{"id":2212,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2212"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:09","slug":"28-chapter-x-the-realisation-of-the-cosmic-self-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\/28-chapter-x-the-realisation-of-the-cosmic-self-vol-23-24-the-synthesis-of-yoga","title":{"rendered":"-28_Chapter X The Realisation of the Cosmic Self.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

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

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Realisation of the Cosmic Self <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tO<\/font>UR FIRST<\/b> imperative
\n\t\t\taim when we draw back from mind, life, body and all else that is not
\n\t\t\tour eternal being, is to get rid of the false idea of self by which
\n\t\t\twe identify ourselves with the lower existence and can realise only
\n\t\t\tour apparent being as perishable or mutable creatures in a
\n\t\t\tperishable or ever mutable world. We have to know ourselves as the
\n\t\t\tself, the spirit, the eternal; we have to exist consciously in our
\n\t\t\ttrue being. Therefore this must be our primary, if not our first one
\n\t\t\tand all-absorbing idea and effort in the path of knowledge. But when
\n\t\t\twe have realised the eternal self that we are, when we have become
\n\t\t\tthat inalienably, we have still a secondary aim, to establish the
\n\t\t\ttrue relation between this eternal self that we are and the mutable
\n\t\t\texistence and mutable world which till now we had falsely taken for
\n\t\t\tour real being and our sole possible status. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn order that there should be any real relation, it must be a
\n\t\t\trelation between two realities. Formerly we had thought the eternal
\n\t\t\tself to be a remote concept far from our mundane existence if not an
\n\t\t\tillusion and an unreality, because in the nature of things we could
\n\t\t\tnot conceive of ourselves as anything except this mind, life, body,
\n\t\t\tchanging and moving in the succession of Time. When we have once got
\n\t\t\trid of our confinement to this lower status, we are apt to seize on
\n\t\t\tthe other side of the same erroneous relation between self and
\n\t\t\tworld; we tend to regard this eternity which we increasingly are or
\n\t\t\tin which we live as the sole reality and begin to look down from it
\n\t\t\tupon the world and man as a remote illusion and unreality, because
\n\t\t\tthat is a status quite opposite to our new foundation in which we no
\n\t\t\tlonger place our roots of consciousness, from which we have been
\n\t\t\tlifted up and transfigured and with which we seem to have no longer
\n\t\t\tany binding link. Especially is this likely to happen if we have
\n\t\t\tmade the finding of the eternal Self not only our primary, but our  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>368<\/font>  <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tone and absorbing objective in the withdrawal from the lower
\n\t\t\ttriplicity; for then we are likely to shoot at once from pure mind
\n\t\t\tto pure spirit without treading the stairs between this middle and
\n\t\t\tthat summit and we tend to fix on our consciousness the profound
\n\t\t\tsense of a gulf which we cannot bridge and can no longer cross over
\n\t\t\tagain except by a painful fall. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut the self and the world are in an eternal close relation and
\n\t\t\tthere is a connection between them, not a gulf that has to be
\n\t\t\toverleaped. Spirit and material existence are highest and lowest
\n\t\t\trung of an orderly and progressive series. Therefore between the two
\n\t\t\tthere must be a real relation and principle of connection by which
\n\t\t\tthe eternal Brahman is able to be at once pure Spirit and Self and
\n\t\t\tyet hold in himself the universe of himself; and it must be possible
\n\t\t\tfor the soul that is one with or in union with the Eternal to adopt
\n\t\t\tthe same poise of divine relation in place of our present ignorant
\n\t\t\timmersion in the world. This principle of connection is the eternal
\n\t\t\tunity between the Self and all existences; of that eternal unity the
\n\t\t\tliberated soul must be capable, just as the ever free and unbound
\n\t\t\tDivine is capable of it, and that we should realise equally with the
\n\t\t\tpure self-existence at which we have first to aim. For integral
\n\t\t\tself-possession we must be one not only with the Self, with God, but
\n\t\t\twith all existences. We must take back in the right relation and in
\n\t\t\tthe poise of an eternal Truth the world of our manifested existence
\n\t\t\tpeopled by our fellow-beings from which we had drawn back because we
\n\t\t\twere bound to them in a wrong relation and in the poise of a
\n\t\t\tfalsehood created in Time by the principle of divided consciousness
\n\t\t\twith all its oppositions, discords and dualities. We have to take
\n\t\t\tback all things and beings into our new consciousness but as one
\n\t\t\twith all, not divided from them by an egoistic individuality. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn other words, besides the consciousness of the transcendent Self
\n\t\t\tpure, self-existent, timeless, spaceless we have to accept and
\n\t\t\tbecome the cosmic consciousness, we have to identify our being with
\n\t\t\tthe Infinite who makes himself the base and continent of the worlds
\n\t\t\tand dwells in all existences. This is the realisation which the
\n\t\t\tancient Vedantins spoke of as seeing all existences in the self and
\n\t\t\tthe self in all existences; and in addition they speak  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>369<\/font>   <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tof the crowning realisation of the man in
\n\t\t\twhom the original miracle of existence has been repeated, self-being
\n\t\t\thas become all these existences that belong to the worlds of the
\n\t\t\tbecoming.\u00b9<\/font> In these three terms is expressed, fundamentally, the
\n\t\t\twhole of that real relation between the self and the world which we
\n\t\t\thave to substitute for the false relation created by the limiting
\n\t\t\tego. This is the new vision and sense of infinite being which we
\n\t\t\thave to acquire, this the foundation of that unity with all which we
\n\t\t\thave to establish. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor our real self is not the individual mental being, that is only a
\n\t\t\tfigure, an appearance; our real self is cosmic, infinite, it is one
\n\t\t\twith all existence and the inhabitant of all existences. The self
\n\t\t\tbehind our mind, life and body is the same as the self behind the
\n\t\t\tmind, life and body of all our fellow-beings, and if we come to
\n\t\t\tpossess it, we shall naturally, when we turn to look out again upon
\n\t\t\tthem, tend to become one with them in the common basis of our
\n\t\t\tconsciousness. It is true that the mind opposes any such
\n\t\t\tidentification and if we allow it to persist in its old habits and
\n\t\t\tactivities, it will rather strive to bring again its veil of
\n\t\t\tdissonances over our new realisation and possession of self than to
\n\t\t\tshape and subject itself to this true and eternal vision of things.
\n\t\t\tBut in the first place, if we have proceeded rightly on the path of
\n\t\t\tour Yoga, we shall have attained to Self through a purified mind and
\n\t\t\theart, and a purified mind is one that is necessarily passive and
\n\t\t\topen to the knowledge. Secondly, even the mind in spite of its
\n\t\t\ttendency to limit and divide can be taught to think in the rhythm of
\n\t\t\tthe unifying Truth instead of the broken terms of the limiting
\n\t\t\tappearance. We must therefore accustom it by meditation and
\n\t\t\tconcentration to cease to think of things and beings as separately
\n\t\t\texistent in themselves and rather to think always of the One
\n\t\t\teverywhere and of all things as the One. Although we have spoken
\n\t\t\thitherto of the withdrawing motion of the Jiva as the first
\n\t\t\tnecessity of knowledge and as if it were to be pursued alone and by
\n\t\t\titself, yet in fact it is better for the sadhaka of the integral
\n\t\t\tYoga to unite the two movements. By <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\u00b9<\/font> Isha Upanishad. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>370<\/font>   <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tone he will find the self within, by the other he will find that self
\n\t\t\tin all that seems to us at present to be outside us. It is possible
\n\t\t\tindeed to begin with the latter movement, to realise all things in
\n\t\t\tthis visible and sensible existence as God or Brahman or Virat
\n\t\t\tPurusha and then to go beyond to all that is behind the Virat. But
\n\t\t\tthis has its inconveniences and it is better, if that be found
\n\t\t\tpossible, to combine the two movements. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis realisation of all things as God or Brahman has, as we have
\n\t\t\tseen, three aspects of which we can conveniently make three
\n\t\t\tsuccessive stages of experience. First, there is the Self in whom
\n\t\t\tall beings exist. The Spirit, the Divine has manifested itself as
\n\t\t\tinfinite self-extended being, self-existent, pure, not subject to
\n\t\t\tTime and Space, but supporting Time and Space as figures of its
\n\t\t\tconsciousness. It is more than all things and contains them all
\n\t\t\twithin that self-extended being and consciousness, not bound by
\n\t\t\tanything that it creates, holds or becomes, but free and infinite
\n\t\t\tand all-blissful. It holds them, in the old image, as the infinite
\n\t\t\tether contains in itself all objects. This image of the ethereal
\n\t\t\t(Akasha) Brahman may indeed be of great practical help to the
\n\t\t\tsadhaka who finds a difficulty in meditating on what seems to him at
\n\t\t\tfirst an abstract and unseizable idea. In the image of the ether,
\n\t\t\tnot physical but an encompassing ether of vast being, consciousness
\n\t\t\tand bliss, he may seek to see with the mind and to feel in his
\n\t\t\tmental being this supreme existence and to identify it in oneness
\n\t\t\twith the self within him. By such meditation the mind may be brought
\n\t\t\tto a favourable state of predisposition in which, by the rending or
\n\t\t\twithdrawing of the veil, the supramental vision may flood the
\n\t\t\tmentality and change entirely all our seeing. And upon that change
\n\t\t\tof seeing, as it becomes more and more potent and insistent and
\n\t\t\toccupies all our consciousness, there will supervene eventually a
\n\t\t\tchange of becoming so that what we see we become. We shall be in our
\n\t\t\tself-consciousness not so much cosmic as ultra-cosmic, infinite.
\n\t\t\tMind and life and body will then be only movements in that infinity
\n\t\t\twhich we have become, and we shall see that what exists is not world
\n\t\t\tat all but simply this infinity of spirit in which move the mighty
\n\t\t\tcosmic harmonies of its own images of self-conscious becoming. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>371<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t But what then of all these forms and existences that make up the
\n\t\t\tharmony? Shall they be to us only images, empty name and form
\n\t\t\twithout any informing reality, poor worthless things in themselves
\n\t\t\tand however grandiose, puissant or beautiful they once seemed to our
\n\t\t\tmental vision, now to be rejected and held of no value? Not so;
\n\t\t\talthough that would be the first natural result of a very intense
\n\t\t\tabsorption in the infinity of the all-containing Self to the
\n\t\t\texclusion of the infinities that it contains. But these things are
\n\t\t\tnot empty, not mere unreal name and form imagined by a cosmic Mind;
\n\t\t\tthey are, as we have said, in their reality self-conscious becomings
\n\t\t\tof the Self, that is to say, the Self dwells within all of them even
\n\t\t\tas within us, conscious of them, governing their motion, blissful in
\n\t\t\this habitation as in his embrace of all that he becomes. As the
\n\t\t\tether both contains and is as it were contained in the jar, so this
\n\t\t\tSelf both contains and inhabits all existences, not in a physical
\n\t\t\tbut in a spiritual sense, and is their reality. This indwelling
\n\t\t\tState of the Self we have to realise; we have to see and ourselves
\n\t\t\tto become in our consciousness the Self in all existences. We have,
\n\t\t\tputting aside all vain resistance of the intellect and the mental
\n\t\t\tassociations, to know that the Divine inhabits all these becomings
\n\t\t\tand is their true Self and conscious Spirit, and not to know it only
\n\t\t\tintellectually but to know by a self-experience that shall compel
\n\t\t\tinto its own diviner mould all the habits of the mental
\n\t\t\tconsciousness. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis Self that we are has finally to become to our self-consciousness
\n\t\t\tentirely one with all existences in spite of its exceeding them. We
\n\t\t\thave to see it not only as that which contains and inhabits all, but
\n\t\t\tthat which is all, not only as indwelling spirit, but also as the
\n\t\t\tname and form, the movement and the master of the movement, the mind
\n\t\t\tand life and body. It is by this final realisation that we shall
\n\t\t\tresume entirely in the right poise and the vision of the Truth all
\n\t\t\tthat we drew back from in the first movement of recoil and
\n\t\t\twithdrawal. The individual mind, life and body which we recoiled
\n\t\t\tfrom as not our true being, we shall recover as a true becoming of
\n\t\t\tthe Self, but no longer in a purely individual narrowness. We shall
\n\t\t\ttake up the mind not as a separate mentality imprisoned in a petty
\n\t\t\tmotion, but <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>372<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tas a large movement of the universal mind, the life not as an
\n\t\t\tegoistic activity of vitality and sensation and desire, but as a
\n\t\t\tfree movement of the universal life, the body not as a physical
\n\t\t\tprison of the soul but as a subordinate instrument and detachable
\n\t\t\trobe, realising that also as a movement of universal Matter, a cell
\n\t\t\tof the cosmic Body. We shall come to feel all the consciousness of
\n\t\t\tthe physical world as one with our physical consciousness, feel all
\n\t\t\tthe energies of the cosmic life around as our own energies, feel all
\n\t\t\tthe heart-beats of the great cosmic impulse and seeking in our
\n\t\t\theart-beats set to the rhythm of the divine Ananda, feel all the
\n\t\t\taction of the universal mind flowing into our mentality and our
\n\t\t\tthought-action flowing out upon it as a wave into that wide sea.
\n\t\t\tThis unity embracing all mind, life and matter in the light of a
\n\t\t\tsupramental Truth and the pulse of a spiritual Bliss will be to us
\n\t\t\tour internal fulfilment of the Divine in a complete cosmic
\n\t\t\tconsciousness. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut since we must embrace all this in the double term of the Being
\n\t\t\tand the Becoming, the knowledge that we shall possess must be
\n\t\t\tcomplete and integral. It must not stop with the realisation of the
\n\t\t\tpure Self and Spirit, but include also all those modes of the Spirit
\n\t\t\tby which it supports, develops and throws itself out into its cosmic
\n\t\t\tmanifestation. Self-knowledge and world-knowledge must be made one in
\n\t\t\tthe all-ensphering knowledge of the Brahman.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>373<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter X   The Realisation of the Cosmic Self   OUR FIRST imperative aim when we draw back from mind, life, body and all else…<\/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-2212","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\/2212","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=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}