{"id":2193,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2193"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:02","slug":"37-chapter-xix-the-planes-of-our-existence-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\/37-chapter-xix-the-planes-of-our-existence-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-37_Chapter XIX The Planes of Our Existence.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Planes of Our Existence<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI<\/font>F THE<\/b> Purusha in us has
\n\t\t\tthus to become by union with its highest self, the Divine Purusha,
\n\t\t\tthe knower, lord, free enjoyer of its Prakriti, it cannot be done,
\n\t\t\tevidently, by dwelling on the present plane of our being; for that
\n\t\t\tis the material plane in which the reign of Prakriti is complete;
\n\t\t\tthere the divine Purusha is entirely hidden in the blinding surge of
\n\t\t\ther activities, in the gross pomp of her workings, and the
\n\t\t\tindividual soul emerging from her involution of spirit in matter,
\n\t\t\tsubject in all its activities to its entangling in the material and
\n\t\t\tvital instruments is unable to experience the divine freedom. What
\n\t\t\tit calls its freedom and mastery, is only the subtle subjection of
\n\t\t\tmind to Prakriti which is lighter indeed, nearer to the possibility
\n\t\t\tof liberty and rule than the gross subjection of vital and material
\n\t\t\tthings like the animal, plant and metal, but is still not real
\n\t\t\tfreedom and mastery. Therefore we have had to speak of different
\n\t\t\tplanes of our consciousness and of the spiritual planes of the
\n\t\t\tmental being; for if these did not exist, the liberation of the
\n\t\t\tembodied being would have been impossible here on earth. He would
\n\t\t\thave had to wait and at most to prepare himself for seeking it in
\n\t\t\tother worlds and in a different kind of physical or spiritual
\n\t\t\tembodiment less obstinately sealed in its shell of material
\n\t\t\texperience. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the ordinary Yoga of knowledge it is only necessary to recognise
\n\t\t\ttwo planes of our consciousness, the spiritual and the materialised
\n\t\t\tmental; the pure reason standing between these two views them both,
\n\t\t\tcuts through the illusions of the phenomenal world, exceeds the
\n\t\t\tmaterialised mental plane, sees the reality of the spiritual; and
\n\t\t\tthen the will of the individual Purusha unifying itself with this
\n\t\t\tpoise of knowledge rejects the lower and draws back to the supreme
\n\t\t\tplane, dwells there, loses mind and body, sheds life from it and
\n\t\t\tmerges itself in the supreme Purusha, is delivered from individual
\n\t\t\texistence. It knows that  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>446<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tthis is not the whole truth of our existence, which is much more
\n\t\t\tcomplex; it knows there are many planes, but it disregards them or
\n\t\t\tpays little attention to them because they are not essential to this
\n\t\t\tliberation. They indeed rather hamper it, because to live on them
\n\t\t\tbrings new attractive psychical experiences, psychical enjoyments,
\n\t\t\tpsychical powers, a new world of phenomenal knowledge the pursuit of
\n\t\t\twhich creates stumbling-blocks in the way of its one object,
\n\t\t\timmergence in Brahman, and brings a succession of innumerable
\n\t\t\tway-side snares on the road which leads to God. But since we accept
\n\t\t\tworld-existence, and for us all world-existence is Brahman and full
\n\t\t\tof the presence of God, these things can have no terrors for us;
\n\t\t\twhatever dangers of distraction there may be, we have to face and
\n\t\t\tovercome them. If the world and our own existence are so complex, we
\n\t\t\tmust know and embrace their complexities in order that our
\n\t\t\tself-knowledge and our knowledge of the dealings of Purusha with its
\n\t\t\tPrakriti may be complete. If there are many planes, we have to
\n\t\t\tpossess them all for the Divine, even as we seek to possess
\n\t\t\tspiritually and transform our ordinary poise of mind, life and body. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe ancient knowledge in all countries was full of the search after
\n\t\t\tthe hidden truths of our being and it created that large field of
\n\t\t\tpractice and inquiry which goes in Europe by the name of occultism,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 we do not use any corresponding word in the East, because these
\n\t\t\tthings do not seem to us so remote, mysterious and abnormal as to
\n\t\t\tthe occidental mentality; they are nearer to us and the veil between
\n\t\t\tour normal material life and this larger life is much thinner. In
\n\t\t\tIndia,\u00b9<\/font> Egypt, Chaldea, China, Greece, the Celtic countries they
\n\t\t\thave formed part of various Yogic systems and disciplines which had
\n\t\t\tonce a great hold everywhere, but to the modern mind have seemed
\n\t\t\tmere superstition and mysticism, although the facts and experiences
\n\t\t\ton which they are founded are quite as real in their own field and
\n\t\t\tas much governed by intelligible laws of their own as the facts and
\n\t\t\texperiences of the material world. It is not our intention here to
\n\t\t\tplunge into this <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u00b9<\/font> For example, the Tantric in India.
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>447<\/font> \n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tvast and difficult field of psychical knowledge.\u00b2<\/font> But it becomes necessary now to deal with certain broad
\n\t\t\tfacts and principles which form its framework, for without them our
\n\t\t\tYoga of knowledge cannot be complete. We find that in the various
\n\t\t\tsystems the facts dealt with are always the same, but there are
\n\t\t\tconsiderable differences of theoretic and practical arrangement, as
\n\t\t\tis natural and inevitable in dealing with a subject so large and
\n\t\t\tdifficult. Certain things are here omitted, there made
\n\t\t\tall-important, here understressed, there over-emphasised; certain
\n\t\t\tfields of experience which are in one system held to be merely
\n\t\t\tsubordinate provinces, are in others treated as separate kingdoms.
\n\t\t\tBut I shall follow here consistently the Vedic and Vedantic
\n\t\t\tarrangement of which we find the great lines in the Upanishads,
\n\t\t\tfirst because it seems to me at once the simplest and most
\n\t\t\tphilosophical and more especially because it was from the beginning
\n\t\t\tenvisaged from the point of view of the utility of these various
\n\t\t\tplanes to the supreme object of our liberation. It takes as its
\n\t\t\tbasis the three principles of our ordinary being, mind, life and
\n\t\t\tmatter, the triune spiritual principle of Sachchidananda and the
\n\t\t\tlink principle of  vijnā<\/font>na<\/i>, supermind, the free or spiritual intelligence, and
\n\t\t\tthus arranges all the large possible poises of our being in a tier
\n\t\t\tof seven planes, \u2014 sometimes regarded as five only, because, only
\n\t\t\tthe lower five are wholly accessible to us, \u2014 through which the
\n\t\t\tdeveloping being can rise to its perfection. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut first we must understand what we mean by planes of
\n\t\t\tconsciousness, planes of existence. We mean a general settled poise
\n\t\t\tor world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul
\n\t\t\tand Nature. For anything that we can call world is and can be
\n\t\t\tnothing else than the working out of a general relation which a
\n\t\t\tuniversal existence has created or established between itself, or
\n\t\t\tlet us say its eternal fact or potentiality and the powers of its
\n\t\t\tbecoming. That existence in its relations with and its experience of
\n\t\t\tthe becoming is what we call soul or Purusha, <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u00b2<\/font> We hope to deal with it hereafter; but our first concern in the
\n\t\t\tArya <\/i>must be with spiritual and philosophical truths; it is only
\n\t\t\twhen these have been grasped that the approach to the psychical
\n\t\t\tbecomes safe and clear.
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>448<\/font>   \n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tindividual soul in the individual, universal soul in the cosmos; the
\n\t\t\tprinciple and the powers of the becoming are what we call Nature or
\n\t\t\tPrakriti. But since Being, conscious force and delight of being are
\n\t\t\talways the three constituent terms of existence, the nature of a
\n\t\t\tworld is really determined by the way in which Prakriti is set to
\n\t\t\tdeal with these three primary things and the forms which it is
\n\t\t\tallowed to give to them. For existence itself is and must always be
\n\t\t\tthe stuff of its own becoming; it must be shaped into the substance
\n\t\t\twith which Force has to deal. Force again must be the power which
\n\t\t\tworks out that substance and works with it to whatever ends; Force
\n\t\t\tis that which we ordinarily call Nature. Again the end, the object
\n\t\t\twith which the worlds are created must be worked out by the
\n\t\t\tconsciousness inherent in all existence and all force and all their
\n\t\t\tworkings, and the object must be the possession of itself and of its
\n\t\t\tdelight of existence in the world. To that all the circumstances and
\n\t\t\taims of any world-existence must reduce themselves; it is existence
\n\t\t\tdeveloping its terms of being, its power of being, its conscious
\n\t\t\tdelight of being; if these are involved, their evolution; if they
\n\t\t\tare veiled, their self-revelation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tHere the soul lives in a material universe; of that alone it is
\n\t\t\timmediately conscious; the realisation of its potentialities in that
\n\t\t\tis the problem with which it is concerned. But matter means the
\n\t\t\tinvolution of the conscious delight of existence in self-oblivious
\n\t\t\tforce and in a self-dividing, infinitesimally disaggregated form of
\n\t\t\tsubstance. Therefore the whole principle and effort of a material
\n\t\t\tworld must be the evolution of what is involved and the development
\n\t\t\tof what is undeveloped. Here everything is shut up from the first in
\n\t\t\tthe violently working inconscient sleep of material force; therefore
\n\t\t\tthe whole aim of any material becoming must be the waking of
\n\t\t\tconsciousness out of the inconscient; the whole consummation of a
\n\t\t\tmaterial becoming must be the removal of the veil of matter and the
\n\t\t\tluminous revelation of the entirely self-conscient Being to its own
\n\t\t\timprisoned soul in the becoming. Since Man is such an imprisoned
\n\t\t\tsoul, this luminous liberation and coming to self-knowledge must be
\n\t\t\this highest object and the condition of his perfection. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tBut the limitations of a material universe seem to be hostile to the
\n\t\t\tproper accomplishment of this object which is yet so inevitably the
\n\t\t\thighest aim of a mental being born into a physical body. First
\n\t\t\texistence has formed itself here, fundamentally, as Matter; it has
\n\t\t\tbeen objectivised, made sensible and concrete to its own
\n\t\t\tself-experiencing conscious-force in the form of self-dividing
\n\t\t\tmaterial substance, and by the aggregation of this matter there has
\n\t\t\tbeen built up for man a physical body separate, divided from others
\n\t\t\tand subject to the fixed habits of process or, as we call them, the
\n\t\t\tlaws of inconscient material Nature. His force of being too is
\n\t\t\tnature or Force working in matter, which has waked slowly out of
\n\t\t\tinconscience to life and is always limited by form, always dependent
\n\t\t\ton the body, always separated by it from the rest of Life and from
\n\t\t\tother living beings, always hampered in its development,
\n\t\t\tpersistence, self-perfectioning by the laws of the Inconscience and
\n\t\t\tthe limitations of bodily living. Equally, his consciousness is a
\n\t\t\tmentality emerging in a body and in a sharply individualised life;
\n\t\t\tit is therefore limited in its workings and capacities and dependent
\n\t\t\ton bodily organs of no great competence and on a very restricted
\n\t\t\tvital force; it is separated from the rest of cosmic mind and shut
\n\t\t\tout from the thoughts of other mental beings whose inner workings
\n\t\t\tare a sealed book to man’s physical mind except in so far as he can
\n\t\t\tread them by the analogy of his own mentality and by their
\n\t\t\tinsufficient bodily signs and self-expressions. His consciousness is
\n\t\t\talways falling back towards the inconscience in which a large part
\n\t\t\tof it is always involved, his life towards death, his physical being
\n\t\t\ttowards dis-aggregation. His delight of being depends on the
\n\t\t\trelations of this imperfect consciousness with its environment based
\n\t\t\tupon physical sensations and the sense-mind, in other words on a
\n\t\t\tlimited mind trying to lay hold on a world external and foreign to
\n\t\t\tit by means of a limited body, limited vital force, limited organs.
\n\t\t\tTherefore its power for possession is limited, its force for delight
\n\t\t\tis limited, and every touch of the world which exceeds its force,
\n\t\t\twhich that force cannot bear, cannot seize on, cannot assimilate and
\n\t\t\tpossess must turn to something else than delight, to pain,
\n\t\t\tdiscomfort or grief. Or else it must  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n

\n\t\t\tbe met by non-reception, insensibility, or, if received, put away by
\n\t\t\tindifference. Moreover such delight of being as it possesses, is not
\n\t\t\tpossessed naturally and eternally like the self-delight of
\n\t\t\tSachchidananda, but by experience and acquisition in Time, and can
\n\t\t\ttherefore only be maintained and prolonged by repetition of
\n\t\t\texperience and is in its nature precarious and transient. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAll this means that the natural relations of Purusha to Prakriti in
\n\t\t\tthe material universe are the complete absorption of conscious being
\n\t\t\tin the force of its workings, therefore the complete self-oblivion
\n\t\t\tand self-ignorance of the Purusha, the complete domination of
\n\t\t\tPrakriti and subjection of the soul to Nature. The soul does not
\n\t\t\tknow itself, it only knows, if anything, the workings of Prakriti.
\n\t\t\tThe emergence of the individual self-conscious soul in Man does not
\n\t\t\tof itself abrogate these primary relations of ignorance and
\n\t\t\tsubjection. For this soul is living on a material plane of
\n\t\t\texistence, a poise of Prakriti in which matter is still the chief
\n\t\t\tdeterminant of its relations to Nature, and its consciousness being
\n\t\t\tlimited by Matter cannot be an entirely self-possessing
\n\t\t\tconsciousness. Even the universal soul, if limited by the material
\n\t\t\tformula, could not be in entire possession of itself; much less can
\n\t\t\tthe individual soul to which the rest of existence becomes by
\n\t\t\tbodily, vital and mental limitation and separation something
\n\t\t\texternal to it on which it is yet dependent for its life and its
\n\t\t\tdelight and its knowledge. These limitations of his power,
\n\t\t\tknowledge, life, delight of existence are the whole cause of man’s
\n\t\t\tdissatisfaction with himself and the universe. And if the material
\n\t\t\tuniverse were all and the material plane the only plane of his
\n\t\t\tbeing, then man the individual Purusha could never arrive at
\n\t\t\tperfection and self-fulfilment or indeed to any other life than that
\n\t\t\tof the animals. There must be either worlds in which he is liberated
\n\t\t\tfrom these incomplete and unsatisfactory relations of Purusha with
\n\t\t\tPrakriti, or planes of his own being by ascending to which he can
\n\t\t\ttranscend them, or at the very least planes, worlds and higher
\n\t\t\tbeings from which he can receive or be helped to knowledge, powers,
\n\t\t\tjoys, a growth of his being otherwise impossible. All these things,
\n\t\t\tthe ancient knowledge asserts, exist, \u2014 other worlds, higher planes,
\n\t\t\tthe possibility of     <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>451<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tcommunication, of ascension, of growth by
\n\t\t\tcontact with and influence from that which is above him in the
\n\t\t\tpresent scale of his realised being. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs there is a poise of the relations of Purusha with Prakriti in
\n\t\t\twhich Matter is the first determinant, a world of material
\n\t\t\texistence, so there is another just above it in which Matter is not
\n\t\t\tsupreme, but rather Life-force takes its place as the first
\n\t\t\tdeterminant. In this world forms do not determine the conditions of
\n\t\t\tthe life, but it is life which determines the form, and therefore
\n\t\t\tforms are there much more free, fluid, largely and to our
\n\t\t\tconceptions strangely variable than in the material world. This
\n\t\t\tlife-force is not inconscient material force, not even, except in
\n\t\t\tits lowest movements, an elemental subconscient energy, but a
\n\t\t\tconscious force of being which makes for formation, but much more
\n\t\t\tessentially for enjoyment, possession, satisfaction of its own
\n\t\t\tdynamic impulse. Desire and the satisfaction of impulse are
\n\t\t\ttherefore the first law of this world of sheer vital existence, this
\n\t\t\tpoise of relations between the soul and its nature in which the
\n\t\t\tlife-power plays with so much greater a freedom and capacity than in
\n\t\t\tour physical living; it may be called the desire-world, for that is
\n\t\t\tits principal characteristic. Moreover, it is not fixed in one
\n\t\t\thardly variable formula as physical life seems to be, but is capable
\n\t\t\tof many variations of its poise, admits many sub-planes ranging from
\n\t\t\tthose which touch material existence and, as it were, melt into
\n\t\t\tthat, to those which touch at the height of the life-power the
\n\t\t\tplanes of pure mental and psychic existence and melt into them. For
\n\t\t\tin Nature in the infinite scale of being there are no wide gulfs, no
\n\t\t\tabrupt chasms to be overleaped, but a melting of one thing into
\n\t\t\tanother, a subtle continuity; out of that her power of distinctive
\n\t\t\texperience creates the orderings, the definite ranges, the distinct
\n\t\t\tgradations by which the soul variously knows and possesses its
\n\t\t\tpossibilities of world-existence. Again, enjoyment of one kind or
\n\t\t\tanother being the whole object of desire, that must be the trend of
\n\t\t\tthe desire-world; but since wherever the soul is not free, \u2014 and it
\n\t\t\tcannot be free when subject to desire, \u2014 there must be the negative
\n\t\t\tas well as the positive of all its experience, this world contains
\n\t\t\tnot only the possibility of large or intense  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tor continuous enjoyments almost inconceivable to the limited physical
\n\t\t\tmind, but also the possibility of equally enormous sufferings. It is
\n\t\t\there therefore that there are situated the lowest heavens and all
\n\t\t\tthe hells with the tradition and imagination of which the human mind
\n\t\t\thas lured and terrified itself since the earliest ages. All human
\n\t\t\timaginations indeed correspond to some reality or real possibility,
\n\t\t\tthough they may in themselves be a quite inaccurate representation
\n\t\t\tor couched in too physical images and therefore inapt to express the
\n\t\t\ttruth of supraphysical realities. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNature being a complex unity and not a collection of unrelated
\n\t\t\tphenomena, there can be no unbridgeable gulf between the material
\n\t\t\texistence and this vital or desire world. On the contrary, they may
\n\t\t\tbe said in a sense to exist in each other and are at least
\n\t\t\tinterdependent to a certain extent. In fact, the material world is
\n\t\t\treally a sort of projection from the vital, a thing which it has
\n\t\t\tthrown out and separated from itself in order to embody and fulfil
\n\t\t\tsome of its desires under conditions other than its own, which are
\n\t\t\tyet the logical result of its own most material longings. Life on
\n\t\t\tearth may be said to be the result of the pressure of this
\n\t\t\tlife-world on the material, inconscient existence of the physical
\n\t\t\tuniverse. Our own manifest vital being is also only a surface result
\n\t\t\tof a larger and profounder vital being which has its proper seat on
\n\t\t\tthe life-plane and through which we are connected with the
\n\t\t\tlife-world. Moreover, the life-world is constantly acting upon us
\n\t\t\tand behind everything in material existence there stand appropriate
\n\t\t\tpowers of the life-world; even the most crude and elemental have
\n\t\t\tbehind them elemental life-powers, elemental beings by which or by
\n\t\t\twhom they are supported. The influences of the life-world are always
\n\t\t\tpouring out on the material existence and producing there their
\n\t\t\tpowers and results which return again upon the life-world to modify
\n\t\t\tit. From that the life-part of us, the desire-part is being always
\n\t\t\ttouched and influenced; there too are beneficent and malefic powers
\n\t\t\tof good desire and evil desire which concern themselves with us even
\n\t\t\twhen we are ignorant of and unconcerned with them. Nor are these
\n\t\t\tpowers merely tendencies, inconscient forces, nor, except on the
\n\t\t\tverges  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\tof Matter, subconscient, but conscious
\n\t\t\tpowers, beings, living influences. As we awaken to the higher planes
\n\t\t\tof our existence, we become aware of them as friends or enemies,
\n\t\t\tpowers which seek to possess or which we can master, overcome, pass
\n\t\t\tbeyond and leave behind. It is this possible relation of the human
\n\t\t\tbeing with the powers of the life-world which occupied to so large
\n\t\t\tan extent European occultism, especially in the Middle Ages, as well
\n\t\t\tas certain forms of Eastern magic and spiritualism. The
\n\t\t\t"superstitions" of the past \u2014 much superstition there was, that is
\n\t\t\tto say, much ignorant and distorted belief, false explanations and
\n\t\t\tobscure and clumsy dealing with the laws of the beyond, \u2014 had yet
\n\t\t\tbehind them truths which a future Science, delivered from its sole
\n\t\t\tpreoccupation with the material world, may rediscover. For the
\n\t\t\tsupra-material is as much a reality as the existence of mental
\n\t\t\tbeings in the material universe. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut why then are we not normally aware of so much that is behind us
\n\t\t\tand always pressing upon us? For the same reason that we are not
\n\t\t\taware of the inner life of our neighbour, although it exists as much
\n\t\t\tas our own and is constantly exercising an occult influence upon us,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 for a great part of our thoughts and feelings come into us from
\n\t\t\toutside, from our fellow-men, both from individuals and from the
\n\t\t\tcollective mind of humanity; and for the same reason that we are not
\n\t\t\taware of the greater part of our own being which is subconscient or
\n\t\t\tsubliminal to our waking mind and is always influencing and in an
\n\t\t\toccult manner determining our surface existence. It is because we
\n\t\t\tuse, normally, only our corporeal senses and live almost wholly in
\n\t\t\tthe body and the physical vitality and the physical mind, and it is
\n\t\t\tnot directly through these that the life-world enters into relations
\n\t\t\twith us. That is done through other sheaths of our being, \u2014 so they
\n\t\t\tare termed in the Upanishads, \u2014 other bodies, as they are called in
\n\t\t\ta later terminology, the mental sheath or subtle body in which our
\n\t\t\ttrue mental being lives and the life sheath or vital body which is
\n\t\t\tmore closely connected with the physical or food-sheath and forms
\n\t\t\twith it the gross body of our complex existence. These possess
\n\t\t\tpowers, senses, capacities which are always secretly acting in us,
\n\t\t\tare connected with and impinge upon our physical  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>454<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\torgans and the plexuses of our physical life and mentality. By
\n\t\t\tself-development we can become aware of them, possess our life in
\n\t\t\tthem, get through them into conscious relation with the life-world
\n\t\t\tand other worlds and use them also for a more subtle experience and
\n\t\t\tmore intimate knowledge of the truths, facts and happenings of even
\n\t\t\tthe material world itself. We can by this self-development live more
\n\t\t\tor less fully on planes of our existence other than the material
\n\t\t\twhich is now all in all to us. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWhat has been said of the life-world applies with the necessary
\n\t\t\tdifferences to still higher planes of the cosmic existence. For
\n\t\t\tbeyond that is a mental plane, a world of mental existence in which
\n\t\t\tneither life, nor matter, but mind is the first determinant. Mind
\n\t\t\tthere is not determined by material conditions or by the life-force,
\n\t\t\tbut itself determines and uses them for its own satisfaction. There
\n\t\t\tmind, that is to say, the psychical and the intellectual being, is
\n\t\t\tfree in a certain sense, free at least to satisfy and fulfil itself
\n\t\t\tin a way hardly conceivable to our body-bound and life-bound
\n\t\t\tmentality; for the Purusha there is the pure mental being and his
\n\t\t\trelations with Prakriti are determined by that purer mentality,
\n\t\t\tNature there is mental rather than vital and physical. Both the
\n\t\t\tlife-world and indirectly the material are a projection from that,
\n\t\t\tthe result of certain tendencies of the mental Being which have
\n\t\t\tsought a field, conditions, an arrangement of harmonies proper to
\n\t\t\tthemselves; and the phenomena of mind in this world may be said to
\n\t\t\tbe a result of the pressure of that plane first on the life-world
\n\t\t\tand then on life in the material existence. By its modification in
\n\t\t\tthe life-world it creates in us the desire-mind; in its own right it
\n\t\t\tawakes in us the purer powers of our psychical and intellectual
\n\t\t\texistence. But our surface mentality is only a secondary result of a
\n\t\t\tlarger subliminal mentality whose proper seat is the mental plane.
\n\t\t\tThis world of mental existence also is constantly acting upon us and
\n\t\t\tour world, has its powers and its beings, is related to us through
\n\t\t\tour mental body. There we find the psychical and mental heavens to
\n\t\t\twhich the Purusha can ascend when it drops this physical body and
\n\t\t\tcan there sojourn till the impulse to terrestrial existence again
\n\t\t\tdraws it downward. Here too are many planes, the lowest <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>455<\/font>   \n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tconverging upon and melting into the
\n\t\t\tworlds below, the highest at the heights of the mind-power into the
\n\t\t\tworlds of a more spiritual existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThese highest worlds are therefore supramental; they belong to the
\n\t\t\tprinciple of supermind, the free, spiritual or divine intelligence\u00b3<\/font>or gnosis and to the triple spiritual principle of Sachchidananda.
\n\t\t\tFrom them the lower worlds derive by a sort of fall of the Purusha
\n\t\t\tinto certain specific or narrow conditions of the play of the soul
\n\t\t\twith its nature. But these also are divided from us by no
\n\t\t\tunbridgeable gulf; they affect us through what are called the
\n\t\t\tknowledge-sheath and the bliss-sheath, through the causal or
\n\t\t\tspiritual body, and less directly through the mental body, nor are
\n\t\t\ttheir secret powers absent from the workings of the vital and
\n\t\t\tmaterial existence. Our conscious spiritual being and our intuitive
\n\t\t\tmind awaken in us as a result of the pressure of these highest
\n\t\t\tworlds on the mental being in life and body. But this causal body
\n\t\t\tis, as we may say, little developed in the majority of men and to
\n\t\t\tlive in it or to ascend to the supramental planes, as distinguished
\n\t\t\tfrom corresponding sub-planes in the mental being, or still more to
\n\t\t\tdwell consciously upon them is the most difficult thing of all for
\n\t\t\tthe human being. It can be done in the trance of Samadhi, but
\n\t\t\totherwise only by a new evolution of the capacities of the
\n\t\t\tindividual Purusha of which few are even willing to conceive. Yet is
\n\t\t\tthat the condition of the perfect self-consciousness by which alone
\n\t\t\tthe Purusha can possess the full conscious control of Prakriti; for
\n\t\t\tthere not even the mind determines, but the Spirit freely uses the
\n\t\t\tlower differentiating principles as minor terms of its existence
\n\t\t\tgoverned by the higher and reaching by them their own perfect
\n\t\t\tcapacity. That alone would be the perfect evolution of the involved
\n\t\t\tand development of the undeveloped for which the Purusha has sought
\n\t\t\tin the material universe, as if in a wager with itself, the
\n\t\t\tconditions of the greatest difficulty. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t \u00b3<\/font>
\n\t\t\tCalled the vijnā<\/font>na <\/i>or buddhi<\/i>, a word which may lead to
\n\t\t\tsome misunderstanding as it is also applied to the mental
\n\t\t\tintelligence which is only a lower derivation from the divine
\n\t\t\tgnosis.  
\n<\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>456<\/font>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XIX   The Planes of Our Existence   IF THE Purusha in us has thus to become by union with its highest self, the…<\/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-2193","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\/2193","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=2193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}