{"id":1000,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:53","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1000"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:53","slug":"06-reason-science-and-yoga-vol-22-letters-on-yoga-volume-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/22-letters-on-yoga-volume-22\/06-reason-science-and-yoga-vol-22-letters-on-yoga-volume-22","title":{"rendered":"-06_Reason Science and Yoga.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n
\n
\nS<\/font><\/span>ECTION<\/font> F<\/font>OUR<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 Reason, Science and Yoga<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

I<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span>               
\nE<\/font><\/span>UROPEAN<\/font>
\nmetaphysical thought \u2013 even in those thinkers who try to prove or explain the
\nexistence and nature of God or of the Absolute \u2013 does not in its method and
\nresult go beyond the intellect. But the intellect is incapable of knowing the
\nsupreme Truth; it can only range about seeking for Truth, and catching
\nfragmentary representations of it, not the thing itself, and trying to piece
\nthem together. Mind cannot arrive at Truth; it can only make some constructed
\nfigure that tries to represent it or a combination of figures. At the end of
\nEuropean thought, therefore, there must always be Agnosticism, declared or
\nimplicit. Intellect, if it goes sincerely to its own end, has to return and give
\nthis report: \u201cI cannot know; there is, or at least it seems to me that there may
\nbe or even must be Something beyond, some ultimate Reality, but about its truth
\nI can only speculate; it is either unknowable or cannot be known by me.\u201d Or, if
\nit has received some light on the way from what is beyond it, it can say too:
\n\u201cThere is perhaps a consciousness beyond Mind, for I seem to catch glimpses of
\nit and even to get intimations from it. If that is in touch with the Beyond or
\nif it is itself the consciousness of the Beyond and you can find some way to
\nreach it, then this Something can be known but not otherwise.\u201d<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\nAny seeking of the supreme
\nTruth through intellect alone must end either in Agnosticism of this kind or
\nelse in some intellectual system or mind-constructed formula. There have been
\nhundreds of these systems and formulas and there can be hundreds more, but none
\ncan be definitive. Each may have its value for the mind, and different systems
\nwith their contrary conclusions can have an equal appeal to intelligences of
\nequal power and competence. All this labour of speculation has its utility in
\ntraining the human mind and helping to keep before it the idea of Something
\nbeyond and Ultimate towards which it must turn. But the intellectual Reason can
\nonly point vaguely <\/span><\/font>
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 157<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nor feel gropingly towards it or try to indicate
\npartial and even conflicting aspects of its manifestation here; it cannot enter
\ninto and know it. As long as we remain in the domain of the intellect only, an
\nimpartial pondering over all that has been thought and sought after, a constant
\nthrowing up of ideas, of all the possible ideas, and the formation of this or
\nthat philosophical belief, opinion or conclusion is all that can be done. This
\nkind of disinterested search after Truth would be the only possible attitude
\nfor any wide and plastic intelligence. But any conclusion so arrived at would
\nbe only speculative; it could have no spiritual value; it would not give the
\ndecisive experience or the spiritual certitude for which the soul is seeking.
\nIf the intellect is our highest possible instrument and there is no other means
\nof arriving at supraphysical<\/span> Truth, then a wise and
\nlarge Agnosticism must be our ultimate attitude. Things in the manifestation
\nmay be known to some degree, but the Supreme and all that is beyond the Mind
\nmust remain forever unknowable. <\/span><\/font>
\n
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIt is only if there is a
\ngreater consciousness beyond Mind and that consciousness is accessible to us
\nthat we can know and enter into the ultimate Reality. Intellectual speculation,
\nlogical reasoning as to whether there is or is not such a greater consciousness
\ncannot carry us very far. What we need is a way to get the experience of it, to
\nreach it, enter into it, live in it. If we can get that, intellectual
\nspeculation and reasoning must fall necessarily into a very secondary place and
\neven lose their reason for existence. Philosophy, intellectual expression of
\nthe Truth may remain, but mainly as a means of expressing this greater
\ndiscovery and as much of its contents as can at all be expressed in mental
\nterms to those who still live in the mental intelligence.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThis, you will see, answers
\nyour point about the Western thinkers, Bradley and others, who have arrived
\nthrough intellectual thinking at the idea of an \u201cOther beyond Thought\u201d or have
\neven, like Bradley, tried to express their conclusions about it in terms that
\nrecall some of the expressions in the Arya. The idea in itself is not new; it
\nis as old as the Vedas. It was repeated in other forms in Buddhism, Christian
\nGnosticism, Sufism. Originally, it was not discovered by intellectual
\nspeculation, but by the mystics following an inner spiritual discipline. When,<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 158<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nsomewhere between the seventh and fifth centuries
\nB.C., men began both in the East and West to intellectualise<\/span>
\nknowledge, this Truth survived in the East; in the West where the intellect
\nbegan to be accepted as the sole or highest instrument for the discovery of
\nTruth, it began to fade. But still it has there too tried constantly to return;
\nthe Neo-Platonists brought it back, and now, it appears, the Neo-Hegelians and
\nothers (e.g., the Russian Ouspensky<\/span> and one or two
\nGerman thinkers, I believe) seem to be reaching after it. But still there is a
\ndifference. <\/span><\/font>
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIn the East, especially in
\nIndia, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the
\nnature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they
\nhave not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the
\ndiscovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank has always been
\ngiven to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an
\nintellectual conclusion that contradicts this supreme authority is held
\ninvalid. Secondly, each philosophy has armed itself with a practical way of reaching
\nto the supreme state of consciousness, so that even when one begins with
\nThought, the aim is to arrive at a consciousness beyond mental thinking. Each
\nphilosophical founder (as also those who continued his work or school) has been
\na metaphysical thinker doubled with a yogi. Those who were only philosophic
\nintellectuals were respected for their learning but never took rank as
\ntruth-discoverers. And the philosophies that lacked a sufficiently powerful
\nmeans of spiritual experience died out and became things of the past because
\nthey were not dynamic for spiritual discovery and realisation.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIn the West it was just the
\nopposite that came to pass. Thought, intellect, the logical reason came to be
\nregarded more and more as the highest means and even the highest end; in
\nphilosophy, Thought is the be-all and the end-all. It is by intellectual
\nthinking and speculation that the truth is to be discovered; even spiritual
\nexperience has been summoned to pass the tests of the intellect, if it is to be
\nheld valid \u2013 just the reverse of the Indian position. Even those who see that
\nthe mental Thought must be overpassed<\/span> and admit a
\nsupramental \u201cOther\u201d, do not seem to escape from the feeling that it must be
\nthrough mental<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 159<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nThought, sublimating and transmuting itself, that
\nthis other Truth must be reached and made to take the place of the mental
\nlimitation and ignorance. And again Western thought has ceased to be dynamic;
\nit has sought after a theory of things, not after realisation. It was still
\ndynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than
\nspiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic;
\nit became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for
\nthe attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment, spiritual discovery, a
\nspiritual transformation. If there were not this difference, there would be no
\nreason for seekers like yourself to turn to the East for guidance; for in the
\npurely intellectual field, the Western thinkers are as competent as any Eastern
\nsage. It is the spiritual way, the road that leads beyond the intellectual
\nlevels, the passage from the outer being to the inmost Self, which has been
\nlost by the over-intellectuality of the mind of Europe. <\/span><\/font>
\n
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIn the extracts you have
\nsent me from Bradley and Joachim, it is still the intellect thinking about what
\nis beyond itself and coming to an intellectual, a reasoned speculative
\nconclusion about it. It is not dynamic for the change which it attempts to
\ndescribe. If these writers were expressing in mental terms some realisation,
\neven mental, some intuitive experience of this \u201cOther than Thought\u201d, then one
\nready for it might feel it through the veil of the language they use and
\nhimself draw near to the same experience. Or if, having reached the
\nintellectual conclusion, they had passed on to the spiritual realisation,
\nfinding the way or following one already found, then in pursuing their thought,
\none might be preparing oneself for the same transition. But there is nothing of
\nthe kind in all this strenuous thinking. It remains in the domain of the
\nintellect and in that domain it is no doubt admirable; but it does not become
\ndynamic for spiritual experience.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIt is not by \u201cthinking out\u201d
\nthe entire reality, but by a change of consciousness that one can pass from the
\nignorance to the Knowledge \u2013 the Knowledge by which we become what we know. To
\npass from the external to a direct and intimate inner consciousness; to widen
\nconsciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an
\ninner will and aspiration<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 160<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nand opening to the Light till it passes in its
\nascent beyond Mind; to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through
\nself-giving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and
\nbody \u2013 this is the integral way to the Truth.1 <\/sup>It is this that we
\ncall the Truth here and aim at in our yoga.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nYoga is not a thing of ideas but of inner spiritual
\nexperience. Merely to be attracted to any set of religious or spiritual ideas
\ndoes not bring with it any realisation. Yoga means a change of consciousness; a
\nmere mental activity will not bring a change of consciousness, it can only
\nbring a change of mind. And if your mind is sufficiently mobile, it will go on
\nchanging from one thing to another till the end without arriving at any sure
\nway or any spiritual harbour<\/span>. The mind can think and
\ndoubt and question and accept and withdraw its acceptance, make formations and
\nunmake them, pass decisions and revoke them, judging always on the surface and
\nby surface indications and therefore never coming to any deep and firm
\nexperience of Truth, but by itself it can do no more. There are only three ways
\nby which it can make itself a channel or instrument of Truth. Either it must fall
\nsilent in the Self and give room for a wider and greater consciousness; or it
\nmust make itself passive to an inner Light and allow that Light to use it as a
\nmeans of expression; or else, it must itself change from the questioning
\nintellectual superficial mind it now is to an intuitive intelligence, a mind of
\nvision fit for the direct perception of the divine Truth.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIf you want to do anything
\nin the path of yoga, you must fix once for all what way you mean to follow. It
\nis no use setting your face towards the future and then always looking back
\ntowards the past; in this way you will arrive nowhere. If you are tied to your
\npast, return to it and follow the way you then choose; but if you choose this
\nway instead, you must give yourself to it single-mindedly and not look back at
\nevery moment.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n  1<\/sup> I have said that the idea of the supermind was
\nalready in existence from ancient times. There was in India and elsewhere the
\nattempt to reach it by rising to it; but what was missed was the way to make it
\nintegral for the life and to bring it down for transformation of the whole
\nnature, even of the physical nature.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 161<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nAs to doubts and argumentative answers to them, I have
\nlong given up the practice as I found it perfectly useless. Yoga is not a field
\nfor intellectual argument or dissertation. It is not by the exercise of the
\nlogical or the debating mind that one can arrive at a true understanding of
\nyoga or follow it. A doubting spirit, \u201chonest doubt\u201d and the claim that the
\nintellect shall be satisfied and be made the judge on every point is all very
\nwell in the field of mental action outside. But yoga is not a mental field, the
\nconsciousness which has to be established is not a mental, logical or debating
\nconsciousness \u2013 it is even laid down by yoga that unless and until the mind is
\nstilled, including the intellectual or logical mind, and opens itself in
\nquietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness, vision and knowledge,
\nsadhana cannot reach its goal. For the same reason an unquestioning openness to
\nthe Guru is demanded in the Indian spiritual tradition; as for blame, criticism
\nand attack on the Guru, it was considered reprehensible and the surest possible
\nobstacle to sadhana.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIf the spirit of doubt could
\nbe overcome by meeting it with arguments, there might be something in the
\ndemand for its removal by satisfaction through logic. But the spirit of doubt
\ndoubts for its own sake, for the sake of doubt; it simply uses the mind as its
\ninstrument for its particular dharma, and this not the least when that mind
\nthinks it is seeking sincerely for a solution of its honest and irrepressible
\ndoubts. Mental positions always differ, moreover, and it is well-known that people
\ncan argue for ever without one convincing the other. To go on perpetually
\nanswering persistent and always recurring doubts such as for long have filled
\nthis Ashram and obstructed the sadhana, is merely to frustrate the aim of the
\nyoga and go against its central principle with no spiritual or other gain
\nwhatever. If anybody gets over his fundamental doubts, it is by the growth of
\nthe psychic in him or by an enlargement of his consciousness, not otherwise.
\nQuestions which arise from the spirit of enquiry, not aggressive or
\nself-assertive, but as a part of a hunger for knowledge can be<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 162<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nanswered, but the \u201cspirit of doubt\u201d is insatiable
\nand unappeasable.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nOut of the thousand mental questions and answers
\nthere are only one or two here and there that are really of any dynamic
\nassistance \u2013 while a single inner response or a little growth of consciousness
\nwill do what those thousand questions and answers could not do. The yoga does
\nnot proceed by upade<\/span>‘sa but by inner influence. To
\nstate your condition, experiences, etc. and open to the help is far more
\nimportant than question-asking.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThe whole world knows, spiritual thinker and
\nmaterialist alike, that the world for the created or naturally evolved being in
\nthe ignorance or the inconscience of Nature is neither a bed of roses nor a
\npath of joyous Light. It is a difficult journey, a battle and struggle, an
\noften painful and chequered<\/span> growth, a life besieged
\nby obscurity, falsehood and suffering. It has its mental, vital, physical joys and
\npleasures, but these bring only a transient taste \u2013 which yet the vital self is
\nunwilling to forego \u2013 and they end in distaste, fatigue or disillusionment.
\nWhat then? To say the Divine does not exist is easy, but it leads nowhere \u2013 it
\nleaves you where you are with no prospect or issue \u2013 neither Russell nor any
\nmaterialist can tell you where you are going or even where you ought to go. The
\nDivine does not manifest himself so as to be recognised<\/span>
\nin the external world-circumstances \u2013 admittedly so. These are not the works of
\nan irresponsible autocrat somewhere \u2013 they are the circumstances of a working
\nout of Forces according to a certain nature of being, one might say a certain
\nproposition or problem of being into which we have all really consented to
\nenter and co-operate. The work is painful, dubious, its vicissitudes impossible
\nto forecast? There are either of two possibilities then, to get out of it into
\nNirvana by the Buddhist or the illusionist way or to get inside oneself and
\nfind the Divine there since he is not discoverable on the surface. For those
\nwho have made the attempt, and there were not<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 163<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\na few but hundreds and thousands, have testified
\nthrough the ages that he is there and that is why there exists the yoga. It
\ntakes long? The Divine is concealed behind a thick veil of his Maya and does
\nnot answer at once or at any early stage to our call? Or he gives only a
\nglimpse uncertain and passing and then withdraws and waits for us to be ready?
\nBut if the Divine has any value, is it not worth some trouble and time and
\nlabour to follow after him and must we insist on having him without any
\ntraining or sacrifice or suffering or trouble? It is surely irrational to make
\na demand of such a nature. It is positive that we have to get inside, behind
\nthe veil to find him; it is only then that we can see him outside and the
\nintellect be not so much convinced as forced to admit his presence by
\nexperience \u2013 just as when a man sees what he has denied and can no longer deny
\nit. But for that the means must be accepted and the persistence in the will and
\npatience in the labour.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nBut why on earth does your despairing friend want
\neverybody to agree with him and follow his own preferred line of conduct or
\nbelief? That is the never-realised dream of the politician, or realised only by
\nthe violent compression of the human mind and life, which is the latest feat of
\nthe man of action. The \u201cincarnate\u201d Gods \u2013 Gurus and spiritual men of whom he so
\nbitterly complains \u2013 are more modest in their hopes and are satisfied with a
\nhandful or, if you like, an Ashramful<\/span> of disciples,
\nand even these they don’t ask for, but they come, they come. So are they not \u2013 these
\ndenounced \u201cincarnates\u201d \u2013 nearer to reason and wisdom than the political
\nleaders? \u2013 unless of course one of them makes the mistake of founding a
\nuniversal religion, but that is not our case. Moreover, he upbraids you for
\nlosing your reason in blind faith. But what is his own view of things except a
\nreasoned faith? You believe according to your faith, which is quite natural, he
\nbelieves according to his opinion, which is natural also, but no better, so far
\nas the likelihood of getting at the true truth of things is in question. His
\nopinion is according to his reason. So are the opinions of his political
\nopponents<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 164<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\naccording to their reason, yet they affirm the very
\nopposite idea to his. How is reasoning to show which is right? The opposite
\nparties can argue till they are blue in the face \u2013 they won’t be anywhere
\nnearer a decision. In the end he prevails who has the greater force or whom the
\ntrend of things favours<\/span>. But who can look at the
\nworld as it is and say that the trend of things is always (or ever) according
\nto right reason \u2013 whatever this thing called right reason may be? As a matter
\nof fact there is no universal infallible reason which can decide and be the
\numpire between conflicting opinions; there is only my reason, your reason, X’s
\nreason, Y’s reason, multiplied up to the discordant innumerable. Each reasons
\naccording to his view of things, his opinion, that is, his mental constitution
\nand mental preference. So what is the use of running down faith which after all
\ngives something to hold on to amidst the contradictions of an enigmatic
\nuniverse? If one can get at a knowledge that knows, it is another matter; but
\nso long as we have only an ignorance that argues, \u2013 well, there is a place
\nstill left for faith, \u2013 even faith may be a glint from the knowledge that
\nknows, however far off, and meanwhile there is not the slightest doubt that it
\nhelps to get things done. There’s a bit of reasoning for you! \u2013 just like all
\nother reasoning too, convincing to the convinced, but not to the unconvincible<\/span>, that is, to those who don’t accept the
\nground upon which the reasoning dances. Logic, after all, is only a measured
\ndance of the mind, nothing else.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nYour dream was certainly not moonshine: it was an
\ninner experience and can be given its full value. As for the other questions,
\nthey are full of complications and I do not feel armed to cut the Gordian knot
\nwith a sentence. Certainly, you are right to follow directly the truth for
\nyourself and need not accept X’s or anybody else’s proposition or solution. Man
\nneeds both faith and reason so long as he has not reached a surer insight and
\ngreater knowledge. Without faith he cannot certainly walk on any road, and
\nwithout reason he might very well be walking, even with the staff of faith to
\nsupport him, in the darkness. X himself founds his faith, if not on Reason yet
\non reasons; and the rationalist,<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 165<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nthe rationaliser<\/span> or the reasoner<\/span> must have some faith even if it be faith only in
\nReason itself as sufficient and authoritative, just as the believer has faith
\nin his faith as sufficient and authoritative. Yet both are capable of error, as
\nthey must be since both are instruments of the human mind whose nature is to
\nerr, and they share that mind’s limitations. Each must walk by the light he has
\neven though there are dark spots in which he stumbles. <\/span><\/font>
\n
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nAll that is, however,
\nanother matter than the question about the present human civilisation. It is
\nnot this which has to be saved; it is the world that has to be saved and that
\nwill surely be done, though it may not be so easily or so soon as some wish or
\nimagine, or in the way that they imagine. The present must surely change, but
\nwhether by a destruction or a new construction on the basis of a greater Truth,
\nis the issue. The Mother has left the question hanging and I can only do the
\nsame. After all, the wise man, unless he is a prophet or a Director of the
\nMadras Astrological Bureau, must often be content to take the Asquithian<\/span> position. Neither optimism nor pessimism is the
\ntruth: they are only modes of the mind or modes of the temperament. <\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nLet us then, without either
\nexcessive optimism or excessive pessimism, \u201cwait and see\u201d.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThe faith in spiritual things that is asked of the
\nsadhak is not an ignorant but a luminous faith, a faith in light and not in
\ndarkness. It is called blind by the sceptical<\/span>
\nintellect because it refuses to be guided by outer appearances or seeming
\nfacts, \u2013 for it looks for the truth behind, \u2013 and because it does not walk on
\nthe crutches of proof and evidence. It is an intuition, an intuition not only
\nwaiting for experience to justify it, but leading towards experience. If I
\nbelieve in self-healing, I shall after a time find out the way to heal myself.
\nIf I have a faith in transformation, I can end by laying my hand on and unravelling<\/span> the process of transformation. But if I begin
\nwith doubt and go on with more doubt, how far am I likely to go on the journey?<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 166<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nAs for the faith-doubt question, you ardently give
\nto the word faith a sense and a scope I do not attach to it. I will have to
\nwrite not one but several letters to clear up the position. It seems to me that
\nyou mean by faith a mental belief which is in fact put before the mind and
\nsenses in the doubtful form of an unsupported asseveration. I mean by it a
\ndynamic intuitive conviction in the inner being of the truth of supersensible
\nthings which cannot be proved by any physical evidence but which are a subject
\nof experience. My point is that this faith is a most desirable preliminary (if
\nnot absolutely indispensable \u2013 for there can be cases of experiences not
\npreceded by faith) to the desired experience. If I insist so much on faith \u2013 but
\neven less on positive faith than on the throwing away of a priori doubt and
\ndenial \u2013 it is because I find that this doubt and denial have become an
\ninstrument in the hands of the obstructive forces….<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nWhy I call the materialist’s
\ndenial an a priori denial is because he refuses even to consider or examine
\nwhat he denies but starts by denying it like Leonard Woolf<\/span>
\nwith his \u201cquack, quack\u201d on the ground that it contradicts his own theories, so
\nit can’t be true. On the other hand, the belief in the Divine and the Grace and
\nyoga and the Guru etc. is not a priori, because it rests on a great mass of
\nhuman experience which has been accumulating through the centuries and the
\nmillenniums as well as the personal intuitive perception. Therefore it is an
\nintuitive perception which has been confirmed by the experience of hundreds and
\nthousands of those who have tested it before me.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nI have started writing about doubt, but even in
\ndoing so I am afflicted by the \u201cdoubt\u201d whether any amount of writing or of
\nanything else can ever persuade the eternal doubt in man which is the penalty
\nof his native ignorance. In the first place, to write adequately would mean
\nanything from 60 to 600 pages, but not even 6000 convincing pages would
\nconvince doubt. For doubt exists for its own sake; its very function is to
\ndoubt always and, even when convinced, to go on doubting still; it is only to
\npersuade its entertainer to give it board and lodging<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 167<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nthat it pretends to be an honest truth-seeker. This
\nis a lesson I have learnt from the experience both of my own mind and of the
\nminds of others; the only way to get rid of doubt is to take discrimination as
\none’s detector of truth and falsehood and under its guard to open the door
\nfreely and courageously to experience.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nAll the same I have started
\nwriting, but I will begin not with doubt but with the demand for the Divine as
\na concrete certitude, quite as concrete as any physical phenomenon caught by
\nthe senses. Now, certainly, the Divine must be such a certitude not only as
\nconcrete but more concrete than anything sensed by ear or eye or touch in the
\nworld of Matter; but it is a certitude not of mental thought but of essential
\nexperience. When the Peace of God descends on you, when the Divine Presence is
\nthere within you, when the Ananda rushes on you like a sea, when you are driven
\nlike a leaf before the wind by the breath of the Divine Force, when Love
\nflowers out from you on all creation, when Divine Knowledge floods you with a
\nLight which illumines and transforms in a moment all that was before dark,
\nsorrowful and obscure, when all that is becomes part of the One Reality, when
\nthe Reality is all around you, you feel at once by the spiritual contact, by
\nthe inner vision, by the illumined and seeing thought, by the vital sensation
\nand even by the very physical sense, everywhere you see, hear, touch only the
\nDivine. Then you can much less doubt it or deny it than you can deny or doubt
\ndaylight or air or the sun in heaven \u2013 for of these physical things you cannot
\nbe sure but they are what your senses represent them to be; but in the concrete
\nexperiences of the Divine, doubt is impossible.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nAs to permanence, you cannot
\nexpect permanence of the initial spiritual experiences from the beginning \u2013 only
\na few have that and even for them the high intensity is not always there; for
\nmost, the experience comes and then draws back behind the veil waiting for the
\nhuman part to be prepared and made ready to bear and hold fast its increase and
\nthen its permanence. But to doubt it on that account would be irrational in the
\nextreme. One does not doubt the existence of air because a strong wind is not
\nalways blowing or of sunlight because<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 168<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nnight intervenes between dawn and dusk. The
\ndifficulty lies in the normal human consciousness to which spiritual experience
\ncomes as something abnormal and is in fact supernormal. This weak limited
\nnormality finds it difficult at first even to get any touch of that greater and
\nintenser supernormal experience; or it gets it diluted into its own duller
\nstuff of mental or vital experience, and when the spiritual does come in its
\nown overwhelming power, very often it cannot bear or, if it bears, cannot hold
\nand keep it. Still, once a decisive breach has been made in the walls built by
\nthe mind against the Infinite, the breach widens, sometimes slowly, sometimes
\nswiftly, until there is no wall any longer, and there is the permanence.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nBut the decisive experiences
\ncannot be brought, the permanence of a new state of consciousness in which they
\nwill be normal cannot be secured if the mind is always interposing its own
\nreservations, prejudgments, ignorant formulas or if it insists on arriving at
\nthe divine certitude as it would at the quite relative truth of a mental
\nconclusion, by reasoning, doubt, enquiry and all the other paraphernalia of
\nIgnorance feeling and fumbling around after Knowledge; these greater things can
\nonly be brought by the progressive opening of a consciousness quieted and
\nturned steadily towards spiritual experience. If you ask why the Divine has so
\ndisposed it on these highly inconvenient bases, it is a futile question, \u2013 for
\nthis is nothing else than a psychological necessity imposed by the very nature
\nof things. It is so because these experiences of the Divine are not mental constructions,
\nnot vital movements; they are essential things, not things merely thought but
\nrealities, not mentally felt but felt in our very underlying substance and
\nessence. No doubt, the mind is always there and can intervene; it can and does
\nhave its own type of mentalising<\/span> about the Divine,
\nthoughts, beliefs, emotions, mental reflections of spiritual Truth, even a kind
\nof mental realisation which repeats as well as it can some kind of figure of
\nthe higher Truth, and all this is not without value but it is not concrete,
\nintimate and indubitable. Mind by itself is incapable of ultimate certitude;
\nwhatever it believes, it can doubt; whatever it can affirm, it can deny;
\nwhatever it gets hold of, it can and does let go. That, if you like, is its<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 169<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nfreedom, noble right, privilege; it may be all you
\ncan say in its praise, but by these methods of mind you cannot hope (outside
\nthe reach of physical phenomena and hardly even there) to arrive at anything
\nyou can call an ultimate certitude. It is for this compelling reason that mentalising<\/span> or enquiring about the Divine cannot by its own
\nright bring the Divine. If the consciousness is always busy with small mental
\nmovements, \u2013 especially accompanied, as they usually are, by a host of vital
\nmovements, desires, prepossessions and all else that vitiates human thinking, \u2013
\neven apart from the native insufficiency of reason, what room can there be for
\na new order of knowledge, for fundamental experiences or for those deep and
\ntremendous upsurgings<\/span> or descents of the Spirit? It
\nis indeed possible for the mind in the midst of its activities to be suddenly
\ntaken by surprise, overwhelmed, swept aside, while all is flooded with a sudden
\ninrush of spiritual experience. But if afterwards it begins questioning,
\ndoubting, theorising<\/span>, surmising what these might be
\nand whether it is true or not, what else can the spiritual power do but retire
\nand wait for the bubbles of the mind to cease? <\/span><\/font>
\n
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nI would ask one simple
\nquestion of those who would make the intellectual mind the standard and judge
\nof spiritual experience. Is the Divine something less than mind or is it
\nsomething greater? Is mental consciousness with its groping enquiry, endless
\nargument, unquenchable doubt, stiff and unplastic<\/span>
\nlogic something superior or even equal to the Divine Consciousness or is it
\nsomething inferior in its action and status? If it is greater, then there is no
\nreason to seek after the Divine. If it is equal, then spiritual experience is
\nquite superfluous. But if it is inferior, how can it challenge, judge, make the
\nDivine stand as an accused or a witness before its tribunal, summon it to
\nappear as a candidate for admission before a Board of Examiners or pin it like
\nan insect under its examining microscope? Can the vital animal hold up as
\ninfallible the standard of its vital instincts, associations and impulses, and
\njudge, interpret and fathom by it the mind of man? It cannot, because man’s
\nmind is a greater power working in a wider, more complex way which the animal
\nvital consciousness cannot follow. Is it<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 170<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n
\nso difficult to see, similarly, that the Divine
\nConsciousness must be something infinitely wider, more complex than the human
\nmind, filled with greater powers and lights, moving in a way which mere mind
\ncannot judge, interpret or fathom by the standard of its fallible reason and
\nlimited half-knowledge? The simple fact is there that Spirit and Mind are not
\nthe same thing and that it is the spiritual consciousness into which the yogin<\/span> has to enter (in all this I am not in the least
\nspeaking of the supermind), if he wants to be in permanent contact or union
\nwith the Divine. It is not then a freak of the Divine or a tyranny to insist on
\nthe mind recognising<\/span> its limitations, quieting
\nitself, giving up its demands, and opening and surrendering to a greater Light
\nthan it can find on its own obscurer level.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\nThis doesn’t mean that mind
\nhas no place at all in the spiritual life; but it means that it cannot be even
\nthe main instrument, much less the authority, to whose judgment all must submit
\nitself, including the Divine. Mind must learn from the greater consciousness it
\nis approaching and not impose its own standards on it; it has to receive
\nillumination, open to a higher Truth, admit a greater power that doesn’t work
\naccording to mental canons, surrender itself and allow its half-light
\nhalf-darkness to be flooded from above till where it was blind it can see,
\nwhere it was deaf it can hear, where it was insensible it can feel, and where
\nit was baffled, uncertain, questioning, disappointed it can have joy,
\nfulfilment, certitude and peace.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThis is the position on
\nwhich yoga stands, a position based upon constant experience since men began to
\nseek after the Divine. If it is not true, then there is no truth in yoga and no
\nnecessity for yoga. If it is true, then it is on that basis, from the
\nstandpoint of the necessity of this greater consciousness that we can see
\nwhether doubt is of any utility for the spiritual life. To believe anything and
\neverything is certainly not demanded of the spiritual seeker; such a
\npromiscuous and imbecile credulity would be not only unintellectual<\/span>,
\nbut in the last degree unspiritual. At every moment of the spiritual life until
\none has got fully into the higher light, one has to be on one’s guard and be
\nable to distinguish spiritual truth from pseudo-spiritual imitations of it or
\nsubstitutes for it set up by the mind and the<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 171<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nvital desire. The power to distinguish between
\ntruths of the Divine and the lies of the Asura is a cardinal necessity for
\nyoga. The question is whether that can best be done by the negative and
\ndestructive method of doubt, which often kills falsehood but rejects truth too
\nwith the same impartial blow, or a more positive, helpful and luminously
\nsearching power can be found, which is not compelled by its inherent ignorance
\nto meet truth and falsehood alike with the stiletto of doubt and the bludgeon
\nof denial. An indiscriminateness of mental belief is not the teaching of
\nspirituality or of yoga; the faith of which it speaks is not a crude mental
\nbelief but the fidelity of the soul to the guiding light within it, a fidelity
\nwhich has to remain till the light leads it into knowledge.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nI do not ask \u201cundiscriminating faith\u201d from anyone,
\nall I ask is fundamental faith, safeguarded by a patient and quiet
\ndiscrimination \u2013 because it is these that are proper to the consciousness of a
\nspiritual seeker and it is these that I have myself used and found that they
\nremoved all necessity for the quite gratuitous dilemma of \u201ceither you must
\ndoubt everything supraphysical<\/span> or be entirely
\ncredulous\u201d, which is the stock-in-trade of the materialist argument. Your
\ndoubt, I see, constantly returns to the charge with a repetition of this
\nformula in spite of my denial \u2013 which supports my assertion that Doubt cannot
\nbe convinced, because by its very nature it does not want to be convinced; it
\nkeeps repeating the old ground always.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThe abnormal abounds in this physical world, the
\nsupernormal is there also. In these matters, apart from any question of faith, any
\ntruly rational man with a free mind (not tied up like the rationalists or
\nso-called free-thinkers at every point with the triple cords of a priori
\nirrational disbelief) must not cry out at once, \u201cHumbug! Falsehood!\u201d but
\nsuspend judgment until he has the necessary experience and knowledge.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 172<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nTo deny in ignorance is no better than to affirm in
\nignorance.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nWhatever the motive immediately pushing the mind or
\nthe vital, if there is a true seeking for the Divine in the being, it must lead
\neventually to the realisation of the Divine. The soul within has always the
\ninherent (ahaitukī<\/i><\/span>)
\nyearning for the Divine; the hetu<\/span> or special motive
\nis simply an impulsion used by it to get the mind and the vital to follow the
\ninner urge. If the mind and the vital can feel and accept the soul’s sheer love
\nfor the Divine for his own sake, then the sadhana gets its full power and many
\ndifficulties disappear; but even if they do not, they will get what they seek
\nafter in the Divine and through it they will come to realise something, even to
\npass beyond the limit of the original desire…. I may say that the idea of a
\njoyless God is an absurdity, which only the ignorance of the mind could
\nengender! The Radha<\/span> love is not based upon any such
\nthing, but means simply that whatever comes on the way to the Divine, pain or
\njoy, milana<\/span> or viraha<\/span>, and
\nhowever long the sufferings may last, the Radha<\/span> love
\nis unshaken and keeps its faith and certitude pointing fixedly like a star to
\nthe supreme object of Love.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nWhat is this Ananda, after
\nall? The mind can see in it nothing but a pleasant psychological condition, \u2013 but
\nif it were only that, it could not be the rapture which the bhaktas<\/span>
\nand the mystics find in it. When the Ananda comes into you, it is the Divine
\nwho comes into you, just as when the Peace flows into you, it is the Divine who
\nis invading you, or when you are flooded with Light, it is the flood of the
\nDivine himself that is around you. Of course, the Divine is something much
\nmore, many other things besides, and in them all a Presence, a Being, a Divine
\nPerson; for the Divine is Krishna, is Shiva, is the Supreme Mother. But through
\nthe Ananda you can perceive the Anandamaya Krishna, for the Ananda is the
\nsubtle body and being of Krishna; through the Peace you can perceive the Shantimaya<\/span> Shiva; in the Light, in the delivering
\nKnowledge, the Love, the fulfilling and uplifting Power you can meet the
\npresence of the Divine Mother. It is this<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 173<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nperception that makes the experiences of the bhaktas<\/span> and mystics so rapturous and enables them to pass
\nmore easily through the nights of anguish and separation; when there is this
\nsoul-perception, it gives to even a little or brief Ananda a force or value it
\ncould not otherwise have, and the Ananda itself gathers by it a growing power
\nto stay, to return, to increase.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nI cannot very well answer
\nthe strictures of Russell, for the conception of the Divine as an external
\nomnipotent Power who has \u201ccreated\u201d the world and governs it like an absolute
\nand arbitrary monarch \u2013 the Christian or Semitic conception \u2013 has never been
\nmine; it contradicts too much my seeing and experience during thirty years of
\nsadhana. It is against this conception that the atheistic objection is aimed, \u2013
\nfor atheism in Europe has been a shallow and rather childish reaction against a
\nshallow and childish exoteric religionism<\/span> and its
\npopular inadequate and crudely dogmatic notions. But when I speak of the Divine
\nWill, I mean something different, \u2013 something that has descended here into an
\nevolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on
\nthe Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible
\nin the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a
\ndescent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held
\nback and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and
\ntherefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and
\nAnanda, for these are the Divine Nature. The Divine Grace is there ready to act
\nat every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into
\nthe Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however
\nmiraculous often its intervention, but as a help in that growth and a Light
\nthat leads and eventually delivers. If we take the facts of the world as they
\nare and the facts of spiritual experience as a whole, neither of which can be
\ndenied or neglected, then I do not see what other Divine there can be. This
\nDivine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us
\nand around us, but it is to the Light he is leading and not to anything else.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 174<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nThe point about the intellect’s misrepresentation of
\nthe \u201cFormless\u201d (the result of a merely negative expression of something that is
\ninexpressibly intimate and positive) is very well made and hits the truth in
\nthe centre. No one who has had the Ananda of the Brahman can do anything but
\nsmile at the charge of coldness; there is an absoluteness of immutable ecstasy
\nin it, a concentrated intensity of silent and inalienable rapture that is
\nimpossible even to suggest to anyone who has not had the experience. The
\neternal Reality is neither cold nor dry nor empty; you might as well talk of
\nthe midsummer sunlight as cold or the ocean as dry or perfect fullness as
\nempty. Even when you enter into it by elimination of form and everything else,
\nit surges up as a miraculous fullness\u2014that is truly the Purnam<\/span>;
\nwhen it is entered affirmatively as well as by negation, there can obviously be
\nno question of emptiness or dryness! All is there and more than one could ever
\ndream of as the all. That is why one has to object to the intellect thrusting
\nitself in as the sab-jāntā<\/i><\/span>
\n(all-knowing) judge: if it kept to its own limits, there would be no objection
\nto it. But it makes constructions of words and ideas which have no application
\nto the Truth, babbles foolish things in its ignorance and makes its
\nconstructions a wall which refuses to let in the Truth that surpasses its own
\ncapacities and scope.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIf one is blind, it is quite natural \u2013 for the human
\nintelligence is after all rather an imbecile thing at its best \u2013 to deny
\ndaylight: if one’s highest natural vision is that of glimmering mists, it is
\nequally natural to believe that all high vision is but a mist or a glimmer. But
\nLight exists for all that \u2013 and Spiritual Truth is more than a mist and a
\nglimmer.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIn reference to what Prof. Sorley<\/span>
\nhas written on The Riddle of this World, the book, of course, was not meant as
\na full or direct statement of my thought and, as it was written to sadhaks<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 175<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nmostly, many things were taken for granted there.
\nMost of the major ideas \u2013 e.g. Overmind \u2013 were left without elucidation. To
\nmake the ideas implied clear to the intellect, they must be put with precision
\nin an intellectual form \u2013 so far as that is possible with supra-intellectual
\nthings. What is written in the book can be clear to those who have gone far
\nenough in experience, but for most it can only be suggestive.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nI do not think, however,
\nthat the statement of supra-intellectual things necessarily involved a making
\nof distinctions in the terms of the intellect. For, fundamentally, it is not an
\nexpression of ideas arrived at by speculative thinking. One has to arrive at
\nspiritual knowledge through experience and a consciousness of things which
\narises directly out of that experience or else underlies or is involved in it.
\nThis kind of knowledge, then, is fundamentally a consciousness and not a
\nthought or formulated idea. For instance, my first major experience \u2013 radical
\nand overwhelming, though not, as it turned out, final and exhaustive \u2013 came
\nafter and by the exclusion and silencing of all thought \u2013 there was, first,
\nwhat might be called a spiritually substantial or concrete consciousness of
\nstillness and silence, then the awareness of some sole and supreme Reality in
\nwhose presence things existed only as forms, but forms not at all substantial
\nor real or concrete; but this was all apparent to a spiritual perception and
\nessential and impersonal sense and there was not the least concept or idea of
\nreality or unreality or any other notion, for all concept or idea was hushed or
\nrather entirely absent in the absolute stillness. These things were known
\ndirectly through the pure consciousness and not through the mind, so there was
\nno need of concepts or words or names. At the same time this fundamental
\ncharacter of spiritual experience is not absolutely limitative; it can do
\nwithout thought, but it can do with thought also. Of course, the first idea of
\nthe mind would be that the resort to thought brings one back at once to the
\ndomain of the intellect \u2013 and at first and for a long time it may be so; but it
\nis not my experience that this is unavoidable. It happens so when one tries to
\nmake an intellectual statement of what one has experienced; but there is
\nanother kind of thought that springs out as if it were a body<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 176<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nor form of the experience or of the consciousness
\ninvolved in it \u2013 or of a part of that consciousness \u2013 and this does not seem to
\nme to be intellectual in its character. It has another light, another power in
\nit, a sense within the sense. It is very clearly so with those thoughts that
\ncome without the need of words to embody them, thoughts that are of the nature
\nof a direct seeing in the consciousness, even a kind of intimate sense or
\ncontact formulating itself into a precise expression of its\u00a0 <\/span>awareness (I hope this is not too mystic or
\nunintelligible); but it might be said that directly the thoughts turn into
\nwords they belong to the kingdom of intellect \u2013 for words are a coinage of the
\nintellect. But is it so really or inevitably? It has always seemed to me that
\nwords came originally from somewhere else than the thinking mind, although the
\nthinking mind secured hold of them, turned them to its use and coined them
\nfreely for its purposes. But even otherwise, is it not possible to use words
\nfor the expression of something that is not intellectual? Housman<\/span>
\ncontends that poetry is perfectly poetical only when it is non-intellectual,
\nwhen it is non-sense. That is too paradoxical, but I suppose what he means is
\nthat if it is put to the strict test of the intellect, it appears extravagant
\nbecause it conveys something that expresses and is real to some other kind of
\nseeing than that which intellectual thought brings to us. Is it not possible
\nthat words may spring from, that language may be used to express \u2013 at least up
\nto a certain point and in a certain way \u2013 the supra-intellectual consciousness
\nwhich is the essential power of spiritual experience? This, however, is by the
\nway \u2013 when one tries to explain spiritual experience to the intellect itself,
\nthen it is a different matter.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThe interpenetration of the
\nplanes is indeed for me a capital and fundamental part of spiritual experience
\nwithout which yoga as I practise it and its aim could not exist. For that aim
\nis to manifest, reach or embody a higher consciousness upon earth and not to
\nget away from earth into a higher world or some supreme Absolute. The old yogas<\/span> (not quite all of them) tended the other way \u2013 but
\nthat was, I think, because they found the earth as it is a rather impossible
\nplace for any spiritual being and the resistance to change too obstinate to be
\nborne; earthnature <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 177<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n
\nlooked to them in Vivekananda’s<\/span>
\nsimile like the dog’s tail which, every time you straighten it, goes back to
\nits original curl. But the fundamental proposition in this matter was
\nproclaimed very definitely in the Upanishads which went so far as\u00a0 <\/span>to say that Earth is the foundation and all
\nthe worlds are on the earth and to imagine a clean-cut or irreconcilable
\ndifference between them is ignorance: here and not elsewhere, not by going to
\nsome other world, the divine realisation must come. This statement was used to
\njustify a purely individual realisation, but it can equally be the basis of a
\nwider endeavour. <\/span><\/font>
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nAbout polytheism, I
\ncertainly accept the truth of the many forms and personalities of the One which
\nsince the Vedic times has been the spiritual essence of Indian polytheism \u2013 a secondary
\naspect in the seeking for the One and only Divine.\u00a0 <\/span>But the passage referred to by Professor Sorley<\/span> (p. 56) is concerned with something else \u2013 the
\nlittle godlings<\/span> and Titans spoken of there are supraphysical<\/span> beings of other planes. It is not meant to be
\nsuggested that they are real Godheads and entitled to worship \u2013 on the
\ncontrary, it is indicated that to accept their influence is to move towards
\nerror and confusion or a deviation from the true spiritual way. No doubt, they
\nhave some power to create, they are makers of forms in their own way\u00a0 <\/span>and in their limited domain, but so are men
\ntoo creators of outward and of inward things in their own domain and limits \u2013 and,
\neven, man’s creative powers can have repercussions on the supraphysical<\/span>
\nlevels. <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n


\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nI agree that asceticism can
\nbe overdone. It has its place as one means \u2013 not the only one \u2013 of
\nself-mastery; but asceticism that cuts away life is an exaggeration, though one
\nthat had many remarkable results which perhaps could hardly have come
\notherwise. The play of forces in this world is enigmatic, escaping from any
\nrigid rule of the reason, and even an exaggeration like that is often employed
\nto bring about something needed for the full development of human achievement
\nand knowledge and experience. But it was an exaggeration all the same and not,
\nas it claimed to be, the indispensable path to the true goal.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 178<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nI <\/b>find nothing to object to in Prof. Sorley’s<\/span> comment on the still, bright and clear mind, for
\nit adequately indicates the process by which the mind makes itself ready for
\nthe reflection of the higher Truth in its undisturbed surface or substance. One
\nthing perhaps needs to be kept in view \u2013 this pure stillness of the mind is
\nalways the required condition, the desideratum, but to bring it about there are
\nmore ways than one. It is not, for instance, only by an effort of the mind
\nitself to get clear of all intrusive emotion or passion or of its own
\ncharacteristic vibrations or of the obscuring fumes of a physical inertia which
\nbrings about the sleep or torpor of the mind instead of its wakeful silence
\nthat the thing can be done \u2013 for this is only the ordinary process of the yogic
\npath of knowledge. It can happen also by a descent from above of a great
\nspiritual stillness imposing silence on the mind and heart and the life stimuli
\nand the physical reflexes. A sudden descent of this kind or a series of
\ndescents accumulative in force and efficacy is a well-known phenomenon of
\nspiritual experience. Or again one may start a process of one kind or another
\nfor the purpose which would normally mean a long labour and be seized, even at
\nthe outset, by a rapid intervention or manifestation of the Silence with an
\neffect out of all proportion to the means used at the beginning. One commences
\nwith a method, but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, from That to
\nwhich one aspires or an irruption of the infinitudes of the Spirit. It was in
\nthis last way that I myself came by the mind’s absolute silence, unimaginable
\nto me before I had its actual experience. <\/span><\/font>
\n
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nThere is another point of
\nsome importance, \u2013 the exact nature of this brightness, clearness, stillness, \u2013
\nof what it is constituted, whether it is merely a psychological condition or
\nsomething more. Professor Sorley<\/span> says these words are
\nafter all metaphors and he wants to express and succeeds in expressing the same
\nthing in a more abstract language. But I was not conscious of using metaphors
\nwhen I wrote the phrase, though I am aware that the words could to others have
\nthat appearance. I think even that they would seem to one who had half the same
\nexperience not only a more vivid but a more accurate description of this inner
\nstate than any more abstract language could give. It is true that metaphors,
\nsymbols, images are constant<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 179<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nauxiliaries summoned by the mystic for the
\nexpression of his experiences: that is inevitable because he has to express, in
\na language made or at least developed and manipulated by the mind, the
\nphenomena of a consciousness other than the mental and at once more complex and
\nmore subtly concrete. It is this subtle concrete, supersensuously<\/span>
\nsensible reality of the phenomena of that consciousness to which the mystic
\narrives, that justifies the use of metaphor and image as a more living and
\naccurate transcription than the abstract terms which intellectual reflection
\nemploys for its own characteristic process. If the images used are misleading
\nor not descriptively accurate, it is because the writer has a force of
\nexpression inadequate to the intensity of his experience. The scientist speaks
\nof light-waves or of sound-waves and in doing so he uses a metaphor, but one
\nwhich corresponds to the physical fact and is perfectly applicable \u2013 for there
\nis no reason why there should not be a wave, a constant flowing movement of
\nlight or of sound as well as of water. But when I speak of the mind’s
\nbrightness, clearness, stillness, I have no idea of calling metaphor to my aid.
\nIt was meant to be a description as precise and positive as if I were
\ndescribing in the same way an expanse of air or a sheet of water. For the
\nmystic’s experience of mind \u2013 especially when it falls still \u2013 is not that of
\nan abstract condition or a falling off or of some unseizable<\/span>
\nelement of the consciousness, it is an experience of an extended subtle
\nsubstance in which there can be and are waves, currents, vibrations not
\nmaterial but still as definite, perceptible, controllable by an inner sense as
\nany movement of material energy or substance by the physical senses. The
\nstillness of the mind means first the falling to rest of the habitual thought
\nmovements, thought formations, thought currents which agitate the
\nmind-substance, and that for many is a sufficient mental silence. But even in
\nthis repose of all thought movements or movements of feelings, when one looks
\nmore closely at it, one sees that this mind-substance is in a constant state of
\nvery subtle vibration, not at first easily observable, but afterwards quite
\nevident \u2013 and that state of constant vibration may be as harmful to the exact
\nreflection or reception of the descending Truth as any more formed thought
\nmovement \u2013 for it is the source of a<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 180<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nmentalisation<\/font><\/span><\/span> which can diminish or
\ndistort the authenticity of the higher Truth or break it up into mental
\nrefractions. When I speak of a still mind, I mean one in which these
\ndisturbances are no longer there. As they fall quiet one can feel the
\nincreasing stillness and a resultant clearness as palpable as one can perceive
\nthe stillness and clearness of a physical atmosphere. What I describe as the
\nbrightness \u2013 there is another element \u2013 is resolved into a phenomenon of Light
\ncommon in mystic experience. That Light is not a metaphor \u2013 as when Goethe
\ncalled for more light in his last moments \u2013 it presents itself as a very
\npositive illumination actually seen and felt by the inner sense. The brightness
\nof the still and clear mind is also a positive reflection of this Light before
\nthe Light itself manifests \u2013 and this reflection of the Light is a very
\nnecessary condition for a growing capacity of penetrability by the Truth one
\nhas to receive and harbour<\/span>. I have emphasised this
\npart of the subject at a little length because it helps to bring out the
\ndifference between the abstract mental and the concrete mystic perception of supraphysical<\/span> things which is the source of much
\nmisunderstanding between the spiritual seeker and the intellectual thinker.
\nEven when they speak the same language it is a different order of perceptions
\nto which the language refers the products of two different grades of
\nconsciousness and even in their agreement there is often a certain gulf of
\ndifference.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nThat brings us straight to the question raised by
\nProfessor Sorley<\/span>, what is the relation of mystic or
\nspiritual experience and is it true, as it is contended, that the mystic must,
\nwhether as to the validity of his experience itself or the validity of his
\nexpression of it, accept the intellect as the judge. It is very plain that in
\nthe experience itself the intellect cannot claim to put its limits or its law
\non an endeavour whose very aim, principle and matter is to go beyond the domain
\nof the ordinary earth-ruled and sense-ruled mental intelligence. It is as if I
\nwere asked to climb a mountain with a rope around my feet attaching me to the
\nterrestrial level or to fly only on condition that I keep my feet on the earth<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 181<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\n\t\t
\n\t\twhile I do it. It may be the safest thing to walk on
\nearth and be on firm ground always and to ascend on wings or otherwise may be
\nto risk a collapse and all sorts of accidents of error, illusion, extravagance,
\nhallucination or what not \u2013 the usual charges of the positive earth-walking
\nintellect against mystic experience; but I have to take the risk if I want to
\ndo it at all. The reasoning intellect bases itself on man’s normal experience
\nand on the workings of a surface external perception and conception of things
\nwhich is at its ease only when working on a mental basis formed by terrestrial
\nexperience and its accumulated data. The mystic goes beyond into a region where
\nthis mental basis falls away, where these data are exceeded, where there is
\nanother law and canon of perception and knowledge. His entire business is to
\nbreak through these borders into another consciousness which looks at things in
\na different way and though this new consciousness may include the data of the
\nordinary external intelligence it cannot be limited by them or bind itself to
\nsee from the intellectual standpoint or in accordance with its way of
\nconceiving, reasoning, established interpretation of experience. A mystic
\nentering the domain of the occult or of the spirit with the intellect as his
\nonly or his supreme light or guide would risk seeing nothing or else arriving
\nonly at a mental realisation already laid down for him by the speculations of
\nthe intellectual thinker. <\/span><\/font>
\n\t\t
\n\t\t <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t <\/p>\n


\nThere is, no doubt, a strain
\nof spiritual thought in India which compromises with the modern intellectual
\ndemand and admits Reason as a supreme judge, but they speak of a Reason which
\nin its turn is prepared to compromise and accept the data of spiritual
\nexperience as valid per se. That, in a sense, is just what the Indian
\nphilosophers have always done; for they have tried to establish generalisations
\ndrawn from spiritual experience by the light of metaphysical reasoning, but on
\nthe basis of that experience and with the evidence of the spiritual seekers as
\na supreme proof ranking higher than intellectual speculation or experience. In
\nthat way the freedom of spiritual and mystic experience is preserved, the
\nreasoning intellect comes in only on the second line as a judge of the generalised
\nstatements drawn from the experience. This is, I presume, something akin to<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 182<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nProf. Sorley’s<\/span> position \u2013 he
\nconcedes that the experience itself is of the domain of the Ineffable, but as
\nsoon as I begin to interpret it, to state it, I fall back into the domain of
\nthe thinking mind, I use its terms and ways of thought and expression and must
\naccept the intellect as judge. If I do not, I knock away the ladder by which I
\nhave climbed \u2013 through mind to Beyondmind<\/span> \u2013 and I am
\nleft in the air. It is not quite clear whether the truth of my experience
\nitself is supposed to be invalidated by this unsustained<\/span>
\nposition in the air, but it remains at any rate something aloof and
\nincommunicable without support or any consequences for thought or life. There are
\nthree propositions, I suppose, which I can take as laid down or admitted here
\nand joined together. First, the spiritual experience is itself of the
\nBeyond-Mind, ineffable and, I presume, unthinkable. Next, in the expression,
\nthe interpretation of the experience, you are obliged to fall back into the
\ndomain of the consciousness you have left and must abide by its judgments,
\naccept the terms and the canons of its law, submit to its verdict; you have
\nabandoned the freedom of the Ineffable and are no longer your master. Last,
\nspiritual truth may be true in itself, to its own self-experience, but any
\nstatement of it is liable to error and here the intellect is the sole judge. <\/span>
\n<\/font>
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nI do not think I am prepared
\nto accept any of these affirmations completely as they are. It is true that
\nspiritual and mystic experience carries one first into domains of Other-Mind
\n(and also Other-Life) and then into the Beyond-Mind; it is true also that the
\nultimate Truth is described as unthinkable, ineffable, unknowable \u2013 speech
\ncannot reach there nor mind arrive to it; I may observe that it is so to human
\nmind, but not to itself \u2013 for to itself it is described as self-conscient<\/span>, in some direct supramental way knowable, known,
\neternally self-aware. And here the question is not of the ultimate realisation
\nof the ultimate Ineffable which, according to many, can only be reached in a
\nsupreme trance, samādhi<\/i><\/span>,
\nwithdrawn from all outer mental or other awareness, but of an experience in a
\nluminous silence of the mind which looks up into the boundlessness of the last
\nillimitable silence into which it is to pass and disappear, but before that
\nunspeakable experience of the Ultimate or<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 183<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\ndisappearance into it, there is possible a descent
\nof at least some Power or Presence of the Reality into the substance of mind
\nalong with a modification of mind-substance, an illumination of it, and of this
\nexperience an expression of some kind, a rendering into thought ought to be
\npossible. Or let us suppose the Ineffable and Unknowable may have aspects, presentations
\nof it that are not utterly unthinkable and ineffable.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nIf it were not so, all
\naccount of spiritual truth and experience would be impossible. At most one
\ncould speculate about it, but that would be an activity very much in the air,
\neven in a void, without support or data, a mere manipulation of all the
\npossible ideas of what might be the Supreme and Ultimate. Apart from that there
\ncould be only a certain unaccountable transition by one way or another from
\nconsciousness to an incommunicable Supraconscience<\/span>.
\nThat is indeed what much mystical seeking actually reached both in Europe and
\nIndia. The Christian mystics spoke of a total darkness, a darkness complete and
\nuntouched by any mental lights, through which one must pass into that luminous
\nIneffable. The Indian Sannyasis<\/span> sought to shed mind
\naltogether and pass into a thought-free trance from which if one returns, no
\ncommunication or expression could be brought back of what was there except a
\nremembrance of inexpressible existence and bliss. But still there were previous
\nexperiences of the supreme mystery, formulations of the Highest or the occult
\nuniversal Existence which were held to be spiritual truth and on the basis of
\nwhich the seers and mystics did not hesitate to formulate their experience and
\nthe thinkers to build on it numberless philosophies and books of exegesis. The
\nonly question that remains is what creates the possibility of this
\ncommunication and expression, this transmission of the facts of a different
\norder of consciousness to the mind and what determines the validity of the
\nexpression or, even, of the original experience. If no valid account were
\npossible there could be no question of the judgment of the intellect \u2013 only the
\ngrotesque contradiction of sitting down to speak of the Ineffable, think of the
\nUnthinkable, comprehend the Incommunicable and Unknowable.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 184<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

I have read Leonard Woolf’s<\/span> article, but I do not propose to deal with it in my
\ncomments on Professor Sorley’s<\/span> letter \u2013 for apart
\nfrom the ignorant denunciation and cheap satire in which it deals, there is
\nnothing much in its statement of the case against spiritual thought or
\nexperience; its reasoning is superficial and springs from an entire
\nmisunderstanding of the case for the mystic. There are four main arguments he
\nsets against it and none of them has any value.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Argument number
\none. Mysticism and mystics have always risen in times of decadence, of the ebb
\nof life and their loud quacking is a symptom of the decadence. This argument is
\nabsolutely untrue. In the East the great spiritual movements have arisen in the
\nfull flood of a people’s life and culture or on a rising tide and they have
\nthemselves given a powerful impulse of expression and richness to its thought
\nand Art and life; in Greece the mystics and the mysteries were there at the
\nprehistoric beginning and in the middle (Pythagoras was one of the greatest of
\nmystics) and not only in the ebb and decline; the mystic cults flourished in
\nRome when its culture was at high tide; many great spiritual personalities of
\nItaly, France, Spain sprang up in a life that was rich, vivid and not in the
\nleast touched with decadence. This hasty and stupid generalisation has no truth
\nin it and therefore no value. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Argument number
\ntwo. A spiritual experience cannot be taken as a truth (it is a chimera) unless
\nit is proved just as the presence of a chair in the next room can be proved by
\nshowing it to the eye. Of course, a spiritual experience cannot be proved in
\nthat way, for it does not belong to the order of physical facts and is not
\nphysically visible or touchable. The writer’s proposition would amount to this
\nthat only what is or can easily be evident to everybody without any need of
\ntraining, development, equipment or personal discovery is to be taken as true.
\nThis is a position which, if accepted, would confine knowledge or truth within
\nvery narrow limits and get rid of a great deal of human culture. A spiritual
\npeace \u2013 the peace that passeth<\/span> all understanding \u2013 is
\na common experience of the mystics all over the world, it is a fact but a
\nspiritual fact, a fact of the invisible, and when one enters it or it enters
\ninto one, one knows that it is a <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 185<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

truth of existence and is there
\nall the time behind life and visible things. But how am I to prove these
\ninvisible facts to Mr. Leonard Woolf<\/span>? He will turn
\naway saying that this is the usual decadent quack-quack and pass contemptuously
\non \u2013 perhaps to write another cleverly shallow article on some subject of which
\nhe has no personal knowledge or experience. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Argument number
\nthree. The generalisations based on spiritual experience are irrational as well
\nas unproven. Irrational in what way? Are they merely foolish and inconceivable
\nor do they belong to a suprarational order of experience to which the ordinary
\nintellectual canons do not apply because these are founded on phenomena as they
\nappear to the external mind and sense and not to an inner realisation which
\nsurpasses these phenomena? That is the contention of the mystics and it cannot
\nbe dismissed by merely saying that as these generalisations do not agree with
\nthe ordinary experience, therefore they are nonsense and false. I do not
\nundertake to defend all that Joad<\/span> or Radhakrishnan<\/span> may have written \u2013 such as the statement that
\nthe \u201cuniverse is good\u201d \u2013 but I cannot admit about many of these statements
\ncondemned by the writer that they are irrational at all. \u201cIntegrating the
\npersonality\u201d may have no meaning to him, it has a very clear meaning to me, for
\nit is a truth of experience \u2013 and, if modern psychology is to be believed, it
\nis not irrational, since there is in our being not only a conscious but an
\nunconscious or subconscious or concealed subliminal part and it is not
\nimpossible to become aware of both and make some kind of integration. To
\ntranscend both also may have a rational meaning if we admit that as there is a
\nsubconscious so there may be a superconscious part of our being; to reconcile
\ndisparate parts of our nature or our experience is also not such a ridiculous
\nor meaningless phrase. It is not absurd to say that the doctrine of Karma
\nreconciles determinism and free-willism<\/span>, since it
\nsupposes that our own past action and therefore our past will determine to a
\ngreat extent the present results, but not so as to exclude a present will
\nmodifying them and creating a fresh determinism of our existence yet to be. The
\nphrase about the value of the world is quite intelligible when we see that it
\nrefers to a progressive value, not determined by the <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 186<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

good or bad experience of the
\nmoment, a value of existence developing through time and taken as a whole. As
\nfor the statement about God, it has no meaning if it is taken in connection
\nwith the superficial idea of the Divine current in popular religion, but it is
\na perfectly logical result of the premises that there is an Infinite and
\nEternal which is manifesting in itself Time and things that are phenomenally
\nfinite. One may accept or reject this complex idea of the Divine which is
\nfounded on co-ordination of the data of long spiritual experience passed
\nthrough by thousands of seekers in all times, but I fail to see why it should
\nbe considered unreasonable. If it is because that means \u201cto have it not only in
\nboth ways but in every way\u201d, I do not see why that should be so reprehensible
\nand inadmissible. There can be after all a synthetic and global view and
\nconsciousness of things which is not bound by the oppositions and divisions of
\na mere analytical and selective or dissecting intelligence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Argument number
\nfour. The plea of intuition is only a cover for the inability to explain or
\nestablish by the use of reason \u2013 Joad<\/span> and Radhakrishnan<\/span> reason, but take refuge in intuition where
\ntheir reasoning fails. Can the issue be settled in so easy and trenchant a way?
\nThe fact is that the mystic depends on an inner knowledge, an inner experience;
\nbut if he philosophises<\/span>, he must try to explain to
\nthe reason, though not necessary always by the reason alone, what he has seen
\nto be the Truth. He cannot but say, \u201cI am explaining a truth which is beyond
\nouter phenomena and the intelligence which depends on phenomena; it really
\ndepends on a certain kind of direct experience and the intuitive knowledge
\nwhich arises from that experience, it cannot be adequately communicated by
\nsymbols appropriate to the world of outer phenomena, yet I am obliged to do as
\nwell as I can with these to help me towards some statement which will be
\nintellectually acceptable to you.\u201d There is no wickedness or deceitful cunning
\ntherefore in using metaphors and symbols with a cautionary \u201cas it were\u201d, as in
\nthe simile of the focus, which is surely not intended as an argument but as a
\nsuggestive image. I may observe in passing that the writer himself takes refuge
\nin metaphor frequently, beginning with the quack-quack and Joad<\/span>
\nmight well reply that he does so in order to damn the opposite <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 187<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

side, while avoiding the
\nnecessity of a sound philosophical reply to the philosophy he dislikes and
\nrepudiates. An intensity of belief is not the measure of truth, but neither is
\nan intensity of unbelief the right measure. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As to the real
\nnature of intuition and its relation to the intellectual mind, that is quite
\nanother and very large and complex question which I cannot deal with here. I
\nhave confined myself to pointing out that this article is quite inadequate and
\nsuperficial criticism. A case can be made against spiritual experience and
\nspiritual philosophy and its positions, but to deserve a serious reply it must
\nbe put forward by a better advocate and it must touch the real centre of the
\nproblem, which lies here. As there is a category of facts to which our senses
\nare our best available but very imperfect guides, as there is a category of
\ntruths which we seek by the keen but still imperfect light of our reason, so
\naccording to the mystic, there is a category of more subtle truths which
\nsurpass the reach both of the senses and the reason but can be ascertained by
\nan inner direct knowledge and direct experience. These truths are supersensuous<\/span>, but not the less real for that: they have
\nimmense results upon the consciousness changing its substance and movement,
\nbringing especially deep peace and abiding joy, a great light of vision and
\nknowledge, a possibility of the overcoming of the lower animal nature, vistas
\nof a spiritual self-development which without them do not exist. A new outlook
\non things arises which brings with it, if fully pursued into its consequences,
\na great liberation, inner harmony, unification \u2013 many other possibilities
\nbesides. These things have been experienced, it is true, by a small minority of
\nthe human race, but still there has been a host of independent witnesses to
\nthem in all times, climes and conditions and numbered among them are some of
\nthe greatest intelligences of the past, some of the world’s most remarkable
\nfigures. Must these possibilities be immediately condemned as chimeras because
\nthey are not only beyond the average man in the street but also not easily
\nseizable even by many cultivated intellects or because their method is more
\ndifficult than that of the ordinary sense or reason? If there is any truth in
\nthem, is not this possibility opened by them worth pursuing as disclosing a
\nhighest range of self-discovery and world
\n <\/p>\n

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\nPage \u2013 188<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

discovery by the human soul? At its
\nbest, taken as true, it must be that \u2013 at its lowest taken as only a
\npossibility, as all things attained by man have been only a possibility in
\ntheir earlier stages, it is a great and may well be a most fruitful adventure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nII<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do not think anything can be
\nsaid that would convince one who starts from exactly the opposite viewpoint to
\nthe spiritual, the way of looking at things of a Victorian agnostic. His points
\nof doubt about the value \u2013 other than subjective and purely individual \u2013 of
\nyoga experience are that it does not aim at scientific truth and cannot be said
\nto achieve ultimate truth because the experiences are coloured<\/span>
\nby the individuality of the seer. One might ask whether Science itself has
\narrived\u00a0 <\/span>at any ultimate truth; on the
\ncontrary, ultimate truth even on the physical plane seems to recede as Science
\nadvances. Science started on the assumption that the ultimate truth must be
\nphysical and objective \u2013 and the objective Ultimate (or even less than that)
\nwould explain all subjective phenomena. Yoga proceeds on the opposite view that
\nthe ultimate Truth is spiritual and subjective and it is in that ultimate Light
\nthat we must view objective phenomena. It is the two opposite poles and the
\ngulf is as wide as it can be. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yoga, however,
\nis scientific to this extent that it proceeds by subjective experiment and
\nbases all its findings on experience; mental intuitions are admitted only as a
\nfirst step and are not considered as realisation \u2013 they must be confirmed by
\nbeing translated into and justified by experience. As to the value of the
\nexperience itself, it is doubted by the physical mind because it is subjective,
\nnot objective. But has the distinction much value? Is not all knowledge and
\nexperience subjective at bottom? Objective external physical things are seen
\nvery much in the same way by human beings because of the construction of the
\nmind and senses; with another construction of mind and sense quite another
\naccount of the physical world would be given \u2013 Science itself has made that
\nvery clear. But your friend’s point is that the
\n <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

yoga experience is individual, coloured<\/span> by the individuality of the seer. It may be true
\nto a certain extent of the precise form or transcription given to the
\nexperience in certain domains; but even here the difference is superficial. It
\nis a fact that yogic experience runs everywhere on the same lines. Certainly,
\nthere are, not one line, but many; for, admittedly, we are dealing with a
\nmany-sided Infinite to which there are and must be many ways of approach; but
\nyet the broad lines are the same everywhere and the intuitions, experiences,
\nphenomena are the same in ages and countries far apart from each other and
\nsystems practised quite independently from each other. The experiences of the
\nmediaeval European bhakta<\/span> or mystic are precisely the
\nsame in substance, however differing in names, forms, religious colouring<\/span>, etc., as those of the mediaeval Indian bhakta<\/span> or mystic \u2013 yet these people were not corresponding
\nwith one another or aware of each other’s experiences and results as are modern
\nscientists from New York to Yokohama. That would seem to show that there is
\nsomething there identical, universal and presumably true \u2013 however the colour<\/span> of the translation may differ because of the
\ndifference of mental language. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As for ultimate
\nTruth, I suppose both the Victorian agnostic and, let us say, the Indian
\nVedantin may agree that it is veiled but there. Both speak of it as the
\nUnknowable; the only difference is that the Vedantin says it is unknowable by
\nthe mind and inexpressible by speech, but still attainable by something deeper
\nor higher than the mental perception, while even mind can reflect and speech
\nexpress the thousand aspects it presents to the mind’s outward and inward
\nexperience. The Victorian agnostic would, I suppose, cancel this qualification;
\nhe would pronounce for the doubtful existence and, if existent, for the
\nabsolute unknowableness<\/span> of this Unknowable. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You ask me whether you have to
\ngive up your predilection for testing before accepting and to accept everything
\nin yoga a priori \u2013 and by testing you mean testing by the ordinary reason. The
\nonly answer I can give to that is that the experiences of yoga belong to an
\ninner domain and go according to a law of their
\n <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

own, have their own method of perception,
\ncriteria and all the rest of it which are neither those of the domain of the
\nphysical\u00a0 <\/span>senses nor of the domain of
\nrational or scientific enquiry. Just as scientific enquiry passes beyond that
\nof the physical senses and enters the domain of the infinite and infinitesimal
\nabout which the senses can say nothing and test nothing \u2013 for one cannot see
\nand touch an electron or know by the evidence of the sense-mind whether it
\nexists or not or decide by that evidence whether the earth really turns round the
\nsun and not rather the sun round the earth as our senses and all our physical
\nexperience daily tell us \u2013 so the spiritual search passes beyond the domain of
\nscientific or rational enquiry and it is impossible by the aid of the ordinary
\npositive reason to test the data of spiritual experience and decide whether
\nthose things exist or not or what is their law and nature. As in Science, so
\nhere you have to accumulate experience on experience, following faithfully the
\nmethods laid down by the Guru or by the systems of the past, you have to
\ndevelop an intuitive discrimination which compares the experiences, see what
\nthey mean, how far and in what field each is valid, what is the place of each
\nin the whole, how it can be reconciled or related with others that at first
\nmight seem to contradict it, etc., etc., until you can move with a secure
\nknowledge in the vast field of spiritual phenomena. That is the only way to
\ntest spiritual experience. I have myself tried the other method and I have
\nfound it absolutely incapable and inapplicable. On the other hand, if you are
\nnot prepared to go through all that yourself,\u2014as few can do except those of extraordinary
\nspiritual stature \u2013 you have to accept the leading of a Master, as in Science
\nyou accept a teacher instead of\u00a0 <\/span>going
\nthrough the whole field of Science and its experimentation all by yourself \u2013 at
\nleast until you have accumulated sufficient experience and knowledge. If that
\nis accepting things a priori, well, you have to accept a priori. For I am
\nunable to see by what valid tests you propose to make the ordinary reason the
\njudge of what is beyond it.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You quote the
\nsayings of V or X. I would like to know before assigning a value to these
\nutterances what they actually did for the testing of their spiritual perceptions
\nand experiences. How did V test the value of his spiritual experiences \u2013 some
\nof <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

them not easily credible to the
\nordinary positive mind any more than the miracles attributed to some famous
\nyogis? I know nothing about X, but what were his tests and how did he apply
\nthem? What are his methods? his criteria? It seems to me that no ordinary mind
\nwill accept the apparition of Buddha out of a wall or the half hour’s talk with
\nHayagriva<\/span> as valid facts by any kind of testing. It
\nwould either have to accept them a priori or on the sole evidence of V, which
\ncomes to the same thing, or to reject them a priori as hallucinations or mere
\nmental images accompanied in one case by an auditive<\/span>
\nhallucination. I fail to see how it could \u201ctest\u201d them. Or how was I to test by
\nthe ordinary mind my experience of Nirvana? To what conclusion could I come
\nabout it by the aid of the ordinary positive reason? How could I test its
\nvalidity? I am at a loss to imagine. I did the only thing I could \u2013 to accept
\nit as a strong and valid truth of experience, let it have its full play and
\nproduce its full experimental consequences until I had sufficient yogic
\nknowledge to put it in its place. Finally, how without inner knowledge or
\nexperience can you or anyone else test the inner knowledge and experience of
\nothers?
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have often
\nsaid that discrimination is not only perfectly admissible but indispensable in
\nspiritual experience. But it must be a discrimination founded on knowledge, not
\na reasoning founded on ignorance. Otherwise you tie up your mind and hamper
\nexperience by preconceived ideas which are as much a priori as any acceptance
\nof a spiritual truth or experience can be. Your idea that surrender can only
\ncome by love is a point in instance. It is perfectly true in yogic experience
\nthat surrender by true love, which means psychic and spiritual love, is the
\nmost powerful, simple and effective of all, but one cannot, putting that
\nforward as a dictum arrived at by the ordinary reason, shut up the whole of
\npossible experience of surrender into that formula or announce on its strength
\nthat one must wait till one loves perfectly before one can surrender. Yogic
\nexperience shows that surrender can also be made by the mind and will, a clear
\nand sincere mind seeing the necessity of surrender and a clear and sincere will
\nenforcing it on the recalcitrant members. Also, experience shows that not only
\ncan surrender come by love, but love also <\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

can come by surrender or grow
\nwith it from an imperfect to a perfect love. One starts by an intense idea and
\nwill to know or reach the Divine and surrenders more and more one’s ordinary
\npersonal ideas, desires, attachments, urges to action or habits of action so
\nthat the Divine may take up everything. Surrender means that, to give up our
\nlittle mind and its mental ideas and preferences into a divine Light and a
\ngreater Knowledge, our petty personal troubled blind stumbling will into a
\ngreat, calm, tranquil, luminous Will and Force, our little, restless, tormented
\nfeelings into a wide intense divine Love and Ananda, our small suffering
\npersonality into the one Person of which it is an obscure outcome. If one
\ninsists on one’s own ideas and reasonings, the greater Light and Knowledge
\ncannot come or else is marred and obstructed in the coming at every step by a
\nlower interference; if one insists on one’s desires and fancies, that great
\nluminous Will and Force cannot act in its own true power \u2013 for you ask it to be
\nthe servant of your desires; if one refuses to give up one’s petty ways of
\nfeeling, eternal Love and supreme Ananda cannot descend or are mixed and spilt
\nfrom the effervescing crude emotional vessel. No amount of ordinary reasoning
\ncan get rid of the necessity of surmounting the lower in order that the higher
\nmay be there. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And if some find
\nthat retirement is the best way of giving oneself to the Higher, to the Divine
\nby avoiding as much as possible occasions for the bubbling up of the lower, why
\nnot? The aim they have come for is that, and why blame or look with distrust
\nand suspicion on the means they find best or daub it with disparaging
\nadjectives to discredit it \u2013 grim, inhuman and the rest? It is your vital that
\nshrinks from it and your vital mind that supplies these epithets which express
\nonly your shrinking and not what the retirement really is. For it is the vital
\nor its social part that shrinks from solitude; the thinking mind does not but
\nrather courts it. The poet seeks solitude with himself or with Nature to listen
\nto his inspiration; the thinker plunges into solitude to meditate on things and
\ncommune with a deeper knowledge; the scientist shuts himself up in his
\nlaboratory to pore by experiment into the secrets of Nature; these retirements
\nare not grim and inhuman. Neither is the retirement of the sadhak into the <\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

exclusive concentration of which
\nhe feels the need; it is a means to the end \u2013 to the end on which his whole
\nheart is set. As for the yogin<\/span> or Bhakta who has
\nalready begun to have the fundamental experience, he is not in a grim and
\ninhuman solitude. The Divine and all the world are there in the being of the
\none, the supreme Beloved or his Ananda is there in the heart of the other. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I say this as
\nagainst your depreciation of retirement founded on ignorance of what it really
\nis; but I do not, as I have often said, recommend a total seclusion, for I hold
\nthat to be a dangerous expedient which may lead to morbidity and much error.
\nNor do I impose retirement on anyone as a method or approve of it unless the
\nperson himself seeks it, feels its necessity, has the joy of it and the
\npersonal proof that it helps to the spiritual experience. It is not to be
\nimposed on anyone as a principle, for that is the mental way of doing things,
\nthe way of the ordinary mind \u2013 it is as a need that it has to be accepted, when
\nit is felt as a need, not as a general law or rule.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What you
\ndescribe in your letter as the response of the Divine would not be called that
\nin the language of yogic experience \u2013 this feeling of great peace, light, ease,
\ntrust, difficulties lessening, certitude would rather be called a response of
\nyour own nature to the Divine. There is a Peace or Light which is the response
\nof the Divine, but that is a wide Peace, a great Light which is felt as a
\npresence other than one’s personal self, not part of one’s personal nature, but
\nsomething that comes from above, though in the end it possesses the nature \u2013 or
\nthere is the Presence itself which carries with it indeed the absolute
\nliberation, happiness, certitude. But the first responses of the Divine are not
\noften like that \u2013 they come rather as a touch, a pressure one must be in a
\ncondition to recognise and to accept, or it is a voice of assurance, sometimes
\na very \u201cstill small voice\u201d, a momentary Image or Presence, a whisper of
\nGuidance sometimes, there are many forms it may take. Then it withdraws and the
\npreparation of the nature goes on till it is possible for the touch to come
\nagain and again, to last longer, to change into something more pressing and
\nnear and intimate. The Divine in the beginning does not impose himself\u2014he asks
\nfor recognition, for acceptance. That is one reason why the mind must fall
\nsilent, not put tests, not make <\/p>\n

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\nPage \u2013 194<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

claims \u2013 there must be room for
\nthe true intuition which recognises at once the true touch and accepts it.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Then for the tumultuous
\nactivity of the mind which prevents your concentration. But that or else a more
\ntiresome, obstinate, grinding, mechanical activity is always the difficulty
\nwhen one tries to concentrate and it takes a long time to get the better of it.
\nThat or the habit of sleep which prevents either the waking concentration or
\nthe conscious samadhi or the absorbed and all-excluding trance which are the
\nthree forms that yogic concentration takes. But it is surely ignorance of yoga,
\nits process and its difficulties that makes you feel desperate and pronounce
\nyourself unfit for ever because of this quite ordinary obstacle. The insistence
\nof the ordinary mind and its wrong reasonings, sentiments and judgments, the
\nrandom activity of the thinking mind in concentration or its mechanical
\nactivity, the slowness of response to the veiled or the initial touch are the
\nordinary obstacles the mind imposes, just as pride, ambition, vanity, sex,
\ngreed, grasping of things for one’s own ego are the difficulties and obstacles
\noffered by the vital. As the vital difficulties can be fought down and
\nconquered, so can the mental. Only one has to see that these are inevitable
\nobstacles and neither cling to them nor be terrified or overwhelmed because
\nthey are there. One has to persevere till one can stand back from the mind as
\nfrom the vital and feel the deeper and larger mental and vital Purushas<\/span> within one which are capable of silence, capable
\nof a straight receptivity of the true Word and Force as of the true silence. If
\nthe nature takes the way of fighting down the difficulties first, then the
\nfirst half of the way is long and tedious and the complaint of the want of the
\nresponse of the Divine arises. But really the Divine is there all the time,
\nworking behind the veil as well as waiting for the recognition of his response
\nand for the response to the response to be possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One feels here a stream from the
\ndirect sources of Truth that one does not meet so often as one could desire.
\nHere is a mind that can not only think but see \u2013 and not merely see the
\nsurfaces of things with which most intellectual thought goes on wrestling <\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

without end or definite issue and
\nas if there were nothing else, but look into the core. The Tantriks<\/span>
\nhave a phrase paśyantī<\/i><\/span> vāk<\/span><\/i> to
\ndescribe one level of the Vak<\/span>-Shakti, the seeing
\nWord; here is paśyantī<\/i><\/span> buddhi<\/i>, a seeing intelligence. It might
\nbe because the seer within has passed beyond thought into experience, but there
\nare many who have a considerable wealth of experience without its clarifying
\ntheir eye of thought to this extent; the soul feels, but the mind goes on with
\nmixed and imperfect transcriptions, blurs and confusions in the idea. There
\nmust have been the gift of right vision lying ready in this nature. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is an
\nachievement to have got rid so rapidly and decisively of the shimmering mists
\nand fogs which modern intellectualism takes for Light of Truth. The modern mind
\nhas so long and persistently wandered \u2013 and we with it \u2013 in the Valley of the
\nFalse Glimmer that it is not easy for anyone to disperse its mists with the
\nsunlight of clear vision so soon and entirely as has here been done. All that
\nis said here about modern humanism and humanitarianism, the vain efforts of the
\nsentimental idealist and the ineffective intellectual, about synthetic
\neclecticism and other kindred things is admirably clear-minded, it hits the
\ntarget. It is not by these means that humanity can get that radical change of
\nits ways of life which is yet becoming imperative, but only by reaching the
\nbed-rock of Reality behind, \u2013 not through mere ideas and mental formations, but
\nby a change of the consciousness, an inner and spiritual conversion. But that
\nis a truth for which it would be difficult to get a hearing in the present
\nnoise of all kinds of many-voiced clamour<\/span> and confusion
\nand catastrophe.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A distinction,
\nthe distinction very keenly made here, between the plane of phenomenal process,
\nof externalised<\/span> Prakriti, and the plane of Divine
\nReality ranks among the first words of the inner wisdom. The turn given to it
\nin these pages is not merely an ingenious explanation; it expresses very
\nsoundly one of the clear certainties you meet when you step across the border
\nand look at the outer world from the standing-ground of the inner spiritual
\nexperience. The more you go inward or upward, the more the view of things
\nchanges and the outer knowledge Science organises<\/span>
\ntakes its real and very limited place. Science, like most mental and external
\nknowledge, gives you only truth of process. <\/p>\n


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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

I would add that it cannot give
\nyou even the whole truth of process; for you seize some of the ponderables<\/span>, but miss the all-important imponderables; you
\nget, hardly even the how, but the conditions under which things happen in
\nNature. After all the triumphs and marvels of Science the explaining principle,
\nthe rationale, the significance of the whole is left as dark, as mysterious and
\neven more mysterious than ever. The scheme it has built up of the evolution not
\nonly of this rich and vast and variegated material world, but of life and consciousness
\nand mind and their workings out of a brute mass of electrons, identical and
\nvaried only in arrangement and number, is an irrational magic more baffling
\nthan any the most mystic imagination could conceive. Science in the end lands
\nus in a paradox effectuated, an organised and rigidly determined accident, an
\nimpossibility that has somehow happened, \u2013 it has shown us a new, a material
\nMaya, aghatana-ghatana-patīyasī<\/i><\/span>,
\nvery clever at bringing about the impossible, a miracle that cannot logically
\nbe and yet somehow is there actual, irresistibly organised, but still
\nirrational and inexplicable. And this is evidently because Science has missed
\nsomething essential; it has seen and scrutinised<\/span> what
\nhas happened and in a way how it has happened, but it has shut its eyes to
\nsomething that made this impossible possible, something it is there to express.
\nThere is no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine Reality;
\nfor you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of manageable and utilisable appearance.
\nIt is the magic of the Magician you are trying to analyse<\/span>,
\nbut only when you enter into the consciousness of the Magician himself can you
\nbegin to experience the true origination, significance and circles of the Lila.
\nI say \u201cbegin\u201d because the Divine Reality is not so simple that at the first
\ntouch you can know all of it or put it into a single formula; it is the
\nInfinite and opens before you an infinite knowledge to which all Science put
\ntogether is a bagatelle. But still you do touch the essential, the eternal
\nbehind things and in the light of That all begins to be profoundly luminous,
\nintimately intelligible.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have once
\nbefore told you what I think of the ineffective peckings<\/span>
\nof certain well-intentioned scientific minds on the surface or apparent surface
\nof the spiritual Reality behind things and <\/p>\n


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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

I need not elaborate it. More
\nimportant is the prognostic of a greater danger coming in the new attack by the
\nadversary, the sceptics<\/span>, against the validity of
\nspiritual and supraphysical<\/span> experience, their new
\nstrategy of destruction by admitting and explaining it in their own sense.
\nThere may well be a strong ground for the apprehension; but I doubt whether, if
\nthese things are once admitted to scrutiny, the mind of humanity will long remain
\nsatisfied with explanations so ineptly superficial and external, explanations
\nthat explain nothing. If the defenders of religion take up an unsound position,
\neasily capturable<\/span>, when they affirm only the
\nsubjective validity of spiritual experience, the opponents also seem to me to
\nbe giving away, without knowing it, the gates of the materialistic stronghold
\nby their consent at all to admit and examine spiritual and supraphysical<\/span>
\nexperience. Their entrenchment in the physical field, their refusal to admit or
\neven examine supraphysical<\/span> things was their tower of
\nstrong safety; once it is abandoned, the human mind pressing towards something
\nless negative, more helpfully positive will pass to it over the dead bodies of
\ntheir theories and the broken debris of their annulling explanations and
\ningenious psychological labels. Another danger may then arise, \u2013 not of a final
\ndenial of the Truth, but the repetition in old or new forms of a past mistake,
\non one side some revival of blind fanatical obscurantist sectarian religionism<\/span>, on the other a stumbling into the pits and
\nquagmires of the vitalistic<\/span> occult and the
\npseudo-spiritual \u2013 mistakes that made the whole real strength of the
\nmaterialistic attack on the past and its credos. But these are phantasms that
\nmeet us always on the border line or in the intervening country between the
\nmaterial darkness and the perfect Splendour<\/span>. In spite
\nof all, the victory of the supreme Light even in the darkened
\nearth-consciousness stands as the one ultimate certitude.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Art, poetry,
\nmusic are not yoga, not in themselves things spiritual any more than philosophy
\nis a thing spiritual or Science. There lurks here another curious incapacity of
\nthe modern intellect \u2013 its inability to distinguish between mind and spirit,
\nits readiness to mistake mental, moral and aesthetic idealisms for spirituality
\nand their inferior degrees for spiritual values. It is mere truth that the
\nmental intuitions of the metaphysician or the <\/p>\n


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<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

poet for the most part fall far
\nshort of a concrete spiritual experience; they are distant flashes, shadowy
\nreflections, not rays from the centre of Light. It is not less true that,
\nlooked at from the peaks, there is not much difference between the high mental
\neminences and the lower climbings<\/span> of this external
\nexistence. All the energies of the Lila are equal in the sight from above, all
\nare disguises of the Divine. But one has to add that all can be turned into a
\nfirst means towards the\u00a0 <\/span>realisation of
\nthe Divine. A philosophic statement about the Atman is a mental formula, not
\nknowledge, not experience; yet sometimes the Divine takes it as a channel of
\ntouch; strangely, a barrier in the mind breaks down, something is seen, a
\nprofound change operated in some inner part, there enters into the ground of
\nthe nature something calm, equal, ineffable. One stands upon a mountain ridge
\nand glimpses or mentally feels a wideness, a pervasiveness, a nameless Vast in
\nNature; then suddenly there comes the touch, a revelation, a flooding, the
\nmental loses itself in the spiritual, one bears the first invasion of the
\nInfinite. Or you stand before a temple of Kali beside a sacred river and see
\nwhat? \u2013 a sculpture, a gracious piece of architecture, but in a moment
\nmysteriously, unexpectedly there is instead a Presence, a Power, a Face that
\nlooks into yours, an inner sight in you has regarded the World-Mother. Similar
\ntouches can come through art, music, poetry to their creator or to one who
\nfeels the shock of the word, the hidden significance of a form, a message in
\nthe sound that carries more perhaps than was consciously meant by the composer.
\nAll things in the Lila can turn into windows that open on the hidden Reality.
\nStill so long as one is satisfied with looking through windows, the gain is
\nonly initial; one day one will have to take up the pilgrim’s staff and start
\nout to journey there where the Reality is for ever manifest and present. Still
\nless can it be spiritually satisfying to remain with shadowy reflections, a
\nsearch imposes itself for the Light which they strive to figure. But since this
\nReality and this Light are in ourselves no less than in some high region above
\nthe mortal plane, we can in the seeking for it use many of the figures and
\nactivities of life; as one offers a flower, a prayer, an act to the Divine, one
\ncan offer too a created form of beauty, a song, a poem, an image, a strain of
\nmusic, and
\n <\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

gain through it a contact, a
\nresponse or an experience. And when that divine consciousness has been entered
\nor when it grows within, then too its expression in life through these things
\nis not excluded from yoga; these creative activities can still have their
\nplace, though not intrinsically a greater place than any other that can be put
\nto divine use and service. Art, poetry, music, as they are in their ordinary
\nfunctioning, create mental and vital, not spiritual values; but they can be
\nturned to a higher end, and then, like all things that are capable of linking
\nour consciousness to the Divine, they are transmuted and become spiritual and
\ncan be admitted as part of a life of yoga. All takes new values not from
\nitself, but from the consciousness that uses it; for there is only one thing
\nessential, needful, indispensable, to grow conscious of the Divine Reality and
\nlive in it and live it always. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The difficulty is that you are a
\nnon-scientist trying to impose your ideas on the most difficult because most
\nmaterial field of science \u2013 physics. It is only if you were a scientist
\nyourself basing your ideas on universally acknowledged scientific facts or else
\nyour own discoveries \u2013 though even then with much difficulty \u2013 that you could
\nget a hearing or your opinion have any weight. Otherwise you open yourself to
\nthe accusation of pronouncing in a field where you have no authority, just as
\nthe scientist himself does when he pronounces on the strength of his
\ndiscoveries that there is no God. When the scientist says that \u201cscientifically
\nspeaking, God is a hypothesis which is no longer necessary\u201d he is talking
\narrant nonsense \u2013 for the existence of God is not and cannot be and never was a
\nscientific hypothesis or problem at all, it is and always has been a spiritual
\nor a metaphysical problem. You cannot speak scientifically about it at all
\neither pro or con. The metaphysician or the spiritual seeker has a right to
\npoint out that it is nonsense; but if you lay down the law to the scientist in
\nthe field of science, you run the risk of having the same objection turned
\nagainst you.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As to the unity
\nof all knowledge, that is a thing in posse, not yet in esse<\/span>.
\nThe mechanical method of knowledge leads to
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 200<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

certain results, the higher
\nmethod leads to certain others, and they at many points fundamentally disagree.
\nHow is the difference to be bridged \u2013 for each seems valid in its own field; it
\nis a problem to be solved, but you cannot solve it in the way you propose.
\nLeast of all in the field of physics. In psychology one can say that the
\nmechanical or physiological approach takes hold of the thing by the blind end and
\nis the least fruitful of all \u2013 for psychology is not primarily a thing of
\nmechanism and measure, it opens to a vast field beyond the physical
\ninstrumentalities of the body-consciousness. In biology one can get a glimpse
\nof something beyond mechanism, because there is from the beginning a stir of
\nconsciousness progressing and organising itself more and more for
\nself-expression. But in physics you are in the very domain of the mechanical
\nlaw where process is everything and the driving consciousness has chosen to
\nconceal itself with the greatest thoroughness \u2013 so that, \u201cscientifically
\nspeaking\u201d, it does not exist there. One can discover it there only by occultism
\nand yoga, but the methods of occult science and of yoga are not measurable or followable<\/span> by the means of physical science \u2013 so the gulf
\nremains still in existence. It may be bridged one day, but the physicist is not
\nlikely to be the bridge-builder, so it is no use asking him to try what is
\nbeyond his province.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The desire [of the occultists and
\nthe spiritists<\/span>] to satisfy the physical scientists is
\nabsurd and illogical. The physical scientists have their own field with its own
\ninstruments and standards. To apply the same tests to phenomena of a different
\nkind is as foolish as to apply physical tests to spiritual truth. One can’t
\ndissect God or see the soul under a microscope. So also the subjection of
\ndisembodied spirits or even of psycho-physical phenomena to tests and standards
\nvalid only for material phenomena is a most false and unsatisfactory method.
\nMoreover, the physical scientist is for the most part resolved not to admit
\nwhat cannot be neatly packed and labelled<\/span> and
\ndocketed in his own system and its formulas. Dr. Jules Romains<\/span>,
\nhimself a scientist as well as a great writer, makes experiments to prove that
\nman can see and read <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 201<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

with the eyes blindfolded, the
\nscientists refuse even to admit or record the results. Khuda<\/span>
\nBaksh<\/span> comes along and proves it patently,
\nindubitably, under all legitimate tests, the scientists are quite unwilling to
\ncede and record the fact even though his results are undeniable. He walks on
\nfire unhurt and disproves all hitherto suggested explanations, \u2013 they simply
\ncast about for another and still more silly explanation! What is the use of
\ntrying to convince people who are determined not to believe?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The scientific mind refuses to
\nleave anything unclassed<\/span>. Has it not classified the
\nDivine also?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The minds of these people [the
\nscientists] are too much accustomed to deal with physical things and things
\nmeasurable by instruments and figures to be much good for any other provinces.
\nEinstein’s views outside his domain are crude and childish, a sort of
\nunsubstantial commonplace idealism without grasp on realities. As a man can be
\na great scholar and yet simple and foolish, so a man can be a great scientist
\nbut his mind and ideas negligible in other things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Psychologists of course having to
\ndeal with mental movements more easily recognise that there can be no real
\nequation between them and physiological processes and at the most mind and body
\nreact on each other as is inevitable since they are lodging together. But even
\na great physical scientist like Huxley recognised<\/span>
\nthat mind was something quite different from matter and could not possibly be
\nexplained in the terms of matter. Only since then physical Science became very
\narrogant and presumptuous and tried to subject everything to itself and its
\nprocesses. Now in theory it has begun to recognise its limitations in a general
\nway, but the old mentality is still too habitual in most scientists to shake
\noff yet. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 202<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n

1<\/sup> The article reads as
\nif it had been written by a professor rather than a philosopher. What you speak
\nof is, I suppose, a survival of the nineteenth-century scientific contempt for
\nmetaphysics; all thinking must be based on scientific facts and the
\ngeneralisations of science, often so faulty and ephemeral, must be made the
\nbasis for any sound metaphysical thinking. That is to make philosophy the
\nhandmaid of science, metaphysics the camp-follower of physics and to deny her her<\/span> sovereign rights in her own city. It ignores the fact
\nthat the philosopher has his own domain and his own instruments; he may use
\nscientific discoveries as material just as he may use any other facts of
\nexistence, but whatever generalisations science offers he must judge by his own
\nstandards \u2013 whether they are valid for transference to the metaphysical plane
\nand, if so, how far. Still in the heyday of physical science before it
\ndiscovered its own limitations and the shakiness of its scheme of things floating
\nprecariously in a huge infinity or boundless Finite of the Unknown, there was
\nperhaps some excuse for such an attitude. But spiritualism glorified under the
\nname of psychical research? That is not a science; it is a mass of obscure and
\nambiguous documents from which you can draw only a few meagre<\/span>
\nand doubtful <\/p>\n


\n <\/font><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

\n1 <\/font><\/sup>
\nThis is in reply to the points raised by a disciple
\nin the following letter to Sri Aurobindo: \u201cOn p. 511 of The Listener of March 28,
\n1934 there are a couple of surprising assumptions \u2013 first, that metaphysics is
\none among the experimental sciences and has a darkened s\u00e9ance room for its
\nlaboratory \u2013 and secondly, that survival need not be distinguished from
\nimmortality. In the interests of clearness, most philosophical thinkers have
\nmade this distinction; it is odd that it should be ignored when such a polemic
\nis being launched against them…. Of course, if one has a turn for practical
\nexperimenting in science, it is no doubt admirable to employ it in psychical
\ninvestigation \u2013 but (unless it is assumed that all cultured human beings, or
\nall philosophers at least, should possess and cultivate this gift) why are the
\nmajority of philosophers to be blamed for finding the results up-to-date obscure
\nand meagre<\/span> and for following their bent in confining
\nthemselves to metaphysical studies proper?\u201d<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>(Regarding a dream about a long-distance
\ntelephone conversation with an acquaintance.) \u201cIn actual life I think a
\ntelephone can be far less satisfactory than an exchange of letters. Is there
\nnot something very symbolic about the emergence of telephony and cinematography
\njust at an epoch when human behaviour<\/span> and
\nrelationship is breaking down? Owing to falsehood and callousness and
\nself-centred indifferenoe<\/span> to others, each person is
\nto every other more and more a meaningless shadow and a deceptive voice. In The
\nManchester Guardian’s musical critic’s remarks on an Elgar<\/span>
\nMemorial Concert there are some good points about `the reaction working against
\nnobility and tenderness in art’. I fail to see any further need for human
\nbeings either as creators or enjoyers of such `art’ as can still fall within
\nthe canons of fashion; perhaps, however, in an Asuric civilisation, men are
\nanyhow superfluous and only `incarnated Asuras<\/span>‘ are
\nrequired?\u201d<\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 203<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

generalisations. Moreover, so far
\nas it belongs to the occult, it touches only the inferior regions of the occult
\n\u2013 what we would call the lowest vital worlds \u2013 where there is as much falsehood
\nand fake and confused error as upon the earth and even more. What is a
\nphilosopher to do with all that obscure and troubled matter? I do not catch the
\npoint of many of his remarks. Why should a prediction of a future event alter
\nour conception \u2013 at least any philosophic conception \u2013 of Time? It can alter
\none’s ideas of the relation of events to each other or of the working out of
\nforces or of the possibilities of consciousness, but Time remains the same as
\nbefore. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The dream is, of
\ncourse, the rendering of an attempt at communication on the subtle plane. As
\nfor the telephone and cinema, there is something of what you say, but it seems
\nto me that these and other modern things could have taken on a different
\ncharacter if they had been accepted and used in a different spirit. Mankind was
\nnot ready for these discoveries, in the spiritual sense, nor even, if the
\npresent confusions are a sign, intellectually ready. The aesthetic downfall is
\nperhaps due to other causes, a disappointed idealism in its recoil generating
\nits opposite, a dry and cynical intellectualism which refuses to be duped by
\nthe ideal, romantic or the emotional or anything that is higher than the reason
\nwalking by the light of the senses. The Asuras<\/span> of the
\npast were after all often rather big beings; the trouble about the present ones
\nis that they are not really Asuras<\/span>, but beings of the
\nlower vital world, violent, brutal and ignoble, but above all narrow-minded,
\nignorant and obscure. But this kind of cynical narrow intellectualism that is
\nrampant now, does not last \u2013 it prepares its own end by increasing dryness \u2013 men
\nbegin to feel the need of new springs of life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do not think the two questions
\nyou put are of much importance from the viewpoint of spiritual sadhana. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n1. The question
\nabout science and spirituality would have been of some moment some twenty years
\nago and it filled the minds of men in the earlier years of the twentieth
\ncentury, but it<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 204<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

is now out of date. Science
\nitself has come to the conclusion that it cannot, as it once hoped, determine
\nwhat is the truth of the things or their real nature, or what is behind
\nphysical phenomena; it can only deal with the process of physical things and
\nhow they come about or on what lines men can deal with and make use of them. In
\nother words, the field of physical science has been now definitely marked off
\nand limited and questions about God or the ultimate Reality or other
\nmetaphysical or spiritual problems are outside it. This is at least the case
\nall over continental Europe and it is only in England and America that there is
\nstill some attempt to reason about these things on the basis of physical
\nscience.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The so-called
\nsciences which deal with the mind and men (psychology, etc.) are so much
\ndependent on physical science that they cannot go beyond narrow limits. If
\nscience is to turn her face towards the Divine, it must be a new science not
\nyet developed which deals directly with the forces of the life-world and of
\nMind and so arrives at what is beyond Mind; but present-day science cannot do
\nthat. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. From the spiritual
\npoint of view such temporary phenomena as the turn of the educated Hindus
\ntowards materialism are of little importance. There have always been periods
\nwhen the mind of nations, continents or cultures turned towards materialism and
\naway from all spiritual belief. Such periods came in Europe in the nineteenth
\ncentury, but they are usually of short duration. Western Europe has already
\nlost its faith in materialism and is seeking for something else, either turning
\nback to old religions or groping for something new. Russia and Asia are now
\ngoing through the same materialistic wave. These waves come because of a
\ncertain necessity in human development \u2013 to destroy the bondage of old forms
\nand leave a field for new truth and new forms of truth and action in life as
\nwell as for what is behind life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think X bases his ideas on the
\nattempt of Jeans, Eddington<\/span> and other English
\nscientists to thrust metaphysical conclusions into scientific facts; it is
\nnecessary that he should appreciate fully <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 205<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the objections of more austerely
\nscientific minds to such a mixture. Moreover, spiritual seeking has its own
\naccumulated knowledge which does not depend in the least on the theories or
\ndiscoveries of science in the purely physical sphere. X’s attempt like that of
\nJeans and others is a reaction against the illegitimate attempts of some
\nscientific minds in the nineteenth century and of many others who took
\nadvantage of the march of scientific discovery to discredit or abolish as far
\nas possible the religious spirit and to discredit also metaphysics as a cloudy
\nverbiage, exalting science as the only clue to the truth of the universe. But I
\nthink that attitude is now dead or moribund; the scientists recognise, as you
\npoint out, the limits of their sphere. I may observe that the conflict between
\nreligion and science never arose in India (until the days of European
\neducation) because religion did not interfere with scientific discovery and
\nscientists did not question religious or spiritual truth because the two things
\nwere kept on separate but not opposing lines.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The defect in what X writes about
\nScience seems to be that he is insisting vehemently on the idea that Science is
\nstill materialistic or at least that scientists, Jeans and Eddington<\/span>
\nexcepted, are still fundamentally materialists. This is not the fact. Most
\ncontinental scientists have now renounced the idea that Science can explain the
\nfundamentals of existence. They hold that Science is only concerned with
\nprocess and not with fundamentals. They declare that it is not the business of
\nScience nor is it within its means to decide anything about the great questions
\nwhich concern philosophy and religion. This is the enormous change which the
\nlatest developments of Science have brought about. Science itself nowadays is
\nneither materialistic nor idealistic. The rock on which materialism was built
\nand which in the 19th century seemed unshakable has now been shattered.
\nMaterialism has now become a philosophical speculation just like any other
\ntheory; it cannot claim to found itself on a sort of infallible Biblical
\nauthority, based on the facts and conclusions of Science. This change can be
\nfelt by one like myself who grew up in the <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 206<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

heyday of absolute rule of
\nscientific materialism in the 19th century. The way which had been almost
\nentirely barred, except by rebellion, now lies wide open to spiritual truths,
\nspiritual ideas, spiritual experiences. That is the real revolution. Mentalism<\/span> is only a half-way house, but mentalism<\/span>
\nand vitalism<\/span> are now perfectly possible as hypotheses
\nbased on the facts of existence, scientific facts as well as any others. The
\nfacts of Science do not compel anyone to take any particular philosophical
\ndirection. They are now neutral and can even be used on one side or another
\nthough most scientists do not consider such a use as admissible. Nobody here
\never said that the new discoveries of Physics supported the ideas of religion
\nor churches; they merely contended that Science had lost its old materialistic
\ndogmatism and moved away by a revolutionary change from its old moorings.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is this
\nchange which I expected and prophesied in my poems in the first Ahana<\/span> volume, \u201cA Vision of Science\u201d and \u201cIn the Moonlight\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am afraid I have lost all
\ninterest in these speculations; things are getting too serious for me to waste
\ntime on these inconclusive intellectualities. I do not at all mind your driving
\nyour point triumphantly home and replacing a dogmatism from materialistic
\nscience on its throne of half a century ago from which it could victoriously
\nban all thought surpassing its own narrow bounds as mere wordy metaphysics and
\nmysticism and moonshine. Obviously, if material energies alone can exist in the
\nmaterial world, there can be no possibility of a life divine on the earth. A
\nmere metaphysical \u201csleight of mind\u201d, as one might call it, could not justify it
\nagainst the objections of scientific negation and concrete common sense. I had
\nthought that even many scientific minds on the Continent had come to admit that
\nscience could no longer claim to decide what was the real reality of things,
\nthat it had no means of deciding it and could only discover and describe the
\nhow and process of the operations of material Force in the physical front of
\nthings. That left the field open to higher thought and speculation, spiritual
\nexperience and even to mysticism, occultism and all those greater things which
\nalmost everyone
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 207<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

had come to disbelieve as
\nimpossible nonsense. That was the condition of things when I was in England. If
\nthat is to return or if Russia and her dialectical materialism are to lead the
\nworld, well, fate must be obeyed and life divine must remain content to wait
\nperhaps for another millennium. But I do not like the idea of one of our
\nperiodicals being the arena for a wrestle of that kind. That is all. I am
\nwriting under the impression of your earlier article on this subject, as I have
\nnot gone carefully through the later ones; I dare say these later ones may be
\nentirely convincing and I would find after reading them that my own position
\nwas wrong and that only an obstinate mystic could still believe in such a
\nconquest of Matter by the Spirit as I had dared to think possible. But I am
\njust such an obstinate mystic; so, if I allowed your exposition of the matter
\nto be published in one of our own periodicals, I would be under the obligation
\nof returning to the subject in which I have lost interest and therefore the
\ninclination to write, so as to re-establish my position and would have to
\ncombat the claim of materialistic Science to pronounce anything on these
\nmatters on which it has no means of enquiry nor any possibility of arriving at
\na valid decision. Perhaps I would have practically to rewrite The Life Divine
\nas an answer to the victorious \u201cnegation of the materialist\u201d! This is the only
\nexplanation which I can give, apart from sheer want of time to tackle the
\nsubject, for my long and disappointing silence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I know it is the Russian explanation
\nof the recent trend to spirituality and mysticism that it is a phenomenon of
\ncapitalist society in its decadence. But to read an economic cause, conscious
\nor unconscious, into all phenomena of man’s history is part of the Bolshevik
\ngospel born of the fallacy of Karl Marx. Man’s nature is not so simple and
\none-chorded as all that \u2013 it has many lines and each line produces a need of
\nhis life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them and man tries to satisfy
\nit in various ways, by superstitions of all kinds, by ignorant religionism<\/span>, by spiritism<\/span>,
\ndemonism and what not, in his more enlightened parts by spiritual philosophy,
\nthe higher occultism and
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 208<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the rest, at his highest by the
\nunion with the All, the Eternal or the Divine. The tendency towards the search
\nfor spirituality began in Europe with a recoil from the nineteenth century’s
\nscientific materialism, a dissatisfaction with the pretended all-sufficiency of
\nthe reason and the intellect and a feeling out for something deeper. That was a
\npre-war phenomenon, and began when there was no menace of Communism and the
\ncapitalistic world was at its height of insolent success and triumph, and it
\ncame rather as a revolt against the materialistic bourgeois life and its
\nideals, not as an attempt to serve or sanctify it. It has been at once served
\nand opposed by the post-war disillusionment \u2013 opposed because the post-war
\nworld has fallen back either on cynicism and the life of the senses or on
\nmovements like Fascism and Communism; served because with the deeper minds the
\ndissatisfaction with the ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or
\nvital or material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the
\nspiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light
\non these things dallies with vital will-o’-the wisps like spiritism<\/span>
\nor theosophy or falls back upon the old religionism<\/span>;
\nbut the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by them or pass through them
\nin search of a greater Light. I have had contact with many and the above
\ntendencies are very clear. They come from all countries and it was only a
\nminority who hailed from England or America. Russia is different \u2013 unlike the
\nothers it has lingered in mediaeval religionism<\/span> and
\nnot passed through any period of revolt \u2013 so when the revolt came it was
\nnaturally anti-religious and atheistic. It is only when this phase is exhausted
\nthat Russian mysticism can receive and take not a narrow religious but the
\nspiritual direction. It is true that mysticism \u00e0<\/span> revers<\/span>, turned upside down, has made Bolshevism and its
\nendeavour a creed rather than a political theme and a search for the paradisal<\/span> secret millennium on earth rather than the
\nbuilding of a purely social structure. But for the most part Russia is trying
\nto do on the communistic basis all that nineteenth-century idealism hoped to
\nget at \u2013 and failed \u2013 in the midst of or against an industrial competitive
\nenvironment. Whether it will really succeed any better is for the future to
\ndecide \u2013 for at present it only keeps what it
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage 209<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

has got by a tension and violent
\ncontrol which is not over.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Isha<\/span>
\nUpanishad passage1 <\/sup>is of course a much larger statement of the
\nnature of universal existence than the Einstein theory which is confined to the
\nphysical universe. You can deduce too a much larger law of relativity from the
\nstatement in the verse. What it means from this point of view \u2013 for it contains
\nmuch more in it \u2013 is that the absolute Reality exists, but it is immovable and
\nalways the same, the universal movement is a motion of consciousness in this
\nReality of which only the Transcendent itself can seize the truth, which is
\nself-evident to It, while the apprehension of it by the Gods (the mind, senses,
\netc.) must necessarily be imperfect and relative, since they can try to follow
\nbut none can really overtake (apprehend or seize) that Truth, each being
\nlimited by its own viewpoint,2\u00a0 <\/span><\/sup>lesser
\ninstrumentality or capacity of consciousness, etc. This is the familiar
\nattitude of the Indian or at least the Vedantic mind which held that our
\nknowledge, perception and experience of things in the world and of the world
\nitself must be vyāvahārika<\/i><\/span>,
\nrelative, practical or pragmatic only, \u2013 so declared Shankara, \u2013 it is in fact
\nan illusory knowledge, the real Truth of things lying beyond our mental and
\nsensory consciousness. Einstein’s relativity is a scientific, not a
\nmetaphysical statement. The form and field of it are different \u2013 but, I
\nsuppose, if one goes back from it and beyond it to its essential significance,
\nthe real reason for its being so, one can connect it with the Vedantic
\nconclusion. But to justify that to the intellect, you would have to go through
\na whole process to show how the connection comes \u2013 it does not self-evidently
\nfollow. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

.As for Jeans, many would say that his conclusions are not at all
\nlegitimate. Einstein’s law is a scientific generalization based upon certain
\nrelations proper to the domain of physics and, if<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/span><\/sup> \u201cOne unmoving that is
\nswifter than Mind, That the Gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front.
\nThat, standing, passes beyond others as they run.\u201d Isha<\/span>
\nUpanishad, Verse 4. Sri Aurobindo’s translation. See Sri Aurobindo, Eight
\nUpanishads (1965 Edition), p. 5.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n2<\/font><\/span><\/sup> The Gods besides are in and
\nsubject to Space and Time, part of the motion in Space and Time, not superior
\nto it.<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 210<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

valid, valid there in the limits
\nof that domain, or, if you like, in the general domain of scientific
\nobservation and measurement of physical processes and motions; but how can you
\ntransform that at once into a metaphysical generalisation? It is a jump over a
\nconsiderable gulf \u2013 or a forceful transformation of one thing into another, of
\na limited physical result into an unlimited all-embracing formula. I don’t quite
\nknow what Einstein’s law really amounts to, but does it amount to more than
\nthis that our scientific measurements of time and other things are, in the
\nconditions under which they have to be made, relative because subject to the
\nunavoidable drawback of these conditions? What metaphysically follows from that
\n\u2013 if anything at all does follow \u2013 it is for the metaphysicians, not the
\nscientists to determine. The Vedantic position was that the Mind itself (as
\nwell as the senses) is a limited power making its own representations,
\nconstructions, formations and imposing them on the Reality. That is a much
\nbigger and more intricate affair shooting down into the very roots of our
\nexistence. I think myself there are many positions taken by modern Science
\nwhich tend to be helpful to that view \u2013 though in the nature of things they
\ncannot be sufficient to prove it.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I state the
\nobjections only; I myself see certain fundamental truths underlying all the
\ndomains and the one Reality everywhere. But there is also a great difference in
\nthe instruments used and the ways of research followed by the seekers in these
\ndifferent ways (the physical, the occult and the spiritual) and for the
\nintellect at least the bridge between them has still to be built. One can point
\nout analogies, but it can be maintained very well that Science cannot be used
\nfor yielding\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>or buttressing results of
\nspiritual knowledge. The other side can be maintained also and it is best that
\nboth should be stated \u2013 so this is not meant to discourage your thesis.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How does Sir James Jeans or any
\nother scientist know that it was by a \u201cmere accident\u201d that life came into
\nexistence or that there is no life anywhere else in the universe or that life
\nelsewhere <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 211<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

must either be exactly the same
\nas life here under the same conditions or not existent at all? These are mere
\nmental speculations without any conclusiveness in them. Life can be an accident
\nonly if the whole world also is an accident \u2013 a thing created by Chance and
\ngoverned by Chance. It is not worthwhile to waste time on this kind of
\nspeculation, for it is only the bubble of a moment. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The material
\nuniverse is only the facade of an immense building which has other structures
\nbehind it, and it is only if one knows the whole that one can have some knowledge
\nof the truth of the material universe. There are vital, mental and spiritual
\nranges behind which give the material its significance. If the earth is the
\nonly field of the spiritual evolution in Matter \u2013 (assuming that) \u2013 then it
\nmust be as part of the total design. The idea that all the rest must be a waste
\nis a human idea which would not trouble the vast Cosmic Spirit whose
\nconsciousness and life are everywhere, in the stone and dust as much as in the
\nhuman intelligence. But this is a speculative question which is quite alien to
\nour practical purpose. For us it is the development of the spiritual
\nconsciousness in the human body that matters. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this
\ndevelopment there are stages \u2013 the whole truth cannot be known till all are
\npassed and the final stage is there. The stage in which you are is one in which
\nthe self is beginning to be realised, the self free from all embodiment and not
\ndepending on embodiment for its perpetual existence. It is therefore natural
\nthat you should feel the embodiment to be something quite subordinate and like
\nthe earth-life of Jeans almost accidental. It is because of this stage that the
\nMayavadins<\/span>, taking it for final, thought the world to
\nbe an illusion. But this is only a stage of the journey. Beyond this Self which
\nis static, separate, formless, there is a greater Consciousness in which the
\nSilence and the Cosmic Activity are united but in another knowledge than the
\nwalled-in ignorance of the embodied human being. This Self is only one aspect
\nof the Divine Reality. It is when one gets to that greater Consciousness that
\ncosmic existence and form and life and mind no longer appear to be an accident
\nbut find their significance. Even there there<\/span> are two
\nstages, the overmental<\/span> and the supramental, and it is
\nnot till one gets to the last <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 212<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

that the full truth of existence
\ncan become entirely real to the consciousness. Observe what you experience and
\nknow that it has its value and is indispensable as a stage, but do not take the
\nexperience of a stage for the final knowledge.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have not read him [Bergson<\/span>] sufficiently to pronounce. So far as I know, he
\nseems to have some perception of the dynamic creative intuition involved in
\nLife, but none of the truly supra-rational intuition above. If so, his
\nIntuition which he takes to be the sole secret of things is only a secondary
\nmanifestation of something transcendent which is itself only the \u201crays of the
\nSun\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No, it [Bergson’s<\/span>
\n\u201c\u00e9lan vital\u201d] is not the supramental. But Bergson’s<\/span>
\n\u201cintuition\u201d seems to be a Life Intuition which is of course the supramental
\nfragmented and modified to act as a Knowledge in \u201cLife-in-Matter\u201d. I can’t say
\ndefinitively yet, but that is the impression it gave me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He [Bergson<\/span>]
\nsees Consciousness (Chit) not in its essential truth but as a creative Force=a
\nsort of transcendent Life-Energy descending into Matter and acting there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Elan<\/span>
\nVital:] Not Sachchidananda but Chit-shakti<\/span> in the
\ndisguise of Pranashakti<\/span>. Bergson<\/span>
\nis, I believe, a vitalist<\/span> (as opposed to a
\nmaterialist on one side and an idealist on the other) with a strong perception
\nof Time (in Upanishadic<\/span> times they speculated whether
\nTime was not the Brahman and some schools held that idea). So for him
\nBrahman=Consciousness-Force=Time-Force=Life-Force. But the last two he sees
\nvividly while the first which is the real thing behind creation he sees very
\ndimly.  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 213<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Instinct and intuition as
\ndescribed by him [Bergson<\/span>] are vital, but it is
\npossible to develop a corresponding mental intuition, and that is probably what
\nhe suggests \u2013 and which depends not on thought but a sort of mental direct
\ncontact with things. This is not exactly mysticism, though it is a first step
\ntowards it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I suppose Bergson<\/span>
\nmust already know what the \u201cmystics\u201d say about the matter and has put his own
\ninterpretation or value upon it. So he would not at all be impressed by your
\nsuggestion. He would say, \u201cI know all about that already.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These extraordinary occurrences
\nwhich go outside the ordinary course of physical Nature, happen frequently in
\nIndia and are not unknown elsewhere; they are akin to what is called
\npoltergeist phenomena in Europe. Scientists do not speak or think about such
\nsupernormal happenings except to pooh-pooh them or to prove that they are
\nsimply the tricks of children simulating supernatural manifestations.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Scientific laws
\nonly give a schematic account of material process of Nature \u2013 as a valid scheme
\nthey can be used for reproducing or extending at will a material process, but
\nobviously they cannot give an account of the thing itself. Water, for instance,
\nis not merely so much oxygen and hydrogen put together \u2013 the combination is
\nsimply a process or device for enabling the materialisation<\/span>
\nof a new thing called water; what that new thing really is, is quite another
\nmatter. In fact,\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>there are different
\nplanes of substance, gross, subtle and more subtle going back to what is called
\ncausal (Karana) substance. What is more gross can be reduced to the subtle state
\nand the subtle brought into the gross state; that accounts for dematerialisation<\/span> and rematerialisation<\/span>.
\nThese are occult processes and are vulgarly regarded as magic. Ordinarily the
\nmagician knows nothing of the why and wherefore of what he is doing, he has
\nsimply learned the formula or process or else controls elemental beings of the
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 214<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

subtler states (planes or worlds)
\nwho do the thing for him. The Tibetans indulge widely in occult processes; if
\nyou see the books of Madame David Neel<\/span> who has lived
\nin Tibet you
\nwill get an idea of their expertness in these things. But also the Tibetan
\nLamas know something of the laws of occult (mental and vital) energy and how it
\ncan be made to act on physical things. That is something which goes beyond mere
\nmagic. The direct power of mind-force or life-force upon Matter can be extended
\nto an almost illimitable degree. It must be remembered that Energy is
\nfundamentally one in all the planes, only taking more and more dense forms, so
\nthere is nothing a<\/i> priori <\/i>impossible in mind-energy or
\nlife-energy acting directly on material energy and substance; if they do, they
\ncan make a material object do things or rather can do things with a material
\nobject which would be to that object in its ordinary poise or \u201claw\u201d unhabitual<\/span> and therefore apparently impossible. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do not
\nsee how cosmic rays can explain the origination of Matter; it is like Sir
\nOliver Lodge’s explanation of life on earth that it comes from another planet;
\nit only pushes the problem one step farther back \u2013 for how do the cosmic rays
\ncome into existence? But it is a fact that Agni<\/span> is
\nthe basis of forms as the Sankhya pointed out long ago, i.e. the fiery
\nprinciple in the three powers radiant, electric and gaseous (the Vedic trinity
\nof Agni<\/span>) is the agent in producing liquid and solid
\nforms of what is called Matter. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Obviously, a
\nlayman cannot do these things, unless he has a native \u201cpsychic\u201d (that is,
\noccult) faculty and even then he will have to learn the law of the thing before
\nhe can use it at will. It is always possible to use spiritual force or
\nmind-power or will-power or a certain kind of vital energy to produce effects
\nin men, things and happenings; but knowledge and much practice is needed before
\nthis possibility ceases to be occasional and haphazard and can be used quite
\nconsciously, at will or to perfection. Even then, to have \u201ca control over the
\nwhole material world\u201d is too big a proposition, a local and partial control is
\nmore possible or, more widely, certain kinds of control over Matter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 215<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

All the world, according to
\nScience, is nothing but a play of Energy \u2013 a material Energy it used to be
\ncalled, but it is now doubted whether Matter, scientifically speaking, exists
\nexcept as a phenomenon of Energy. All the world, according to Vedanta, is a
\nplay of a power of a spiritual entity, the power of an original consciousness,
\nwhether it be Maya or Shakti, and the result an illusion or real. In the world
\nso far as man is concerned we are aware only of mind-energy, life-\u00a0 <\/span>energy, energy in Matter; but it is supposed
\nthat there is a spiritual energy or force also behind them from which they
\noriginate. All things, in either case, are the results of a Shakti, energy or
\nforce. There is no action without a Force or Energy doing the action and bringing
\nabout its consequence. Further, anything that has no Force in it is either
\nsomething dead or something unreal or something inert and without consequence.
\nIf there is no such thing as spiritual consciousness, there can be no reality
\nof yoga, and if there is no yoga-force, spiritual force, yoga shakti<\/span>, then also there can be no effectivity in yoga. A
\nyoga-consciousness or spiritual consciousness which has no power or force in
\nit, may not be dead or unreal, but it is evidently something inert and without
\neffect or consequence. Equally, a man who sets out to be a yogi or Guru and has
\nno spiritual consciousness or no power in his spiritual consciousness \u2013 a
\nyoga-force or spiritual force \u2013 is making a false claim and is either a
\ncharlatan or a self-deluded imbecile; still more is he so if having no
\nspiritual force he claims to have made a path others can follow. If yoga is a
\nreality, if spirituality is anything better than a delusion, there must be such
\na thing as yoga-force or spiritual force. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is evident
\nthat if spiritual force exists, it must be able to produce spiritual results \u2013 therefore
\nthere is no irrationality in the claim of those sadhaks who say that they feel
\nthe force of the Guru or the force of the Divine working in them and leading
\ntowards spiritual fulfilment and experience. Whether it is so or not in a
\nparticular case is a personal question, but the statement cannot be denounced
\nas per se incredible and manifestly false, because such things cannot be.
\nFurther, if it be true that spiritual force is the original one and the others
\nare derivative from it, then there is no irrationality in supposing that
\nspiritual force can <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 216<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

produce mental results, vital
\nresults, physical results. It may act through mental, vital or physical
\nenergies and through the means which these energies use, or it may act directly
\non mind, life or Matter as the field of its own special and immediate action.
\nEither way is prima facie possible. In a case of cure of illness, someone is
\nill for two days, weak, suffering from pains and fever; he takes no medicine,
\nbut finally asks for cure from his Guru; the next morning he rises well, strong
\nand energetic. He has at least some justification for thinking that a force has
\nbeen used on him and put into him and that it was a spiritual power that acted.
\nBut in another case, medicines may be used, while at the same time the
\ninvisible force may be called for to aid the material means, for it is a known
\nfact that medicines may or may not succeed \u2013 there is no certitude. Here for
\nthe reason of an outside observer (one who is neither the user of the force nor
\nthe doctor nor the patient) it remains uncertain whether the patient was cured
\nby the medicines only or by the spiritual force with the medicines as an
\ninstrument. Either is possible, and it cannot be said that because medicines
\nwere used, therefore the working of a spiritual force is per se incredible and
\ndemonstrably false. On the other hand, it is possible for the doctor to have
\nfelt a force working in him and guiding him or he may see the patient improving
\nwith a rapidity which, according to medical science, is incredible. The patient
\nmay feel the force working in himself bringing health, energy, rapid cure. The
\nuser of the force may watch the results, see the symptoms he works on diminishing,
\nthose he did not work upon increasing till he does work on them and then
\nimmediately diminishing, the doctor working according to his unspoken
\nsuggestions, etc., etc., until the cure is done. (On the other hand, he may see
\nforces working against the cure and conclude that the spiritual force has to be
\ncontented with a withdrawal or an imperfect success.) In all that the doctor,
\nthe patient or the user of force is justified in believing that the cure is at
\nleast partly or even fundamentally due to the spiritual force. Their experience
\nis valid of course for themselves only, not for the outside rationalising<\/span>
\nobserver. But the latter is not logically entitled to say that their experience
\nis incredible and must be false.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Another point.
\nIt does not follow that a spiritual force must <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 217<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

either succeed in all cases or,
\nif it does not, that proves its non-existence. Of no force can that be said.
\nThe force of fire is to burn, but there are things it does not burn; under
\ncertain circumstances it does not burn even the feet of the man who walks
\nbarefoot on red-hot coals. That does not prove that fire cannot burn or that
\nthere is no such thing as force of fire, Agni<\/span> Shakti. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have no time
\nto write more; it is not necessary either. My object was not to show that
\nspiritual force must be believed in, but that the belief in it is not
\nnecessarily a delusion and that this belief can be rational as well as
\npossible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The invisible Force producing
\ntangible results both inward and outward is the whole meaning of the yogic
\nconsciousness. Your question about yoga bringing merely a feeling of Power
\nwithout any result was really very strange. Who would be satisfied with such a
\nmeaningless hallucination and call it Power? If we had not had thousands of
\nexperiences showing that the Power within could alter the mind, develop its
\npowers, add new ones, bring in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements,
\nchange the character, influence men and things, control the conditions and
\nfunctionings of the body, work as a concrete dynamic Force on other forces,
\nmodify events, etc., etc., we would not speak of it as we do. Moreover, it is
\nnot only in its results but in its movements that the Force is tangible and
\nconcrete. When\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>I speak of feeling Force
\nor Power, I do not mean simply having a vague sense of it, but feeling it
\nconcretely and consequently being able to direct it, manipulate it, watch its
\nmovement, be conscious of its mass and intensity and in the same way of that of
\nother, perhaps opposing forces; all these things are possible and usual by the
\ndevelopment of yoga. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is not, unless it is supramental Force, a Power that
\nacts without conditions and limits. The conditions and limits under which yoga
\nor sadhana has to be worked out are not arbitrary or capricious; they arise
\nfrom the nature of things. These including the will, receptivity, assent,
\nself-opening and surrender of the sadhak have to be respected by the
\nyoga-force, unless it receives <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 218<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

a sanction from the Supreme to override
\neverything and get something done, but that sanction is sparingly given. It is
\nonly if the supramental Power came fully down, not merely sent its influences
\nthrough the overmind<\/span>, that things could be very
\nradically directed towards that object \u2013 for then the sanction would not be
\nrare. For the Law of the Truth would be at work, not constantly balanced by the
\nlaw of the Ignorance. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Still the
\nyoga-force is always tangible and concrete in the way I have described and has
\ntangible results. But it is invisible \u2013 not like a blow given or the rush of a
\nmotor car knocking somebody down which the physical senses can at once
\nperceive. How is the mere physical mind to know that it is there and working?
\nBy its results? But how can it know that the results were that of the yogic
\nforce and not of something else? One of two things it must be. Either it must
\nallow the consciousness to go inside, to become aware of inner things, to
\nbelieve in the experience of the invisible and the supraphysical<\/span>,
\nand then by experience, by the opening of new capacities, it becomes conscious
\nof these forces and can see, follow and use their workings, just as the
\nScientist uses the unseen forces of Nature. Or one must have faith and watch
\nand open oneself and then it will begin to see how things happen, it will
\nnotice that when the Force was called in, there began after a time to be a
\nresult, then repetitions, more repetitions, more clear and tangible results,
\nincreasing frequency, increasing consistency of results, a feeling and
\nawareness of the Force at work \u2013 until the experience becomes daily, regular,
\nnormal, complete. These are the two main methods, one internal, working from in
\noutward, the other external, working from outside and calling the inner force
\nout till it penetrates and is visible in the exterior consciousness. But
\nneither can be done if one insists always on the extrovert attitude, the
\nexternal concrete only and refuses to join to it the internal concrete \u2013 or if
\nthe physical mind at every step raises a dance of doubts which refuses to allow
\nthe nascent experience to develop. Even the Scientist carrying on a new
\nexperiment would never succeed if he allowed his mind to behave in that way. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 219<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

Concrete? What do you mean by
\nconcrete? Spiritual force has its own concreteness; it can take a form (like a
\nstream, for instance) of which one is aware and can send it quite concretely on
\nwhatever object one chooses.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is a
\nstatement of fact about the power inherent in spiritual consciousness. But
\nthere is also such a thing as a willed use of any subtle force \u2013 it may be
\nspiritual, mental or vital \u2013 to secure a particular result at some point in the
\nworld. Just as there are waves of unseen physical forces (cosmic waves etc.) or
\ncurrents of electricity, so there are mind-waves, thought-currents, waves of
\nemotion, \u2013 for example, anger, sorrow, etc., \u2013 which go out and affect others
\nwithout their knowing whence they come or that they come at all, they only feel
\nthe result. One who has the occult or inner senses awake can feel them coming
\nand invading him. Influences good or bad can propagate themselves in that way;
\nthat can happen without intention and naturally, but also a deliberate use can
\nbe made of them. There can also be a purposeful generation of force, spiritual
\nor other. There can be too the use of the effective will or idea acting
\ndirectly without the aid of any outward action, speech or other instrumentation
\nwhich is not concrete in that sense, but is all the same effective. These
\nthings are not imaginations or delusions or humbug, but true phenomena.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The fact that you don’t feel a
\nforce does not prove that it is not there. The steam-engine does not feel a
\nforce moving it, but the force is there. A man is not a steam-engine? He is very
\nlittle better, for he is conscious only of some bubbling on the surface which
\nhe calls `himself’ and is absolutely unconscious of all the subconscient<\/span>,
\nsubliminal, superconscient forces moving him. (This is a fact which is being
\nmore and more established by modern psychology, though it has got hold only of
\nthe lower force and not the higher, \u2013 so you must not turn up your rational
\nnose at it.) He twitters intellectually, foolishly about the surface results
\nand attributes them all to his `noble self’, ignoring the fact that his noble
\nself is hidden far away from his own view behind the veil of his dimly
\nsparkling intellect and the reeking fog of his <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 220<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

vital feelings, emotions,
\nimpulses, sensations and impressions. So your argument is utterly absurd and
\nfutile. Our aim is to bring the secret forces out and unwalled<\/span>
\ninto the open, so that instead of getting some shadows or lightnings<\/span>
\nof themselves out through the veil or being wholly obstructed, they may pour
\ndown and flow in rivers. But to expect that all at once is a presumptuous
\ndemand which shows an impatient ignorance and inexperience. If they begin to
\ntrickle at first, that is enough to justify the faith in a future downpour. You
\nadmit that you once or twice felt a force coming down; it proves that the force
\nwas and is there and at work and it is only your sweating Herculean labour that
\nprevents you feeling it. Also, it is the trickle that gives the assurance of
\nthe possibility of the downpour. One has only to go on and by one’s patience
\ndeserve the downpour or else, without deserving, slide on until one gets it. In
\nyoga the experience itself is a promise and foretaste but gets shut off till
\nthe nature is ready for the fulfilment. This is a phenomenon familiar to every
\nyogi when he looks back on his past experience. Such were the brief visitations
\nof Ananda you had sometimes before. It does not matter if you have not a
\nleech-like tenacity \u2013 leeches are not the only type of yogis. If you can stick
\nanyhow or get stuck, that is sufficient.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These things should not be spoken
\nof but kept under a cover….\u00a0 <\/span>Even in
\nordinary non-spiritual things the action of invisible or subjective forces is
\nopen to doubt and discussion in which there could be no material certitude,
\nwhile the spiritual force is invisible in itself and also invisible in its
\naction. So it is idle to try to prove that such and such a result was the
\neffect of spiritual force. Each must form his own idea about that, for if it is
\naccepted, it cannot be as a result of proof and argument, but only as a result
\nof experience, of faith or of that insight in the deeper heart or the deeper
\nintelligence which looks behind appearances and sees what is behind them. The
\nspiritual consciousness does not claim in that way, it can state the truth about
\nitself but not fight for a personal acceptance. A general and impersonal truth
\nabout <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 221<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

spiritual force is another
\nmatter, but I doubt whether the time has come for it or whether it could be
\nunderstood by mere reasoning intelligence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If I write about these questions
\nfrom the yogic point of view, even though on a logical basis, there is bound to
\nbe much that is in conflict with the current opinions, e.g., about miracles,
\nthe limits of judgment by sense-data, etc. I have avoided as much as possible
\nwriting about these subjects because I would have to propound things that
\ncannot be understood except by reference to other data than those of the
\nphysical senses or of reason founded on these alone. I might have to speak of
\nlaws and forces not recognised<\/span> by reason or physical
\nscience. In my public writings and my writings to sadhaks I have not dealt with
\nthese because they go out of the range of ordinary knowledge and the
\nunderstanding founded on it. These things are known to some, but they do not
\nusually speak about them, while the public view of much of those as are known
\nis either credulous or incredulous, but in both cases without experience or
\nknowledge.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As for what you write about your
\nexperience and your ideas, it looks as if it were simply the old thoughts and
\nmovements rising, as they often do, to interfere with the straight course of
\nthe sadhana. Mental realisations and ideas of this kind are at best only
\nhalf-truths and not always even that; once one has taken up a sadhana that goes
\nbeyond the mind, it is a mistake to give them too much importance. They can
\neasily become by misapplication a fruitful ground for error.
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If you examine
\nthe ideas that have come to you, you will see that they are quite inadequate.
\nFor example: <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n1. Matter is jada<\/i><\/span> <\/i>only in appearance. As even modern
\nScience admits, Matter is only energy in action, and, as we know in India,
\nenergy is force of consciousness in action.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n2. Prakriti in
\nthe material world seems to be jada<\/i><\/span>, but this<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 222<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

too is only an appearance.
\nPrakriti is in reality the conscious power of the Spirit. <\/p>\n

3. A bringing
\ndown of the Spirit into Matter cannot lead to a laya<\/i><\/span> <\/i>in jada<\/i><\/span> prakrti<\/span><\/i>. A
\ndescent of the Spirit could only mean a descent of light, consciousness and
\npower, not a growth of unconsciousness and inertia which is what is meant by
\nthe jada-laya. <\/i><\/p>\n

4. The Spirit is
\nthere already in Matter as everywhere else; it is only a surface apparent unconsciousness
\nor involved consciousness which veils its presence. What we have to do is to
\nawake Matter to the spiritual consciousness concealed in it. <\/p>\n

5. What we aim
\nat bringing down into the material world is the supramental consciousness,
\nlight and energy, because it is this alone that can truly transform it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If there is at
\nany time a growth of unconsciousness and inertia, it is because of the
\nresistance of the ordinary nature to the spiritual change. But this is usually
\nraised up in order to be dealt with and eliminated. If it is allowed to remain
\nconcealed and not raised up, the difficulty will never be grappled with and no
\nreal transformation will take place.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If there were no creative power
\nin the material energy, there would be no material universe. Matter is not
\nunconscious or without dynamism \u2013 only it is an involved force and
\nconsciousness that work in it. It is what the psychologists call the
\ninconscient from which all comes \u2013 but it is not really inconscient.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1<\/sup> There is no need to
\nput \u201cthe\u201d before \u201cquality\u201d \u2013 in English that would alter the sense. Matter is
\nnot regarded in this passage as a quality of being perceived by sense; I don’t
\nthink that would have any meaning. It is regarded as a result of a certain
\npower<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1<\/font><\/span><\/sup>This explanation is apropos
\nof the following passage in The Yoga and
\nIts Objects<\/i> (1968 Edition), p. 13:<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u201cMatter itself, you will one
\nday realise, is not material, it is not substance but form of consciousness, guna<\/span><\/i>, the
\nresult of quality of being perceived by sense-knowledge.\u201d<\/span><\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 223<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

and action of consciousness which
\npresents forms of itself to sense perception and it is this quality of sense-perceivedness<\/span>, so to speak, that gives them the appearance
\nof Matter, i.e. of a certain kind of substantiality inherent in themselves \u2013 but
\nin fact they are not self-existent substantial objects but forms of
\nconsciousness. The point is that there is no such thing as the self-existent
\nMatter posited by nineteenth century Science.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You are reasoning on the analogy
\nof your own very cabined and limited sense-consciousness and its rather clumsy
\nrelations with the happenings in material space. What is space after all but an
\nextension of conscious being in which Consciousness-Force builds its own
\nsurroundings? In the subtle physical plane there are, not one, but many layers
\nof consciousness and each moves in its own being, that is to say, in its own
\nspace. I have said that each subtle plane is a conglomeration or series of
\nworlds. Each space may at any point meet, penetrate or coincide with another;
\naccordingly at one point of meeting or coincidence there might be several
\nsubtle objects occupying what we might rather arbitrarily call the same space,
\nand yet they may not be in any actual relation with each other. If there is a
\nrelation created, it is the multiple consciousness of the seer in which the
\nmeeting-place becomes apparent that creates it. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the other hand, there may be
\na relation between objects in different regions of space correlated to each
\nother as in the case of the gross physical object and its subtle counterpart.
\nThere you can more easily reason of relations between one space and another.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Time and Space are not limited,
\nthey are infinite \u2013 they are the terms of an extension of consciousness in
\nwhich things take place or are arranged in a certain relation, succession,
\norder. There are again different orders of Time and Space; that too depends on
\nthe consciousness. The Eternal is extended in Time and Space, but he is also
\nbeyond all Time and Space. Timelessness and Time <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 224<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

are two terms of the eternal
\nexistence. The Spaceless<\/span> Eternal is not one
\nindivisible infinity of Space, there is in it no near or far, no here or
\nthere \u2013 the Timeless Eternal is not measurable by years or hours or aeons<\/span>, the experience of it has been described as the
\neternal moment. But for the mind this state cannot be described except by
\nnegatives, \u2013 one has to go beyond and to realise it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The objection 1 <\/sup>is founded
\non human three dimensional ideas of space and division in space, which are
\nagain founded upon the limited nature of the human senses. To some beings space
\nis one dimensional, to others two dimensional, to others three dimensional \u2013 but
\nthere are other dimensions also. It is well recognised<\/span>
\nin metaphysics that the Infinite can be in a point and not only in extension of
\nspace \u2013 just as there is an eternity of extension in Time but also an Eternity
\nwhich is independent of Time so that it can be felt in the moment \u2013 one has not
\nto think of millions and millions of years in order to realise it. So too the
\nrigid distinction of One against Many, a One that cannot be many or of an All
\nthat is made up by addition and not self-existent are crude mental notions of
\nthe outer finite mind that cannot be applied to the Infinite. If the All were
\nof this material and unspiritual character, tied down to a primary arithmetic
\nand geometry, the realisation of the universe in oneself, of the all in each
\nand each in all, of the universe in the Bindu<\/span> would
\nbe impossible. Your Xs are evidently innocent of the elements of metaphysical
\nthinking or they would not make such objections.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is only by feeling all things
\nas one spiritual substance that one can arrive at unity \u2013 unity is in the
\nspiritual consciousness. The material point is only one point among millions of
\nmillions \u2013 so that is not the base of unity. But once you get the unity in
\nconsciousness, you can feel through that the unity of mind<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

            
\n1 <\/sup>\u201cHow can the Divine, who is the
\nall-pervading and all-containing Infinite, incarnate in the small space of a
\nhuman body?\u201d<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 225<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

substance, mind force, etc., the
\nunity of life substance (mobile) and life force, the unity of material
\nsubstance and energies. Being \u2013 Consciousness of being \u2013 energy of
\nconsciousness \u2013 form of consciousness, all things are really that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is quite true that the word
\n\u201csuperstition\u201d has been habitually used as a convenient club to beat down any
\nbelief that does not agree with the ideas of the materialistic reason, that is
\nto say, the physical mind dealing with the apparent law of physical process and
\nseeing no farther. It has also been used to dismiss ideas and beliefs not in
\nagreement with one’s own idea of what is the rational norm of supraphysical<\/span> truths as well. For many ages man cherished
\nbeliefs that implied a force behind which acted on principles unknown to the
\nphysical mind and beyond the witness of the outward reason and the senses.
\nScience came in with a method of knowledge which extended the evidence of this
\nouter field of consciousness, and thought that by this method all existence
\nwould become explicable. It swept away at once without examination all the
\nancient beliefs as so many \u201csuperstitions\u201d \u2013 true, half-true or false, all went
\ninto the dust-bin in one impartial sweep, because they did not rely on the
\nmethod of physical Science and lay outside its data or were or seemed
\nincompatible with its standpoint. Even in the field of supraphysical<\/span>
\nexperience only so much was admitted as could give a mentally rational
\nexplanation of itself according to a certain range of ideas \u2013 all the rest,
\neverything that seemed to demand an occult, mystic or below-the-surface origin
\nto explain it, was put aside as so much superstition. Popular beliefs that were
\nthe fruit sometimes of imagination but sometimes also of a traditional
\nempirical knowledge or of a right instinct shared naturally the same fate. That
\nall this was a hasty and illegitimate operation, itself based on the \u201csuperstition\u201d
\nof the all-sufficiency of the new method which really applies only to a limited
\nfield, is now becoming more and more evident. I agree with you that the word
\nsuperstition is one which should be used either not at all or with great
\ncaution. It is evidently an anachronism to apply it to beliefs not accepted
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 226<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

by the form of religion one
\nhappens oneself to follow or favour. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The
\ngrowing reversal of opinion with regard to many things that were then condemned
\nbut are now coming into favour once more is very striking. In addition to the
\ninstances you quote a hundred others might be added. One does not quite know
\nwhy a belief in graphology should be condemned as irrational or superstitious;
\nit seems to me quite rational to believe that a man’s handwriting is the result
\nof or consistent with his temperament and nature and, if so, it may very well
\nprove on examination to be an index of character. It is now a known fact that
\neach man is an individual by himself with his own peculiar formation different
\nfrom others and made by minute variations in the general human plan, \u2013 this is
\ntrue of small physical characteristics, it is evidently equally true of
\npsychological characteristics; it is not unreasonable to suppose a correlation
\nbetween the two. On that basis cheiromancy<\/span> may very
\nwell have a truth in it, for it is a known fact that the lines in an individual
\nhand are different from the lines in others and that this, as well as
\ndifferences of physiognomy, may carry in it psychological indications is not
\nimpossible. The difficulty for minds trained under rationalistic influences
\nbecomes greater when these lines or the data of astrology are interpreted as
\nsigns of destiny, because modern rationalism resolutely refused to admit that
\nthe future was determined or could be determinable. But this looks more and
\nmore like one of the \u201csuperstitions\u201d of the modern mind, a belief curiously
\ncontradictory of the fundamental notions of Science. For Science has believed,
\nat least until yesterday, that everything is determined in Nature and it
\nattempts to find the laws of that determination and to predict future physical
\nhappenings on that basis. If so, it is reasonable to suppose that there are
\nunseen connections determining human events in the world and that future events
\nmay therefore be predictable. Whether it can be done on the lines of astrology
\nor cheiromancy<\/span> is a matter of enquiry and one does
\nnot get any farther by dismissing the possibility with a summary denial. The
\ncase for astrology is fairly strong; a case seems to exist for cheiromancy<\/span> also. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the other
\nhand, it is not safe to go too hastily in the other direction. There is the
\nopposite tendency to believe everything <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 227<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

in these fields and not keep one’s
\neyes open to the element of limitation or error in these difficult branches of
\nknowledge \u2013 it was the excess of belief that helped to discredit them, because
\ntheir errors were patent. It does not seem to me established that the stars
\ndetermine the future \u2013 though that is possible, but it does look as if they
\nindicate it \u2013 or rather, some certitudes and potentialities of the future. Even
\nthe astrologers admit that there is another element of determination in man
\nhimself which limits the field of astrological prediction and may even alter
\nmany of its ascertained results. There is a very tangled and difficult complex
\nof forces making up any determination of things in the world and when we have
\ndisentangled one thread of the skein and follow it we may get many striking
\nresults, but we cannot rely on it as the one wholly reliable clue. The mind’s
\nmethods are too rigid and conveniently simple to unravel the true or whole
\ntruth whether of the Reality or of its separate phenomena. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I would accept
\nyour statement about the possibility of knowing much about a man from
\nobservations of a small part of his being, physical or psychological, but I
\nthink it is to go too far to say that one can reconstruct a whole man from one
\nminute particle of a hair. I should say from my knowledge of the complexity and
\nmultiplicity of elements in the human being that such a procedure would be
\nhazardous and would leave a large part of the Unknown overshadowing the
\nexcessive certitude of this inferential structure.<\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I suppose we cannot go so far as
\nto deny that there is such a thing as superstition \u2013 a fixed belief without any
\nground in something that is quite unsound and does not hang together. The human
\nmind readily claps on such beliefs to things which can be or are in themselves
\ntrue, and this is a mixture which very badly confuses the search for knowledge.
\nBut precisely because of this mixture, because somewhere behind the
\nsuperstition or not far off from it there is very usually some real truth, one
\nought to be cautious in using the word or sweeping away with it as a convenient
\nbroom the true, the partly true and the unfounded <\/p>\n


\nPage \u2013 228<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

together and claiming that the
\nbare ground left is the only truth of the matter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n⁂<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I wrote that sentence about
\n\u201ca fixed blind belief\u201d, I was not thinking really of religious beliefs, but of
\ncommon popular ideas and beliefs. Your feeling about the matter, in any case,
\nis quite sound. One can and ought to believe and follow one’s own path without
\ncondemning or looking down on others for having beliefs different from those
\none thinks or sees to be the best or the largest in truth. The spiritual field
\nis many-sided and full of complexities and there is room for an immense variety
\nof experiences. Besides, all mental egoism \u2013 and spiritual egoism \u2013 has to be
\nsurmounted and this sense of superiority should therefore not be cherished.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

P.S. A sincere, whole-hearted and
\none-pointed following of this yoga should lead to a level where these rigid
\nmental divisions do not exist, for they are mental walls put round one part of
\nTruth and Knowledge so as to cut it off from the rest, but this view from above
\nthe mind is comprehensive and everything falls into its place in the whole. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 229<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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