June 16, 2002
v A joke is appreciated in its
own cultural context, not outside, as the joke assumes the knowledge of the
context.
v Sri Aurobindo writes about
the evolving Spirit and its goal on earth.
v Spiritual writings are
esoteric and reveal only to the initiated.
v In a very large measure,
writing of quality is meant for the cream in the field and not for the
uninitiated.
v Readers of Sri Aurobindo are
alien to the ways of Spirit that can be explained by a yogi. A further dimension of the
inherent complexity here received as complication is raised by the concept of
evolution of Spirit. To an educated public who do not actively consider the
evolution of society or who mistake it for social growth, concepts of this third
dimension remain a mystery at best. At their worst, they create a fertile
confusion out of helplessness.
v Still the writing especially
its logic and presentation is well within the scope of one who has received a
rigorous academic training. Such people not only find the writing intelligible
but enjoyable as it engages their unengaged faculties.
v The aims here are,
1.
To
list out, after a fashion, as many as possible of these assumptions.
2.
To
illustrate some of them.
3.
To
illustrate through life examples whenever one is in sight.
4.
To
quote His own sentences to bring out the difference that we miss in reading.
5.
To
reach the resourcefulness of conceptformation which He takes advantage of to
bring out His dimension of thought. To show He uses such resourcefulness of
language to His advantage.
6.
To
quote occasional utterances of His to prevent natural misconceptions from
forming.
7.
To
help the reader STAY on Sri Aurobindo's dimension
unfailingly giving him the principle of that dimension as well as the precise
use of common words in that sense.
8.
To
draw a sharp difference between concepts of the Rishis that are mental concepts
and Sri Aurobindo's conceptformation.
9.
Significance of terms differ according to the plane in which it acts.
For this the planes must be distinguished fully and a few usages must be used.
10.
We
see most of HIS startling ideas are already
known to the sages of the world and to serious writers. Our purpose is to show
the limitation of understanding in life or that it was only a mental perception
not extending into the realism of life.
Sri Aurobindo uses words
like Spirit and Truth in their original significance and assumes the reader
knows them, whereas the reader takes them in the linguistic sense and puts
himself outside the pale of HIS writing.
— For us, Spirit is soul or
God, a power that presides over human destiny, as we take government to be a
power in the capital.
Spirit, to Sri Aurobindo is the experience of
Sat while it tries to objectify. This experience renders Sat into substance. It
is out of that substance the world is made. It is difficult for us to
distinguish between Spirit, Soul and Being. He explains that Spirit in the
transcendent plane is before Time was created and Soul is the Spirit in the
Cosmos and Universe.
— Truth for us is fact or the
opposite of false. Truth is the objective state of Sat which is subjective.
— Such other words are:
Absolute, Infinite, Eternal, Consciousness,
Ascent, Descent, Being, Becoming, Asat, Nirvana, Nihil, Sunya, Cipher, Maya,
Subtle, Concentration, Energy, Force, Power, Cosmos, Universe, Consecration,
surrender, Formlessness, good, Good, Bliss, Delight, Divine, Individual, Self,
Soul, Unity, Totality, Wisdom, Ego, Ether, Buddhi, Ethics, Evolution,
Non-Existence, Faith, God, Good and Evil, Silence, Peace, birth, death,
Real-Idea, Ignorance, Illusion, Imagination, Immortality, Impersonal,
Unconscious, Freedom, Indeterminable, Mind, Life, Matter, Integral,
Transformation, Intellect, Reason, Ishwara, Karma, Love, Light, Personality,
Character, Nature, Negative, One, Oneness, Overmind, Physical, Plane, Psychic,
Purusha, Reality, Reversal, Sacrifice, Supermind, Superconscience, Surface,
Time, Transcendent, Vidya, Avidya, Vital, Yoga.
The
above is a formidable list, though somewhat incomplete. It is worthwhile giving
here all that can be said of each word, which of course will become of
considerable length. I shall briefly indicate what is meant or what is not
meant by each word in one or two lines.
The first world Absolute belongs to
philosophy and therefore it is better to emphasise the philosophic sense
instead of the linguistic.
Asat It is nothingness and Non-Existence or Non-Being
to the tradition. To Sri Aurobindo it is infinite Existence.
Ascent and Descent are only meant in the
evolutionary sense and not in the sense of rising to a highest which is a
physical meaning.
Avidya is ignorance. As the Upanishads use Avidya
as knowledge of Becoming, Sri Aurobindo while explaining His own ideas uses the
word Ignorance avoiding Avidya of the Upanishads or acitti of the
Vedas which means not knowing God.
Being
is Purusha, Becoming is Prakriti so far. The concept of Being of the
Becoming is born only with Him, not before. Please note Becoming in this
extended sense is the evolving Being wholly. The distinction is subtle, likely
to be missed if the mind is not on the sequence of HIS argument.
Birth He says birth is the first mystery. He depicts
birth and death as the machinery that renders Timelessness in terms of Time.
Birth is not merely a body or soul coming into worldly existence.
Buddhi is not the mere intellect that receives the sense
information and processes the facts in it separating them from sense
impressions. It has the subtle side to it and is capable of linking the mind to
higher consciousness.
Character is a non-complicated word for understanding. In
India the word is wrongly confined to one's moral behaviour towards women. In
language character and personality are usually properly understood though there
is no precise definition that distinguishes one from the other. Swabhava
in Sanskrit is very close to character but it is the character of the soul not
the mind only.
Cipher, Nihil, Nirvana, Sunya all mean nothing, empty.
In his philosophy, all of them mean everything, rather infinitely everything.
Concentration In daily use it is a common word meaning focussed
attention which is all right. In these spiritual writings it helps us to
consider this word in its original meaning of dwelling on itself.
Consecration is a religious word
meaning to make an act sacred and is well known thus. Though it is the same
here too, to us it succeeds aspiration and precedes Surrender in a chain of
spiritually willed acts.
Cosmos He uses the two words Universe and Cosmos to
refer to the lower hemisphere of ignorance and the higher hemisphere of
knowledge. The universal is also the impersonal against the personal of the
individual. What is a slight difference in language is of significance in
philosophy especially when the writing refers to characteristics of the soul.
While it is human in the universal, in the Cosmos it is non-human or divine.
Delight Ananda, Bliss and Delight are used as synonyms
inter-changeably. He does draw the
difference between static bliss and active delight. He explains that as the
change of Delight of Being into Delight of Becoming expressing a world of
difference.
Divine Mother has a horror of the word God for the
religious connotations it had acquired in Europe. She uses Divine instead.
The three aspects of Sat are Atma, Purusha,
Ishwara. Atma is closer to the original Brahman, Purusha is a Being that
is conscious while Ishwara is the creator of the world, the Lord of Nature. He
employs the word Divine in the sense of Ishwara, particularly in the sense of
the Lord who represents the evolving Soul. He is to Sri Aurobindo one who
enjoys the Unity in Multiplicity, the godhead into which man is to evolve.
Ego This is a very important word for this yoga as
the aim of this yoga is to abolish ego. In His writings Ego must always be
understood only in the spiritual sense, not in the usual linguistic sense of
proud, arrogant, or selfish. These are the surface aspects of ego. To sum up, the
Spiritual sense HE uses for Ego is "All
that is not divine or Nature is ego." When mind began to divide the
material force and ended its division in matter as atomic existence, Ego was
created. It will not utterly disappear until that division is healed by
evolution. On p. 740 of The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo says when the ego
is shed, the Cosmic Self reveals. Egoistic ignorance is deeper than Temporal
Ignorance which means ego will survive as long as Time is there. That is
not the common usage.
Energy A very common word. In no place in HIS writings
does the word have a simple meaning. It divides into physical energy, vital
energy, mental energy and spiritual energy. We do not have that distinction.
Supramental energy is what passes through the FORCE in a speed that exceeds that of light.
Eternal There is a line saying that Eternity is common
between Time and Timelessness. To us Timeless is Eternal and Time is not. To
him there is a Time-eternity and Timeless eternity which meet in Time.
Ether We must distinguish between the material ether we
know and the spiritual ether that creates the Five Elements.
Evolution Involution ends in Matter and then evolution
begins. Even the changes that occur at Sachchidananda Sri Aurobindo calls
evolution. To Him involution and evolution together are Evolution. It begins at
the beginning.
Faith To act on an occasion positively without any
knowledge of what we do is faith. Spiritually Faith is a knowledge of the
Soul. Mind acquiring that knowledge as its own is called spiritual
knowledge.
Force is a common term. Here Force issues out of
consciousness. It can be divided while consciousness and Being are indivisible.
Karma acts at the level of Force not beyond it.
Formlessness is understood to be the opposite of Form. He
describes it as a condition out of which all Forms emanate, maybe formlessness
too. Silence, One, Identical, Unmanifest, Infinite Form are so described by Him
that all of them represent an original condition which exceeds the dual statuses.
In the plane of Time it is explicit. Mind knows both the opposites, not the
condition which includes both and transcends them. Only Supermind can know
that. All his yoga and philosophy are expressed only in this third dimension
of wholeness and Unity.
Freedom The last Freedom is that which can without
hindrance lose that Freedom. It is by this argument HE could bring the
whole of Unity into the purview of the logic of the partial mind. 'Freedom is
the final law and last consummation' says HE. Mind is our ultimate. It is
partial. It is incapable of seeing its insufficiency. When it arrived at
the Absolute, it found the ABSOLUTE to be
neither one or the other while it was everything we know. Trying to frame a
principle of creation, the Rishis could never consider the Absolute as a
creator as it is NOTHING
they knew. They
excluded it from that possibility of Cosmic determinism. Sri Aurobindo whose
vision is of the Supermind, sees the Absolute as the creator who determines.
With that vision, HE needs to put to our minds that vision through an
argument. His argument was the Absolute, that neither one nor the other could
not be determined by anything, thus satisfying the demands of logic. Freedom
and indeterminability receive the same treatment at His hands.
Self-existence is a concept on which Sri Aurobindo dwells
very much. He describes human good as the opposite of evil and says there is a GOOD,
Light, Delight, etc. that are not the opposites of evil, darkness or pain. They
are of the higher consciousness, higher hemisphere. He extends that argument to
Infinity too. He thus speaks of self-existing Infinity, Eternity, etc.
Ignorance is not to know. Vedas and Upanishads have
explained them differently. Vedas said knowing God is knowledge, citti,
not knowing God is acitti, thus explaining knowledge and ignorance in
terms of God. Therefore, their final solution can only cover one side, not the
whole. The Upanishads described knowledge as knowing God Vidya -- and knowing
the world as ignorance Avidya. These definitions are not one-sided as in the
Vedas but become mutually exclusive. Sri Aurobindo says knowledge by
self-absorption becomes Ignorance, thus retaining their relationship. Thus, He
was able to offer a solution of the Whole.
Illusion what others call illusion
He calls Ignorance. He explains the mind is not capable of imagining a
non-existent thing and creates an illusion.
Imagination He describes the faculty of imagination as the
capacity to visualise the future and thus bring it about.
Immortality Popularly understood as survival in the body
without death. His definition of immortality is to know the Self in birth and
non-birth.
Impersonal is the opposite of personal and particular and
therefore general extending to universal. He cites the Sanskrit term Anantaguna,
meaning capable of all the qualities.
Individual The corresponding term Jivatma is not used
by him when He particularly explains the idea. Even His chapter on that is
"Eternal and the Individual". Jivatma has no reality in the tradition
and is not eternal while Individual for Him is Eternal. There is a world of
difference in the basic concepts.
Integral Though the meaning of the word is clear, this is
not a concept now commonly seen anywhere. The two things of common experience
are disharmony and its opposite, cooperation. The concept of co-ordination
is felt only negatively when the roads are dug up all the time by one
department or another without coordinating. We enjoy a health which is
fully integrated but as we take it for granted we are rarely aware of it. The
other nearest example is an automated machine. Even in these two examples the
integration of functions are on the merits of each part. The integration of
the Universe which Sri Aurobindo has in view is one where each part is as
important as every other. Each time Sri Aurobindo uses the word, it is
better to stop, bring before one's eyes what He means and take in the meaning.
When we say here is a man of many parts, an employee, a son, a father, a member
of the party, etc. all these functions are done by ONE man who is the same man.
There is no question of integrating these functions but they are all united in
him. To see the world inside oneself will be that vision which will dwarf
the Viswarupa of Arjuna. At least the mind should fully feel its truth.
Ishwara The Absolute that put forth Existence, Sat as the
first step in creation witnesses four extensions of Sat.
— Sat-Chit-Ananda remains in
unmanifestation as well as in manifestation.
— Atma, Purusha, Ishwara are
the aspects of Sat.
— Truth is the objective state
of Sat, which is subjective.
— Time and Space withhold the
cosmos that is created
The
state of Sat prior to any of these modifications is called Supreme,
Supracosmic, Transcendent.
Ishwara can be either in the cosmos or beyond it.
What is beyond is Supreme Ishwara, Purusha too can be at both levels. Atma
above is Transcendent Self. In the Cosmos it assumes the states of mutable and
immutable. In addition, Ishwara includes Purusha and Purusha includes Atma.
These three states also are representative of Sat, Chit, Ananda. To have a
clear idea of the stages, grades, etc. and to draw them in some kind of a
chart, though it will elude precision, will be helpful. 'Essays on the Gita'
touches upon all these states at various places. Sri Aurobindo assumes all
this knowledge in the reader. Superconscient occupies a special position.
Sri Aurobindo says to know the process of moving from consciousness to
Superconscient is the supreme discovery. Superconscient is formed out of
self-absorption even as the Inconscient was so formed darkly. As these states
constantly overlap, only experience will clear these distinctions, not study.
Even in experience, one can speak only of what he has experienced. And there
are too many states.
Karma Belongs to Force, not consciousness or Being. The
idea of reward and punishment is silly. Maybe cause and effect will hold good
better, if not at all points.
Life is a plane of Force above
matter and below mind. We know only social life and that too not as a plane.
The Life plane HE speaks of pervades the
universe and can survive its abolition. It is a specialised Force created by
the action of the mental knowledge on will as a plane of energy.
Light is the opposite of darkness. To Sri Aurobindo
darkness is more intense light. He also says there is no darkness in the
world, only the inability of our senses to create light. Mother says the
light of a bright noon is pitch dark before spiritual light and the darkness of
midnight is bright before spiritual darkness. The light we see or receive from
the sun is only material concentrations of the original light, not the original
light. We know our knowledge rises to light. They also say the origin of light
is consciousness and the knowledge that issues from there.
Love The Love they speak of is not what we humans call
love, as this is full of selfish interests. The world is not ready to
receive a drop of that higher love, which, if it descends now earth will be
crushed. At the beginning of creation, Love was thrown into it to heal the
breach created. Love is Ananda descended into creation and received by the
soul. If Ananda is received by the vital, JOY is the result. Beauty is a form. It is mind that sees the forms. Ananda
seen by the mind of forms is beauty.
Matter In spirituality Matter and Spirit are the same.
Apart from explaining that Matter is Sachchidananda, Delight of existence, He
says Matter is the result of Mind acting on Matter. Mind creates Matter
dividing the cosmic substance and aggregating it while the substance itself is
originally spiritual substance converted into material substance by the senses
of mind. It is of Force, not consciousness or Being.
Maya The Indian tradition describes Maya as illusion.
The Vedas say it is wisdom. To His, it is the consciousness of the Absolute. As
Sachchidanandam is the luminous shadow cast by the absolute, Maya is its dark
shadow.
Mind I wonder whether Mind is described anywhere in
the world. At least the Western physiology or philosophy does not seem to have
defined it. Whether it is there in Indian Spiritual tradition or not, I do not
know. Mind is one of the innumerable things we take for granted and
constantly use without knowing what it really is. Such an unconscious use
of anything results in one becoming a slave to the instrument of creation, much
as the common man uses money. Whether the origin, organisation, power, role of
money is fully known to the world is again a question. The role of money as a
financial power is fully defined, documented and analysed. There are two other
powers of money, social and evolutionary. They are least appreciated.
Nature In language Nature means hills, forests, bushes,
rivers, etc. Spiritually it is the becoming of the being. While reading
spiritual, philosophic, or yogic material, if one is led by the common usage,
the misleading is sure and great.
Negative In the series of hostile, evil, negative, bad
this concept takes its allotted space between bad and evil. Negative is the
opposite of positive. Sri Aurobindo considers Negative as a complement to
the Positive. In a plantation of 1000 acres, if 300 acres are developed, the rest
is undeveloped. One is not opposite of the other. All that we consider good in
our personality is only the organised energy while the rest is unorganised. We
have got into the habit of calling the undeveloped or unorganised part
negative.
One is considered the very antithesis of the Many.
One enjoys the undifferentiated unity while the pluralistic state subdivides
into the Many and does not lose its unity but enjoys in the diversified
multiplicity. In fact, it is a higher level of unity. It is in order to enjoy
this higher unity that the One consciously lost its undifferentiated unity. An
autocratic leader who enjoys implicit obedience of fear, offers freedom of
opinion to the other levels of leadership and to the rank and file. When the
unity of authority he voluntarily gave up comes back to him as the voluntary
unity of the units, he emerges stronger. The One enjoys the Many in this
fashion. Oneness is a prior stage to unity. Oneness is in union and in
consciousness. Unity is in the being and its substance.
Overmind This is a coinage by Him as Supermind. It is the
last stage of spiritual mind where there is knowledge coexisting with
ignorance.
Characteristics of Overmind:
Peace In all His writings Peace is Spiritual peace, not
the Peace of nations when war ceases. A trait or act or movement has a
structure of energy. The structure dissolves generating peace. Peace and
Silence together create JOY.
Silence and Peace are so fundamental that it is even said 'Silence is God',
'Peace is God'.
Physical Physical and material can be understood
separately though often they go together. Body in us is physical, is
subconscient, though its original substance is inconscient. It is the vital and
mind that dominate the physical. All knowledge of the physical is
subconscient and thus perfect. The physical cannot learn in half. It cannot
move until it fully learns. When it learns it cannot wait. It acts. Though the
physical fully obeys the mind, when it finds the mind is incapable of
protecting the body, it rises, acts and protects itself when we witness
convulsing strength. The entire past is buried in it.
Plane As there are planes in geometry, we speak of
social planes, moral planes, spiritual planes. It is a plane of energy we thus
refer to. Some planes are visible, others subtle and invisible.
Power Issues out Force which emanates from
consciousness. Faculty is organised power. Force organised is power. Language
does not give us distinct definitions of energy, force, power, and faculty
though in usage writers adhere to the exact sense. Thus is created scope of
interchange of words for expressive metaphor. Memory is a faculty but we speak
of the power of memory as a faculty has its power too. Consciousness is a power
of Being. Truth is a power of Being. To know His usage of such words and to
adhere to it will be of help. It is easy to get confused, but it is equally
possible to get out of confusion.
Psychic Psychic is of the mind. Sri Aurobindo did not use
this word in The Arya but when The Life Divine was published in 1940 He
rewrote the entire text using Psychic, meaning the evolving Soul. Nature too
has a soul. It slowly evolves. Psychic is that evolving soul. It is in the
fourth dimension. It is the Being of the Becoming. It is centred in man behind
the heart. Bhakti yoga releases Psychic and leads to moksha because it can. It
can lead to moksha as well as evolution, depending on the line of yoga in which
it emerges.
Purusha Being, the witness Soul. Tradition accepts Sankya
theory of many Purushas and one Prakriti, while Sri Aurobindo believes there is
only one Purusha. It is the conscious being. It acts by Prakriti. It is the
second aspect of Sat among the three, Atman, Purusha, Ishwara. The power of
Atman, Maya is conceptively creative while the power of Purusha Prakriti is
dynamically executive. Ishwara's power Shakti -- is both conceptively
creative and dynamically creative. Purusha exists in the cosmos as Purusha,
beyond that in the Transcendence as the Supreme Purusha (Purushothama) and in
the individual as Jivatma. Atman is called Self. It becomes the Purusha when
Self becomes conscious. Purusha is the Silent witness of Prakriti's doings.
When it ceases to be silent and orders Prakriti, Prakriti becomes Shakti and
Purusha Ishwara.
RealIdea is His own creation. Senses see the objects and
report to mind as sense impressions. Sifting the impressions away, we have
observation. Observation in the mind becomes information, i.e. the mind is informed
of a phenomenon. Information processed becomes data that is usable. When mind
receives into its own preferred perch, information changes into opinion. The
mind that refrains from getting into the pigeon holes of opinion creates facts
out of information. Many facts go to produce an idea. In fact, the idea of
the mind that emerges out of the impact of facts is its own. This idea is a
knowledge that is aware of itself, but it has no force of effectuation. It
resides in the will of the mind. The mind's will in the measure of endorsing
its idea implements it. In the Supermind, idea and will are fused together. It
is Real-Idea. Real-Idea is a
vibration of Being Sat -- through which Supermind creates instantaneously. Sat
conceives to create. Sat is the origin of substance. Naturally, by virtue of
emanating from substance itself, its idea has the force to effectuate itself.
Reality It refers to Truth strictly though used
severally.
Reason means conclusions arrived at on a basis. What is
baseless is not reasonable. It is believed reason cannot take us to the
Absolute. He explains Reason can do so if we do not limit its scope and calls
the second phase of it higher reason. Reason being a faculty, it acts within
authority whether it is religion or society. In a class, when a child scores
the top mark, in a society bound to caste, the prize will not go to the child
if it is an outcaste. Marriages with Jews were denied in the last century for
Christians. In that society it is unreasonable to award the outcaste child,
i.e. reason is bent to the authority of the day. In us, we bend reason to the
authority of the one-sided, partial mind. We never see that at all. The
Southerners believed THUS in their invulnerability in the Civil War. The Second World War could have been avoided if Baldwin and
Chamberlain had read the writing on the wall. Man in his pursuit of
Absolute uses social or mental reason. Sri Aurobindo asks for Pure Reason. To
see the Force of His reasoning while pleading that Negative is not the opposite
of Positive, Nihil is not Nothing, Freedom has the freedom to lose itself, we
see Sri Aurobindo at his very best.
Reversal goes with transformation. It is not ordinarily
met with in life. The confessions of the church, the penitence of the criminal are
similar phenomena in life. There is more than meets the eye. As one
rises in life, the physical work he did for himself is done for him by others.
He shifts to the mind, ceases to exercise his hand. Instead of himself working,
he has the work done for him. Giving up the pleasure of working with his own
two hands, he shifts to asking another to do it for him. We know the
phenomenon of memorisation changing into understanding which yields place to
thinking. All these are given up in favour of Silence which is NOT thinking. The reversal of
consciousness at each step is clear. But there is still more. In a bargain, we
work for our best. It changes to our working for the rival's best where the
reversal is clearer. There was a time when for a petty crime a man was hanged.
His life was taken out of him. Now they try to take his crime out of him. For
transformation to take place, reversal of consciousness is indispensable. To be
able to know the reversal at every step is to know it fully.
Sacrifice is giving up. Giving up outwardly is Sannyasa,
doing it inwardly is thyaga. Only the latter is of relevance to us.
Self is the Spirit in transcendence, Soul is the
Spirit in Cosmos. A plane of energy has a live centre. When that centre takes
shape, it becomes a being, e.g. a vital being, mental being, spiritual being,
etc. When that being is of spirit in us or in the cosmos, it is Soul. Going
beyond the Cosmos that being is called the Self.
Subtle The fragrance of the flower that is invisible is subtle. Subtle is invisible. Thoughts are subtle. Fragrance is in the subtle physical, feelings are in the subtle vital, thoughts are in the subtle mental. Seeing Mother is Spiritually subtle plane.
Supermind It is above Overmind. It is the creator of the
world. The Vedas called it Satyam, rtam, Brihat the Truth, vast, luminous. It
is the Nature of Sachchidananda. It is called the plane of Truth-Consciousness.
Truth that is objective status of Sat becomes Supermind when it becomes
conscious. Therefore, it is the plane of Truth consciousness. It holds the
planes of Timelessness and Time. It splits into comprehending Supermind and
apprehending Supermind, in between which MIND is born. It creates by Real-Idea which is a vibration of Being.
Surface Sri Aurobindo divides mind into three levels --
1. surface mind, 2. inner mind, 3. subliminal mind. The surface, apart from
being surface has four characteristics of 1. Mind, 2. Ego, 3. Time, 4. Finite.
All parts of our being including the body belong to the surface. It is here
Ignorance becomes complete. All important activities of consciousness arise
from the surface. The entire Indian yogic tradition is confined to the surface.
One can go behind the surface either by concentration or thinking or
consecration. By so doing, one goes into the inner mind which opens into the
subliminal.
Subliminal Where the subconscious in its ascent meets the
Superconscient in the descent the subliminal is born. It is universal. The
psychic is in the cave of the subliminal. It records what happens around us
even if it is not in our view.
Surrender In life the weak
surrenders to the strong. The Gita demands of the bhakta to surrender his all,
all his dharma values -- so that he may attain liberation. The Gita's
surrender is for liberation; here it is meant for transformation. The
individual surrenders his being, consciousness, delight and power into that of
the divine being. This surrender dissolves his ego, releases his psychic and
puts him on the threshold of universalisation. The surrender Sri Aurobindo
speaks of makes the one who surrenders the object to which he surrenders.
Time is the Spirit looking at
itself in its movements. It is the inner extension of consciousness or being.
There are different Times to different planes. The Timeless expresses itself in
the plane of Time through birth and death. Time is becoming. Timelessness is
Purusha. Simultaneous coexistence of Timeeternity and Timeless eternity is the
dimension of the Psychic where the Absolute evolves in life.
Totality He has drawn our
attention to the idea that all totality is a reversal. We must remember this
aspect of it with totality.
Unconscious He explains in a long
passage that we are not unconscious when we are stunned or drugged or sleeping.
In His opinion, this is a wrong usage where subconscious is right.
Vital He calls life Vital.
Wisdom is not consummate
knowledge of the world. To know the relationship between God and the
world is Wisdom.
Yoga means dhyana, japa, mantra,
samadhi, asana, pranayama. But all this is not YOGA for Him. All life is yoga.
Nature is enjoying the leisure of infinity before it and therefore is not in a
hurry. She intentionally puts obstacles in the way of speedy partial progress
because all Unity, Truth, Goodness, Knowledge, Power and Love must mature
simultaneously. To centre oneself in the soul of Nature Becoming and
aspire for its evolution is YOGA for Him. TO LIVE CENTERED IN THE PSYCHIC AND BE EVOLVING
ALL THE TIME and
to make the human choice every minute so as to fulfil that purpose is YOGA for Sri Aurobindo.
This
is not strictly an exhaustive list of terms or assumptions, though it covers
nearly the whole territory. An exhaustive list is the field of a scholar who
writes a glossary of His vocabulary. The explanation given to yoga above
contains a statement about the whole of six parts. In The Life Divine it
comes as an explanation of an argument. But it is an important assumption
no part can reach its fullness till the whole reaches it. The six items He
gives there represent Sachchidananda,
Unity
Truth -
Sat
Goodness
Knowledge
Power -
Chit
Love -
Ananda.
In
other words, Sachchidananda is the Whole.
Another
important thing He always upheld was power should come down on earth before
Love if Love is to be protected. Jesus could not protect himself for that
reason. We see in the above six that Power precedes Love.
To
us the word thought never poses any problem. To grasp what He means in an
argument such as 'Thought seeks the Absolute' one needs to know what He means
by Thought. We take thought for granted. Thought comprehends by the sense of
difference is His explanation. When two or more ideas present to the mind,
the effort of mind to relate one with the other is the process of thinking. Atma
is known to create conceptually, which is a process of thought. Wherever there
is a difference, thought can comprehend it. Thus, thought can reach the
Absolute.
In
another place HE says even if ego is
abolished one will be left with evil nature which means the creation of evil is
beyond the plane of ego. Here He assumes in us the knowledge of planes. What is
the value of Thought here and elsewhere? Brahman in which there is no scar of
division has created Sachchidanandam. Now a difference has come into existence. Thought is capable of comprehending this
difference. As against the age-old belief that Thought cannot reach Brahman,
we can now see it is possible. For understanding this we must understand what
thought is. Sri Aurobindo's assumptions are of this level. To write
explaining all His assumptions is possible in a work of good length for one who
is intellectually inclined. The aim here is to be indicative, suggestive, not
scholarly and exhaustive.
He
assumes that we will NOT assume.
When
the ego dissolves, the psychic emerges and becomes universal. This is a theme
that runs through His writings. Along any linear development of finite into a
bigger finite, the rules may repeat, not when the finite is making for
Infinity as the movement here is not linear. This is an occasion where the
converse is not true. The ego when it dissolves in other yogas becomes the
impersonal Self not the psychic. Only in the evolutionary movement does it
become the psychic.
Another
familiar theme is when the Psychic emerges, it leads us along the path of
evolution. Not so in Bhakti yoga which also releases the psychic. Here it leads
to liberation. Though Psychic is an instrument of evolution, it does not
function so when it is not released by the evolutionary process. A
principal grants you admission when you appear before him as a candidate for
admission, not when he meets you in the supermarket as a salesman.
Cosmic
Consciousness
This
is one of the extensions of the Self-Conscious Being, the Sat Purusha that is
transcendent or Supracosmic. For us to see that, we must rise above that and
there the Being is one with consciousness. We may be able to see it when we
enter into it but only from above is it fully seen.
Spirit is a common word which we
accept as something divine. As it emerges from the Being when it objectifies
itself as Truth, Spirit arises as the experience of Being. In a passage
Sri Aurobindo further explains (p.22) Spirit is inactive Brahman, transcendent
Silence, the Self of the Adwaitin, the conscious Energy one with Being that
creates the world. Even after reading all this, when we come across the word
Spirit, we look at it as before, not in its full significance.
p.26.
It is in cosmic consciousness Unity breaks into multiplicity and interacts with
each other. Mind in its mental consciousness can only see the multiplicity, not
the unity. In the superconsciousness Mind
will be able to see the unity and not the multiplicity. Both and their
interactions are seen in cosmic consciousness. The truth of creation is
here. The Rishis who reached the Superconscious directly, missed the truth of
creation and hence evolution.
Nirvana is a word that tells us
nothing exists. The Buddhist conception also tells us Nirvana dissolves every
thing including the SOUL.
What Nirvana dissolves is the ego, personality, Karma, cause and effect as they
are all products of becoming. Soul is not. It is of the Being. There is no
question of its being dissolved.
Sri
Aurobindo uses the medium of language to communicate spiritual experiences that
are fresh to human experience. And that language is read by people of several
cultures. A language is differently understood by different cultures. When an
American uses the word daughter to an Indian it means at the age of 18 she
would take care of herself whereas to the Indian the same word means she is a
life-long liability to him whose marriage must be quickly arranged by him. The one thousand ideas that The Life
Divine explains should be understood by us as HE originally meant, not what
it means to us or what the language means by it.
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