddled with conflicts of its three gunas and is thus quite lower than the original Prakriti which is the direct manifestation of the divine consciousness. The ultimate reality is, according to the Gita, the Purusha, that is uttama, the highest, and can be designated as Purushottama because he is the originator by his will of the energy and movement and can live and dwell in that field of energy where that energy works out His Will. Purushottama can also be described as parabrahman, because its essence is inextinguishable and because even when that essence is extended in mobility, its immobility remains unalterable; or that uttama purusa can be described as Parabrahman, because he is forever the lord over all that moves in the cosmos and lord also of the unalterable immobility that still supports equally and impartially and impersonally all that moves in the universe. That ultimate reality has been regarded in the Gita as the one source, without the second, of the plurality of individuals, each of which is a portion of that Supreme Being and which is put forth in manifestation as constituted by the supreme power of the supreme reality, Para Prakriti of Purushottama. As the Gita points out in VII.5, Para Prakriti is Jīvabhūtā, higher nature of which the individual jivas are individual becomings. In this light, each jiva can be described as individual Purusha, but, unlike Sankhyan Purusha, he is an eternal portion of the Purushottama (XV.7).

The distinction between Purusha and Prakriti is of immense importance for understanding varieties of spiritual experiences which take place in the individual when he rises from Ignorance and enters into the realms of Knowledge. Our normal experience of Purusha is that of the Purusha-consciousness in the individual soul. According to the Gita, each of us is the individual, and its origin is in the Purushottama and Para Prakriti. At that point of origin, the individual soul or jivātman is that of the individual Purusha fully aware of his being an eternal portion of the Purushottama but manifested through the supramental power of manifestation of the Purushottama. The Purusha Consciousness, in the individual, experiences in his intimate play with Para Prakriti constant unity, even while there is varying play of diversity. In our lower experience of human consciousness, the individual soul is found in the complex formation of body, life and mind. The body, life and mind are formations of material energy of Prakriti, vital energy of Prakriti and

mental energy of Prakriti; corresponding to these three levels of Prakriti, there are three poises of the Purusha consciousness of the individual. The nature of the Purusha consciousness is that of the originator, witness, support and Lord, enjoyer of the forms and works of Prakriti, but at different levels of the working of Prakriti, Purusha has the consciousness of the giver of the consent to the movement of Prakriti and also of assuming the forms of Prakriti. If the individual has accepted to plunge into ignorance, the Purusha in the individual consents to the play of the ignorance and assumes the forms of ignorance, — physical, vital, mental, — which are presented to it by the Ignorant Prakriti. Hence, the individual in the Ignorance has three poises of the Purusha corresponding to three currents of the formations of Prakriti. In the physical formation of Prakriti, the individual takes the poise of the physical Purusha (annamaya purusa), in the vital formation of Prakriti, the individual takes the poise of the vital Purusha (prānamaya purusa), and in the mental formation of Prakriti in the human complex, the individual takes the poise of the mental Purusha (manomaya purusa). But these assumptions of the Purusha corresponding to gradual formations of forms of Prakriti have behind them the consent of the Purusha, and the capital point of importance is that the Purusha has the freedom to withdraw the consent as and when Purusha finds it useful or necessary to withdraw the consent. It can be said that the entire possibility of the yogic endeavour rests upon the freedom of the Purusha to withdraw its consent to remain subjected to lower forms of Apara Prakriti or lower nature of ignorance. If Purusha decides to withdraw its consent, Prakriti, too, manifests activities by which the withdrawal of the Purusha from its subjection to Prakriti is facilitated; if the Purusha decides to rise on the higher rungs of Apara Prakriti and of higher Prakriti or Para Prakriti, then the Prakriti also facilitates the higher ascent of Purusha to higher rungs of Para Prakriti; and even the Para Prakriti, too, offers increasing aid to the Purusha to climb upwards. That is the reason why the Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of higher poises of Purusha of the individual, namely, the poise of vijnānamaya Purusha (corresponding to supramental formations of Para Prakriti) and anandamaya Purusha (corresponding to the highest bliss forms of Para Prakriti).

In the Bhagavad Gita, the entire fund of spiritual knowledge of the Veda and Upanishad is present. The Bhagavad Gita admits the overwhelming power of the Prakriti and its determinations of ignorance over the Purusha which has consented to the subjection of Prakriti; it

even pronounces an extreme statement in regard to the power of the hold of Prakriti, "All things follow the determinations of Prakriti, of what avail is the movement of self-control?" (III.33). It, nonetheless, lays down its basic principle of yoga in the statement, "It is by the self that the self should be up-raised over the self." (VI.5) According to the Gita, the overwhelming subjection to Prakriti is a result of Purusha's consent to be subjected to Prakriti, but gradually, it can withdraw that consent and rise upward, even liberate himself from subjection to Prakriti.

While explaining the relationship between Purusha and Prakriti, Sri Aurobindo points out:

"Nature acts for the Purusha and by its sanction, for its will and pleasure; the Conscious Being imparts its consciousness to the Energy we call Nature, receives in that consciousness her workings as in a mirror, accepts the forms which she, the executive cosmic Force, creates and imposes on it, gives or withdraws its sanction from her movements. The experience of Purusha-Prakriti, the Spirit or Conscious Being in its relations to Nature, is of immense pragmatic importance; for on these relations the whole play of the consciousness depends in the embodied being. If the Purusha in us is passive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a constant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental, vital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its formation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance. If the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul's freedom; for it becomes detached, and it is possible then to know Nature and her processes and in all independence, since we are no longer involved in her works, to accept or not to accept, to make the sanction no longer automatic but free and effective; we can choose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from her works and withdraw easily into the Self's spiritual silence, or we can reject her present formations and rise to a spiritual level of existence and from there re-create our existence. The Purusha can cease to be subject, anīiśa, and become lord of its nature, īśvara." (SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, pp. 348-9.)

⁵¹RV. 1.72.9.

⁵² Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 10, pp. 191-2.

"Mother's Agenda, Institut de Recherches Evolutives (I.R.E.), Paris, 1981, Vol. 2, pp. 375-7.

⁵⁴Ibid., pp. 382-3.

⁵⁵ Vide, Mundaka Upanishad, 1.2.6,10,11,12.

"Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads, SABCL, Pondicherry, 1971, Vol.12, pp. 231-2.

⁵⁷ It would be useful to state that there have been in the history of thought and spiritual experience, several major descriptions of the supramental vision of the ultimate reality, and in regard to these descriptions, the same perplexity, bewilderment and some kind of unintelligibility can be found. From among many statements regarding the ultimate reality, we may take the following from the Rig Veda, which in the very statement, acknowledges its unintelligibility as far as the intellectual mentality is concerned. In 1.170.1, in the colloquy of Indra and Agastya, Indra describes the supramental supreme reality, one without the second, the absolute eternal, as follows:

"It is not now, nor is It tomorrow; who knoweth That which is Supreme and Wonderful? It has motion and action in the consciousness of another, but when It is approached by the thought, It vanishes."

Or let us take the following from the Isha Upanishad, which is also the last part of the Yajur Veda:

"One unmoving that is swifter than Mind, That the Gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front. That, standing, passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of Life establishes the Waters. That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this." (4, 5)

Or let us take the following from the Mundaka Upanishad:

"That the invisible, That the unseizable, without connections, without hue, without eye or ear, that which is without hands or feet, eternal, pervading, which is in all things and impalpable, that which is Imperishable, that which is the womb of creatures, sages behold everywhere. As the spider puts out and gathers in, as herbs spring up upon the earth, as hair of head and body grow from a living man, so here all is born from the Immutable...

He, the divine, the formless Spirit, even He is the outward and the inward and he the Unborn; He is beyond life, beyond mind, luminous, Supreme

beyond the immutable." (1.1.6, 7; II. 1.2)

The description of the supreme knowledge, which contains the supreme secret as declared in the Bhagavad Gita, is as follows:

"This entire world is pervaded by Me (the Supreme Reality) in My unmanifest form. All beings abide in Me, but I do not abide in them. And yet these beings do not exist in Me; behold My divine mystery. Although My spirit is a source of all beings and sustainer of the beings, yet I do not abide in them. As the mighty wind moving everywhere abides always in the sky, in the same way you have to realize that all created beings abide in Me." (IX. 4, 5, 6.)

Or, we may take the following statement from the Bhagavad Gita where the supreme reality is described as follows:

"There are two Purushas in this world: kshara, the perishable, and akshara, the imperishable. All these existences of the world are called kshara, and kutastha (the unperturbed) is called Akshara. The Highest Purusha is different from these two (Kshara and Akshara). He is called the Supreme Self, who though immutable, permeates the three worlds, controls and sustains them." (XV. 16, 17.)

These descriptions of the supreme reality show us that that Reality is supra-intellectual, that it is mysterious and wonderful, and although One and Simple, it is complex. It is true that these descriptions contain apparent self-contradictions, and we find them difficult to grasp intellectually. But the difficulty, when examined more closely, may ultimately be found to be verbal and conceptual rather than real. (For the solution of this difficulty, see Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, SABCL, 1971, Vol. 18, pp. 322-87).

⁵⁸Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, SABCL, 1971, Vol.13, p. 275.

⁵⁹Vide, BG.,VII.4.

⁶⁰Ibid., VII.5 and XV.7.

⁶¹Vide, Ibid., chapters. XIV to XVIII.

⁶²Ibid., XIV. 19. "Ibid., XIV.2.

⁶⁴Ibid., XVIII.66.

⁶⁵Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, 1971, Vol.20, p. 87.

⁶⁶Ibid.

⁶⁷Ibid., Essays on the Gita, Vol. 13, p.452.

⁶⁸Vide, Ibid., The Synthesis of Yoga, Vol.21, pp. 647-63. ⁶⁹Ibid., pp. 662-3.

⁷⁰Ibid., pp. 669-70.

71Ibid., Vol. 20, p.44.

Kireet Joshi (b. 1931) studied philosophy and law at the Bombay University. He was selected for the I.A.S. in 1955 but in 1956, he resigned in order to devote himself at Pondicherry to the study and practice of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. He taught Philosophy and Psychology at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Pondicherry and participated in numerous educational experiments under the direct guidance of The Mother.

In 1976, the Government of India invited him to be Education Advisor in the Ministry of Education. In 1983, he was appointed Special Secretary to the Government of India, and he held the post until 1988. He was Member-Secretary of Indian Council of Philosophical Research from 1981 to 1990. He was also Member-Secretary of Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan from 1987 to 1993. He was the Vice-Chairman of the UNESCO Institute of Education, Hamburg, from 1987 to 1989.

From 1999 to 2004, he was the Chairman of Auroville Foundation. From 2000 to 2006, he was Chairman of Indian Council of Philosophical Research. From 2006 to 2008, he was Editorial Fellow of the Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture (PHISPC).

Currently, he is Education Advisor to the Chief Minister of Gujarat,

Other Titles in the Series

The New Synthesis of Yoga - An Introduction

Varieties of Yogic Experience and Integral Realisation

Significance of Indian Yoga - An Overview

A Pilgrim's Quest for the Highest and the Best

Synthesis of Yoga in the Veda

Synthesis of Yoga in the Upanishads

The Gita and Its Synthesis of Yoga

Integral Yoga: Major Aims, Processes, Methods and Results

Integral Yoga of Transformation:

Psychic, Spiritual and Supramental

Integral Yoga and Evolutionary Mutation

Integral Yoga, Evolution and the Next Species

Also by Kireet Joshi

Education for Character Development

Education for Tomorrow

Education at Crossroads

A National Agenda for Education

Sri Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

Landmarks of Hinduism

The Veda and Indian Culture

Glimpses of Vedic Literature

The Portals of Vedic Knowledge

Bhagavadgita and Contemporary Crisis

Philosophy and Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and Other Essays

A Philosophy of the Role of the Contemporary Teacher

A Philosophy of Evolution for the Contemporary Man

A Philosophy of Education for the Contemporary Youth

Edited by Kireet Joshi

The Aim of Life

The Good Teacher and the Good Pupil

Mystery and Excellence of Human Body

Gods and the World Crucifixion

Uniting Men - Jean Monnet

Joan of Arc

Nala and Damayanti

Alexander the Great Siege of Troy

Catherine the Great

Parvati's Tapasya

Sri Krishna in Vrindavan

Socrates

Nachiketas

Sri Rama

Compiled by Kireet Joshi

On Materialism

Towards Universal Fraternity

Let us Dwell on Human Unity