{"id":2156,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:48","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2156"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:48","slug":"41-chapter-xxiii-the-conditions-of-attainment-to-the-gnosis-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\/41-chapter-xxiii-the-conditions-of-attainment-to-the-gnosis-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-41_Chapter XXIII The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Conditions of Attainment
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tto the Gnosis <\/font><\/b> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tK<\/font>NOWLEDGE<\/b> is the first principle of the Vijnā<\/font>na, but knowledge is not its only power. The Truth-consciousness, like every other plane, founds itself upon that particular principle which is naturally the key of all its motions;
\nbut it is not limited by it, it contains all the other powers of existence. Only the character and working of these other powers
\nis modified and moulded into conformity with its own original and dominant law; intelligence, life, body, will, consciousness,
\nbliss are all luminous, awake, instinct with divine knowledge. This is indeed the process of Purusha-Prakriti everywhere; it is
\nthe key-movement of all the hierarchy and graded harmonies of manifested existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the mental being mind-sense or intelligence is the original and dominant principle. The mental being in the mind-world
\nwhere he is native is in his central and determining nature intelligence; he is a centre of intelligence, a massed movement of
\nintelligence, a receptive and radiating action of intelligence. He has the intelligent sense of his own existence, the intelligent sense
\nof other existence than his own, the intelligent sense of his own nature and activities and the activities of others, the intelligent
\nsense of the nature of things and persons and their relations with himself and each other. That makes up his experience of existence. He has no other knowledge of existence, no knowledge of life and matter except as they make themselves sensible to him
\nand capable of being seized by his mental intelligence; what he does not sense and conceive, is to him practically non-existent,
\nor at least alien to his world and his nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMan is in his principle a mental being, but not one living
\nin a mind world, but in a dominantly physical existence; his is  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>488<\/font>
\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\ta mind cased in Matter and conditioned by Matter. Therefore
\nhe has to start with the action of the physical senses which are all channels of material contact; he does not start with the
\nmind-sense. But even so he does not and cannot make free use of anything conveyed by these physical organs until and unless they
\nare taken hold of by the mind-sense and turned into stuff and value of his intelligent being. What is in the lower subhuman
\nsubmental world a pranic, a nervous, a dynamic action and reaction that proceeds very well without any need of translation into mind-terms or government by mind, has in him to be raised and offered to some kind of intelligence. In order to be
\ncharacteristically human it has to become first a sense of force, sense of desire, sense of will, sense of intelligent will-action or
\nmentally conscious sense of force-action. His lower delight of being translates itself into a sense of mental or mentalised vital
\nor physical pleasure and its perversion pain, or into a mental or mentalised feeling-sensation of liking and disliking, or into an
\nintelligence of delight and failure of delight, \u2014 all phenomena of the intelligent mind-sense. So too that which is above him
\nand that which is around him and in which he lives, \u2014 God, the universal being, the cosmic Forces,
\n\u2014 are non-existent and
\nunreal to him until his mind awakes to them and gets, not yet their true truth, but some idea, observation, inference, imagination of things supersensuous, some mental sense of the Infinite, some intelligent interpreting consciousness of the forces of the
\nsuper-self above and around him. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll changes when we pass from mind to gnosis; for there a
\ndirect inherent knowledge is the central principle. The gnostic 
\n(vijnā<\/font>namaya<\/i>) being is in its character a truth-consciousness, a centre
\n\t\t\tand circumference of the truth-vision of things, a massed movement
\n\t\t\tor subtle body of gnosis. Its action is a self-fulfilling and
\n\t\t\tradiating action of the truth-power of things according to the inner
\n\t\t\tlaw of their deepest truest self and nature. This truth of things at
\n\t\t\twhich we must arrive before we can enter into the gnosis, \u2014 for in
\n\t\t\tthat all exists and from that all originates on the gnostic plane, \u2014
\n\t\t\tis, first of all, a truth of unity, of oneness, but of unity
\n\t\t\toriginating diversity, unity in multiplicity and still unity <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>489<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\talways, an indefeasible oneness. State of gnosis, the condition
\n\t\t\tof vijnā<\/font>namaya <\/i>being, is impossible without an ample and close
\nself-identification of ourselves with all existence and with all existences, a universal pervasiveness, a universal comprehension
\nor containing, a certain all-in-allness. The gnostic Purusha has normally the consciousness of itself as infinite, normally too the
\nconsciousness of containing the world in itself and exceeding it; it is not like the divided mental being normally bound to a consciousness that feels itself contained in the world and a part of it. It follows that a deliverance from the limiting and imprisoning
\nego is the first elementary step towards the being of the gnosis; for so long as we live in the ego, it is idle to hope for this higher
\nreality, this vast self-consciousness, this true self-knowledge. The least reversion to ego-thought, ego-action, ego-will brings back
\nthe consciousness tumbling out of such gnostic Truth as it has attained into the falsehoods of the divided mind-nature. A secure
\nuniversality of being is the very basis of this luminous higher consciousness. Abandoning all rigid separateness (but getting
\ninstead a certain transcendent overlook or independence) we have to feel ourselves one with all things and beings, to identify
\nourselves with them, to become aware of them as ourselves, to feel their being as our own, to admit their consciousness as part
\nof ours, to contact their energy as intimate to our energy, to learn how to be one self with all. That oneness is not indeed all that is
\nneeded, but it is a first condition and without it there is no gnosis. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis universality is impossible to achieve in its completeness
\nso long as we continue to feel ourselves, as we now feel, a consciousness lodged in an individual mind, life and body. There has
\nto be a certain elevation of the Purusha out of the physical and
\neven out of the mental into the vijnā<\/font>namaya <\/i>body. No longer can the brain
\n\t\t\tnor its corresponding mental "lotus" remain the centre of our
\n\t\t\tthinking, no longer the heart nor its corresponding "lotus" the
\n\t\t\toriginating centre of our emotional and sensational being. The
\n\t\t\tconscious centre of our being, our thought, our will and action,
\n\t\t\teven the original force of our sensations and emotions rise out of
\n\t\t\tthe body and mind and take a free station above them. No longer have
\n\t\t\twe the sensation of living in the body, but  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>490<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tare above it as its lord, possessor or Ishwara and at the same time
\n\t\t\tencompass it with a wider consciousness than that of the imprisoned
\n\t\t\tphysical sense. Now we come to realise with a very living force of
\n\t\t\treality, normal and continuous, what the sages meant when they spoke
\n\t\t\tof the soul carrying the body or when they said that the soul is not
\n\t\t\tin the body, but the body in the soul. It is from above the body and
\n\t\t\tnot from the brain that we shall ideate and will; the brain-action
\n\t\t\twill become only a response and movement of the physical machinery
\n\t\t\tto the shock of the thought-force and will-force from above. All
\n\t\t\twill be originated from above; from above, all that corresponds in
\n\t\t\tgnosis to our present mental activity takes place.\u00b9<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut this centre and this action are free, not bound, not
\ndependent on the physical machine, not clamped to a narrow ego-sense. It is not involved in body; it is not shut up in a
\nseparated individuality feeling out for clumsy contacts with the world outside or groping inward for its own deeper spirit. For in
\nthis great transformation we begin to have a consciousness not shut up in a generating box, but diffused freely and extending
\nself-existently everywhere; there is or may be a centre, but it is a convenience for individual action, not rigid, not constitutive or separative. The very nature of our conscious activities is henceforth universal; one with those of the universal being, it
\nproceeds from universality to a supple and variable individualisation. It has become the awareness of an infinite being who
\nacts always universally though with emphasis on an individual formation of its energies. But this emphasis is differential rather
\nthan separative, and this formation is no longer what we now understand by individuality; there is no longer a petty limited
\nconstructed person shut up in the formula of his own mechanism. This state of consciousness is so abnormal to our present
\nmode of being that to the rational man who does not possess it it may seem impossible or even a state of alienation; but once <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t \u00b9<\/font> Many, if not all, of these conditions of the gnostic change can and indeed have
\nto be attained long before we reach the gnosis, \u2014 but imperfectly at first as if by a reflection,
\n\u2014 in higher mind itself, and more completely in what we may call an overmind
\nconsciousness between mentality and gnosis.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>491<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tpossessed it vindicates itself even to the mental intelligence by its
\ngreater calm, freedom, light, power, effectivity of will, verifiable truth of ideation and feeling. For this condition begins already
\non the higher levels of liberated mind, and can therefore be partly sensed and understood by mind-intelligence, but it rises
\nto perfect self-possession only when it leaves behind the mental levels, only in the supramental gnosis. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn this state of consciousness the infinite becomes to us the primal, the actual reality, the one thing immediately and sensibly
\ntrue. It becomes impossible for us to think of or realise the finite apart from our fundamental sense of the infinite, in which
\nalone the finite can live, can form itself, can have any reality or duration. So long as this finite mind and body are to our
\nconsciousness the first fact of our existence and the foundation of all our thinking, feeling and willing and so long as things
\nfinite are the normal reality from which we can rise occasionally, or even frequently, to an idea and sense of the infinite,
\nwe are still very far away from the gnosis. In the plane of the gnosis the infinite is at once our normal consciousness of being,
\nits first fact, our sensible substance. It is very concretely to us there the foundation from which everything finite forms itself
\nand its boundless incalculable forces are the origination of all our thought, will and delight. But this infinite is not only an
\ninfinite of pervasion or of extension in which everything forms and happens. Behind that immeasurable extension the gnostic
\nconsciousness is always aware of a spaceless inner infinite. It is through this double infinite that we shall arrive at the essential
\nbeing of Sachchidananda, the highest self of our own being and the totality of our cosmic existence. There is opened to us an
\nillimitable existence which we feel as if it were an infinity above us to which we attempt to rise and an infinity around us into
\nwhich we strive to dissolve our separate existence. Afterwards we widen into it and rise into it; we break out of the ego into
\nits largeness and are that for ever. If this liberation is achieved, its power can take, if so we will, increasing possession of our
\nlower being also until even our lowest and perversest activities are refashioned into the truth of the Vijnā<\/font>na. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>492<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t   This is the basis, this sense of the infinite and possession by
\nthe infinite, and only when it is achieved, can we progress towards some normality of the supramental ideation, perception,
\nsense, identity, awareness. For even this sense of the infinite is only a first foundation and much more has to be done before the
\nconsciousness can become dynamically gnostic. The supramental knowledge is the play of a supreme light; there are many other
\nlights, other levels of knowledge higher than human mind which can open in us and receive or reflect something of that effulgence
\neven before we rise into the gnosis. But to command or wholly possess it we must first enter into and become the being of the
\nsupreme light, our consciousness must be transformed into that consciousness, its principle and power of self-awareness and all-awareness by identity must be the very stuff of our existence. For our means and ways of knowledge and action must necessarily
\nbe according to the nature of our consciousness and it is the consciousness that must radically change if we are to command
\nand not only be occasionally visited by that higher power of knowledge. But it is not confined to a higher thought or the
\naction of a sort of divine reason. It takes up all our present means of knowledge immensely extended, active and effective
\nwhere they are now debarred, blind, infructuous, and turns them into a high and intense perceptive activity of the Vijnā<\/font>na. Thus
\nit takes up our sense action and illumines it even in its ordinary field so that we get a true sense of things. But also it enables the
\nmind-sense to have a direct perception of the inner as well as the outer phenomenon, to feel and receive or perceive, for instance,
\nthe thoughts, feelings, sensations, the nervous reactions of the object on which it is turned.\u00b2<\/font> It uses the subtle senses as well
\nas the physical and saves them from their errors. It gives us the knowledge, the experience of planes of existence other than the
\nmaterial to which our ordinary mentality is ignorantly attached and it enlarges the world for us. It transforms similarly the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u00b2 <\/font>This power, says Patanjali, comes by “samyama<\/i>” on an object. That is for the
\n˙<\/i>
\nmentality, in the gnosis there is no need of samyama<\/i>. For this kind of perception is the natural action of the Vijnā<\/font>na.
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>493<\/font> 
\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tsensations and gives them their full intensity as well as their full
\nholding-power; for in our normal mentality the full intensity is impossible because the power to hold and sustain vibrations
\nbeyond a certain point is denied to it, mind and body would both break under the shock or the prolonged strain. It takes
\nup too the element of knowledge in our feelings and emotions, \u2014 for our feelings too contain a power of knowledge and a
\npower of effectuation which we do not recognise and do not properly develop, \u2014 and delivers them at the same time from
\ntheir limitations and from their errors and perversions. For in all things the gnosis is the Truth, the Right, the highest Law,  devānā<\/font>m adabdhā<\/font>ni vratā<\/font>ni<\/i>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tKnowledge and Force or Will \u2014 for all conscious force is will \u2014 are the twin sides of the action of consciousness. In our
\nmentality they are divided. The idea comes first, the will comes stumbling after it or rebels against it or is used as its imperfect
\ntool with imperfect results; or else the will starts up first with a blind or half-seeing idea in it and works out something in
\nconfusion of which we get the right understanding afterwards. There is no oneness, no full understanding between these powers
\nin us; or else there is no perfect correspondence of initiation with effectuation. Nor is the individual will in harmony with
\nthe universal; it tries to reach beyond it or falls short of it or deviates from and strives against it. It knows not the times and
\nseasons of the Truth, nor its degrees and measures. The Vijnā<\/font>na takes up the will and puts it first into harmony and then into
\noneness with the truth of the supramental knowledge. In this knowledge the idea in the individual is one with the idea in
\nthe universal, because both are brought back to the truth of the supreme Knowledge and the transcendent Will. The gnosis
\ntakes up not only our intelligent will, but our wishes, desires, even what we call the lower desires, the instincts, the impulses,
\nthe reachings out of sense and sensation and it transforms them. They cease to be wishes and desires, because they cease first to be
\npersonal and then cease to be that struggling after the ungrasped which we mean by craving and desire. No longer blind or half-blind reachings out of the instinctive or intelligent mentality, they  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>494<\/font>
\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tare transformed into a various action of the Truth-will; and that
\nwill acts with an inherent knowledge of the right measures of its decreed action and therefore with an effectivity unknown to our mental willing. Therefore too in the action of the vijnā<\/font>namaya<\/i>
\nwill there is no place for sin; for all sin is an error of the will, a desire and act of the Ignorance. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen desire ceases entirely, grief and all inner suffering also cease. The Vijnā<\/font>na takes up not only our parts of knowledge
\nand will, but our parts of affection and delight and changes them into action of the divine Ananda. For if knowledge and
\nforce are the twin sides or powers of the action of consciousness, delight, Ananda
\n\u2014 which is something higher than what
\nwe call pleasure \u2014 is the very stuff of consciousness and the natural result of the interaction of knowledge and will, force and
\nself-awareness. Both pleasure and pain, both joy and grief are deformations caused by the disturbance of harmony between our
\nconsciousness and the force it applies, between our knowledge and will, a breaking up of their oneness by a descent to a lower
\nplane in which they are limited, divided in themselves, restrained from their full and proper action, at odds with other-force,
\nother-consciousness, other-knowledge, other-will. The Vijna<\/font>na sets this to rights by the power of its truth and a wholesale
\nrestoration to oneness and harmony, to the Right and the highest Law. It takes up all our emotions and turns them into various
\nforms of love and delight, even our hatreds, repulsions, causes of suffering. It finds out or reveals the meaning they missed
\nand by missing it became the perversions they are; it restores our whole nature to the eternal Good. It deals similarly with
\nour perceptions and sensations and reveals all the delight that they seek, but in its truth, not in any perversion and wrong
\nseeking and wrong reception; it teaches even our lower impulses to lay hold on the Divine and Infinite in the appearances after
\nwhich they run. All this is done not in the values of the lower being, but by a lifting up of the mental, vital, material into the
\ninalienable purity, the natural intensity, the continual ecstasy, one yet manifold, of the divine Ananda. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThus the being of Vijna<\/font>na is in all its activities a play of  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>495<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tperfected knowledge-power, will-power, delight-power, raised
\nto a higher than the mental, vital and bodily level. All-pervasive, universalised, freed from egoistic personality and individuality, it
\nis the play of a higher Self, a higher consciousness and therefore a higher force and higher delight of being. All that acts in the
\nVijna<\/font>na in the purity, in the right, in the truth of the superior or divine Prakriti. Its powers may often seem to be what are called
\nin ordinary Yogic parlance siddhis, by the Europeans occult powers, shunned and dreaded by devotees and by many Yogins
\nas snares, stumbling-blocks, diversions from the true seeking after the Divine. But they have that character and are dangerous
\nhere because they are sought in the lower being, abnormally, by the ego for an egoistic satisfaction. In the Vijna<\/font>na they are
\nneither occult nor siddhis, but the open, unforced and normal play of its nature. The Vijna<\/font>na is the Truth-power and Truth-action of the divine Being in its divine identities, and, when this acts through the individual lifted to the gnostic plane, it fulfils
\nitself un-perverted, without fault or egoistic reaction, without diversion from the possession of the Divine. There the individual
\nis no longer the ego, but the free Jiva domiciled in the higher 
\ndivine nature of which he is a portion, parā<\/font> prakr<\/font>tir jī<\/font>vabhūtā<\/font><\/i>,.<\/i>
\nthe nature of the supreme and universal Self seen indeed in the play of multiple individuality but without the veil of ignorance,
\nwith self-knowledge, in its multiple oneness, in the truth of its divine Shakti. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the Vijnana the right relation and action of Purusha and Prakriti are found, because there they become unified and the
\nDivine is no longer veiled in Maya. All is his action. The Jiva no longer says “I think, I act, I desire, I feel”; he does not even say
\nlike the sadhaka striving after unity but before he has reached it, “As appointed by Thee seated in my heart, I act.” For the
\nheart, the centre of the mental consciousness is no longer the centre of origination but only a blissful channel. He is rather
\naware of the Divine seated above, lord of all, adhis<\/font>t<\/font>hita<\/i>, as well ..<\/i>
\nas acting within him. And seated himself in that higher being, 
\nparā<\/font>rdhe<\/i>, paramasyā<\/font>m parā<\/font>vati<\/i>, he can say truly and boldly, “God himself by his Prakriti knows, acts, loves, takes delight <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>496<\/font>  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthrough my individuality and its figures and fulfils there in its higher and divine measures the multiple līlā<\/font> <\/i>which the Infinite
\nfor ever plays in the universality which is himself for ever.”   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>497<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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