The
Divine Body
Page 1
A
divine life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal
that we envisage. But what will be the divine body? What
will be the nature of this body, its structure, the principle
of its activity, the perfection that distinguishes it from
the limited and imperfect physicality within which we are
now bound? What will be the conditions and operations of
its life, still physical in its base upon the earth, by
which it can be known as divine?
If
it is to be the product of an evolution, and it is so that
we must envisage it, an evolution out of our human imperfection
and ignorance into a greater truth of spirit and nature,
by what process or stages can it grow into manifestation
or rapidly arrive? The process of the evolution upon earth
has been slow and tardy—what principle must intervene
if there is to be a transformation, a progressive or sudden
change?
It
is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at
the possibility of this transformation. As Nature has evolved
beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested
Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness
and power of our existence free from the imperfection and
limitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness,
and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit.
Here a slow and tardy change need no longer be the law or
manner of our evolution; it will be only so to a greater
or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and
hampers our ascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness
its power of spiritual truth of being will determine all.
Into that truth we shall be freed and it will transform
mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a
perfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being
are there as native powers of the supramental truth-consciousness
and these will in their very nature transform mind and life
and body even here upon earth into a manifestation of the
truth-conscious spirit. The obscurations of earth will not
prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for
even into the earth it can bring enough of the omniscient
light and omnipotent force of the spirit to conquer. All
may not open to the fullness of its light and power, but
whatever does open must to that extent undergo the change.
That will be the principle of transformation.
It
might be that a psychological change, a mastery of the nature
by the soul, a transformation of the mind into a principle
of light, of the life-force into power and purity would
be the first approach, the first attempt to solve the problem,
to escape beyond the merely human formula and establish
something that could be called a divine life upon earth,
a first sketch of supermanhood, of a supramental living
in the circumstances of the earth-nature. But this could
not be the complete and radical change needed; it would
not be the total transformation, the fullness of a divine
life in a divine body. There would be a body still human
and indeed animal in its origin and fundamental character
and this would impose its own inevitable limitations on
the higher parts of the embodied being. As limitation by
ignorance and error is the fundamental defect of an untransformed
mind, as limitation by the imperfect impulses and strainings
and wants of desire are the defects of an untransformed
life-force, so also imperfection of the potentialities of
the physical action, an imperfection, a limitation in the
response of its half-consciousness to the demands made upon
it and the grossness and stains of its original animality
would be the defects of an untransformed or an imperfectly
transformed body. These could not but hamper and even pull
down towards themselves the action of the higher parts of
the nature. A transformation of the body must be the condition
for a total transformation of the nature.
It
might be also that the transformation might take place by
stages; there are powers of the nature still belonging to
the mental region which are yet potentialities of a growing
gnosis lifted beyond our human mentality and partaking of
the light and power of the Divine and an ascent through
these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might
seem to be the natural evolutionary course. But in practice
it might be found that these intermediate levels would not
be sufficient for the total transformation since, being
themselves illumined potentialities of mental being not
yet supramental in the full sense of the word, they could
bring down to the mind only a partial divinity or raise
the mind towards that but not effectuate its elevation into
the complete supramentality of the truth-consciousness.
Still these levels might become stages of the ascent which
some would reach and pause there while others went higher
and could reach and live on superior strata of a semi-divine
existence. It is not to be supposed that all humanity would
rise in a block into the supermind; at first those only
might attain to the highest or some intermediate height
of the ascent whose inner evolution has fitted them for
so great a change or who are raised by the direct touch
of the Divine into its perfect light and power and bliss.
The large mass of human beings might still remain for long
content with a normal or only a partially illumined and
uplifted human nature. But this would be itself a sufficiently
radical change and initial transformation of earth-life;
for the way would be open to all who have the will to rise,
the supramental influence of the truth-consciousness would
touch the earth-life and influence even its untransformed
mass and a hope would be there and a promise eventually
available to all which now only the few can share
in or realise.
In
any case these would be beginnings only and could not constitute
the fullness of the divine life upon earth; it would be
a new orientation of the earthly life but not the consummation
of its change. For that there must be the sovereign reign
of a supramental truth-consciousness to which all other
forms of life would be subordinated and depend upon it as
the master principle and supreme power to which they could
look up as the goal, profit by its influences, be moved
and upraised bysomething of its illumination and penetrating
force. Especially, as the human body had to come into existence
with its modification of the previous animal form and its
erect figure of a new power of life and its expressive movements
and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle
of mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must
be developed with new powers, activities or degrees of a
divine action expressive of a truth-conscious being and
proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a
conscious spirit. While the capacity for taking up and sublimating
all the activities of the earth-life capable of being spiritualised
must be there, a transcendence of the original animality
and the actions incurably tainted by it or at least some
saving transformation of them, some spiritualising or psychicising
of the consciousness and motives animating them and the
shedding of whatever could not be so transformed, even a
change of what might be called its instrumental structure,
its functioning and organisation, a complete and hitherto
unprecedented control of these things must be the consequence
or incidental to this total change. These things have been
already to some extent illustrated in the lives of many
who have become possessed of spiritual powers but as something
exceptional and occasional, the casual or incomplete manifestation
of an acquired capacity rather than the organisation of
a new consciousness, a new life and a new nature. How far
can such physical transformation be carried, what are the
limits within which it must remain to be consistent with
life upon earth and without carrying that life beyond the
earthly sphere or pushing it towards the supraterrestrial
existence? The supramental consciousness is not a fixed
quantity but a power which passes to higher and higher levels
of possibility until it reaches supreme consummations of
spiritual existence fulfilling supermind as supermind fulfils
the ranges of spiritual consciousness that are pushing towards
it from the human or mental level. In this progression the
body also may reach a more perfect form and a higher range
of its expressive powers, become a more and more perfect
vessel of divinity.
-
Sri Aurobindo
