THE perfecting of the normal
mind, heart, Prana and body gives us only the perfection
of the psychophysical machine we have to use and creates
certain right instrumental conditions for a divine life
and works lived and done with a purer, greater, clearer
power and knowledge. The next question is that of the
Force which is poured into the instruments, karana,
and the One who works it for his universal ends. The
force at work in us must be the manifest divine Shakti,
the supreme or the universal Force unveiled in the liberated
individual being, parä prakrtir jlvabhutä,
who will be the doer of all the action and the power
of this divine life, kartä. The One behind
this force will be the Ishwara, the Master of all being,
with whom all our existence will be in our perfection
a Yoga at once of oneness in being and of union in various
relations of the soul and its nature with the Godhead
who is seated within us and in whom too we live, move
and have our being. It is this Shakti with the Ishwara
in her or behind her whose divine presence and way we
have to call into all our being and life. For without
this divine presence and this greater working there
can be no Siddhi of the power of the nature.
All the action of man in life is a nexus of the presence
of the soul and the workings of Nature, Purusha and
Prakriti. The presence and influence of the Purusha
represents itself in nature as a certain power of our
being which we may call for our immediate purpose soul-force;
and it is always this soul-force which supports all
the workings of the powers of the reason, the mind,
life and body and determines the cast of our conscious
being and the type of our nature. The normal ordinarily
developed man possesses it in a subdued, a modified,
a mechanised, submerged form as temperament and character;
but that is only its most outward mould in which Purusha,
the conscious soul or being, seems to be limited, conditioned
and given some shape by the mechanical Prakriti. The
soul flows into whatever moulds of intellectual, ethical,
aesthetic, dynamic, vital and physical mind and type
the developing nature takes and can act only in the
way this formed Prakriti lays on it and move in its
narrow groove or relatively wider circle. The man is
then sattwic, rajasic or tamasic or a mixture of these
qualities and his temperament is only a sort of subtler
soul-colour which has been given to the major prominent
operation of these fixed modes of his nature. Men of
a stronger force get more of the soul-power to the surface
and develop what we call a strong or great personality,
they have in them something of the Vibhuti as described
by the Gita, vibhütimat sattvam srïmad
ürjitam eva vä, a higher power of being
often touched with or sometimes full of some divine
afflatus or more than ordinary manifestation of the
Godhead which is indeed present in all, even in the
weakest or most clouded living being, but here some
special force of it begins to come out from behind the
veil of the average humanity, and there is something
beautiful, attractive, splendid or powerful in these
exceptional persons which shines out in their personality,
character, life and work. These men too work in the
type of their nature-force according to its gunas, but
there is something evident in them and yet not easily
analysable which is in reality a direct power of the
Self and spirit using to strong purpose the mould and
direction of the nature. The nature itself thereby rises
to or towards a higher grade of its being. Much in the
working of the Force may seem egoistic or even perverse,
but it is still the touch of the Godhead behind, whatever
Daivic, Asuric or even Rakshasic form it may take, which
drives the Prakriti and uses it for its own greater
purpose. A still more developed power of the being will
bring out the real character of this spiritual presence
and it will then be seen as something impersonal and
self-existent and self-empowered, a sheer soul-force
which is other than the mind-force, life-force, force
of intelligence, but drives them and, even while following
to a certain extent their mould of working, Guna, type
of nature, yet puts its stamp of an initial transcendence,
impersonality, pure fire of spirit, a something beyond
the gunas of our normal nature. When the spirit in us
is free, then what was behind this soul-force comes
out in all its light, beauty and greatness, the Spirit,
the Godhead who makes the nature and soul of man his
foundation and living representative in cosmic being
and mind, action and life.
The Godhead, the spirit manifested in Nature appears
in a sea of infinite quality, Ananta-guna. But the executive
or mechanical Prakriti is of the threefold Guna, Sattwa,
Rajas, Tamas, and the Ananta-guna, the spiritual play
of infinite quality, modifies itself in this mechanical
nature into the type of these three gunas. And in the
soul-force in man this Godhead in Nature represents
itself as a fourfold effective Power, caturvyüha,
a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power
for mutuality and active and productive relation and
interchange, a Power for works and labour and service,
and its presence casts all human life into a nexus and
inner and outer operation of these four things. The
ancient thought of India conscious of this fourfold
type of active human personality and nature, built out
of it the four types of the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya
and Sudra, each with its spiritual turn, ethical ideal,
suitable upbringing, fixed function in society and place
in the evolutionary scale of the spirit. As always tends
to be the case when we too much externalise and mechanise
the more subtle truths of our nature, this became a
hard and fast system inconsistent with the freedom and
variability and complexity of the finer developing spirit
in man. Nevertheless the truth behind it exists and
is one of some considerable importance in the perfection
of our power of nature; but we have to take it in its
inner aspects, first, personality, character, temperament,
soul-type, then the soul-force which lies behind them
and wears these forms, and lastly the play of the free
spiritual Shakti in which they find their culmination
and unity beyond all modes. For the crude external idea
that a man is born as a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya
or Sudra and that alone, is not a psychological truth
of our being. The psychological fact is that there are
these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit
and its executive Shakti within us and the predominance
of one or the other in the more well-formed part of
our personality gives us our main tendencies, dominant
qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and
life. But they are more or less present in all men,
here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued
and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man
will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in
the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play
of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and
outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of
the Purusha with his and the world's Nature-Power.
The
most outward psychological form of these things is the
mould or trend of the nature towards certain dominant
tendencies, capacities, characteristics, form of active
power, quality of the mind and inner life, cultural
personality or type. The turn is often towards the predominance
of the intellectual element and the capacities which
make for the seeking and finding of knowledge and an
intellectual creation or formativeness and a preoccupation
with ideas and the study of ideas or of life and the
information and development of the reflective intelligence.
According to the grade of the development there is produced
successively the make and character of the man of active,
open, inquiring intelligence, then the intellectual
and, last, the thinker, sage, great mind of knowledge.
The soul-powers which make their appearance by a considerable
development of this temperament, personality, soul-type,
are a mind of light more and more open to all ideas
and knowledge and incomings of Truth; a hunger and passion
for knowledge, for its growth in ourselves, for its
communication to others, for its reign in the world,
the reign of reason and right and truth and justice
and, on a higher level of the harmony of our greater
being, the reign of the spirit and its universal unity
and light and love; a power of this light in the mind
and will which makes all the life subject to reason
and its right and truth or to the spirit and spiritual
right and truth and subdues the lower members to their
greater law; a poise in the temperament turned from
the first to patience, steady musing and calm, to reflection,
to meditation, which dominates and quiets the turmoil
of the will and passions and makes for high thinking
and pure living, founds the self-governed sattwic mind,
grows into a more and more mild, lofty, impersonalised
and universa-lised personality. This is the ideal character
and soul-power of the Brahmana, the priest of knowledge.
If it is not there in all its sides, we have the imperfections
or perversions of the type, a mere intellectuality or
curiosity for ideas without ethical or other elevation,
a narrow concentration on some kind of intellectual
activity without the greater needed openness of mind,
soul and spirit, or the arrogance and exclusiveness
of the intellectual shut up in his intellectuality,
or an ineffective idealism without any hold on life,
or any other of the characteristic incompletenesses
and limitations of the intellectual, religious, scientific
or philosophic mind. These are stoppings short on the
way or temporary exclusive concentrations, but a fullness
of the divine soul and power of truth and knowledge
in man is the perfection of this Dharma or Swabhava,
the accomplished Brahminhood of the complete Brahmana.
On the other hand, the turn of the nature may be to
the predominance of the will-force and the capacities
which make for strength, energy, courage, leadership,
protection, rule, victory in every kind of battle, a
creative and formative action, the willpower which lays
its hold on the material of life and on the wills of
other men and compels the environment into the shapes
which the Shakti within us seeks to impose on life or
acts powerfully according to the work to be done to
maintain what is in being or to destroy it and make
clear the paths of the world or to bring out into definite
shape what is to be. This may be there in lesser or
greater power or form and according to its grade and
force we have successively the mere fighter or man of
action, the man of self-imposing active will and personality
and the ruler, conqueror, leader of a cause, creator,
founder in whatever field of the active formation of
life. The various imperfections of the soul and mind
produce many imperfections and perversities of this
type,—the man of mere brute force of will, the
worshipper of power without any other ideal or higher
purpose, the selfish, dominant personality, the aggressive
violent rajasic man, the grandiose egoist, the Titan,
Asura, Rakshasa. But the soul-powers to which this type
of nature opens on its higher grades are as necessary
as those of the Brahmana to the perfection of our human
nature. The high fearlessness which no danger or difficulty
can daunt and which feels its power equal to meet and
face and bear whatever assault of man or fortune or
adverse gods, the dynamic audacity and daring which
shrinks from no adventure or enterprise as beyond the
powers of a human soul free from disabling weakness
and fear, the love of honour which would scale the heights
of the highest nobility of man and stoop to nothing
little, base, vulgar or weak, but maintains untainted
the ideal of high courage, chivalry, truth, straightforwardness,
sacrifice of the lower to the higher self, helpfulness
to men, unflinching resistance to injustice and oppression,
self-control and mastery, noble leading, warriorhood
and captainship of the journey and the battle, the high
self-confidence of power, capacity, character and courage
indispensable to the man of action,—these are
the things that build the make of the Kshatriya. To
carry these things to their highest degree and give
them a certain divine fullness, purity and grandeur
is the perfection of those who have this Swabhava and
follow this Dharma.
A third turn is one that brings out into relief the
practical arranging intelligence and the instinct of
life to produce, exchange, possess, enjoy, contrive,
put things in order and balance, spend itself and get
and give and take, work out to the best advantage the
active relations of existence. In its outward action
it is this power that appears as the skilful devising
intelligence, the legal, professional, commercial, industrial,
economical, practical and scientific, mechanical, technical
and utilitarian mind. This nature is accompanied at
the normal level of its fullness by a general temperament
which is at once grasping and generous, prone to amass
and treasure, to enjoy, show and use, bent upon efficient
exploitation of the world or its surroundings, but well
capable too of practical philanthropy, humanity, ordered
benevolence, orderly and ethical by rule but without
any high distinction of the finer ethical spirit, a
mind of the middle levels, not straining towards the
heights, not great to break and create noble moulds
of life, but marked by capacity, adaptation and measure.
The powers, limitations and perversions of this type
are familiar to us on a large scale, because this is
the very spirit which has made our modern commercial
and industrial civilisation. But if we look at the greater
inner capacities and soul-values, we shall find that
here also there are things that enter into the completeness
of human perfection. The Power that thus outwardly expresses
itself on our present lower levels is one that can throw
itself out in the great utilities of life and at its
freest and widest makes, not for oneness and identity
which is the highest reach of knowledge or the mastery
and spiritual kingship which is the highest reach of
strength, but still for something which is also essential
to the wholeness of existence, equal mutuality and the
exchange of soul with soul and life with life. Its powers
are, first, a skill, kausala, which fashions
and obeys law, recognises the uses and limits of relations,
adapts itself to settled and developing movements, produces
and perfects the outer technique of creation and action
and life, assures possession and proceeds from possession
to growth, is watchful over order and careful in progress
and makes the most of the material of existence and
its means and ends; then a power of self-spending skilful
in lavishness and skilful in economy, which recognises
the great law of interchange and amasses in order to
throw out in a large return, increasing the currents
of interchange and the fruitfulness of existence; a
power of giving and ample creative liberality, mutual
helpfulness and utility to others which becomes the
source in an open soul of just beneficence, humanitarianism,
altruism of a practical kind; finally, a power of enjoyment,
a productive, possessive, active opulence luxurious
of the prolific Ananda of existence. A largeness of
mutuality, a generous fullness of the relations of life,
a lavish self-spending and return and ample interchange
between existence and existence, a full enjoyment and
use of the rhythm and balance of fruitful and productive
life are the perfection of those who have this Swabhava
and follow this Dharma.
The other turn is towards work and service. This was
in the old order the Dharma or soul-type of the Sudra
and the Sudra in that order was considered as not one
of the twice-born, but an inferior type. A more recent
consideration of the values of existence lays stress
on the dignity of labour and sees in its toil the bed-rock
of the relations between man and man. There is a truth
in both attitudes. For this force in the material world
is at once in its necessity the foundation of material
existence or rather that on which it moves, the feet
of the creator Brahma in the old parable, and in its
primal state not uplifted by knowledge, mutuality or
strength, a thing which reposes on instinct, desire
and inertia. The well-developed Sudra soul-type has
the instinct of toil and the capacity of labour and
service; but toil as opposed to easy or natural action
is a thing imposed on the natural man which he bears
because without it he cannot assure his existence or
get his desires and he has to force himself or be forced
by others or circumstances to spend himself in work.
The natural Sudra works not from a sense of the dignity
of labour or from the enthusiasm of service,—though
that conies by the cultivation of his Dharma,—not
as the man of knowledge for the joy or gain of knowledge,
not from a sense of honour, nor as the born craftsman
or artist for love of his work or ardour for the beauty
of its technique, nor from an ordered sense of mutuality
or large utility, but for the maintenance of his existence
and gratification of his primal wants, and when these
are satisfied, he indulges, if left to himself, his
natural indolence, the indolence which is normal to
the quality in all of us, but comes out most clearly
in the uncompelled primitive man, the savage. The unregenerated
Sudra is born therefore for service rather than for
free labour and his temperament is prone to an inert
ignorance, a gross unthinking self-indulgence of the
instincts, a servility, an unreflec-tive obedience and
mechanical discharge of duty varied by indolence, evasion,
spasmodic revolt, an instinctive and uninformed life.
The ancients held that all men are born in their lower
nature as Sudras and only regenerated by ethical and
spiritual culture, but in their highest inner self are
Brahmanas capable of the full spirit and godhead, a
theory which is not far perhaps from the psychological
truth of our nature.
And yet when the soul develops, it is in this Swabhava
and Dharma of work and service that there are found
some of the most necessary and beautiful elements of
our greatest perfection and the key to much of the secret
of the highest spiritual evolution. For the soul powers
that belong to the full development of this force in
us are of the greatest importance,—the power of
service to others, the will to make our life a thing
of work and use to God and man, to obey and follow and
accept whatever great influence and needful discipline,
the love which consecrates service, a love which asks
for no return, but spends itself for the satisfaction
of that which we love, the power to bring down this
love and service into the physical field and the desire
to give our body and life as well as our soul and mind
and will and capacity to God and man, and, as a result,
the power of complete self-surrender, ätma-samarpana,
which transferred to the spiritual life becomes one
of the greatest and most revealing keys to freedom and
perfection. In these things lies the perfection of this
Dharma and the nobility of this Swabhava. Man could
not be perfect and complete if he had not this element
of nature in him to raise to its divine power.
None of these four types of personality can be complete
even in its own field if it does not bring into it something
of the other qualities. The man of knowledge cannot
serve Truth with freedom and perfection, if he has not
intellectual and moral courage, will, audacity, the
strength to open and conquer new kingdoms, otherwise
he becomes a slave of the limited intellect or a servant
or at most a ritual priest of only an established knowledge,[That
perhaps is why it was the Kshatriya bringing his courage,
audacity, spirit of conquest into the fields of intuitive
knowledge and spiritual experience who first discovered
the great truths of Vedanta.]—cannot
use his knowledge to the best advantage unless he has
the adaptive skill to work out its truths for the practice
of life, otherwise he lives only in the idea,—cannot
make the entire consecration of his knowledge unless
he has the spirit of service to humanity, to the Godhead
in man and the Master of his being. The man of power
must illumine and uplift and govern his force and strength
by knowledge, light of reason or religion or the spirit,
otherwise he becomes the mere forceful Asura,—must
have the skill which will help him best to use and administer
and regulate his strength and make it creative and fruitful
and adapted to his relations with others, otherwise
it becomes a mere drive of force across the field of
life, a storm that passes and devastates more than it
constructs,—must be capable too of obedience and
make the use of his strength a service to God and the
world, otherwise he becomes a selfish dominator, tyrant,
brutal compeller of men's souls and bodies. The man
of productive mind and work must have an open inquiring
mind and ideas and knowledge, otherwise he moves in
the routine of his functions without expansive growth,
must have courage and enterprise, must bring a spirit
of service into his getting and production, in order
that he may not only get but give, not only amass and
enjoy his own life, but consciously help the fruitfulness
and fullness of the surrounding life by which he profits.
The man of labour and service becomes a helpless drudge
and slave of society if he does not bring knowledge
and honour and aspiration and skill into his work, since
only so can he rise by an opening mind and will and
understanding usefulness to the higher dharmas. But
the greater perfection of man comes when he enlarges
himself to include all these powers, even though one
of them may lead the others, and opens his nature more
and more into the rounded fullness and universal capacity
of the fourfold spirit. Man is not cut out into an exclusive
type of one of these dharmas, but all these powers are
in him at work at first in an ill-formed confusion,
but he gives shape to one or another in birth after
birth, progresses from one to the other even in the
same life and goes on towards the total development
of his inner existence. Our life itself is at once an
inquiry after truth and knowledge, a struggle and battle
of our will with ourselves and surrounding forces, a
constant production, adaptation, application of skill
to the material of life and a sacrifice and service.
These things are the ordinary aspects of the soul while
it is working out its force in nature, but when we get
nearer to our inner selves, then we get too a glimpse
and experience of something which was involved in these
forms and can disengage itself and stand behind and
drive them, as if a general Presence or Power brought
to bear on the particular working of this living and
thinking machine. This is the force of the soul itself
presiding over and filling the powers of its nature.
The difference is that the first way is personal in
its stamp, limited and determined in its action and
mould, dependent on the instrumentation, but here there
emerges something impersonal in the personal form, independent
and self-sufficient even in the use of the instrumentation,
indeterminable though determining both itself and things,
something which acts with a much greater power upon
the world and uses particular power only as one means
of communication and impact on man and circumstance.
The Yoga of self-perfection brings out this soul-force
and gives it its largest scope, takes up all the fourfold
powers and throws them into the free circle of an integral
and harmonious spiritual dynamis. The godhead, the soul-power
of knowledge rises to the highest degree of which the
individual nature can be the supporting basis. A free
mind of light develops which is open to every kind of
revelation, inspiration, intuition, idea, discrimination,
thinking synthesis; an enlightened life of the mind
grasps at all knowledge with a delight of finding and
reception and holding, a spiritual enthusiasm, passion,
or ecstasy; a power of light full of spiritual force,
illumination and purity of working manifests its empire,
brahma-tejas, brahma-varcas; a bottomless steadiness
and illimitable calm upholds all the illumination, movement,
action as on some rock of ages, equal, unperturbed,
unmoved, acyuta.
The godhead, the soul-power of will and strength rises
to a like largeness and altitude. An absolute calm fearlessness
of the free spirit, an infinite dynamic courage which
no peril, limitation of possibility, wall of opposing
force can deter from pursuing the work or aspiration
imposed by the spirit, a high nobility of soul and will
untouched by any littleness or baseness and moving with
a certain greatness of step to spiritual victory or
the success of the God-given work through whatever temporary
defeat or obstacle, a spirit never depressed or cast
down from faith and confidence in the power that works
in the being, are the signs of this perfection. There
comes too to fulfilment a large godhead, a soul-power
of mutuality, a free self-spending and spending of gift
and possession in the work to be done, lavished for
the production, the creation, the achievement, the possession,
gain, uti-lisable return, a skill that observes the
law and adapts the relation and keeps the measure, a
great taking into oneself from all beings and a free
giving out of oneself to all, a divine commerce, a large
enjoyment of the mutual delight of life. And finally
there comes to perfection the godhead, the soul-power
of service, the universal love that lavishes itself
without demand of return, the embrace that takes to
itself the body of God in man and works for help and
service, the abnegation that is ready to bear the yoke
of the Master and make the life a free servitude to
Him and under his j direction to the claim and need
of his creatures, the self-surrender [ of the whole
being to the Master of our being and his work in the
world. These things unite, assist and enter into each
other, become one. The full consummation comes in the
greatest souls most capable of perfection, but some
large manifestation of this fourfold soul-power must
be sought and can be attained by all who practise the
integral Yoga.
These are the signs, but behind is the soul which thus
expresses itself in a consummation of nature. And this
soul is an outcoming of the free self of the liberated
man. That self is of no character, being infinite, but
bears and upholds the play of all character, supports
a kind of infinite, one, yet multiple personality, nirguno
gunï, is in its manifestation capable of infinite
quality, anantaguna. The force that it uses
is the supreme and universal, the divine and infinite
Shakti pouring herself into the individual being and
freely determining action for the divine purpose.
-Sri
Aurobindo
