{"id":2167,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2167"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:52","slug":"38-chapter-xx-the-lower-triple-purusha-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\/38-chapter-xx-the-lower-triple-purusha-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-38_Chapter XX The Lower Triple Purusha.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Lower Triple Purusha <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tS<\/font>UCH<\/b> is the constituent
\n\t\t\tprinciple of the various worlds of cosmic existence and the various
\n\t\t\tplanes of our being; they are as if a ladder plunging down into
\n\t\t\tMatter and perhaps below it, rising up into the heights of the
\n\t\t\tSpirit, even perhaps to the point at which existence escapes out of
\n\t\t\tcosmic being into ranges of a supra-cosmic Absolute, \u2014 so at least
\n\t\t\tit is averred in the world-system of the Buddhists. But to our
\n\t\t\tordinary materialised consciousness all this does not exist because
\n\t\t\tit is hidden from us by our preoccupation with our existence in a
\n\t\t\tlittle corner of the material universe and with the petty
\n\t\t\texperiences of the little hour of time which is represented by our
\n\t\t\tlife in a single body upon this earth. To that consciousness the
\n\t\t\tworld is a mass of material things and forces thrown into some kind
\n\t\t\tof shape and harmonised into a system of regulated movements by a
\n\t\t\tnumber of fixed self-existent laws which we have to obey, by which
\n\t\t\twe are governed and circumscribed and of which we have to get the
\n\t\t\tbest knowledge we can so as to make the most of this one brief
\n\t\t\texistence which begins with birth, ends with death and has no second
\n\t\t\trecurrence. Our own being is a sort of accident or at least a very
\n\t\t\tsmall and minor circumstance in the universal life of Matter or the
\n\t\t\teternal continuity of the workings of material Force. Somehow or
\n\t\t\tother a soul or mind has come to exist in a body and it stumbles
\n\t\t\tabout among things and forces which it does not very well
\n\t\t\tunderstand, at first preoccupied with the difficulty of managing to
\n\t\t\tlive in a dangerous and largely hostile world and then with the
\n\t\t\teffort to understand its laws and use them so as to make life as
\n\t\t\ttolerable or as happy as possible so long as it lasts. If we were
\n\t\t\treally nothing more than such a minor movement of individualised
\n\t\t\tmind in Matter, existence would have nothing more to offer us; its
\n\t\t\tbest part would be at most this struggle of an ephemeral intellect
\n\t\t\tand will with eternal <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t Matter and with the difficulties of Life
\n\t\t\tsupplemented and eased by a play of imagination and by the consoling
\n\t\t\tfictions presented to us by religion and art and all the wonders
\n\t\t\tdreamed of by the brooding mind and restless fancy of man. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut because he is a soul and not merely a living body, man can never
\n\t\t\tfor long remain satisfied that this first view of his existence, the
\n\t\t\tsole view justified by the external and objective facts of life, is
\n\t\t\tthe real truth or the whole knowledge: his subjective being is full
\n\t\t\tof hints and inklings of realities beyond, it is open to the sense
\n\t\t\tof infinity and immortality, it is easily convinced of other worlds,
\n\t\t\thigher possibilities of being, larger fields of experience for the
\n\t\t\tsoul. Science gives us the objective truth of existence and the
\n\t\t\tsuperficial knowledge of our physical and vital being; but we feel
\n\t\t\tthat there are truths beyond which possibly through the cultivation
\n\t\t\tof our subjective being and the enlargement of its powers may come
\n\t\t\tto lie more and more open to us. When the knowledge of this world is
\n\t\t\tours, we are irresistibly impelled to seek for the knowledge of
\n\t\t\tother states of existence beyond, and that is the reason why an age
\n\t\t\tof strong materialism and scepticism is always followed by an age of
\n\t\t\toccultism, of mystical creeds, of new religions and profounder
\n\t\t\tseekings after the Infinite and the Divine. The knowledge of our
\n\t\t\tsuperficial mentality and the laws of our bodily life is not enough;
\n\t\t\tit brings us always to all that mysterious and hidden depth of
\n\t\t\tsubjective existence below and behind of which our surface
\n\t\t\tconsciousness is only a fringe or an outer court. We come to see
\n\t\t\tthat what is present to our physical senses is only the material
\n\t\t\tshell of cosmic existence and what is obvious in our superficial
\n\t\t\tmentality is only the margin of immense continents which lie behind
\n\t\t\tunexplored. To explore them must be the work of another knowledge
\n\t\t\tthan that of physical science or of a superficial psychology. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tReligion is the first attempt of man to get beyond himself and
\n\t\t\tbeyond the obvious and material facts of his existence. Its first
\n\t\t\tessential work is to confirm and make real to him his subjective
\n\t\t\tsense of an Infinite on which his material and mental being depends
\n\t\t\tand the aspiration of his soul to come into its presence and live in
\n\t\t\tcontact with it. Its function is to assure <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\thim too of that possibility of which he has always dreamed, but of
\n\t\t\twhich his ordinary life gives him no assurance, the possibility of
\n\t\t\ttranscending himself and growing out of bodily life and mortality
\n\t\t\tinto the joy of immortal life and spiritual existence. It also
\n\t\t\tconfirms in him the sense that there are worlds or planes of
\n\t\t\texistence other than that in which his lot is now cast, worlds in
\n\t\t\twhich this mortality and this subjection to evil and suffering are
\n\t\t\tnot the natural state, but rather bliss of immortality is the
\n\t\t\teternal condition. Incidentally, it gives him a rule of mortal life
\n\t\t\tby which he shall prepare himself for immortality. He is a soul and
\n\t\t\tnot a body and his earthly life is a means by which he determines
\n\t\t\tthe future conditions of his spiritual being. So much is common to
\n\t\t\tall religions; beyond this we get from them no assured certainty.
\n\t\t\tTheir voices vary; some tell us that one life on earth is all we
\n\t\t\thave in which to determine our future existence, deny the past
\n\t\t\timmortality of the soul and assert only its future immortality,
\n\t\t\tthreaten it even with the incredible dogma of a future of eternal
\n\t\t\tsuffering for those who miss the right path, while others more large
\n\t\t\tand rational affirm successive existences by which the soul grows
\n\t\t\tinto the knowledge of the Infinite with a complete assurance for all
\n\t\t\tof ultimate arrival and perfection. Some present the Infinite to us
\n\t\t\tas a Being other than ourselves with whom we can have personal
\n\t\t\trelations, others as an impersonal existence into which our separate
\n\t\t\tbeing has to merge; some therefore give us as our goal worlds beyond
\n\t\t\tin which we dwell in the presence of the Divine, others a cessation
\n\t\t\tof world-existence by immergence in the Infinite. Most invite us to
\n\t\t\tbear or to abandon earthly life as a trial or a temporary affliction
\n\t\t\tor a vanity and fix our hopes beyond; in some we find a vague hint
\n\t\t\tof a future triumph of the Spirit, the Divine in the body, upon this
\n\t\t\tearth, in the collective life of man, and so justify not only the
\n\t\t\tseparate hope and aspiration of the individual but the united and
\n\t\t\tsympathetic hope and aspiration of the race. Religion in fact is not
\n\t\t\tknowledge, but a faith and aspiration; it is justified indeed both
\n\t\t\tby an imprecise intuitive knowledge of large spiritual truths and by
\n\t\t\tthe subjective experience of souls that have risen beyond the
\n\t\t\tordinary life, but in itself it only gives us the hope and faith by
\n\t\t\twhich we may be  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tinduced to aspire to the intimate
\n\t\t\tpossession of the hidden tracts and larger realities of the Spirit.
\n\t\t\tThat we turn always the few distinct truths and the symbols or the
\n\t\t\tparticular discipline of a religion into hard and fast dogmas, is a
\n\t\t\tsign that as yet we are only infants in the spiritual knowledge and
\n\t\t\tare yet far from the science of the Infinite. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tYet behind every great religion, behind, that is to say, its
\n\t\t\texoteric side of faith, hope, symbols, scattered truths and limiting
\n\t\t\tdogmas, there is an esoteric side of inner spiritual training and
\n\t\t\tillumination by which the hidden truths may be known, worked out,
\n\t\t\tpossessed. Behind every exoteric religion there is an esoteric Yoga,
\n\t\t\tan intuitive knowledge to which its faith is the first step,
\n\t\t\tinexpressible realities of which its symbols are the figured
\n\t\t\texpression, a deeper sense for its scattered truths, mysteries of
\n\t\t\tthe higher planes of existence of which even its dogmas and
\n\t\t\tsuperstitions are crude hints and indications. What Science does for
\n\t\t\tour knowledge of the material world, replacing first appearances and
\n\t\t\tuses by the hidden truths and as yet occult powers of its great
\n\t\t\tnatural forces and in our own minds beliefs and opinions by verified
\n\t\t\texperience and a profounder understanding, Yoga does for the higher
\n\t\t\tplanes and worlds and possibilities of our being which are aimed at
\n\t\t\tby the religions. Therefore all this mass of graded experience
\n\t\t\texisting behind closed doors to which the consciousness of man may
\n\t\t\tfind, if it wills, the key, falls within the province of a
\n\t\t\tcomprehensive Yoga of knowledge, which need not be confined to the
\n\t\t\tseeking after the Absolute alone or the knowledge of the Divine in
\n\t\t\titself or of the Divine only in its isolated relations with the
\n\t\t\tindividual human soul. It is true that the consciousness of the
\n\t\t\tAbsolute is the highest reach of the Yoga of knowledge and that the
\n\t\t\tpossession of the Divine is its first, greatest and most ardent
\n\t\t\tobject and that to neglect it for an inferior knowledge is to
\n\t\t\tafflict our Yoga with inferiority or even frivolity and to miss or
\n\t\t\tfall away from its characteristic object; but, the Divine in itself
\n\t\t\tbeing known, the Yoga of knowledge may well embrace also the
\n\t\t\tknowledge of the Divine in its relations with ourselves and the
\n\t\t\tworld on the different planes of our existence. To rise to the pure
\n\t\t\tSelf being  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tsteadfastly held to as the summit of our subjective self-uplifting,
\n\t\t\twe may from that height possess our lower selves even to the
\n\t\t\tphysical and the workings of Nature which belong to them. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe may seek this knowledge on two sides separately, the side of
\n\t\t\tPurusha, the side of Prakriti; and we may combine the two for the
\n\t\t\tperfect possession of the various relations of Purusha and Prakriti
\n\t\t\tin the light of the Divine. There is, says the Upanishad, a fivefold
\n\t\t\tsoul in man and the world, the microcosm and the macrocosm. The
\n\t\t\tphysical soul, self or being, \u2014 Purusha, Atman, \u2014 is that of which
\n\t\t\twe are all at first conscious, a self which seems to have hardly any
\n\t\t\texistence apart from the body and no action vital or even mental
\n\t\t\tindependent of it. This physical soul is present everywhere in
\n\t\t\tmaterial Nature; it pervades the body, actuates obscurely its
\n\t\t\tmovements and is the whole basis of its experiences; it informs all
\n\t\t\tthings even that are not mentally conscious. But in man this
\n\t\t\tphysical being has become vitalised and mentalised; it has received
\n\t\t\tsomething of the law and capacities of the vital and mental being
\n\t\t\tand nature. But its possession of them is derivative, superimposed,
\n\t\t\tas it were, on its original nature and exercised under subjection to
\n\t\t\tthe law and action of the physical existence and its instruments. It
\n\t\t\tis this dominance of our mental and vital parts by the body and the
\n\t\t\tphysical nature which seems at first sight to justify the theory of
\n\t\t\tthe materialists that mind and life are only circumstances and
\n\t\t\tresults of physical force and all their operations explicable by the
\n\t\t\tactivities of that force in the animal body. In fact entire
\n\t\t\tsubjection of the mind and the life to the body is the
\n\t\t\tcharacteristic of an undeveloped humanity, as it is in an even
\n\t\t\tgreater degree of the infra-human animal. According to the theory of
\n\t\t\treincarnation those who do not get beyond this stage in the earthly
\n\t\t\tlife, cannot rise after death to the mental or higher vital worlds,
\n\t\t\tbut have to return from the confines of a series of physical planes
\n\t\t\tto increase their development in the next earthly existence. For the
\n\t\t\tundeveloped physical soul is entirely dominated by material nature
\n\t\t\tand its impressions and has to work them out to a better advantage
\n\t\t\tbefore it can rise in the scale of being. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA more developed humanity allows us to make a better and <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tfreer use of all the capacities and
\n\t\t\texperiences that we derive from the vital and mental planes of
\n\t\t\tbeing, to lean more for support upon these hidden planes, be less
\n\t\t\tabsorbed by the physical and to govern and modify the original
\n\t\t\tnature of the physical being by greater vital forces and powers from
\n\t\t\tthe desire-world and greater and subtler mental forces and powers
\n\t\t\tfrom the psychical and intellectual planes. By this development we
\n\t\t\tare able to rise to higher altitudes of the intermediary existence
\n\t\t\tbetween death and rebirth and to make a better and more rapid use of
\n\t\t\trebirth itself for a yet higher mental and spiritual development.
\n\t\t\tBut even so, in the physical being which still determines the
\n\t\t\tgreater part of our waking self, we act without definite
\n\t\t\tconsciousness of the worlds or planes which are the sources of our
\n\t\t\taction. We are aware indeed of the life-plane and mind-plane of the
\n\t\t\tphysical being, but not of the life-plane and mind-plane proper or
\n\t\t\tof the superior and larger vital and mental being which we are
\n\t\t\tbehind the veil of our ordinary consciousness. It is only at a high
\n\t\t\tstage of development that we become aware of them and even then,
\n\t\t\tordinarily, only at the back of the action of our mentalised
\n\t\t\tphysical nature; we do not actually live on those planes, for if we
\n\t\t\tdid we could very soon arrive at the conscious control of the body
\n\t\t\tby the life-power and of both by the sovereign mind; we should then
\n\t\t\tbe able to determine our physical and mental life to a very large
\n\t\t\textent by our will and knowledge as masters of our being and with a
\n\t\t\tdirect action of the mind on the life and body. By Yoga this power
\n\t\t\tof transcending the physical self and taking possession of the
\n\t\t\thigher selves may to a greater or less degree be acquired through a
\n\t\t\theightened and widened self-consciousness and self-mastery. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis may be done, on the side of Purusha, by drawing back from the
\n\t\t\tphysical self and its preoccupation with physical nature and through
\n\t\t\tconcentration of thought and will raising oneself into the vital and
\n\t\t\tthen into the mental self. By doing so we can become the vital being
\n\t\t\tand draw up the physical self into that new consciousness so that we
\n\t\t\tare only aware of the body, its nature and its actions as secondary
\n\t\t\tcircumstances of the Life-soul which we now are, used by it for its
\n\t\t\trelations with the <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tmaterial world. A certain remoteness from physical being and then a
\n\t\t\tsuperiority to it; a vivid sense of the body being a mere instrument
\n\t\t\tor shell and easily detachable; an extraordinary effectivity of our
\n\t\t\tdesires on our physical being and life-environment; a great sense of
\n\t\t\tpower and ease in manipulating and directing the vital energy of
\n\t\t\twhich we now become vividly conscious, for its action is felt by us
\n\t\t\tconcretely, subtly physical in relation to the body, sensible in a
\n\t\t\tsort of subtle density as an energy used by the mind; an awareness
\n\t\t\tof the life-plane in us above the physical and knowledge and contact
\n\t\t\twith the beings of the desire-world; a coming into action of new
\n\t\t\tpowers, \u2014 what are usually called occult powers or siddhis; a close
\n\t\t\tsense of and sympathy with the Life-soul in the world and a
\n\t\t\tknowledge or sensation of the emotions, desires, vital impulses of
\n\t\t\tothers; these are some of the signs of this new consciousness gained
\n\t\t\tby Yoga. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut all this belongs to the inferior grades of spiritual experience
\n\t\t\tand indeed is hardly more spiritual than the physical existence. We
\n\t\t\thave in the same way to go yet higher and raise ourselves into the
\n\t\t\tmental self. By doing so we can become the mental self and draw up
\n\t\t\tthe physical and vital being into it, so that life and body and
\n\t\t\ttheir operations become to us minor circumstances of our being used
\n\t\t\tby the Mind-soul which we now are for the execution of its lower
\n\t\t\tpurposes that belong to the material existence. Here too we acquire
\n\t\t\tat first a certain remoteness from the life and the body and our
\n\t\t\treal life seems to be on quite another plane than material man’s, in
\n\t\t\tcontact with a subtler existence, a greater light of knowledge than
\n\t\t\tthe terrestrial, a far rarer and yet more sovereign energy; we are
\n\t\t\tin touch in fact with the mental plane, aware of the mental worlds,
\n\t\t\tcan be in communication with its beings and powers. From that plane
\n\t\t\twe behold the desire-world and the material existence as if below
\n\t\t\tus, things that we can cast away from us if we will and in fact
\n\t\t\teasily reject when we relinquish the body, so as to dwell in the
\n\t\t\tmental or psychical heavens. But we can also, instead of being thus
\n\t\t\tremote and detached, become rather superior to the life and body and
\n\t\t\tthe vital and material planes and act upon them with mastery from
\n\t\t\tour new height of being. Another sort  <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tof dynamis than physical or vital energy,
\n\t\t\tsomething that we may call pure mind-power and soul-force, which the
\n\t\t\tdeveloped human being uses indeed but derivatively and imperfectly,
\n\t\t\tbut which we can now use freely and with knowledge, becomes the
\n\t\t\tordinary process of our action, while desire-force and physical
\n\t\t\taction fall into a secondary place and are only used with this new
\n\t\t\tenergy behind them and as its occasional channels. We are in touch
\n\t\t\tand sympathy also with the Mind in cosmos, conscious of it, aware of
\n\t\t\tthe intentions, directions, thought-forces, struggle of subtle
\n\t\t\tpowers behind all happenings, which the ordinary man is ignorant of
\n\t\t\tor can only obscurely infer from the physical happening, but which
\n\t\t\twe can now see and feel directly before there is any physical sign
\n\t\t\tor even vital intimation of their working. We acquire too the
\n\t\t\tknowledge and sense of the mind-action of other beings whether on
\n\t\t\tthe physical plane or on those above it; and the higher capacities
\n\t\t\tof the mental being, \u2014 occult powers or siddhis, but of a much rarer
\n\t\t\tor subtler kind than those proper to the vital plane, \u2014 naturally
\n\t\t\tawake in our consciousness. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll these however are circumstances of the lower triple world of our
\n\t\t\tbeing, the trailokya <\/i>of the ancient sages. Living on these we
\n\t\t\tare, whatever the enlargement of our powers and our consciousness,
\n\t\t\tstill living within the limits of the cosmic gods and subject,
\n\t\t\tthough with a much subtler, easier and modified subjection, to the
\n\t\t\treign of Prakriti over Purusha. To achieve real freedom and mastery
\n\t\t\twe have to ascend to a yet higher level of the many-plateaued
\n\t\t\tmountain of our being.   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Chapter XX   The Lower Triple Purusha   SUCH is the constituent principle of the various worlds of cosmic existence and the various planes of…<\/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-2167","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\/2167","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=2167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}