THE relation between the Purusha
and Prakriti which emerges as one advances in the Yoga
of self-perfection is the next thing that we have to
understand carefully in this part of the Yoga. In the
spiritual truth of our being the power which we call
Nature is the power of being, consciousness and will
and therefore the power of self-expression and self-creation
of the self, soul or Purusha. But to our ordinary mind
in the ignorance and to its experience of things the
force of Prakriti has a different appearance. When we
look at it in its universal action outside ourselves,
we see it first as a mechanical energy in the cosmos
which acts upon matter or in its own created forms of
matter. In matter it evolves powers and processes of
life and in living matter powers and processes of mind.
Throughout its operations it acts by fixed laws and
in each kind of created thing displays varying properties
of energy and laws of process which give its character
to the genus or species and again in the individual
develops without infringing the law of the kind minor
characteristics and variations of a considerable consequence.
It is this mechanical appearance of Prakriti which has
preoccupied the modern scientific mind and made for
it its whole view of Nature, and so much so that science
still hopes and labours with a very small amount of
success to explain all phenomena of life by laws of
matter and all phenomena of mind by laws of living matter.
Here soul or spirit has no place and nature cannot be
regarded as power of spirit. Since the whole of our
existence is mechanical, physical and bounded by the
biological phenomenon of a brief living consciousness
and man is a creature and instrument of material energy,
the spiritual self-evolution of Yoga can be only a delusion,
hallucination, abnormal state of mind or self-hypnosis.
In any case it cannot be what it represents itself to
be, a discovery of the eternal truth of our being and
a passing above the limited truth of the mental, vital
and physical to the full truth of our spiritual nature.
But
when we look, not at external mechanical Nature to the
exclusion of our personality, but at the inner subjective
experience of man, the mental being, our nature takes
to us a quite different appearance. We may believe intellectually
in a purely mechanical view even of our subjective existence,
but we cannot act upon it or make it quite real to our
self-experience. For we are conscious of an I which
does not seem identical with our nature, but capable
of a standing back from it, of a detached observation
and criticism and creative use of it, and of a will
which we naturally think of as a free will; and even
if this be a delusion, we are still obliged in practice
to act as if we were responsible mental beings capable
of a free choice of our actions, able to use or misuse
and to turn to higher or lower ends our nature. And
even we seem to be struggling both with our environmental
and with our own present nature and striving to get
mastery over a world which imposes itself on and masters
us and at the same time to become something more than
we now are. But the difficulty is that we are only in
command, if at all, over a small part of ourselves,
the rest is subconscient or subliminal and beyond our
control, our will acts only in a small selection of
our activities; the most is a process of mechanism and
habit and we must strive constantly with ourselves and
surrounding circumstances to make the least advance
or self-amelioration. There seems to be a dual being
in us; Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, seem to
be half in agreement, half at odds, Nature laying its
mechanical control on the soul, the soul attempting
to change and master nature. And the question is what
is the fundamental character of this duality and what
the issue.
The
Sankhya explanation is that our present existence is
governed by a dual principle. Prakriti is inert without
the contact of Purusha, acts only by a junction with
it and then too by the fixed mechanism of her instruments
and qualities; Purusha, passive and free apart from
Prakriti, becomes by contact with her and sanction to
her works subject to this mechanism, lives in her limitation
of ego-sense and must get free by withdrawing the sanction
and returning to its own proper principle. Another explanation
that tallies with a certain part of our experience is
that there is a dual being in us, the animal and material,
or more widely the lower nature-bound, and the soul
or spiritual being entangled by mind in the material
existence or in world-nature, and freedom comes by escape
from the entanglement, the soul returning to its native
planes or the self or spirit to its pure existence.
The perfection of the soul then is to be found not at
all in, but beyond Nature.
But
in a higher than our present mental consciousness we
find that this duality is only a phenomenal appearance.
The highest and real truth of existence is the one Spirit,
the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and it is the power
of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all
that we experience as universe. This universal Nature
is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but
informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit.
The mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance
and the reality is the Spirit creating or manifesting
its own being by its own power of being in all that
is in Nature. Soul and Nature in us too are only a dual
appearance of the one existence. The universal energy
acts in us, but the soul limits itself by the ego-sense,
lives in a partial and separate experience of her workings,
uses only a modicum and a fixed action of her energy
for its self-expression. It seems rather to be mastered
and used by this energy than to use it, because it identifies
itself with the ego-sense which is part of the natural
instrumentation and lives in the ego experience. The
ego is in fact driven by the mechanism of Nature of
which it is a part and the ego-will is not and cannot
be a free will. To arrive at freedom, mastery and perfection
we have to get back to the real self and soul within
and arrive too thereby at our true relations with our
own and with universal nature.
In
our active being this translates itself into a replacement
of our egoistic, our personal, our separatively individual
will and energy by a universal and a divine will and
energy which determines our action in harmony with the
universal action and reveals itself as the direct will
and the all-guiding power of the Purushottama. We replace
the inferior action of the limited, ignorant and imperfect
personal will and energy in us by the action of the
divine Shakti. To open ourselves to the universal energy
is always possible to us, because that is all around
us and always flowing into us, it is that which supports
and supplies all our inner and outer action and in fact
we have no power of our own in any separately individual
sense, but only a personal formulation of the one Shakti.
And, on the other hand, this universal Shakti is within
ourselves, concentrated in us, for the whole power of
it is present in each individual as in the universe,
and there are means and processes by which we can awaken
its greater and potentially infinite force and liberate
it to its larger workings.
We
can become aware of the existence and presence of the
universal Shakti in the various forms of her power.
At present we are conscious only of the power as formulated
in our physical mind, nervous being and corporeal case
sustaining our various activities. But if we can once
get beyond this first formation by some liberation of
the hidden, recondite, subliminal parts of our existence
by Yoga, we become aware of a greater life-force, a
pranic Shakti, which supports and fills the body and
supplies all the physical and vital activities,—for
the physical energy is only a modified form of this
force,—and supplies and sustains too from below
all our mental action. This force we feel in ourselves
also, but we can feel it too around us and above, one
with the same energy in us, and can draw it in and down
to aggrandise our normal action or call upon and get
it to pour into us. It is an illimitable ocean of Shakti
and will pour as much of itself as we can hold into
our being. This pranic force we can use for any of the
activities of life, body or mind with a far greater
and effective power than any that we command in our
present operations, limited as they are by the physical
formula. The use of this pranic power liberates us from
that limitation to the extent of our ability to use
it in place of the body-bound energy. It can be used
so to direct the Prana as to manage more powerfully
or to rectify any bodily state or action, as to heal
illness or to get rid of fatigue, and to liberate an
enormous amount of mental exertion and play of will
or knowledge. The exercises of Pranayama are the familiar
mechanical means of freeing and getting control of the
pranic energy. They heighten too and set free the psychic,
mental and spiritual energies which ordinarily depend
for their opportunity of action on the pranic force.
But the same thing can be done by mental will and practice
or by an increasing opening of ourselves to a higher
spiritual power of the Shakti. The pranic Shakti can
be directed not only upon ourselves, but effectively
towards others or on things or happenings for whatever
purposes the will dictates. Its effectivity is immense,
in itself illimitable, and limited only by defect of
the power, purity and universality of the spiritual
or other will which is brought to bear upon it; but
still, however great and powerful, it is a lower formulation,
a link between the mind and body, an instrumental force.
There is a consciousness in it, a presence of the spirit,
of which we are aware, but it is encased, involved in
and preoccupied with the urge to action. It is not to
this action of the Shakti that we can leave the whole
burden of our activities; we have either to use its
lendings by our own enlightened personal will or else
call in a higher guidance; for of itself it will act
with greater force, but still according to our imperfect
nature and mainly by the drive and direction of the
life-power in us and not according to the law of the
highest spiritual existence.
The
ordinary power by which we govern the pranic energy
is that of the embodied mind. But when we get clear
above the physical mind, we can get too above the pranic
force to the consciousness of a pure mental energy which
is a higher formulation of the Shakti. There we are
aware of a universal mind consciousness closely associated
with this energy in, around and above us,—above,
that is to say, the level of our ordinary mind status,—giving
all the substance and shaping all the forms of our will
and knowledge and of the psychic element in our impulses
and emotions. This mind force can be made to act upon
the pranic energy and can impose upon it the influence,
colour, shape, character, direction of our ideas, our
knowledge, our more enlightened volition and thus more
effectively bring our life and vital being into harmony
with our higher powers of being, ideals and spiritual
aspirations. In our ordinary state these two, the mental
and the pranic being and energies, are very much mixed
up and run into each other, and we are not able clearly
to distinguish them or get a full hold of the one on
the other and so control effectively the lower by the
higher and more understanding principle. But when we
take our station above the physical mind, we are able
then to separate clearly the two forms of energy, the
two levels of our being, disentangle their action and
act with a clearer and more potent self-knowledge and
an enlightened and a purer willpower. Nevertheless the
control is not complete, spontaneous, sovereign so long
as we work with the mind as our chief guiding and controlling
force. The mental energy we find to be itself derivative,
a lower and limiting power of the conscious spirit which
acts only by isolated and combined seeings, imperfect
and incomplete half-lights which we take for full and
adequate light, and with a disparity between the idea
and knowledge and the effective will-power. And we are
aware soon of a far higher power of the Spirit and its
Shakti concealed or above, super-conscient to mind or
partially acting through the mind, of which all this
is an inferior derivation.
The
Purusha and Prakriti are on the mental level as in the
rest of our being closely joined and much involved in
each other and we are not able to distinguish clearly
soul and nature. But in the purer substance of mind
we can more easily discern the dual strain. The mental
Purusha is naturally able in its own native principle
of mind to detach itself, as we have seen, from the
workings of its Prakriti and there is then a division
of our being between a consciousness that observes and
can reserve its will-power and an energy full of the
substance of consciousness that takes the forms of knowledge,
will and feeling. This detachment gives at its highest
a certain freedom from the compulsion of the soul by
its mental nature. For ordinarily we are driven and
carried along in the stream of our own and the universal
active energy partly floundering in its waves, partly
maintaining and seeming to guide or at least propel
ourselves by a collected thought and an effort of the
mental will muscle; but now there is a part of ourselves,
nearest to the pure essence of self, which is free from
the stream, can quietly observe and to a certain extent
decide its immediate movement and course and to a greater
extent its ultimate direction. The Purusha can at last
act upon the Prakriti from half apart, from behind or
from above her as a presiding person or presence, adhyaksa,
by the power of sanction and control inherent in the
spirit.
What
we shall do with this relative freedom depends on our
aspiration, our idea of the relation we must have with
our highest self, with God and Nature. It is possible
for the Purusha to use it on the mental plane itself
for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification,
to sanction, reject, alter, bring out new formulations
of the nature and establish a calm and disinterested
action, a high and pure sattwic balance and rhythm of
its energy, a personality perfected in the sattwic principle.
This may amount only to a highly mentalised perfection
of our present intelligence and the ethical and the
psychic being or else, aware of the greater self in
us it may impersonalise, universalise, spiritualise
its self-conscious existence and the action of its nature
and arrive either at a large quietude or a large perfection
of the spiritualised mental energy of its being. It
is possible again for the Purusha to stand back entirely
and by a refusal of sanction allow the whole normal
action of the mind to exhaust itself, run down, spend
its remaining impetus of habitual action and fall into
silence. Or else this silence may be imposed on the
mental energy by rejection of its action and a constant
command to quietude. The soul may through the confirmation
of this quietude and mental silence pass into some ineffable
tranquillity of the spirit and vast cessation of the
activities of Nature. But it is also possible to make
this silence of the mind and ability to suspend the
habits of the lower nature a first step towards the
discovery of a superior formulation, a higher grade
of the status and energy of our being and pass by an
ascent and transformation into the supramental power
of the spirit. And this may even, though with more difficulty,
be done without resorting to the complete state of quietude
of the normal mind by a persistent and progressive transformation
of all the mental into their greater corresponding supramental
powers and activities. For everything in the mind derives
from and is a limited, inferior, groping, partial or
perverse translation into mentality of something in
the supermind. But neither of these movements can be
successfully executed by the sole individual unaided
power of the mental Purusha in us, but needs the help,
intervention and guidance of the divine Self, the Ishwara,
the Purushottama. For the supermind is the divine mind
and it is on the supramental plane that the individual
arrives at his right, integral, luminous and perfect
relation with the supreme and universal Purusha and
the supreme and universal Para Prakriti.
As
the mind progresses in purity, capacity of stillness
or freedom from absorption in its own limited action,
it becomes aware of and is able to reflect, bring into
itself or enter into the conscious presence of the Self,
the supreme and universal Spirit, and it becomes aware
too of grades and powers of the spirit higher than its
own highest ranges. It becomes aware of an infinite
of the consciousness of being, an infinite ocean of
all the power and energy of illimitable consciousness,
an infinite ocean of Ananda, of the self-moved delight
of existence. It may be aware of one or other only of
these things, for the mind can separate and feel exclusively
as distinct original principles what in a higher experience
are inseparable powers of the One, or it may feel them
in a trinity or fusion which reveals or arrives at their
oneness. It may become aware of it on the side of Purusha
or on the side of Prakriti. On the side of Pursha it
reveals itself as Self or Spirit, as Being or as the
one sole existent Being, the divine Purushottama, and
the individual Jiva soul can enter into entire oneness
with it in its timeless self or in its universality,
or enjoy nearness, immanence, difference without any
gulf of separation and enjoy too inseparably and at
one and the same time oneness of being and delight-giving
difference of relation in active experiencing nature.
On the side of Prakriti the power and Ananda of the
Spirit come into the front to manifest this Infinite
in the beings and personalities and ideas and forms
and forces of the universe and there is then present
to us the divine Mahashakti, original Power, supreme
Nature, holding in herself infinite existence and creating
the wonders of the cosmos. The mind grows conscious
of this illimitable ocean of Shakti or else of her presence
high above the mind and pouring something of herself
into us to constitute all that we are and think and
will and do and feel and experience, or it is conscious
of her all around us and our personality a wave of the
ocean of power of spirit, or of her presence in us and
of her action there based on our present form of natural
existence but originated from above and raising us towards
the higher spiritual status. The mind too can rise towards
and touch her infinity or merge itself in it in trance
of Samadhi or can lose itself in her universality, and
then our individuality disappears, our centre of action
is then no longer in us, but either outside our bodied
selves or nowhere; our mental activities are then no
longer our own, but come into this frame of mind, life
and body from the universal, work themselves out and
pass leaving no impression on us, and this frame of
ourselves too is only an insignificant circumstance
in her cosmic vastness. But the perfection sought in
the integral Yoga is not only to be one with her in
her highest spiritual power and one with her in her
universal action, but to realise and possess the fullness
of this Shakti in our individual being and nature. For
the supreme Spirit is one as Purusha or as Prakriti,
conscious being or power of conscious being, and as
the Jiva in essence of self and spirit is one with the
supreme Purusha, so on the side of Nature, in power
of self and spirit it is one with Shakti, parä
prakrtir jivabhütä. To realise this double
oneness is the condition of the integral self-perfection.
The Jiva is then the meeting-place of the play of oneness
of the supreme Soul and Nature.
To
reach this perfection we have to become aware of the
divine Shakti, draw her to us and call her in to fill
the whole system and take up the charge of all our activities.
There will then be no separate personal will or individual
energy trying to conduct our actions, no sense of a
little personal self as the doer, nor will it be the
lower energy of the three gunas, the mental, vital and
physical nature. The divine Shakti will fill us and
preside over and take up all our inner activities, our
outer life, our Yoga. She will take up the mental energy,
her own lower formation, and raise it to its highest
and purest and fullest powers of intelligence and will
and psychic action. She will change the mechanical energies
of the mind, life and body which now govern us into
delight-filled manifestations of her own living and
conscious power and presence. She will manifest in us
and relate to each other all the various spiritual experiences
of which the mind is capable. And as the crown of this
process she will bring down the supramental light into
the mental levels, change the stuff of mind into the
stuff of supermind, transform all the lower energies
into energies of her supramental nature and raise us
into our being of gnosis. The Shakti will reveal herself
as the power of the Purushottama, and it is the Ishwara
who will manifest himself in his force of supermind
and spirit and be the master of our being, action, life
and Yoga.
-Sri
Aurobindo
