{"id":2192,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2192"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:02","slug":"60-chapter-vi-purification-the-lower-mentality-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\/60-chapter-vi-purification-the-lower-mentality-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-60_Chapter VI Purification \u00e2\u20ac\u201d The Lower Mentality.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPurification \u2014 The Lower Mentality
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tW<\/font>E HAVE<\/b> to deal with the complex action of all these
\ninstruments and set about their purification. And the simplest way will be to fasten on the two kinds of
\nradical defect in each, distinguish clearly in what they consist and set them right. But there is also the question where we are
\nto begin. For the entanglement is great, the complete purification of one instrument depends on the complete purification too of
\nall the others, and that is a great source of difficulty, disappointment and perplexity,
\n\u2014 as when we think we have got the
\nintelligence purified, only to find that it is still subject to attack and over-clouding because the emotions of the heart and the will
\nand sensational mind are still affected by the many impurities of the lower nature and they get back into the enlightened buddhi
\nand prevent it from reflecting the pure truth for which we are seeking. But we have on the other hand this advantage that
\none important instrument sufficiently purified can be used as a means for the purification of the others, one step firmly taken
\nmakes easier all the others and gets rid of a host of difficulties. Which instrument then by its purification and perfection will
\nbring about most easily and effectively or can aid with a most powerful rapidity the perfection of the rest? <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tSince we are the spirit enveloped in mind, a soul evolved here as a mental being in a living physical body, it must naturally
\nbe in the mind, the antah<\/font>karan<\/font>a<\/i>, that we must look for this .<\/i>
\n.<\/i> desideratum. And in the mind it is evidently by the buddhi, the
\nintelligence and the will of the intelligence that the human being is intended to do whatever work is not done for him by the physical or nervous nature as in the plant and the animal. Pending the evolution of any higher supramental power the intelligent will
\nmust be our main force for effectuation and to purify it becomes a very primary necessity. Once our intelligence and will are well
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tpurified of all that limits them and gives them a wrong action
\nor wrong direction, they can easily be perfected, can be made to respond to the suggestions of Truth, understand themselves and
\nthe rest of the being, see clearly and with a fine and scrupulous accuracy what they are doing and follow out the right way to do
\nit without any hesitating or eager error or stumbling deviation. Eventually their response can be opened up to the perfect discernings, intuitions, inspirations, revelations of the supermind and proceed by a more and more luminous and even infallible
\naction. But this purification cannot be effected without a preliminary clearing of its natural obstacles in the other lower parts of
\nthe antah<\/font>karan<\/font>a<\/i>, and the chief natural obstacle running through  the whole action of the antah<\/font>karan<\/font>a<\/i>, through the sense, the
\nmental sensation, emotion, dynamic impulse, intelligence, will, is the intermiscence and the compelling claim of the psychic prana.
\nThis then must be dealt with, its dominating intermiscence ruled out, its claim denied, itself quieted and prepared for purification. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tEach instrument has, it has been said, a proper and legitimate action and also a deformation or wrong principle of its
\nproper action. The proper action of the psychic prana is pure possession and enjoyment,
\nbhoga<\/i>. To enjoy thought, will, action,
\ndynamic impulse, result of action, emotion, sense, sensation, to enjoy too by their means objects, persons, life, the world, is the
\nactivity for which this prana gives us a psycho-physical basis. A really perfect enjoyment of existence can only come when
\nwhat we enjoy is not the world in itself or for itself, but God in the world, when it is not things, but the Ananda of the spirit
\nin things that forms the real, essential object of our enjoying and things only as form and symbol of the spirit, waves of the
\nocean of Ananda. But this Ananda can only come at all when we can get at and reflect in our members the hidden spiritual
\nbeing, and its fullness can only be had when we climb to the supramental ranges. Meanwhile there is a just and permissible,
\na quite legitimate human enjoyment of these things, which is, to speak in the language of Indian psychology, predominantly
\nsattwic in its nature. It is an enlightened enjoyment principally by the perceptive, aesthetic and emotive mind, secondarily only <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tby the sensational, nervous and physical being, but all subject to
\nthe clear government of the buddhi, to a right reason, a right will, a right reception of the life impacts, a right order, a right feeling
\nof the truth, law, ideal sense, beauty, use of things. The mind gets the pure taste of enjoyment of them,
\nrasa<\/i>, and rejects whatever
\nis perturbed, troubled and perverse. Into this acceptance of the clear and limpid
\nrasa<\/i>, the psychic prana has to bring in the
\nfull sense of life and the occupying enjoyment by the whole being, bhoga<\/i>, without which the acceptance and possession by
\nthe mind, rasa-grahan<\/font>a<\/i>, would not be concrete enough, would .<\/i>
\nbe too tenuous to satisfy altogether the embodied soul. This contribution is its proper function. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe deformation which enters in and prevents the purity, is a form of vital craving; the grand deformation which the psychic
\nprana contributes to our being, is desire. The root of desire is the vital craving to seize upon that which we feel we have not,
\nit is the limited life’s instinct for possession and satisfaction. It creates the sense of want,
\n\u2014 first the simpler vital craving of
\nhunger, thirst, lust, then these psychical hungers, thirsts, lusts of the mind which are a much greater and more instant and pervading affliction of our being, the hunger which is infinite because it is the hunger of an infinite being, the thirst which is only
\ntemporarily lulled by satisfaction, but is in its nature insatiable. The psychic prana invades the sensational mind and brings into
\nit the unquiet thirst of sensations, invades the dynamic mind with the lust of control, having, domination, success, fulfilment
\nof every impulse, fills the emotional mind with the desire for the satisfaction of liking and disliking, for the wreaking of love and
\nhate, brings the shrinkings and panics of fear and the strainings and disappointments of hope, imposes the tortures of grief and
\nthe brief fevers and excitements of joy, makes the intelligence and intelligent will the accomplices of all these things and turns
\nthem in their own kind into deformed and lame instruments, the will into a will of craving and the intelligence into a partial,
\na stumbling and an eager pursuer of limited, impatient, militant prejudgment and opinion. Desire is the root of all sorrow,
\ndisappointment, affliction, for though it has a feverish joy of   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tpursuit and satisfaction, yet because it is always a straining of
\nthe being, it carries into its pursuit and its getting a labour, hunger, struggle, a rapid subjection to fatigue, a sense of limitation, dissatisfaction and early disappointment with all its gains, 
\na ceaseless morbid stimulation, trouble, disquiet, aśā<\/font>nti<\/i>. To get rid of desire is the one firm indispensable purification of the
\npsychical prana, \u2014 for so we can replace the soul of desire with its pervading immiscence in all our instruments by a mental soul
\nof calm delight and its clear and limpid possession of ourselves and world and Nature which is the crystal basis of the mental
\nlife and its perfection. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe psychical prana interferes in all the higher operations
\nto deform them, but its defect is itself due to its being interfered with and deformed by the nature of the physical workings in
\nthe body which Life has evolved in its emergence from matter. It is that which has created the separation of the individual life
\nin the body from the life of the universe and stamped on it the character of want, limitation, hunger, thirst, craving for what
\nit has not, a long groping after enjoyment and a hampered and baffled need of possession. Easily regulated and limited in the
\npurely physical order of things, it extends itself in the psychical prana immensely and becomes, as the mind grows, a thing with
\ndifficulty limited, insatiable, irregular, a busy creator of disorder and disease. Moreover, the psychical prana leans on the physical
\nlife, limits itself by the nervous force of the physical being, limits thereby the operations of the mind and becomes the link of its
\ndependence on the body and its subjection to fatigue, incapacity, disease, disorder, insanity, the pettiness, the precariousness and
\neven the possible dissolution of the workings of the physical mentality. Our mind instead of being a thing powerful in its own
\nstrength, a clear instrument of conscious spirit, free and able to control, use and perfect the life and body, appears in the result
\na mixed construction; it is a predominantly physical mentality limited by its physical organs and subject to the demands and
\nto the obstructions of the life in the body. This can only be got rid of by a sort of practical, inward psychological operation
\nof analysis by which we become aware of the mentality as a <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>657<\/font> 
\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tseparate power, isolate it for a free working, distinguish too the
\npsychical and the physical prana and make them no longer a link for dependence, but a transmitting channel for the Idea and
\nWill in the buddhi, obedient to its suggestions and commands; the prana then becomes a passive means of effectuation for the
\nmind’s direct control of the physical life. This control, however abnormal to
\nour habitual poise of action, is not only possible, \u2014
\nit appears to some extent in the phenomena of hypnosis, though these are unhealthily abnormal, because there it is a foreign will
\nwhich suggests and commands, \u2014 but must become the normal action when the higher Self within takes up the direct command
\nof the whole being. This control can be exercised perfectly, however, only from the supramental level, for it is there that the true
\neffective Idea and Will reside and the mental thought-mind, even spiritualised, is only a limited, though it may be made a very
\npowerful deputy. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tDesire, it is thought, is the real motive power of human
\nliving and to cast it out would be to stop the springs of life; satisfaction of desire is man’s only enjoyment and to eliminate
\nit would be to extinguish the impulse of life by a quietistic asceticism. But
\n\t\t\tthe real motive power of the life of the soul is Will; desire is
\n\t\t\tonly a deformation of will in the dominant bodily life and physical
\n\t\t\tmind. The essential turn of the soul to possession and enjoyment of
\n\t\t\tthe world consists in a will to delight, and the enjoyment of the
\n\t\t\tsatisfaction of craving is only a vital and physical degradation of
\n\t\t\tthe will to delight. It is essential that we should distinguish
\n\t\t\tbetween pure will and desire, between the inner will to delight and
\n\t\t\tthe outer lust and craving of the mind and body. If we are unable to
\n\t\t\tmake this distinction practically in the experience of our being, we
\n\t\t\tcan only make a choice between a life-killing asceticism and the
\n\t\t\tgross will to live or else try to effect an awkward, uncertain and
\n\t\t\tprecarious compromise between them. This is in fact what the mass of
\n\t\t\tmen do; a small minority trample down the life instinct and strain
\n\t\t\tafter an ascetic perfection; most obey the gross will to live with
\n\t\t\tsuch modifications and restraints as society imposes or the normal
\n\t\t\tsocial man has been trained to impose on his own mind and actions;  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tothers set up a balance between ethical austerity and temperate
\nindulgence of the desiring mental and vital self and see in this balance the golden mean of a sane mind and healthy human
\nliving. But none of these ways gives the perfection which we are seeking, the divine government of the will in life. To tread down
\naltogether the prana, the vital being, is to kill the force of life by which the large action of the embodied soul in the human being
\nmust be supported; to indulge the gross will to live is to remain satisfied with imperfection; to compromise between them is to
\nstop half way and possess neither earth nor heaven. But if we can get at the pure will undeformed by desire,
\n\u2014 which we shall
\nfind to be a much more free, tranquil, steady and effective force than the leaping, smoke-stifled, soon fatigued and baffled flame
\nof desire, \u2014 and at the calm inner will of delight not afflicted or limited by any trouble of craving, we can then transform
\nthe prana from a tyrant, enemy, assailant of the mind into an obedient instrument. We may call these greater things, too, by
\nthe name of desire, if we choose, but then we must suppose that there is a divine desire other than the vital craving, a God-desire of which this other and lower phenomenon is an obscure shadow and into which it has to be transfigured. It is better to
\nkeep distinct names for things which are entirely different in their character and inner action. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo rid the prana of desire and incidentally to reverse the ordinary poise of our nature and turn the vital being from a
\ntroublesomely dominant power into the obedient instrument of a free and unattached mind, is then the first step in purification.
\nAs this deformation of the psychical prana is corrected, the purification of the rest of the intermediary parts of the
\nantahkarana<\/i> 
\nis facilitated, and when that correction is completed, their purification too can be easily made absolute. These intermediary
\nparts are the emotional mind, the receptive sensational mind and the active sensational mind or mind of dynamic impulse.
\nThey all hang together in a strongly knotted interaction. The deformation of the emotional mind hinges upon the duality
\n\t\t\tof liking and disliking, rā<\/font>ga-dves<\/font>a<\/i>, emotional attraction and
\n.<\/i> repulsion. All the complexity of our emotions and their tyranny <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>659<\/font>
\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tover the soul arise from the habitual responses of the soul of
\ndesire in the emotions and sensations to these attractions and repulsions. Love and hatred, hope and fear, grief and joy all
\nhave their founts in this one source. We like, love, welcome, hope for, joy in whatever our nature, the first habit of our being,
\nor else a formed (often perverse) habit, the second nature of our being, presents to the mind as pleasant,
\npriyam<\/i>; we hate,
\ndislike, fear, have repulsion from or grief of whatever it presents to us as unpleasant,
\napriyam<\/i>. This habit of the emotional nature gets into the way of the
\n\t\t\tintelligent will and makes it often a helpless slave of the
\n\t\t\temotional being or at least prevents it from exercising a free
\n\t\t\tjudgment and government of the nature. This deformation has to be
\n\t\t\tcorrected. By getting rid of desire in the psychic prana and its
\n\t\t\tintermiscence in the emotional mind, we facilitate the correction.
\n\t\t\tFor then attachment which is the strong bond of the heart, falls
\n\t\t\taway from the heart-strings; the involuntary habit of rā<\/font>ga-dves<\/font>a <\/i>remains, but, not being made obstinate .<\/i>
\nby attachment, it can be dealt with more easily by the will and the intelligence. The restless heart can be conquered and get rid
\nof the habit of attraction and repulsion. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut then if this is done, it may be thought, as with regard
\nto desire, that this will be the death of the emotional being. It will certainly be so, if the deformation is eliminated but not
\nreplaced by the right action of the emotional mind; the mind will then pass into a neutral condition of blank indifference or
\ninto a luminous state of peaceful impartiality with no stir or wave of emotion. The former state is in no way desirable; the
\nlatter may be the perfection of a quietistic discipline, but in the integral perfection which does not reject love or shun various
\nmovement of delight, it can be no more than a stage which has to be overpassed, a preliminary passivity admitted as a first basis
\nfor a right activity. Attraction and repulsion, liking and disliking are a necessary mechanism for the normal man, they form a first
\nprinciple of natural instinctive selection among the thousand flattering and formidable, helpful and dangerous impacts of the
\nworld around him. The buddhi starts with this material to work on and tries to correct the natural and instinctive by a wiser
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\treasoned and willed selection; for obviously the pleasant is not
\nalways the right thing, the object to be preferred and selected, nor the unpleasant the wrong thing, the object to be shunned  and rejected; the pleasant and the good, preyas <\/i>and
\n\t\t\tś<\/font>reyas<\/i>, have
\nto be distinguished, and right reason has to choose and not the caprice of emotion. But this it can do much better when
\nthe emotional suggestion is withdrawn and the heart rests in a luminous passivity. Then too the right activity of the heart
\ncan be brought to the surface; for we find then that behind this emotion-ridden soul of desire there was waiting all the while
\na soul of love and lucid joy and delight, a pure psyche, which was clouded over by the deformations of anger, fear, hatred,
\nrepulsion and could not embrace the world with an impartial love and joy. But the purified heart is rid of anger, rid of fear, rid
\nof hatred, rid of every shrinking and repulsion: it has a universal love, it can receive with an untroubled sweetness and clarity the
\nvarious delight which God gives it in the world. But it is not the lax slave of love and delight; it does not desire, does not attempt
\nto impose itself as the master of the actions. The selective process necessary to action is left principally to the buddhi and, when
\nthe buddhi has been overpassed, to the spirit in the supramental will, knowledge and Ananda. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe receptive sensational mind is the nervous mental basis of the affections; it receives mentally the impacts of things and gives
\nto them the responses of mental pleasure and pain which are the starting-point of the duality of emotional liking and disliking.
\nAll the heart’s emotions have a corresponding nervous-mental accompaniment, and we often find that when the heart is freed of
\nany will to the dualities, there still survives a root of disturbance of nervous mind, or a memory in physical mind which falls
\nmore and more away to a quite physical character, the more it is repelled by the will in the buddhi. It becomes finally a mere
\nsuggestion from outside to which the nervous chords of the mind still occasionally respond until a complete purity liberates them
\ninto the same luminous universality of delight which the pure heart already possesses. The active dynamic mind of impulse is
\nthe lower organ or channel of responsive action; its deformation  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>661<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tis a subjection to the suggestions of the impure emotional and
\nsensational mentality and the desire of the prana, to impulses to action dictated by grief, fear, hatred, desire, lust, craving, and
\nthe rest of the unquiet brood. Its right form of action is a pure dynamic force of strength, courage, temperamental power, not
\nacting for itself or in obedience to the lower members, but as an impartial channel for the dictates of the pure intelligence and
\nwill or the supramental Purusha. When we have got rid of these deformations and cleared the mentality for these truer forms of
\naction, the lower mentality is purified and ready for perfection. But that perfection depends on the possession of a purified and
\nenlightened buddhi; for the buddhi is the chief power in the mental being and the chief mental instrument of the Purusha.
\n   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 <\/font>662<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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