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

PART SIX

Review of the Gains of the Earlier Systems of Yoga

Against this background, there was a need to review the entire fund of knowledge pertaining to the nature of liberation and perfection as also to the Spirit, Supermind, Mind, Life and Matter. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, as a result of a vast research, the dimensions of which covered all the planes of existence and intricate secrets of psychology, occultism and spirituality, have provided new answers regarding the issue of the ideals of liberation and perfection. Some of the important points that emerged from this great research work, and which are relevant to our immediate purpose here can be summed up as follows:

Victory of the Vedic Rishis

In the history of Indian yoga, the richest treasure of knowledge can be found in the Veda, particularly in regard to the integral vision of the ultimate reality and in regard to the discovery of supermind, which was termed as rta at or Truth-Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had, on their own, discovered the supermind, and because of that discovery, they were able to decipher the Vedic symbolism and discover the golden knowledge of the supermind in various hymns of the Veda. The question was the method that was adopted by the Vedic Rishis and the extent to which the discovery of the supermind was developed and applied. According to Sri Aurobindo, the Vedic Rishis or their forefathers had individual attainment, and although they

followed the method of ascent to supermind, the maximum point which they reached was that of the attainment of widening of physical consciousness so that the body could become the vehicle of receiving the supermind. Sri Aurobindo also points out that the reception of the supermind resulted in the breaking of the limits of the physical being and its opening out to supramental light. It was this attainment of the wideness of the physical being which the Vedic Rishis termed as the attainment of the state of immortality. According to Sri Aurobindo, although this was a very high attainment, it was not enough for fulfilling what Sri Aurobindo discovered to be the intention of the Supramental Divine Will for the next step in the evolution on the earth. According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, what is aimed at by the evolutionary force in the human species is the accomplishment of fixing of the supramental consciousness in the physical being and not merely of attainment of the universalisation or vastness of the physical being. In this connection, the following statements of the Mother, in an answer to a question of a disciple (Satprem), are both pertinent and important:

Satprem: About the discovery of the supermind in the Veda and by Sri Aurobindo. There is something that I don't quite grasp.

The Mother: "Because in the Veda it's incomplete. ...

"According to what Sri Aurobindo saw and what I saw as well, the Rishis had the contact, the experience - how to put it? ... A kind of lived knowledge of the thing, coming like a promise, saying, 'THAT is what will be.' But it's not permanent. There's a big difference between their experience and the DESCENT - what Sri Aurobindo calls 'the descent

of the Supermind': something that comes and establishes itself. ...

...What the Rishis had was a sort of promise - an INDIVIDUAL experience."⁵³

Again, what the Mother told Satprem a few days later is also illuminating:

... "It is by rising to the summit of consciousness through a progressive ascent that one unites with the Supermind. But as soon as the union is achieved, one knows and one sees that the Supermind exists in the heart of the Inconscient as well.

When one is in that state, there is neither high nor low.

But GENERALLY, it is by REDESCENDING through the levels of the being with a supramentalized consciousness that one can accomplish the permanent transformation of physical nature.

(This can be experienced in all sorts of ways, but what WE want and what Sri Aurobindo spoke of is a change that will never be revoked, that will persist, that will be as durable as the present terrestrial conditions. ...'permanent.')

There is no proof that the Rishis used another method, although, to effect this transformation (if they ever did) they must necessarily have fought their way through the powers of inconscience and obscurity."

"Yes, the Rishis give an absolutely living description ... - as soon as you descend into the Subconscient: all these battles with the beings who conceal the Light and so on. I experienced these things continually at Tlemcen and again with Sri Aurobindo when we were doing the Work - it's raging quite merrily even now!

"As soon as you go down there, that's what happens -you have to fight against all that is unwilling to change, all that dominates the world and does not want to change."⁵⁴

The Vedic quest and attainment of immortality is not merely concerned with liberation but also with perfection, although the ideal of perfection envisaged by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother is quite new. The Vedic attainment where the physical being becomes widened or universalized on the visitation of the supermind as also the victorious battles of the Vedic Rishis with the opposing subconscient forces, — these achievements have remained an epical victory in the Indian tradition of yoga. This victory was recovered, but only rarely in such experiences and realizations which have been recorded in the Upanishads and in the Gita.

Attainment of the Upanishads

The spiritual substance of the Veda appears to have been captured in the Upanishads. The ancient psychological science and art of spiritual living that are to be found in the Veda as a body of inspired knowledge, but yet insufficiently equipped with intellectual and philosophical terms, are restated in a language that can be grasped more readily by philosophical intellectuality; and yet, the movement of life and the large breath of the soul that have been described in wide largeness, freedom, flexibility, fluidity, suppleness and subtlety have been absent in the later systems of philosophy. The Veda was at once a Book of Knowledge and a Book of Works; and while the great quest of Vedic Rishis aimed not only at liberation from our present bonds and littleness, but also at arriving at larger perfection, the later philosophies gradually narrowed down to become the means only of attaining liberation as the one supreme good.

The more ancient Upanishads kept close to the Vedic ideal of perfection and immortality, but the later Upanishads tended gradually towards a more restricted aim. It also came to be maintained that one could wander about the ranges of the supermind while living in the body or connected with the physical world, that connection with the body and the physical world need to be cast off in order to cross the gate of the supermind where one can realize the Immortal, the Spirit, the Self undecaying and imperishable. It is even pointed out that the seeker of the Brahman or of the highest Self arrives at world-distaste, since not by work done one reaches Him who is Uncreated.⁵⁵

Sri Aurobindo has discerned the increasing overemphasis in the later Upanishads on the goal of transcendence and liberation from the bondage of the body, life and mind as compared to the balance and harmony that marked the characteristic note of the earlier Upanishads where the Vedic aim of perfectibility was restated in its fullness. According to Sri Aurobindo, that over-emphasis on the salvation of the individual and the rejection of the cosmic and physical life, has been the cause of much of the gradual decline of Indian vigour and vitality in the later centuries of Indian history. As Sri Aurobindo states:

"Now certainly there is an emphasis in the Upanishads increasing steadily as time goes on into an over-emphasis, on the salvation of the individual, on his rejection of the lower cosmic life... .It does not exist in the earlier Vedic revelation where individual salvation is regarded as a means towards a great cosmic victory, the eventual conquest of heaven and earth by the superconscient Truth and Bliss, and those who have achieved the victory in the past are the conscious helpers of their yet battling posterity. If this earlier note is

missing in the Upanishads, then, — for great as are these Scriptures, luminous, profound, sublime in their unsurpassed truth, beauty and power, yet it is only the ignorant soul that will make itself the slave of a book, — then in using them as an aid to knowledge we must insistently call back that earlier missing note, we must seek elsewhere a solution for the word of the riddle that has been ignored. The Upanishad alone of extant scriptures gives us without veil or stinting, with plenitude and a noble catholicity the truth of the Brahman; its aid to humanity is therefore indispensable. Only, where anything essential is missing, we must go beyond the Upanishads to seek it, — as for instance, when we add to its emphasis on divine knowledge the indispensable ardent emphasis of the later teachings upon divine love and the high emphasis of the Veda upon divine works."⁵⁶

The Synthesis of Yoga in the Gita

There came to be developed, in the later history of Indian yoga, the great synthesis of yoga in the Gita, which is the greatest gospel of divine works. The quintessential aims and methods of Karma yoga that were greatly emphasized in the Veda and also in the earlier Upanishads were reiterated with great emphasis and assured mastery. In doing so, the quintessentials of the knowledge of the ultimate Reality that have been richly described in the Veda and which were articulated with great clarity and refined language that could be more readily accessible to philosophy in the Upanishadic concepts of Brahman, Purusha, Ishawara, got reiterated and were given in the Gita the foundational position in regard to the methods and aims of its synthetic yoga. The Gita also brought into the forefront the yoga of divine love and discovered the principle of self-surrender which is essential

for the right relationship between the human soul and the Divine Lover; this principle of self-surrender was found to be the sovereign means of the fulfillment of divine knowledge and divine works.

The supreme secrets of the Vedic and Upanishadic knowledge came to be clearly restated in the Gita, and the mystery and the wonder that are associated with the knowledge of the ultimate reality constitute the essential aspects of the descriptions of the secret nature of the ultimate reality that we find in the Gita. The culminating point of this knowledge is, in terms of the Gita, the knowledge of Purushottama and Para-prakriti.⁵⁷

A central objective to be fulfilled by the practice of the synthesis of Gita's yoga is that we, as individuals, have a central role, and that we are here to move inwardly towards a greater consciousness and a supreme existence, not by a total exclusion of our cosmic nature, but by a higher and spiritual fulfillment of all that we now essentially are. There is to be a change from our mortal imperfection to a divine perfection of being. Sri Aurobindo explains the essential foundation of this complex aim as follows:

"The first idea on which this possibility is founded, is the conception of the individual soul in man as in its eternal essence and its original power a ray of the supreme Soul and Godhead and here a veiled manifestation of him, a being of his being, a consciousness of his consciousness, a nature of his nature, but in the obscurity of this mental and physical existence self-forgetful of its source, its reality, its true character. The second idea is that of the double nature of the Soul in manifestation, — the original nature in which it is one with its own true spiritual being, and the derived in which it

is subject to the confusions of egoism and ignorance. The latter has to be cast away and the spiritual has to be inwardly recovered, fulfilled, made dynamic and active. Through an inner self-fulfilment, the opening of a new status, our birth into a new power, we return to the nature of the Spirit and re-become a portion of the Godhead from whom we have descended into this mortal figure of being."⁵⁸

In the object of the yoga that is placed before us in the Gita we find a greater affirmation; the object is not merely of liberation of the individual from the ignorant mind, life and body with which it has become identified by its descent into Nature or what the Gita terms as Apara Prakriti or lower nature, but the utilization of the attainment of liberation as a step towards the movement by which hierarchies of mind, overmind and supermind are attained, so that one is enabled to manifest the higher nature, divine nature or Para Prakriti. The Gita replaces the obsessive idea of self-annulment of nature by the principle of self-fulfilment in divine Nature.

There is, according to the Gita, the normal phenomenon of the individual in the state of its entanglement and identification with the body, life and mind, the three cords of Nature, which are riddled with sattwa (principle of light and harmony), rajas, (the principle of dynamism), and tamas, (the principle of resistance, limitation and inertia), all of which are at play in disproportionate prominence. This nature has been called, in the Gita, eight fold Prakriti (astadha prakrti),⁵⁹ since it consists of earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intellect and ego. This Prakriti is apara prakrti, and it is described as the lower nature of the Supreme, which is derived from the higher nature of the Supreme, Para Prakriti. It is declared that this Para Prakriti is the origin of the Apara Prakriti and is manifest in the individual or Jiva, since all the

Jivas are the becomings of the Para Prakriti, even while they are eternal portions of the Supreme Being.⁶⁰

If the individual, [who is the eternal portion of the Supreme, and who has been constituted by the higher Nature (Para Prakriti), which is expressive power of the Supreme] is found to be entangled in Apara Prakriti, which is itself derived from Para Prakriti, there must be a profound significance of that entanglement, and it cannot be exhausted by a mere return of the individual from its entanglements to a state of freedom or liberation from the entanglement where it can become one with the Supreme by self-annulment or merger (sālokya mukti), or by Nirvana or self-extinction or by attainment of a state of union with the Supreme (sāyujya mukti or sāmīpya mukti). The Gita, therefore, in search of the fulfillment of that significance, develops in its later chapters, particularly in its last six chapters, the possibility, not only of the recovery of the individual in its source,—the Supreme being (Purushottama) and Para Prakriti, but also of manifesting that Para Prakriti in actual action and work in the world. This is the reason why there is so much of insistence in the Gita of a progressive development of tamas and rajas into sattwa, into a state of trigunātita, the state of transcending the three-fold Apara Prakriti, and on manifestation of those elements which are directly expressive of Para Prakriti, namely, swabhava and swadharma, shraddha or faith which is the essential nature of the individual being or Purusha, divine nature (daivi bhāva), action that involves giving (dāna), sacrifice (yajna) and austere process of concentration (tapas), and inner renunciation of desire (tyāga) instead of renunciation of action itself (sannyāsa).⁶¹ The Gita puts forward the attainment of divine nature (madbhāva),⁶² and of perfection of manifesting the law of the divine nature (sādharmyam),^63.

as the goal for the individual after the attainment of liberation from its entanglement with Apara Prakriti. And the method that the Gita proposes for this attainment is that of complete surrender to the Supreme.⁵⁴ The Gita, in placing this higher goal restates the goal that was sought after by the Rishis of the Veda and of the earlier Upanishads, namely, the attainment of the supramental nature.

Indeed, just as Sri Aurobindo and the Mother pointed out the incompleteness in regard to the Vedic goal and Vedic conquest, even so, they have pointed out also the incompleteness in regard to the highest possible fulfilment that has been described in the Gita. As Sri Aurobindo points out:

"The greatest gospel of spiritual works ever yet given to the race, the most perfect system of Karmayoga known to man in the past, is to be found in the Bhagavad Gita. In that famous episode of the Mahabharata the great basic lines of Karmayoga are laid down for all time with an incomparable mastery and the infallible eye of an assured experience. It is true that the path alone, as the ancients saw it, is worked out fully; the perfect fulfilment, the highest secret is hinted rather than developed; it is kept back as an unexpressed part of a supreme mystery. ...The Gita at its cryptic close may seem by its silence to stop short of that solution for which we are seeking; it pauses at the borders of the highest spiritual mind and does not cross them into the splendours of the supramental Light. And yet its secret of dynamic, and not only static, identity with the inner Presence, its highest mystery of absolute surrender to the Divine Guide, Lord and Inhabitant of our nature, is the central secret. This surrender is the indispensable means of the supramental change and, again, it is through the supramental change that the dynamic

identity becomes possible."⁶⁵

One of the most important elements of knowledge relating to the objects and methods of yoga, particularly in connection with 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. According to the Gita, the individual Purusha can rise above the rungs of the body, life and mind, the present formation of lower Prakriti (Apara Prakriti), and he can be established permanently into the spiritual status of the immobile witness or imperturbable Silence or in relationship and union with Purushottama in any one of his cosmic or transcendental poises, akshara or kshara or both; but, as in the Veda and the Upanishads, so in the Gita, there is a higher possibility of rising still upwards in the higher ranges of Para Prakriti and even of recreating the lower Prakriti, Apara Prakriti, into increasingly luminous image of Para Prakriti. In the Bhagavad Gita, this entire process of rising upwards towards higher nature and into the realms of higher nature and even of recreating the lower nature in the image of higher nature by the method of complete surrender to the Purushottama is indicated through its concept of trigunātītā (a state of transcendence of the three gunas of tamas, rajas and sattwa). But, as Sri Aurobindo points out, the possibility of recreation of the lower nature in the image of the high nature is rather hinted but not worked out. As Sri Aurobindo points out,

"The Gita at its cryptic close may seem by its silence to stop short of that solution for which we are seeking; it pauses

at the borders of the highest spiritual mind and does not cross them into the splendours of the supramental Light."⁶⁶

As in the Veda and in the Upanishad, so also in the Gita there is, Sri Aurobindo points out, the idea of the higher levels of knowledge of the supermind (rita-chit, Aditi, Shakti, Para Prakriti). But the road by which the lower nature can be transformed into the higher nature was found by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to be blocked, and it can be said that the mighty effort of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was centered on breaking and surmounting that block. The novelty of the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother lies precisely in this effort and its victorious accomplishment.

What would be the realized condition of consciousness and power when lower nature comes to be recreated and transformed by the higher nature is briefly described by Sri Aurobindo in the language appropriate to the Gita's synthesis of yoga as follows:

"When we grow into the spirit, this Dharma or inferior law of Nature is replaced by the immortal Dharma of the spirit; there is the experience of a free immortal action, a divine illimitable knowledge, a transcendent power, an unfathomable repose. ..."⁶⁷

In other words, the Sattwa is transformed into divine illimitable Knowledge, rajas is transformed into transcendent power and free immortal action, and tamas is transformed into unfathomable repose.

Contribution of the Tantra

An extremely important element in the fund of the spiritual knowledge accumulated in the past related to the theme of liberation and perfection consists of the aims and

methods of the Tantra. The Tantra aims at integration of the heightened perfections of the powers of the instruments of the being as also of the cosmic enjoyment through these instruments. The Tantra not only aims at mukti, liberation, but also at bhukti, enjoyment; and since that enjoyment cannot be perfect without arriving at the perfection of the powers of the being, it also puts forward the aim of perfection. That in the human being and in the universe there are two poles of being whose essential unity is the secret of existence and that is the supreme affirmation of the Tantric yoga. These two poles of being can be variously termed, such as Lord and Supreme Mother, Shiva and Shakti. Shakti is the power of Shiva or rather Shiva is Shakti, considering their essential unity. It is Shakti that has manifested in the universe and, at the human level, we experience Her as Nature or energy that is seen to be active in body, life and mind. The distinction of the method of the Tantra is to raise the nature of Shakti that is dormant in man so that it manifests itself as the unveiled power of the Spirit. The important point of the synthesis of the Tantra is that it is the whole nature that Tantra gathers up for the spiritual conversion. It includes, therefore, in its synthesis of yoga the ideal of the perfection of the body, and for that purpose, it begins with Hathayoga; it pursues the forceful hathayogic processes and the hathayogic science of the nervous centres, chakras; the hathayogic processes aim at the gradual opening up of the nervous centers starting from the lowest, which is called mūlādhāra, in which the supreme shakti is found to be coiled; the hathayogic process aims at awakening that shakti coiled up in the mulādhāra, and by means of the process of awakening, that shakti is uncoiled in a spiral movement similar to that of the serpent. That is the reason why the

shakti is called kundalini or serpentine energy. The awakened shakti passes systematically from the lowest mūlādhāra and crosses through the intermediate centers up to the highest point or the topmost level of the brain and opens up the brain centre, which is called the centre of thousand-petalled lotus, sahasrāra. When the shakti opens up the thousand-petalled lotus, she attains her union with the Supreme Lord. In this process, Tantra utilizes the system of the operations of the subtle body and subtle elements of consciousness; here the Tantra aims at purification of the operations and at the unification of these operations by the processes of meditation and concentration by the utilization of the methods of Raja yoga so as to attain to the states of Samadhi. The Tantra also aims at purification and development and perfection of the intellect, will-force, and the motive power of devotion by resorting to the processes of Jnana yoga, Karma yoga and Bhakti yoga. Tantra goes even farther and it subjects the main springs of human quality, desire and action to an intensive discipline; as a result, it seeks to attain the soul's mastery over human motives, and it also aims at the elevation of these motives to a diviner spiritual level as its final utility. Finally, since it does not aim merely at liberation (mukti) but also cosmic enjoyment of the power of the spirit (bhukti), the tantrik system is rendered much bolder and larger than the Vedantic schools of yoga.

The vast fund of the knowledge of the Tantric yoga is assimilated in Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's synthesis of yoga. But even though it includes the aims of the Tantra, its initial stress falls upon the methods of the Veda, the Upanishads and the Gita. As a result, in Sri Aurobindo's synthesis of yoga, raising of the powers of the human

consciousness towards their heights is sought to be effected by the operation of the Purusha consciousness or Brahman consciousness; and as the yogic processes progress farther, the principle of surrender to the Shakti or Divine Mother which is so central in the Tantra also becomes central; there is, however, full recognition that the shakti is the power of Purushottama and is herself Purushottama. In the Tantra, the initial stress is on starting from the bottom, and there is a rise on the ladder through grades of ascent upward to the summit; in Sri Aurobindo's synthesis of yoga, the emphasis is upon man as a spirit in mind much more than a spirit in body, and it assumes in him the capacity to begin on that level; hence, this new synthesis of yoga aims at spiritualizing man's being by the power of the soul in mind, and the method is to open the soul in mind directly to a higher spiritual force and being and to perfect by that higher force so possessed and brought into action the rule of his nature. In order to work out this process, this synthesis of yoga utilizes powers of soul in mind (which are those of the quest of knowledge, the quest of heroism, the quest of harmony and the quest of perfection), and turns the triple key of knowledge, work and love in the locks of the Spirit. As a consequence, the hathayogic methods can be dispensed with, although there would be no objection to their partial use. The methods of Raja yoga also would enter in but only as an informal element. The methods of this yoga aim at all the perfections that are aimed at in the Tantra but they even go beyond. These methods are so conceived as to constitute the shortest way at the largest development of spiritual power and being and divinize by it a liberated nature in the whole range of human living. Moreover, in Sri Aurobindo's synthesis of yoga, the spirit in man is regarded not as solely an individual being

travelling to a transcendent unity with the Divine, but a universal being capable of oneness with the divine in all souls and in his all-nature with all the practical consequences.

Sri Aurobindo acknowledges that there are a thousand ways of approaching and realizing the Divine and each way has its own experiences which have their own truth. The important thing that is stressed is that one should follow one's own way well and thoroughly and arrive at the integrality of the path of ascent to the supermind and of descent of the supermind for the total transformation of the mind, life and body. In pursuit of this process, Sri Aurobindo acknowledges the contributions that can be made by the yogic systems which are at the back of all religions as also those which are independent of any religion. Sri Aurobindo also acknowledges the subtlety and complexity that are available in several exclusive systems of yoga, and underlines the importance of new elements which those systems of yoga have discovered and realized.

A special emphasis is, however, made on the discovery of the psychic entity and of the utilization of the powers of the psychic entity that have been discovered in various systems of the yoga of Divine Love. In fact, in the synthesis of yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the yoga of the psychic entity plays a major role, and a great stress is laid right from the beginning on the awakening of the psychic being, and on the psychisation and psychic transformation of Nature. That, again, is supplemented and perfected by the processes of spiritual and supramental transformation of Nature.