Supermind in Integral Yoga - Problem of Ignorance Bondage, Liberation and Perfection - Part Five

PART FIVE

Discovery of the Psychic Entity

But even deeper than the subliminal, there is in us an inmost being, which Sri Aurobindo calls psychic entity or soul and which the Katha Upanishad describes as "the Purusha that is no larger than the thumb of a man and who is seated in the midst of our self (angustamātrah puruso madhye atmani tistati)?⁵ The psychic entity supports the submental, the subconscious, the conscious, and the subliminal. The discovery of the psychic entity is of capital importance in our journey of self-knowledge. It is the source of true individuality, entirely distinct from the ego-sense, and it is that entity which represents in our evolutionary movement the individual Divine which is known in the Indian system of yoga as Jivatman, and which, as Sri Aurobindo has explained, is the Supreme Himself in His individuation which takes place in the second poise of the supermind. It is that Jivatman which has been described in Katha Upanishad as the eater of sweetness, and about which the following has been stated in that Upanishad:

"He that has known from the very close this Eater of sweetness, the Jiva, the self within that is lord of what was and what shall be, shrinks not thereafter from aught nor abhors any. This is That thou seekest".³⁶

Again, it is the Jivatman that has been described in the Gita as the eternal portion of the Supreme, mamaivāmśo jiva-loke jīvabhūtāh sanatanah,³¹ and which is also described

as parāprakrtir jīvabhūtā, the higher supramental Nature which manifests the Jiva.³⁸

As Sri Aurobindo points out, it is the individual being of ours by which ignorance is possible to self-conscious mind, but it is also that by which liberation into the spiritual being is possible and the enjoyment of divine immortality.³⁹ It is the individual being, represented by the psychic entity⁴⁰ that, impelled by the Supreme Will, plunges into the inconscient, and leads the individual evolution, which also contributes to general or universal evolution; it is that which assumes in its Purusha consciousness the various formations that evolve from the inconscient nature in its evolutionary process; it is the individual being who in the human consciousness is found to have assumed in its Purusha consciousness various beings corresponding to the physical, the vital, the mental and the psychic; it is that which is capable of developing and formulating, by overcoming the Ignorance, the supramental being and even the bliss being. It is these states of the Purusha which are described in the Taittiriya Upanishad as annamaya purusa, the physical being, prānamaya purusa, the vital being, manomaya purusa, the mental being, vijanānamaya purusa, the supramental being, and ānandamaya purusa, the bliss being. It is the individual being that accepts the identification, by means of exclusive concentration of consciousness, with the physical, vital and mental consciousness as also with the egoistic consciousness. The fall of the individual being in inconscience and its raising up the evolutionary forms of matter, life and mind is seen, when the higher knowledge arrives eventually, to be intentional. The individual slowly individualizes the forms that are evolved from the Inconscient by the process of evolution, and the intention is to manifest higher and higher forms of consciousness, including the

supramental and still beyond, and to bring about the embodiment of those higher levels of consciousness into fully individualized mind, life and body. It is with this purpose that the individual, who is identified by exclusive concentration of consciousness with the ascending forms produced by the evolutionary movement that slowly seeks to find its heaven of joy and light even in the oppositions offered by the terms of embodied material existence; and it accepts the process of struggle in order to discover its true self and nature and develop even in the material body a temple of the Divinity. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"That purpose for which all this exclusive concentration we call the Ignorance is necessary, is to trace the cycle of self-oblivion and self-discovery for the joy of which the Ignorance is assumed in Nature by the secret spirit. It is not that all cosmic manifestation would otherwise become impossible; but it would be a quite different manifestation from the one in which we live; ... Not to return as speedily as may be to heavens where perfect light and joy are eternal or to the supracosmic bliss is the object of this cosmic cycle, nor merely to repeat a purposeless round in a long unsatisfactory groove of ignorance seeking for knowledge and never finding it perfectly, — in that case the ignorance would be either an inexplicable blunder of the All-conscient or a painful and purposeless Necessity equally inexplicable, — but to realise the Ananda of the Self in other conditions than the supracosmic, in cosmic being, and to find its heaven of joy and light even in the oppositions offered by the terms of an embodied material existence, by struggle therefore towards the joy of self-discovery, would seem to be the true object of the birth of the soul in the human body and of the labour of the human race in the series of its cycles. The

Ignorance is a necessary, though quite subordinate term which the universal Knowledge has imposed on itself that that movement might be possible, — not a blunder and a fall, but a purposeful descent, not a curse, but a divine opportunity. To find and embody the All-Delight in an intense summary of its manifoldness, to achieve a possibility of the infinite Existence which could not be achieved in other conditions, to create out of Matter a temple of the Divinity would seem to be the task imposed on the spirit born into the material universe."⁴¹

In the human consciousness, the individual soul has risen up to mental level; and since this consciousness is embodied in physical, vital and mental complex, it (the soul) is identified through its Purusha consciousness with the body, with the vital consciousness and power, and the mental consciousness and power as also with the fluctuating egoistic consciousness by process of various degrees of exclusive concentration of consciousness; but this concentration is not involutionary but evolutionary, and therefore, in this concentration, there is also a thrust towards knowledge and thrust towards the removal of the veil of Ignorance, — the veil that is created and sustained by exclusive concentration of consciousness. In order that that exclusive concentration of consciousness can be removed, the conscious Force being in us uses the same power of exclusive concentration, but in a reverse direction, and in a growing manner of integrality. And that is the essential process of integral yoga. There is, first, the movement of quieting the frontal movement of Prakriti in the individual consciousness, and in this movement, there is an exclusive concentration increasingly on the concealed inner being, on the Self or on the true inmost psychic being, Purusha, so that the same may be

disclosed. But while this is being done, the movement need not remain in this opposite exclusiveness; there is, therefore, the movement towards the resumption of integral consciousness or a global consciousness; this movement can then embrace manifestation with a larger consciousness free from the previous limitations. It is on these movements, that the integral yoga and its methods have been built.

Reality of the Individual: Problem of Ignorance, Bondage and Liberation

It will be seen that in this view of the Ignorance, multiplicity is not the creation of the Ignorance, since the Many and the All are inherent in the Supreme Oneness, and they manifest through the dynamic power of the Supreme and they are all comprehended in the manifestation of the supramental consciousness. Again, in this view of the Ignorance, multiplicity and infinity and eternity of space and time are not unaccounted and mysteriously projected on the Spaceless and Timeless Reality.

In the Advaitic theory of Maya, the individual soul is one with the Supreme, its sense of separateness ignorance, escape from the sense of separateness and identity with the Supreme its salvation; but if this account corresponds to the truth of the Reality, a question can be asked as to who profits by the escape from the sense of separateness. It cannot be that the Supreme Self profits from it, for it is supposed to be always and inalienably free, still, silent and pure. Nor does the world profit, since according to this view, that remains constantly in the bondage and is not freed by the escape of any individual soul from the universal Illusion. If it is the individual soul that profits from the escape, then there must be some distinctive reality of the individual soul. But

according to the Advaitic Mayavada, the individual soul is an illusion and non-existent except in the inescapable mystery of a cosmic power or Maya, which is also ultimately non-existent. In this view, therefore, we are led to conclude that there are illusory non-existent souls who are suffering from illusory non-existent bondage in an illusory nonexistent and inexplicable world, and the supreme good that these non-existent souls have to pursue is to escape from their bondage to Ignorance, which illusorily afflicts the individual souls, which really do not exist in reality. It is even declared as a last word of the Knowledge, "There is none bound, none freed, none seeking to be free."

It is true that the separative consciousness by means of which the individual conceives of its individuality as a separate fact in the totality or as divided from the oneness of the supreme reality is an act of the ignorance. The individual making itself the center of its own universe instead of knowing itself as one concentration of the universal is also an act of the Ignorance. It is also true that the Ignorance is the parent of the sense of separation and division in the individual consciousness; but it is important to make a distinction between separateness or division, on the one hand, and differentiation, on the other. It may be said that the differentiation is not by itself a result of the operation of the Ignorance. It is the sense of separateness or division which is caused by the process of the ignorance. The supreme reality is One without the second, but what is meant by the One is not a mathematical integer, which is more than zero and less than two. As Sri Aurobindo points out, oneness is complex-simple and it is the supreme object of knowledge because when that oneness is known, all the differentiations that constitute the complexity of the One are also known as

differentiations proceeding from the One. Of that supreme object of knowledge, Sri Aurobindo states:

"It is the cosmic and the supracosmic spirit, the supreme Lord, the supreme Self, the supreme Purusha and supreme Shakti, the Ever Unborn who is endlessly born, the Infinite who is innumerably finite, the multitudinous One, the complex Simple, the many-sided Single, the Word of the Silence Ineffable, the impersonal omnipresent Person, the Mystery, translucent in highest consciousness to its own spirit, but to a lesser consciousness veiled in its own exceeding light and impenetrable forever."⁴²

In the supramental vision of the supreme reality, differentiations of names and forms, differentiations among individuals and differentiations between the individual and the universal and the transcendental do not contradict or abridge the overarching unity and the transcendental oneness. But it is true that there is, at a certain stage, in the functioning of the supramental consciousness and action in its third poise, particularly in its acutest operation, — the operation of the consciousness that can properly be called Mind (since Mind is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the final operation of the Supermind) — the overpowering predominance of differentiations, and, if it is so willed, there can intervene at that stage the operation of exclusive concentration of consciousness on diversity which can build a veil between the underlying sense of unity and the overpowering sense of diversity. It is that veil which is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the veil of ignorance; it is by the operation of ignorance that the sense of differentiations can be turned into a sense of divisions, although in actuality real divisions can never occur. But that sense of division, if it continues to operate, the error of division and separateness

can culminate in the production of the inconscience, and that inconscience, evolving under the evolutionary force working from within itself and also assisted by all that is behind the involutionary movement, can culminate, as it has, into human consciousness which is the field of evolutionary Ignorance groping towards the recovery of all that is involved in it or recovering all the Knowledge which is at work within, behind and above it. In the light of this conception, ignorance cannot be regarded as the creator of differentiations but only as a creator of the sense of separateness and the sense of division. Ignorance is the parent of the error and illusion of separateness and division, since in reality, nothing can be separated and divided from the original Oneness; but Ignorance is not the parent of differentiations themselves, since they are inherent in the original oneness, and the supramental consciousness is creative of the rich play of unity and differentiations, as can be seen in Sri Aurobindo's description of the triple status of the supermind to which we have referred earlier.

The Ignorance commences its involutionary process by downward looking Mind (at the stage of the final operation of the third poise of the Supermind) with exclusive concentration of consciousness on diversity while ignoring the unity, which is always present behind it; this exclusive concentration of consciousness creates a wall or a veil between the supramental consciousness and the mental consciousness. This movement culminates, ultimately, in the state of inconscience; from that state, there is an upward evolutionary process. This evolutionary process develops the human consciousness; it is here that we find the individual soul identified with a particular temporal and spatial action which is only a part of its own total being. This ignorance is

farther deepened by the self-identification with the body. In our depths, our being knows itself as more than the body and is capable of a less materialized action. But, externally, the surface consciousness can see things only as they present themselves to it from outside or else as they rise up to its view from its separate temporal and spatial consciousness; it is not conscious of its other selves except by the outward indications they give of their existence. But there is in the human consciousness clearer reflective mentality by means of which one becomes capable of the recovery of the inner spirit. But even in the pure mentality, there is still the veil between the mental and supramental action. As Sri Aurobindo points out, "an image of the Truth gets through, not the Truth itself."⁴³

In the human consciousness, however, the veil of the Ignorance can be rent and the divided mind overpowered, and it is possible then for the mind to become silent and passive in order to have the action of the Real-Idea or of the Supermind. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"There we find a luminous mentality reflective, obedient and instrumental to the divine Real-Idea. There we perceive what the world really is; we know in every way ourselves in others and as others, others as ourselves and all as the universal and self-multiplied One. We lose the rigidly separate individual standpoint which is the source of all limitation and error. Still, we perceive also that all that the ignorance of Mind took for the truth was in fact truth but truth deflected, mistaken and falsely conceived. We still perceive the division, the individualising, the atomic creation, but we know them and ourselves for what they and we really are. And so we perceive that the Mind was really a subordinate action and instrumentation of the Truth-

Consciousness."⁴⁴

The conclusion at which we arrive is that the Ignorance is the Mind separated in knowledge from its source of knowledge, which gives a false rigidity in a mistaken appearance of a position. Hence, there is an element of error in all human knowledge, and as Sri Aurobindo states:

"Similarly our will, ignorant of the rest of the all-will, must fall into error of working and a greater or less degree of incapacity and impotence; the soul's self-delight and delight of things, ignoring the all-bliss and by defect of will and knowledge unable to master its world, must fall into incapacity of possessive delight and therefore into suffering. Self-ignorance is therefore the root of all the perversity of our existence, and that perversity stands fortified in the self-limitation, the egoism which is the form taken by that self-ignorance."⁴⁵

Sevenfold Ignorance

If this ignorance is analyzed fully, it will be found, as Sri Aurobindo has shown, that the evolving human ignorance is sevenfold. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, in a spatial and temporal universe, we see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a many-sided self-ignorance. We are ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence, — that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self; we take

the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becoming in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence,—that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-self, — that is the third, the egoistic ignorance. We are ignorant of our eternal becoming in Time; we take this little life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space, for our beginning, our middle and our end, — that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is superconscient, subconscient, intraconscient, circumconscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence, — that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming; we take the mind or life or body or any two of these or all three for our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to determine sovereignly by its emergence their operations, — that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoyment of our life in the world; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal, — that is the seventh, the practical ignorance."⁴⁶

Liberation of the Individual and Status of Integral Knowledge⁴⁷

We who are subject to this sevenfold ignorance are, in reality, true individuals. The true individual is, according to Sri Aurobindo, the eternal portion of the Supreme Reality, a conscious being who is for our valuation of existence a being of the Eternal in its power of individualizing self-experience; it is a concrete being who, on arriving at the liberation, enjoys immortality. In the state of that knowledge in which the individual enjoys immortality, the individual realizes himself in the world and the world in him, he realizes God in him and he in God, not meaning thereby that God depends for His existence on him (man), but that He manifests himself in that which He manifests within Himself; the individual finds himself existing in the Transcendent but he also finds that all the Transcendent is there concealed in the individual. The individual realizes himself one with God in his being and yet he can have relations with Him in his experience. The individual,—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 His cosmic being.⁴⁸

The true individual realizes what he truly is when the veil of ignorance is removed. That veil of ignorance, it is found, was assumed by him for a purpose, which he detects by an evolutionary process. The entire process of the recovery of the self-knowledge and unity with the universal and transcendental Reality and the eventual manifestation of the intended manifestation of the divine will in the physical life consists of the most difficult endeavour, and that process is the process of the integral yoga. This task culminates in

manifestation of the divine will in physical life, and in this task, the importance of the individual is critical. As Sri Aurobindo states:

"The human being is here on earth the highest power of ...the individual, for he alone can work out at its critical turning-point that movement of self-manifestation which appears to us as the involution and evolution of the divine consciousness between the two terms of the Ignorance and the Knowledge. The power of the individual to possess in his consciousness by self-knowledge his unity with the Transcendent and the universal, with the One Being and all beings and to live in that knowledge and transform his life by it, is that which makes the working out of the divine self-manifestation through the individual possible; and the arrival of the individual, — not in one but in all, — at the divine life is the sole conceivable object of the movement. The existence of the individual is not an error in some self of the Absolute which that self afterwards discovers; for it is impossible that the absolute self-awareness or anything that is one with it should be ignorant of its own truth and its own capacities and betrayed by that ignorance either into a false idea of itself which it has to correct or an impracticable venture which it has to renounce. Neither is the individual existence a subordinate circumstance in a divine play or Lila, a play which consists in a continual revolution through unending cycles of pleasure and suffering without any higher hope in the Lila itself or any issue from it except the occasional escape of a few from time to time out of their bondage to this ignorance. We might be compelled to hold that ruthless and disastrous view of God's workings if man had no power of self-transcendence or no power of transforming by self-knowledge the conditions of the play

intricacies of varieties of relationships in which one is entangled in one's commerce with the outer world.

At a farther stage, one is led to enquire into the questions as to whether sorrow and suffering, disabilities and death, dualities and incapacities can truly and effectively be removed altogether. The question, "What am I?", assumes then great prominence, and one is led to a quest of the most Ultimate or of Something in which all afflictions and incapacities can be extinguished permanently.

A special feature of Indian philosophy is that it measures its own relevance in terms of the answers it provides to existential questions relating to bondage and quest for liberation. And, while the Indian philosophical enquiry has its own supreme theoretical and logical heights, the ultimate test that it imposes upon itself is not merely that of logical consistency and comprehensiveness but also its ability to show the way to liberation from delusion and sorrow and even to total collective welfare by attainment of states and powers of perfection.

In general, the Indian yogic disciplines maintain that the state of bondage is marked by identification of the experiencing consciousness with the instruments and objects that constitute for the experiencing consciousness its world of experience.⁵⁰ Different systems of yoga use different terms for the experiencing consciousness and for the experienced world. According to one system, the experiencing consciousness is called Purusha and the experienced world is called Prakriti, and it is maintained that the identification of Purusha with Prakriti constitutes state of bondage; according to another system, the individual soul, which is called Jiva, when identified with the mind and other

instruments and objects of knowledge, is said to be in the state of bondage; according to a third system, the individual soul or Jiva is nothing but a temporary conglomeration of perceptions and images which by repetitive actions create an apparent sense of self or ego-sense which identifies itself with body, life and mind and with various objects or selective objects of experienced world, which, in turn, are also conglomerations of perceptions and impressions. There is yet another view according to which the individual soul, which is in some way dependent on supreme reality, and which, when instead of dwelling in that Reality, identifies itself with the instruments of experience and objects of the experienced world, gets into the state of bondage.

Among these and similar views, what is commonly emphasized is that there are two elements in the psychology of bondage. These are: desire and ego-sense. All systems of yoga are fundamentally different ways by which desire and ego-sense can be eliminated. Again, all yogic systems agree that the state of liberation is attained when desire and ego-sense are annihilated or extinguished.

All yogic systems consider the state of bondage to be the result of Ignorance, which causes the confusion between the real and unreal, super-imposition of the unreal on the real, or super-imposition of the not-self on the self, or perception of fleeting impressions or illusions which are extinguishable but are not yet extinguished. The question as to how ignorance can be removed has been answered differently by different systems of yoga, although they have also some common elements.

According to Raja yoga, ignorance can be eliminated by means of cessation of modifications of consciousness as a

result of disciplined pursuit of eight-fold path consisting of processes of purification, self-control and concentration leading up to Samadhi or yogic trance in which the mind is completely stilled. According to Jnana yoga, the intellect should be so trained that it can distinguish between the real and the unreal, and with the help of intellectual conviction of this distinction, one should follow up positive and negative lines of concentration, such that one dissociates oneself from identification with the unreal or not-self and arrives at identification with the Real or Self. According to Bhakti yoga, the individual needs to turn the entire complex of the emotional being in spirit of worship, adoration, service and love for the supreme Reality; and, by constant indwelling in the supreme Reality or rather in the supreme Person one gets dissociated from everything else with which one was earlier identified. According to Karma yoga, the discipline consists of a gradual elimination of desire and egoism, — which are normally intertwined strongly with action, — by means of a gradual process in which one dissociates oneself from fruits of action and later on from the sense of doership of action, and finally, one becomes a mere vehicle of action proceeding from the Supreme Reality. In the yogic system of Jainism, the discipline consists of dissociating Jiva from Matter by means of gradual or rapid exhaustion of action, karma, with the help of various practices that underline rigorous practice of truthfulness, non-violence, continence, non-covetousness and burning away of all attachments to possessions. In the yoga of Buddhism, the process of yoga consists of the eight-fold path, namely, of the practice of right beliefs, right aspirations, right speech, right conduct, right mode of livelihood, right effort, right mindedness and right rapture. There are also many other systems of yoga which

emphasize disciplines of body, or of life-force and mind or else they combine various systems of yoga in some kind of synthesis. There are, of course, claims and counterclaims, in regard to superiority of one system over the other, but, as stated above, they all agree that the state of liberation is impossible without the elimination of desire and ego-sense.

The state of the liberated soul or the state of liberation has been described variously. But there are two important characteristics of this state which are commonly to be found in all these descriptions. Firstly, the state of liberation is a state of recovery — recovery of a state which was always in a state of freedom. It is said that it is a state of Nirvana or of Purusha or Brahman which is forever free. Secondly, it is a state beyond the mind consciousness, which could be defined as consciousness that is discursive, successive, and centered on apprehensive as opposed to comprehensive point of view. If this state of liberation is that of consciousness or knowledge or bliss or all of them together, it is other than what it is at the mental level. It is fundamentally a state of stillness or peace that transcends understanding or of resignation or surrender, or of all of them together, and if there is any movement or dynamism or action, it is a movement of soul's relationship of unity and harmony of all things in transcendence or with transcendental and universal Reality or Being. In that state of freedom, the soul may merge into the infinite Being or choose to dwell in union with the Supreme Being, and in that case, at the fall of the body, all connections with Nature or Prakriti are cut off without any possibility of return. However, as long as the bodily life continues, the psychology of a liberated soul is so poised that the inner freedom from the bondage is not lost even when outer activities of Prakriti of the body, life and mind continue

by the momentum of the past. At the same time, even in the outer Prakriti, desire and egoism are annihilated, and the activities of the gunas, as understood in the terminology of Sankhya philosophy, are harmonized in such a way that the sattwa predominates and rajas and tamas are subordinated, and all the three gunas reflect or carry out in spite of their inherent limitations, something that reflects the state of the liberated soul.

Among the numerous experiences which have been described in respect of the state of liberation, there are three experiences which are frequently mentioned, and each one of them appears as an experience that excludes the other two.

The first of these experiences is that of the soul as Purusha in a state of silent witness that stands unaffected by the determinations which were earlier imposed upon it by the power and action of Prakriti. The second experience is that of an overwhelming awakening to Reality when the thought is stilled, when mind withdraws from its constructions and when one passes into a pure Self-hood void of all sense of individuality, empty of all cosmic contents. If the spiritualized mind then looks at the individual and the cosmos, they appear to it as an illusion, the scheme of names and figures and movements falsely imposed on the sole reality of the Self-Existent; or even the sense of Self becomes inadequate. Both, knowledge and ignorance, disappear into sheer consciousness and consciousness is plunged into a trance of pure superconscient existence or even existence ends by becoming too limiting a name for that which abides solely forever. There is only a timeless Eternal, a spaceless Infinite, the utterness of the Absolute, nameless peace and overwhelming single objectless ecstasy. The third experience is that of the omnipresent Divine Person, Lord of the real

Universe and the Lord of the supreme Shakti, of which the individual soul is a center without circumference or a portion or a child of the Supreme Divine Lord that lives by mutuality with all and in utter ecstasy of union with the Lord and His Shakti.

There is also, it is claimed, an experience in which all the above three experiences are transcended into something that can be described as a śūnya or a Nihil, which is also sometimes described as Permanent. Again, there is an affirmation of a supramental and integral experience in which all these experiences are held simultaneously and where the Supreme is realized, as in the Gita, as Purushottama in His absoluteness and Integrality, at once kshara and akshara Purusha, the static and dynamic Purusha. This experience answers the great pronouncement of the Upanishads where the Supreme is described at once as Brahman or Atman, Purusha and Ishwara.

Liberation and Perfection

In the Indian yogic tradition, there appears to be a distinction between liberation and perfection, although these two terms are often understood to be interchangeable. Nonetheless, when we study the Vedic concepts of liberation and immortality, the Gita's concept of sādharmya in connection with perfection of Karma yoga, as also the Tantrik view of siddhis or accomplishments, including those of mental, vital and physical being, we are obliged to bring out full value of the idea of perfection as distinguished from that of liberation.

The Vedic yoga may be looked upon as an earliest synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest

flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense of the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis is to be found in the experience of the Vedic Rishis, which was transcendental and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. This experience culminates in the ascent to the plane of Supermind or truth-consciousness, and the physical consciousness becomes so vast that the truth-consciousness can visit it. The Vedic Rishis have called that state the state of immortality. The Rishi Parashara speaks of the path which leads to immortality in the following words:

"They who entered into all things that bear right fruits formed a path towards the immortality; earth stood wide for them by the greatness and by the Great Ones, the mother Aditi with her sons came or, manifested herself for the upholding."⁵¹

Commenting on this, Sri Aurobindo states:

"That is to say, the physical being, visited by the greatness of the infinite planes above and by the power of the great godheads who reigned on those planes breaks its limits, opens out to the Light and is upheld in its new wideness by the infinite Consciousness, mother Aditi and her sons, the divine Powers of the supreme Deva. This is the Vedic immortality."⁵²

Upanishads also speak of immortality, and when we study these great books of profound masters of spiritual knowledge, we find that, starting from the crowning

experiences of liberation and perfection of the Vedic seers, they arrive at a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking.

The Gita is essentially a restatement of the ideas of liberation and perfection that we find in the Veda and the Upanishads, but which, as Sri Krishna points out in the fourth chapter, were lost. At the same time, the Gita starts with synthesis of yoga contained in the Veda and the Upanishads, and on that basis, builds another harmony of three great means and powers, love, knowledge and works, through which the soul of man can directly approach and cast itself into the eternal. And it opens up the doors by which the Spirit can take up the individual into the universal Power of higher supramental Nature, Para Prakriti. As a result, the Gita presents not only the ideal of sālokya mukti, liberation of the individual arriving at the same plane in which the supreme Lord dwells, and sāyujya mukti, the liberation by which the individual soul is united with the Supreme Lord or Infinite Existence, but also the ideal of sādharmya mukti, the liberation and perfection of the lower nature of life and mind by infusion into it of the divine nature, the Para Prakriti, — the divine Aditi of the Veda. The Tantrik yoga has also developed methods of far richer spiritual conquest that would enable the seeker to embrace the whole life in his divine scope as the cosmic Plane of the Divine. In other words, it grasps that idea of the divine perfectibility of man, which was possessed by the Vedic Rishis.