{"id":2196,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2196"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:03","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:03","slug":"35-chapter-xvii-the-soul-and-nature-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga\/35-chapter-xvii-the-soul-and-nature-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-35_Chapter XVII The Soul and Nature.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Soul and Nature
\n<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HIS IS<\/b> the result of the integral knowledge taken in its
\nmass; its work is to gather up the different strands of our being into the universal oneness. If we are to possess
\nperfectly the world in our new divinised consciousness as the Divine himself possesses it, we have to know also each thing in
\nits absoluteness, first by itself, secondly in its union with all that completes it; for so has the Divine imaged out and seen its being
\nin the world. To see things as parts, as incomplete elements is a lower analytic knowledge. The Absolute is everywhere; it has
\nto be seen and found everywhere. Every finite is an infinite and has to be known and sensed in its intrinsic infiniteness as well
\nas in its surface finite appearance. But so to know the world, so to perceive and experience it, it is not enough to have an
\nintellectual idea or imagination that so it is; a certain divine vision, divine sense, divine ecstasy is needed, an experience of
\nunion of ourselves with the objects of our consciousness. In that experience not only the Beyond but all here, not only the totality,
\nthe All in its mass, but each thing in the All becomes to us our self, God, the Absolute and Infinite, Sachchidananda. This is the
\nsecret of complete delight in God’s world, complete satisfaction of the mind and heart and will, complete liberation of the consciousness. It is the supreme experience at which art and poetry and all the various efforts of subjective and objective knowledge
\nand all desire and effort to possess and enjoy objects are trying more or less obscurely to arrive; their attempt to seize the forms
\nand properties and qualities of things is only a first movement which cannot give the deepest satisfaction unless by seizing them
\nperfectly and absolutely they get the sense of the infinite reality of which these are the outer symbols. To the rational mind and
\nthe ordinary sense-experience this may well seem only a poetic fancy or a mystic hallucination; but the absolute satisfaction
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>426<\/font>
\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tand sense of illumination which it gives and alone can give is
\nreally a proof of its greater validity; we get by that a ray from the higher consciousness and the diviner sense into which our
\nsubjective being is intended eventually, if we will only allow it, to be transfigured. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWe have seen that this applies to the highest principles of the Divine Being. Ordinarily, the discriminating mind tells us
\nthat only what is beyond all manifestation is absolute, only the formless Spirit is infinite, only the timeless, spaceless, immutable,
\nimmobile Self in its repose is absolutely real; and if we follow and are governed in our endeavour by this conception, that
\nis the subjective experience at which we shall arrive, all else seeming to us false or only relatively true. But if we start from
\nthe larger conception, a completer truth and a wider experience open to us. We perceive that the immutability of the timeless,
\nspaceless existence is an absolute and an infinite, but that also the conscious-force and the active delight of the divine Being
\nin its all-blissful possession of the outpouring of its powers, qualities, self-creations is an absolute and an infinite,
\n\u2014 and
\nindeed the same absolute and infinite, so much the same that we can enjoy simultaneously, equally the divine timeless calm
\nand peace and the divine time-possessing joy of activity, freely, infinitely, without bondage or the lapse into unrest and suffering.
\nSo too we can have the same experience of all the principles of this activity which in the Immutable are self-contained and in a
\nsense drawn in and concealed, in the cosmic are expressed and realise their infinite quality and capacity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first of these principles in importance is the duality \u2014 which resolves itself into a unity
\n\u2014 of Purusha and Prakriti of
\nwhich we have had occasion to speak in the Yoga of Works, but which is of equal importance for the Yoga of Knowledge.
\nThis division was made most clearly by the old Indian philosophies; but it bases itself upon the eternal fact of practical duality
\nin unity upon which the world-manifestation is founded. It is given different names according to our view of the universe.
\nThe Vedantins spoke of the Self and Maya, meaning according to their predilections by the Self the Immutable and by Maya <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tthe power the Self has of imposing on itself the cosmic illusion,
\nor by the Self the Divine Being and by Maya the nature of conscious-being and the conscious-force by which the Divine
\nembodies himself in soul-forms and forms of things. Others spoke of Ishwara and Shakti, the Lord and His force, His cosmic
\npower. The analytic philosophy of the Sankhyas affirmed their eternal duality without any possibility of oneness, accepting only
\nrelations of union and separation by which the cosmic action of Prakriti begins, proceeds or ceases for the Purusha; for the
\nPurusha is an inactive conscious existence, \u2014 it is the Soul the same in itself and immutable forever,
\n\u2014 Prakriti the active force
\nof Nature which by its motion creates and maintains and by its sinking into rest dissolves the phenomenon of the cosmos.
\nLeaving aside these philosophical distinctions, we come to the original psychological experience from which all really take their
\nstart, that there are two elements in the existence of living beings, of human beings at least if not of all cosmos,
\n\u2014 a dual being,
\nNature and the soul. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis duality is self-evident. Without any philosophy at all,
\nby the mere force of experience it is what we can all perceive, although we may not take the trouble to define. Even the most
\nthoroughgoing materialism which denies the soul or resolves it into a more or less illusory result of natural phenomena acting upon some ill-explained phenomenon of the physical brain which we call consciousness or the mind, but which is really no
\nmore than a sort of complexity of nervous spasms, cannot get rid of the practical fact of this duality. It does not matter at all
\nhow it came about; the fact is not only there, it determines our whole existence, it is the one fact which is really important to us
\nas human beings with a will and an intelligence and a subjective existence which makes all our happiness and our suffering. The
\nwhole problem of life resolves itself into this one question, \u2014 “What are we to do with this soul and nature set face to face
\nwith each other, \u2014 we who have as one side of our existence this Nature, this personal and cosmic activity, which tries to impress
\nitself upon the soul, to possess, control, determine it, and as the other side this soul which feels that in some mysterious way it has
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\ta freedom, a control over itself, a responsibility for what it is and
\ndoes, and tries therefore to turn upon Nature, its own and the world’s, and to control, possess, enjoy, or even, it may be, reject
\nand escape from her?” In order to answer that question we have to know, \u2014 to know what the soul can do, to know what it can
\ndo with itself, to know too what it can do with Nature and the world. The whole of human philosophy, religion, science is really
\nnothing but an attempt to get at the right data upon which it will be possible to answer the question and solve, as satisfactorily as
\nour knowledge will allow, the problem of our existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe hope of a complete escape from our present strife with
\nand subjection to our lower and troubled nature and existence arises when we perceive what religion and philosophy affirm,
\nbut modern thought has tried to deny, that there are two poises of our soul-existence, a lower, troubled and subjected, a higher,
\nsupreme, untroubled and sovereign, one vibrant in Mind, the other tranquil in Spirit. The hope not only of an escape, but
\nof a completely satisfying and victorious solution comes when we perceive what some religions and philosophies affirm, but
\nothers seem to deny, that there is also in the dual unity of soul and nature a lower, an ordinary human status and a higher, a
\ndivine; for it is in the divine alone that the conditions of the duality stand reversed; there the soul becomes that which now
\nit only struggles and aspires to be, master of its nature, free and by union with the Divine possessor also of the world-nature.
\nAccording to our idea of these possibilities will be the solution we shall attempt to realise. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tInvolved in mind, possessed by the ordinary phenomenon of mental thought, sensation, emotion, reception of the vital and
\nphysical impacts of the world and mechanical reaction to them, the soul is subject to Nature. Even its will and intelligence are
\ndetermined by its mental nature, determined even more largely by the mental nature of its environment which acts upon, subtly as well as overtly, and overcomes the individual mentality. Thus its attempt to regulate, to control, to determine its own
\nexperience and action is pursued by an element of illusion, since when it thinks it is acting, it is really Nature that is acting and <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tdetermining all it thinks, wills and does. If there were not this
\nconstant knowledge in it that it is, that it exists in itself, is not the body or life but something other which at least receives and
\naccepts the cosmic experience if it does not determine it, it would be compelled in the end to suppose that Nature is all and the soul
\nan illusion. This is the conclusion modern Materialism affirms and to that nihilistic Buddhism arrived; the Sankhyas, perceiving
\nthe dilemma, solved it by saying that the soul in fact only mirrors Nature’s determinations and itself determines nothing, is not the
\nlord, but can by refusing to mirror them fall back into eternal immobility and peace. There are too the other solutions which
\narrive at the same practical conclusion, but from the other end, the spiritual; for they affirm either that Nature is an illusion or
\nthat both the soul and Nature are impermanent and they point us to a state beyond in which their duality has no existence;
\neither they cease by the extinction of both in something permanent and ineffable or their discordances end by the exclusion
\nof the active principle altogether. Though they do not satisfy humanity’s larger hope and deep-seated impulse and aspiration,
\nthese are valid solutions so far as they go; for they arrive at an Absolute in itself or at the separate absolute of the soul, even if
\nthey reject the many rapturous infinities of the Absolute which the true possession of Nature by the soul in its divine existence
\noffers to the eternal seeker in man. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tUplifted into the Spirit the soul is no longer subject to
\nNature; it is above this mental activity. It may be above it in 
\ndetachment and aloofness, udā<\/font>sī<\/font>na<\/i>,
\n\t\t\tseated above and indifferent, or attracted by and lost in the
\n\t\t\tabsorbing peace or bliss of its undifferentiated, its concentrated
\n\t\t\tspiritual experience of itself; we must then transcend by a complete
\n\t\t\trenunciation of Nature and cosmic existence, not conquer by a divine
\n\t\t\tand sovereign possession. But the Spirit, the Divine is not only
\n\t\t\tabove Nature; it is master of Nature and cosmos; the soul rising
\n\t\t\tinto its spiritual poise must at least be capable of the same
\n\t\t\tmastery by its unity with the Divine. It must be capable of
\n\t\t\tcontrolling its own nature not only in calm or by forcing it to
\n\t\t\trepose, but with a sovereign control of its play and activity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>430<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tTo arrive by an intense spirituality at the absolute of the soul
\nis our possibility on one side of our dual existence; to enjoy the absolute of Nature and of everything in Nature is our possibility
\non the other side of this eternal duality. To unify these highest aspirations in a divine possession of God and ourselves and the
\nworld, should be our happy completeness. In the lower poise this is not possible because the soul acts through the mind and the
\nmind can only act individually and fragmentarily in a contented obedience or a struggling subjection to that universal Nature
\nthrough which the divine knowledge and the divine Will are worked out in the cosmos. But the Spirit is in possession of
\nknowledge and will, of which it is the source and cause and not a subject; therefore in proportion as the soul assumes its divine
\nor spiritual being, it assumes also control of the movements of its nature. It becomes, in the ancient language, Swarat, free and
\na self-ruler over the kingdom of its own life and being. But also it increases in control over its environment, its world. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis it can only do entirely by universalising itself; for it is the divine and universal will that it must express in its action
\nupon the world. It must first extend its consciousness and see the universe in itself instead of being like the mind limited by
\nthe physical, vital, sensational, emotional, intellectual outlook of the little divided personality. It must accept the world-truths, the
\nworld-energies, the world-tendencies, the world-purposes as its own instead of clinging to its own intellectual ideas, desires and
\nendeavours, preferences, objects, intentions, impulses; these, so far as they remain, must be harmonised with the universal. It
\nmust then submit its knowledge and will at their very source to the divine Knowledge and the divine Will and so arrive through
\nsubmission at immergence, losing its personal light in the divine Light and its personal initiative in the divine initiative. To be
\nfirst in tune with the Infinite, in harmony with the Divine, and then to be unified with the Infinite, taken into the Divine is its
\ncondition of perfect strength and mastery, and this is precisely the very nature of the spiritual life and the spiritual existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe distinction made in the Gita between the Purusha and the Prakriti gives us the clue to the various attitudes which the
\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>431<\/font>  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tsoul can adopt towards Nature in its movement towards perfect freedom and rule. The Purusha is, says the Gita, witness, upholder, source of the sanction, knower, lord, enjoyer; Prakriti
\nexecutes, it is the active principle and must have an operation corresponding to the attitude of the Purusha. The soul may
\n\t\t\tassume, if it wishes, the poise of the pure witness, sā<\/font>ksī<\/font><\/i>; it may
\nlook on at the action of Nature as a thing from which it stands apart; it watches, but does not itself participate. We have seen
\nthe importance of this quietistic capacity; it is the basis of the movement of
\nwithdrawal by which we can say of everything, \u2014
\nbody, life, mental action, thought, sensation, emotion, \u2014 “This is Prakriti working in the life, mind and body, it is not myself, it
\nis not even mine,” and thus come to the soul’s separation from these things and to their quiescence. This may, therefore, be an
\nattitude of renunciation or at least of non-participation, tamasic, with a resigned and inert endurance of the natural action so long
\nas it lasts, rajasic, with a disgust, aversion and recoil from it, sattwic, with a luminous intelligence of the soul’s separateness
\nand the peace and joy of aloofness and repose; but also it may be attended by an equal and impersonal delight as of a spectator
\nat a show, joyous but unattached and ready to rise up at any moment and as joyfully depart. The attitude of the Witness at
\nits highest is the absolute of unattachment and freedom from affection by the phenomena of the cosmic existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAs the pure Witness, the soul refuses the
\n\t\t\tfunction of up\u00af<\/i>
\nholder or sustainer of Nature. The upholder, bhartā<\/font><\/i>, is another, God or Force or Maya, but not the soul, which only admits
\nthe reflection of the natural action upon its watching consciousness, but not any responsibility for maintaining or continuing
\nit. It does not say “All this is in me and maintained by me, an activity of my being,” but at the most “This is imposed on
\nme, but really external to myself.” Unless there is a clear and real duality in existence, this cannot be the whole truth of the
\nmatter; the soul is the upholder also, it supports in its being the energy which unrolls the spectacle of the cosmos and which
\nconducts its energies. When the Purusha accepts this upholding, it may do it still passively and without attachment, feeling that <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

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\n <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tit contributes the energy, but not that it controls and determines
\nit. The control is another, God or Force or the very nature of Maya; the soul only upholds indifferently so long as it must, so
\nlong perhaps as the force of its past sanction and interest in the energy continues and refuses to be exhausted. But if the attitude
\nof the upholder is fully accepted, an important step forward has been taken towards identification with the active Brahman and
\nhis joy of cosmic being. For the Purusha has become the active giver of the sanction. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the attitude of the Witness there is also a kind of sanction, but it is passive, inert and has no kind of absoluteness about it;
\nbut if he consents entirely to uphold, the sanction has become active, even though the soul may do no more than consent to
\nreflect, support and thereby maintain in action all the energies of Prakriti. It may refuse to determine, to select, believing that
\nit is God or Force itself or some Knowledge-Will that selects and determines, and the soul only a witness and upholder and
\n\u00af<\/i> thereby giver of the sanction, anumantā<\/font><\/i>, but not the possessor
\n\t\t\tand the director of the knowledge and the will, jnātā<\/font> 
\n\t\t\tīś<\/font>varah<\/i><\/font>
\n.<\/i> Then there is a general sanction in the form of an active upholding of whatever is determined by God or universal Will, but there is not an active determination. But if the soul habitually
\nselects and rejects in what is offered to it, it determines; the relatively passive has become an entirely active sanction and is
\non the way to be an active control. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis it becomes when the soul accepts its complete function
\nas the knower, lord and enjoyer of Nature. As the knower the soul possesses the knowledge of the force that acts and determines, it sees the values of being which are realising themselves in cosmos, it is in the secret of Fate. For the force that acts
\nis itself determined by the knowledge which is its origin and the source and standardiser of its valuations and effectuations
\nof values. Therefore in proportion as the soul becomes again the knower, it gets the capacity of becoming also the controller
\nof the action whether by spiritual force alone or by that force figuring itself in mental and physical activities. There may be
\nin our soul life a perfect spiritual knowledge and understanding  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>433<\/font>
\n  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tnot only of all our internal activities but of all the unrolling of
\nthings, events, human, animal, natural activities around us, the world-vision of the Rishi. This may not be attended by an active
\nputting forth of power upon the world, though that is seldom entirely absent; for the Rishi is not uninterested in the world
\nor in his fellow-creatures, but one with them by sympathy or by accepting all creatures as his own self in many minds and
\nbodies. The old forest-dwelling anchorites even are described continually as busily engaged in doing good to all creatures. This
\ncan only be done in the spiritual realisation, not by an effort, for effort is a diminution of freedom, but by a spiritual influence or
\nby a spiritual mastery over the minds of men and the workings of Nature, which reflects the divine effective immanence and the
\ndivine effective mastery. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNor can it do this without becoming the active enjoyer,  bhoktā<\/font><\/i>. In the lower being the enjoyment is of a twofold kind,
\npositive and negative, which in the electricity of sensation translates itself into joy and suffering; but in the higher it is an actively
\nequal enjoyment of the divine delight in self-manifestation. That enjoyment again may be limited to a silent spiritual delight or
\nan integral divine joy possessing all things around us and all activities of all parts of our being. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere is no loss of freedom, no descent into an ignorant attachment. The man free in his soul is aware that the Divine is
\nthe lord of the action of Nature, that Maya is His Knowledge Will determining and effecting all, that Force is the Will side of
\nthis double divine Power in which knowledge is always present and effectual. He is aware of himself also, even individually, as a
\ncentre of the divine existence, \u2014 a portion of the Lord, the Gita expresses it,
\n\u2014 controlling so far the action of Nature which he
\nviews, upholds, sanctions, enjoys, knows and by the determinative power of knowledge controls. And when he universalises
\nhimself, his knowledge still reflects only the divine knowledge, his will effectuates only the divine will, he enjoys only the
\ndivine delight and not an ignorant personal satisfaction. Thus the Purusha preserves its freedom in its possession, renunciation
\nof limited personality even in its representative enjoyment and<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>434<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tdelight of cosmic being. It has taken up fully
\n\t\t\tin the higher poise the true relations of the soul and Nature. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPurusha and Prakriti in their union and duality arise from the being
\n\t\t\tof Sachchidananda. Self-conscious existence is the essential nature
\n\t\t\tof the Being; that is Sat or Purusha. The Power of self-aware
\n\t\t\texistence, whether drawn into itself or acting in the works of its
\n\t\t\tconsciousness and force, its knowledge and its will, Chit and Tapas,
\n\t\t\tChit and its Shakti, \u2014 that is Prakriti. Delight of being, Ananda,
\n\t\t\tis the eternal truth of the union of this conscious being and its
\n\t\t\tconscious force whether absorbed in itself or else deployed in the
\n\t\t\tinseparable duality of its two aspects. It unrolls the worlds as
\n\t\t\tPrakriti and views them as Purusha; acts in them and upholds the
\n\t\t\taction; executes works and gives the sanction without which the
\n\t\t\tforce of Nature cannot act; executes and controls the knowledge and
\n\t\t\tthe will and knows and controls the determinations of the
\n\t\t\tknowledge-force and will-force; ministers to the enjoyment and
\n\t\t\tenjoys; \u2014 all is the Soul possessor, observer, knower, lord of
\n\t\t\tNature and Nature expressing the being, executing the will,
\n\t\t\tsatisfying the self-knowledge, ministering to the delight of being
\n\t\t\tof the soul. There we have, founded on the very nature of being, the
\n\t\t\tsupreme and the universal relation of Prakriti with Purusha. The
\n\t\t\trelation in its imperfect, perverted or reverse terms is the world
\n\t\t\tas we see it; but the perfect relation brings the absolute joy of
\n\t\t\tthe soul in itself and, based upon that, the absolute joy of the
\n\t\t\tsoul in Nature which is the divine fulfilment of world-existence.   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>435<\/font><\/p>\n

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

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