Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Triple Transformation - Session VI

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 889

If it is the sole intention of Nature in the evolution of the spiritual man to awaken him to the supreme Reality and release him from herself, or from the Ignorance in which she as the Power of the Eternal has masked herself, by a departure into a higher status of being elsewhere, if this step in the evolution is a close and an exit, then in the essence her work has been already accomplished and there is nothing more to be done. The ways have been built, the capacity to follow them has been developed, the goal or last height of the creation is manifest; all that is left is for each soul to reach individually the right stage and turn of its development, enter into the spiritual ways and pass by its own chosen path out of this inferior existence. But we have supposed that there is a farther intention,—not only a revelation of the Spirit, but a radical and integral transformation of Nature. There is a will in her to effectuate a true manifestation of the embodied life of the Spirit, to complete what she has begun by a passage from the Ignorance to the Knowledge, to throw off her mask and to reveal herself as the luminous Consciousness-Force carrying in her the eternal Existence and its universal Delight of being. It then becomes obvious that there is something not yet accomplished, there becomes clear to view the much that has still to be done, bhūri aspaṣṭa kartvam; there is a height still to be reached, a wideness still to be covered by the eye of vision, the wing of the will, the self-affirmation of the spirit in the material universe. What the evolutionary Power has done is to make a few individuals aware of their souls, conscious of their selves, aware of the eternal being that they are, to put them into communion with the Divinity or the Reality which is concealed by her appearances: a certain change of nature prepares, accompanies or follows upon this illumination, but it is not the complete and radical change which establishes a secure and settled new principle, a new creation, a permanent new order of being in the field of terrestrial Nature. The spiritual man has evolved, but not the supramental being who shall thenceforward be the leader of that Nature.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Triple Transformation

There is so much packed in this paragraph that we need to differentiate many strengths in this statement. To state very briefly it can be said that in the history of the world, man has been seeking and as a result of this search he has discovered something and what he has discovered is satisfying but only to some extent. There is still much more to be done and in Sri Aurobindo's words "the spiritual man has come but not the supramental being". That is to say the human being who is a mental man, thinks with the mind, acts with the mind, decides with the mind, executes with the mind and from that point of view, some people have reached to a level of spiritual existence and they have been able to find out the ways and means by which one can rise from the mental level to the spiritual. If the intention was only this much then that work has been done, the ways have been found out and it is now for the rest to follow them out, to work this out in their being. But this is not so. The spiritual man has come but not the Supramental being, so there is a distinction made between spiritual and the Supramental. So there are three words to be distinguished: the menial, the spiritual and the Supramental. If you understand these three words separately, then we shall be able to grasp exactly what is meant here because it is said, the mental being has become the spiritual, at least in some cases, but the supramental being has not yet come into being.

Mind-Intellect, kshetra-kshetragna, Purusha-Prakriti

So let us see now what he means by a mental being becoming a spiritual being and then we shall see what he means by a spiritual being becoming a supramental being — a task which is still to be done. What is it that you define as mental? Mental has three layers. First is the layer of sensation. Every mental being is capable of sensing with the senses. These sensations give rise to images. This is a very special power of the mind: formation of images. First the images are only sensational images: you see a bright object, you close your eyes and some kind of image still goes on; it is a purely sensational image. But, afterwards you have a mental image: I close my eyes and I can visualise this table, its form, its character, its comparison with other tables and so on; now that is a mental image I make. The capacity of making images is a very special capacity of the mind. How are we able to make and why we are able to make these images? This is a distinctive quality of the mind. But then we go further and we find that apart from images, we are able to form concepts. First we have sensations, second is the formation of images and third is a concept. A concept is similar to image and yet different from image. If I have a concept of the table it will not be exactly the image of this table. The image of this table will be similar to this table but the concept of the table will be something which is applicable to all the tables. In other words whenever we come to the concept of concepts there is this idea of universality. It is something that is applicable to all but which belongs to that particular object. It is a category by itself. What is a human being, for example? There is an image of a human being, of a particular human being, but then at a higher level there is a concept of the human being, which is not the image of this human being or that human being, it is something that is applicable to all human beings. We find out those characteristics which are common to all human beings. So that which is common to all human beings is the concept of a human being. Mind proper, where it begins to have this concept is also called intellect. This is another word we use but actually speaking the word intellect should be used not for the capacity of sensations or for image making, but for making concepts. The concept making capacity is, properly speaking, an intellectual capacity. Having made concepts there is a further development of the intellect and that is, to compare the concepts. Even when a small child says "this table is blue", actually speaking, without knowing he has already compared two concepts: the tableness and the blueness. Somehow he has understood that there is something like blueness and there is something like tableness. In a short sentence, "the table is blue", the intellectual capacity has already come into operation, a capacity which is not available to animals. In other words, you find that a human being has an intellectual capacity of conceiving even at a very low level of development. Even a small child can conceive, it is automatic in the child. That is why we say that there is a remarkable difference between an animal and man and that difference is the capacity to conceive. What you call rational is basically nothing but the capacity to conceive. When you conceive, when you compare concepts, contrast concepts, relate concepts and synthesise concepts, the more rapidly you can do this, the more evolved you are as an intellectual being.

Basically, you might say that the intellect is constantly concerned with relating concepts with each other and these relationships ordinarily are what we encounter in elementary arithmetic — additions, subtractions, multiplications, divisions. These are the ordinary operations of arithmetic. They are the rudimentary intellectual operations. And even at the higher level of intellectual development, if you want to find out their real analysis, ultimately you will find that all of them are nothing but additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions. You may do them more rapidly; some may do it less rapidly. Even the greatest thinkers (as far as thinking is concerned) are limited to these four operations basically, but they are more rapid, they are relating many more data. It is a question of how many data you collect together. That is why a very developed intellectual personality today is compared to a computer. A computer is basically an instrument of adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, but on a huge scale, which even the human brain is not able to do today. And yet we know that computers cannot do what a human brain can do and that brings us to the point of knowing what true intellectuality is?

The true intellectuality is not only to add, subtract, multiply and divide but to understand. A computer can do all kinds of operations but the question is, does the computer understand? It is argued that modern computers are so powerful that they can play chess with you. And unless there is a comprehension of what is being played by the other party one won't be able to make another move, therefore it means that the computer is able to understand. But it is able to understand only in a mechanical sense. So many things have been fed into the computer and each one of the moves that is made is one of the possibilities. Can even things which are not fed be understood by the computer?

In any case, the experience of understanding is something peculiar to human mentality. When two persons are talking to each other they feel that they communicate and they understand, sometimes even without communicating through words, they feel they understand, something happens and they feel it is understood and they do not even talk about it, yet there is an understanding. So you might say that the deepest capacity of the human mind is understanding and this understanding can be at many levels but the minimum level of understanding is the feeling that one is confronted with a situation. This is the minimum that the mental being understands. Every human being observes a situation and tries to understand the situation and every human being finds himself in a situation. So there is a distinction that he makes between himself and the situation. This is the famous distinction which is made in the Bhagavad Gita: Kshetra Kshetragna, the field and the knower of the field. This is the minimum understanding that every human being confronts when he sees a situation. Normally whenever we confront a situation you will find there is a further detail in it. Every human being wants to deal with the situation, even a small child wants to deal with the situation. A toy is kept in his field of observation and either he wants to take it, possess it, manipulate it, feel the possession of it, enjoy it, wants to throw it away, tries to grapple with it, tries to get another of the same kind or one of a different kind. The situation is given to him and he wants to deal with it. He feels that he can deal with the situation. This is the underlying feeling — that he is somehow capable of dealing with the situation.

In philosophical terms, this is called the distinction between Prakriti and Purusha. The observer is the Purusha consciousness and the situation is Prakriti. You may not use these very difficult words if you like and simply call them the observer and the field of observation. As you go deeper and deeper into the understanding of what man is, what the mental being is, it is found that the mind is capable of standing behind the movement. It is a very special capacity of the mind. The mind is capable of standing behind the movement. I will be watching the waves of the sea and I am absorbed in the watching of the sea and the waves of the sea, my observation is rolled up with the waves. A friend comes and gives a slap on my back and asks: "What are you doing?" I withdraw a little and I can see that I was seeing the waves of the sea. I have now differentiated myself from my act of observation. This capacity of withdrawing from what you are doing is one special quality of the mind. As a result of drawing back, a further development takes place and that is self consciousness. I become aware that I am aware — a self awareness. This is another characteristic of the mental being. All mental beings normally are aware that they are aware but the degrees of awareness may be different. The more you go, backward, the more you become aware of yourself; it is like having two mirrors opposite to each other and there you see endless images of yourself, so you become aware that you are aware, you become aware of that you are aware and become aware of that awareness, you become aware of that awareness, you become aware of that awareness and so on and this is a capacity which goes on indefinitely.

Questions & Answers—Exercise of human-will

This is something which is common to everybody and very simple you might say. There is a very profound statement of Indian thought that the situation in which you are placed is the result of the ‘will’ of the observer.

Question: The will maybe unconscious?

Maybe unconscious, it is the result of the will of the observer. In other words, in philosophical language it is said that Prakriti executes what Purusha decides. If this proposition is to be tested; in our ordinary consciousness we do not find it to be true because normally, we find that the situation we are in is rather unfavourable. Usually, apart from a few situations which may be very favourable, many situations of our life are quite unfavourable. So how can we prove that the situations which are unfavourable could be the results of my will?

Question: Does that mean that whatever we keep feeding into our subconscious, is actually what happens?

That is also one of the propositions, I will come to that. Not only do you put it in the subconscious but you also put it in the higher levels of consciousness, of which you are not aware now. Suppose you sit very quietly and aspire that this situation should change and repeat it again and again, then it is claimed by this philosophy that the situation will change according to what you have fed into your consciousness, because it is said that each situation is a result of your will. Prakriti executes what Purusha has decided.

Question: But in many cases, the will may not be all that strong.

Quite true, then it will not happen. But if the will is strong, it will happen. This is the truth of what is called the Sankhya philosophy. According to Sankhya philosophy, Prakriti executes what Purusha demands and it says that what you are now is a result of what your Purusha had decided and demanded from Prakriti. This is the Sankhya thought. It may be right, it may be wrong, we are just exploring. Normally human beings may be materialistic, idealistic, spiritualist — whatever their predilection, one thing remains very true, that everybody is called upon to deal with situations and everyone wants to be master of the situations. This is the fundamental urge in every human being. Their mastery may come in the form of harmony with nature or the situation, it may come in the form of control of the situation, it may come under the form of mastery over the situation. In either of the three forms it may come, either with harmonising or by controlling or by mastering.

Actually speaking if we ask ourselves, what the aim of our life is; the usual answer is that it is to enjoy. This is a very common answer. I ask the next question "What is it that really gives you enjoyment?" Normally people answer that they really enjoy when they can have a situation which is full of sensations, which are pleasant. Then they feel they are enjoying. But we will find gradually that an individual truly enjoys when he can stand back from a situation, when the situation is under his control and he can change the situation according to his will, and he has even mastery over the situation such that whether that situation remains or does not remain, he is not affected at all. When he can arrive at this condition then he really enjoys. The first is called the Sakshi bhava, when you can witness the situation, the second is called the state of anumanta, when you give the sanction, and the third is called the condition or bhokta, the real enjoyer. You can really enjoy an object when whether that situation remains or does not remain; it has no effect on you. That is why Isha Upanishad said, "tena tyaktena bhunjithaha", i. e. you enjoy by renouncing. When you arrive at that condition in which you are in delight whether the situation is there or not, then only can you really enjoy.

Question: But in order to renounce, you do have to first experience it?

Quite true, that is why the first stage is witnessing. You first of all become the Sakshi, then you become an Anumanta, and then you become a Bhokta. These developments of becoming a Sakshi, of becoming an Anumanta or becoming the Bhokta are the beginnings of what we call spiritual experiences. This is not a mental experience. This is not a method merely of conceiving, you are not merely relating concepts, this is the field of experience. Spirituality is a field of experience, an experience which is not merely physical but something that brings you nearer to your true self consciousness.

This is said very briefly but actually to be able to witness, to be able to give the consent and to be really the enjoyer, it takes a long long period of experience. It takes a very, very long period of experience. A series of experiences and masteries of various kinds are needed to arrive at that point. But all these exercises are what may be called spiritual exercises. As a result of these exercises, you gain two basic experiences. One is that if you so like or so decide, you can escape from any situation that is given to you. You just withdraw from the situation and then withdraw completely away and you can be absorbed in self consciousness to such an extent that even if the situation remains there before you, it has no effect on you at all. The other capacity you get is that you bring a will on the situation and change it and the circumstance itself is changed. Now both these experiments have been done for thousands of years in India and both have been found to be valid. By making repeated experiments, it can be shown that both these possibilities exist.

Question: Is escaping from a situation such a good idea? Isn't it better to face it, not escape from it and then rise above it?

From my point of view, controlling and changing the situation is much more valuable than escaping, but psychologically I am only presenting all the possibilities, which include the possibility for you to escape.

Question: And be aware that you escaped.

Yes. It is possible psychologically to be aware that you can escape and then you really feel that that situation has no effect on you at all. The situation remains the same, but it now has no effect on you. You have not changed the situation. The situation remains the same, what you have done is that you have withdrawn from it to such an extent that you arrive at a point that it has no effect on you at all.

So that is one positive use of escaping that you can afterwards come back to the situation and change it. The other possibility is that you can withdraw from it forever. This is a very important statement I am making. You do not come back to improve it. Here also many experiments have been made. These experiments have shown to some of the people that even when they come back to the situation and try to change them, they do not change. They change to some extent but not to the degree to which they ought to change. So they have come to the conclusion that the situations are bound to remain more or less like this.

Question: That means the change has come in the person himself?

Their conclusion is that the world is like a dog's curly tail, however much you try to straighten it, it comes back to its curve, so you can never change it. This is the conclusion some people have arrived at that however much you try to change, it does not change. It is argued that Christ has come and gone, the world has remained as it is; Buddha has come and gone, the world has remained as it is.

Vedic, Upanishadic and Gita’s Yoga

If you examine the history of the world, the greatest experiments in this field have been done in India. They have been done elsewhere also. But this is an objective fact, it is not that we are speaking about India because we are Indians; this is a fact of Indian history that some of the profoundest experiments and repeated experiments have occurred in India, and the earliest were found in the Veda, and having made experiments they have laid down the road. The roads have been built so that others can follow that road very easily. They have found through their experiment that first by withdrawing from the situation and by gaining a lot of experience of self consciousness you can come back to the situation and you can greatly change the situation. But this experiment has to be done on many levels. The speciality of the Vedic rishis was that this withdrawing from a situation and again coming back to the situation to change it occurs on several levels. The first is the level of the physical, where you confront only a physical situation, withdraw from the physical situation, become larger than the field, come back to the physical situation and change it. Then you come to the situation of life, not the physical but the life of emotions, sentiments, desires, attractions, repulsions; withdraw from this life situation, come back again to the life situation, change it, and they said this also can be greatly changed. Then they made experience with the mind and similarly that showed that even mind can be greatly changed. Mental situations can be greatly changed. Therefore the Vedic experience is called the experience of victory. There is a battle and there is a victory. And you ascend from plane to plane and they said that even beyond the mind there is the truth plane, the plane of satyam ritam brihat. And when you reach that plane then you find that even mental, vital, physical planes can be changed by the help of your going into the truth plane. And they have found that some of the individuals reached such a point that they could change completely their entire being. Human nature they have found can be entirely changed. They not only experienced immortality at the highest plane, they built immortality in the situation itself. This was repeated also in the Upanishads and they gave so much importance to remaining in the situation, not escaping from it but changing the situation. They said that if you do not do it while in the body then you have to come back again in the body until you really realise it while in the body itself. Merely by withdrawing do not think that you will escape it. Even if you try to escape you will have to come back again.

But this process was a long process — to withdraw and again to change. But this treasure of experience of the Veda got lost after the Upanishads particularly. This wealth of knowledge and experience was not fully transmitted, so when fresh experiments were made, there was a real question which was raised once again: can the situation really be changed? And they found that the situation cannot be changed. You can withdraw from it, you can escape from the situation but you cannot change the situation. Having come to this conclusion they found quicker methods of escape. So they found out that if you just develop the mind and induce in the mind a sense of vairagya, which in a certain sense means a sense of vanity — meaninglessness — then the mind is induced to withdraw from the situation much more quickly. Secondly you develop the mind in the field of concentration, because when you withdraw you have to withdraw truly and with sustenance for a long period and this can happen only if the mind is sufficiently trained to be concentrated for a long time, this is the second prescription. First is vairagya, second the method of sustaining for a long period a sense of concentration or a capacity of concentration to be away from the situation, in self-consciousness, and if you can remain for long periods then you can very quickly come out of the snares of the situation. And ultimately you reach a point where you still find that even having withdrawn, when you come back again from there — because you cannot remain withdrawn for all the time, because the bodily calls will be there, the appetites of the body will be there, other physical discomforts will be there, so you will be called back from your withdrawal — so a point must come when you should even try to come out of the body. So they have prescribed that by long sessions of vairagya and concentration, you are able to come out ultimately from the body itself and then you can remain absorbed in the self consciousness. This method became prominent in India, particularly in Buddhistic tendency, in Jain tendency and also in the Hindu tendency to some extent, if not fully. There is a long history of India where you can see very clearly that the richness of the Vedic experience was as it were put behind, it remained only a memory, but was not practised. In practice only this kind of a method was developed and each one came out with quicker methods by which one can escape from the situation.

There were of course movements where there was a kind of an opposition to this kind of an escape such as we find in the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna was bewildered. He was asking why he should not escape from there, because it was quite prominent by that time itself that you can escape from the situation and particularly a horrible situation like this. He wondered why he should not withdraw and attain to samadhi and remain completely quiet, blameless and sinless. Sri Krishna repeats the Vedic experience and he says that although it is possible for anybody to withdraw, but he does not prescribe it, it is not preferable. There are both the methods. One of escaping and the other of dealing with the situation and changing the situation and the latter is the preferred path. Sri Krishna says that this path was declared by him long ago. In the fourth chapter he says to Arjuna that he gave this knowledge to Vivasvan and then to Manu and Ikshvaku and then it was lost and now he is giving this knowledge back again to Arjuna. But even after the Bhagavad Gita's great message, the general tendency that prevailed was the quick shortcut of escaping from life. Escaping from the situation became a very prevalent idea.

This is the history of what has been done so far. In the modern times, once again there is a tendency which prescribes that you should not escape but you should face the situation. This is a modern tendency and it has not come from a spiritual tradition. The modern progressivism says that you may do anything in the world, you may achieve anything for yourself but until you achieve something for the whole community, your achievements cannot be considered valuable. In the light of this new trend the question is being put: is it really possible to change the situation?

Quote from The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo, p.889

Therefore there is a need to study the Vedic experience again. When they said that the situation can be changed, had they really changed the situation? If they had changed the situation, why is this present situation still continuing? That means that they were not able to change the situation entirely. In the process of evaluation of the past we can say something was still missing even in the Vedic experience. They made many experiments and they proposed that we can change the situation and we can change the human nature. Sri Aurobindo says here: "there is still much to be done", and this is also the statement of the Veda itself. The Vedic rishis were great scientists, they never claimed more than what they really did. They themselves said that as we rise higher and higher, newer peaks reveal themselves before us which are still to be attained, there is still much to be accomplished. It means the Veda itself recognised that the victory was not a complete victory. There was a great victory but that victory which you can call complete victory, by which you can really change the situation, the world order can be changed much needs to be accomplished: Bhuri aspashtam kartvam—bhuri means a lot, spashta means clarify, kartvam means needed to be done, a lot of clarification still needs to be made. This statement is from the Veda itself.

Now what is it that is to be done, by which the real situation can be changed?

As I have said, Veda itself said that if you really want to change you have to enter into the truth plane—satyam ritam brihat—you have to cross the physical plane, the vital plane, the mental plane and enter into the truth plane. And they tried to bring the truth plane on the lower planes. In this respect much was done but something more was still to be done. It is to that that Sri Aurobindo addresses himself, ‘That which has still to be done, is to bring the Truth plane, not only in the individual life but on the collective plane, in the world order’. Not only to reach the supermind which was already reached by the Vedic rishis—the Truth plane is the Supermind—but to bring that supermind on the lower planes until the physical plane itself is changed. This was the real experiment that Sri Aurobindo did and accomplished, and he said, "this can be done". Sri Aurobindo says: the spiritual man has come but not the supramental being—to reach the supermind is one thing but to bring the supramental being here is another. That is why the process that Sri Aurobindo has proposed is a process of ascent and descent. You rise up to the higher levels of consciousness and bring their light into the lower planes of consciousness until you reach right up to the supermind and then bring down the supermind on the physical plane and transform that too. This process includes the positive sides of other experiences also. The escape from a situation as a temporary phase can be prescribed. You can come out for the present moment to escape from the situation if that is very necessary, only for a temporary phase, but not with the idea of completely escaping altogether and forever. In any case to be able to witness a situation, to control the situation, to master the situation these processes which are a part of escape are also parts of this process; this capacity in any case you must achieve. But then you have to supplement it by the capacity to come back to the situations, rise above the mind into the supermind and then constantly work on the situation to bring supramental knowledge on the physical.

If we read the first paragraph again, we shall understand what Sri Aurobindo says. He says that if the aim was only to return from ignorance and from situations of ignorance and to realise the inner self, then that work has been done already, the path has been found out. If it is only to change the world to some extent, that work also has been done, but if the task that is to be done is to completely change the situation of the world then that work has still not been done. That is still to be done. We shall read again this first paragraph (page 889).

If it is the sole intention of Nature in the evolution of the spiritual man to awaken him to the supreme Reality and release him from herself, or from the Ignorance in which she as the Power of the Eternal has masked herself, by a departure into a higher status of being elsewhere, if this step in the evolution is a close and an exit, then in the essence her work has been already accomplished and there is nothing more to be done. The ways have been built, the capacity to follow them has been developed, the goal or last height of the creation is manifest; all that is left is for each soul to reach individually the right stage and turn of its development, enter into the spiritual ways and pass by its own chosen path out of this inferior existence. But we have supposed that there is a farther intention,—not only a revelation of the Spirit, but a radical and integral transformation of Nature. There is a will in her to effectuate a true manifestation of the embodied life of the Spirit, to complete what she has begun by a passage from the Ignorance to the Knowledge, to throw off her mask and to reveal herself as the luminous Consciousness-Force carrying in her the eternal Existence and its universal Delight of being. It then becomes obvious that there is something not yet accomplished, there becomes clear to view the much that has still to be done, bhūri aspaṣṭa kartvam; there is a height still to be reached, a wideness still to be covered by the eye of vision, the wing of the will, the self-affirmation of the spirit in the material universe. What the evolutionary Power has done is to make a few individuals aware of their souls, conscious of their selves, aware of the eternal being that they are, to put them into communion with the Divinity or the Reality which is concealed by her appearances: a certain change of nature prepares, accompanies or follows upon this illumination, but it is not the complete and radical change which establishes a secure and settled new principle, a new creation, a permanent new order of being in the field of terrestrial Nature. The spiritual man has evolved, but not the supramental being who shall thenceforward be the leader of that Nature.

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - II: The Triple Transformation