{"id":2177,"date":"2013-07-13T01:39:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2177"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:39:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:39:56","slug":"70-chapter-xvi-the-divine-shakti-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\/70-chapter-xvi-the-divine-shakti-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-70_Chapter XVI The Divine Shakti.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Divine Shakti
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/b> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE RELATION<\/b> between the Purusha and Prakriti which
\nemerges as one advances in the Yoga of self-perfection is the next thing that we have to understand carefully in this
\npart of the Yoga. In the spiritual truth of our being the power which we call Nature is the power of being, consciousness and
\nwill and therefore the power of self-expression and self-creation of the self, soul or Purusha. But to our ordinary mind in the
\nignorance and to its experience of things the force of Prakriti has a different appearance. When we look at it in its universal
\naction outside ourselves, we see it first as a mechanical energy in the cosmos which acts upon matter or in its own created
\nforms of matter. In matter it evolves powers and processes of life and in living matter powers and processes of mind. Throughout its operations it acts by fixed laws and in each kind of created thing displays varying properties of energy and laws
\nof process which give its character to the genus or species and again in the individual develops without infringing the law of
\nthe kind minor characteristics and variations of a considerable consequence. It is this mechanical appearance of Prakriti which
\nhas preoccupied the modern scientific mind and made for it its whole view of Nature, and so much so that science still hopes
\nand labours with a very small amount of success to explain all phenomena of life by laws of matter and all phenomena of mind
\nby laws of living matter. Here soul or spirit has no place and nature cannot be regarded as power of spirit. Since the whole
\nof our existence is mechanical, physical and bounded by the biological phenomenon of a brief living consciousness and man
\nis a creature and instrument of material energy, the spiritual self-evolution of Yoga can be only a delusion, hallucination,
\nabnormal state of mind or self-hypnosis. In any case it cannot be what it represents itself to be, a discovery of the eternal truth <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\t of our being and a passing above the limited truth of the mental,
\nvital and physical to the full truth of our spiritual nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut when we look, not at external mechanical Nature to
\nthe exclusion of our personality, but at the inner subjective experience of man the mental being, our nature takes to us a
\nquite different appearance. We may believe intellectually in a purely mechanical view even of our subjective existence, but we
\ncannot act upon it or make it quite real to our self-experience. For we are conscious of an I which does not seem identical
\nwith our nature, but capable of a standing back from it, of a detached observation and criticism and creative use of it, and
\nof a will which we naturally think of as a free will; and even if this be a delusion, we are still obliged in practice to act as if we
\nwere responsible mental beings capable of a free choice of our actions, able to use or misuse and to turn to higher or lower ends
\nour nature. And even we seem to be struggling both with our environmental and with our own present nature and striving to
\nget mastery over a world which imposes itself on and masters us and at the same time to become something more than we
\nnow are. But the difficulty is that we are only in command, if at all, over a small part of ourselves, the rest is subconscient or
\nsubliminal and beyond our control, our will acts only in a small selection of our activities; the most is a process of mechanism
\nand habit and we must strive constantly with ourselves and surrounding circumstances to make the least advance or self-amelioration. There seems to be a dual being in us; Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, seem to be half in agreement, half
\nat odds, Nature laying its mechanical control on the soul, the soul attempting to change and master nature. And the question
\nis what is the fundamental character of this duality and what the issue. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Sankhya explanation is that our present existence is governed by a dual principle. Prakriti is inert without the contact of Purusha, acts only by a junction with it and then too by the fixed mechanism of her instruments and qualities; Purusha,
\npassive and free apart from Prakriti, becomes by contact with her and sanction to her works subject to this mechanism, lives <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tin her limitation of ego-sense and must get free by withdrawing
\nthe sanction and returning to its own proper principle. Another explanation that tallies with a certain part of our experience
\nis that there is a dual being in us, the animal and material, or more widely the lower nature-bound, and the soul or spiritual
\nbeing entangled by mind in the material existence or in world-nature, and freedom comes by escape from the entanglement,
\nthe soul returning to its native planes or the self or spirit to its pure existence. The perfection of the soul then is to be found
\nnot at all in, but beyond Nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut in a higher than our present mental consciousness we
\nfind that this duality is only a phenomenal appearance. The highest and real truth of existence is the one Spirit, the supreme
\nSoul, Purushottama, and it is the power of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all that we experience as universe. This
\nuniversal Nature is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit.
\nThe mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance and the reality is the Spirit creating or manifesting its own being by
\nits own power of being in all that is in Nature. Soul and Nature in us too are only a dual appearance of the one existence. The
\nuniversal energy acts in us, but the soul limits itself by the egosense, lives in a partial and separate experience of her workings,
\nuses only a modicum and a fixed action of her energy for its self-expression. It seems rather to be mastered and used by this
\nenergy than to use it, because it identifies itself with the egosense which is part of the natural instrumentation and lives in
\nthe ego experience. The ego is in fact driven by the mechanism of Nature of which it is a part and the ego-will is not and cannot
\nbe a free will. To arrive at freedom, mastery and perfection we have to get back to the real self and soul within and arrive too
\nthereby at our true relations with our own and with universal nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn our active being this translates itself into a replacement of our egoistic, our personal, our separatively individual will
\nand energy by a universal and a divine will and energy which determines our action in harmony with the universal action and
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\treveals itself as the direct will and the all-guiding power of the Purushottama. We replace the inferior action of the limited, ignorant and imperfect personal will and energy in us by the
\naction of the divine Shakti. To open ourselves to the universal energy is always possible to us, because that is all around us and
\nalways flowing into us, it is that which supports and supplies all our inner and outer action and in fact we have no power
\nof our own in any separately individual sense, but only a personal formulation of the one Shakti. And on the other hand this
\nuniversal Shakti is within ourselves, concentrated in us, for the whole power of it is present in each individual as in the universe,
\nand there are means and processes by which we can awaken its greater and potentially infinite force and liberate it to its larger
\nworkings. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe can become aware of the existence and presence of the
\nuniversal Shakti in the various forms of her power. At present we are conscious only of the power as formulated in our physical
\nmind, nervous being and corporeal case sustaining our various activities. But if we can once get beyond this first formation
\nby some liberation of the hidden, recondite, subliminal parts of our existence by Yoga, we become aware of a greater life
\nforce, a pranic Shakti, which supports and fills the body and supplies all the physical and vital activities, \u2014 for the physical
\nenergy is only a modified form of this force, \u2014 and supplies and sustains too from below all our mental action. This force
\nwe feel in ourselves also, but we can feel it too around us and above, one with the same energy in us, and can draw it in and
\ndown to aggrandise our normal action or call upon and get it to pour into us. It is an illimitable ocean of Shakti and will
\npour as much of itself as we can hold into our being. This pranic force we can use for any of the activities of life, body
\nor mind with a far greater and effective power than any that we command in our present operations, limited as they are by
\nthe physical formula. The use of this pranic power liberates us from that limitation to the extent of our ability to use it in
\nplace of the body-bound energy. It can be used so to direct the prana as to manage more powerfully or to rectify any bodily<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>755<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tstate or action, as to heal illness or to get rid of fatigue, and
\nto liberate an enormous amount of mental exertion and play of will or knowledge. The exercises of Pranayama are the familiar
\nmechanical means of freeing and getting control of the pranic energy. They heighten too and set free the psychic, mental and
\nspiritual energies which ordinarily depend for their opportunity of action on the pranic force. But the same thing can be done by
\nmental will and practice or by an increasing opening of ourselves to a higher spiritual power of the Shakti. The pranic Shakti can
\nbe directed not only upon ourselves, but effectively towards others or on things or happenings for whatever purposes the
\nwill dictates. Its effectivity is immense, in itself illimitable, and limited only by defect of the power, purity and universality of
\nthe spiritual or other will which is brought to bear upon it; but still, however great and powerful, it is a lower formulation, a
\nlink between the mind and body, an instrumental force. There is a consciousness in it, a presence of the spirit, of which we are
\naware, but it is encased, involved in and preoccupied with the urge to action. It is not to this action of the Shakti that we can
\nleave the whole burden of our activities; we have either to use its lendings by our own enlightened personal will or else call in
\na higher guidance; for of itself it will act with greater force, but still according to our imperfect nature and mainly by the drive
\nand direction of the life-power in us and not according to the law of the highest spiritual existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ordinary power by which we govern the pranic energy is that of the embodied mind. But when we get clear above
\nthe physical mind, we can get too above the pranic force to the consciousness of a pure mental energy which is a higher
\nformulation of the Shakti. There we are aware of a universal mind consciousness closely associated with this energy in,
\naround and above us, \u2014 above, that is to say, the level of our ordinary mind status, \u2014 giving all the substance and shaping all
\nthe forms of our will and knowledge and of the psychic element in our impulses and emotions. This mind force can be made to
\nact upon the pranic energy and can impose upon it the influence, colour, shape, character, direction of our ideas, our knowledge,
\n  
\n <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tour more enlightened volition and thus more effectively bring
\nour life and vital being into harmony with our higher powers of being, ideals and spiritual aspirations. In our ordinary state
\nthese two, the mental and the pranic being and energies, are very much mixed up and run into each other, and we are not able
\nclearly to distinguish them or get a full hold of the one on the other and so control effectively the lower by the higher and more
\nunderstanding principle. But when we take our station above the physical mind, we are able then to separate clearly the two forms
\nof energy, the two levels of our being, disentangle their action and act with a clearer and more potent self-knowledge and an
\nenlightened and a purer will-power. Nevertheless the control is not complete, spontaneous, sovereign so long as we work with
\nthe mind as our chief guiding and controlling force. The mental energy we find to be itself derivative, a lower and limiting power
\nof the conscious spirit which acts only by isolated and combined seeings, imperfect and incomplete half-lights which we take for
\nfull and adequate light, and with a disparity between the idea and knowledge and the effective will-power. And we are aware
\nsoon of a far higher power of the Spirit and its Shakti concealed or above, superconscient to mind or partially acting through the
\nmind, of which all this is an inferior derivation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Purusha and Prakriti are on the mental level as in the
\nrest of our being closely joined and much involved in each other and we are not able to distinguish clearly soul and nature. But in
\nthe purer substance of mind we can more easily discern the dual strain. The mental Purusha is naturally able in its own native
\nprinciple of mind to detach itself, as we have seen, from the workings of its Prakriti and there is then a division of our being
\nbetween a consciousness that observes and can reserve its willpower and an energy full of the substance of consciousness that
\ntakes the forms of knowledge, will and feeling. This detachment gives at its highest a certain freedom from the compulsion of
\nthe soul by its mental nature. For ordinarily we are driven and carried along in the stream of our own and the universal active energy partly floundering in its waves, partly maintaining and seeming to guide or at least propel ourselves by a collected <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthought and an effort of the mental will muscle; but now there
\nis a part of ourselves, nearest to the pure essence of self, which is free from the stream, can quietly observe and to a certain extent
\ndecide its immediate movement and course and to a greater extent its ultimate direction. The Purusha can at last act upon
\nthe Prakriti from half apart, from behind or from above her as a presiding person or presence,
\nadhyaks<\/font>a<\/i>, by the power of
\n.<\/i> sanction and control inherent in the spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat we shall do with this relative freedom depends on our aspiration, our idea of the relation we must have with our highest
\nself, with God and Nature. It is possible for the Purusha to use it on the mental plane itself for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification, to sanction, reject, alter, bring out new formulations of the nature and establish a calm and
\ndisinterested action, a high and pure sattwic balance and rhythm of its energy, a personality perfected in the sattwic principle.
\nThis may amount only to a highly mentalised perfection of our present intelligence and the ethical and the psychic being or
\nelse, aware of the greater self in us, it may impersonalise, universalise, spiritualise its self-conscious existence and the action
\nof its nature and arrive either at a large quietude or a large perfection of the spiritualised mental energy of its being. It is
\npossible again for the Purusha to stand back entirely and by a refusal of sanction allow the whole normal action of the mind to
\nexhaust itself, run down, spend its remaining impetus of habitual action and fall into silence. Or else this silence may be imposed
\non the mental energy by rejection of its action and a constant command to quietude. The soul may through the confirmation
\nof this quietude and mental silence pass into some ineffable tranquillity of the spirit and vast cessation of the activities of
\nNature. But it is also possible to make this silence of the mind and ability to suspend the habits of the lower nature a first step
\ntowards the discovery of a superior formulation, a higher grade of the status and energy of our being and pass by an ascent and
\ntransformation into the supramental power of the spirit. And this may even, though with more difficulty, be done without
\nresorting to the complete state of quietude of the normal mind  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tby a persistent and progressive transformation of all the mental
\ninto their greater corresponding supramental powers and activities. For everything in the mind derives from and is a limited,
\ninferior, groping, partial or perverse translation into mentality of something in the supermind. But neither of these movements can
\nbe successfully executed by the sole individual unaided power of the mental Purusha in us, but needs the help, intervention and
\nguidance of the divine Self, the Ishwara, the Purushottama. For the supermind is the divine mind and it is on the supramental
\nplane that the individual arrives at his right, integral, luminous and perfect relation with the supreme and universal Purusha and
\nthe supreme and universal Para Prakriti. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs the mind progresses in purity, capacity of stillness or
\nfreedom from absorption in its own limited action, it becomes aware of and is able to reflect, bring into itself or enter into
\nthe conscious presence of the Self, the supreme and universal Spirit, and it becomes aware too of grades and powers of the
\nspirit higher than its own highest ranges. It becomes aware of an infinite of the consciousness of being, an infinite ocean of all
\nthe power and energy of illimitable consciousness, an infinite ocean of Ananda, of the self-moved delight of existence. It may
\nbe aware of one or other only of these things, for the mind can separate and feel exclusively as distinct original principles what
\nin a higher experience are inseparable powers of the One, or it may feel them in a trinity or fusion which reveals or arrives at
\ntheir oneness. It may become aware of it on the side of Purusha or on the side of Prakriti. On the side of Purusha it reveals itself
\nas Self or Spirit, as Being or as the one sole existent Being, the divine Purushottama, and the individual Jiva soul can enter into
\nentire oneness with it in its timeless self or in its universality, or enjoy nearness, immanence, difference without any gulf of
\nseparation and enjoy too inseparably and at one and the same time oneness of being and delight-giving difference of relation
\nin active experiencing nature. On the side of Prakriti the power and Ananda of the Spirit come into the front to manifest this
\nInfinite in the beings and personalities and ideas and forms and forces of the universe and there is then present to us the divine
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>759<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tMahashakti, original Power, supreme Nature, holding in herself
\ninfinite existence and creating the wonders of the cosmos. The mind grows conscious of this illimitable ocean of Shakti or else
\nof her presence high above the mind and pouring something of herself into us to constitute all that we are and think and will
\nand do and feel and experience, or it is conscious of her all around us and our personality a wave of the ocean of power
\nof spirit, or of her presence in us and of her action there based on our present form of natural existence but originated from
\nabove and raising us towards the higher spiritual status. The mind too can rise towards and touch her infinity or merge itself
\nin it in trance of samadhi or can lose itself in her universality, and then our individuality disappears, our centre of action is
\nthen no longer in us, but either outside our bodied selves or nowhere; our mental activities are then no longer our own, but
\ncome into this frame of mind, life and body from the universal, work themselves out and pass leaving no impression on us, and
\nthis frame of ourselves too is only an insignificant circumstance in her cosmic vastness. But the perfection sought in the integral
\nYoga is not only to be one with her in her highest spiritual power and one with her in her universal action, but to realise
\nand possess the fullness of this Shakti in our individual being and nature. For the supreme Spirit is one as Purusha or as Prakriti,
\nconscious being or power of conscious being, and as the Jiva in essence of self and spirit is one with the supreme Purusha, so
\non the side of Nature, in power of self and spirit it is one with 
\nShakti, parā<\/font> prakr<\/font>tir jī<\/font>vabhūtā<\/font><\/i>. To realise this double oneness is .<\/i>
\nthe condition of the integral self-perfection. The Jiva is then the meeting-place of the play of oneness of the supreme Soul and
\nNature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo reach this perfection we have to become aware of the divine
\n\t\t\tShakti, draw her to us and call her in to fill the whole system and
\n\t\t\ttake up the charge of all our activities. There will then be no
\n\t\t\tseparate personal will or individual energy trying to conduct our
\n\t\t\tactions, no sense of a little personal self as the doer, nor will it
\n\t\t\tbe the lower energy of the three gunas, the mental, vital and
\n\t\t\tphysical nature. The divine Shakti will fill  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>760<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tus and preside over and take up all our inner activities, our
\nouter life, our Yoga. She will take up the mental energy, her own lower formation, and raise it to its highest and purest and
\nfullest powers of intelligence and will and psychic action. She will change the mechanical energies of the mind, life and body
\nwhich now govern us into delight-filled manifestations of her own living and conscious power and presence. She will manifest
\nin us and relate to each other all the various spiritual experiences of which the mind is capable. And as the crown of this process
\nshe will bring down the supramental light into the mental levels, change the stuff of mind into the stuff of supermind, transform
\nall the lower energies into energies of her supramental nature and raise us into our being of gnosis. The Shakti will reveal
\nherself as the power of the Purushottama, and it is the Ishwara who will manifest himself in his force of supermind and spirit
\nand be the master of our being, action, life and Yoga.   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>761<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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