WHEN the self is purified of
the wrong and confused action of the instrumental Nature
and liberated into its self-existent being, consciousness,
power and bliss and the Nature itself liberated from
the tangle of this lower action of the struggling gunas
and the dualities into the high truth of the divine
calm and the divine action, then spiritual perfection
becomes possible. Purification and freedom are the indispensable
antecedents of perfection. A spiritual self-perfection
can only mean a growing into oneness with the nature
of divine being, and therefore according to our conception
of divine being will be the aim, effort and method of
our seeking after this perfection. To the Mayavadin
the highest or rather the only real truth of being is
the impassive, impersonal, self-aware Absolute and therefore
to grow into an impassive calm, impersonality and pure
self-awareness of spirit is his idea of perfection and
a rejection of cosmic and individual being and a settling
into silent self-knowledge is his way. To the Buddhist
for whom the highest truth is a negation of being, a
recognition of the impermanence and sorrow of being
and the disastrous nullity of desire and a dissolution
of egoism, of the upholding associations of the Idea
and the successions of Karma are the perfect way. Other
ideas of the Highest are less negative; each according
to its own idea leads towards some likeness to the Divine,
sädrsya, and each finds its own way, such
as the love and worship of the Bhakta and the growing
into the likeness of the Divine by love. But for the
integral Yoga perfection will mean a divine spirit and
a divine nature which will admit of a divine relation
and action in the world; it will mean also in its entirety
a divinising of the whole nature, a rejection of all
its wrong knots of being and action, but no rejection
of any part of our being or of any field of our action.
The approach to perfection must be therefore a large
and complex movement and its results and workings will
have an infinite and varied scope. We must fix in order
to find a clue and method on certain essential and fundamental
elements and requisites of perfection, siddhi;
for if these are secured, all the rest will be found
to be only their natural development or particular working.
We may cast these elements into six divisions, interdependent
on each other to a great extent but still in a certain
way naturally successive in their order of attainment.
The movement will start from a basic equality of the
soul and mount to an ideal action of the Divine through
our perfected being in the largeness of the Brahmic
unity.
The first necessity is some fundamental poise of the
soul both in its essential and its natural being regarding
and meeting the things, impacts and workings of Nature.
This poise we shall arrive at by growing into a perfect
equality, samatä. The self, spirit or
Brahman is one in all and therefore one to all; it is,
as is said in the Gita which has developed fully this
idea of equality and indicated its experience on at
least one side of equality, the equal Brahman, samam
brahma; the Gita even goes so far in one passage
as to identify equality and yoga, samatvam yoga
ucyate. That is to say, equality is the sign of
unity with the Brahman, of becoming Brahman, of growing
into an undisturbed spiritual poise of being in the
Infinite. Its importance can hardly be exaggerated ;
for it is the sign of our having passed beyond the egoistic
determinations of our nature, of our having conquered
our enslaved response to the dualities, of our having
transcended the shifting turmoil of the gunas, of our
having entered into the calm and peace of liberation.
Equality is a term of consciousness which brings into
the whole of our being and nature the eternal tranquillity
of the Infinite. Moreover, it is the condition of a
securely and perfectly divine action; the security and
largeness of the cosmic action of the Infinite is based
upon and never breaks down or forfeits its eternal tranquillity.
That too must be the character of the perfect spiritual
action; to be equal and one to all things in spirit,
understanding, mind, heart and natural consciousness,—even
in the most physical consciousness,—and to make
all their workings, whatever their outward adaptation
to the thing to be done, always and imminuably full
of the divine equality and calm must be its inmost principle.
That may be said to be the passive or basic, the fundamental
and receptive side of equality, but there is also an
active and possessive side, an equal bliss which can
only come when the peace of equality is founded and
which is the beatific flower of its fullness.
The next necessity of perfection is to raise all the
active parts of the human nature to that highest condition
and working pitch of their power and capacity, sakti,
at which they become capable of being divinised into
true instruments of the free, perfect, spiritual and
divine action. For practical purposes we may take the
understanding, the heart, the Prana and the body as
the four members of our nature which have thus to be
prepared, and we have to find the constituent terms
of their perfection. Also there is the dynamical force
in us (viryä) of the temperament, character
and soul nature, svabhäva, which makes
the power of our members effective in action and gives
them their type and direction; this has to be freed
from its limitations, enlarged, rounded so that the
whole manhood in us may become the basis of a divine
manhood, when the Purusha, the real Man in us, the divine
Soul, shall act fully in this human instrument and shine
fully through this human vessel. To divinise the perfected
nature we have to call in the divine Power or Shakti
to replace our limited human energy so that this may
be shaped into the image of and filled with the force
of a greater infinite energy, daivi prakrti, bhägavati
sakti, This perfection will grow in the measure
in which we can surrender ourselves, first, to the guidance
and then to the direct action of that Power and of the
Master of our being and our works to whom it belongs,
and for this purpose faith is the essential, faith is
the great motor-power of our being in our aspirations
to perfection,—here, a faith in God and the Shakti
which shall begin in the heart and understanding, but
shall take possession of all our nature, all its consciousness,
all its dynamic motive-force. These four things are
the essentials of this second element of perfection,
the full powers of the members of the instrumental nature,
the perfected dynamis of the soul nature, the assumption
of them into the action of the divine Power, and a perfect
faith in all our members to call and support that assumption,
sakti, virya, daivl prakrti, sraddhä.
But
so long as this development takes place only on the
highest level of our normal nature, we may have a reflected
and limited image of perfection translated into the
lower terms of the soul in mind, life and body, but
not the possession of the divine perfection in the highest
terms possible to us of the divine Idea and its Power.
That is to be found beyond these lower principles in
the supramental gnosis; therefore the next step of perfection
will be the evolution of the mental into the gnostic
being. This evolution is effected by a breaking beyond
the mental limitation, a stride upward into the next
higher plane or region of our being hidden from us at
present by the shining lid of the mental reflections
and a conversion of all that we are into the terms of
this greater consciousness. In the gnosis itself, vijnäna,
there are several gradations which open at their highest
into the full and infinite Ananda. The gnosis once effectively
called into action will progressively take up all the
terms of intelligence, will, sense-mind, heart, the
vital and sensational being and translate them by a
luminous and harmonising conversion into a unity of
the truth, power and delight of a divine existence.
It will lift into that light and force and convert into
their own highest sense our whole intellectual, volitional,
dynamic, ethical, aesthetic, sensational, vital and
physical being. It has the power also of overcoming
physical limitations and developing a more perfect and
divinely instrumental body. Its light opens up the fields
of the super-conscient and darts its rays and pours
its luminous flood into the subconscient and enlightens
its obscure hints and withheld secrets. It admits us
to a greater light of the Infinite than is reflected
in the paler luminosity even of the highest mentality.
While it perfects the individual soul and nature in
the sense of a diviner existence and makes a full harmony
of the diversities of our being, it founds all its action
upon the Unity from which it proceeds and takes up everything
into that Unity. Personality and impersonality, the
two eternal aspects of existence, are made one by its
action in the spiritual being and Nature body of the
Purushottama.
The gnostic perfection, spiritual in its nature, is
to be accomplished here in the body and takes life in
the physical world as one of its fields, even though
the gnosis opens to us possession of planes and worlds
beyond the material universe. The physical body is therefore
a basis of action, pratisfhä, which cannot
be despised, neglected or excluded from the spiritual
evolution: a perfection of the body as the outer instrument
of a complete divine living on earth will be necessarily
a part of the gnostic conversion. The change will be
effected by bringing in the law of the gnostic Purusha,
vijnänamaya purusa, and of that into which
it opens, the Anandamaya, into the physical consciousness
and its members. Pushed to its highest conclusion this
movement brings in a spiritualising and illumination
of the whole physical consciousness and a divinising
of the law of the body. For behind the gross physical
sheath of this materially visible and sensible frame
there is subliminally supporting it and discoverable
by a finer subtle consciousness a subtle body of the
mental being and a spiritual or causal body of the gnostic
and bliss soul in which all the perfection of a spiritual
embodiment is to be found, a yet unmanifested divine
law of the body. Most of the physical siddhis acquired
by certain Yogins are brought about by some opening
up of the law of the subtle or a calling down of something
of the law of the spiritual body. The ordinary method
is the opening up of the Chakras by the physical processes
of Hathayoga (of which something is also included in
the Rajayoga) or by the methods of the Tantric discipline.
But while these may be optionally used at certain stages
by the integral Yoga, they are not indispensable; for
here the reliance is on the power of the higher being
to change the lower existence, a working is chosen mainly
from above downward and not the opposite way, and therefore
the development of the superior power of the gnosis
will be awaited as the instrumentative change in this
part of the Yoga.
There will remain, because it will then only be entirely
possible, the perfect action and enjoyment of being
on the gnostic basis. The Purusha enters into cosmic
manifestation for the variations of his infinite existence,
for knowledge, action and enjoyment; the gnosis brings
the fullness of spiritual knowledge and it will found
on that the divine action and cast the enjoyment of
world and being into the law of the truth, the freedom
and the perfection of the spirit. But neither action
nor enjoyment will be the lower action of the gunas
and consequent egoistic enjoyment mostly of the satisfaction
of rajasic desire which is our present way of living.
Whatever desire will remain, if that name be given,
will be the divine desire, the will to delight of the
Purusha enjoying in his freedom and perfection the action
of the perfected Prakriti and all her members. The Prakriti
will take up the whole nature into the law of her higher
divine truth and act in that law offering up the universal
enjoyment of her action and being to the Anandamaya
Ishwara, the Lord of existence and works and Spirit
of bliss, who presides over and governs her workings.
The individual soul will be the channel of this action
and offering, and it will enjoy at once its oneness
with the Ishwara and its oneness with the Prakriti and
will enjoy all relations with Infinite and finite, with
God and the universe and beings in the universe in the
highest terms of the union of the universal Purusha
and Prakriti.
All the gnostic evolution opens up into the divine principle
of Ananda, which is the foundation of the fullness of
spiritual being, consciousness and bliss of Sachchidananda
or eternal Brahman. Possessed at first by reflection
in the mental experience, it will be possessed afterwards
with a greater fullness and directness in the massed
and luminous consciousness, cidghana, which comes by
the gnosis. The Siddha or perfected soul will live in
union with the Purushottama in this Brahmic consciousness,
he will be conscious in the Brahman that is the All,
sarvam brahma, in the Brahman infinite in being and
infinite in quality, anantam brahma, in Brahman as self-existent
consciousness and universal knowledge, jnanam brahma,
in Brahman as the self-existent bliss and its universal
delight of being, anandam brahma. He will experience
all the universe as the manifestation of the One, all
quality and action as the play of his universal and
infinite energy, all knowledge and conscious experience
as the outflowing of that consciousness, and all in
the terms of that one Ananda. His physical being will
be one with all material Nature, his vital being with
the life of the universe, his mind with the cosmic mind,
his spiritual knowledge and will with the divine knowledge
and will both in itself and as it pours itself through
these channels, his spirit with the one spirit in all
beings. All the variety of cosmic existence will be
changed to him in that unity and revealed in the secret
of its spiritual significance. For in this spiritual
bliss and being he will be one with That which is the
origin and continent and inhabitant and spirit and constituting
power of all existence. This will be the highest reach
of self-perfection.
-Sri
Aurobindo
