Vision and Teachings: Sri Aurobindo

The teaching of Sri Aurobindo starts from that of the ancient sages of India that behind the appearances of the universe there is the Reality of a Being and Consciousness, a Self of all things, one and eternal. All beings are united in that One Self and Spirit but divided by a certain seperativity of consciousness, an ignorance of their true Self and Reality in the mind, life and body. It is possible by a certain psychological discipline to remove this veil of seperative consciousness and become aware of the true Self, the Divinity within us and all.

Sri Aurobindo's teaching states that this One Being and Consciousness is involved here in Matter. Evolution is the method by which it liberates itself ; consciousness appears in what seems to be inconscient, and once having appeared is self impelled to grow higher and higher and at the same time to enlarge and develop towards a greater and greater perfection. Life is the first step of this release of consciousness; mind is the second; but the evolution does not finish with mind, it awaits a release into something greater, a consciousness which is spiritual and supramental. The next step of the evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and spirit of the dominant power in the conscious being. For only then will the involved Divinity in things release itself entirely and it become possible for life to manifest perfection.

But while the former steps in evolution were taken by Nature without a conscious will in the plant and animal life, in man Nature becomes able to evolve by a conscious will in the instrument. It is not, however, by the mental will in man that this can be wholly done, for the mind goes only to a certain point and after that can only move in a circle. A conversion has to be made, a turning of the consciousness by which mind has to change into the higher principle. This method is to be found through the ancient psychological discipline and practice of Yoga. In the past, it has been attempted by a drawing away from the world and a disappearance into the height of the Self or the Spirit. Sri Aurobindo teaches that a descent of the higher principle is possible which will not merely release the spiritual Self out of the world, but release it in the world, replace the mind's ignorance or its very limited knowledge by a supramental Truth-Consciousness which will be a sufficient instrument of the inner Self and make it possible for the human being to find himself dynamically as well as inwardly and grow out of his still animal humanity into a diviner race. The psychological discipline of Yoga can be used to that end by opening all the parts of the being to a conversion or transformation through the descent and working of the higher still concealed supramental principle.

This, however, cannot be done at once or in a short time or by any rapid or miraculous transformation. Many steps have to be taken by the seeker before the supramental descent is possible. Man lives mostly in his surface mind, life and body, but there is an inner being within him with greater possibilities to which he has to awake - for it is only a very restricted influence from it that he receives now and that pushes him to a constant pursuit of a greater beauty, harmony, power and knowledge. The first process of Yoga is therefore to open the ranges of this inner being and to live from there outward, governing his outward life by an inner light and force. In doing so he discovers in himself his true soul which is not this outer mixture of mental, vital and physical elements but something of the Reality behind them, a spark from the one Divine Fire. He has to learn to live in his soul and purify and orientate by its drive towards the Truth the rest of the nature. There can follow afterwards an opening upward and descent of a higher principle of the Being. But even then it is not at once the full supramental Light and Force. For there are several ranges of consciousness between the ordinary human mind and the supramental Truth-Consciousness. These intervening ranges have to be opened up and their power brought down into the mind, life and body. Only afterwards can the full power of the Truth-Consciousness work in the nature. The process of this self-discipline or Sadhana is therefore long and difficult, but even a little of it is so much gained because it makes the ultimate release and perfection more possible.

There are many things belonging to older systems that are necessary on the way-an opening of the mind to a greater wideness and to the sense of the self and the Infinite, an emergence into what has been called the cosmic consciousness, mastery over the desires and passions; an outward asceticism is not essential, but the conquest of desire and attachment and a control over the body and its needs, greeds and instincts are indispensable. There is a combination of the principles of the old systems, the way of knowledge through the mind's discernment between Reality and the appearance, the heart's way of devotion, love and surrender and the way of works turning the will away from motives of self-interest to the Truth and the service of a greater Reality than the ego. For the whole being has to be trained so that it can respond and be transformed when it is possible for that greater Light and Force to work in the nature.

In this discipline, the inspiration of the Master, and in the difficult stages his control and his presence are indispensable - for it would be impossible otherwise to go through it without much stumbling and error which would prevent all chance of success. The Master is one who has risen to a higher consciousness and being and he is often regarded as its manifestation or representative. He not only helps by his teaching and still more by his influence and example but by a power to communicate his own experience to others.

This is Sri Aurobindo's teaching and method of practice. It is not his object to develop any one religion or to amalgamate the older religions or to found any new religion - for any of these things would lead away from his central purpose. The one aim of his Yoga is an inner self-development by which each one who follows it can in time discover the One Self in all and evolve a higher consciousness than the mental, a spiritual and supramental consciousness which will transform and divinise human nature.

Sri Aurobindo

There is an ascending evolution in nature which goes from the stone to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man. Because man is, for the moment, the last rung at the summit of the ascending evolution, he considers himself as the final stage in this ascension and believes there can be nothing on earth superior to him. In that he is mistaken. In his physical nature he is yet almost wholly an animal, a thinking and speaking animal, but still animal in his material habits and instincts. Undoubtedly, nature cannot be satisfied with such an imperfect result; she endeavours to bring out a being who will be to man what man is to the animal, a being who will remain a man in its external form, and yet whose consciousness will rise far above the mental and its slavery to ignorance.

Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to teach this truth to men. He told them that man is only a transitional being living in a mental consciousness, but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the Truth-consciousness, and capable of living a life perfectly harmonious, good and beautiful, happy and fully conscious. During the whole of his life upon earth, Sri Aurobindo gave all his time to establish in himself this consciousness he called supramental, and to help those gathered around him to realise it.

The Mother

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Sri Aurobindo's Teachings & Yoga By M.M Bhattacharya

The Evolutionary Process

What is the essential element in Sri Aurobindo's teachings? He says that man is a transitional being and not a final product of evolution. Man will surpass his present capacities and rise to a new state of consciousness, knowledge and power and not only transform individually his present half-human and half-animal nature, but raise humanity as a whole to the status of a divine life. He will new-create his social, political and economic life in such a way that it will bring down the kingdom of heaven upon earth. Such a vast and inconceivable change will not be precipitated suddenly as a miracle but will come about as the logical culmination of the evolutionary process which is persistently and constantly working in nature.

If we visualize the primal beginning of the cosmos, we shall find that it was full of gaseous matter out of which were created innumerable galaxies with their stars, suns and planets. Thereafter appeared life - a totally new element - first in the form of plants and thereafter in animals. If a single man had been present in the universe at that time as an observer, to him the appearance of life, having totally different qualities like birth, growth, feelings, sensation, decay and death, would have appeared as miraculous, as it is contradictory to the scientific theory which denies the possibility of an entirely new creation. What is possible is the re-arrangement or recombination of atoms as a result of which a new form of matter may come out, but not a completely new principle.

How and from where did life appear? Science cannot explain it. By evolution, is its reply. The question remains : while a new matter may evolve out of old matter, how could life evolve which is not a reorganisation or recombination of matter, but an entirely new creation?

Sri Aurobindo has given an answer to this riddle. He says that the evolution of life out of matter has been possible because life was already involved in it. Not only life but mind and principles higher than both of them are also involved in matter, as the Divine Himself has manifested as matter. Our scriptures also affirm this truth : sarva khalvida brahma, which means that all are Brahman - men, animals, plants and even material objects like stones and metals. According to modern science the ultimate constituents of matter, such as electrons, protons, etc. are nothing but different forms of electrical energy. Matter is therefore nothing but a condensed form of energy. The hard, heavy and rigid form of matter is only an appearance, hiding the vibrant mass of electrons and protons, etc.

The advent of life took place by the meeting of two forces: one is the involved life force inherent in matter and ready for evolution, and the other the descending life force from above.

With the creation of the vegetable kingdom, the empty and ragged earth wore a wonderous beautiful look with trees and plants with their green leaves and multi-coloured flowers and juicy fruits. Then came the animals -small at first, then the bigger ones. The limitations of plant-life disappeared to a great extent as the animals could move from place to place and the feelings and sensations became more pronounced.

When `life' developed a steady and firm footing in the animal, it was time for a new principle named mind to emerge as well as descend. The process was the same. Thus appeared man, an entirely new type of being whose differences from the animal were even more marked.

It is the same process of evolution which has turned the barbarous cave man into the modern civilised man, who has formed a society and state, with politics, economics, literature, art and sculpture. He has tamed Nature to be his slave, and to-day even travel from planet to planet is within his reach.

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The Problem of Man

But his failures stand out as much as his successes. Along with the spread of civilisation and the progress attained by him, he has at the same time created innumerable problems which he has not yet been able to solve. In spite of his immense wealth, his unlimited capacity for production of all kinds of commodities, millions of people are not able to procure their basic necessities of life like food and shelter. Though it is quite possible for him to meet these necessities fully for the whole world, he is unable to do so, due to the self-created complications of the economic mesh in which he has entangled himself inextricably. He has created insurmountable problems in every field of his achievement -political, social, economic and educational. A growing injustice, oppression, and corruption in every field of life point to an impending disaster. There is no limit to his want and in vain he has tried his best to come out of this misery. To get over such a condition many a revolution has taken place and many a country has been flooded with blood, but to what effect? While one suffering has been removed, another has cropped up in its place. This, in short, is the history of his progress. If man continues to remain a man, wallowing in the same level of twilight Consciousness and unable to rise to a higher level, then not one out of his innumerable problems is likely to be solved.

Here Sri Aurobindo raises a pertinent question: is man with his present capacities and incapacities the highest product of evolution or is it possible for him to recreate himself in such a manner as to exceed all his present incapacities and make his own life a life divine and the entire world a kingdom of heaven? Has the evolutionary force which has created man by successive steps from inconscient matter ended with the present creation and has it no further possibility? Science also believes that it is not so. The same power is still active in man -at least in the same, if not in an accelerated, way. But where will it lead to? To what goal? Science does not have the answer. But Sri Aurobindo says that this evolutionary force will raise the present humanity to a higher level, to a consciousness of supermanhood. This will not be a magnified edition of the present humanity with its vices and virtues but an altogether different kind of being, with an entirely different kind of consciousness, knowledge and power, whose difference from the present man will be far more pronounced than that between animals and man. None of the faults, incapacities, obscurities and limitations of the present man will encumber the superman.

To form a correct idea about the future possibilities of humanity it is necessary to understand the extent of its limitations that cripple its full development in the spheres of mind, life and body. Out of a host of limitations we shall see only the few main ones.

Mind is not an instrument of knowledge and such knowledge as gathered through it can at best be imprecise and always shot through and through with doubts and mistakes. This holds good even in the field of gross matter. Day-before-yesterday's absolute truths, are yesterday's doubtful ones, to be thrown overboard today as falsehood. When we come to the subjective fields it becomes even worse. Do we really know what is good or bad for us? What is the work we are doing and what are its results? Even in matters of worldly life, such as choosing the right career or occupation for our children, we do not know for certain what line will be most suitable in a particular case and lead to the full flowering of their latent capabilities. Our choice and even their own choice often end in life-long suffering: such is the frequent case in marriage.

Leaving aside strangers, we hardly know the minds of our own wives and children. Owing to long association and observation, we should correctly gauge their natures, psychological trends, predilections, emotions and reactions. But more often than not our surmises about them turn out to be incorrect. Unable to judge correctly we put our trust in wrong persons and suffer in consequence.

A dark impenetrable curtain hangs between us and our future. What is going to happen tomorrow, nay, the next moment, is unknown and unpredictable. Who can guarantee that we will be alive the very next moment? Even our past -events that have taken place -eludes our memory. What an effort is sometimes required to dig something out of it!

The human mind, encumbered as it is by many deep-rooted wrong predilections, takes wrong decisions leading to suffering and repentance.

The capacity of the mind for acquiring knowledge even in mundane matters is so meagre that in order to attain knowledge the field of enquiry has to be severely restricted and narrowed. Consequently one who is very learned in one subject may be totally ignorant in another.

Sri Aurobindo has said that mind is not an instrument of knowledge. At best it is like a blind man's stick which, while it may help us to plod through, may hinder us by leading to a pit as well.

After mind comes life whose limitations and faults are still more marked and serious. We are bond-slaves of our desires and passions. Constantly provoked and goaded by the will-o'-the-wisp of desires, more often than not we ruin our own lives as well as those of others. We are slaves to anger, lust, envy, jealousy, selfishness and a host of other evil propensities which are behind all the evils, sufferings, injustices, oppressions and corruptions in the world. Earthly nature without exception is subject to these defects. Merely the extent and the intensity vary. Only a perfect yogi can elude them. Lastly we have the body whose limitations are idleness, laziness, fatigue, inertia, illness, disintegration, decay, senility and death. We pass about one-third of our lives in sleep. We are absolutely dependent on food and air.

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The Future Possibilities

If these limitations can be removed, human mind will become omniscient, and omnipotent. Nothing will appear impossible to it. Man's life will be free from desires, ambitions and all evil propensities. He will be the master of his own nature and therefore the master of all nature. That is to say of all forces working in the universe. He will have a body free from disease, decay, fatigue and inertia. In the end he will conquer even death and his body, formed of gross matter, will be replaced by a body of light.

Sri Aurobindo not only saw these possibilities in his yogic vision but also found them corroborated by reason. All our scriptures describe this earth as a field of divine play where God is playing hide and seek with Himself. He had hidden Himself completely in gross matter, from where by a slow process of self-finding, He has evolved at present as man in whom He has partially displayed a little of His wonderful knowledge, love and power. The aim of this play is a complete self-finding and a full display of all His capacities, knowledge, love and power. And the play cannot stop till that is achieved. The evolutionary force which produced life from matter, and mind from life, will bring down into play a new element called Supermind and consequently the advent of the Divinised man.

Now a question may be raised: "Spirituality has been pursued in India from time immemorial. There has never been any dearth of Yogis and Rishis in India. Why then did the advent of the new race, of the Divinised man, not take place earlier?" The reply is that the time was not ripe. Each new creation, be it in the social, political, economic, scientific or spiritual field, awaits its hour.

But when will this hour come? Sri Aurobindo says that the hour has come to begin this work. He attained the supramental knowledge, and brought down its light and power into his own embodied being. This supramental force is now exerting its pressure upon the terrestrial world for its transformation and as a result the opposing anti-divine forces have come up in reaction. They have raised all the evil propensities in human nature, wherever possible, and are responsible for all the chaos, evil and trouble in the world. Sri Aurobindo predicted that such a state of affair could come about in the near future and it would be the clear symptoms of the birth-pang of the new creation. The Mother has also said that such a change of man's consciousness is inevitable but it is left to man to decide if he will collaborate for this change or it will have to be enforced upon him by the power of "crashing circumstances". In the spiritual path and its pursuits, the work that would have normally taken a whole lifetime may be achieved in the course of a few years, by the conscious collaboration and effort of the Yogin.

Shall we hasten the advent of this consciousness by our active collaboration or compel it to establish itself through "crashing circumstances" by our opposition or indifference? The choice is ours.

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The Integral Yoga

But how can we prepare ourselves for the new birth? This path is neither the path of clashes nor of conflicting political creeds, nor bloody revolution. Sri Aurobindo has chalked out this sunlit path in his Integral Yoga.

What is it in the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo that sets it apart from all the other traditional yogas? Why do we give it the name of integral yoga or, rather, why did the Master himself call it that way? The answer is because it is integral in its aims and integral in its methods.

The first and most important feature that distinguishes Sri Aurobindo's yoga from the rest is its aim. While the traditional yogas aim at union with the Divine, whatever its aspect, Sri Aurobindo's yoga calls upon this siddhi as only the very first step of an infinite ladder. There must be not merely a union with the Divine Consciousness on some uplifted plane of being, away from this earthly life, but a total transformation of this earthly life into the Divine Life, a descent of the Divine Consciousness right into the darkness and ignorance of mind, life and even the body. Therefore, a divine fulfilment and not a divine negation is the real object of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga.

Secondly, the Integral Yoga does not seek to make this descent possible merely for individual salvation or on an individual scale but for the totality of creation. It endeavours to change ultimately the whole earth and not merely some privileged individuals.

Thirdly, it is new and revolutionary in its methods as well. It does not emphasise just some part of the being in this seeking for the Divine but strives to take up the entire being. The mind, the vital, the body must all participate in the invocation for the Divine transformation. All life is a field for this Yoga, its every experience, movement, contact with the external world, be it important or trivial, is turned upwards and all inner experience too becomes a rung in the ladder of perfection.

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