{"id":109,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:59","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=109"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:59","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:59","slug":"05-the-divine-body-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16\/05-the-divine-body-vol-16-the-supramental-manifestation-volume-16","title":{"rendered":"-05_The Divine Body.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nThe Divine Body<\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n  
\nA<\/font><\/b>
\nDIVINE<\/font> life in a divine body is the formula of the ideal that we envisage. But
\nwhat will be the divine body? What will be the nature of this body, its
\nstructure, the principle of its activity, the perfection that distinguishes it
\nfrom the limited and imperfect physicality within which we are now bound? What
\nwill be the conditions and operations of its life still physical in its base
\nupon the earth by which it can be known as divine?<\/p>\n

 
\n If
\nit is to be the product of an evolution, and it is so that we must envisage it,
\nan evolution out of our human imperfection and ignorance into a greater truth of
\nspirit and nature, by what process or stages can it grow into manifestation or
\nrapidly arrive ? The process of the evolution upon earth has been slow and
\ntardy\u2013 what principle must intervene if there is to be a transformation, a
\nprogressive or sudden change?\n<\/p>\n

 
\n It
\nis indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this
\ntransformation. As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond
\nLife and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a
\nconsciousness and power of our existence. free from the imperfection and
\nlimitation of our mental existence, a supramental or truth-consciousness and
\nable to develop the power and perfection of the spirit. Here a slow and tardy
\nchange need no longer be the law or manner of our evolution; it will be only so
\nto a greater or less extent so long as a mental ignorance clings and hampers our
\nascent; but once we have grown into the truth-consciousness its power of
\nspiritual truth of being will determine all. Into that truth we shall be freed
\nand it will transform mind and life and body. Light and bliss and beauty and a
\nperfection of the spontaneous right action of all the being are there as native
\npowers of the supramental truth-consciousness and these will in their very
\nnature transform mind and life and body even here upon earth into a
\nmanifestation of the truth-conscious spirit. The
\nobscura<\/span>tions\n<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 20<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

 of earth
\nwill not prevail against the supramental truth-consciousness, for even into the
\nearth it can bring enough of the omniscient light and omnipotent force of the
\nspirit to conquer. All may. not open to the fullness of its light and power, but
\nwhatever does open must to that extent undergo the change. That will be the
\nprinciple of transformation.<\/p>\n

         
\nIt
\nmight be that a psychological change, a mastery of the nature by the soul, a
\ntransformation of the mind into a principle of light, of the life-force into
\npower and purity would be the first approach, the first attempt to solve the
\nproblem, to escape be-yond the merely human formula and establish something that
\ncould be called a divine life upon earth, a first sketch of super-manhood, of a
\nsupramental living in the circumstances of the earth-nature. But this could not
\nbe the complete and radical change needed; it would not be the total
\ntransformation, the full- ness of a divine life in a divine body. There would be
\na body still human and indeed animal in its origin and fundamental character and
\nthis would impose its own inevitable limitations on the higher parts of the
\nembodied being. As limitation by ignorance and error is the fundamental defect
\nof an untransformed mind, as limitation by the imperfect impulses and strainings
\nand wants of desire are the defects of an untransformed life-force, so also
\nimperfection of the potentialities of the physical action, an imperfection, a
\nlimitation in the response of its half-consciousness to the demands made upon it
\nand the grossness and stains of its original animality would be the defects of
\nan untransformed or an imperfectly transformed body. These could not but hamper
\nand even pull down towards themselves the action of the higher parts of the
\nnature. A transformation of the body must be the condition for a total
\ntransformation of the nature. It might be also that the transformation might
\ntake place by stages; there are powers of the nature still belonging to the
\nmental region which are yet potentialities of a growing gnosis lifted beyond our
\nhuman mentality and partaking of the light and power of the Divine and an ascent
\nthrough these planes, a descent of them into the mental being might seem to be
\nthe natural evolutionary course. But in practice it might be found that these
\nintermediate levels would not be sufficient for the total transfor-\n<\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 21<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

mation since,
\nbeing themselves i1lumined potentialities of mental being not yet supramental in
\nthe full sense of the word, they could bring down to the mind only a partial
\ndivinity or raise the mind towards that but not effectuate its elevation into
\nthe complete supramentality of the truth-consciousness. Still these levels might
\nbecome stages of the ascent which some would reach and pause there while others
\nwent higher and could reach and live on superior strata of a semi-divine
\nexistence. It is not to be supposed that all humanity would rise in a block into
\nthe supermind; at first those only might attain to the highest or some
\nintermediate height of the ascent whose inner evolution has fitted them for so
\ngreat a change or who are raised by the direct touch of the Divine into its
\nperfect light and power and bliss. The large mass of human beings might still
\nremain for long content with a normal or only a partially illumined and
\nup-lifted human nature. But this would be itself a sufficiently radical change
\nand initial transformation of earth-life; for the way would be open to all who
\nhave the will to rise, the supramental influence of the truth-consciousness
\nwould touch the earth-life and influence even its untransformed mass and a hope
\nwould be there and a promise eventually available to all which now only the few
\ncan share in or realise.<\/p>\n

         
\nIn
\nany case these would be beginnings only and could not constitute the fullness of
\nthe divine life upon earth; it would be a new orientation of the earthly life
\nbut not the consummation of its change. For that there must be the sovereign
\nreign of a supramental truth-consciousness to which all other forms of life
\nwould be subordinated and depend upon it as the master principle and supreme
\npower to which they could look up as the goal, profit by its influences, be
\nmoved and upraised by something of its illumination and penetrating force.
\nEspecially, as the human body had to come into existence with its modification
\nof the previous animal form and its erect figure of a new power of life and its
\nexpressive movements and activities serviceable and necessary to the principle
\nof mind and the life of a mental being, so too a body must be developed with new
\npowers, activities or degrees of a divine action expressive of a truth-conscious
\nbeing and proper to a supramental consciousness and manifesting a con-\n<\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 22
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

scious spirit. While the
\ncapacity for taking up and sublimating all the activities of the earth-life
\ncapable of being spiritualised must be there, a transcendence of the original animality and the actions incurably tainted by it or at least some saving
\ntransformation of them, some spiritualising or psychicising of the consciousness
\nand motives animating them and the shedding of what- ever could not be so
\ntransformed, even a change of what might be called its instrumental structure,
\nits functioning and organisation, a complete and hitherto unprecedented control
\nof these things must be the consequence or incidental to this total change:
\nThese things have been already to some extent illustrated in the lives of many
\nwho have become possessed of spiritual powers but as something exceptional and
\noccasional, the casual or incomplete manifestation of an acquired capacity
\nrather than the organisation of a new consciousness, a new life and a new
\nnature. How far can such physical transformation be carried, what are the limits
\nwithin which it must remain to be consistent with life upon earth and without
\ncarrying that life beyond the earthly sphere or pushing it towards the supra
\nterrestrial existence? The supramental consciousness is not a fixed quantity but
\na power which passes to higher and higher levels of possibility until it reaches
\nsupreme consummations of spiritual existence fulfilling supermind and supermind
\nfulfils the ranges of spiritual consciousness that are pushing towards it from
\nthe human or mental level. In this progression the body also may reach a more
\nperfect form and a higher range of its expressive powers, become a more and more
\nperfect vessel of divinity.<\/p>\n

                This destiny of the body has
\nrarely in the past been envisaged or else not for the body here upon earth; such
\nforms would rather be imagined or visioned as the privilege of celestial beings
\nand not possible as the physical residence of a soul still bound to terrestrial
\nnature. The Vaishnavas have spoken of a spiritualised conscious body, cinmaya
\ndeha; <\/i>there has been the conception of a radiant or luminous body, which
\nmight be the Vedic jyotir,-maya deha. <\/i>A light has been seen by some
\nradiating from the<\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 23<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

bodies of highly developed
\nspiritual persons, even extending to the emission of an enveloping aura and
\nthere has been recorded an initial phenomenon of this kind in the life of so
\ngreat a spiritual personality as Ramakrishna. But these things have been either
\nconceptual only or rare and occasional and for the most part the body has not
\nbeen regarded as possessed of spiritual possibility or capable of
\ntransformation. It has been spoken of as the means of effectuation of the dharma
\nand dharma here includes all high purposes, achievements and ideals of life not
\nexcluding the spiritual change: but it is an instrument that must be dropped
\nwhen its work is done and though there may be and must be spiritual realisation
\nwhile yet in the body, it can only come to its full fruition after the
\nabandonment of the physical frame. More ordinarily in the spiritual tradition
\nthe body has been regarded as an obstacle, incapable of spiritualisation or
\ntransmutation and a heavy weight holding the soul to earthly nature and
\npreventing its ascent either to spiritual fulfilment in the Supreme or to the
\ndissolution of its individual being in the Supreme. But while this conception of
\nthe role of the body in our destiny is suitable enough for a sadhana that sees
\nearth only as a field of the ignorance and earth-life as a preparation for a
\nsaving withdrawal from life which is the indispensable condition for spiritual
\nliberation, it is insufficient for a sadhana which conceives of a divine life
\nupon earth and liberation of earth-nature itself as part of a total purpose of
\nthe embodiment of the spirit here. If a total transformation of the being is our
\naim, a trans- formation of the body must be an indispensable part of it; without
\nthat no full divine life on earth is possible.<\/p>\n

\n <\/span>          
\n<\/span>It is the past evolution of the body and especially its animal nature and
\nanimal history which seems to stand in the way of this consummation. The body,
\nas we have seen, is an offspring and creation of the Inconscient, itself
\ninconscient or only half- conscious; it began as a form of unconscious Matter,
\ndeveloped life and from a material object became a living growth, developed mind
\nand from the subconsciousness of the plant and the initial rudimentary mind or
\nincomplete intelligence of the animal developed the intellectual mind and more
\ncomplete intelligence of man and now serves as the physical base, container and<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

 instrumental means of
\nour total spiritual endeavour. Its animal character and its gross limitations
\nstand indeed as an obstacle to our spiritual perfection; but the fact that it
\nhas developed a soul and is capable of serving it as a means may indicate that
\nit is capable of further development and may become a shrine and expression of
\nthe spirit, reveal a secret spirituality of Matter, become entirely and not only
\nhalf-conscious, reach a certain oneness with the spirit. This much it must do,
\nso far at least it must transcend its original earth-nature, if it is to be the
\ncomplete instrument of the divine life and no longer an obstacle.<\/p>\n

               Still the inconveniences of
\nthe animal body and its animal nature and impulses and the limitations of the
\nhuman body at its best are there in the beginning and persist always so long as
\nthere is not the full and fundamental liberation and its inconscience or
\nhalf-conscience and its binding of the soul and mind and life-force to Matter,
\nto materiality of all kinds, to the call of the unregenerated earth-nature are
\nthere and constantly oppose the call of the spirit and circumscribe the climb to
\nhigher things. To the physical being it brings a bondage to the material
\ninstruments, to the brain and heart and senses, wed to materiality and
\nmaterialism of all kinds, to the bodily mechanism and its needs and obligations,
\nto the imperative need of food and the preoccupation with the means of getting
\nit and storing it as one of the besetting interests of life, to fatigue and
\nsleep, to the satisfaction of bodily desire. The life-force in man also is tied
\ndown to these small things; it has to limit the scope of its larger ambitions
\nand longings, its drive to rise beyond the pull of earth and follow the
\nheavenlier intuitions of its psychic parts, the heart’s ideal and the soul’s
\nyearnings. On the mind the body imposes the boundaries of the physical being and
\nthe physical life and the sense of the sole complete reality of physical things
\nwith the rest as a sort of brilliant fireworks of the imagination, of lights and
\nglories that can only have their fun play in heavens beyond, on higher planes of
\nexistence, but not here; it afflicts the idea and aspiration with the burden of
\ndoubt, the evidence<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

 of the subtle senses
\nand the intuition with uncertainty and the vast field of supraphysical
\nconsciousness and experience with the imputation of unreality and clamps down to
\nits earth-roots the growth of the spirit from its original limiting humanity
\ninto the supramental truth and the divine nature. These obstacles can be
\novercome, the denials and resistance of the body surmounted, its transformation
\nis possible. Even the inconscient and animal part of us can be illumined and
\nmade capable of manifesting the god-nature even as our mental humanity can be
\nmade to manifest the super humanity of the supramental truth-consciousness and
\nthe divinity of what is now superconscious to us and the total transformation
\nmade a reality here. But for this the obligations and compulsions of its
\nanimality must cease to be obligatory and a purification of its materiality
\neffected by which that very materiality can be turned into a material solidity
\nof the manifestation of the divine nature. For nothing essential must be left
\nout in the totality of the earth-change; Matter itself can be turned into a
\nmeans of revelation of the spiritual reality, the Divine.<\/p>\n

         
\nThe
\ndifficulty is dual, psychological and corporeal: the first is the effect of the
\nunregenerated animality upon the life especially by the insistence of the body’s
\ngross instincts, impulses, desires; the second is the outcome of our corporeal
\nstructure and organic instrumentation imposing its restrictions on the dynamism
\nof the higher divine nature. The first of these two difficulties is easier to
\ndeal with and conquer; for here the will can intervene and impose on the body
\nthe power of the higher nature. Certain of these impulses and instincts of the
\nbody have been found especially harmful by the spiritual aspirant and weighed
\nconsiderably in favour of an ascetic rejection of the body. Sex and sexuality
\nand all that springs from sex and testifies to its existence had to be banned
\nand discarded from the spiritual life, and this, though difficult, is not at all
\nimpossible and can be made a cardinal condition for the spiritual seeker. This
\nis natural and unescapable in all ascetic practice and the satisfaction of this
\ncondition, though not easy at first to fulfil, becomes after a time quite
\nfeasible; the overcoming of the sex-instinct and impulse is indeed binding on
\nall who would attain to self-mastery and lead the\n<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

 spiritual
\nlife. A total mastery over it is essential for all spiritual seekers, the
\neradication of it for the complete ascetic. This much has to be recognised and
\nnot diminished in its obligatory importance and its principle.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nBut
\nall recognition of the sex principle, as apart from the gross physical
\nindulgence of the sex-impulse, could not be excluded from a divine life upon
\nearth; it is there in life, plays a large part and has to be dealt with, it
\ncannot simply be ignored, merely suppressed or held down or put away out of
\nsight. In the first place, it is in one of its aspects a cosmic and even a
\ndivine principle: it takes the spiritual form of the Ishwara and the Shakti and
\nwithout it there could be no world-creation or manifestation of the
\nworld-principle of Purusha and Prakriti which are both necessary for the
\ncreation, necessary too in their association and interchange for the play of its
\npsychological working and in their manifestation as soul and Nature fundamental
\nto the whole process of the Lila. In the divine life itself an incarnation or at
\nleast in some form a presence of the two powers or their initiating influence
\nthrough their embodiments or representatives would be indispensable for making
\nthe new creation possible. In its human action on the mental and vital level sex
\nis not altogether an undivine principle; it has its nobler aspects and
\nidealities and it has to be seen in what way and to what extent these can be
\nadmitted into the new and larger life. All gross animal indulgence of sex desire
\nand impulse would have to be eliminated; it could only continue among those who
\nare not ready for the higher life or not yet ready for a complete spiritual
\nliving. In all who aspired to it but could not yet take it up in its fullness
\nsex will have to be refined, submit to the spiritual or psychic impulse and a
\ncontrol by the higher mind and the higher vital and shed all its lighter,
\nfrivolous or degraded forms and feel the touch of the purity of the ideal. Love
\nwould remain, all forms of the pure truth of love in higher and higher steps
\ntill it realised its highest nature, widened into universal love, merged into
\nthe love of the Divine. The love of man and woman would also undergo that
\nelevation and consummation; for all that can feel a touch of the ideal and the
\nspiritual must follow the way of ascent till it reaches the divine Reality. The
\nbody and its activities must be<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 27<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

 accepted
\nas part of the divine life and pass under this law; but, as in the other
\nevolutionary transitions, what cannot accept the law of the divine life cannot
\nbe accepted and must fall away from the ascending nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nAnother
\ndifficulty that the transformation of the body has to face is its dependence for
\nits very existence upon food and here too are involved the gross physical
\ninstincts, impulses, desires that are associated with this difficult factor, the
\nessential cravings of the palate, the greed of food and animal gluttony of the
\nbelly, the coarsening of the mind when it grovels in the mud of sense, obeys a
\nservitude to its mere animal part and hugs its bondage to Matter. The higher
\nhuman in us seeks refuge in a temperate moderation, in abstemiousness and
\nabstinence or in carelessness about the body and its wants and in an absorption
\nin higher things. The spiritual seeker often, like the Jain ascetics, seeks
\nrefuge in long and frequent fasts which lift him temporarily at least out of the
\nclutch of the body’s demands and help him to feel in himself a pure vacancy of
\nthe wide rooms of the spirit. But all this is not liberation and the question
\nmay be raised whether, not only at first but always, the divine life also must
\nsubmit to this necessity. But it could only deliver itself from it altogether if
\nit could find out the way so to draw upon the universal energy that the energy
\nwould sustain not only the vital parts of our physicality but its constituent
\nmatter with no need of aid for sustenance from any outside substance of Matter.
\nIt is indeed possible even while fasting for very long periods to maintain the
\nfull energies and activities of the soul and mind and life, even those of the
\nbody, to remain wakeful but concentrated in Yoga all the time, or to think
\ndeeply and write day and night, to dispense with sleep, to walk eight hours a
\nday, maintaining all these activities separately or together and not feel any
\nloss of strength, any fatigue, any kind of failure or decadence. At the end of
\nthe fast one can even resume at once taking the normal or even a greater than
\nthe normal amount of nourishment without any transition or precaution such as
\nmedical science enjoins, as if both the complete fasting and the feasting were
\nnatural conditions, alternating by an immediate and easy passage from one to the
\nother, of a body already trained by a sort of initial transformation to be an
\ninstru-<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

 ment
\nof the powers and activities of Yoga. But one thing one does not escape and that
\nis the wasting of the material tissues of the body, its flesh and substance.
\nConceivably, if a practicable way and means could only be found, this last
\ninvincible obstacle too might be overcome and the body maintained by an inter-
\nchange of its forces with the forces of material Nature, giving to her her need
\nfrom the individual and taking from her directly the sustaining energies of her
\nuniversal existence. Conceivably, one might rediscover and re-establish at the
\nsummit of the evolution of life the phenomenon we see at its base, the power to
\ndraw from all around it the means of sustenance and self-renewal. Or else the
\nevolved being might acquire the greater power to draw down those means from
\nabove rather than draw them up or pull them in from the environment around, all
\nabout it and below it. But until something like this is achieved or made
\npossible we have to go back to food and the established material forces of
\nNature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nIn
\nfact we do, however unconsciously, draw constantly upon the universal energy,
\nthe force in Matter to replenish our material existence and the mental, vital
\nand other potencies in the body: we do it directly in the. invisible processes
\nof inter-change constantly kept up by Nature and by special means devised by
\nher; breathing is one of these, sleep also and repose. But as her basic means
\nfor maintaining and renewing the gross physical body and its workings and inner
\npotencies Nature has selected the taking in of outside matter in the shape of
\nfood, its digestion, assimilation of what is assimilable and elimination of what
\ncannot or ought not to be assimilated, this by itself is sufficient for mere
\nmaintenance, but for assuring health and strength in the body so maintained it
\nhas added the impulse towards physical exercise and play of many kinds, ways for
\nthe expenditure and renewal of energy, the choice or the necessity of manifold
\naction and labour. In the new life, in its beginnings at least,
\n<\/span>\u2013<\/span>
\nit would not be necessary or advisable
\nto make any call for an extreme or precipitate rejection of the need of food or
\nthe established natural method for the maintenance of the still imperfectly
\ntransformed body. If or when these things have to be transcended it must come as
\na result of the awakened will of the spirit,<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

 a
\nwill also in Matter itself, an imperative evolutionary urge, an act of the
\ncreative transmutations of Time or a descent from the transcendence. Meanwhile
\nthe drawing in of the universal energy by a conscious action of the higher
\npowers of the being from around or from above, by a call to what is still to us
\na transcending consciousness or by an invasion or descent from the Transcendence
\nitself may well become an occasional, a frequent or a constant phenomenon and
\neven reduce the part played by food and its need to an incidence no longer
\npreoccupying, a necessity minor and less and less imperative. Meanwhile food and
\nthe ordinary process of Nature can be accepted although its use has to be
\nliberated from attachment and desire and the grosser un-discriminating appetites
\nand clutch at the pleasures of the flesh which is the way of the Ignorance; the
\nphysical processes have to be subtilised and the grossest may have to be
\neliminated and new processes found or new instrumentalities emerge. So long as
\nit is accepted a refined pleasure in it may be permitted and even a desireless
\nananda of taste take the place of the physical relish and the human selection by
\nlikings and dislikings which is our present imperfect response to what is
\noffered to us by Nature. It must be remembered that for the divine life on
\nearth, earth and Matter have not to be and cannot be rejected but have only to
\nbe sublimated and to reveal in themselves the possibilities of the spirit, serve
\nthe spirit’s highest uses and be transformed into instruments of a greater
\nliving.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nThe
\ndivine life must always be actuated by the push towards perfection; a perfection
\nof the joy of life is part and an essential part of it, the body’s delight in
\nthings and the body’s joy of life are not excluded from it; they too have to be
\nmade perfect. A large totality is the very nature of this new and growing way of
\nexistence, a fullness of the possibilities of the mind transmuted into a thing
\nof light, of the life converted into a force of spiritual power and joy, of the
\nbody transformed into an instrument of a divine action, divine knowledge, divine
\nbliss. All can be taken into its scope that is capable of transforming itself,
\nall that can be an instrument, a vessel, an opportunity for the expression of
\nthis totality of the self-manifesting Spirit.<\/p>\n

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\n
\n<\/div>\n

                There
\nis one problem raised by sex for those who would reject in toto <\/i>the
\nobligations imposed by the animality of the body and put forward by it as an
\ninsistent opposition in the way of the aspirant to a higher life: it is the
\nnecessity of the prolongation of the race for which the sex activity is the only
\nmeans already provided by Nature for living beings and inevitably imposed upon
\nthe race. It is not indeed necessary for the individual seeker after a divine
\nlife to take up this problem or even for a group who do not seek after it for
\nthemselves alone but desire a wide acceptance of it by mankind as at least an
\nideal. There will always be the multitude who do not concern themselves with it
\nor are not ready for its complete practice and to these can be left the care for
\nthe prolongation of the race. The number of those who lead the divine life can
\nbe maintained and increased as the ideal extends itself, by the voluntary
\nadhesion of those who are touched by the aspiration and there need be no resort
\nto physical means for this purpose, no deviation from the rule of a strict
\nsexual abstinence. But yet there may be circumstances in which from another
\nstandpoint, a voluntary creation of bodies for souls that seek to enter the
\nearth-life to help in the creation and extension of the divine life upon earth
\nmight be found to be desirable. Then the necessity of a physical procreation for
\nthis purpose could only be avoided if new means of a supraphysical kind were
\nevolved and made available. A development of this kind must necessarily belong
\nto what is now considered as the sphere of the occult and the use of concealed
\npowers of action or creation not known or possessed by the common mind of the
\nrace. Occultism means rightly the use of the higher powers of our nature, soul,
\nmind, life-force and the faculties of the subtle physical consciousness to bring
\nabout results on their own or on the material plane by some pressure of their
\nown secret law and its potentialities, for manifestation and result in human or
\nearthly mind and life and body or in objects and events in the world of Matter.
\nA discovery or an extension of these little known or yet undeveloped powers is
\nnow envisaged by some well-known thinkers as a next step to be taken by mankind
\nin its immediate evolution; the kind of creation spoken of has not been included
\namong these developments, but it could well be<\/p>\n

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 considered
\nas one of the new possibilities. Even physical science is trying to find
\nphysical means for passing beyond the ordinary instrumentation or procedure of
\nNature in this matter of propagation or the renewal of the physical life-force
\nin human or animal beings; but the resort to occult means and the intervention
\nof subtle physical processes, if it could be made possible, would be a greater
\nway which could avoid the limitations, degradations, incompleteness and heavy
\nimperfection of the means and results solely available to the law of material
\nforce. In India there has been always from the earliest times a widely spread
\nbelief in the possibility and reality of the use of these powers by men with an
\nadvanced knowledge of these secret things or with a developed spiritual
\nknowledge and experience and dynamic force and even, in the Tantras, an
\norganised system of their method and practice. The intervention of the Yogi in
\nbringing about a desired birth of offspring is also generally believed in and
\noften appealed to and the bestowal on the child so obtained of a spiritual
\nattainment or destiny by his will or his blessing is some-times asked for and
\nsuch a result is recorded not only in the tradition of the past but maintained
\nby the witness of the present. But there is here still the necessity of a resort
\nto the normal means of propagation and the gross method of physical Nature. A
\npurely occult method, a resort to supraphysical processes acting by
\nsupraphysical means for a physical result would have to be possible if we are to
\navoid this necessity: the resort to the sex impulse and its animal process could
\nnot be transcended otherwise. If there is some reality in the phenomenon of
\nmaterialisation and dematerialisation claimed to be possible by occultists and
\nevidenced by occurrences many of us have witnessed, a method of this kind would
\nnot be out of the range of possibility. For in the theory of the occultists and
\nin the gradation of the ranges and planes of our being which Yoga-knowledge
\noutlines for us there is not only a subtle physical force but a subtle physical
\nMatter intervening between life and gross Matter and to create in this subtle
\nphysical substance and precipitate the forms thus made into our grosser
\nmateriality is feasible. It should be possible and it is believed to be possible
\nfor an object formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit from
\nits subtlety<\/p>\n

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 into
\nthe state of gross Matter directly by the intervention of an occult force and
\nprocess whether with or even without the assistance or intervention of some
\ngross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself
\na body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or
\neven provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation without
\npassing through birth by the sex process or under-going any degradation or any
\nof the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material
\nbody inevitable to our present way of existence. It might then assume at once
\nthe structure and greater powers and functionings of the truly divine material
\nbody which must one day emerge in a progressive evolution to a totally
\ntransformed existence both of the life and form in a divinised earth-nature.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nBut
\nwhat would be the internal or external form and structure and what the
\ninstrumentation of this divine body? The material history of the development of
\nthe animal and human body has left it bound to a minutely constructed and
\nelaborated system of organs and a precarious order of their functioning which
\ncan easily become a disorder, open to a general or local disorganisation,
\ndependent on an easily disturbed nervous system and commanded by a brain whose
\nvibrations are supposed to be mechanical and automatic and not under our
\nconscious control. According to the materialist all this is a functioning of
\nMatter alone whose fundamental reality is chemical. We have to suppose that the
\nbody is constructed by the agency of chemical elements building up atoms and
\nmolecules and cells and these again are the agents and only conductors at the
\nbasis of a complicated physical structure and instrumentation which is the sole
\nmechanical cause of all our actions, thoughts, feelings, the soul a fiction and
\nmind and life only a material and mechanical manifestation and appearance of
\nthis machine which is worked out and automatically driven with a figment of
\nconsciousness in it by the forces inherent in inconscient Matter. If that were
\nthe truth it is obvious that any divinisation or divine transformation of the
\nbody or of anything else would be nothing but an illusion, an imagination, a
\nsenseless and impossible chimera. But even if we suppose a soul, a conscious
\nwill at work in this body it could<\/p>\n

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not
\narrive at a divine transformation if there were no radical<\/span>,
\n<\/span>change in the bodily instrument
\nitself and in the organisation of its material workings. The transforming agent
\nwill be bound and stopped in its work by the physical organism’s unalterable
\nlimitations and held up by the unmodified or imperfectly modified original
\nanimal in us. The possibility of the disorders, derangements, maladies native to
\nthese physical arrangements would still be there and could only be shut out by a
\nconstant vigilance or perpetual control obligatory on the corporeal instrument’s
\nspiritual inhabitant and master. This could not be called a truly divine body;
\nfor in a divine body an inherent freedom from all these things would be natural
\nand perpetual; this freedom would be a normal and native truth of its being and
\ntherefore inevitable and unalterable. A radical transformation of the
\nfunctioning and, it may well be, of the structure and certainly of the too
\nmechanical and material impulse and driving forces of the bodily system would be
\nimperative. What agency could we find which we could make the means of this
\nall-important liberation and change? Something there is in us or something has
\nto be developed, perhaps a central and still occult part of our being containing
\nforces whose powers in our actual and present make-up are only a fraction of
\nwhat could be, but if they became complete and dominant would be truly able to
\nbring about with the help of the light and force of the soul and the supramental
\ntruth- consciousness the necessary physical transformation and its consequences.
\nThis might be found in the system of Chakras revealed by Tantric knowledge and
\naccepted in the systems of Yoga, conscious centres and sources of all the
\ndynamic powers of our being organising their action through the plexuses and
\narranged in an ascending series from the lowest physical to the highest mind
\ncentre and spiritual centre called the thousand-petalled lotus where ascending
\nNature, the Serpent Power of the Tantrics, meets the Brahman and is liberated
\ninto the Divine Being. These centres are closed or half closed within us and
\nhave to be opened before their full potentiality can be manifested in our
\nphysical nature: but once they are opened and completely active, no limit can
\neasily be set to the development of their potencies and the total transformation
\nto be possible.<\/p>\n

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But
\nwhat would be the result of the emergence of these forces and their liberated
\nand diviner action on the body itself, what their dynamic connection with it and
\ntheir transforming operation on the still existing animal nature and its animal
\nimpulses and gross material procedure? It might be held that the first necessary
\nchange would be the liberation of the mind, the life-force, the subtle physical
\nagencies and the physical consciousness into a freer and a diviner activity, a
\nmany-dimensioned and unlimited operation of their consciousness, a large
\noutbreak of higher powers and the sublimation of the bodily consciousness
\nitself, of its instrumentation, capacity, capability for the manifestation of
\nthe soul in the world of Matter. The subtle senses now concealed in us might
\ncome forward into a free action and the material senses themselves become means
\nor channels for the vision of what is now invisible to us or the discovery of
\nthings surrounding us but at present unseizable and held back from our
\nknowledge. A firm check might be put on the impulses of the animal nature or
\nthey might be purified and subtilised so as to become assets and not liabilities
\nand so transformed as to be parts and processes of a diviner life. But even
\nthese changes would still leave a residue of material processes keeping the old
\nway and not amenable to the higher control and, if this could not be changed,
\nthe rest of the transformation might itself be checked and incomplete. A total
\ntransformation of the body would demand a sufficient change of the most material
\npart of the organism, its constitution, its processes and its set-up of nature.
\nAgain, it might be thought that a full control would be sufficient, a knowledge
\nand a vision of this organism and its un- seen action and an effective control
\ndetermining its operations according to the conscious will; this possibility has
\nbeen affirmed as something already achieved and a part of the development of the
\ninner powers in some. The cessation of the breathing while still the life of the
\nbody remained stable, the hermetic sealing up at will not only of the breath but
\nof all the vital manifestations for long periods, the stoppage of the heart
\nsimilarly at will while thought and speech and other mental workings continued
\nun- abated, these and other phenomena of the power of the will over the body are
\nknown and well-attested examples of this kind<\/span> of<\/p>\n

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mastery.
\nBut these are occasional or sporadic successes and do not amount to
\ntransformation; a total control is necessary and an established and customary
\nand, indeed, a natural mastery. Even with that achieved something more
\nfundamental might have to be demanded for the complete liberation and change
\ninto a divine body.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nAgain,
\nit might be urged that the organic structure of the body no less than its basic
\nouter form would have to be retained as a necessary material foundation for the
\nretention of the earth-nature, the connection of the divine life with the life
\nof earth and a continuance of the evolutionary process so as to prevent a
\nbreaking upward out of and away from it into a state of being which would
\nproperly belong to a higher plane and not to a terrestrial divine fulfilment.
\nThe prolonged existence of the animal itself in our nature, if sufficiently
\ntransformed to be an instrument of manifestation and not an obstacle, would be
\nnecessary to preserve the continuity, the evolutionary total; it would be needed
\nas the living vehicle, vahana, <\/i>of the emergent god in the material world
\nwhere he would have to act and achieve the works and wonders of the new life. It
\nis certain that a form of body making this connection and a bodily action
\ncontaining the earth-dynamism and its fundamental activities must be there, but
\nthe connection should not be a bond or a confining limitation or a contradiction
\nof the totality of the change. The maintenance of the present organism without
\nany transformation of it would not but act as such a bond and confinement within
\nthe old nature. There would be a material base but it would be of the earth
\nearthy, an old and not a new earth with a diviner psychological structure; for
\nwith that structure the old system would be out of harmony and it would be
\nunable to serve its further evolution or even to uphold it as a base in Matter.
\nIt would bind part of the being, a lower part to an untransformed humanity and
\nunchanged animal functioning and prevent its liberation into the superhumanity
\nof the supramental nature. A change is then necessary here too, a necessary part
\nof the total bodily transformation, which would divinise the whole man, at least
\nin the ultimate result and not leave his evolution incomplete.<\/p>\n

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                This
\naim, it must be said, would be sufficiently served’ if the instrumentation of
\nthe centres and their forces reigned over all the activities of the nature with
\nan entire domination of the body and made it both in its structural form and its
\norganic workings a free channel and means of communication and a plastic
\ninstrument of cognition and dynamic action for all that they had to do in the
\nmaterial life, in the world of Matter. There would have to be a change in the
\noperative processes of the material organs themselves and, it may well be, in
\ntheir very constitution and their importance; they could not be allowed to
\nimpose their limitations imperatively on the new physical life. To begin with,
\nthey might become more clearly outer ends of the channels of communication and
\naction, more serviceable for the psychological purposes of the inhabitant, less
\nblindly material in their responses, more conscious of the act and aim of the
\ninner movements and powers which use them and which they are wrongly supposed by
\nthe material man in us to generate and to use. The brain would be a channel of
\ncommunication of the form of the thoughts and a battery of their insistence on
\nthe body and the outside world where they could then become effective directly,
\ncommunicating themselves without physical means from mind to mind, producing
\nwith a similar directness effects on the thoughts, actions and lives of others
\nor even upon material things. The heart would equally be a direct communicant
\nand medium of interchange for the feelings and emotions thrown outward upon the
\nworld by the forces of the psychic centre. Heart could reply directly to heart,
\nthe life-force come to the help of other lives and answer their call in spite of
\nstrangeness and distance, many beings without any external communication thrill
\nwith the message and meet in the secret light from one divine centre. The will
\nmight control the organs that deal with food, safeguard automatically the
\nhealth, eliminate greed and desire, substitute subtler processes or draw in
\nstrength and substance from the universal life-force so that the body could
\nmaintain for a long time its own strength and substance without loss or waste,
\nremaining thus with no need of sustenance by material aliments, and yet continue
\na strenuous action with no fatigue or pause for sleep or repose. The soul’s will
\nor the mind’s could act<\/p>\n

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 from
\nhigher sources upon the sex-centre and the sex organs so as to check firmly or
\neven banish the grosser sexual impulse or stimulus and instead of serving an
\nanimal excitation or crude drive or desire turn their use to the storing,
\nproduction and direction towards brain and heart and life-force of the essential
\nenergy, ojas, <\/i>of which this region is the factory so as to support the
\nworks of the mind and soul and spirit and the higher life-powers and limit the
\nexpenditure of the energy on lower things. The soul, the psychic being, could
\nmore easily fill all with the light and turn the very matter of the body to
\nhigher uses for its own greater purpose.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nThis
\nwould be a first potent change, but not by any means all that is possible or
\ndesirable. For it may well be that the evolutionary urge would proceed to a
\nchange of the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish
\ngreatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The
\ncentres in the subtle body, suksma sarira, <\/i>of which one would become
\nconscious and aware of all going on in it would pour their energies into
\nmaterial nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material
\nbody; all the physical life and its necessary activities in this new existence
\ncould be maintained and operated by these higher agencies in a freer and ampler
\nway and by a less burdensome and restricting method. This might go so far that
\nthese organs might cease to be indispensable and even be felt as too
\nobstructive: the central force might use them less and less and finally throw
\naside their use altogether. If that happened they might waste by atrophy, be
\nreduced to an insignificant minimum or even disappear. The central force might
\nsubstitute for them subtle organs of a very different character or, if anything
\nmaterial was needed, instruments that would be forms of dynamism or plastic
\ntransmitters rather than what we know as organs. This might well be part of a
\nsupreme total transformation of the body, though this too might not be final. To
\nenvisage such changes is to look far ahead and minds attached to the present
\nform of things may be unable to give credence to their possibility. No such
\nlimits and no such impossibility of any necessary change can be imposed on the
\nevolutionary urge. All has not to be fundamentally changed: on the contrary, all
\nhas to be preserved that is still needed in the tota-<\/p>\n

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 lity,
\nbut all has to be perfected. Whatever is necessary for the evolutionary purpose
\nfor the increasing, enlarging, heightening of the consciousness, which seems to
\nbe its central will and aim here, or the progression of its enabling means and
\npreserving environment has to be kept and furthered; but what has to be
\noverpassed, whatever has no longer a use or is degraded, what has become
\nunhelpful or retarding, can be discarded and dropped on the way. That has been
\nevident in the history of the evolution of the body from its beginning in
\nelementary forms to its most developed type, the human, there is no reason why
\nthis process should not intervene in the transition from the human into the
\ndivine body. For the manifestation or building of a divine body on earth there
\nmust be an initial transformation, the appearance of a new, a greater and more
\ndeveloped type, not a continuance with little modifications of the present
\nphysical form and its limited possibilities. What has to be preserved must
\nindeed be preserved and that means whatever is necessary or thoroughly
\nserviceable for the uses of the new life on earth; whatever is still needed and
\nwill serve its purpose but imperfect, will have to be retained but developed and
\nperfected; whatever is no longer of use for new aims or is a disability must be
\nthrown aside. The necessary forms and instrumentations of Matter must remain
\nsince it is in a world of Matter that the divine life has to manifest, but their
\nmateriality must be refined, uplifted, ennobled, illumined, since Matter and the
\nworld of Matter have increasingly to manifest the indwelling Spirit.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

         
\nThe
\nnew type, the divine body, must continue the already developed evolutionary
\nform; there must be a continuation from the type Nature has all along been
\ndeveloping, a continuity from the human to the divine body, no breaking away to
\nsomething unrecognisable but a high sequel to what has already been achieved and
\nin part perfected. The human body has in it parts and instruments that have been
\nsufficiently evolved to serve the divine life; these have to survive in their
\nform, though they must be still further perfected, their limitations of range
\nand use removed, their liability to defect and malady and impairment eliminated,
\ntheir capacities of cognition and dynamic action carried beyond the present
\nlimits. New powers have to be acquired by the body<\/p>\n

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which
\nour present humanity could not hope to realise, could not even dream of or could
\nonly imagine. Much that can now only be known, worked out or created by the use
\nof invented tools and machinery might be achieved by the new body in its own
\npower or by the inhabitant spirit through its own direct spiritual force. The
\nbody itself might acquire new means and ranges of communication with other
\nbodies, new processes of acquiring knowledge, a new aesthesis, new potencies of
\nmanipulation of itself and objects. It might not be impossible for it to possess
\nor disclose means native to its own constitution, substance or natural
\ninstrumentation for making the far near and annulling distance, cognising what
\nis now beyond the body’s cognisance, acting where action is now out of its reach
\nor its domain, developing subtleties and plasticities which could not be
\npermitted under present conditions to the needed fixity of a material frame.
\nThese and other numerous potentialities might appear and the body become an
\ninstrument immeasurably superior to what we can now imagine as possible. There
\ncould be an evolution from a first apprehending truth-consciousness to the
\nutmost heights of the ascending ranges of supermind and it may pass the borders
\nof the supermind proper itself where it begins to shadow out, develop, delineate
\nexpressive forms of life touched by a supreme pure existence, consciousness and
\nbliss which constitute the worlds of a highest truth of existence, dynamism of
\nTapas, glory and sweet- ness of bliss, the absolute essence and pitch of the
\nall-creating Ananda. The transformation of the physical being might follow this
\nincessant line of progression and the divine body reflect or reproduce here in a
\ndivine life on the earth something of this highest greatness and glory of the
\nself-manifesting Spirit.<\/p>\n

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