The Supermind and the Yoga of Works - Part 2

The Supermind and the Yoga of Works

Part 2                                

We must also keep in mind that the supramental change is a difficult, distant and an ultimate stage. It must be regarded as the end of a far-off vista. It can not be and must not be turned into a first aim or a constantly envisaged goal or an immediate objective. Considerable amount of self-conquest and self-exceeding is needed in order for it to come into the view of possibility. It is achieved at the end of many long and trying stages of a difficult self-evolution of the nature. One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness. It should replace our ordinary view of things, natural movements and motives of life. One must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. At the next stage we have to go still deeper and discover our veiled psychic entity. Then in the light of this psychic entity and under its government we have to psychicise our inner and outer parts. We have to turn our mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul.

As a next stage we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety.  This is to be done by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. We can do it even concurrently with the earlier stage also. We need to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality. We need to dissolve the ego. We have to enter into the cosmic consciousness. Realise the self. Acquire a spiritualized and universalized mind, heart, life-force and physical consciousness. Only after passing through these processes the passage into supramental consciousness begins to become possible. Even then we have to face a difficult ascent. Each stage of this ascent is a separate arduous achievement. Yoga is a rapid and concentrated conscious evolution of the being. It can effect in a single life what in an unassisted Nature might take centuries and millenniums or many hundreds of lives. However we can not by-pass the stages necessary for the Evolution. Even the greatest rapidity and concentration of the movement cannot swallow up all the stages. It can not reverse natural process and bring the end near to the beginning. In other words, there are no short-cuts. This necessity is easily forgotten by the hasty and ignorant mind and a too eager force. They rush forward to make the Supermind an immediate aim. They expect to pull it down with a pitchfork from its highest heights in the Infinite. This is an absurd expectation. It is also full of danger. There is a danger that the vital desire may very well bring in an action of dark or vehement vital powers. They may hold out before it a promise of immediate fulfilment of its impossible longing. This is likely to result in a plunge into many kinds of self-deception. It will yield to the falsehoods and temptations of the forces of darkness, a hunt for supernormal powers. It will lead into a running away from the Divine to the Asuric nature. It will cause a fatal self-inflation into an unnatural unhuman and undivine bigness of magnified ego.

A large scale disaster out of this folly may not happen if the being is small and if the nature is weak and incapable. However it will still cause a loss of balance, mental unhinging and fall into unreason. It may also cause a vital unhinging and consequent moral aberration. It is also likely to result in a deviation into some kind of morbid abnormality of the nature. It should be particularly noted that in the Path of Integral Yoga the abnormality of any kind is not admitted. This is true even in the case of exalted abnormality. It can still not be admitted as a way to self-fulfilment or spiritual realisation. There should be no disturbance of the poise even when one enters into supernormal and supra-rational experience. The poise must be kept firm right from the summit of the consciousness to its baser levels. The experiencing consciousness must preserve a calm balance, an unfailing clarity and order in its observation. It is a sort of sublimated commonsense, It is an unfailing power of self-criticism as well as of right discrimination, co-ordination and firm vision of things. One must have an constant grasp on facts and a high spiritualized positivism. One can NOT go beyond ordinary nature into supernature by becoming irrational or infra-rational. It has to be done by passing through reason to a greater light of super-reason. This super-reason descends into reason. There it takes up into higher levels even while breaking its own limitations. At this stage the reason is not lost. It only changes and becomes its own true unlimited self. It becomes a coordinating power of the supernature. 

Based on Sri Aurobindo – Synthesis of Yoga

Pg 281 The Supermind and the Yoga of Works

30  May 2013

The Supermind and the Yoga of Works

The Supermind and the Yoga of Works

Part 1

The ultimate aim of the Integral Yoga is the conversion of the whole being into a higher spiritual consciousness and a larger divine existence. This is the vital and indispensable element in its total and ultimate aim. This means that all the individual parts of our being of life as well as all our self and nature must seek the Divine. They must enter into the Infinite and unite with the Eternal. This applies to all our parts of being like will and action, knowledge, our thinking being and our emotional being. However the present nature of man is limited, divided and unequal. Therefore he can not embrace all in one go. It is easiest for him to concentrate in the strongest part of his being. He can then follow a definite line of progress which is proper to his nature. Only rare individuals have the strength to take a large immediate plunge straight into the sea of the Divine Infinity. For most others the path will involve the choosing as a starting point a concentration in thought, or contemplation, or the mind’s one-pointedness. This will eventually lead in the discovery of the eternal reality of the Self in them. While some may find it easy to withdraw into the heart and meet there the Divine, the Eternal. While for some others who are predominantly dynamic and active it will be more suitable to centre themselves in the will and consequently enlarge their being through works. They will have to surrender their will into the infinity of Self and the source of all and get united with it. They will be guided in their works by the secret Divinity within. They will be surrendered to the Lord of the  cosmic action as the master and mover of all their energies of thought, feeling and action. Through this way they will have enlargement of their being into something selfless and universal. This will lead them by works some first stage of fullness of a spiritual status.

One thing is certain. The Path, whatever its starting point, must eventually open up into a vaster dominion. Its result is the totality of integrated knowledge, emotion, will of dynamic action, perfection of the being and the entire nature.

In the supramental consciousness on the level of the supramental existence this integration becomes consummate. At that level knowledge, will, emotion, the perfection of the will and the dynamic nature rise each to its absolute of itself. All rise to their perfect harmony. All rise towards the fusion with each other, to a divine integration and a divine perfection. This is because the Supermind is a Truth-Consciousness. In it the Divine Reality is fully manifested. It no longer works with the instrumentation of the Ignorance. It is a truth of status of being which is absolute. It becomes dynamic in a truth of energy and activity of the being. It is self-existent and perfect. There every movement is a movement of the self-aware truth of Divine Being. Every part is in entire harmony with the whole. In the Truth-Consciousness even the most limited and finite action is a movement of the Eternal and Infinite. It partakes of the inherent absoluteness and perfection of the Eternal and Infinite. An ascent into the supramental Truth raises our spiritual and essential consciousness to that height. At the same time it also brings about a descent of this Light and Truth into all our being and all our parts of nature. All then becomes part of the Divine Truth. It becomes an element and means of the supreme union and oneness. The ultimate aim of Integral Yoga is this ascent and descent.

Thus one essential object of the Yoga is a union with the Divine Reality of our being and all being. It is necessary to keep this in mind. We must remember that our Yoga is not undertaken for the sake of the acquisition of Supermind itself. It is done for the sake of the Divine. We seek Supermind not for its own joy and greatness, but to make the union absolute and complete. Our aim is to feel it, possess it, dynamise it in every possible way of our being. We have to do it in its highest intensities and largest wideness. We have to do it in every range and turn and nook and recess of our nature. It is a mistake to think that the object of a supramental Yoga is to arrive at a mighty magnificence of supermanhood. The object is also not to acquire a divine power and greatness, the self-fulfilment of a magnified individual  personality. This is a tempting thought for many. It is wrong. This is a false and disastrous conception. It is disastrous because it is likely to raise the pride, vanity and ambition of the rajasic vital mind in us. If we do not overpass and overcome this tendency, it will lead to spiritual downfall. It is false because it is an egoistic conception. The first condition of the supramental change is to get rid of ego. It is also most dangerous for the active and dynamic nature of the man of will and works. He can easily be led away by the pursuit of power.

Power comes inevitably by the supramental change. It is a necessary condition for a perfect action. It is the Divine Shakti that comes and takes up the nature and the life. It is the power of the One which acts through the spiritual individual. It is not an aggrandizement of the personal force. It is also not the last crowning fulfilment of the separative mental and vital ego. Self-fulfilment is a natural result of the Yoga. However its aim is not the greatness of the individual. The sole aim is a spiritual perfection. It is a finding of the true self. It is to have union with the Divine by putting on the divine consciousness and nature. All the rest is a constituent detail and attendant circumstance. Ego-centric impulses, ambition, desire of power and greatness, motives of self-assertion are foreign to this greater consciousness. They would become an insuperable bar against any possibility of even a distant approach towards the supramental change. One must lose one’s little lower self to find the greater self. Union with the Divine must be the master motive. Even the discovery of the truth of one’s own being and of all being are only the natural results of that movement. Same with the life in that truth and its greater consciousness and perfection of nature. They are all natural results on the Path. They are the indispensable conditions of its entire consummation. They are part of the central aim only because they are a necessary development and a major consequence.

Based on Sri Aurobindo – Synthesis of Yoga

Pg 279-281 The Supermind and the Yoga of Works

28 May 2013