Theme of Savitri (Cont.)

(ii) Transformation of Consciousness

     “Savitri is a Mantra for the transformation of the world.”

—     The Mother

     This chapter takes up the second thematic design of Savitri. Sri Aurobindo is a poet with certain definite mission and towards attaining that he directs the power and movement of his Integral Yoga. He puts a high responsibility on poetry of the future, that of remoulding this world of ignorance, falsehood and mortality, ‘to hew the ways of immortality’ by transformation of the consciousness. It is veritably building a new world on earth.  This forms the core of Sri Aurobindo’s poetic Agenda in general and in Savitri in particular. How meticulously and painstakingly this divine builder makes new  worlds or transforms the existing ones! One has to enter into the spirit of Savitri to believe it. Poetry to be meaningful and helpful towards achieving the divine fulfilment upon earth must turn towards expressing the new creation which the yogic vision of the poet sees and which can be created by transformation. But the situation today is

In vain is the unending line of seers,

The sages ponder in unsubstantial light,

The poets lend their voice to outward dreams,

A homeless fire inspires the prophet tongues.

Heaven’s flaming lights descend and back return,

The luminous Eye approaches and retires;

Eternity speaks, none understands its word;

Fate is unwilling and the Abyss denies;

The Inconscient’s mindless waters block all done.

Only a little lifted is Mind’s screen.

—    Savitri : 371

    

Not to carry man ‘a little beyond’ is the aim of this seer poet, rather to establish a gnostic life, a life divine upon this death – bound earth is his high mission. A new method which can reveal to man his divine potentialities has to be given. Not to explore life that has exhibited but to liberate the hidden and eternal truth in the inmost being, ‘the indispensable fire’, ‘the burning witness’ and thereby carry evolution to its summit so as to build a new  world upon the earth is the high poetic aim of Savitri. But so long as human consciousness is in ignorance this aim cannot be achieved. Only when man’s consciousness changes to the spiritual and the supramental that the new creation is possible,

     To make of life a cosmic harmony,

     An empire of the immanent Divine

—    Savitri : 318

But this could not be unless the poet himself has attained realisation and experience of the highest plane of consciousness. With his seeing-soul the poet in an unmoved joy then chants of his vision beatific. The epic not only upholds the poet’s spiritual experiences but also it attempts at remoulding and transforming the very mind, life and body of man. “Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences.. there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry.”¹

Savitri is the poetry Transformation. To attain this seemingly impossible task Sri Aurobindo gives to the world his magnificent yoga of Transformation. Pain, misery, suffering, falsehood and death stalk this earth-nature, and there is no way out of this, at least not so far found. There is no way to get rid of these dark universal Powers. These can only be transformed into their higher divine counterparts. This work, says Sri Aurobindo, can be achieved by the power of the highest Truth-Consciousness which he calls the Supermind and which he has realised and experienced. The transformation of the terrestrial life forms the second major theme of the poem

To free the self is but one radiant pace;

Hereto fulfil himself was God’s desire.

—    Savitri : 312

These are the two thematic threads of the poem. The first is achieved by evolution and the second by transformation.

Transformation : meaning and its need:

The meaning of Transformation may better be given in Sri Aurobindo’s own words: “By transformation I do not mean some change of nature — I do not mean, for instance, sainthood or ethical perfection or yogic siddhis (like the Tantrik’s) or a trancendental (cinmaya) body. I use transformation in a special sense, a change of consciousness radical and complete and of a certain specific kind which is so conceived as to bring about a strong and assured step forward in the spiritual evolution of the being of a greater and higher kind and of a larger sweep and completeness than what took place when a mentalised being first appeared in a vital and material animal world. If anything short of that takes place or at least if a real beginning is not made on that basis, a fundamental progress towards this fulfilment, then my object is not accomplished. A partial realisation, something mixed and inconclusive, does not meet the demand I make on life and Yoga.”²

It is true that spiritual realisation in itself does not bring transformation of the being as a whole, ‘it may bring only an opening or heightening or widening of the consciousness at the top so as to realise something in the Purusha part without any radical change in the parts of Prakriti.’ “One may have some light of realisation at the spiritual summit of the consciousness but the parts below remain what they were... There must be a descent of the light not merely into the mind or part of it but into all the being down to the physical and below before a real transformation can take place”.²  Only when a strong descent of the Divine Consciousness with its Peace, Light, Power etc comes into the parts of man’s being and nature that the process of transformation begins—

     A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,

     A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,

     A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire,

     Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs

     And penetrated nerve and heart and brain

     That thrilled and fainted with the epiphany:

     His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp

—    Savitri : 81

A descent like this can transform the being and his nature. A light in the mind may spiritualise or otherwise change it or part of it; a light in the vital may purify and enlarge its movements, ‘but leave the body and the physical consciousness as it was’. It must be the descent of the whole higher consciousness, its Peace, Power, Knowledge, Love, Ananda as the above lines of Savitri describe. Again the descent may bring a great change in the inner being, ‘while the outer remains an imperfect instrument.’ Transformation cannot be integral and complete ‘unless it is a supramentalisation of the being.’

Regarding the need of transformation : Man does not and cannot remain constantly in the higher consciousness; if that could be possible it is good and if there is no risk of his falling back to the lower. Sri Aurobindo states, “If one remains always in the higher consciousness, so much the better. But why does not one remain there? Because the lower is still part of the nature and it pulls you down towards itself”.³

        Only a while at first these heavenlier states,

     These large wide-poised upliftings could endure.

        The high and luminous tension breaks too soon.....

     As a child who learns to walk can walk not long.

—    Savitri : 34

Also,

     An old pull of subconscious cords renews;

     It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights

     Or a dull gravitation drags us down

     To the blind driven inertia of our base.

—    Ibid

Hence there is an imperative need of transformation. If on the other hand the lower is transformed, it becomes of one kind with the higher and there is nothing lower to pull the consciousness downward.

“Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above, if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the  self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended – they can only be mended by transformation”³ This is the rationale of the need and necessity for transformation.

     To mould humanity into God’s own shape

     And lead this great blind struggling world to light 

     Or a new world discover or create.

     Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven

     Or Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state.

—    Savitri : 486

Transformation : its fundamentals:

Sri Aurobindo insists that transformation must be preceded by highest and deepest spiritual realisations. The fundamental realisations in the Yoga of Transformation are:

“I, The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence”. The discovery of the psychic and psychicisation of the being, according to Sri Aurobindo, is of paramount significance and the first inevitable step in the Yoga of Transformation: “Hid deep in man celestial powers can dwell” (Savitri) and once the psychic is found and it comes to the front, then ‘strange powers and influences’ from the soul space would change life, thought, action through our love and devotion for the Divine Mother. The importance of  finding the psychic finds expression in the following verse.

     Always we bear in us a magic key

     Concealed in life’s hermetic envelope,

     A burning Witness in the sanctuary

     Regards through Time and  the blind walls of Form;...

He sees the secret things no words can speak

And knows the goal of the unconscious world...           

—    Savitri : 49

“2. The descent of Peace, Power, Light, etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body”. “Our body’s cells must hold the Immortal’s flame”. (Savitri : 35)

“3. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.”⁴

     A living Oneness widened at its core

     And joined him to unnumbered multitudes,

     A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love

     Caught all into a sole immense embrace;

     Existence found its truth on Oneness’ breast.

—    Savitri : 322-3

Besides, there are realisations of the triple divinity:

“(1) the realisation of the psychic being and consciousness as the divine element in the evolution; (2) the realisation of the cosmic Self which is one in all; (3) the realisation of the Supreme Divine from which both individual and cosmos have come and of the individual being (Jivatma) as an eternal portion of the Divine”.⁵ These realisations alone lead to psychic and spiritual transformation. But the ultimate and total transformation of the being and its nature can only be attained by supramental realisation or supramentalisation.

Transformation : its operative movements:

The basic sketch of the path that the Yoga of Transformation follows has been outlined by Sri Aurobindo: “There are in fact two systems simultaneously active in the organisation of the being and its parts: one is concentric, a series of rings or sheaths with the psychic at the centre: another is vertical, an ascension and descent, like a flight of steps, a series of superimposed planes with the supermind – overmind as the crucial nodus of the transition beyond the human into the Divine. For this transition, if it is to be at the same time a transformation, there is only one way, one path. First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts. When one has made the inward conversion, one psychicises the whole lower nature so as to make it ready for the divine change. Going upwards, one passes beyond the human mind and at each stage of the ascent, there is a conversion into a new consciousness and an infusion of this new consciousness into the whole of the nature Thus rising beyond intellect through illuminated higher mind to the intuitive consciousness, we begin to look at everything not from the intellect range or through intellect as an instrument, but from a greater intuitive height and through an intuitvised will, feeling, emotion, sensation and physical contact. So, proceeding  from intuition to a greater overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact. But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there – once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and conversion of consciousness is no longer needed, though a farther divine progression, even an infinite development is still possible.”⁶

1.  The concentric movement:

It is an inward conversion, the consciousness going inward to find the psychic. A series of concentric rings or sheaths — mind, vital, body and inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of nature — are the teguments that cover the inmost psychic at the centre. Piercing through all these teguments the consciousness has to find the psychic and bring it to the front so as to psychicise the nature: “Thus could he bear the touch immaculate”. (Savitri: )

This movement is ‘conversion inwards’ and is a major step in the process of transformation, and it makes the passage of the other movements of transformation easier, more rapid and less difficult. Savitri describes the change that comes with the finding of the psychic—

     His soul was all in front like a great sea

     Flooding the mind and body with its waves;

     His being, spread to embrace the universe,

     United the within and the without

     To make of life a cosmic harmony,

     An empire of the immanent Divine

—    Savitri : 318

The psychic that lies hidden in our depth can guide the ignorant nature to the supreme goal—

     The unfelt Self within who is the guide,

     The unknown Self above who is the goal.

—    Savitri : 168

2.  The vertical movement:

It is an ascension of consciousness rung after higher rung, as if along a ladder, the World-Stair. Rising upwards, one passes beyond the human mind to new and higher plane of consciousness, even to the highest. Such an ascension leads to one’s individual “salvation’ as have been the aim and practice of traditional systems of yoga. But Sri Aurobindo’s aim is not individual salvation; his mission is to build a new world with new beings of Truth – Consciousness and that is possible only by transforming earth-nature and human being and its nature. There must be  ascension to higher planes of consciousness but that is only the first step if going upwards is ‘to be at the same time a transformation’, there must be a descent, to bring down into the lower parts the power of higher consciousness gained by ascension. This implies a double movement, ascent and descent of the consciousness. Again, in ascent and descent of the consciousness each is a two-stage movement: In the first stage ascent begins from above the human mind and journeying through the principal spiritual planes (Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind) of the lower hemisphere aparaprakriti — “A scale and series in the Ignorance” (Savitri : 484) the ascending consciousness is thus readied for the second stage of the ascent into the higher hemisphere of paraprakriti;  this is the entry of the consciousness into the Divine Truth-Consciousness, the Supermind. The second movement of this part of Yoga is the descent of the consciousness that has arisen to higher spiritual planes, even to the highest supramental plane, and bringing their powers down into mind, life and body of man to transform them. The descent, like its counterpart ascent, has two stages: first, descent from the spiritual planes of consciousness, and secondly, from the supramental plane. Transformation achieved by the descending powers of consciousness from spiritual planes has been termed by Sri Aurobindo as Spiritual Transformation, while transformation brought by the descending Truth – Consciousness is the Supramental Transformation. Thus both the movements of Ascent and Descent carry out the work of transformation. The entire process of transformation includes

     Psychic Transformation,

     Spiritual Transformation and

     Supramental Transformation.

This is Sri Aurobindo’s famous Triple Transformation. This finds a beautiful expression in the following verse:—

     But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve

     Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.

     The soul must soar sovereign above the form

     And climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep;

     Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength,

     Surprise the animal with the occult god.

     Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,

     Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,

     We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,

     Make the abysm a road for Heaven’s descent,

     Acquaint our depths with supernal Ray

     And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.

—    Savitri : 171-2

Transformation, basic conditions:

A certain preliminary or some sort of initial purification, self-perfecting of the nature and its instruments is necessary so that ‘they may respond to higher forces and admit them and to a certain extent a change or at least a greater plasticity in the processes’  may be attained. Integral Yoga implies integral transformation both in the inner and outer being and its nature. The basic conditions however do not directly go to achieve this transformation. They only go to make a certain preparatory ground-work so as to facilitate the work of transformation. These conditions are—

1.  Equality

“The very first necessity for spiritual perfection is a perfect equality.”⁷ Again, “A perfect equality of our spirit and nature is a means by which we can move back from the troubled and ignorant outer consciousness into this inner kingdom of heaven and possess the spirit’s eternal kingdoms.... of greatness, joy and peace”.⁸ The epic sings of this perfect equality of mind — “In the world which sprang from it, it took no part”

     It gave no heed to the paeans of victory,

     It was indifferent to its own defeats,

     It heard the cry of grief and made no sign;

     Impartial fell its gaze on evil and good.

     It saw destruction come and did not move.

     An equal Cause of things, a lonely Seer....

     It acted not but bore all thoughts and deeds,

     The witness Lord of Nature’s myriad acts

—    Savitri : 283

This ‘witness hush is the Thinker’s secret base’. And when this ‘vast quietism’ is reflected in the mind, then the seeker is firmly stationed in the Equality of his mind and spirit and then

     The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him

—    Savitri : 26

Not only equality reveals to the seeker the true source of knowledge, but it brings too the ‘yogic poise’ so necessary in yoga; with its attainment half the battle is won—

     At last was won a firm spiritual poise,

     A constant lodging in the Eternal’s realm,

     A safety in the Silence and the Ray,

     A settlement in the Immutable.

—    Savitri : 36

2.  To be egoless:

“The formation of a mental and vital ego tied to the body-sense was the first great labour of the cosmic Life in its progressive evolution; for this was the means it found for creating out of matter a conscious individual. The dissolution of this limiting ego is the one condition, the necessary means for this very cosmic Life to arrive at its divine fruition: for only so can the conscious individual find either his transcendent self or his true Person”.⁹ It is in this sense the true meaning of Sri Aurobindo’s famous aphorism ‘Ego was the helper, ego is the bar’ stands illumined. “The ego is by its nature a smallness of being; it brings contraction of the consciousness and with the contraction limitation of knowledge, disabling ignorance, — confinement and a diminution of power and by that diminution incapacity and weakness — scission of oneness and by that scission disharmony and failure of sympathy and love and understanding,...”¹⁰ The ego forms a shadow of the self, once this shadow disappears, it will reveal  the spirit’s unclouded substance’, man’s central being.

For the seeker on the path of Integral Yoga, ‘the self of the man must be made one with the Self of all. And this cannot be done without an uncompromising abolition of the ego sense at its very basis and source. Man’s self discriminating egoism is given him as a means for the primary purpose of his ‘perfect disengagement from the lower subconscient in which the individual is overpowered by the mass-consciousness of the world and entirely subject to the mechanical workings of Nature.’ “Man must first affirm himself in the ignorance and then only he can perfect himself in the knowledge by abolishing the ego.” When

     The landmarks of the little person fell,

     The island ego joined its continent:

     Overpassed was this world of rigid limiting forms:

     Life’s barriers opened into the Unknown.

—    Savitri : 25

then is

     Annulled the soul’s treaty with Nature’s nescience” (Ibid) and

     Truth unpartitioned found immense sky-room;

     An empyrean vision saw and knew;

     The bounded mind became a boundless light,

     The finite self mated with Infinity.

—    Savitri : 25

Here is a perfect egoless state of Savitri described by the poet

     A vacant consciousness watched from within,

     Empty of all but bare Reality.

     There was no will behind the word and act,

     No thought formed in her brain to guide the speech:

     An impersonal emptiness walked and spoke in her.

—    Savitri : 551-2

In this state one is guided by ‘the original Mystery’ and

     It used her speech and acted in her acts,

     It was beauty in her limbs, life in her breath;

     The original Mystery wore her human face.

     Thus was she lost within to separate self;

     Her mortal ego perished in God’s night.

     Only a body was left, the ego’s shell

     Afloat mid drift and foam of the world – sea....

—    Ibid 552

The Mother too in her talk emphasises on the abolition of the ego : “.... but now that the birth of superhumanity is being prepared, the ego has to disappear and give way to the psychic being”.¹¹ A similar expression is found in her Prayers and Meditation : “Never hast thou been able to die integrally... learn how to disappear, break the last dam which separates thee from me.”¹² This last dam is the ego. The epic chants,—

     Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time’s work,

     Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.

     Annul thyself that only God may be.

—    Savitri : 538

In another talk we have Mother’s exhortation and assurance too: “We want a race that has no ego, that has in place of the ego the Divine Consciousness. It is that which will allow the race to develop itself and the supramental being to take birth”.¹³

According to Sri Aurobindo, widening or expansion of the consciousness is an effective method of abolition of the ego. He writes, “The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and self-perfecting”.¹⁴ Then the contraction and smallness of the ego can be got rid of. In the Mother’s words, “For, to tell the truth, everbody is small, small, small, so small that there is not enough room to put any supramental in. It is so small that it is already quite filled up with all ordinary little human movements. There must be great widening to make room for the movements of the Supermind”.¹⁵ The poem describes beautifully the widening of the consciousness:

     His soul was all in front like a great sea

     Flooding the mind and body with its waves

—    Savitri : 538

Release from ego brings in the realisation of cosmic consciousness, ‘a casting of oneself into the universal’.

3.  To be desireless:

Once the yogic poise has been attained by equality, once the being has ‘a constant lodging in the Eternal’s realm’ and ‘a settlement in the Immutable’, it becomes easier for the seeker to get rid of desires. People are mostly driven by the forces of Nature; “whatever desires come, they fulfil them, whatever emotions come, they allow them to play, whatever physical wants they have, they try to satisfy”.¹⁶ But instincts and desires have no place in yoga. “Yoga demands mastery over the nature, not subjection to the nature”.¹⁷ Surmounting desires is a great achievement as it helps the seeker to delink himself from his lower vital.

“The root of desire is the vital craving to seize upon that which we feel we have not, it is the limited life’s instinct for possession and satisfaction. It creates the sense of want”¹⁸ It brings ‘the unquiet thirst of sensation’; ‘the lust of control, domination, success’; ‘the desire for the satisfaction of liking and disliking, love and hate, grief and joy’. It is the sense of limitation and impulse towards self-engagement that create all these, “The rejection of desire is essentially the rejection of the element of craving, putting that out from the consciousness itself as a foreign element not belonging to the true self and the inner nature. But refusal to indulge the suggestions of desire is also a part of the rejection; to abstain from the action suggested, if it is not the right action, must be included in the yogic discipline.”¹⁸ Sri Aurobindo explains, “The desires come from outside, enter the subconscious vital and rise to the surface. It is only when they rise to the surface and the mind becomes aware of them, that we become conscious of the desire. It seems to us to be our own because we feel it thus rising from the vital into the mind and do not know that it came from outside”.¹⁸ The difficulty of rejection comes because we feel desire as part of our constituent. To that is added ‘the habit of responding to the waves of the currents of suggestion’. To see with the true consciousness is the way out—

     Then looking to know whence the intruders came

     She saw a spiritual immensity

     Pervading and encompassing the world-space

     As ether our transparent tangible air,

     And through it sailing tranquilly a thought

     As smoothly glides a ship nearing its port...

—    Savitri : 544

Once conscious of the desire approaching from outside, meet it with ‘a barring will, a blow of Force’. ‘Ignorant of embargo and blockade’ the desire comes ‘sailing tranquilly’—

     Confident of entrance and the visa’s seal,

     It came to the silent city of the brain

     Towards its accustomed and expectant quay,

     But met a barring will, a blow of Force

     And sank vanishing in the immensity.

—    Ibid

Demand and so-called necessities of life are the aspects of the same desire; “for there are only a very few things that are real necessities in life. The rest are either utilities or things decorative to life or luxuries.”¹⁹ In fact desire is ‘a psychological movement’ and it has the knack to attach itself to ‘things that are not true needs’.

Behind desire ‘stands a cosmic might’,

     From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds

     And with its dire edge eats at being’s heart

     Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire,

     A thousand shapes it wore, took numberless names:....

     It burns all breasts with an ambiguous fire.

     A radiance gleaming on a murky stream,

     It flamed towards heaven, then sank, engulfed, towards hell;

     It climbed to drag down Truth into the mire

     And used for muddy ends its brilliant Force

—    Savitri : 247

And in human breast it grows into a ‘new aesthesis of Inferno’s art’—

     A charm and sweetness sudden and formidable,

     Faces that raised alluring lips and eyes

     Approached him armed with beauty like a snare,

     But hid a fatal meaning in each line

—    Savitri : 205-6

Here life is ‘without hope, obscured, deformed by some dire Gorgon spell.’ and “Turned lust into a decorative art:” (Ibid : 212)

     All that denies must be torn out and slain

     And crushed the many longings for whose sake

     We lose the One for whom our lives were made.

—    Savitri : 316

To be desireless all the dim crypts and corners of our nature must be searched with the soul-fire

     Where refugee instincts and unshaped revolts

     Could shelter find in darkness’ sanctuary

     Against the white purity of heaven’s cleansing flame.

—    Savitri : 318

‘Yet some minutest dissident might escape’ and ‘lest a human cry should spoil the Truth’—

     He tore desire up from its bleeding roots

     And offered to the gods the vacant place.

—    Ibid

Thus could one be desireless and

    

     Thus could he bear the touch immaculate

     A last and mightiest transformation came.

—    Ibid

4.  Cosmic Consciousness

     Our consciousness is cosmic and immense.

     But only when we break through Matter’s wall

     In that spiritual vastness can we stand.

—    Savitri : 542-3

Attaining cosmic consciousness is another important condition and a very significant preparatory stage in the Yoga of Transformation. it is that peak from where one may dare to look up and hope for the touch of the supramental. It is the release from the ego that brings in ‘a sudden sense of cosmic consciousness, a casting of oneself into the universal’. According to Sri Aurobindo, a secure universality of being is the very basis of this new consciousness. Abandoning all rigid separateness one feels one with all things and beings, admit their consciousness as part of his. The poet describes its realisation,—

     Then suddenly there came a downward look,

     As if a sea exploring its own depths,

     A living Oneness widened at its core

     And joined him to unnumbered multitudes.

     A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love

     Caught all into a sole immense embrace;

—    Savitri : 322-3

Release from ‘the little ego’s ring,’ once ‘the landmarks of the little person fell,’ the ‘imperishable Inhabitant’ within finds its release from ignorance. Thence is attained the spirit’s freedom and greatness and it could breathe ‘a superhuman air’ in the cosmic consciousness:

     The imprisoned deity rent its magic fence.

     As with a sound of thunder and of seas,

     Vast barriers crashed around the huge escape,

     Immutably coeval with the world,

—    Savitri : 82

and the consciousness becomes cosmic, ‘coeval with the world.’ Listen to the poet’s description,—

     The cosmos flowered in her, she was its bed,

     She was Time and the dreams of God in Time;

     She was Space and the wideness of his days.

     From this she rose where Time and Space were not;

     The superconscient was her native air,

     Infinity was her movement’s natural space;

     Eternity looked out from her on Time.

—    Savitri : 557

The description of this state continues in an overwhelming manner:

     She was no more herself but all the world,

     Out of the infinitudes all came to her,

     Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,

     Infinity was her own natural home.

     Nowhere she dwelt, her spirit was everywhere,

     The distant constellations wheeled round her;

     Earth saw her born, all worlds were her colonies,...

—    Ibid, 556-7

Once stationed in this consciousness, entry into the highest supramental Consciousness becomes possible. Realisation of the cosmic consciousness is the final reversal of consciousness in the lower hemisphere, the last rung of the World-Stair.

5.  Resistance of the Nature:

There is no ‘royal road or short cut to the Divine’, and “it is a mistake to think that any path of Yoga is facile....” says Sri Aurobindo. “One cannot have the crown of spiritual victory without the struggle or reach the heights without ascent and its labour. Of all it can be said, “Difficult is that road, hard to tread like the edge of a razor”.²⁰ Regarding the difficulties of the Path, Sri Aurobindo explains, “All who enter the spiritual path have to face the difficulties and ordeals of the path, those which rise from their own nature and those which come in from outside. The difficulties in the nature always rise again and again till you overcome them, they must be faced with both strength and patience.”²¹ As the soul approaches the Divine, there is a resistance in the mind in the form of denial, doubt and fear of the Unknown:

     Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change;

     Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch:

     It fears the pure divine intolerance

     Of that assault of ether and of fire;

     It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,

     Almost with hate repels the light it brings;

     It trembles at its naked power of Truth

—    Savitri : 7

And ‘inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law’,

     Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence

     It turns against the saviour hands of Grace

—    Ibid.

In all the parts of the being there are tremendous resistances. Mind is ‘a house haunted by the slain past’, its ideas ‘ghosts of old truths’ and it makes of ‘God’s spontaneities’ a ‘grave of great lost opportunities’. And the ‘sun-thoughts’ from the ‘glory of lightnings’ fade, ‘darkened by ignorant minds’ that

     Denied the Truth that transient truths might live

     And hid the Deity in creed and guess

—    Savitri : 244

“There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance”,²¹ then there will be great difficulties:

     In the texture of our bound humanity

     He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb

—    Savitri : 317

and its tentacles stretch endlessly. The only way out is to uproot the resistance that comes from desire. “The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability to respond to the higher consciousness, a habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically.....”²²

There is a fundamental resistance in man. “Human nature and the character of the individual are a formation that has arisen in and out of the inconscience of the material world and can never get entirely free from the pressure of that Inconscience”.²³

     He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb

     Of our inconscient and unseeing base,

     The stubborn mute rejection in Life’s depths,

     The ignorant No in the origin of things,

     A veiled collaboration with the Night...

     Its kinship with the Inconscient whence it came.

—    Savitri : 317

‘A shadowy unity with a vanished past’ still continues with human nature, and this is the fundamental resistance in man:

     Nothing is wholly dead that once had lived;

     In dim tunnels of the world’s being and in ours

     The old rejected nature still survives;

—    Savitri : 483

Or, again –

     Our dead past round our future’s ankles clings

     And drags back the new nature’s glorious stride,

     Or from its buried corpse old ghosts arise.

—    Ibid

“The spiritual change which yoga demands from human nature and individual character is, therefore, full of difficulties, one may almost say that it is the most difficult of all human aspirations and efforts,”²³  Listen to its description-

     An old self lurks in the new self we are;

     Hardly we escape from what we once had been:

     In the dim gleam of habit’s passages,

     In the subconscient’s darkling corridors

     All things are carried by the porter nerves   

—    Ibid

The resistance however strong and violent cannot withstand ‘a divine intervention’ that ‘thrones above’ : “A Godhead stands behind the brute machine”. (Savitri : 21)

The Divine is there, but he does not ignore the conditions, the laws, the circumstances of Nature; it is under these conditions that He does all His work, His work in the world and in man and consequently in the sadhak, the aspirant, even in the God-knower and God-lover,...”²⁴ assures Sri Aurobindo. All are limited by their nature. “A complete liberation and a complete perfection or the complete possession of the Divine and possession by the Divine is possible, but it does not  usually happen by an easy miracle or a series of miracles. The miracle can and does happen but only when there is the full call and complete self-giving of the soul and the entire widest opening of the nature.”²⁴

     A prayer, a master act, a king idea

     Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.

     Then miracle is made the common rule,

     One mighty deed can change the course of things;

—    Savitri : 20

Sri Aurobindo speaks of another resistance: “There is, moreover, the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence in the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses, desires, feelings, responses continue even after they are thrown out and rejected, and can return like an invading army from outside, until the whole nature, given to the Divine, refuses to admit them”²² This statement of Sri Aurobindo finds a wonderful poetic expression in another sustained imagery in Book Seven, canto six of Savitri . All rejected old ideas, impulses, feelings, thoughts return like an invading army from outside. These are

     Mind’s unexpected visitors from the unseen

     Like far – off sails upon a lonely sea.

—    Savitri : 544

‘Then looking to know whence the intruders came’

     She saw a spiritual immensity

     Pervading and encompassing the world-space

     As ether our transparent tangible air,

     And through it sailing tranquilly a thought.

—    Ibid

They came as though they had ‘a natural privileged right to the high royal entries of the soul’. Then comes the epic simile through which the poet continues the imagery-

     As smoothly glides a ship nearing its port,

     Ignorant of embargo and blockade,

     Confident of entrance and the visa’s seal,

     It came to the silent city of the brain

     Towards its accustomed and expectant quay

—    Ibid

Thus comes the resistance of the universal Nature. But the mind’s unexpected visitors from the unseen’ meet the unexpected ‘embargo and blockade’ from Savitri, they

     ...met a barring will, a blow of Force

     And sank vanishing in the immensity.

—    Ibid.

The solution provided by the poem besides ‘a barring will, a blow of Force’, is to remain exclusively in ‘eternity’s hush’, the repose of the Absolute’, in ‘the ocean silence of Infinity’.

Transformation of the nature and parts of being:

“The difficulty of the yoga is not in getting experiences or a subjective realisation of the Truth; it is in objectivising the Truth, that is in making  the outer consciousness down to the material an expression of the inner Truth. So long as that is not done the attacks of the lower Nature can always intervene”.²⁵ By fulfilling the conditions for transformation as discussed in the previous section, a certain preparatory base is attained: “In him that high transition laid its base”.

     Through which his Glory shines for whom we were made

     And we break into the infinity of God.

—    Savitri : 24

This is the ‘high transition’ that lays its base in the seeker, and

     Across our nature’s border line we escape

     Into supernature’s arc of living light

—    Ibid

One is thus prepared to undergo transformation of his nature and parts of being

Regarding transformation of the nature, Sri Aurobindo writes, “Merely to have experiences of the higher consciousness will not change the nature”²⁵ He speaks of four ways by which change of nature can be brought about. They are

1.  the higher consciousness has to make a dynamic descent into the whole being and change it; or

2.  it must establish itself in the inner being down to the inner physical so that the latter feels itself separate from the outer and is able to act freely upon it; or

3.  the psychic must come forward and change the nature; or

4.  the inner will must awake and force the nature to change.

But any of the above to be effective there is need of “an increasingly stable quietude and silence of the mind’,

     He stood in a realm of boundless silences

     Awaiting the Voice that spoke and built the worlds.

—    Savitri : 297

Or, listen to the following verse:

     This Light comes not by struggle or by thought;

     In the mind’s silence the Transcendent acts

     And the hushed heart hears the unuttered Word.

—    Savitri : 315

The ‘dynamic descent into the whole being’ which ‘must awake and force the nature to change’ is the ultimate method—

     A Power that lives upon the heights must act,

     Bring into life’s closed room the Immortal’s air

     And fill the finite with the Infinite.

—    Ibid

Then is it possible

     To break earth’s seal of ignorance and death

—    Savitri : 315

Transformation of the nature to be integral must extend to fourfold aspects

1.  Transformation of the mind;

2.  Transformation of the vital;

3.  Transformation of the physical; and

4.  Transformation of the Subconscient and the Inconscient.

Transformation of the mind:

(a)         The thinking mind:

“To have a developed intellect is always helpful if one can enlighten it from above and turn it to a divine use”, writes Sri Aurobindo. “The intellect of most men is extremely imperfect, ill-trained, half-developed... At the same time the intellect is usually arrogant and presumptuous, confidently asserting its imperfect conclusions as the truth and setting down as mistaken, stupid or foolish those who differ from them. In the course of the sadhana intellect has to be transformed into the higher mind which is itself a passage towards the true knowledge”.²⁶ Armed with her lens and measuring and probe’.

     She strove to reduce to rules the mystic world.

     Nothing she knew but all things hoped to know.

—    Savitri : 250

Intellect merely ‘throws a glittering robe on ignorance’ and ‘drags huge knowledge-bales through Matter’s dust to reach utility’s immense bazaar’. ‘The husks she keeps, the kernel throws aside’, and finally ‘Time cancels all her verdicts in appeal’.

But Sri Aurobindo says that it should not be a bar ‘to receive through the thinking mind’. If the thinking mind  does not receive the higher consciousness, it could not be transformed. It is the ordinary and unenlightened activity of the intellect that is an obstacle to spiritual experience:

     For not by Reason was creation made

     And not by Reason can the Truth be seen

     Which through the veils of thought, the screens of sense

     Hardly the spirit’s vision can descry

     Dimmed by the imperfection of its means:

—    Savitri : 256-7

The only way to liberation from the turmoil of mental activity is that “the thinking mind has to learn how to be entirely silent. It is only then that true knowledge can come.... cessation of thought and other vibrations is the climax of the inner silence”.²⁷ True knowledge comes from the higher planes of consciousness which are veiled to reason –

     Reason cannot tear off that glimmering mask.

     Her efforts only make it glimmer more;

—    Savitri : 257

But “To save the world from ignorance she came” (Savitri: 250) A pure Thought-Mind, ‘archangel of a white transcending realm’, ‘luminous in a remote and empty air’ can break the limits of the labouring Power, the mind, for ‘Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind and “It is greater than its earthly instrument”. To that higher consciousness human mind must climb or bring down its dynamic power into itself:

     A fire shall come out of the infinitudes,

     A greater Gnosis shall regard the world

     Crossing out of some far omniscience

     On lustrous seas from the still rapt Alone

     To illumine the deep heart of self and things.

     A timeless knowledge it shall bring to Mind.

—    Savitri : 258

Thus alone transformation of the thinking mind is possible.

(b)         The vital mind:

“The thinking mind does not lead men, does not influence them the most – it is the vital propensities and the vital mind that predominate. The thinking mind with most men is, in matters of life, only an instrument of the vital”.²⁸ explains Sri Aurobindo, “the function of this mind (vital mind) is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, for that is the function of the thinking mind proper, — but to plan or dream or imagine what can be done. It makes formations for the future which the will can try to carry out if opportunity and circumstances become favourable or even it can work to make them favourable... it is exceedingly important not to allow this power to do what it likes with you, for it then creates false experiences according to its nature....”²⁹  This is ‘a fiery spirit’, — it is ‘a hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass’, ‘a rash Intelligence’ that ‘with its dire edge eats at being’s heart’. It is the fire of ambition that consumes man.–

     It burns all breasts with an ambiguous fire.

     A radiance gleaning on a murky stream,

     It flamed towards heaven, then sank, engulfed, towards hell;

     It climbed to drag down Truth into the mire

     And used for muddy ends its brilliant Force;

—    Savitri : 247

Ultimately it leads one to disappointment and failure. By nature the vital mind is—

     Ardent to find, incapable to retain,

     A brilliant instability was its mark,

     To err its inborn trend, its native cue.

—    Savitri : 248

This mind is a misleading force often used by powers of Falsehood and leads to man’s downfall, political and spiritual. ‘It cherished golden nothings born of wish’ and ‘thought all true that flattered its own hope’. Listen to the
following —

     An eager spring to seize and to possess

     Unguided by reason or the seeing soul

     Was its first natural motion and its last,

     It squandered life’s force to achieve the impossible:

     It scorned the straight road and ran on wandering curves

—    Ibid

The vital mind too has the need to be transformed. From a high station there looks down on this world scene.

     A power to uplift the laggard world,

     Imperious rode a huge high-winged Life-Thought...

     It saw afar the unreached Immortal’s home

     And heard afar the voices of the Gods

—    Savitri : 258

‘Archangel of a white trancending realm’, a pure ‘Thought-Mind’ surveys the cosmic act. This Thought-Mind ‘transcends the circles of mortal mind’ and is ‘greater than its earthly instrument’. To that high consciousness human mind must rise or bring down its power into itself. Then is its transformation possible.

(c)         The physical mind:

     It could not house the wideness of a soul

     Which needed all infinity for its home.

—    Savitri : 238-9

“The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty  respond to the higher forces. Left to itself, it is sceptical of the existence of supraphysical things, of which it has no direct experience and to which it can find no clue; even when it has spiritual experiences, it forgets them easily, loses the impression and result and finds it difficult to believe. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and supramental planes is one object of this yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human self-development, civilisation and culture.”³⁰

The poet describes the range and limitations of this physical mind as,

     Here are devised the forms of an ignorant life

     That sees the empiric fact as settled law,

     Labours for the hour and not for eternity

     And trades its gains to meet the moment’s call;

—    Savitri : 239-40

This mind is

     A specialist of logic’s hard machine

     Imposed its rigid artifice on the soul;

     An aide of the inventor intellect,

     It cut Truth into manageable bits

     That each might have his ration of thought-food,

     Then new-built Truth’s slain body by his art.

—    Savitri : 242

“It is the nature of the physical mind not to believe or accept anything that is supraphysical unless it is enlightened and compelled by the light to do it”, says Sri Aurobindo.

It is-

     A robot exact and serviceable and false

     Displaced the spirit’s finer view of things:

     A polished engine did the work of a god.

—    Ibid

Of course most men live in their physical mind, and it is the smallest of the trinity of mind:

     A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,

     A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds

     For ever stooped to hammer fact and form,

     Absorbed and cabined in external sight,

     It takes its stand on Nature’s solid base.

—    Savitri : 245

‘A prisoner of the moulds in which it works’, the physical mind is ‘the instrument of understanding and ordered action on physical things’

     A slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules,

     It sees as Law the habits of the world,

     It sees as Truth the habits of the mind.

—    Ibid

It lives content with ‘the common and the known’, ‘repeating old familiar acts’, “It loves the old ground that was its dwelling place”. This mind is ‘a prudent treasurer of its ignorance’ and habits.

     It shrinks from adventure, blinks at glorious hope,

     Preferring a safe foothold upon things

     To the dangerous joy of wideness and of height

—    Savitri : 246

The nature of physical mind is not to believe or accept anything new or supraphysical: