{"id":2165,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2165"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:52","slug":"63-chapter-ix-the-liberation-of-the-nature-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\/63-chapter-ix-the-liberation-of-the-nature-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-63_Chapter IX The Liberation of the Nature.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\t
\n \t\t\tChapter IX
\n\t<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n \t\t\tThe Liberation of the Nature
\n\t<\/font><\/b> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE TWO<\/b> sides of our being, conscious experiencing soul
\nand executive Nature continuously and variously offering to the soul her experiences, determine in their meeting
\nall the affections of our inner status and its responses. Nature contributes the character of the happenings and the forms of the
\ninstruments of experience, the soul meets it by an assent to the natural determinations of the response to these happenings or by
\na will to other determination which it imposes upon the nature. The acceptance of the instrumental ego consciousness and the
\nwill to desire are the initial consent of the self to the lapse into the lower ranges of experience in which it forgets its divine nature
\nof being; the rejection of these things, the return to free self and the will of the divine delight in being is the liberation of the
\nspirit. But on the other side stand the contributions of Nature herself to the mixed tangle, which she imposes on the soul’s
\nexperience of her doings and makings when once that first initial consent has been given and made the law of the whole outward
\ntransaction. Nature’s essential contributions are two, the gunas and the dualities. This inferior action of Nature in which we
\nlive has certain essential qualitative modes which constitute the whole basis of its inferiority. The constant effect of these modes
\non the soul in its natural powers of mind, life and body is a discordant and divided experience, a strife of opposites,
\ndvandva<\/i>, a motion in all its experience and an oscillation between or a
\n\t\t\tmixture of constant pairs of contraries, of combining positives and
\n\t\t\tnegatives, dualities. A complete liberation from the ego and the
\n\t\t\twill of desire must bring with it a superiority to the qualitative modes of the inferior Nature, traigunyatitya<\/i>, a release from
\nthis mixed and discordant experience, a cessation or solution of the dual action of Nature. But on this side too there are two
\nkinds of freedom. A liberation from Nature in a quiescent bliss<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>682<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tNature, because she is a power of spirit, is essentially qualitative in her action. One may almost say that Nature is only
\nthe power in being and the development in action of the infinite qualities of the spirit,
\nanantagun<\/font>a<\/i>. All else belongs to her out.<\/i> ward and more mechanical aspects; but this play of quality is
\nthe essential thing, of which the rest is the result and mechanical combination. Once we have set right the working of the essential
\npower and quality, all the rest becomes subject to the control of the experiencing Purusha. But in the inferior nature of things the
\nplay of infinite quality is subject to a limited measure, 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 be kept in action; this play of concorded
\ndiscords, conflicting qualities, disparate powers and ways of experience compelled to some just manageable, partial, mostly
\nprecarious agreement, an unstable mutable equilibrium, is managed by a fundamental working in three qualitative modes which
\nconflict and combine together in all her creations. These three modes have been given in the Sankhya system, which is generally adopted for this purpose by all the schools of philosophic thought and of Yoga in India, the three names,
\nsattva<\/i>, rajas<\/i>
\nand tamas<\/i>.\u00b9<\/font> Tamas is the principle and power of inertia; rajas is the principle of kinesis, passion, endeavour, struggle, initiation  (ā<\/font>rambha<\/i>); sattwa the principle of assimilation, equilibrium and
\nharmony. The metaphysical bearing of this classification does not concern us; but in its psychological and spiritual bearing it is
\nof immense practical importance, because these three principles enter into all things, combine to give them their turn of active
\nnature, result, effectuation, and their unequal working in the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tsoul-experience is the constituent force of our active personality, our temperament, type of nature and cast of psychological response to experience. All character of action and experience in
\nus is determined by the predominance and by the proportional interaction of these three qualities or modes of Nature. The
\nsoul in its personality is obliged, as it were, to run into their moulds; mostly, too, it is controlled by them rather than has
\nany free control of them. The soul can only be free by rising above and rejecting the tormented strife of their unequal action
\nand their insufficient concords and combinations and precarious harmonies, whether in the sense of a complete quiescence from
\nthe half-regulated chaos of their action or in the sense of a superiority to this lower turn of nature and a higher control
\nor transformation of their working. There must be either an emptiness of the gunas or a superiority to the gunas. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe gunas affect every part of our natural being. They have indeed their strongest relative hold in the three different members of it, mind, life and body. Tamas, the principle of inertia, is strongest in material nature and in our physical being. The
\naction of this principle is of two kinds, inertia of force and inertia of knowledge. Whatever is predominantly governed by
\nTamas, tends in its force to a sluggish inaction and immobility or else to a mechanical action which it does not possess, but is
\npossessed by obscure forces which drive it in a mechanical round of energy; equally in its consciousness it turns to an inconscience
\nor enveloped subconscience or to a reluctant, sluggish or in some way mechanical conscious action which does not possess the idea
\nof its own energy, but is guided by an idea which seems external to it or at least concealed from its active awareness. Thus the
\nprinciple of our body is in its nature inert, subconscient, incapable of anything but a mechanical and habitual self-guidance
\nand action: though it has like everything else a principle of kinesis and a principle of equilibrium of its state and action,
\nan inherent principle of response and a secret consciousness, the greatest portion of its rajasic motions are contributed by the life-power
\n\t\t\tand all the overt consciousness by the mental being. The principle
\n\t\t\tof rajas has its strongest hold on the vital nature. It is  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tthe Life within us that is the strongest kinetic motor power, but
\nthe life-power in earthly beings is possessed by the force of desire, therefore rajas turns always to action and desire; desire is the
\nstrongest human and animal initiator of most kinesis and action, predominant to such an extent that many consider it the father
\nof all action and even the originator of our being. Moreover, rajas finding itself in a world of matter which starts from the
\nprinciple of inconscience and a mechanical driven inertia, has to work against an immense contrary force; therefore its whole
\naction takes on the nature of an effort, a struggle, a besieged and an impeded conflict for possession which is distressed in its every
\nstep by a limiting incapacity, disappointment and suffering: even its gains are precarious and limited and marred by the reaction
\nof the effort and an aftertaste of insufficiency and transience. The principle of sattwa has its strongest hold in the mind; not
\nso much in the lower parts of the mind which are dominated by the rajasic life-power, but mostly in the intelligence and the
\nwill of the reason. Intelligence, reason, rational will are moved by the nature of their predominant principle towards a constant
\neffort of assimilation, assimilation by knowledge, assimilation by a power of understanding will, a constant effort towards
\nequilibrium, some stability, rule, harmony of the conflicting elements of natural happening and experience. This satisfaction
\nit gets in various ways and in various degrees of acquisition. The attainment of assimilation, equilibrium and harmony brings
\nwith it always a relative but more or less intense and satisfying sense of ease, happiness, mastery, security, which is other than
\nthe troubled and vehement pleasures insecurely bestowed by the satisfaction of rajasic desire and passion. Light and happiness
\nare the characteristics of the sattwic guna. The whole nature of the embodied living mental being is determined by these three
\ngunas. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut these are only predominant powers in each part of our
\ncomplex system. The three qualities mingle, combine and strive in every fibre and in every member of our intricate psychology.
\nThe mental character is made by them, the character of our reason, the character of our will, the character of our moral, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>685<\/font>
\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\taesthetic, emotional, dynamic, sensational being. Tamas brings
\nin all the ignorance, inertia, weakness, incapacity which afflicts our nature, a clouded reason, nescience, unintelligence, a clinging to habitual notions and mechanical ideas, the refusal to think and know, the small mind, the closed avenues, the trotting
\nround of mental habit, the dark and the twilit places. Tamas brings in the impotent will, want of faith and self-confidence and
\ninitiative, the disinclination to act, the shrinking from endeavour and aspiration, the poor and little spirit, and in our moral
\nand dynamic being the inertia, the cowardice, baseness, sloth, lax subjection to small and ignoble motives, the weak yielding
\nto our lower nature. Tamas brings into our emotional nature insensibility, indifference, want of sympathy and openness, the
\nshut soul, the callous heart, the soon spent affection and languor of the feelings, into our aesthetic and sensational nature the
\ndull aesthesis, the limited range of response, the insensibility to beauty, all that makes in man the coarse, heavy and vulgar spirit.
\nRajas contributes our normal active nature with all its good and evil; when unchastened by a sufficient element of sattwa, it
\nturns to egoism, self-will and violence, the perverse, obstinate or exaggerating action of the reason, prejudice, attachment to
\nopinion, clinging to error, the subservience of the intelligence to our desires and preferences and not to the truth, the fanatic or the
\nsectarian mind, self-will, pride, arrogance, selfishness, ambition, lust, greed, cruelty, hatred, jealousy, the egoisms of love, all the
\nvices and passions, the exaggerations of the aesthesis, the morbidities and perversions of the sensational and vital being. Tamas
\nin its own right produces the coarse, dull and ignorant type of human nature, rajas the vivid, restless, kinetic man, driven by the
\nbreath of action, passion and desire. Sattwa produces a higher type. The gifts of sattwa are the mind of reason and balance,
\nclarity of the disinterested truth-seeking open intelligence, a will subordinated to the reason or guided by the ethical spirit, self-control, equality, calm, love, sympathy, refinement, measure, fineness of the aesthetic and emotional mind, in the sensational
\nbeing delicacy, just acceptivity, moderation and poise, a vitality subdued and governed by the mastering intelligence. The <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\taccomplished types of the sattwic man are the philosopher, saint
\nand sage, of the rajasic man the statesman, warrior, forceful man 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 shifting and alternation from the predominance of one
\nto the prevalence of another guna; even in the governing form of their nature most human beings are of a mixed type. All the
\ncolour and variety of life is made of the intricate pattern of the weaving of the gunas. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut richness of life, even a sattwic harmony of mind and nature does not constitute spiritual perfection. There is a relative
\npossible perfection, but it is a perfection of incompleteness, some partial height, force, beauty, some measure of nobility and greatness, some imposed and precariously sustained balance. There is a relative mastery, but it is a mastery of the body by life or of the
\nlife by mind, not a free possession of the instruments by the liberated and self-possessing spirit. The gunas have to be transcended
\nif we would arrive at spiritual perfection. Tamas evidently has to be overcome, inertia and ignorance and incapacity cannot
\nbe elements of a true perfection; but it can only be overcome in Nature by the force of rajas aided by an increasing force
\nof sattwa. Rajas has to be overcome, egoism, personal desire and self-seeking passion are not elements of the true perfection;
\nbut it can only be overcome by force of sattwa enlightening the being and force of tamas limiting the action. Sattwa itself
\ndoes not give the highest or the integral perfection; sattwa is always a quality of the limited nature; sattwic knowledge is the
\nlight of a limited mentality; sattwic will is the government of a limited intelligent force. Moreover, sattwa cannot act by itself
\nin Nature, but has to rely for all action on the aid of rajas, so that even sattwic action is always liable to the imperfections
\nof rajas; egoism, perplexity, inconsistency, a one-sided turn, a limited and exaggerated will, exaggerating itself in the intensity
\nof its limitations, pursue the mind and action even of the saint, philosopher and sage. There is a sattwic as well as a rajasic or
\ntamasic egoism, at the highest an egoism of knowledge or virtue; but the mind’s egoism of whatever type is incompatible with <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tliberation. All the three gunas have to be transcended. Sattwa
\nmay bring us near to the Light, but its limited clarity falls away from us when we enter into the luminous body of the divine
\nNature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis transcendence is usually sought by a withdrawal from
\nthe action of the lower nature. That withdrawal brings with it a stressing of the tendency to inaction. Sattwa when it wishes to
\nintensify itself, seeks to get rid of rajas and calls in the aid of the tamasic principle of inaction; that is the reason why a certain
\ntype of highly sattwic men live intensely in the inward being, but hardly at all in the outward life of action, or else are there
\nincompetent and ineffective. The seeker of liberation goes farther in this direction, strives by imposing an enlightened tamas on
\nhis natural being, a tamas which by this saving enlightenment is more of a quiescence than an incapacity, to give the sattwic
\nguna freedom to lose itself in the light of the spirit. A quietude and stillness is imposed on the body, on the active life-soul of
\ndesire and ego, on the external mind, while the sattwic nature by stress of meditation, by an exclusive concentration of adoration,
\nby a will turned inward to the Supreme, strives to merge itself in the spirit. But if this is sufficient for a quietistic release, it
\nis not sufficient for the freedom of an integral perfection. This liberation depends upon inaction and is not entirely self-existent
\nand absolute; the moment the soul turns to action, it finds that the activity of the nature is still the old imperfect motion. There
\nis a liberation of the soul from the nature which is gained by inaction, but not a liberation of the soul in nature perfect and
\nself-existent whether in action or in inaction. The question then arises whether such a liberation and perfection are possible and
\nwhat may be the condition of this perfect freedom. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ordinary idea is that it is not possible because all action
\nis of the lower gunas, necessarily defective, sados<\/font>am<\/i>, caused by
\nthe motion, inequality, want of balance, unstable strife of the gunas; but when these unequal gunas fall into perfect equilibrium, all action of Nature ceases and the soul rests in its quietude. The divine Being, we may say, may either exist in his silence or
\nact in Nature through her instrumentation, but in that case must <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>688<\/font> 
\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tput on the appearance of her strife and imperfection. That may
\nbe true of the ordinary deputed action of the Divine in the 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. The strife of the gunas is only a representation in the
\nimperfection of the lower nature; what the three gunas stand for are three essential powers of the Divine which are not merely
\nexistent in a perfect equilibrium of quietude, but unified in a perfect consensus of divine action. Tamas in the spiritual being
\nbecomes a divine calm, which is not an inertia and incapacity of 
\naction, but a perfect power, ś<\/font>akti<\/i>, holding in itself all its capacity and capable of controlling and subjecting to the law of calm
\neven the most stupendous and enormous activity: rajas becomes a self-effecting initiating sheer Will of the spirit, which is not
\ndesire, endeavour, striving passion, but the same perfect power
\nof being, ś<\/font>akti<\/i>, capable of an infinite, imperturbable and blissful
\naction. Sattwa becomes not the modified mental light, prakāś<\/font>a<\/i>, but the self-existent light of the divine being,
\njyotih<\/font><\/i>, which is the
\n\t\t\tsoul of the perfect power of being and illumines in their unity
\nthe divine quietude and the divine will of action. The ordinary liberation gets the still divine light in the divine quietude, but
\nthe integral perfection will aim at this greater triune unity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhen this liberation of the nature comes, there is a liberation also of all the spiritual sense of the dualities of Nature. In the lower nature the dualities are the inevitable effect of the
\nplay of the gunas on the soul affected by the formations of the sattwic, rajasic and tamasic ego. The knot of this duality
\nis an ignorance which is unable to seize on the spiritual truth of things and concentrates on the imperfect appearances, but
\nmeets them not with a mastery of their inner truth, but with a strife and a shifting balance of attraction and repulsion, capacity
\nand incapacity, liking and disliking, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, acceptance and repugnance; all life is represented to us
\nas a tangle of these things, of the pleasant and the unpleasant, the beautiful and the unbeautiful, truth and falsehood, fortune and
\nmisfortune, success and failure, good and evil, the inextricable double web of Nature. Attachment to its likings and repugnances <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>689<\/font> 
\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tkeeps the soul bound in this web of good and evil, joys and
\nsorrows. The seeker of liberation gets rid of attachment, throws away from his soul the dualities, but as the dualities appear to be
\nthe whole act, stuff and frame of life, this release would seem to be most easily compassed by a withdrawal from life, whether a
\nphysical withdrawal, so far as that is possible while in the body, or an inner retirement, a refusal of sanction, a liberating distaste,
\n\t\t\tvairā<\/font>gya<\/i>, for the whole action of Nature. There is a separation
\nof the soul from Nature. Then the soul watches seated above 
\nand unmoved, udā<\/font>sī<\/font>na<\/i>, the strife of the gunas in the natural being and regards as an impassive witness the pleasure and pain
\nof the mind and body. Or it is able to impose its indifference even on the outer mind and watches with the impartial calm or
\nthe impartial joy of the detached spectator the universal action in which it has no longer an active inner participation. The end
\nof this movement is the rejection of birth and a departure into the silent self,
\nmoks<\/font>a<\/i>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut this rejection is not the last possible word of liberation.
\nThe integral liberation comes when this passion for release,
\nmumuks<\/font>utva<\/i>, founded on distaste or vairā<\/font>gya<\/i>, is itself transcended; the soul is then liberated both from attachment to the lower action of nature and from all repugnance to the cosmic
\naction of the Divine. This liberation gets its completeness when the spiritual gnosis can act with a supramental knowledge and
\nreception of the action of Nature and a supramental luminous will in initiation. The gnosis discovers the spiritual sense in Nature, God in things, the soul of good in all things that have the contrary appearance; that soul is delivered in them and out
\nof them, the perversions of the imperfect or contrary forms fall away or are transformed into their higher divine truth,
\n\u2014 even as
\nthe gunas go back to their divine principles, \u2014 and the spirit lives in a universal, infinite and absolute Truth, Good, Beauty, Bliss
\nwhich is the supramental or ideal divine Nature. The liberation of the Nature becomes one with the liberation of the spirit, and
\nthere is founded in the integral freedom the integral perfection.   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>690<\/font><\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter IX   The Liberation of the Nature   THE TWO sides of our being, conscious experiencing soul and executive Nature continuously and variously offering…<\/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-2165","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\/2165","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=2165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}