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SECTION FOUR
OBJECTS OF SRI AUROBINDO’S SADHANA
Opening the Way
MY sadhana is not a freak or a monstrosity or a miracle done outside the laws of Nature and the conditions of life and consciousness on earth. If I could do these things or if they could happen in my Yoga, it means that they can be done and that therefore these developments and transformations are possible in the terrestrial consciousness….
Sadhana for the Earth-Consciousness
MY point about my sadhana was that my sadhana was not done for myself but for the earth-consciousness as a showing of the way towards the Light, so that whatever I showed in it to be possible—- inner growth, transformation, manifesting of new faculties, etc.—was not of no importance to anybody, but meant as an opening of lines and ways for what had to be done. The question of degree of greatness does not come in at all. Page – 65 Conditions for Supramentalisation
I HAVE no intention of achieving the Supermind for myself only—I am not doing anything for myself, as I have no personal need of anything, neither of salvation (Moksha) nor Supramentalisation. If I am seeking after Supramentalisation, it is because it is a thing that has to be done for the earth-consciousness and if it is not done in myself, it cannot be done in others. My Supramentalisation is only a key for opening the gates of the Supramental to the earth-consciousness; done for its own sake, it would be perfectly futile. But it does not follow either that if or when I become supramental, everybody will become supramental. Others can so become who are ready for it, when they are for it—though of course the achievement in myself will be to them a great help towards it. It is therefore quite legitimate to have the aspiration for it—provided: (1) One does not make a too personal or egoistic affair of it turning it into a Nietzschean or other ambition to be superman. (2) One is ready to undergo the conditions and stages needed for the achievement. (3) One is sincere and regards it as a part of the seeking of the Divine and consequent culmination Page – 66 of the Divine Will in one and insists on no more than the fulfilment of that Will whatever it may be, psychicisation, spiritualisation or Supramentalisation. It should be regarded as the fulfilment of God’s working in the world, not as a personal chance or achievement. . April,1935 Certitude of Supramental Advent
I HAVE already spoken about the bad conditions of the world; the usual idea of the occultists about it is that the worse they are the more is probable the coming of an intervention or a new revelation from above. The ordinary mind cannot know—it has either to believe or disbelieve or wait and see. As to whether the Divine seriously means something to happen, I believe it is intended. I know with absolute certitude that the Supramental is a truth and that its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable. The question is as to the when and the how. That also is decided and predestined from somewhere above; but it is here being fought out amid a rather grim clash of conflicting forces. Page – 67 For in the terrestrial world the predetermined result is hidden and what we see is a whirl of possibilities and forces attempting to achieve some- thing with the destiny of it all concealed from human eyes. This is however certain that a number of souls have been sent to see that it shall be now. That is the situation. My faith and will are for the now. I am speaking of course on the level of the human intelligence—mystically-rationally, as one might put it. To say more would be going beyond that line. You don’t want me to start prophesying, I suppose? As a rationalist, you can’t. 28-12-1934 Inevitability of Supramental Descent
I MUST remind you that I have been an intellectual myself and no stranger to doubts—both the Mother and myself have had one side of the mind as positive and as insistent on practical results and more so than any Russell can be. We could never have been contented with the shining ideas and phrases which a Rolland or another takes for gold coin of Truth. We know well what is the difference between a subjective Page – 68 experience and a dynamic outward-going and realising Force. So although we have faith, (and who ever did anything great in the world without having faith in his mission or the Truth at work behind him?) we do not found ourselves on faith alone, but oh a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. That is why I am not alarmed by the aspect of the world around me or disconcerted by the often successful fury of the adverse Forces who increase in their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer to the field of earth and Matter. If I believe in the probability and not only possibility, if I feel practically certain of the Supramental Descent (I do not fix a date), it is because I have my grounds for the belief, not a faith in the air. I know that the Supramental Descent is inevitable— I have faith in view of my experience that the time can be and should be now and not in a later age…. But even if I knew it to be for a later time, I would not swerve from my path or be discouraged or flag in my labour. Formerly I might have been, but not now—after all the path I have traversed. When one is sure of the Truth, or even when one Page – 69 believes the thing one pursues to be the only possible solution, one does not stipulate for an immediate success, one travels towards the Light taking as well worth while and facing every risk of the adventure, Still, like you, it is now, in this life that I insist on it and not in another or in the hereafter. 30-8-1932 Importance of "Trifles"
I CANNOT say that I follow very well the logic of your doubts. How does the suffering of a noble and self- less friend invalidate the hope of Yoga? There are many dismal spectacles in the world, but that is after all the very reason why Yoga has to be done. If the world were all happy and beautiful and ideal, who would want to change it or find it necessary to bring down a higher consciousness into the earthly Mind and Matter? Your other argument is that the work of the Yoga itself is difficult, not easy, not a happy canter to the goal. Of course it is, because the world and human nature are what they are. I never said it was easy or that there were not obstinate difficulties in the way of the endeavour. Again, I Page – 70 do not understand your point about raising up a new race by my going on writing "trivial" letters ten hours a day. Of course not—nor by writing important letters either; even if I were to spend my time writing fine poems it would not build up a new race. Each activity is important in its own place—an electron or a molecule or a grain may be small things in themselves, but in their place they are indispensable to the building up of a world; it cannot be made up only of mountains and sunsets and streamings of the aurora borealis—though these have their place there. All depends on the force behind these things and the purpose in their action—and that is known to the Cosmic Spirit which is at work; and it works, I may add, not by the mind or according to human standards but by a greater consciousness which, starting from an electron, can build up a world and, using ‘a tangle of ganglia, can make them the base here for the works of the Mind and Spirit in Matter, produce a Ramakrishna, or a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare. Is the life of a great poet either made up only of magnificent and important things? How many trivial things had to be dealt with and done before there could be produced a "KING LEAR" or a "HAMLET"? Again, according to your own reasoning, would not people be justified in mocking at your pother—so they would call it, I do not— Page – 71 about metre and scansion and how many ways a syllable can be read? Why, they might say, is he wasting his time in trivial prosaic things like this when he might have been spending it in producing a beautiful lyric or fine music? But the worker knows and respects the material with which he must work and he knows why he is busy with "trifles" and small details and what is their place in the fullness of his labour. As for faith, you write as if I never had a doubt or any difficulty. I have had worse than any human mind can think of. It is not because I have ignored difficulties, but because I have seen them more clearly, experienced them on a larger scale than any one living now or before me that, having faced and measured them, I am sure of the results "of my work. But even if I still saw the chance that it might come to nothing (which is impossible), I would go on unperturbed, because I would still have done to the best of my power the work that I had to do and what is so done always counts in the economy of the universe. But why should I feel that all this may come to nothing when I see each step and where it is leading and every week, every day—once it was every year and month and hereafter it will be every day and hour—brings me so much nearer to my goal? In the way that one treads with the greater Page – 72 Light above, even every difficulty gives its help and has its value and Night itself carries in it the burden of the Light that has to be. December, 1933 Object of Seeking the Supermind
THESE egoistic terms are not those in which my vital moves. It is a higher Truth I seek, whether it makes men greater or not is not the question, but whether it will give them truth and peace and light to live in and make life something better than a struggle with ignorance and falsehood and pain and strife. Then, even if they are less great than the men of the past, my object will have been achieved. For me mental conceptions cannot be the end of all things. I know that the Supermind is a truth. It is not for personal greatness that I am seeking to bring down the Supermind. I care nothing for greatness or littleness in the human sense. I am seeking to bring some principle of inner Truth, Light, Harmony, Peace into the earth-consciousness; I see it above and know what it is—I feel it ever Page – 73 gleaming down on my consciousness from above and I am seeking to make it possible for it to take up the whole being into its own native power, instead of the nature of man continuing to remain in half-light, half-darkness. I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here to be the final sense of the earth evolution. If greater men than myself have not had this vision and this ideal before them, that is no reason why I should not follow my Truth-sense and Truth- vision. If human reason regards me as a fool for trying to do what Krishna did not try, I do not in the least care. There is no question of X or Y or anybody else in that. It is a question between the Divine and myself—whether it is the Divine Will or not, whether I am sent to bring that down or open the way for its descent or at least make it more possible or not. Let all men jeer at me if they will or all Hell fall upon me if it will for my presumption, —I go on till I conquer or perish. This is the spirit in which I seek the Supermind, no hunting for greatness for myself or others. 10-2-1935 Page – 74 The Earthly Burden
I USE the language of the mind because there is no other which human beings can understand,—even: though most of them understand it badly. If I were to use a supramental language like Joyce, you would not even have the illusion of understanding it; so,. not being an Irishman, I don’t make the attempt. But of course any one who wants to change earth-nature must first accept it in order to change it. To quote from an unpublished poem1 of my own:
"He who would bring the heavens here, Must descend himself into clay And the burden of earthly nature bear And tread the dolorous way…. 25-8-1935
Bridging the Empyrean and the Abyss
No, it is not with the Empyrean that I am busy: I wish it were. It is rather with the opposite end of
1 "A GOD’S LABOUR" subsequently published in Poems Past \and Present by Sri Aurobindo. Page – 75 things; it is in the Abyss that I have to plunge to build a bridge between the two. But that too is necessary for my work and one has to face it. 30-5-1936 The Burden of Love
IT is only divine Love which can bear the burden I have to bear, that all have to bear who have sacrificed everything else to the one aim of uplifting earth out of its darkness towards the Divine. The Gallic— like "Je m’en fiche"-ism (I do not care)—would not carry me one step; it would certainly not be divine. It is quite another thing that enables me to walk un-weeping and unlamenting towards the goal. April, 1934 The Struggle and the Battle
BUT what strange ideas again!—that I was born with a supramental temperament and that I know nothing Page – 76 of hard realities! Good God! My whole life has been a struggle with hard realities, from hardships, starvation in England and constant dangers and fierce difficulties to the far greater difficulties continually cropping up here in Pondicherry, external and internal. My life has been a battle from its early years and is still a battle: the fact that I wage it now from a room upstairs and by spiritual means as well as others that are external makes no difference to its character. But of course as we have not been shouting about these things, it is natural, I suppose, for others to think that I am living in an august, glamorous, lotus-eating dreamland where no hard facts of life or Nature present themselves. But what I an illusion all the same !
Action of Supramental Truth-Power
You have created your own bewildering problem by supplying your own data! There is nothing nebulous about the Supramental; its action depends on the utmost precision possible. As for solidity, since I once have got many solid things from much lower forces, I do not see why the highest ones should only give us nebulosities. But that seems to be the human mind’s position: that only what is Page – 77 earthy is solid, what is high must be misty and unreal —the worm is a reality, the eagle only a vapour! However, I have not told N that I have been scaling and winging—on the contrary, I have been dealing with very hard practical facts. I only told him : I had got the formula of solution for the difficulty -that had been holding me up since last November and I am working it out. To return to the Supramental: the Supramental is simply the direct self-existent Truth-Consciousness .and the direct self-effective Truth-Power. There can therefore be no question of jugglery about it. What is not true is not Supramental. As for calm and .silence, there is no need of the Supramental to get that. One can get it even on the level of Higher Mind which is the next above the human intelligence. I got these things in i908, 27 years ago, and I can assure you they were solid enough and marvellous enough in all conscience without any need of Supramental to make it more so. Again, "a calm that ;looks like action and motion" is a phenomenon of which I know nothing. A calm or silence that is what I have had—the proof is that out of an absolute silence of the mind I edited the Bande Mataram for 4 months and wrote 6 volumes of the Arya, not to speak of all the letters and messages etc… l have written since. If you say that writing is not an action Page – 78 or motion but only something that seems like it, a jugglery of the consciousness,—well, still out of that calm and silence I conducted a pretty strenuous political activity and have also taken my share in keeping up an Ashram which has at least an appearance to the physical senses of being solid and material! If you deny that these things are material or solid (which of course metaphysically you can), then you land yourself plump into Shankara’s Illusionism, and there I will leave you. You will say, however, that this is not the Supramental but at most the Overmind that helped me to these non-nebulous motions and action. But the Supermind is by definition a greater dynamic activity than mind or Overmind. I have said that what is not true is not Supramental; I will add that what is ineffective is not Supramental. And finally I conclude by saying that I have not told N that I have taken complete possession of the Supramental—I only admit to be very near to it. But "very near" is—well, after all—a relative phrase like all human phrases. I don’t know how you are to answer R. You might perhaps by my two formulas, but it is doubtful. Or perhaps you might tell him that the Supramental was silence—-only, it would be untrue! So I leave you in your fix—there is no other go. At least until Page – 79 I have firm physical hold of the Supramental and can come and tell the mentals and humans,—no doubt in a language which will be intelligible to them,—I must be somewhat dumb, since they have wholly misunderstood even the little that has found voice through my writings up till now. 23-8-1935 The Present Power
I HAVE never told you that the power that works here is absolute at present; I have, on the contrary, told you that I am trying to make it absolute and it is for that that I want the Supermind to intervene. But to say that because it is not absolute therefore it does not exist, seems to me a logical inconsequence. 28-8-1934 Process of Supramental Descent
No, the Supramental has not descended into the body or into Matter—it is only at the point where such a descent has become not only possible but Page – 80 inevitable; I am speaking, of course, of my experience. But as my experience is the centre and condition of all the rest, that is sufficient for the promise. My difficulty is that you all seem to expect a kind of miraculous fairy-tale change and do not realise that it is a rapid and concentrated evolution which is the aim of my sadhana and that there must be a process for it, a working of the higher in the lower and a dealing with all the necessary intervals—not a sudden feat of creation by which everything is done on a given date. It is a supramental but not an irrational process. What is to be done will happen—perhaps with a rush even—but in a workmanlike way and not according to Faerie. 14-U-1933 Perfection on the Physical Plane
As for the question about the illness, perfection in the physical plane is indeed part of the ideal of the. Yoga, but it is the last item and, so long as the fundamental change has not been made in the material consciousness to which the body belongs, one may Page – 81 have a certain perfection on other planes without having immunity in the body. We have not sought perfection for our own separate sake, but as part of a general change—creating a possibility of perfection for others. That could not have been done without our accepting and facing the difficulties of the realisation and transformation and overcoming them for ourselves. It has been done to a sufficient degree on the other planes—but not yet on the most material part of the physical plane. Till it is done, the fight there continues and, though there may be and is a force of Yogic action and defence, there cannot be immunity. The Mother’s difficulties are not her own; she bears the difficulties of others and those that are inherent in the general action and working for the transformation If it had been otherwise, it would be a very different matter. August, 1936 Resistance to Supramental Descent
WHEN I wrote in my letters about the Supermind and the obstinate resistance, I spoke, of course, of Page – 82 something I had already spoken of before. I did not mean that the resistance was of an unexpected character or had altered anything essential. But in its nature the descent is not something arbitrary and miraculous but a rapid evolutionary process compressed into a few years which proceeds by taking up the present nature into its Light and pouring its Truth into the inferior planes. That cannot be done in the whole world at a time, but is done, like all such processes, first through selected Adhars and then on a wider scale. We have to do it through ourselves first and, through the circle of sadhaks gathered around us, in the terrestrial consciousness as typified here. If a few open, that is sufficient for the process to be possible. On the other hand, if there is a general misunderstanding and resistance (not in all, but in many), that makes it difficult and the process more laborious, but it does not make it impossible. I was not suggesting that it has become impossible, Taut that if the circumstances were made unfavourable by our being unable to concentrate enough on this thing of capital importance and having too much work to do of an irrelevant kind, the descent was likely to take longer than it would do otherwise. Certainly, when the Supramental does touch earth with a sufficient force to dig itself into earth-consciousness, there will be no more Page – 83 chance of any success or survival for the Asuric Maya…. Progress, might be slow at first, but progress would come; it would quicken afterwards and with the supramental force here, there would be for you as for others the full speed and certitude. 18-10-1934 Attacks and Advance
I AM afraid I cannot endorse your reading of the situation, at least so far as the Mother and myself and the prospects of the work are concerned. I can agree only that we have had a heavy time of it recently and that there has been a strong attack on the plane of the physical and material—but that (heavy attacks) is a thing we have been accustomed to for the last 30 years and it has never prevented us from making any necessary advance. I have never had any illusions about the path being comfortable and easy; I knew all along that the work could only be done if all the essential difficulties rose and were faced; so their rising cannot tire or dishearten me, whatever obstinacy there may Page – 84 be in the difficulties, whether our own or in the sadhaks or in Nature. No, I am not tired or on the point of giving up. I have made inwardly steps in front in the last two or three months which had seemed impossible because of the obstinate resistance for years together and it is not an experience which pushes me to despair and to give up. If there is much resistance on one side, there have been large gains on the other—all has not been a picture of sterile darkness. You yourself are kept back only by the demon of doubt which bangs on you each door as you are opening it; you have only to set about resolutely slaying the Rakshasa and the doors will open to you as they have done to many others who were held up by their own mind or vital nature. 12-1-1934 Page – 85 |