The
Divne Body - Occultism
...
There is one problem raised by sex for those who would
reject in toto the obligations imposed by the animality
of the body and put forward by it as an insistent opposition
in the way of the aspirant to a higher life: it is the
necessity of the prolongation of the race for which the
sex activity is the only means already provided by the
Nature for living beings and inevitably imposed upon the
race. It is not indeed necessary for the individual seeker
after a divine life to take up this problem or even for
a group who do not seek after it for themselves alone
but desire a wide acceptance of it by mankind as at least
an ideal. There will always be the multitude who do not
concern themselves with it or are not ready for its complete
practice and to these can be left the care for the prolongation
of the race. The number of those who lead the divine life
can be maintained and increased as the ideal extends itself,
by the voluntary adhesion of those who are touched by
the aspiration and there need be no resort to physical
means for this purpose, no deviation from the rule of
a strict sexual abstinence. But yet there may be circumstances
in which from another standpoint, a voluntary creation
of bodies for souls that seek to enter the earth-life
to help in the creation and extension of the divine life
upon earth might be found to be desirable. Then the necessity
of a physical procreation for this purpose could only
be avoided if new means of a supraphysical kind were evolved
and made available. A development of this kind must necessarily
belong to what is now considered as the sphere of the
occult and the use of concealed powers of action or creation
not known or possessed by the common mind of the race.
Occultism means rightly the use of our nature, soul, mind,
life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness
to bring about results on their own or on the material
plane by some pressure of their own secret law and its
potentialities, for manifestation and result in human
or earthly mind and life and body or in objects and events
in the world of Matter. A discovery or an extension of
these little known or yet undeveloped powers is now envisaged
by some well-known thinkers as a next step to be taken
by mankind in its immediate evolution; the kind of creation
spoken of has not been included among these developments,
but it could well be considered as one of the new possibilities.
Even physical science is trying to find physical means
for passing beyond the ordinary instrumentation or procedure
of Nature in this matter of propagation or the renewal
of the physical life-force in human or animal beings;
but the resort to occult means and the intervention of
subtle physical processes, if it could be made possible,
would be a greater way which could avoid the limitations,
degradations, incompleteness and heavy imperfection of
the means and results solely available to the law of material
force. In India there has been always from the earliest
times a widely spread belief in the possibility and reality
of the use of these powers by men with an advanced knowledge
of these secret things or with a developed spiritual knowledge
and experience and dynamic force and even, in the Tantras,
an organised system of their method and practice. The
intervention of the Yogi in bringing about a desired birth
of offspring is also generally believed in and often appealed
to and the bestowal on the child so obtained of a spiritual
attainment or destiny by his will or his blessing is sometimes
asked for and such a result is recorded not only in the
tradition of the past but maintained by the witness of
the present. But there is here still the necessity or
a resort to the normal means of propagation and the gross
method of physical Nature. A purely occult method, a resort
to supraphysical processes acting by supraphysical means
for a physical result would have to be possible if we
are to avoid this necessity: the resort to the sex impulse
and its animal process could not be transcended otherwise.
If there is some reality in the phenomenon of materialisation
and dematerialisation claimed to be possible by occultists
and evidenced by occurrences many of us have witnessed,
a method of this kind would not be out of the range of
possibility. For in the theory of the occultists and in
the gradations of the ranges and planes of our being which
Yoga-knowledge outlines for us there is not only a subtle
physical force but a subtle physical Matter intervening
between life and gross Matter and to create in this subtle
physical substance and precipitate the forms thus made
into our grosser materiality is feasible. It should be
possible and it is believed to be possible for an object
formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit
from its subtlety into the state of gross Matter directly
by the intervention of an occult force and process whether
with or even without the assistance or intervention of
some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter
into a body or form for itself and take part in a divine
life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided
with such a form by this method of direct transmutation
without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing
any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the
growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable
to our present way of existence. It might then assume
at once the structure and greater powers and functionings
of the truly divine material body which must one day emerge
in a progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence
both of the life and form in a divinised earth-nature.
...
-
Sri Aurobindo
