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Chapter IX
The Liberation of the Nature
THE TWO sides of our being, conscious experiencing soul
and executive Nature continuously and variously offering to the soul her experiences, determine in their meeting
all the affections of our inner status and its responses. Nature contributes the character of the happenings and the forms of the
instruments of experience, the soul meets it by an assent to the natural determinations of the response to these happenings or by
a will to other determination which it imposes upon the nature. The acceptance of the instrumental ego consciousness and the
will to desire are the initial consent of the self to the lapse into the lower ranges of experience in which it forgets its divine nature
of being; the rejection of these things, the return to free self and the will of the divine delight in being is the liberation of the
spirit. But on the other side stand the contributions of Nature herself to the mixed tangle, which she imposes on the soul's
experience of her doings and makings when once that first initial consent has been given and made the law of the whole outward
transaction. Nature's essential contributions are two, the gunas and the dualities. This inferior action of Nature in which we
live has certain essential qualitative modes which constitute the whole basis of its inferiority. The constant effect of these modes
on the soul in its natural powers of mind, life and body is a discordant and divided experience, a strife of opposites,
dvandva, a motion in all its experience and an oscillation between or a
mixture of constant pairs of contraries, of combining positives and
negatives, dualities. A complete liberation from the ego and the
will of desire must bring with it a superiority to the qualitative modes of the inferior Nature, traigunyatitya, a release from
this mixed and discordant experience, a cessation or solution of the dual action of Nature. But on this side too there are two
kinds of freedom. A liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss
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of the spirit is the first form of release. A farther liberation of
the Nature into a divine quality and spiritual power of world-experience fills the supreme calm with the supreme kinetic bliss
of knowledge, power, joy and mastery. A divine unity of supreme spirit and its supreme nature is the integral liberation.
Nature, because she is a power of spirit, is essentially qualitative in her action. One may almost say that Nature is only
the power in being and the development in action of the infinite qualities of the spirit,
anantaguna. All else belongs to her out. ward and more mechanical aspects; but this play of quality is
the essential thing, of which the rest is the result and mechanical combination. Once we have set right the working of the essential
power and quality, all the rest becomes subject to the control of the experiencing Purusha. But in the inferior nature of things the
play of infinite quality is subject to a limited measure, a divided and conflicting working, a system of opposites and discords
between which some practical mobile system of concords has to be found and to be kept in action; this play of concorded
discords, conflicting qualities, disparate powers and ways of experience compelled to some just manageable, partial, mostly
precarious agreement, an unstable mutable equilibrium, is managed by a fundamental working in three qualitative modes which
conflict and combine together in all her creations. These three modes have been given in the Sankhya system, which is generally adopted for this purpose by all the schools of philosophic thought and of Yoga in India, the three names,
sattva, rajas
and tamas.¹ Tamas is the principle and power of inertia; rajas is the principle of kinesis, passion, endeavour, struggle, initiation (ārambha); sattwa the principle of assimilation, equilibrium and
harmony. The metaphysical bearing of this classification does not concern us; but in its psychological and spiritual bearing it is
of immense practical importance, because these three principles enter into all things, combine to give them their turn of active
nature, result, effectuation, and their unequal working in the
¹ This subject has been treated in the Yoga of Works. It is restated here from the point of view of the general type of nature and the complete liberation of the being.
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soul-experience is the constituent force of our active personality, our temperament, type of nature and cast of psychological response to experience. All character of action and experience in
us is determined by the predominance and by the proportional interaction of these three qualities or modes of Nature. The
soul in its personality is obliged, as it were, to run into their moulds; mostly, too, it is controlled by them rather than has
any free control of them. The soul can only be free by rising above and rejecting the tormented strife of their unequal action
and their insufficient concords and combinations and precarious harmonies, whether in the sense of a complete quiescence from
the half-regulated chaos of their action or in the sense of a superiority to this lower turn of nature and a higher control
or transformation of their working. There must be either an emptiness of the gunas or a superiority to the gunas.
The gunas affect every part of our natural being. They have indeed their strongest relative hold in the three different members of it, mind, life and body. Tamas, the principle of inertia, is strongest in material nature and in our physical being. The
action of this principle is of two kinds, inertia of force and inertia of knowledge. Whatever is predominantly governed by
Tamas, tends in its force to a sluggish inaction and immobility or else to a mechanical action which it does not possess, but is
possessed by obscure forces which drive it in a mechanical round of energy; equally in its consciousness it turns to an inconscience
or enveloped subconscience or to a reluctant, sluggish or in some way mechanical conscious action which does not possess the idea
of its own energy, but is guided by an idea which seems external to it or at least concealed from its active awareness. Thus the
principle of our body is in its nature inert, subconscient, incapable of anything but a mechanical and habitual self-guidance
and action: though it has like everything else a principle of kinesis and a principle of equilibrium of its state and action,
an inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness, the greatest portion of its rajasic motions are contributed by the life-power
and all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle
of rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is
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the Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but
the life-power in earthly beings is possessed by the force of desire, therefore rajas turns always to action and desire; desire is the
strongest human and animal initiator of most kinesis and action, predominant to such an extent that many consider it the father
of all action and even the originator of our being. Moreover, rajas finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the
principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; therefore its whole
action takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every
step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering: even its gains are precarious and limited and marred by the reaction
of the effort and an aftertaste of insufficiency and transience. The principle of sattwa has its strongest hold in the mind; not
so much in the lower parts of the mind which are dominated by the rajasic life-power, but mostly in the intelligence and the
will of the reason. Intelligence, reason, rational will are moved by the nature of their predominant principle towards a constant
effort of assimilation, assimilation by knowledge, assimilation by a power of understanding will, a constant effort towards
equilibrium, some stability, rule, harmony of the conflicting elements of natural happening and experience. This satisfaction
it gets in various ways and in various degrees of acquisition. The attainment of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony brings
with it always a relative but more or less intense and satisfying sense of ease, happiness, mastery, security, which is other than
the troubled and vehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire and passion. Light and happiness
are the characteristics of the sattwic guna. The whole nature of the embodied living mental being is determined by these three
gunas.
But these are only predominant powers in each part of our
complex system. The three qualities mingle, combine and strive in every fibre and in every member of our intricate psychology.
The mental character is made by them, the character of our reason, the character of our will, the character of our moral,
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aesthetic, emotional, dynamic, sensational being. Tamas brings
in all the ignorance, inertia, weakness, incapacity which afflicts our nature, a clouded reason, nescience, unintelligence, a clinging to habitual notions and mechanical ideas, the refusal to think and know, the small mind, the closed avenues, the trotting
round of mental habit, the dark and the twilit places. Tamas brings in the impotent will, want of faith and self-confidence and
initiative, the disinclination to act, the shrinking from endeavour and aspiration, the poor and little spirit, and in our moral
and dynamic being the inertia, the cowardice, baseness, sloth, lax subjection to small and ignoble motives, the weak yielding
to our lower nature. Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and openness, the
shut soul, the callous heart, the soon spent affection and languor of the feelings, into our aesthetic and sensational nature the
dull aesthesis, the limited range of response, the insensibility to beauty, all that makes in man the coarse, heavy and vulgar spirit.
Rajas contributes our normal active nature with all its good and evil; when unchastened by a sufficient element of sattwa, it
turns to egoism, self-will and violence, the perverse, obstinate or exaggerating action of the reason, prejudice, attachment to
opinion, clinging to error, the subservience of the intelligence to our desires and preferences and not to the truth, the fanatic or the
sectarian mind, self-will, pride, arrogance, selfishness, ambition, lust, greed, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, the egoisms of love, all the
vices and passions, the exaggerations of the aesthesis, the morbidities and perversions of the sensational and vital being. Tamas
in its own right produces the coarse, dull and ignorant type of human nature, rajas the vivid, restless, kinetic man, driven by the
breath of action, passion and desire. Sattwa produces a higher type. The gifts of sattwa are the mind of reason and balance,
clarity of the disinterested truth-seeking open intelligence, a will subordinated to the reason or guided by the ethical spirit, self-control, equality, calm, love, sympathy, refinement, measure, fineness of the aesthetic and emotional mind, in the sensational
being delicacy, just acceptivity, moderation and poise, a vitality subdued and governed by the mastering intelligence. The
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accomplished types of the sattwic man are the philosopher, saint
and sage, of the rajasic man the statesman, warrior, forceful man of action. But in all men there is in greater or less proportions a
mingling of the gunas, a multiple personality and in most a good deal of shifting and alternation from the predominance of one
to the prevalence of another guna; even in the governing form of their nature most human beings are of a mixed type. All the
colour and variety of life is made of the intricate pattern of the weaving of the gunas.
But richness of life, even a sattwic harmony of mind and nature does not constitute spiritual perfection. There is a relative
possible perfection, but it is a perfection of incompleteness, some partial height, force, beauty, some measure of nobility and greatness, some imposed and precariously sustained balance. There is a relative mastery, but it is a mastery of the body by life or of the
life by mind, not a free possession of the instruments by the liberated and self-possessing spirit. The gunas have to be transcended
if we would arrive at spiritual perfection. Tamas evidently has to be overcome, inertia and ignorance and incapacity cannot
be elements of a true perfection; but it can only be overcome in Nature by the force of rajas aided by an increasing force
of sattwa. Rajas has to be overcome, egoism, personal desire and self-seeking passion are not elements of the true perfection;
but it can only be overcome by force of sattwa enlightening the being and force of tamas limiting the action. Sattwa itself
does not give the highest or the integral perfection; sattwa is always a quality of the limited nature; sattwic knowledge is the
light of a limited mentality; sattwic will is the government of a limited intelligent force. Moreover, sattwa cannot act by itself
in Nature, but has to rely for all action on the aid of rajas, so that even sattwic action is always liable to the imperfections
of rajas; egoism, perplexity, inconsistency, a one-sided turn, a limited and exaggerated will, exaggerating itself in the intensity
of its limitations, pursue the mind and action even of the saint, philosopher and sage. There is a sattwic as well as a rajasic or
tamasic egoism, at the highest an egoism of knowledge or virtue; but the mind's egoism of whatever type is incompatible with
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liberation. All the three gunas have to be transcended. Sattwa
may bring us near to the Light, but its limited clarity falls away from us when we enter into the luminous body of the divine
Nature.
This transcendence is usually sought by a withdrawal from
the action of the lower nature. That withdrawal brings with it a stressing of the tendency to inaction. Sattwa when it wishes to
intensify itself, seeks to get rid of rajas and calls in the aid of the tamasic principle of inaction; that is the reason why a certain
type of highly sattwic men live intensely in the inward being, but hardly at all in the outward life of action, or else are there
incompetent and ineffective. The seeker of liberation goes farther in this direction, strives by imposing an enlightened tamas on
his natural being, a tamas which by this saving enlightenment is more of a quiescence than an incapacity, to give the sattwic
guna freedom to lose itself in the light of the spirit. A quietude and stillness is imposed on the body, on the active life-soul of
desire and ego, on the external mind, while the sattwic nature by stress of meditation, by an exclusive concentration of adoration,
by a will turned inward to the Supreme, strives to merge itself in the spirit. But if this is sufficient for a quietistic release, it
is not sufficient for the freedom of an integral perfection. This liberation depends upon inaction and is not entirely self-existent
and absolute; the moment the soul turns to action, it finds that the activity of the nature is still the old imperfect motion. There
is a liberation of the soul from the nature which is gained by inaction, but not a liberation of the soul in nature perfect and
self-existent whether in action or in inaction. The question then arises whether such a liberation and perfection are possible and
what may be the condition of this perfect freedom.
The ordinary idea is that it is not possible because all action
is of the lower gunas, necessarily defective, sadosam, caused by
the motion, inequality, want of balance, unstable strife of the gunas; but when these unequal gunas fall into perfect equilibrium, all action of Nature ceases and the soul rests in its quietude. The divine Being, we may say, may either exist in his silence or
act in Nature through her instrumentation, but in that case must
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put on the appearance of her strife and imperfection. That may
be true of the ordinary deputed action of the Divine in the human spirit with its present relations of soul to nature in an embodied
imperfect mental being, but it is not true of the divine nature of perfection. The strife of the gunas is only a representation in the
imperfection of the lower nature; what the three gunas stand for are three essential powers of the Divine which are not merely
existent in a perfect equilibrium of quietude, but unified in a perfect consensus of divine action. Tamas in the spiritual being
becomes a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of
action, but a perfect power, śakti, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law of calm
even the most stupendous and enormous activity: rajas becomes a self-effecting initiating sheer Will of the spirit, which is not
desire, endeavour, striving passion, but the same perfect power
of being, śakti, capable of an infinite, imperturbable and blissful
action. Sattwa becomes not the modified mental light, prakāśa, but the self-existent light of the divine being,
jyotih, which is the
soul of the perfect power of being and illumines in their unity
the divine quietude and the divine will of action. The ordinary liberation gets the still divine light in the divine quietude, but
the integral perfection will aim at this greater triune unity.
When this liberation of the nature comes, there is a liberation also of all the spiritual sense of the dualities of Nature. In the lower nature the dualities are the inevitable effect of the
play of the gunas on the soul affected by the formations of the sattwic, rajasic and tamasic ego. The knot of this duality
is an ignorance which is unable to seize on the spiritual truth of things and concentrates on the imperfect appearances, but
meets them not with a mastery of their inner truth, but with a strife and a shifting balance of attraction and repulsion, capacity
and incapacity, liking and disliking, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, acceptance and repugnance; all life is represented to us
as a tangle of these things, of the pleasant and the unpleasant, the beautiful and the unbeautiful, truth and falsehood, fortune and
misfortune, success and failure, good and evil, the inextricable double web of Nature. Attachment to its likings and repugnances
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keeps the soul bound in this web of good and evil, joys and
sorrows. The seeker of liberation gets rid of attachment, throws away from his soul the dualities, but as the dualities appear to be
the whole act, stuff and frame of life, this release would seem to be most easily compassed by a withdrawal from life, whether a
physical withdrawal, so far as that is possible while in the body, or an inner retirement, a refusal of sanction, a liberating distaste,
vairāgya, for the whole action of Nature. There is a separation
of the soul from Nature. Then the soul watches seated above
and unmoved, udāsīna, the strife of the gunas in the natural being and regards as an impassive witness the pleasure and pain
of the mind and body. Or it is able to impose its indifference even on the outer mind and watches with the impartial calm or
the impartial joy of the detached spectator the universal action in which it has no longer an active inner participation. The end
of this movement is the rejection of birth and a departure into the silent self,
moksa.
But this rejection is not the last possible word of liberation.
The integral liberation comes when this passion for release,
mumuksutva, founded on distaste or vairāgya, is itself transcended; the soul is then liberated both from attachment to the lower action of nature and from all repugnance to the cosmic
action of the Divine. This liberation gets its completeness when the spiritual gnosis can act with a supramental knowledge and
reception of the action of Nature and a supramental luminous will in initiation. The gnosis discovers the spiritual sense in Nature, God in things, the soul of good in all things that have the contrary appearance; that soul is delivered in them and out
of them, the perversions of the imperfect or contrary forms fall away or are transformed into their higher divine truth,
— even as
the gunas go back to their divine principles, — and the spirit lives in a universal, infinite and absolute Truth, Good, Beauty, Bliss
which is the supramental or ideal divine Nature. The liberation of the Nature becomes one with the liberation of the spirit, and
there is founded in the integral freedom the integral perfection.
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