{"id":2139,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2139"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:42","slug":"26-chapter-viii-the-release-from-the-heart-and-the-mind-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga\/26-chapter-viii-the-release-from-the-heart-and-the-mind-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-26_Chapter VIII The Release from the Heart and the Mind.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter VIII <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Release from the Heart <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tand the Mind <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tB<\/font>UT THE<\/b> ascending soul has to separate
\n\t\t\titself not only from the life in the body but from the action of the
\n\t\t\tlife-energy in the mind; it has to make the mind say as the
\n\t\t\trepresentative of the Purusha "I am not the Life; the Life is not
\n\t\t\tthe self of the Purusha, it is only a working and only one working
\n\t\t\tof Prakriti." The characteristics of Life are action and movement, a
\n\t\t\treaching out to absorb and assimilate what is external to the
\n\t\t\tindividual and a principle of satisfaction or dissatisfaction in
\n\t\t\twhat it seizes upon or what comes to it, which is associated with
\n\t\t\tthe all-pervading phenomenon of attraction and repulsion. These
\n\t\t\tthree things are everywhere in Nature because Life is everywhere in
\n\t\t\tNature. But in us mental beings they are all given a mental value
\n\t\t\taccording to the mind which perceives and accepts them. They take
\n\t\t\tthe form of action, of desire and of liking and disliking, pleasure
\n\t\t\tand pain. The Prana is everywhere in us supporting not only the
\n\t\t\taction of our body, but of our sense-mind, our emotional mind, our
\n\t\t\tthought-mind; and bringing its own law or dharma into all these, it
\n\t\t\tconfuses, it limits, it throws into discord their right action and
\n\t\t\tcreates that impurity of misplacement and that tangled confusion
\n\t\t\twhich is the whole evil of our psychological existence. In that
\n\t\t\tconfusion one law seems to reign, the law of desire. As the
\n\t\t\tuniversal Divine Being, all-embracing and all-possessing, acts,
\n\t\t\tmoves, enjoys purely for the satisfaction of divine Delight, so the
\n\t\t\tindividual life acts, moves, enjoys and suffers predominantly for
\n\t\t\tthe satisfaction of desire. Therefore the psychic life-energy
\n\t\t\tpresents itself to our experience as a sort of desire-mind, which we
\n\t\t\thave to conquer if we mean to get back to our true self. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDesire is at once the motive of our actions, our lever of  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>350<\/font>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t accomplishment and the bane of our existence. If our
\n\t\t\tsense-mind, emotional mind, thought-mind could act free from the
\n\t\t\tintrusions and importations of the life-energy, if that energy could
\n\t\t\tbe made to obey their right action instead of imposing its own yoke
\n\t\t\ton our existence, all human problems would move harmoniously to
\n\t\t\ttheir right solution. The proper function of the life-energy is to
\n\t\t\tdo what it is bidden by the divine principle in us, to reach to and
\n\t\t\tenjoy what is given to it by that indwelling Divine and not to
\n\t\t\tdesire at all. The proper function of the sense-mind is to lie open
\n\t\t\tpassively, luminously to the contacts of Life and transmit their
\n\t\t\tsensations and the
\nrasa <\/i>or right taste and principle of delight in them to the higher
\n\t\t\tfunction; but interfered with by the attractions and repulsions, the
\n\t\t\tacceptances and refusals, the satisfactions and dissatisfactions,
\n\t\t\tthe capacities and incapacities of the life-energy in the body it
\n\t\t\tis, to begin with, limited in its scope and, secondly, forced in
\n\t\t\tthese limits to associate itself with all these discords of the life
\n\t\t\tin Matter. It becomes an instrument for pleasure and pain instead of
\n\t\t\tfor delight of existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSimilarly the emotional mind compelled to take note of all these
\n\t\t\tdiscords and subject itself to their emotional reactions becomes a
\n\t\t\thurtling field of joy and grief, love and hatred, wrath, fear,
\n\t\t\tstruggle, aspiration, disgust, likes, dislikes, indifferences,
\n\t\t\tcontent, discontent, hopes, disappointments, gratitude, revenge and
\n\t\t\tall the stupendous play of passion which is the drama of life in the
\n\t\t\tworld. This chaos we call our soul. But the real soul, the real
\n\t\t\tpsychic entity which for the most part we see little of and only a
\n\t\t\tsmall minority in mankind has developed, is an instrument of pure
\n\t\t\tlove, joy and the luminous reaching out to fusion and unity with God
\n\t\t\tand our fellow-creatures. This psychic entity is covered up by the
\n\t\t\tplay of the mentalised Prana or desire-mind which we mistake for the
\n\t\t\tsoul; the emotional mind is unable to mirror the real soul in us,
\n\t\t\tthe Divine in our hearts, and is obliged instead to mirror the
\n\t\t\tdesire-mind. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSo too the proper function of the thought-mind is to observe,
\n\t\t\tunderstand, judge with a dispassionate delight in knowledge and open
\n\t\t\titself to messages and illuminations playing upon all that it
\n\t\t\tobserves and upon all that is yet hidden from it but must  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>351<\/font> \n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tprogressively be revealed, messages and illuminations that
\n\t\t\tsecretly flash down to us from the divine Oracle concealed in light
\n\t\t\tabove our mentality whether they seem to descend through the
\n\t\t\tintuitive mind or arise from the seeing heart. But this it cannot do
\n\t\t\trightly because it is pinned to the limitations of the life-energy
\n\t\t\tin the senses, to the discords of sensation and emotion, and to its
\n\t\t\town limitations of intellectual preference, inertia, straining,
\n\t\t\tself-will which are the form taken in it by the interference of this
\n\t\t\tdesire-mind, this psychic Prana. As is said in the Upanishads, our
\n\t\t\twhole mind-consciousness is shot through with the threads and
\n\t\t\tcurrents of this Prana, this Life-energy that strives and limits,
\n\t\t\tgrasps and misses, desires and suffers, and only by its purification
\n\t\t\tcan we know and possess our real and eternal self. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt is true that the root of all this evil is the ego-sense and that
\n\t\t\tthe seat of the conscious ego-sense is the mind itself; but in
\n\t\t\treality the conscious mind only reflects an ego already created in
\n\t\t\tthe subconscious mind in things, the dumb soul in the stone and the
\n\t\t\tplant which is present in all body and life and only finally
\n\t\t\tdelivered into voicefulness and wakefulness but not originally
\n\t\t\tcreated by the conscious mind. And in this upward procession it is
\n\t\t\tthe life-energy which has become the obstinate knot of the ego, it
\n\t\t\tis the desire-mind which refuses to relax the knot even when the
\n\t\t\tintellect and the heart have discovered the cause of their ills and
\n\t\t\twould be glad enough to remove it; for the Prana in them is the
\n\t\t\tAnimal who revolts and who obscures and deceives their knowledge and
\n\t\t\tcoerces their will by his refusal. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTherefore the mental Purusha has to separate himself from
\n\t\t\tassociation and self-identification with this desire-mind. He has to
\n\t\t\tsay "I am not this thing that struggles and suffers, grieves and
\n\t\t\trejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffled, is angry and afraid
\n\t\t\tand cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional
\n\t\t\tpassions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in
\n\t\t\tthe sensational and emotional mind." The mind then draws back from
\n\t\t\tits emotions and becomes with these, as with the bodily movements
\n\t\t\tand experiences, the observer or witness. There is again an inner
\n\t\t\tcleavage. There is this emotional mind in which these moods and
\n\t\t\tpassions continue to occur according to<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>352<\/font>   \n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe habit of the modes of Nature and there is the observing
\n\t\t\tmind which sees them, studies and understands but is detached from
\n\t\t\tthem. It observes them as if in a sort of action and play on a
\n\t\t\tmental stage of personages other than itself, at first with interest
\n\t\t\tand a habit of relapse into identification, then with entire calm
\n\t\t\tand detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but to the
\n\t\t\tpure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at their
\n\t\t\tunreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is
\n\t\t\tplaying and loses himself in the play. Secondly, it becomes aware of
\n\t\t\titself as master of the sanction who by his withdrawal of sanction
\n\t\t\tcan make this play to cease. When the sanction is withdrawn, another
\n\t\t\tsignificant phenomenon takes place; the emotional mind becomes
\n\t\t\tnormally calm and pure and free from these reactions, and even when
\n\t\t\tthey come, they no longer rise from within but seem to fall on it as
\n\t\t\timpressions from outside to which its fibres are still able to
\n\t\t\trespond; but this habit of response dies away and the emotional mind
\n\t\t\tis in time entirely liberated from the passions which it has
\n\t\t\trenounced. Hope and fear, joy and grief, liking and disliking,
\n\t\t\tattraction and repulsion, content and discontent, gladness and
\n\t\t\tdepression, horror and wrath and fear and disgust and shame and the
\n\t\t\tpassions of love and hatred fall away from the liberated psychic
\n\t\t\tbeing. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat takes their place? It may be, if we will, an entire calm,
\n\t\t\tsilence and indifference. But although this is a stage through which
\n\t\t\tthe soul has usually to pass, it is not the final aim we have placed
\n\t\t\tbefore us. Therefore the Purusha becomes also the master who wills
\n\t\t\tand whose will it is to replace wrong by right enjoyment of the
\n\t\t\tpsychic existence. What he wills, Nature executes. What was
\n\t\t\tfabric-stuff of desire and passion, is turned into reality of pure,
\n\t\t\tequal and calmly intense love and joy and oneness. The real soul
\n\t\t\temerges and takes the place left vacant by the desire-mind. The
\n\t\t\tcleansed and emptied cup is filled with the wine of divine love and
\n\t\t\tdelight and no longer with the sweet and bitter poison of passion.
\n\t\t\tThe passions, even the passion for good, misrepresent the divine
\n\t\t\tnature. The passion of pity with its impure elements of physical
\n\t\t\trepulsion and emotional inability to bear the suffering of others
\n\t\t\thas to be rejected and replaced by <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>353<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe higher divine compassion which sees, understands, accepts
\n\t\t\tthe burden of others and is strong to help and heal, not with
\n\t\t\tself-will and revolt against the suffering in the world and with
\n\t\t\tignorant accusation of the law of things and their source, but with
\n\t\t\tlight and knowledge and as an instrument of the Divine in its
\n\t\t\temergence. So too the love that desires and grasps and is troubled
\n\t\t\twith joy and shaken with grief must be rejected for the equal,
\n\t\t\tall-embracing love that is free from these things and has no
\n\t\t\tdependence upon circumstances and is not modified by response or
\n\t\t\tabsence of response. So we shall deal with all the movements of the
\n\t\t\tsoul; but of these things we shall speak farther when we consider
\n\t\t\tthe Yoga of self-perfection. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs with action and inaction, so it is with this dual possibility of
\n\t\t\tindifference and calm on the one side and active joy and love on the
\n\t\t\tother. Equality, not indifference is the basis. Equal endurance,
\n\t\t\timpartial indifference, calm submission to the causes of joy and
\n\t\t\tgrief without any reaction of either grief or joy are the
\n\t\t\tpreparation and negative basis of equality; but equality is not
\n\t\t\tfulfilled till it takes its positive form of love and delight. The
\n\t\t\tsense-mind must find the equal rasa <\/i>of the All-Beautiful, the
\n\t\t\theart the equal love and Ananda for all, the psychic Prana the
\n\t\t\tenjoyment of this rasa<\/i>, love and Ananda. This, however, is
\n\t\t\tthe positive perfection that comes by liberation; our first object
\n\t\t\ton the path of knowledge is rather the liberation that comes by
\n\t\t\tdetachment from the desire-mind and by the renunciation of its
\n\t\t\tpassions. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe desire-mind must also be rejected from the instrument of thought
\n\t\t\tand this is best done by the detachment of the Purusha from thought
\n\t\t\tand opinion itself. Of this we have already had occasion to speak
\n\t\t\twhen we considered in what consists the integral purification of the
\n\t\t\tbeing. For all this movement of knowledge which we are describing is
\n\t\t\ta method of purification and liberation whereby entire and final
\n\t\t\tself-knowledge becomes possible, a progressive self-knowledge being
\n\t\t\titself the instrument of the purification and liberation. The method
\n\t\t\twith the thought-mind will be the same as with all the rest of the
\n\t\t\tbeing. The Purusha, having used the thought-mind for release <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>354<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tfrom identification with the life and body and with the mind of
\n\t\t\tdesire and sensations and emotions, will turn round upon the
\n\t\t\tthought-mind itself and will say "This too I am not; I am not the
\n\t\t\tthought or the thinker; all these ideas, opinions, speculations,
\n\t\t\tstrivings of the intellect, its predilections, preferences, dogmas,
\n\t\t\tdoubts, self-corrections are not myself; all this is only a working
\n\t\t\tof Prakriti which takes place in the thought-mind." Thus a division
\n\t\t\tis created between the mind that thinks and wills and the mind that
\n\t\t\tobserves and the Purusha becomes the witness only; he sees, he
\n\t\t\tunderstands the process and laws of his thought, but detaches
\n\t\t\thimself from it. Then as the master of the sanction he withdraws his
\n\t\t\tpast sanction from the tangle of the mental undercurrent and the
\n\t\t\treasoning intellect and causes both to cease from their
\n\t\t\timportunities. He becomes liberated from subjection to the thinking
\n\t\t\tmind and capable of the utter silence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor perfection there is necessary also the resumption by the Purusha
\n\t\t\tof his position as the lord of his Nature and the will to replace
\n\t\t\tthe mere mental undercurrent and intellect by the truth-conscious
\n\t\t\tthought that lightens from above. But the silence is necessary; in
\n\t\t\tthe silence and not in the thought we shall find the Self, we shall
\n\t\t\tbecome aware of it, not merely conceive it, and we shall withdraw
\n\t\t\tout of the mental Purusha into that which is the source of the mind.
\n\t\t\tBut for this withdrawal a final liberation is needed, the release
\n\t\t\tfrom the ego-sense in the mind.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>355<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter VIII   The Release from the Heart   and the Mind   BUT THE ascending soul has to separate itself not only from the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","wpcat-46-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139","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=2139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}