{"id":1223,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1223"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:22","slug":"19-the-liberation-of-the-nature-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21\/19-the-liberation-of-the-nature-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","title":{"rendered":"-19_The Liberation of the Nature.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nChapter IX<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

The
\nLiberation of the Nature<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/font><\/b>HE
\n<\/font>two sides of our being, conscious experiencing soul and executive Nature
\ncontinuously and variously offering to the soul her experiences, determine in
\ntheir meeting all the affections of our inner status and its responses. Nature
\ncontributes the character of the happenings and the forms of the instruments of
\nexperience,<\/span> the soul meets it by an assent to the
\nnatural determinations of the response to these happenings or by a will to
\nother determination which it imposes upon the nature. The acceptance of the
\ninstrumental ego consciousness and the will to desire are the initial consent
\nof the self to the lapse into the lower ranges of experience in which it
\nforgets its divine nature of being; the rejection of these things, the return
\nto free self and the will of the divine delight in being is the liberation of
\nthe spirit. But on the other side stand the contributions of Nature herself to
\nthe mixed tangle, which she imposes on the soul’s experience of her doings and makings
\nwhen once that first initial consent has been given and made the law of the
\nwhole outward transaction. Nature’s essential contributions are two, the gunas
\nand the dualities. This inferior action of Nature in which we live has certain
\nessential qualitative modes which constitute the whole basis of its
\ninferiority. The constant effect of these modes on the soul in its natural
\npowers of mind, life and body is a discordant and divided experience, a strife<\/span> of opposites, dvandva<\/i><\/span>, a motion in all its
\nexperience and an oscillation between or a mixture of constant pairs of
\ncontraries, of combining positives and negatives, dualities. A complete liberation
\nfrom the ego and the will of desire must bring with it a
\nsuperiority<\/span> to the qualitative modes of the inferior Nature, traiguņyātītya<\/i><\/span>,
\na release from this mixed and discordant experience, a cessation or solution of
\nthe dual action of Nature. But on this side too there are two kinds of freedom.
\nA liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss of the
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 655<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

spirit<\/span>
\nis the first form of release. A farther liberation of the Nature into a divine
\nquality and spiritual power of world-experience fills the supreme calm with the
\nsupreme kinetic bliss of knowledge, power, joy and mastery. A divine unity of
\nsupreme spirit and its supreme nature is the integral liberation.<\/p>\n

Nature, because
\nshe is a power of spirit, is essentially qualitative in her action. One may
\nalmost say that Nature is only the power in being and the development in action
\nof the infinite qualities of the spirit, anantaguņa<\/i><\/span>. All else belongs
\nto her outward and more mechanical aspects; but this play of quality is the
\nessential thing, of which the rest is the result and mechanical combination.
\nOnce we have set right the working of the essential power and quality, all the
\nrest becomes subject to the control of the experiencing Purusha. But in the
\ninferior nature of things the play of infinite quality is subject to a limited
\nmeasure, a divided and conflicting working, a system of opposites and discords
\nbetween which some practical mobile system of concords has to be found and to
\nbe kept in action; this play of concorded<\/span> discords,
\nconflicting qualities, disparate powers and ways of experience compelled to
\nsome just manageable, partial, mostly precarious agreement, an unstable mutable
\nequilibrium, is managed by a fundamental working in three qualitative modes
\nwhich conflict and combine together in all her creations. These three modes
\nhave been given in the Sankhya system, which is generally adopted for this
\npurpose by all the schools of philosophic thought and of Yoga in India,
\nthe three names, sattva, rajas and tamas. \u00b9 Tamas is the principle and power of
\ninertia; rajas is the principle of kinesis, passion, endeavour, struggle,
\ninitiation (ārambha<\/i><\/span>);
\nsattwa the principle of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony. The metaphysical
\nbearing of this classification does not concern us; but in its psychological
\nand spiritual bearing it is of immense practical importance, because these
\nthree principles enter into all things, combine to give them their turn of
\nactive nature, result, effectuation, and their unequal working in the soul-experience
\nis the constituent force of our active personality, our temperament, type of
\nnature and cast of psychological response to experience. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9 This subject has been
\ntreated in the Yoga of Works. It is restated here from the point of view of the
\ngeneral type of nature and the complete liberation of the being.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 656<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

All character of action and
\nexperience in us is determined by the predominance and by the proportional
\ninteraction of these three qualities or modes of Nature. The soul in its
\npersonality is obliged, as it were, to run into their moulds; mostly, too, it
\nis controlled by them rather than has any free control of them. The soul can
\nonly be free by rising above and rejecting the tormented strife of their
\nunequal action and their insufficient concords and combinations and precarious
\nharmonies, whether in the sense of a complete quiescence from the half-regulated
\nchaos of their action or in the sense of a superiority to this lower turn of
\nnature and a higher control or transformation of their working. There must be either
\nan emptiness of the gunas or a superiority<\/span> to the
\ngunas.<\/p>\n

The gunas
\naffect every part of our natural being. They have indeed their strongest
\nrelative hold in the three different members of it, mind, life and body. Tamas,
\nthe principle of inertia, is strongest in material nature and in our physical
\nbeing. The action of this principle is of two kinds, inertia of force and
\ninertia of knowledge. Whatever is predominantly governed by Tamas, tends in its
\nforce to a sluggish inaction and immobility or else to a mechanical action
\nwhich it does not possess, but is possessed by obscure forces which drive it in
\na mechanical round of energy; equally in its consciousness it turns to an inconscience
\nor enveloped subconscience<\/span> or to a reluctant,
\nsluggish or in some way mechanical conscious action which does not possess the
\nidea of its own energy, but is guided by an idea which seems external to it or
\nat least concealed from its active awareness. Thus the principle of our body is
\nin its nature inert, subconscient<\/span>, incapable of
\nanything but a mechanical and habitual self-guidance and action: though it has
\nlike everything else a principle of kinesis and a principle of equilibrium of its
\nstate and action, an inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness,
\nthe greatest portion of its rajasic motions are contributed by the life-power
\nand all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle of rajas has
\nits strongest hold on the vital nature. It is the Life within us that is the
\nstrongest kinetic motor power, but the life-power in earthly beings is
\npossessed by the force of desire, therefore Rajas turns always to action and
\ndesire; desire is the
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 657<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

strongest<\/span>
\nhuman and animal initiator of most kinesis and action, predominant to such an
\nextent that many consider it the father of all action and even the originator
\nof our being. Moreover, rajas finding itself in a world of matter which starts
\nfrom the principle of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work
\nagainst an immense contrary force; therefore its whole action takes on the
\nnature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for
\npossession which is distressed in its every step by a limiting incapacity, disappointment
\nand suffering: even its gains are precarious and limited and marred by the
\nreaction of the effort and an aftertaste of insufficiency and transience. The
\nprinciple of Sattwa has its strongest hold in the mind; not so much in the lower
\nparts of the mind which are dominated by the rajasic life-power, but mostly in
\nthe intelligence and the will of the reason. Intelligence, reason, rational
\nwill are moved by the nature of their predominant principle towards a constant
\neffort of assimilation, assimilation by knowledge, assimilation by a power of
\nunderstanding will, a constant effort towards equilibrium, some stability,
\nrule, harmony of the conflicting elements of natural happening and experience.
\nThis satisfaction it gets in various ways and in various degrees of
\nacquisition. The attainment of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony brings
\nwith it always a relative but more or less intense and satisfying sense of
\nease, happiness, mastery, security, which is other than the troubled and
\nvehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire
\nand passion. Light and happiness are the characteristics of the sattwic Guna<\/span>. The whole nature of the embodied living mental being
\nis determined by these three gunas.<\/p>\n

But these are
\nonly predominant powers in each part of our complex system. The three qualities
\nmingle, combine and strive in every fibre and in every member of our intricate
\npsychology. The mental character is made by them, the character of our reason,
\nthe character of our will, the character of our moral, aesthetic, emotional,
\ndynamic, sensational being. Tamas brings in all the ignorance, inertia, weakness<\/span>, incapacity which afflicts our nature, a clouded
\nreason, nescience, unintelligence, a clinging to habitual notions and
\nmechanical ideas, the refusal to think <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 658<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

and<\/span>
\nknow, the small mind, the closed avenues, the trotting round of mental habit,
\nthe dark and the twilit places. Tamas brings in the impotent will, want of
\nfaith and self-confidence and initiative, the disinclination to act, the shrinking
\nfrom endeavour and aspiration, the poor and little spirit, and in our moral and
\ndynamic being the inertia, the cowardice, baseness, sloth, lax subjection to
\nsmall and ignoble motives, the weak yielding to our lower nature. Tamas brings into
\nour emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and
\nopenness, the shut soul, the callous heart, the soon spent affection and languor
\nof the feelings, into our aesthetic and sensational nature the dull aesthesis,
\nthe limited range of response, the insensibility to beauty, all that makes in
\nman the coarse, heavy and vulgar spirit. Rajas contributes our normal active
\nnature with all its good and evil; when unchastened<\/span>
\nby a sufficient element of Sattwa, it turns to egoism, self-will and violence,
\nthe perverse, obstinate or exaggerating action of the reason, prejudice,
\nattachment to opinion, clinging to error, the subservience of the intelligence
\nto our desires and preferences and not to the truth, the fanatic or the
\nsectarian mind, self-will, pride, arrogance, selfishness, ambition, lust,
\ngreed, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, the egoisms of love, all the vices and passions,
\nthe exaggerations of the aesthesis, the morbidities and perversions of the
\nsensational and vital being. Tamas in its own right produces the coarse, dull
\nand ignorant type of human nature, Rajas the vivid, restless, kinetic man,
\ndriven by the breath of action, passion and desire. Sattwa produces a higher
\ntype. The gifts of sattwa are the mind of reason and balance, clarity of the
\ndisinterested truth-seeking open intelligence, a will subordinated to the
\nreason or guided by the ethical spirit, self-control, equality, calm, love,
\nsympathy, refinement, measure, fineness of the aesthetic and emotional mind, in
\nthe sensational being delicacy, just acceptivity<\/span>,
\nmoderation and poise, a vitality subdued and governed by the mastering intelligence.
\nThe accomplished types of the sattwic man are the philosopher, saint and sage,
\nof the rajasic man the statesman, arrior<\/span>, forceful
\nman of action. But in all men there is in greater or less proportions a
\nmingling of the gunas, a multiple personality and in most a good deal of
\nshifting and alternation from the predominance of one to the preva<\/span>– <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 659<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

lence<\/span><\/span> of another Guna<\/span>; even
\nin the governing form of their nature most human beings are of a mixed type.
\nAll the colour<\/span> and variety of life is made of the intricate
\npattern of the weaving of the gunas.<\/p>\n

But richness of
\nlife, even a sattwic harmony of mind and nature does not constitute spiritual
\nperfection. There is a relative possible perfection, but it is a perfection of
\nincompleteness, some partial height, force, beauty<\/span>,
\nsome measure of nobility and greatness, some imposed and precariously sustained
\nbalance. There is a relative mastery, but it is a mastery<\/span>
\nof the body by life or of the life by mind, not a free possession of the
\ninstruments by the liberated and self-possessing spirit. The gunas have to be
\ntranscended if we would arrive at spiritual perfection. Tamas evidently has to
\nbe overcome, inertia and ignorance and incapacity cannot be elements of a true
\nperfection; but it can only be overcome in Nature by the force of rajas aided
\nby an increasing force of sattwa. Rajas has to be overcome, egoism, personal
\ndesire and self-seeking passion are not elements of the true perfection; but it
\ncan only be overcome by force of sattwa enlightening the being and force of tamas
\nlimiting the action. Sattwa itself does not give the highest or the integral
\nperfection; Sattwa is always a quality of the limited nature; sattwic knowledge
\nis the light of a limited mentality; sattwic will is the government of a
\nlimited intelligent force. Moreover, Sattwa cannot act by itself in Nature, but
\nhas to rely for all action on the aid of Rajas, so that even sattwic action is
\nalways liable to the imperfections of Rajas; egoism, perplexity, inconsistency,
\na one-sided turn, a limited and exaggerated will, exaggerating itself in the
\nintensity of its limitations, pursue the mind and action even of the saint, philosopher
\nand sage. There is a sattwic as well as a rajasic<\/span> or
\ntamasic egoism, at the highest an egoism of knowledge or virtue; but the mind’s
\negoism of whatever type is incompatible with liberation. All the three gunas
\nhave to be transcended. Sattwa may bring us near to the Light, but its limited
\nclarity falls away from us when we enter into the luminous body of the divine
\nNature.<\/p>\n

This
\ntranscendence is usually sought by a withdrawal from the action of the lower
\nnature. That withdrawal brings with it a
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 660<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

stressing<\/span>
\nof the tendency to inaction. Sattwa when it wishes to intensify itself, seeks
\nto get rid of Rajas and calls in the aid of the tamasic principle of inaction;
\nthat is the reason why a certain type of highly sattwic men live intensely in
\nthe inward being, but hardly at all in the outward life of action, or else are
\nthere incompetent and ineffective. The seeker of liberation goes farther in
\nthis direction, strives by imposing an enlightened tamas on his natural being,
\na tamas which by this saving enlightenment is more of a
\nquiescence<\/span> than an incapacity, to give the sattwic Guna<\/span>
\nfreedom to lose itself in the light of the spirit. A quietude and stillness is
\nimposed on the body, on the active life-soul of desire and ego, on the external
\nmind, while the sattwic nature by stress of meditation, by an exclusive
\nconcentration of adoration, by a will turned inward to the Supreme, strives to
\nmerge itself in the spirit. But if this is sufficient for a quietistic<\/span>
\nrelease, it is not sufficient for the freedom of an integral perfection. This
\nliberation depends upon inaction and is not entirely self-existent and
\nabsolute; the moment the soul turns to action, it finds that the activity of
\nthe nature is still the old imperfect motion. There is a liberation of the soul
\nfrom the nature which is gained by inaction, but not a liberation of the soul
\nin nature perfect and self-existent whether in action or in inaction. The question
\nthen arises whether such a liberation and perfection are possible and what may
\nbe the condition of this perfect freedom.<\/p>\n

The ordinary
\nidea is that it is not possible because all action is of the lower gunas,
\nnecessarily defective, sadoşam<\/i><\/span>,
\ncaused by the motion, inequality, want of balance, unstable strife of the
\ngunas; but when these unequal gunas fall into perfect equilibrium, all action
\nof Nature ceases and the soul rests in its quietude. The divine Being, we may
\nsay, may either exist in his silence or act in Nature through her
\ninstrumentation, but in that case must put on the appearance of her strife and
\nimperfection. That may be true of the ordinary deputed action of the Divine in
\nthe human spirit with its present relations of soul to nature in an embodied
\nimperfect mental being, but it is not true of the divine nature of perfection.
\nThe strife of the gunas is only a representation in the imperfection of the
\nlower nature; what the three gunas stand for are three essential powers of the
\nDivine which are
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 661<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

not<\/span>
\nmerely existent in a perfect equilibrium of quietude, but unified in a perfect
\nconsensus of divine action. Tamas in the spiritual being becomes a divine calm,
\nwhich is not an inertia and incapacity of action, but a perfect power, śakti<\/i><\/span>,
\nholding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to
\nthe law of calm even the most stupendous and enormous activity: rajas becomes a
\nself-effecting initiating sheer Will of the spirit, which is not desire,
\nendeavour, striving passion, but the same perfect power of being, śakti<\/i><\/span>,
\ncapable of an infinite, imperturbable and blissful action. Sattwa becomes not
\nthe modified mental light, prakāśa<\/i><\/span>, but the self-existent light of the divine
\nbeing, jyotih<\/i>, which is the soul of
\nthe perfect power of being and illumines in their unity the divine quietude and
\nthe divine<\/span> will of action. The ordinary liberation
\ngets the still divine light in the divine quietude, but the integral perfection
\nwill aim at this greater triune unity.<\/p>\n

When this liberation
\nof the nature comes, there is a liberation<\/span> also of all
\nthe spiritual sense of the dualities of Nature. In the lower nature the
\ndualities are the inevitable effect of the play of the gunas on the soul
\naffected by the formations of the sattwic, rajasic and tamasic ego. The knot of
\nthis duality is an ignorance which is unable to seize on the spiritual truth of
\nthings and concentrates on the imperfect appearances, but meets them not with a
\nmastery of their inner truth, but with a strife and a shifting balance of
\nattraction and repulsion, capacity and incapacity, liking and disliking,
\npleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, acceptance and repugnance; all life is
\nrepresented to us as a tangle of these things, of the pleasant and the unpleasant,
\nthe beautiful and the unbeautiful, truth and falsehood, fortune and misfortune,
\nsuccess and failure, good and evil, the inextricable double web of Nature.
\nAttachment to its likings and repugnances<\/span> keeps the
\nsoul bound in this web of good and evil, joys and sorrows. The seeker of
\nliberation gets rid of attachment, throws away from his soul the dualities, but
\nas the dualities appear to be the whole act, stuff and frame of life, this
\nrelease would seem to be most easily compassed by a withdrawal from life,
\nwhether a physical withdrawal, so far as that is possible while in the body, or
\nan inner retirement, a refusal of sanction, a liberating distaste, vairāgya<\/i><\/span>,
\nfor the whole action of Nature. There is a separation of the soul
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 662<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

from<\/span>
\nNature. Then the soul watches seated above and unmoved, udāsīna<\/i><\/span>, the strife of
\nthe gunas in the natural being and regards as an impassive witness the pleasure
\nand pain of the mind and body. Or it is able to impose its indifference even on
\nthe outer mind and watches with the impartial calm or the impartial joy of the
\ndetached spectator the universal action in which it has no longer an active
\ninner participation. The end of this movement is the rejection of birth and a
\ndeparture into the silent self, mokśa<\/i><\/span>.<\/p>\n

But this
\nrejection is not the last possible word of liberation. The integral liberation
\ncomes when this passion for release, mumukşutva<\/i><\/span>, founded on distaste or vairāgya<\/i><\/span>, is itself
\ntranscended; the soul is then liberated both from attachment to the lower
\naction of nature and from all repugnance to the cosmic action of the Divine.
\nThis liberation gets its completeness when the spiritual gnosis can act with a supramental<\/span> knowledge and reception of the action of
\nNature and a supramental luminous will in initiation. The gnosis discovers the
\nspiritual sense in Nature, God in things, the soul of good in all things that have
\nthe contrary appearance; that soul is delivered in them and out of them, the
\nperversions of the imperfect or contrary forms fall away or are transformed
\ninto their higher divine truth, \u2013 even as the gunas go back to their divine
\nprinciples, \u2013 and the spirit lives in a universal, infinite and absolute Truth,
\nGood, Beauty, Bliss which is the supramental or ideal divine Nature. The
\nliberation of the Nature becomes one with the liberation of the spirit, and
\nthere is founded in the integral freedom the integral perfection. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 663<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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