Perfection
of the Body
Page 4
There
are other movements taught and trained by the mind which
can yet go on operating automatically but faultlessly even
when not attended to by the thought or will; there are others
which can operate in sleep and produce results of value
to the waking intelligence. But more important is what may
be described as a trained and developed automatism, a perfected
skill and capacity of eye and ear and the hands and all
the members prompt to respond to any call made on them,
a developed spontaneous operation as an instrument, a complete
fitness for any demand that the mind and life-energy can
make upon it. This is ordinarily the best we can achieve
at the lower end, when we start from that end and limit
ourselves to the means and methods which are proper to it.
For more we have to turn to the mind and life-energy themselves
or to the energy of the spirit and to what they can do for
a greater perfection of the body. The most we can do in
the physical field by physical means is necessarily insecure
as well as bound by limits; even what seems a perfect health
and strength of the body is precarious and can be broken
down at any moment by fluctuations from within or by a strong
attack or shock from outside: only by the breaking of our
limitations can a higher and more enduring perfection come.
One direction in which our consciousness must grow is an
increasing hold from within or from above on the body and
its powers and its more conscious response to the higher
parts of our being. The mind pre-eminently is man; he is
a mental being and his human perfection grows the more he
fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being,
Purusha, leader of the life and the body. If the mind can
take up and control the instincts and automatisms of the
life-energy and the subtle physical consciousness and the
body, if it can enter into them, consciously use and, as
we may say, fully mentalise their instinctive or spontaneous
action, the perfection of these energies, their action too
become more conscious and more aware of themselves and more
perfect. But it is necessary for the mind too to grow in
perfection and this it can do best when it depends less
on the fallible intellect of physical mind, when it is not
limited even by the more orderly and accurate working of
the reason and can grow in intuition and acquire a wider,
deeper and closer seeing and the more luminous drive of
energy of a higher intuitive will. Even within the limits
of its present evolution it is difficult to measure the
degree to which the mind is able to extend its control or
its use of the body's powers and capacities and when the
mind rises to higher powers still and pushes back its human
boundaries, it becomes impossible to fix any limits: even,
in certain realisations, an intervention by the will in
the automatic working of the bodily organs seems to become
possible. Wherever limitations recede and in proportion
as they recede, the body becomes a more plastic and responsive
and in that measure a more fit and perfect instrument of
the action of the spirit. In all effective and expressive
activities here in the material world the cooperation of
the two ends of our being is indispensable. If the body
is unable whether by fatigue or by natural incapacity or
any other cause to second the thought or will or is in any
way irresponsive or insufficiently responsive, to that extent
the action fails or falls short or becomes in some degree
unsatisfying or incomplete. In what seems to be an exploit
of the spirit so purely mental as the outpouring of poetic
inspiration, there must be a responsive vibration of the
brain and its openness as a channel for the power of the
thought and vision and the light of the word that is making
or breaking its way through or seeking for its perfect expression.
If the brain is fatigued or dulled by any clog, either the
inspiration cannot come and nothing is written or it fails
and something inferior is all that can come out; or else
a lower inspiration takes the place of the more luminous
formulation that was striving to shape itself or the brain
finds it more easy to lend itself to a less radiant stimulus
or else it labours and constructs or responds to poetic
artifice. Even in the most purely mental activities the
fitness, readiness or perfect training of the bodily instrument
is a condition indispensable. That readiness, that response
too is part of the total perfection of the body.
The
essential purpose and sign of the growing evolution here
is the emergence of consciousness in an apparently inconscient
universe, the growth of consciousness and with it growth
of the light and power of the being; the development of
the form and its functioning or its fitness to survive,
although indispensable, is not the whole meaning or the
central motive. The greater and greater awakening of consciousness
and its climb to a higher and higher level and a wider extent
of its vision and action is the condition of our progress
towards that supreme and total perfection which is the aim
of our existence. It is the condition also of the total
perfection of the body. There are higher levels of the mind
than any we now conceive and to these we must one day reach
and rise beyond them to the heights of a greater, a spiritual
existence. As we rise we have to open to them our lower
members and fill these with those superior and supreme dynamisms
of light and power; the body we have to make a more and
more and even entirely conscious frame and instrument, a
conscious sign and seal and power of the spirit. As it grows
in this perfection, the force and extent of its dynamic
action and its response and service to the spirit must increase;
the control of the spirit over it also must grow and the
plasticity of its functioning both in its developed and
acquired parts of power and in its automatic responses down
to those that are now purely organic and seem to be the
movements of a mechanic inconscience. This cannot happen
without a veritable transformation, and a transformation
of the mind and life and very body is indeed the change
to which our evolution is secretly moving and without this
transformation the entire fullness of a divine life on earth
cannot emerge. In this transformation the body itself can
become an agent and a partner. It might indeed be possible
for the spirit to achieve a considerable manifestation with
only a passive and imperfectly conscious body as its last
or bottommost means of material functioning, but this could
not be anything perfect or complete. A fully conscious body
might even discover and work out the right material method
and process of a material transformation. For this, no doubt,
the spirit's supreme light and power and creative joy must
have manifested on the summit of the individual consciousness
and sent down their fiat into the body, but still the body
may take in the working out its spontaneous part of self-discovery
and achievement. It would be thus a participator and agent
in its own transformation and the integral transformation
of the whole being; this too would be a part and a sign
and evidence of the total perfection of the body.
-
Sri Aurobindo
