The Knowledge Within

Health and Happiness

Stepping stone towards Light

A preliminary and preparatory introduction to Sri Aurobindo's yoga

The Gita is a book that has worn extraordinarily well and it is almost as fresh and still in its real substance quite as new, because always renewable in experience, as when it first appeared in or was written into the frame of the Mahabharata. It is still received in India as one of the great bodies of doctrine that most authoritatively govern religious thinking and its teaching acknowledged as of the highest value if not wholly accepted by almost all shades of religious belief and opinion. Its influence is not merely philosophic or academic but immediate and living, an influence both for thought and action, and its ideas are actually at work as a powerful shaping factor in the revival and renewal of a nation and a culture.¹

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It is by a constant inner growth that one can find a constant newness and unfailing interest in life. There is no other satisfying way.

Sri Aurobindo

To express our gratitude to Sri Aurobindo we can do nothing better than to

be a

living demonstration of his teachings.

The Mother

Preface

It is extraordinary how deep were the insights of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, not only into the inner spiritual path but also in its outer manifestation in a world which, despite considerable material progress, is still torn with conflict and strife, poverty and malnutrition, illiteracy and disease. The work of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother stands as a monumental heritage of the human race. There have been many compilations from the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, particularly the very valuable ones by A.S. Dalai. Now Kalu Sarkar has attempted his own compilation.

I commend him for his effort which he has entitled "The Knowledge Within". According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, this inner knowledge alone has the power to lift man above his present condition. And they underscore the fact that at this critical juncture of our evolution, India may hold the key to the riddle and find the way out of the deepening crisis facing humanity.

Indian culture has survived the most terrible invasions and holocausts over the last many centuries, and has emerged with its vitality intact. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda both had a vision of India playing a leadership role in world affairs. However, this will only be possible if we are able to reintegrate the great spiritual ideals that have sustained our culture down through the long and tortuous corridors of time.

KARAN SINGH

15' Aug. 2012

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Foreword

We are passing through an age of paradox. We have built up magnificent cities and at the same time terrible weapons to destroy them; we have achieved great speed, still we have no time for relaxation; we have invented numerous devices to serve us, yet we suffer from anxiety and tension; we have elegant houses, but broken homes inside; we have achieved greater longevity, but old age is an unbearable burden; last but not the least, we have built up a wonderful medical network, yet hitherto unknown new diseases are stalking us.

Does somewhere in our being there remain hidden an undetected element of disharmony? It seems we have been too much conscious of our external life and have neglected the consciousness itself. We have not been alert enough about our inner life which alone, in the ultimate analysis, determines the degree of satisfaction we can derive from our activities and the degree of happiness we can experience. As a mystic said, one can build a cosy bedroom spending a million rupees, but that does not guarantee even one paisa worth of calm sleep.

Till today we have not entirely mastered all the complexities of our physical body. The body, apparently, is a form of matter which our consciousness or spirit is trying to use under its command. The other proposition is that matter itself is a form of consciousness. We may differ on this issue, but we cannot deny the fact that the subtle frontier where both (matter as body and the spirit that dwells in it) meet is the most important area of their coexistence. The ancient physicians of India who were Rishis - the Seers - had delved deep into the structure of our being and had discovered that vital link uniting matter and spirit to be our nervous system.

Shri Kalu Sarkar who has compiled this anthology from the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and has explained the justification of the

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compilation in his Introduction has been experimenting with several authentic alternative systems of Medicare and has evolved a method of treatment for certain maladies that has proved efficacious for patients both in India and abroad. He has inherited the idealism of his father, the late Shri Sudhir Sarkar, a unique person indeed - one who had the rare privilege of being a follower of Sri Aurobindo both in the revolutionary and Yogic phases of the Master's life. Shri Kalu Sarkar has continued to serve with love and dedication those in need of his care, as one in charge of the Physiotherapy department of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

No doubt the compilation will throw light on a number of issues psycho-physical in nature that surface in our mind from time to time and, along with the acupressure principles explained with illustrations, be a practical guide in our approach to our welfare.

Manoj Das

(Shri Manoj Das, Professor of English Literature at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry, is a well-known writer. Awarded the Padma Shri for his distinguished contribution to literature, he is also the recipient of the Saraswati Samman and Sahitya Akademi awards.)

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Introduction

It is the hour and the moment when we need the guidance of the Supreme Master who having tested and experienced every step in evolution by His Yoga (tapasya), that silent actionless impersonal will which He has set here can at last be delivered to the aspiring and suffering humanity. No political leader, no demigod, no second-hand knowledge, no statesman or ascetic sannyasi or religious leader can bring about the true change. We are in the hands of the Supreme Power and are merely instruments of it, and nothing more.

Meanwhile man, half-conscious, god-fearing creature, has been pushed by Ignorance (Avidya), the play of the multiplicity. He has created far himself innumerable trappings and is being crushed by his own science. Over a hundred years ago, Sri Aurobindo foresaw that man will create machines, after machines, convenience after convenience, and comfort will become uncomfortable

Science, philosophy and criticism have established their usefulness for the mass of humanity by ministering to them luxury, comfort and convenience which all men desire and by arming them with justification for their misguided actions in the confused struggle of passions, interests, cravings and hankerings which are working with deadly corrosive effect throughout the world.

It is here that 'stress', a word commonly used in modern society, is perhaps one of humanity's most dangerous enemies for it is the beginning of a silent hostile invasion that has crept into the life of unconscious man and is ready to eat away his sanity and physical well-being if left unattended.

Many believe that stress is a psychological condition brought about by one's inability to cope with the demands of modern-day life. But actually, stress is a

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psycho-physical condition entering largely through the nervous system and the gaping holes present in man's crude and unruly nature.

The symptoms are all too familiar: increased mental and emotional anxiety, lack of ability to control the thoughts and hence its outcome, the loss of concentration.

This has been the experience of the Western world and yet medical science has failed miserably in its attempt to secure a solution. Why is it that material science stumbles every time it tries to prove things that are out of its domain? The reason lies in the simple fact that science has been unable to follow the workings of Nature beyond the realms of Matter. For the root of the problem of stress lies deep within the subtle and subliminal regions of our being and so it is evident that that which has no knowledge and is ignorant of the subtle powers which uphold life is at once at a loss to make a diagnosis and a cure of the malady.

Where science has failed, however, eternal Indian Wisdom triumphs. It is in the higher knowledge concealed in our Self that we are able to find an answer not only to the riddle of our existence but also to the hidden meaning behind the sufferings and innumerable difficulties that mankind has long been facing.

Kalu Sarkar

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Sri Aurobindo's message is clear:

What Science could not provide India offers, Brahman for the eternal goal, Yoga for the means of perfection, dharma (swabhavaniyatam karma) for the rational yet binding law of conduct. Therefore, because it has something by which humanity can be satisfied & on which it can found itself, the victory of the Indian mind is assured. ²

Undoubtedly, for practical purposes the West is right; since only by establishing ourselves on such an assured foundation can we work with the utmost effectiveness and make the most of what we know. But in order that the victory may not be slow & stumbling in its progress and imperfect in its fulfillment, it is necessary that whatever India has to offer should be stated to the West in language that the West can understand and through a principle of knowledge which it has made its own. Europe will accept nothing which is not scientific, nothing, that is to say, which does not take up its stand on an assured, well-ordered and verifiable knowledge.³

The world at large does not live by the pure intellect, concrete itself it stands by things concrete or practical, although, immaterial in its origin, it bases practicality upon abstractions. A goal of life, a practice of perfection and a rational, yet binding law of conduct,—these are man's continual quest, and in none of these demands is modern Science able to satisfy humanity. In reply to all such wants Science can only cry, Society and again Society and always Society. But the nature of man knows that Society is not the whole of life. With the eye of the soul it sees that Society is only a means, not an

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end, a passing & changing outward phenomenon, not that fixed, clear & eternal inward standard & goal which we seek. Of Society as of all things Yajnavalkya's universal dictum stands; a man loves & serves Society for the sake of the Self & not for the sake of Society. That is his nature & whatever Rationalism may teach, to his nature he must always return.⁴

There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanatana dharma...

The European sets great store by machinery. He seeks to renovate humanity by schemes of society and systems of government; he hopes to bring about the millennium by an act of Parliament. Machinery is of great importance, but only as a working means for the spirit within, the force behind. The nineteenth century in India aspired to political emancipation, social renovation, religious vision and rebirth, but it failed because it adopted Western motives and methods, ignored the spirit, history and destiny of our race and thought that by taking over European education, European machinery, European organization and equipment we should reproduce in ourselves European prosperity, energy and progress. We of the twentieth century reject the aims, ideals and methods of the Anglicised nineteenth precisely because we accept its experience. We refuse to make an idol of the present; we look before and after, backward to the mighty history of our race, forward to the grandiose destiny for which that history has prepared it.⁵

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We say to the nation, "It is God's will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, 'This is our dharma.' We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians. And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours. [ . . .]

You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies.

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We shall never lose our fortitude, our courage, our endurance. There are some who think that by lowering our heads the country will escape repression. That is not my opinion. It is by looking the storm in the face and meeting it with a high courage, fortitude and endurance that the nation can be saved. It is that which the Mother demands from us,—which God demands from us.⁶

Man himself is not a life and mind born of Matter and eternally subject to

physical Nature, but a spirit that uses life and body. It is an understanding faith in this conception of existence, it is the attempt to live it out, it is the science and practice of this high endeavour, and it is the aspiration to break out in the end from this mind bound to life and matter into a greater spiritual consciousness that is the innermost sense of Indian culture. It is this that constitutes the much-talked-of Indian spirituality.⁷

It is the habit of bhakti that alone has saved us alive [...] preserving an imperishable core of strength in the midst of our weakness and darkness [...]⁸

In this grave crisis of our destinies let not our people lose their fortitude or suffer stupefaction and depression to seize upon and unnerve their souls. The fight in which we are engaged is not like the wars of old in which when the King or leader fell, the army fled. The King whom we follow to the wars today, is our own Motherland, the sacred and imperishable; the leader of our onward march is the Almighty himself, that element within and without

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us whom sword cannot slay, nor water drown, nor fire burn, nor exile divide from us, nor a prison confine. [...]

Let there be no fainting of heart and no depression, and also let there be no unforeseeing fury, no blindly-striking madness. We are at the beginning of a time of terrible trial. The passage is not to be easy, the crown is not to be cheaply earned. India is going down into the valley of the shadow of death, into a great horror of darkness and suffering. Let us realise that what we are now suffering, is a small part of what we shall have to suffer, and work in that knowledge, with resolution, without hysteria. A fierce and angry spirit is spreading among the people which cries out for violent action and calls upon us to embrace death. We say, let us be prepared for death but work for life,—the life not of our perishable bodies but of our cause and country. Whatever we do, let it be with knowledge and foresight. Let our first and last object be to help on the cause, not to gratify blindly our angry passions. The first need at the present moment is courage, a courage which knows not how to flinch or shrink.⁹

The spiritual force within not only creates the future but creates the materials for the future. It is not limited to the existing materials either in their nature or in their quantity. It can transform bad material into good material, insufficient means into abundant means. It was a deep consciousness of this great truth that gave Mazzini the strength to create modern Italy.

It is our hope that [...] not only the political circumstances of India be changed but her deeper diseases be cured and by a full evocation of her immense stores of moral and spiritual strength that be accomplished for

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India which Mazzini could not accomplish for Italy, to place her in the head and forefront of the new world whose birth-throes are now beginning to convulse the Earth.¹⁰

The eternal question has been put which turns man's eyes away from the visible and the outward to that which is utterly within, away from the little known that he has become to the vast unknown he is behind these surfaces and must yet grow into and be because that is his Reality and out of all masquerade of phenomenon and becoming the Real Being must eventually deliver itself. The human soul once seized by this compelling direction can no longer be satisfied with looking forth at mortalities and seemings through those doors of the mind and sense which the Self-existent has made to open outward upon a world of forms; it is driven to gaze inward into a new world of realities.

Here in the world that man knows, he possesses something which, however imperfect and insecure, he yet values. For he aims at and to some extent he procures enlarged being, increasing knowledge, more and more joy and satisfaction and these things are so precious to him that for what he can get of them he is ready to pay the price of continual suffering from the shock of their opposites. If then he has to abandon what he here pursues and clasps, there must be a far more powerful attraction drawing him to the Beyond, a secret offer of something so great as to be a full reward for all possible renunciation that can be demanded of him here. This is offered,— not an enlarged becoming, but infinite being; not always relative piecings of knowledge mistaken in their hour for the whole of knowledge, but the possession of our essential consciousness and the flood of its luminous realities; not partial satisfactions, but the delight. In a word, Immortality. ¹¹

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India and the West

The urgent necessity of a spiritual change

Spirituality is not a high intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration, a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are of considerable value to mind and life; they are of value to the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining, purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still belong to the mental evolution,— the beginning of a spiritual realisation, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact, the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being, a new self, a new nature.¹²

We must harmonize God and Nature on peril of our destruction. The European nations have invariably decayed after a few centuries of efflorescence because they have persisted in ignorance and been obstinate in Avidya. We who possess the secret but misunderstand it, have taken two

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millenniums to decay, but in the end we have decayed and brought ourselves on the verge of actual death and decomposition.¹³

Indian spirituality has lost itself in a jungle of symbols and slokas and we have to get out of them on to the plain and straight ways and the open heights, where we can see the "much work that has still to be done". ¹⁴

[If we come back to the One consciousness which sees all things as One in their truth idea, embracing the knowledge of the One and the knowledge of the Many] in our acts also we become one with all beings and our life grows into a representation of oneness, truth and divine joy and no longer proceed on the crooked path of egoism of division, error and stumbling.¹⁵

It is only if there is a greater consciousness beyond mind and that consciousness is accessible to us that we can know and enter into the ultimate Reality. Intellectual speculation, logical reasoning as to whether there is or is not such a great consciousness cannot carry us very far. What we need is a way to get the experience of it, to reach it, enter into it, live in it. If we can get that, intellectual speculation and reasoning must fall necessarily into a very secondary place and even lose their reason for existence.¹⁶

India has or rather had the knowledge of the Spirit, but she has neglected Matter and suffers for it. The West has the knowledge of Matter, but she neglected Spirit and suffers badly for it.¹⁷

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A spiritual ideal has always been the characteristic idea and aspiration of India. But the progress of Time and the need of humanity demand a new orientation and another form of that ideal. The old forms and methods are no longer sufficient for the purpose of the Time-Spirit. India can no longer fulfil herself on lines that are too narrow for the great steps she has to take in the future. Nor is ours the spirituality of a life that is aged and world-weary and burdened with the sense of the illusion and miserable inutility of all God's mighty creation. Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit. It is to accept the world as an effort of manifestation of the Divine, but also to transform humanity by a greater effort of manifestation than has yet been accomplished, one in which the veil between man and God shall be removed, the divine manhood of which we are capable shall come to birth and our life shall be remoulded in the truth and light and power of the spirit. It is to make of all our action a sacrifice to the master of our action and an expression of the greater self in man and of all life a Yoga.

The West has made the growth of the intellectual, emotional, vital and material being of man its ideal, but it has left aside the greater possibilities of his spiritual existence. Its highest standards are ideals of progress, of liberty, equality and fraternity, of reason and science, of efficiency of all kinds, of a better political, social and economical state, of the unity and earthly happiness of the race. These are great endeavours, but experiment after experiment has shown that they cannot be realised in their truth by the power of the idea and the sentiment alone: their real truth and practice can only be founded in the spirit. The West has put its faith in its science and machinery and it is being destroyed by its science and crushed under its mechanical burden. It has not understood that a spiritual change is

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necessary for the accomplishment of its ideals. The East has the secret of that spiritual change, but it has too long turned its eyes away from the earth. The time has now come to heal the division and to unite life and the spirit.

This secret too has been possessed but not sufficiently practiced by India. It is summarised in the rule of the Gita, yogasthah kuru karmani. Its principle is to do all actions in Yoga, in union with God, on the foundation of the highest self and through the rule of all our members by the power of the spirit. And this we believe to be not only possible for man but the true solution of all his problems and difficulties. This then is the message we shall constantly utter and this the ideal that we shall put before the young and rising India, a spiritual life that shall take up all human activities and avail to transfigure the world for the great age that is coming. India, she that has carried in herself from of old the secret, can alone lead the way in this great transformation of which the present sandhya of the old yuga is the forerunner. This must be her mission and service to humanity,-as she discovered the inner spiritual life for the individual, so now to discover for the race its integral collective expression and found for mankind its new spiritual and communal order.

Our first object shall be to declare this ideal, insist on the spiritual change as the first necessity and group together all who accept it and are ready to strive sincerely to fulfil it: our second shall be to build up not only an individual but a communal life on this principle. An outer activity as well as an inner change is needed and it must be at once a spiritual, cultural, educational, social and economical action. Its scope, too, will be at once individual and communal, regional and national, and eventually a work not only for the nation but for the whole human people. The immediate object of this action will be a new creation, a spiritual education and culture, an

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enlarged social spirit founded not on division but on unity, on the perfect growth and freedom of the individual, but also on his unity with others and his dedication to a larger self in the people and in humanity, and the beginning of an endeavour towards the solution of the economic problem founded not on any Western model but on the communal principle native to India.

Our call is to young India. It is the young who must be the builders of the new world,—not those who accept the competitive individualism, the capitalism or the materialistic communism of the West as India's future ideal, nor those who are enslaved to old religious formulas and cannot believe in the acceptance and transformation of life by the spirit, but all who are free in mind and heart to accept a completer truth and labour for a greater ideal. They must be men who will dedicate themselves not to the past or the present but to the future. They will need to consecrate their lives to an exceeding of their lower self, to the realisation of God in themselves and in all human beings and to a whole-minded and indefatigable labour for the nation and for humanity. This ideal can be as yet only a little seed and the life that embodies it a small nucleus, but it is our fixed hope that the seed will grow into a great tree and the nucleus be the heart of an ever extending formation. It is with a confident trust in the spirit that inspires us that we take our place among the standard-bearers of the new humanity that is struggling to be born amidst the chaos of a world in dissolution and of the future India, the greater India of the rebirth that is to rejuvenate the mighty outworn body of the ancient Mother.¹⁸

National education cannot be defined briefly in one or two sentences, but we may describe it tentatively as the education which starting with the past

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and making full use of the present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut of the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantage of the present is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought, in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her the best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines. 19

The scientific, rationalistic, industrial, pseudo-democratic civilisation of the West is now in process of dissolution and it would be a lunatic absurdity for us at this moment to build blindly on that sinking foundation. When the most advanced minds of the occident are beginning to turn in this red evening of the West for the hope of a new and more spiritual civilisation to the genius of Asia, it would be strange if we could think of nothing better than to cast away our own self and potentialities and put our trust in the dissolving and moribund past of Europe.

And, finally, the objection grounds itself on the implicit idea that the mind of man is the same everywhere and can everywhere be passed through the same machine and uniformly constructed to order. That is an old and effete superstition of the reason which it is time now to renounce. For within the universal mind and soul of humanity is the mind and soul of the individual with its infinite variation, its commonness and its uniqueness, and between them there stands an intermediate power, the mind of a nation, the soul of a people. And of all these three education must take account if it is

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to be, not a machine-made fabric, but a true building or a living evocation of the powers of the mind and spirit of the human being.²⁰

Mind is rooted in division

Spirit is rooted in oneness

There is, first, the division which has been created by the evolution itself in its three successive formations of Matter, Life and Mind, each with its own law of working. The Life is at war with the body; it attempts to force it to satisfy life's desires, impulses, satisfactions and demands from its limited capacity what could only be possible to an immortal and divine body; and the body, enslaved and tyrannised over, suffers and is in constant dumb revolt against the demands made upon it by the Life. The Mind is at war with both: sometimes it helps the Life against the Body, sometimes restrains the vital urge and seeks to protect the corporeal frame from life's desires, passions and over-driving energies.²¹

Mind rooted in division and limitation cannot provide it to us, nor can life and the body which are the energy and the frame of dividing and limiting mind.²²

As Life is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis with Matter, so Mind is limited and hampered by the conditions of its synthesis with Life in Matter. Neither Matter nor Life has found anything proper to their own formula which could help to conquer or sufficiently expand its

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limitations; they have been compelled each to call in a new principle, Matter to call into itself Life, Life to call into itself Mind. Mind also is not able to find anything proper to its own formula which can conquer or sufficiently expand the limitations imposed upon its workings; Mind also has to call in a new principle beyond itself, freer than itself and more powerful.²³

On one side a darkened mind and life, ignorant, suffering, spinning like a top whipped by Nature always in the same obscure and miserable rounds, on the other a soul touched by a ray from the hidden Truth, illumined, conscious, concentrated in a single unceasing effort towards its own and the world's Highest, — this is the difference between man's ordinary life and the way of the divine Yoga.²⁴

Man in himself is hardly better than an ambitious nothing. He is a narrowness that reaches towards ungrasped widenesses, a littleness straining towards grandeurs which are beyond him, a dwarf enamoured of the heights. His mind is a darkened ray in the splendours of the universal Mind. His life is a striving exulting and suffering wave, an eager passion-tossed and sorrow-stricken or a blindly and dully toiling petty moment of the universal Life. His body is a labouring perishable speck in the material universe. An immortal soul is somewhere hidden within him and gives out from time to time some sparks of its presence, and an eternal spirit is above and overshadows with its wings and upholds with its power this soul continuity in his nature. But that greater spirit is obstructed from descent by the hard lid of his constructed personality and this inner radiant soul is wrapped, stifled and oppressed in dense outer coatings. ²⁵

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The constitution of man consists of three principles of nature sattva, rajas and tamas, the comprehensive, active and passive elements of universal action, which, in one of their thousandfold aspects, manifest as knowledge, passion and ignorance. Tamas is a constitutional dullness or passivity which obscures the knowledge within and creates ignorance, mental inertia, slowness, forgetfulness, disinclination to study, inability to grasp and distinguish. Rajas is an undisciplined activity which obscures knowledge by passion, attachment, prejudgment, predilection and wrong ideas. Sattva is an illumination which reveals the hidden knowledge and brings it to the surface where the observation can grasp and the memory record it.²⁶

To develop the sattwic part of our nature of light, understanding, balance, harmony, sympathy, good will, kindness, fellow feeling, self-control, right ordered and harmonised action, is the best we can do in the limits of the mental formation, but it is a stage, not the goal of our growth of being.²⁷

The office of the intellect is not to fathom reality, but to fabricate and preside over action [...] Intellect cannot comprehend life and reality. Intellect (logic) goes round the object, intuition enters into the object; one stops at the [absolute], the other enters into the absolute.²⁸

Logic, after all, is only a measured dance of the mind, nothing else.²⁹

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Mind has to ask a new principle beyond itself, freer than itself and more powerful. It is this new heart that we have to acquire, instinct must be replaced by Intuition.³⁰

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THE LIFE-FORCE

THE DYNAMIC LINK BETWEEN MIND AND MATTER

What we need to do

To reject doubts means control of one's thoughts - very certainly so. But to control of one's thoughts is as necessary as the control of one's body - for the yoga, and not for the yoga only. One cannot be a fully developed mental being even, if one has not a control of the thoughts, is not their observer, judge, master, the mental Purusha, Monomaya Purusha, Saksi, Anumanta, Iswara. It is more proper for the mental being to be the tennis ball of a rudderless ship in the storm of the desires and passions or the slave of either the mertia or the impulses of the body. I know it is more difficult because man being primarily a creator of mental Prakriti identifies himself with the movements of his mind and cannot at once disassociate himself and stand free from the swirl and eddies of the mind whirlpool. It is comparatively easy for him to put a control on his body, at least on a certain part of his movements; it is less easy but still very possible after a struggle to put a mental control on his vital impulses and desires, but to sit like a tantric yogi on the river, above the whirlpool of his thoughts is less facile. Nevertheless, it can be done; all deyeloped mental men, those who get beyond the average, have in one way or other or at least at certain times and for certain purposes to separate the two parts of the mind, the active part which is a factory of thoughts and the quiet masterful part which is at once a witness and a will, observing them, judging, rejecting, eliminating, accepting, ordering

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corrections and changes, the master in the House of Mind, capable of self-empire, samrajya.³¹

All difficulties can be conquered, but on condition of fidelity to the Way.

There is no obligation on anyone to take it; but once taken, it must be followed or there can be no progress or success.³²

Prana (Pra - force and Ana - food)

The greatest exertions are made with the breath held in; the faster the breathing, the more the dissipation of energy. He who in action can cease from breathing,—naturally, spontaneously,— is the master of Prana, the energy that acts and creates throughout the universe. It is a common experience of the Yogin that when thought ceases, breathing ceases,—the entire kumbhak effected by the Hathayogin with infinite trouble and gigantic effort, establishes itself easily and happily,—but when thought begins again, the breath resumes its activity. But when the thought flows without the resumption of the inbreathing and outbreathing, then the Prana is truly conquered. This is a law of Nature. When we strive to act, the forces of Nature do their will with us; when we grow still, we become their master. But there are two kinds of stillness—the helpless stillness of inertia, which heralds dissolution, and the stillness of assured sovereignty which commands the harmony of life. It is the sovereign stillness which is the calm of the Yogin. The more complete the calm, the mightier the yogic power, the greater the force in action. In this calm, right knowledge comes. The thoughts of men are a tangle of truth and falsehood, satyam and anritam.

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True perception is marred and clouded by false perception, true judgment lamed by false judgment, true imagination distorted by false imagination, true memory deceived by false memory. The activity of the mind must cease, the chitta be purified, a silence fall upon the restlessness of Prakriti, then in that calm, in that voiceless stillness illumination comes upon the mind, error begins to fall away and, so long as desire does not stir again, clarity establishes itself in the higher stratum of the consciousness compelling peace and joy in the lower. Right knowledge becomes the infallible source of right action. Yogah. karmasu kausalam.³³

How does Pranayama help to develop our mental capacities?

What role does it play in bringing about the higher consciousness?

It is the pranic vital currents which sustain mental activity. When these currents are changed by pranayama they bring about a change in the brain. The cause of dullness in the brain is some obstruction in it which does not allow the higher thought to be communicated to it. When this obstruction is removed the higher mental being is able to communicate its action easily to the brain. When the higher consciousness is attained the brain does not become dull. My experience is that it becomes illumined. All exercises, like breathing practices, are only devices which something that is behind them is using for manifesting itself. — a system of notation — that we employ. But we give too much importance to the form of the device, because we think the physical to be the most real. If we knew that the entire physical world is made up of forces and that it is nothing else but the working of a certain consciousness and power using certain devices, then we would not be deceived.³⁴

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For the mind operates upon Matter not directly, but through the Life-force; that is its instrument of communication and the Life-force, being in us a nervous energy and not anything material, can seize on Matter only through nervous impressions of form, through contractual images, as it were, which create corresponding values in the energy-consciousness called in the Upanishads the Prana.³⁵

Sri Aurobindo says that Prana, the life-force, is" the dynamic link between mind and Matter".

How to become aware of its existence?

"By the purification of our means of sensation and knowledge which becomes possible through yoga", says Sri Aurobindo.

Pranayama — calm inbreathing and outbreathing

Sit or lie in a comfortable position. Take the right thumb and press lightly the right nostril. Keep the left nostril open. Take a calm deep breath through the left nostril. As you breathe in, concentrate around the solar plexus. Imagine that the breath is arising from the upper abdomen. Do not force, do not hold your breath. The subtler you can make it, the mightier is its power. Imagine that the breath is going to the senses, the ears, eyes, palate, nose and skin. By the subtlety of the inbreathing and outbreathing and the power of our imagination, the senses begin to receive the right amount of oxygen or life-force and their functions increase by the dynamic link created by the act of positive thinking.

Then, do not stop, continue to feel and imagine that the breath is going to the brain. Throughout imagine the calm and peace. Then press lightly with the index or middle finger the left nostril and gradually breathe out by the right nostril. By the subtle

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outbreathing imagine and feel that the breath, the life-force, is directed to all the parts of the body. Do this exercise alternately, 12 times each nostril. It may take eight to ten minutes. Do it twice a day.

"This calm inbreathing and outbreathing if properly done drives out every lurking disease in the system", says Sri Aurobindo.

It increases the vitality and virility, maintains the blood pressure, quietens the nervous system. Restlessness and inertia (rajasik and tamasic nature) begin to disappear. Sattwik development begins to manifest and harmony descends in the entire system. By this simple process, Pranayama, matter evolves, creates, maintains, disintegrates and recreates fresh matter.

"This is the eternal cycle of life, the reality behind the manifested existence."

Pranic energy supports not only the operations of our physical life, but also those of the mind in the living body. Therefore by the control of the pranic energy it is not only possible to control our physical and vital functionings and to transcend their ordinary operations, but to control also the workings of the mind and to transcend its ordinary operations.

As the yogin gets back to the control of the Prana, and by the direction of its batteries opens up those nervous centers (chakras) in which it is now sluggish or only partially operative, he is able to manifest powers of mind, sense and consciousness which transcend our ordinary experience. The so-called occult powers of yoga are such faculties which thus open up of themselves as the yogin advances in the control of the Pranic force and, purifying the channels of its movement, establishes an increasing communication between the consciousness of his subtle subliminal being and the consciousness of his gross physical and superficial existence.³⁶

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In its higher stages this increase of power intensifies into clairvoyance, clairaudience, the power of reading other minds, and knowing actions distant in space and time, conscious telepathy and other psychical powers. The reason for this development is to be found in the habit of gathering Prana or vitality in the mind-organ. Ordinarily, the psychical life is overlaid and hampered by the physical life, the activity of Prana in the physical body. As soon as this activity becomes even partially quiescent, the gross physical obstruction of Anna and Prana is rarefied and mind becomes more self-luminous, shining out through the clouds that concealed it.³⁷

For mind operates freely and naturally in the subtle matter and the subtler the matter, the freer the workings of the mind.³⁸

If we follow Prana through this process of yogic liberation, we shall find that Prana ends where activity ceases. For Prana is a material entity arising out of the aerial state of subtle Matter and as soon as that state is overpassed, prana is impossible. Throughout there is this close identification of Prana with activity. It may well be said, therefore, that Matarishwan is that which arranges actions.

Matarishwan is the philosophical expression for Vayu, the aerial principle. It means that which moves in the mother or matrix and the word implies the three main characteristics of the aerial element. It is evolved directly out of ether, the common matrix, which is therefore its own mother and ultimately the mother of all elements, forces, substances, objects; its predominant characteristic is motion, and this characteristic of motion

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operates in the matrix, ether. Moving in ether, developing, combining, it creates the substances out of which sun and nebula and planet are made; it evolves fire and water and atmosphere, earth, stone and metal, plant, fish, bird and beast. Moving in ether, acting and functioning through its energy Prana, it determines the nature, motions, powers, activities of all those infinite forms which it has created. By the combinations and operations of this aerial element the sun is built up, fire is struck forth, clouds are formed, a molten globe cools and solidifies into earth. By the energy of the aerial element the sun gives light and heat, fire burns, clouds give rain, earth revolves. Not only all animate, but all inanimate existence owes its life and various activity to Matarishwan and its energy, Prana.³⁹

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Hymn to Agni

This great coming and going is effected in a silent spiritual rapidity; there is no rumour or clamour at all of the trampling hooves of the Vital Forces in their swiftness; but the chariot of the movement gallops swiftly. Finally, the Divine Will-Force lodges in all our being for the benefit of the soul itself and of the gods who work in him, a complete and utter heroic energy, vast with the vastness of the Truth and luminous with its Light.⁴⁰

Brahman

The Supreme is not something aloof and shut up in itself. It is not a mere indefinable, prisoner of its own featureless absoluteness, impotent to define, create, know itself variously, eternally buried in a sleep or a swoon of self-absorption. The Highest is the Infinite and the Infinite contains the All. Whoever attains the highest consciousness, becomes infinite in being and embraces the All.

To make this clear the Upanishad has defined the Brahman as the Truth, Knowledge, Infinity and has defined the result of the knowledge of Him in the secrecy, in the cave of being, in the supreme ether as the enjoyment of all its desires by the soul of the individual in the attainment of its highest self-existence.⁴¹

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The Secret of Material Creation

Matter is not everything and analysis is not everything. By material analysis you can prove that man is nothing but a conglomeration of animalcules, and so materialism with an obstinate and learned silliness persists in asseverating; but man will never consent to regard himself as a conglomeration of animalcules, because he knows that he is more. He looks beyond the analysis to the synthesis, beyond the house to the dweller in the house, beyond the parts to the force that holds the parts together. So with the Air, which is only one of the manifestations of Matariswun proper to this earth, one of the houses in which he dwells; but Matariswun is in all the worlds and built all the worlds; he has numberless houses for his dwelling. The principle of his being is motion materially manifested, and we know that it is by motion creation becomes possible. Matariswun therefore is the Principle of Life, the universal and all pervading ocean of Prana, of which the most important manifestation in man is the force which presides over that distribution of gases in the body to which we give the name of Breath. ⁴²

This body is built by the protoplasm multiplying itself; it does not divide itself, for by division it could not grow. It produces another itself out of itself, the same in appearance, in size, in nature and so it builds up the body which is only itself multiplied in itself. Take that as an imperfect example, which may yet help you to understand.⁴³

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When Science instead of following the course of Nature upstream by analysis, resolving the solid into fluid, the fluid into the fiery, and the fiery into the aerial, shall begin to follow it downstream, imitating the processes of Prakriti, and especially studying & utilising critical stages of transition, then the secret of material creation will be solved, and Science will be able to create material life and not as now merely destroy it. ⁴⁴

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Vidya and Avidya

Vidya, the Knowledge of unity

Avidya — the Knowledge of the multiplicity

THE ONE AND THE MANY

Knowledge and Ignorance

There are always two possible views of the Universe. The one supposes with modern science and the knowledge of the multiplicity (Avidya), matter to be the beginning of things, and studies everything as a process of material evolution. If it is true, as material science maintains, that matter is the source and beginning of all things, how do you explain the emergence of mind, life, of Spirit? For if there was no conscious force behind matter, matter would know only its own static existence.

The other is the knowledge of Unity (Vidya) that is inherent and which sees all as an integral part of the One and the Universe as a manifestation of the Spirit.

When we see the material Universe as a manifestation of the Spirit and we go by the knowledge of the One and we see everything as a whole and begin to look beyond, we can see how matter evolves, creates, maintains, disintegrates and recreates fresh matter. This is the eternal cycle of life, the reality behind the manifested existence.⁴⁵

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The true call upon us is the call of the Infinite and the Supreme; the self-affirmation and self-abnegation imposed on us by Nature are both movements towards that, and it is the right way of self-affirmation and self-negation taken together in place of the wrong, because ignorant, way of the ego and in place of the conflict between the yes and the no of Nature that we have to discover. If we do not discover that, either the push of life will be too strong for our narrow ideal of perfection, its instrumentation will break and it will fail to consummate and perpetuate itself, or at best a half result will be all that we shall obtain, or else the push away from life will present itself as the only remedy, the one way out of the otherwise invincible grasp of the Ignorance.⁴⁶

Certainly if we study the material world only, excluding all evidence of other planes as a dream or a hallucination, if we equally exclude all evidence of operations in mind which exceed the material limitation and study only its ordinary equation with Matter, we must necessarily accept the theory of Matter as the origin and as the indispensable basis and continent. Otherwise, we shall be irresistibly led towards the early Vedantic conclusions.⁴⁷

Sri Aurobindo says that this is our "original sin":

.... or rather let us say in a more philosophical language, the deviation from the Truth and Right of the Spirit, from its oneness, integrality and harmony that was the necessary condition for the great plunge into the Ignorance

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which is the soul's adventure in the world and from which was born our suffering and aspiring humanity.⁴⁸

The origin of falsehood, suffering and evil

The test is the expulsion of all desires, their inability to get at the mind, and it is the inner state from which the freedom arises, the delight of the soul gathered within itself with the mind equal and still and high-poised above the attractions and repulsions and storm and stress of the external life.

The liberator is within us, but it is not our mind, nor our intelligence, nor our personal will — they are only instruments. It is to the Self, the Lord, in whom we have to utterly take refuge. ⁴⁹

The first movement must be obviously to get rid of desire which is the whole root of the evil and suffering; and in order to get rid of desire, we must put an end to the cause of desire, the rushing out of the senses to seize and enjoy their objects. We must draw them back when they are inclined thus to rush out, draw them away from their objects,—as the tortoise draws in his limbs into the shell, so these into their source, quiescent in the mind, the mind quiescent in intelligence, the intelligence quiescent in the soul and its self-knowledge, observing the action of Nature, but not subject to it, not desiring anything that the objective life can give.⁵⁰

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The real difficulty

The real difficulty is always in ourselves, not in our surroundings. There are three things necessary in order to make men invincible, Will, Disinterestedness and Faith. We may have a will to emancipate ourselves, but sufficient faith may be lacking. We may have a faith in our ultimate emancipation, but the will to use the necessary means may be wanting. And even if there are will and faith, we may use them with a violent attachment to the fruit of our work or with passions of hatred, blind excitement or hasty forcefulness which may produce evil reactions. For this reason it is necessary, in a work of such magnitude, to have resort to a higher Power than that of mind and body in order to overcome unprecedented obstacles. This is the need of sadhana.⁵¹

To be conscious is the first necessary step towards overcoming—but for the overcoming, strength is necessary and also detachment and the will to overcome.⁵²

Our highest wisdom, our minutest most accurate science, our most effective application of knowledge can be at most a thinning of the veil of ignorance, but not a going beyond it, so long as we do not get at the fundamental knowledge and the consciousness to which that is native. The rest are effective for their own temporal purposes, but prove ineffective in the end, because they do not bring to the highest good; they lead to no permanent solution of the problem of existence.⁵³

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The ignorance in which we live is not a baseless and wholesale falsehood, but at its lowest the misrepresentation of a Truth, at its highest an imperfect representation and translation into inferior and to that extent misleading values. It is a knowledge of the superficial only and therefore a missing of the secret essential which is the key to all that the superficial is striving for; a knowledge of the finite and apparent, but a missing of all that the apparent symbolises and the finite suggests; a knowledge of inferior forms, but a missing of all that our inferior life and being has above it and to which it must aspire if it is to fulfil its greatest possibilities. The true knowledge is that of the highest, the inmost, the infinite.⁵⁴

Life is a perpetual choice between truth and falsehood, light and darkness, progress and regression. The ascent towards the heights or a fall into the abyss. It is for each one to choose freely.

The Mother

In each one's life a moment comes when he has to choose between the Path and the muddle. You cannot put one foot here and one foot there. If you try to, you will be torn to pieces.

The Mother

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Creation

Everything begins with vibration or movement, the original kshobha or disturbance. If there is no movement of the conscious being, it can only know its own pure static existence. Without vibration or movement of being in consciousness there can be no act of knowledge and therefore no sense; without vibration or movement of being in force there can be no object of sense. 55

Creation is not a making of something out of nothing or one thing out of another, but a self-projection of Brahman. Creation is not a making but a becoming in terms of conscious existence.⁵⁶

Spirit exists from the beginning and was before any beginning, infinite and sempiternal, but Matter also is an eternal entity.⁵⁷

Spirit has concealed itself in inconscient matter.⁵⁸

Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe.⁵⁹

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This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; [...] in this vast and apparently confused mass of existence there is a law, a one truth of being, a guiding and fulfilling purpose of the world-existence.⁶⁰

INVOLUTION-EVOLUTION

Before there could be any evolution, there must needs be an involution of the Divine All that is to emerge. Otherwise there would be not an evolution, but a successive creation of things new, not contained in their antecedents, not their inevitable consequences or followers in a sequence but arbitrarily willed or miraculously conceived by an inexplicable Chance, a stumblingly fortunate Force or an external Creator.

The long process of terrestrial formation and creation, the ambiguous miracle of life, the struggle of mind to appear and grow in an apparent vast Ignorance and to reign there as interpreter and creator and master, the intimations of a greater something that passes beyond the finite marvel of mind to the infinite marvels of the Spirit, are not a meaningless and fortuitous passing result of some cosmic Chance with its huge combination of coincidences; they are not the lucky play of some blind material Force. These things are and can be only because of something eternal and divine that concealed itself in energy and form of Matter.⁶¹

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SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION

A spiritual evolution, an unfolding here of the Being within from birth to birth, of which man becomes the central instrument and human life at its highest offers the critical turning-point, is the link needed for the reconciliation of life and spirit; for it allows us to take into account the total nature of man and to recognise the legitimate place of his triple attraction, to earth, to heaven and to the supreme Reality.⁶²

A spiritual evolution, an evolution of consciousness in Matter in a constant developing self-formation till the form can reveal the indwelling spirit, is then the keynote, the central significant motive of the terrestrial existence. This significance is concealed at the outset by the involution of the Spirit, the Divine Reality, in a dense material Inconscience; a veil of Inconscience, a veil of insensibility of Matter hides the universal Consciousness-Force which works within it, so that the Energy, which is the first form the Force of creation assumes in the physical universe, appears to be itself inconscient and yet does the works of a vast occult Intelligence.⁶³

PSYCHICAL EVOLUTION

Physical life cannot last without the body nor can the body live without the life-force, but the life in itself has a separate existence and a separate body of its own, the vital body, just as the mind, has a separate existence, and can exist on its own plane. All the organisation is held together by the psychic which is the support of all.⁶⁴

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Elemental Evolution

THE FORMS OF MATTER — THE FIVE ELEMENTS

But the Matter that we see and sense is only an outermost sheath and coating; behind it are other subtler degrees of physical substance which are less dense with the atomic nescience and it is easier for Life and Mind to enter into them and operate. If finer invisible physical layers or couches did not exist supporting this gross visible physical world, that world could not abide; for then the fine operations of transmission between Spirit and Matter [could not] be executed at all and it is these that render the grosser visible operations possible. The evolution would be impossible; life and mind and beyond-mind would be unable to manifest in the material universe.⁶⁵

Our first step therefore must be to get behind the forms of Matter, the forms of life, the forms of Mind and go back to that which is most essential, most real, nearest to the actual entity.⁶⁶

Ether, sky or cosmos, gives birth to Air, without Air there is no Fire; Water is lame without Air and Fire; without Air, Fire, and Water, Earth (matter or body) could not have come into being.

The first and original state of subtle matter is the pure ethereal of which the main characteristics are extreme tenuity and pervasiveness and the one sensible property, sound. Sound, according to the Vedic inquirers, is the first

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evolved property of material substance; it precedes form and has the power both to create it and to destroy it. Looking around them in the physical universe for a substance with these characteristics they found it in Akasha or Vyoma (sky), implying not our terrestrial atmosphere but that which is both beyond it and pervades it, - the fine pervasive connecting substance in which, as it were, the whole universe floats. They therefore gave this name, Akasha, to the ethereal condition of matter.

The next matter-condition evolved from Ether and moving in it, was the pure aerial or gaseous. Here pervasiveness was added to a new potency of sensible and varied motion bringing with it, as increased complexity of motion necessarily must do, increased differentiation and complexity of substance. All the variety and evolutions of gaseous matter with their peculiar activities, functions and combinations have this second state or power of matter as their substratum; it is the basis also of that universal Prana or vital energy, starting from action, retention and reaction and culminating in organized consciousness, which we have seen to be so all important an agent in the Vedic theory of the Cosmos. In this second power of matter a new property of material substance is evolved, touch or contact, which was not fully developed in pure ether owing to its extreme tenuity and primarily simplicity of substance. Seeking for a physical substance gaseous in nature, sensible by sound and contact, but without form and characterized chiefly by varied motion and an imperfect pervasiveness, the Rishis found it in Vayu, Wind or Air. Vayu therefore is the conventional term for the second condition of matter.

Evolved out of the pure gaseous state and moving in it is the third or pure igneous condition of matter, which is also called Tejah, light and heat energy. In the igneous stage pervasiveness becomes still less subtle, sensible

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motion no longer the paramount characteristic, but energy, especially formative energy attains full development and creation and destruction, formation and new-formation and at last in readiness. In addition to sound and contact matter has now evolved a third property, form, which could not be developed in pure Air owing to its insufficient density and the elusive vagueness and volatility of gaseous manifestations. The third power of matter is at the basis of all phenomena of light and heat and Prana by its aid so develops that birth and growth now becomes possible; for light and heat are the necessary conditions of animate life-development and in their absence we have the phenomenon of death or inert and inanimate existence; when the energy of light and heat departs from a man, says the Upanishad, then it is that Prana, the vital energy, retires into mind, his subtle or psychical part, ands withdraws from the physical frame. The physical substance which seemed to the Rishis to typify the igneous state was Fire; for it is sensible by sound, contact and form and, less pervasive than air, is distinguished by the utmost energy of light and heat. Fire therefore is the conventional or symbolic name of the third power of matter.

Next upon the igneous state follows the liquid of fluid, less pervasive, less freely motional or energetic, and distinguishingly marked by a kind of compromise between fixity and volatility. In this state matter evolves a fourth property, taste. The liquid state is the substratum of all fluid forms and activities, and in its comparative fixity life-development finds its first possibility of sufficiently stable medium. All life is gathered out of the "the waters" and depends on the fluid principle within it for its very sustenance. Water as the most typical fluid, half volatile, half fixed, perceptible by sound, contact, form and taste, has given a symbolic name to the fourth condition of matter.

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The solid state is the last to develop in this progression from tenuity to density, for in this state pervasiveness reaches its lowest expression and fixity predominates. It is the substratum of all solid forms and bodies and the last necessity for the development of life; for it provided life with a fixed form or body in which it can endure and work itself out which it can develop into organism. The last new property of matter evolved in the solid state is odour; and since earth is the typical solid substance, containing all the five properties sound, contact, form, taste and smell, Earth is the conventional name selected for the fifth and final power of matter.

These five elemental states are only to be found in their purity and with their characteristic qualities distinct and unblended in the world of subtle matter. The five elemental states of gross matter are impure; they are formed out of subtle matter by the combination of the five subtle elements in certain fixed proportions, that one being given the characteristic name of ether, air, fire, water or earth in which the subtle ethereal, gaseous, igneous, fluid or solid element prevails overwhelmingly over the others. Even the last and subtlest condition to which gross matter can be reduced is not a final term; when realized in its constituents, the last term of gross matter disintegrates and matter reaches a stage at which many of the most urgent and inexorable laws of physics no longer operate. It is at this point where chemical analysis and reasoning can no longer follow Nature into her recesses that the Hindu system of Yoga by getting behind the five Pranas or gross vital breaths through which Life manifests in gross physical matter, is able to take up the pursuit and investigate the secrets of psychic existence in a subtler and freer world.⁶⁷

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THE NEED OF AN INTEGRAL EDUCATION

FOR A CHANGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The Training of the Senses

There are six senses which minister to knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, mind, and all of these except the last look outward and gather the material of thought from outside through the physical nerves and their end organs, eye, ear, nose, skin, palate. The perfection of the senses as ministers to thought must be one of the first cares of the teacher. The two things that are needed of the senses are accuracy and sensitiveness. We must first understand what are the obstacles to the accuracy and sensitiveness of the senses, in order that we may take the best steps to remove them. The cause of imperfection must be understood by those who desire to bring about perfection.

The senses depend for their accuracy and sensitiveness on the unobstructed activity of the nerves which are the channels of their information and the passive acceptance of the mind which is the recipient. In themselves the organs do their work perfectly. The eye gives the right form, the ear the correct sound, the palate the right taste, the skin the right touch, the nose the right smell. This can easily be understood if we study the action of the eye as a crucial example. A correct image is reproduced automatically on the retina, if there is any error in appreciating it, it is not the fault of the organ, but of something else. The fault may be with the nerve currents. The nerves are nothing but channels, they have no power in

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themselves to alter the information given by the organs. But a channel may be obstructed and the obstruction may interfere either with the fullness or the accuracy of the information, not as it reaches the organ where it is necessarily and automatically perfect, but as it reaches the mind. The only exception is in case of a physical defect in the organ as an instrument. That is not a matter for the educationist, but for the physician.

If the obstruction is such as to stop the information reaching the mind at all, the result is an insufficient sensitiveness of the senses. The defects of sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, anaesthesia in its various degrees, are curable when not the effect of physical injury or defect in the organ itself. The obstructions can be removed and the sensitiveness remedied by the purification of the nerve system. The remedy is a simple one which is now becoming more and more popular in Europe for different reasons and objects, the regulation of the breathing. This process inevitably restores the perfect and unobstructed activity of the channels and, if well and thoroughly done, leads to a high activity of the senses. The process is called in Yogic discipline nadi-shuddhi or nerve-purification. The obstruction in the channel may be such as not absolutely to stop in however small a degree, but to distort the information.

A familiar instance of this is the effect of fear or alarm on the sense action. The startled horse takes the sack on the road for a dangerous living thing, the startled man takes a rope for a snake, a waving curtain for a ghostly form. All distortions due to actions in the nervous system can be traced to some kind of emotional disturbance acting in the nerve channels. The only remedy for them is the habit of calm, the habitual steadiness of the nerves. This also can be brought about by nadi-shuddhi or nervepurification, which quiets the system, gives a deliberate calmness to all the

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internal processes and prepares the purification of the mind. If the nerve channels are quiet and clear, the only possible disturbance of the information is from or through the mind.

Now the manas or sixth sense is in itself a channel like the nerves, a channel for communication with the buddhi or brain force. Disturbance may happen either from above or from below. The information from outside is first photographed on the end organ, then reproduced at the other end of the nerve system in the citta or passive memory. All the images of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are deposited there and the manas reports them to the buddhi. The manas is both a sense organ and a channel. As a sense organ it is as automatically perfect as the others, as a channel it is subject to disturbance resulting either in· obstruction or distortion.

As a sense organ the mind receives direct thought impressions from outside and from within. These impressions are in themselves perfectly correct, but in their report to the intellect they may either not reach the intellect at all or may reach it so distorted as to make a false or partially false impression. The disturbance may affect the impression which attends the information of eye, ear, nose, skin or palate, but it is very slightly powerful here. In its effect on the direct impressions of the mind, it is extremely powerful and the chief source of error. The mind takes direct impressions primarily of thought, but also of form, sound, indeed of all the things for which it usually prefers to depend on the sense organs. The full development of this sensitiveness of the mind is called in our Yogic discipline sukshmadrishti or subtle reception of images.

Telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, presentiment, thought-reading, character-reading and many other modern discoveries are very ancient powers of the mind which have been left undeveloped, and they all

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belong to the manas. The development of the sixth sense has never formed part of human training. In a future age it will undoubtedly take a place in the necessary preliminary training of the human instrument. Meanwhile there is no reason why the mind should not be trained to give a correct report to the intellect so that our thought may start with absolutely correct if not with full impressions.

The first obstacle, the nervous emotional, we may suppose to be removed by the purification of the nervous system. The second obstacle is that of the emotions themselves warping the impression as it comes. Love may do this, hatred may do this, any emotion or desire according to its power and intensity may distort the impression as it travels. This difficulty can only be removed by the discipline of the emotions, the purifying of the moral habits. This is a part of moral training and its consideration may be postponed for the moment. The next difficulty is the interference of previous associations formed or ingrained in the citta or passive memory. We have a habitual way of looking at things and the conservative inertia in our nature disposes us to give every new experience the shape and semblance of those to which we are accustomed. It is only more developed minds which can receive first impressions without an unconscious bias against the novelty of novel experience. For instance, if we get a true impression of what is happening-and we habitually act on such impressions true or false-if it differs from what we are accustomed to expect, the old association meets it in the citta and sends a changed report to the intellect in which either the new impression is overlaid and concealed by the old or mingled with it. To go farther into this subject would be to involve ourselves too deeply into the details of psychology. This typical instance will suffice. To get rid of this obstacle is impossible without citta shuddhi or purification of the mental and

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moral habits formed in the citta. This is a preliminary process of Yoga and was effected in our ancient system by various means, but would be considered out of place in a modern system of education.

It is clear, therefore, that unless we revert to our old Indian system in some of its principles, we must be content to allow this source of disturbance to remain. A really national system of education would not allow itself to be controlled by European ideas in this all-important matter. And there is a process so simple and momentous that it can easily be made a part of our system. It consists in bringing about passivity of the restless flood of thought sensations rising of its own momentum from the passive memory independent of our will and control. This passivity liberates the intellect from the siege of old associations and false impressions. It gives it power to select only what is wanted from the storehouse of the passive memory, automatically brings about the habit of getting right impressions and enables the intellect to dictate to the citta what samskaras or associations shall be formed or rejected. This is the real office of the intellect, —to discriminate, choose, select, arrange. But so long as there is not cittashuddhi, instead of doing this office perfectly, it itself remains imperfect and corrupt and adds to the confusion in the mind channel by false judgment, false imagination, false memory, false observation, false comparison, contrast and analogy, false deduction, induction and inference. The purification of the citta is essential for the liberation, purification and perfect action of the intellect. ⁶⁸

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Sense-Improvement by Practice

Another cause of the inefficiency of the senses as gatherers of knowledge, is insufficient use. We do not observe sufficiently or with sufficient attention and closeness and a sight, sound, smell, even touch or taste knocks in vain at the door for admission. This tamasic inertia of the receiving instruments is no doubt due to the inattention of the buddhi, and therefore its consideration may seem to come properly under the training of the functions of the intellect, but it is more convenient, though less psychologically correct, to notice it here. The student ought to be accustomed to catch the sights, sounds, etc., around him, distinguish them, mark their nature, properties and sources and fix them in the citta so that they may be always ready to respond when called for by the memory.

It is a fact which has been proved by minute experiments that the faculty of observation is very imperfectly developed in men, merely from want of care in the use of the senses and the memory. Give twelve men the task of recording from memory something they all saw two hours ago and the accounts will all vary from each other and from the actual occurrence. To get rid of this imperfection will go a long way towards the removal of error. It can be done by training the senses to do their work perfectly, which they will do readily enough if they know the buddhi requires it of them, and giving sufficient attention to put the facts in their right place and order in the memory.

Attention is a factor in knowledge, the importance of which has been always recognised. Attention is the first condition of right memory and of accuracy. To attend to what he is doing is the first element of discipline required of the student, and, as I have suggested, this can easily be secured if

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the object of attention is made interesting. This attention to a single thing is called concentration. One truth is, however, sometimes overlooked, that concentration on several things at a time is often indispensable. When people talk of concentration, they imply centring the mind on one thing at a time; but it is quite possible to develop the power of double concentration, triple concentration, multiple concentration. When a given incident is happening, it may be made up of several simultaneous happenings or a set of simultaneous circumstances, a sight, a sound, a touch or several sights, sounds, touches occurring at the same moment or in the same short space of time. The tendency of the mind is to fasten on one and mark others vaguely, many not at all or, if compelled to attend to all, to be distracted and mark none perfectly. Yet this can be remedied and the attention equally distributed over a set of circumstances in such a way as to observe and remember each perfectly. It is merely a matter of abhyasa or steady natural practice.

It is also very desirable that the hand should be capable of coming to the help of the eye in dealing with the multitudinous objects of its activity so as to ensure accuracy. This is of an use so obvious and imperatively needed, that it need not be dwelt on at length. The practice of imitation by the hand of the thing seen is of use both in detecting the lapses and inaccuracies of the mind in noticing the objects of sense and in registering accurately what has been seen. Imitation by the hand ensures accuracy of observation. This is one of the first uses of drawing and it is sufficient in itself to make the teaching of this subject a necessary part of the training of the organs.⁶⁹

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An integral education which could with some variations be adapted to all the nations of the world must bring back the legitimate authority of the Spirit over Matter fully developed and utilised.⁷⁰

The children should be helped to grow up into

straightforward, frank, upright and honourable human

beings ready to develop into divine nature.

Sri Aurobindo

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Beginning of Transformation

You must dismiss the fear of concentration. The emptiness you feel coming on you is the silence of the great peace in which you become aware of your self, not as the small ego shut up in the body, but as the spiritual self wide as the Universe. Consciousness is not dissolved; it is but the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved. In that silence thoughts may cease for a time, there may be nothing but a great limitless freedom and wideness, but into that silence, that empty wideness descends the vast peace from above, light, bliss, knowledge, the higher Consciousness in which you feel the Oneness of the Divine. It is the beginning of the transformation and there is nothing in it to fear.

If you get peace then to clean the vital becomes easy. If you simply clean and clean and do nothing else, you go very slowly - for the vital gets dirty again and has to be cleaned a hundred times. The peace is something that is clean in itself, so to get it is the positive way of securing your object. To look for dirt only and clean is the negative way.⁷¹

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Becoming more Conscious

In the ordinary life people accept the vital movements, anger, desire, greed, sex, etc. as natural, allowable and legitimate things, part of the human nature. Only so far as society discourages them or insists to keep them within fixed limits or subject to a decent restraint or measure, people try to control them so far as to conform to the social standard of morality or rule of conduct. Here, on the contrary, as in spiritual life, the conquest and complete mastery of these things is demanded, that is why the struggle is more felt, not because these things rise more strongly in sadhaks than in ordinary men, but because of the intensity of the struggle between the spiritual mind which demands control and the vital movements which rebel and want to continue in the new as they did in the old life. As for the idea that the sadhana raises up things of the kind. The only truth is that, first, there are many things in the ordinary man of which he is not conscious, because the vital hides them from the mind and gratifies them without the mind realizing what is the force that is moving the action—thus things that are done under the plea of altruism, philanthropy, service, etc. are largely moved by ego which hides itself behind these justifications; in yoga the secret motive has to be pulled out from behind the veil, exposed and got rid of; secondly some things are suppressed in the ordinary life and remain lying in the nature, suppressed but not eliminated; they may rise up any day or they may express themselves in various nervous forms or other disorders of the mind or vital or body without its being evident what is their real cause. This has been recently discovered by European psychologists and much emphasized, even exaggerated in a new science called psycho-analysis. Here again, in sadhana one has to become conscious of these suppressed impulses

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and eliminate them—this may be called rising up, but that does not mean that they have to be raised up into action but only raised up before the consciousness so as to be cleared out of the being.

As for some men being able to control themselves and others being swept away, that is due to difference of temperament. Some men are Sattwik and control comes easy to them, up to a certain point at least, others are more Rajasik and find control difficult and often impossible. Some have a strong mind and mental will and others are vital men in whom the vital passions are stronger and more on the surface. Some do not think control necessary and let themselves go. In sadhana the mental or moral control is only partial and it controls but does not liberate; it is only the psychic and spiritual that can do that, that is the main difference in this respect between the ordinary and the spiritual life.⁷²

At present mankind is undergoing an evolutionary crisis in which is concealed a choice of its destiny; for a stage has been reached in which the human mind has achieved in certain directions an enormous development while in others it stands arrested and bewildered and can no longer find its way. A structure of the external life has been raised up by man's ever-active mind and life-will, a structure of an unmanageable hugeness and complexity, for the service of his mental, vital, physical claims and urges, a complex political, social, administrative, economic, cultural machinery, an organised collective means for his intellectual, sensational, aesthetic and material satisfaction. Man has created a system of civilisation which has become too big for his limited mental capacity and understanding and his still more limited spiritual and moral capacity to utilise and manage, a too dangerous servant of his blundering ego and its appetites. For no greater

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seeing mind, no intuitive soul of knowledge has yet come to his surface of consciousness which could make this basic fullness of life a condition for the free growth of something that exceeded it. This new fullness of the means of life might be, by its power for a release from the incessant unsatisfied stress of his economic and physical needs, an opportunity for the full pursuit of other and greater aims surpassing the material existence, for the discovery of a higher truth and good and beauty, for the discovery of a greater and diviner spirit which would intervene and use life for a higher perfection of the being: but it is being used instead for the multiplication of new wants and an aggressive expansion of the collective ego. At the same time Science has put at his disposal many potencies of the universal Force and has made the life of humanity materially one; but what uses this universal Force is a little human individual or communal ego with nothing universal in its light of knowledge or its movements, no inner sense or power which would create in this physical drawing together of the human world a true life unity, a mental unity or a spiritual oneness.⁷³

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A Prayer for Peace

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Respiratory Exercises

Important Acupressure Points (murmas)

Therapeutic Postures

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Nadi-Shuddhi: calm in-breathing and out-breathing

The subtler the in-breathing and out-breathing, the mightier the force. In this calm in-breathing and outbreathing, the peace has to be visualised. "If properly done, it drives out every lurking disease in the body."

In the following breathing exercise, mid-chest, followed by calm abdominal breathing is done rhythmically. Do not force. Imagine that the life-energy is flowing to all the vital organs in and around the abdominal region. It removes toxic gases and builds strong muscles.

It is recommended that those who are convalescing or weak or are unable to sit, should do this exercise lying on the back Place both hands on the forehead, palms facing outwards. Interlock the fingers but leave the thumbs free. Close the left nostril with the left thumb. Breathe in from the right nostril. Then press the right nostril to breathe out from the left. Do this 12 to 20 times, starting with alternate nostril each time (see first picture on facing page).

You may drink a glass of water before you begin this exercise.

This calm in-breathing and out-breathing may also be practised while doing the other postures shown on the following pages.

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INHALE — EXPAND ABDOMENEXHALE — CONTRACT

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IMPORTANT ACUPRESSURE POINTS (murmas)

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FOR UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND VERTIGO

FOR SORE THROAT AND ASTHMA

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FOR LOWER BACK PAIN

FOR CRAMPS AND PAIN IN THE LOWER ABDOMEN

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THERAPEUTIC POSTURES

Hold each posture for 10-15 seconds in the beginning, repeat three times on each side; gradually increase to 30 seconds upto one minute. Always breathe out and stretch. Continue breathing normally while holding the posture. Rest for 30 seconds between exercises.

Observe all the postures carefully and respect the positions of the neck & arms. Every position is important.

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Lie on your left side. Bend the right knee. Hold the right knee with the left hand (Picture 1). Bend the right arm (Picture 2). Breathe in and breathe out, then stretch the right arm (Picture 3). Palm facing upwards, breathe in and breathe out (Picture 4). Turn the right palm downwards. Breathe out while going back to the first position. Repeat 3 times on each side. Lie on your back and rest for a minute. This exercise helps to slow down the heart-beats and strengthens the heart.

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Observe every step for a perfect posture. Crouch and take the cat pose. If you cannot sit in this posture, put a pillow between the hips under the knees and back of the thighs.

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Therapeutic effect: stretches the upper back and shoulders.

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Take the cat pose; place one knee over the other. Get up and with arms straight, balance on the knees (Posture 3).Sit back and repeat with the other leg. 3 times on each side. Breathe out and stretch.

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Lie down or sit and stretch both knees, holding your feet with your hands (Picture 1 8c 2). Lie down or stand against a wall, bend your knees and stretch. Repeat 3 times on each side.

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Lower back ache

Posture 1: Sit on a chair as shown on the photograph; place right hand over left knee and left hand behind; breathe in and breathe out as you stretch to the left side. Keep posture 10-15 seconds; repeat on both sides 3 to 5 times. Do not attempt this exercise if there is severe pain due to spinal injuries, slipped disks, kidney or urinary infection.

Posture 2: Place both hands from the elbows on the ground; then stretch the entire leg, toes inwards stretching fully from the lower back. Hold 15-20 seconds; repeat 3 times for each leg.

Postures 3 & 4 should follow to relax the lower back.

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Excellent exercises for stretching and strengthening the knees and the back of the thighs. Therapeutic effect: relieves pain in case of sciatica. Hold the position for 10-15 seconds for each leg. Repeat 3 times.

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Half-sit against a wall. Hold for 30 seconds to strengthen the knees (Picture 1). Three-fourth sit: join both hands and hold the position for 30 seconds (Picture 2). Do not attempt in case of knee ailment. Sitting across on a chair, hold your foot and pull the leg backwards (Picture 3). Sit in any comfortable position and relax.

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Glossary

Abhyasa: constant practice (usually of a spiritual discipline).

Arya (Aryan): the good and noble man; he who fights and overcomes inwardly and outwardly all that stands opposed to human advance.

Bhakti: devotion; in yoga, the path of love and devotion.

Buddhi: the intellect, the reason; the thinking and discriminating mind.

Citta: the mental substance; the basic consciousness. Kshoba: disturbance; vibration.

Manas: the mind proper, distinct from the intellect (buddhi) and the sense-mind.

Nadi shuddhi: purification of the nerves.

Prakriti: Nature; the executive Force of the Purusha.

Purusha, manomaya purusha, sakshi, anumanta, ishwara: the true Person, the Soul, the Conscious being; the mental being; the witness; the giver of sanction; the Supreme Lord.

Sadhana: spiritual discipline; the practice of yoga.

Samskaras: associations, impressions ; habitual reactions formed by one's past. Sanatana dharma: the eternal religion.

Swabhava niyatam karma: the controlled action done according to the law of one's true inner nature.

Yoga karmasu kausalam: yoga is skill in works (Bhagavad-Gita).

Yogastha kuru karmani: "fixed in yoga do actions" (Bhagavad-Gita).

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References

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Kalu Sarkar has been in charge of the Physiotherapy-cum-Acupuncture-cum-Homoeopathy department of Sri Aurobindo Ashram for the past 54 years. But his involvement and empathy with the human suffering led him to the conclusion that the external and scientific principles of treatment can play only a limited role in human health-welfare unless the physician as well as the patient had some knowledge of the psychic principles at work in our life. The passages he chose from the vast world of the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, he believes, are the best corollary to the external process of healing, bringing to the patient the indispensable element of faith and self-confidence necessary for recovery.

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