TO PURIFY the Buddhi we must
first understand its rather complex composition. And
first we have to make clear the distinction, ignored
in ordinary speech, between the manas, mind, and buddhi,
the discerning intelligence and the enlightened will.
Manas is the sense-mind. Man's initial mentality is
not at all a thing of reason and will; it is an animal,
physical or sense mentality which constitutes its whole
experience from the impressions made on it by the external
world and by its own embodied consciousness which responds
to the outward stimulus of this kind of experience.
The Buddhi only comes in as a secondary power which
has in the evolution taken the first place, but is still
dependent on the inferior instrument it uses; it depends
for its workings on the sense-mind and does what it
can on its own higher range by a difficult, elaborate
and rather stumbling extension of knowledge and action
from the physical or sense basis. A half-enlightened
physical or sense mentality is the ordinary type of
the mind of man.
In fact the Manas is a development from the external
Chitta; it is a first organising of the crude stuff
of the consciousness excited and aroused by external
contacts, bähya-sparsa. What we are physically
is a soul asleep in matter which has evolved to the
partial wakefulness of a living body pervaded by a crude
stuff of external conciousness more or less alive and
attentive to the outward impacts of the external world
in which we are developing our conscious being. In the
animal this stuff of externalised consciousness organises
itself into a well-regulated mental sense or organ of
perceiving and acting mind. Sense is in fact the mental
contact of the embodied consciousness with its surroundings.
This contact is always essentially a mental phenomenon;
but in fact it depends chiefly upon the development
of certain physical organs of contact with objects and
with their properties to whose images it is able by
habit to give their mental values. What we call the
physical senses have a double element, the physical-nervous
impression of the object and the mental-nervous value
we give to it, and the two together make up our seeing,
hearing, smell, taste, touch with all those varieties
of sensation of which they, and the touch chiefly, are
the starting-point or first transmitting agency. But
the Manas is able to receive sense impressions and draw
results from them by a direct transmission not dependent
on the physical organ. This is more distinct in the
lower creation. Man, though he has really a greater
capacity for this direct sense, the sixth sense in the
mind, has let it fall into abeyance by an exclusive
reliance on the physical senses supplemented by the
activity of the Buddhi.
The Manas is therefore in the first place an organiser
of sense experience; in addition it organises the natural
reactions of the will in the embodied consciousness
and uses the body as an instrument, uses, as it is ordinarily
put, the organs of action. This natural action too has
a double element, a physico-nervous impulse and behind
it a mental-nervous power-value of instinctive will-impulse.
That makes up the nexus of first perceptions and actions
which is common to all developing animal life. But in
addition there is in the Manas or sense-mind a first
resulting thought-element which accompanies the operations
of animal life. Just as the living body has a certain
pervading and possessing action of consciousness, citta,
which forms into this sense-mind, so the sense-mind
has in it a certain pervading and possessing power which
mentally uses the sense data, turns them into perceptions
and first ideas, associates experience with other experiences,
and in some way or other thinks and feels and wills
on the sense basis.
This sensational thought-mind which is based upon sense,
memory, association, first ideas and resultant generalisations
or secondary ideas, is common to all developed animal
life and mentality. Man indeed has given it an immense
development and range and complexity impossible to the
animal, but still, if he stopped there, he would only
be a more highly effective animal. He gets beyond the
animal range and height because he has been able to
disengage and separate to a greater or less extent his
thought action from the sense mentality, to draw back
from the latter and observe its data and to act on it
from above by a separated and partially freed intelligence.
The intelligence and will of the animal are involved
in the sense-mind and therefore altogether governed
by it and carried on its stream of sensations, sense-perceptions,
impulses; it is instinctive. Man is able to use a reason
and will, a self-observing, thinking and all-observing,
an intelligently willing mind which is no longer involved
in the sense-mind, but acts from above and behind it
in its own right, with a certain separateness and freedom.
He is reflective, has a certain relative freedom of
intelligent will. He has liberated in himself and has
formed into a separate power the Buddhi.
But what is this Buddhi? From the point of view of Yogic
knowledge we may say that it is that instrument of the
soul, of the inner conscious being in nature, of the
Purusha, by which it comes into some kind of conscious
and ordered possession both of itself and its surroundings.
Behind all the action of the Chitta and Manas there
is this soul, this Purusha; but in the lower forms of
life it is mostly subconscient, asleep or half-awake,
absorbed in the mechanical action of Nature; but it
becomes more and more awake and comes more and more
forward as it rises in the scale of life. By the activity
of the Buddhi it begins the process of an entire awakening.
In the lower actions of the mind the soul suffers Nature
rather than possesses her; for it is there entirely
a slave to the mechanism which has brought it into conscious
embodied experience. But in the Buddhi we get to something,
still a natural instrumentation, by which yet Nature
seems to be helping and arming the Purusha to understand,
possess and master her.
Neither understanding, possession nor mastery is complete,
either because the Buddhi in us is itself still incomplete,
only yet half developed and half formed, or because
it is in its nature only an intermediary instrument
and before we can get complete knowledge and mastery,
we must rise to something greater than the Buddhi. Still
it is a movement by which we come to the knowledge that
there is a power within us greater than the animal life,
a truth greater than the first truths or appearances
perceived by the sense-mind, and can try to get at that
truth and to labour towards a greater and more successful
power of action and control, a more effective government
both of our own nature and the nature of things around
us, a higher knowledge, a higher power, a higher and
larger enjoyment, a more exalted range of being. What
then is the final object of this trend ? Evidently,
it must be for the Purusha to get to the highest and
fullest truth of itself and of things, greatest truth
of soul or self and greatest truth of Nature, and to
an action and a status of being which shall be the result
of or identical with that Truth, the power of this greatest
knowledge and the enjoyment of that greatest being and
consciousness to which it opens. This must be the final
result of the evolution of the conscious being in Nature.
To arrive then at the whole truth of our self and Spirit
and the knowledge, greatness, bliss of our free and
complete being must be the object of the purification,
liberation and perfection of the Buddhi. But it is a
common idea that this means not the full possession
of Nature by the Purusha, but a rejection of Nature.
We are to get at self by the removal of the action of
Prakriti. As the Buddhi, coming to the knowledge that
the sense-mind only gives us appearances in which the
soul is subject to Nature, discovers more real truths
behind them, the soul must arrive at this knowledge
that the Buddhi too, when turned upon Nature, can give
us only appearances and enlarge the subjection, and
must discover behind them the pure truth of the Self.
The Self is something quite other than Nature and the
Buddhi must purify itself of attachment to and preoccupation
with natural things; so only can it discern and separate
from them the pure Self and Spirit: the knowledge of
the pure Self and Spirit is the only real knowledge,
Ananda of the pure Self and Spirit is the only spiritual
enjoyment, the consciousness and being of the pure Self
and Spirit are the only real consciousness and being.
Action and will must cease because all action is of
the Nature; the will to be pure Self and Spirit means
the cessation of all will to action.
But while the possession of the being, consciousness,
delight, power of the Self is the condition of perfection,—for
it is only by knowing and possessing and living in the
truth of itself that the soul can become free and perfect,—we
hold that Nature is an eternal action and manifestation
of the Spirit; Nature is not a devil's trap, a set of
misleading appearances created by desire, sense, life
and mental will and intelligence, but these phenomena
are hints and indications and behind all of them is
a truth of Spirit which exceeds and uses them. We hold
that there must be an inherent spiritual gnosis and
will by which the secret Spirit in all knows its own
truth, wills, manifests and governs its own being in
Nature; to arrive at that, at communion with it or participation
in it, must be part of our perfection. The object of
the purification of the Buddhi will then be to arrive
at the possession of our own truth of self-being, but
also at the possession of the highest truth of our being
in Nature. For that purpose we must first purify the
Buddhi of all that makes it subject to the sense-mind
and, that once done, purify it from its own limitations
and convert its inferior mental intelligence and will
into the greater action of a spiritual will and knowledge.
The movement of the Buddhi to exceed the limits of the
sense-mind is an effort already half accomplished in
the human evolution; it is part of the common operation
of Nature in man. The original action of the thought-mind,
the intelligence and will in man, is a subject action.
It accepts the evidence of the senses, the commands
of the life-cravings, instincts, desires, emotions,
the impulses of the dynamic sense-mind and only tries
to give them a more orderly direction and effective
success. But the man whose reason and will are led and
dominated by the lower mind, is an inferior type of
human nature, and the part of our conscious being which
consents to this domination is the lowest part of our
manhood. The higher action of the Buddhi is to exceed
and control the lower mind, not indeed to get rid of
it, but to raise all the action of which it is the first
suggestion into the nobler plane of will and intelligence.
The impressions of the sense-mind are used by a thought
which exceeds them and which arrives at truths they
do not give, ideative truths of thought, truths of philosophy
and science; a thinking, discovering, philosophic mind
overcomes, rectifies and dominates the first mind of
sense impressions. The impulsive reactive sensational
mentality, the life-cravings and the mind of emotional
desire are taken up by the intelligent will and are
overcome, are rectified and dominated by a greater ethical
mind which discovers and sets over them a law of right
impulse, right desire, right emotion and right action.
The receptive, crudely enjoying sensational mentality,
the emotional mind and life mind are taken up by the
intelligence and are overcome, rectified and dominated
by a deeper, happier aesthetic mind which discovers
and sets above them a law of true delight and beauty.
All these new formations are used by a general Power
of the intellectual, thinking and willing man in a soul
of governing intellect, imagination, judgment, memory,
volition, discerning reason and ideal feeling which
uses them for knowledge, self-development, experience,
discovery, creation, effectuation, aspires, strives,
inwardly attains, endeavours to make a higher thing
of the life of the soul in Nature. The primitive desire-soul
no longer governs the being. It is still a desire-soul,
but it is repressed and governed by a higher power,
something which has manifested in itself the godheads
of Truth, Will, Good, Beauty and tries to subject life
to them. The crude desire-soul and mind is trying to
convert itself into an ideal soul and mind, and the
proportion in which some effect and harmony of this
greater conscious being has been found and enthroned,
is the measure of our increasing humanity.
But
this is still a very incomplete movement. We find that
it progresses towards a greater completeness in proportion
as we arrive at two kinds of perfection; first, a greater
and greater detachment from the control of the lower
suggestions; secondly, an increasing discovery of a
self-existent Being, Light, Power and Ananda which surpasses
and transforms the normal humanity. The ethical mind
becomes perfect in proportion as it detaches itself
from desire, sense suggestion, impulse, customary dictated
action and discovers a self of Right, Love, Strength
and Purity in which it can live accomplished and make
it the foundation of all its actions. The aesthetic
mind is perfected in proportion as it detaches itself
from all its cruder pleasures and from outward conventional
canons of the aesthetic reason and discovers a self-existent
self and spirit of pure and infinite Beauty and Delight
which gives its own light and joy to the material of
the aesthesis. The mind of knowledge is perfected when
it gets away from impression and dogma and opinion and
discovers a light of self-knowledge and intuition which
illumines all the workings of the sense and reason,
all self-experience and world-experience. The will is
perfected when it gets away from and behind its impulses
and its customary ruts of effectuation and discovers
an inner power of the Spirit which is the source of
an intuitive and luminous action and an original harmonious
creation. The movement of perfection is away from all
domination by the lower nature and towards a pure and
powerful reflection of the being, power, knowledge and
delight of the Spirit and Self in the Buddhi.
The Yoga of self-perfection is to make this double movement
as absolute as possible. All immiscence of desire in
the Buddhi is an impurity. The intelligence coloured
by desire is an impure intelligence and it distorts
Truth; the will coloured by desire is an impure will
and it puts a stamp of distortion, pain and imperfection
upon the soul's activity. All immiscence of the emotions
of the soul of desire is an impurity and similarly distorts
both the knowledge and the action. All subjection of
the Buddhi to the sensations and impulses is an impurity.
The thought and will have to stand back detached from
desire, troubling emotion, distracting or mastering
impulse and to act in their own right until they can
discover a greater guide, a Will, Tapas or divine Shakti
which will take the place of desire and mental will
and impulse, an Ananda or pure delight of the spirit
and an illumined spiritual knowledge which will express
themselves in the action of that Shakti. This complete
detachment, impossible without an entire self-government,
equality, calm, sama, samatä, sänti,
is the surest step towards the purification of the Buddhi.
A calm, equal and detached mind can alone reflect the
peace or base the action of the liberated spirit.
The Buddhi itself is burdened with a mixed and impure
action. When we reduce it to its own proper forms, we
find that it has three stages or elevations of its functioning.
First, its lowest basis is a habitual, customary action
which is a link between the higher reason and the sense-mind,
a kind of current understanding. This understanding
is in itself dependent on the witness of the senses
and the rule of action which the reason deduces from
the sense-mind's perception of and attitude to life.
It is not capable of itself forming pure thought and
will, but it takes the workings of the higher reason
and turns them into coin of opinion and customary standard
of thought or canon of action. When we perform a sort
of practical analysis of the thinking mind, cut away
this element and hold back the higher reason free, observing
and silent, we find that this current understanding
begins to run about in a futile circle, repeating all
its formed opinions and responses to the impressions
of things, but incapable of any strong adaptation and
initiation. As it feels more and more the refusal of
sanction from the higher reason, it begins to fail,
to lose confidence in itself and its forms and habits,
to distrust the intellectual action and to fall into
weakness and silence. The stilling of this current,
running, circling, repeating thought-mind is the principal
part of that silencing of the thought which is one of
the most effective disciplines of Yoga.
But the higher reason itself has a first stage of dynamic,
pragmatic intellectuality in which creation, action
and will are the real motive and thought and knowledge
are employed to form basic constructions and suggestions
which are used principally for effectuation. To this
pragmatic reason truth is only a formation of the intellect
effective for the action of the inner and the outer
life. When we cut it away from the still higher reason
which seeks impersonally to reflect Truth rather than
to create personally effective truth, we find then that
this pragmatic reason can originate, progress, enlarge
the experience by dynamic knowledge, but it has to depend
on the current understanding as a pedestal and base
and put its whole weight on life and becoming. It is
in itself therefore a mind of the Will to life and action,
much more a mind of Will than a mind of knowledge: it
does not live in any assured and constant and eternal
Truth, but in progressing and changing aspects of Truth
which serve the shifting forms of our life and becoming
or, at the highest, help life to grow and progress.
By itself this pragmatic mind can give us no firm foundation
and no fixed goal; it lives in the truth of the hour,
not in any truth of eternity. But when purified of dependence
on the customary understanding, it is a great creator
and in association with the highest mental reason it
becomes a strong channel and bold servant for the effectuation
of Truth in life. The value of its work will depend
on the value and the power of the highest truth-seeking
reason. But by itself it is a sport of Time and a bond-slave
of Life. The seeker of the Silence has to cast it away
from him; the seeker of the integral Divinity has to
pass beyond it, to replace and transform this thinking
mind intent on Life by a greater effectuating spiritual
Will, the Truth-Will of the spirit.
The third and noblest stage of the intellectual will
and reason is an intelligence which seeks for some universal
reality or for a still higher self-existent Truth for
its own sake and tries to live in that Truth. This is
primarily a mind of knowledge and only secondarily a
mind of Will. In its excess of tendency it often becomes
incapable of Will except the one will to know; for action
it is dependent on the aid of the pragmatic mind and
therefore man tends in action to fall away from the
purity of the Truth his highest knowledge holds into
a mixed, inferior, inconstant and impure effectuation.
The disparity, even when it is not an opposition, between
knowledge and will is one of the principal defects of
the human Buddhi. But there are other inherent limitations
of all human thinking. This highest Buddhi does not
work in man in its own purity; it is assailed by the
defects of the lower mentality, continually clouded
by it, distorted, veiled, and prevented or lamed in
its own proper action. Purified as much as may be from
that habit of mental degradation, the human Buddhi is
still a power that searches for the Truth, but is never
in full or direct possession of it; it can only reflect
truth of the spirit and try to make it its own by giving
it a limited mental value and a distinct mental body.
Nor does it reflect integrally, but seizes either an
uncertain totality or else a sum of limited particulars.
First, it seizes on this or that partial reflection
and by subjection to the habit of customary mind turns
it into a fixed imprisoning opinion; all new truth it
judges from the standpoint it has thus formed and therefore
puts on it the colour of a limiting prejudgment. Release
it as much as possible from this habit of limiting opinion,
still it is subject to another affliction, the demand
of the pragmatic mind for immediate effectuation, which
gives it no time to proceed to larger truth, but fixes
it by the power of effective realisation in whatever
it has already judged, known and lived. Freed from all
these chains, the Buddhi can become a pure and flexible
reflector of Truth, adding light to light, proceeding
from realisation to realisation. It is then limited
only by its own inherent limitations.
These limitations are mainly of two kinds. First, its
realisations are only mental realisations; to get to
the Truth itself we have to go beyond the mental Buddhi.
Again, the nature of the mind prevents it from making
an effective unification of the truths it seizes. It
can only put them side by side and see oppositions or
effect some kind of partial, executive and practical
combination. But it finds finally that the aspects of
the Truth are infinite and that none of its intellectual
forms are quite valid, because the spirit is infinite
and in the spirit all is true, but nothing in the mind
can give the whole truth of the spirit. Either then
the Buddhi becomes a pure mirror of many reflections,
reflecting all truth that falls on it, but ineffective
and when turned to action either incapable of decision
or chaotic, or it has to make a selection and act as
if that partiality were the whole truth, though it knows
otherwise. It acts in a helpless limitation of Ignorance,
though it may hold a Truth far greater than its action.
On the other hand, it may turn away from life and thought
and seek to exceed itself and pass into the Truth beyond
it. This it may do by seizing on some aspect, some principle,
some symbol or suggestion of reality and pushing that
to its absolute, all-absorbing, all-excluding term of
realisation or by seizing on and realising some idea
of indeterminate Being or Non-Being from which all thought
and life fall away into cessation. The Buddhi casts
itself into a luminous sleep and the soul passes away
into some ineffable height of spiritual being.
Therefore, in dealing with the Buddhi, we must either
take one of these choices or else try the rarer adventure
of lifting the soul from the mental being into the spiritual
gnosis to see what we can find in the very core of that
supernal light and power. This gnosis contains the sun
of the divine Knowledge-Will burning in the heavens
of the supreme conscious Being, to which the mental
intelligence and will are only a focus of diffused and
deflected rays and reflections. That possesses the divine
unity and yet or rather therefore can govern the multiplicity
and diversity: whatever selection, self-limitation,
combination it makes is not imposed on it by Ignorance,
but is self-developed by a power of self-possessing
divine Knowledge. When the gnosis is gained, it can
then be turned on the whole nature to divinise the human
being. It is impossible to rise into it at once; if
that could be done, it would mean a sudden and violent
overshooting, a breaking or slipping through the gates
of the Sun, suryasya dvard, without near possibility
of return. We have to form as a link or bridge an intuitive
or illuminated mind, which is not the direct gnosis,
but in which a first derivative body of the gnosis can
form. This illumined mind will first be a mixed power
which we shall have to purify of all its mental dependence
and mental forms so as to convert all willing and thinking
into thought-sight and truth-seeing will by an illumined
discrimination, intuition, inspiration, revelation.
That will be the final purification of the intelligence
and the preparation for the Siddhi of the gnosis.
-Sri
Aurobindo
