{"id":1226,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:23","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:23","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:23","slug":"16-purification-the-lower-mentality-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\/16-purification-the-lower-mentality-vol-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","title":{"rendered":"-16_Purification The Lower Mentality.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

 <\/font>Purification \u2014The
\nLower Mentality<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/p>\n

W<\/font><\/b>E
\nHAVE<\/font> to deal with the complex action of all these instruments and set about
\ntheir purification. And the simplest way will be to fasten on the two kinds of
\nradical defect in each, distinguish clearly in what they consist and set them
\nright. But there is also the question where we are to begin. For the
\nentanglement is great, the complete purification of one instrument depends on
\nthe complete purification too of all the others, and that is a great source of
\ndifficulty, disappointment and perplexity,\u2013 as when we think we have got the
\nintelligence purified, only to find that it is still subject to attack and overclouding<\/span> because the emotions of the heart and the will
\nand sensational mind are still affected by the many impurities of the lower
\nnature and they get back into the enlightened buddhi and prevent it from
\nreflecting the pure truth for which we are seeking. But we have on the other
\nhand this advantage that one important instrument sufficiently purified can be
\nused as a means for the purification of the others, one step firmly taken makes
\neasier all the others and gets rid of a host of difficulties. Which instrument
\nthen by its purification and perfection will bring about most easily and
\neffectively or can aid with a most powerful rapidity the perfection of the
\nrest? <\/p>\n

Since we are
\nthe spirit enveloped in mind, a soul evolved here as a mental being in a living
\nphysical body, it must naturally be in the mind, the antakaraņa<\/i><\/span>, that we must
\nlook for this desideratum. And in the mind it is evidently by the buddhi, the
\nintelligence and the will of the intelligence that the human being is intended
\nto do whatever work is not done for him by the physical or nervous nature as in
\nthe plant and the animal. Pending the evolution of any higher supramental power
\nthe intelligent will must be our main force for effectuation and to purify it
\nbecomes a very primary necessity. Once our intelligence and
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 627<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

will are well purified of all
\nthat limits them and gives them a wrong action or wrong direction, they can
\neasily be perfected, can be made to respond to the suggestions of Truth,
\nunderstand themselves and the rest of the being, see clearly and with a fine
\nand scrupulous accuracy what they are doing and follow out the right way to do
\nit without any hesitating or eager error or stumbling deviation. Eventually
\ntheir response can be opened up to the perfect discernings<\/span>,
\nintuitions, inspirations, revelations of the supermind<\/span>
\nand proceed by a more and more luminous and even infallible action. But this
\npurification cannot be effected without a preliminary clearing of its natural
\nobstacles in the other lower parts of the antahkaraņa<\/i>,
\nand the chief natural obstacle running through the whole action of the antahkaraņa<\/i>, through the sense, the
\nmental sensation, emotion, dynamic impulse, intelligence, will, is the
\nintermiscence and the compelling claim of the psychic prana. This then must be dealt
\nwith, its dominating intermiscence ruled out, its claim denied, itself quieted
\nand prepared for purification. <\/p>\n

Each instrument
\nhas, it has been said, a proper and legitimate action and also a deformation or
\nwrong principle of its proper action. The proper action of the psychic prana is
\npure possession and enjoyment, bhoga<\/i>.
\nTo enjoy thought, will, action, dynamic impulse, result of action, emotion,
\nsense, sensation, to enjoy too by their means objects, persons, life, the world,
\nis the activity for which this prana gives us a psycho-physical basis. A really
\nperfect enjoyment of existence can only come when what we enjoy is not the
\nworld in itself or for itself, but God in the world, when it is not things, but
\nthe Ananda of the spirit in things that forms the real, essential object of our
\nenjoying and things only as form and symbol of the spirit, waves of the ocean
\nof Ananda. But this Ananda can only come at all when we can get at and reflect
\nin our members the hidden spiritual being, and its fullness can only be had
\nwhen we climb to the supramental ranges. Meanwhile there is a just and
\npermissible, a quite legitimate human enjoyment of these things, which is, to
\nspeak in the language of Indian psychology, predominantly sattwic in its
\nnature. It is an enlightened enjoyment principally by the perceptive, aesthetic
\nand emotive mind, secondarily only by the sensa<\/span>– <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 628<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n


\ntional<\/span>,
\nnervous and physical being, but all subject to the clear government of the
\nbuddhi, to a right reason, a right will, a right reception of the life impacts,
\na right order, a right feeling of the truth, law, ideal sense, beauty, use of
\nthings. The mind gets the pure taste of enjoyment of them, rasa<\/i>, and rejects whatever is perturbed, troubled and perverse.
\nInto this acceptance of the clear and limpid rasa<\/i>, the psychic prana has to bring in the full sense of life and
\nthe occupying enjoyment by the whole being, bhoga<\/i>,
\nwithout which the acceptance and possession by the mind, rasagrahaņa<\/i><\/span>, would not be concrete
\nenough, would be too tenuous to satisfy altogether the embodied soul. This
\ncontribution is its proper function. <\/p>\n

The deformation
\nwhich enters in and prevents the purity, is a form of vital craving; the grand
\ndeformation which the psychic prana contributes to our being, is desire. The
\nroot of desire is the vital craving to seize upon that which we feel we have
\nnot, it is the limited life’s instinct for possession and satisfaction. It
\ncreates the sense of want, \u2013 first the simpler vital craving of hunger, thirst,
\nlust, then these psychical hungers, thirsts, lusts of the mind which are a much
\ngreater and more instant and pervading affliction of our being, the hunger
\nwhich is infinite because it is the hunger of an infinite being, the thirst
\nwhich is only temporarily lulled by satisfaction, but is in its nature
\ninsatiable. The psychic prana invades the sensational mind and brings into it
\nthe unquiet thirst of sensations, invades the dynamic mind with the lust of
\ncontrol, having, domination, success, fulfilment of every impulse, fills the
\nemotional mind with the desire for the satisfaction of liking and disliking,
\nfor the wreaking of love and hate, brings the shrinkings<\/span>
\nand panics of fear and the strainings and disappointments of hope, imposes the
\ntortures of grief and the brief fevers and excitements of joy, makes the
\nintelligence and intelligent will the accomplices of all these things and turns
\nthem in their own kind into deformed and lame instruments, the will into a will
\nof craving and the intelligence into a partial, a stumbling and an eager
\npursuer of limited, impatient, militant prejudgment and opinion. Desire is the
\nroot of all sorrow, disappointment, affliction, for though it has a feverish
\njoy of pursuit and satisfaction, yet because it is always a straining of the
\nbeing, it carries
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 629<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

into its pursuit and its getting
\na labour, hunger, struggle, a rapid subjection to fatigue, a sense of
\nlimitation, dissatisfaction and early disappointment with all its gains, a
\nceaseless morbid stimulation, trouble, disquiet, aśānti<\/i><\/span>. To get rid of
\ndesire is the one firm indispensable purification of the psychical prana, \u2013 for
\nso we can replace the soul of desire with its pervading immiscence in all our
\ninstruments by a mental soul of calm delight and its clear and limpid possession
\nof ourselves and world and Nature which is the crystal basis of the mental life
\nand its perfection. <\/p>\n

The psychical
\nprana interferes in all the higher operations to deform them, but its defect is
\nitself due to its being interfered with and deformed by the nature of the
\nphysical workings in the body which Life has evolved in its emergence from
\nmatter. It is that which has created the separation of the individual life in
\nthe body from the life of the universe and stamped on it the character of want,
\nlimitation, hunger, thirst, craving for what it has not, a long groping after
\nenjoyment and a hampered and baffled need of possession. Easily regulated and
\nlimited in the purely physical order of things, it extends itself in the
\npsychical prana immensely and becomes, as the mind grows, a thing with
\ndifficulty limited, insatiable, irregular, a busy creator of disorder and
\ndisease. Moreover, the psychical prana leans on the physical life, limits
\nitself by the nervous force of the physical being, limits thereby the
\noperations of the mind and becomes the link of its dependence on the body and its
\nsubjection to fatigue, incapacity, disease, disorder, insanity, the pettiness,
\nthe precariousness and even the possible dissolution of the workings of the
\nphysical mentality. Our mind instead of being a thing powerful in its own
\nstrength, a clear instrument of conscious spirit, free and able to control, use
\nand perfect the life and body, appears in the result a mixed construction; it
\nis a predominantly physical mentality limited by its physical organs and
\nsubject to the demands and to the obstructions of the life in the body. This
\ncan only be got rid of by a sort of practical, inward psychological operation
\nof analysis by which we become aware of the mentality as a separate power,
\nisolate it for a free working, distinguish too the psychical and the physical
\nprana and make them no longer a link for dependence, but a transmitting channel
\nfor the Idea and Will in the Buddhi,
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 630<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

obedient to its suggestions and commands;
\nthe prana then becomes a passive means of effectuation for the mind’s direct
\ncontrol of the physical life. This control, however abnormal to our habitual
\npoise of action, is not only possible, \u2013 it appears to some extent in the
\nphenomena of hypnosis, though these are unhealthily abnormal, because there it
\nis a foreign will which suggests and commands, \u2013 but must become the normal
\naction when the higher Self within takes up the direct command of the whole
\nbeing. This control can be exercised perfectly, however, only from the
\nsupramental level, for it is there that the true effective Idea and Will reside
\nand the mental thought-mind, even spiritualised, is only a limited, though it
\nmay be made a very powerful deputy. <\/p>\n

Desire, it is
\nthought, is the real motive power of human living and to cast it out would be
\nto stop the springs of life; satisfaction of desire is man’s only enjoyment and
\nto eliminate it would be to extinguish the impulse of life by a quietistic<\/span> asceticism. But the real motive power of the
\nlife of the soul is Will; desire is only a deformation of will in the dominant
\nbodily life and physical mind. The essential turn of the soul to possession and
\nenjoyment of the world consists in a will to delight, and the enjoyment of the
\nsatisfaction of craving is only a vital and physical degradation of the will to
\ndelight. It is essential that we should distinguish between pure will and
\ndesire, between the inner will to delight and the outer lust and craving of the
\nmind and body. If we are unable to make this distinction practically in the
\nexperience of our being, we can only make a choice between a life-killing
\nasceticism and the gross will to live or else try to effect an awkward,
\nuncertain and precarious compromise between them. This is in fact what the mass
\nof men do; a small minority trample down the life instinct and strain after an
\nascetic perfection; most obey the gross will to live with such modifications
\nand restraints as society imposes or the normal social man has been trained to
\nimpose on his own mind and actions; others set up a balance between ethical
\nausterity and temperate indulgence of the desiring mental and vital self and
\nsee in this balance the golden mean of a sane mind and healthy human living.
\nBut none of these ways gives the perfection which we are seeking, the <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 631<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

divine government of the will in
\nlife. To tread down altogether the prana, the vital being, is to kill the force
\nof life by which the large action of the embodied soul in the human being must
\nbe supported; to indulge the gross will to live is to remain satisfied with
\nimperfection; to compromise between them is to stop half way and possess
\nneither earth nor heaven. But if we can get at the pure will undeformed<\/span> by desire, \u2013 which we shall find to be a much
\nmore free, tranquil, steady and effective force than the leaping,
\nsmoke-stifled, soon fatigued and baffled flame of desire, \u2013 and at the calm
\ninner will of delight not afflicted or limited by any trouble of craving, we
\ncan then transform the prana from a tyrant, enemy, assailant of the mind into
\nan obedient instrument. We may call these greater things, too, by the name of
\ndesire, if we choose, but then we must suppose that there is a divine desire
\nother than the vital craving, a God-desire of which this other and lower phenomenon
\nis an obscure shadow and into which it has to be transfigured. It is better to
\nkeep distinct names for things which are entirely different in their character
\nand inner action. <\/p>\n

To rid the
\nprana of desire and incidentally to reverse the ordinary poise of our nature
\nand turn the vital being from a troublesomely dominant power into the obedient
\ninstrument of a free and unattached mind, is then the first step in purification.
\nAs this deformation of the psychical prana is corrected, the purification of
\nthe rest of the intermediary parts of the antahkaraņa<\/i>
\nis facilitated, and when that correction is completed, their purification too
\ncan be easily made absolute. These intermediary parts are the emotional mind,
\nthe receptive sensational mind and the active sensational mind or mind of dynamic
\nimpulse. They all hang together in a strongly knotted interaction. The
\ndeformation of the emotional mind hinges upon the duality of liking and
\ndisliking, rāga-dveşa<\/i><\/span>,
\nemotional attraction and repulsion. All the complexity of our emotions and
\ntheir tyranny over the soul arise from the habitual responses of the soul of
\ndesire in the emotions and sensations to these attractions and repulsions. Love
\nand hatred, hope and fear, grief and joy all have their founts in this one
\nsource. We like, love, welcome, hope for, joy in whatever our nature, the first
\nhabit of our being, or else a formed
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 632<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

(often perverse) habit, the
\nsecond nature of our being, presents to the mind as pleasant, priyam<\/i><\/span>; we hate,
\ndislike, fear, have repulsion from or grief of whatever it presents to us as
\nunpleasant, apriyam<\/i><\/span>.
\nThis habit of the emotional nature gets into the way of the intelligent will
\nand makes it often a helpless slave of the emotional being or at least prevents
\nit from exercising a free judgment and government of the nature. This
\ndeformation has to be corrected. By getting rid of desire in the psychic prana
\nand its intermiscence in the emotional mind, we facilitate the correction. For
\nthen attachment which is the strong bond of the heart, falls away from the heart-strings;
\nthe involuntary habit of rāga-dveşa<\/i><\/span>
\nremains, but, not being made obstinate by attachment, it can be dealt with more
\neasily by the will and the intelligence. The restless heart can be conquered
\nand get rid of the habit of attraction and repulsion. <\/p>\n

But then if
\nthis is done, it may be thought, as with regard to desire, that this will be
\nthe death of the emotional being. It will certainly be so, if the deformation
\nis eliminated but not replaced by the right action of the emotional mind; the
\nmind will then pass into a neutral condition of blank indifference or into a
\nluminous state of peaceful impartiality with no stir or wave of emotion. The
\nformer state is in no way desirable; the latter may be the perfection of a quietistic<\/span> discipline, but in the integral perfection which
\ndoes not reject love or shun various movement of delight, it can be no more
\nthan a stage which has to be overpassed<\/span>, a
\npreliminary passivity admitted as a first basis for a right activity.
\nAttraction and repulsion, liking and disliking are a necessary mechanism for
\nthe normal man, they form a first principle of natural instinctive selection
\namong the thousand flattering and formidable, helpful and dangerous impacts of
\nthe world around him. The buddhi starts with this material to work on and tries
\nto correct the natural and instinctive by a wiser reasoned and willed
\nselection; for obviously the pleasant is not always the right thing, the object
\nto be preferred and selected, nor the unpleasant the wrong thing, the object to
\nbe shunned and rejected; the pleasant and the good, preyas<\/i><\/span> and śreyas<\/span><\/i>, have to be
\ndistinguished, and right reason has to choose and not the caprice of emotion.
\nBut this it can do much better when the emotional
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 633<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

suggestion is withdrawn and the
\nheart rests in a luminous passivity. Then too the right activity of the heart
\ncan be brought to the surface; for we find then that behind this emotion-ridden
\nsoul of desire there was waiting all the while a soul of love and lucid joy and
\ndelight, a pure psyche, which was clouded over by the deformations of anger, fear,
\nhatred, repulsion and could not embrace the world with an impartial love and
\njoy. But the purified heart is rid of anger, rid of fear, rid of hatred, rid of
\nevery shrinking and repulsion: it has a universal love, it can receive with an
\nuntroubled sweetness and clarity the various delight which God gives it in the
\nworld. But it is not the lax slave of love and delight; it does not desire,
\ndoes not attempt to impose itself as the master of the actions. The selective
\nprocess necessary to action is left principally to the buddhi and, when the
\nBuddhi has been overpassed<\/span>, to the spirit in the
\nsupramental will, knowledge and Ananda. <\/p>\n

The receptive
\nsensational mind is the nervous mental basis of the affections; it receives
\nmentally the impacts of things and gives to them the responses of mental
\npleasure and pain which are the starting-point of the duality of emotional
\nliking and disliking. All the heart’s emotions have a corresponding
\nnervous-mental accompaniment, and we often find that when the heart is freed of
\nany will to the dualities, there still survives a root of disturbance of
\nnervous mind, or a memory in physical mind which falls more and more away to a
\nquite physical character, the more it is repelled by the will in the buddhi. It
\nbecomes finally a mere suggestion from outside to which the nervous chords of
\nthe mind still occasionally respond until a complete purity liberates them into
\nthe same luminous universality of delight which the pure heart already
\npossesses. The active dynamic mind of impulse is the lower organ or channel of
\nresponsive action; its deformation is a subjection to the suggestions of the
\nimpure emotional and sensational mentality and the desire of the prana, to
\nimpulses to action dictated by grief, fear, hatred, desire, lust, craving, and
\nthe rest of the unquiet brood. Its right form of action is a pure dynamic force
\nof strength, courage, temperamental power, not acting for itself or in
\nobedience to the lower members, but as an impartial channel for the dictates of
\nthe pure intelligence and will
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 634<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/div>\n

or the supramental Purusha. When
\nwe have got rid of these deformations and cleared the mentality for these truer
\nforms of action, the lower mentality is purified and ready for perfection. But
\nthat perfection depends on the possession of a purified and enlightened buddhi;
\nfor the buddhi is the chief power in the mental being and the chief mental
\ninstrument of the Purusha. <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 635<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter VI   Purification \u2014The Lower Mentality   WE HAVE to deal with the complex action of all these instruments and set about their purification. And…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-21","wpcat-26-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}