{"id":2656,"date":"2013-07-13T01:43:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2656"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:43:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:43:02","slug":"35-philosophical-thought-and-yoga-vol-28-letters-on-yoga-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/28-letters-on-yoga-i\/35-philosophical-thought-and-yoga-vol-28-letters-on-yoga-i","title":{"rendered":"-35_Philosophical Thought and Yoga.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\tChapter Three <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tPhilosophical Thought and Yoga
\n<\/font><\/b> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tMetaphysical Thinkers, East and West
\n\t<\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

European metaphysical thought
\n\t\u2014even in those thinkers who
\ntry to prove or explain the existence and nature of God or of the Absolute \u2014does not in its method and result go beyond the
\nintellect. But the intellect is incapable of knowing the supreme Truth; it can only range about seeking for Truth and catching
\nfragmentary representations of it, not the thing itself, and trying to piece them together. Mind cannot arrive at Truth; it can only
\nmake some constructed figure that tries to represent it or a combination of figures. At the end of European thought, therefore,
\nthere must always be Agnosticism, declared or implicit. Intellect, if it goes sincerely to its own end, has to return and give this
\nreport: “I cannot know; there is or at least it seems to me that there may be or even must be Something beyond, some ultimate
\nReality, but about its truth I can only speculate; it is either unknowable or cannot be known by me.” Or, if it has received
\nsome light on the way from what is beyond it, it can say too: “There is perhaps a consciousness beyond Mind, for I seem to
\ncatch glimpses of it and even to get intimations from it. If that is in touch with the Beyond or if it is itself the consciousness
\nof the Beyond and you can find some way to reach it, then this Something can be known but not otherwise.” <\/p>\n

Any seeking of the supreme Truth through intellect alone must end either in Agnosticism of this kind or else in some
\nintellectual system or mind-constructed formula. There have been hundreds of these systems and formulas and there can
\nbe hundreds more, but none can be definitive. Each may have its value for the mind, and different systems with their contrary
\nconclusions can have an equal appeal to intelligences of equal power and competence. All this labour of speculation has its
\nutility in training the human mind and helping to keep before  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013 351<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

it the idea of Something beyond and Ultimate towards which it must turn. But the intellectual Reason can only point vaguely
\nor feel gropingly towards it or try to indicate partial and even conflicting aspects of its manifestation here; it cannot enter into
\nand know it. As long as we remain in the domain of the intellect only, an impartial pondering over all that has been thought and
\nsought after, a constant throwing up of ideas, of all the possible ideas, and the formation of this or that philosophical belief,
\nopinion or conclusion is all that can be done. This kind of disinterested search after Truth would be the only possible attitude
\nfor any wide and plastic intelligence. But any conclusion so arrived at would be only speculative; it could have no spiritual
\nvalue; it would not give the decisive experience or the spiritual certitude for which the soul is seeking. If the intellect is our highest possible instrument and there is no other means of arriving at supraphysical Truth, then a wise and large Agnosticism must
\nbe our ultimate attitude. Things in the manifestation may be known to some degree, but the Supreme and all that is beyond
\nthe Mind must remain for ever unknowable. <\/p>\n

It is only if there is a greater consciousness beyond Mind
\nand that consciousness is accessible to us that we can know and enter into the ultimate Reality. Intellectual speculation, logical reasoning as to whether there is or is not such a greater consciousness cannot carry us very far. What we need is a way
\nto get the experience of it, to reach it, enter into it, live in it. If we can get that, intellectual speculation and reasoning must
\nfall necessarily into a very secondary place and even lose their reason for existence. Philosophy, intellectual expression of the
\nTruth may remain, but mainly as a means of expressing this greater discovery and as much of its contents as can at all be
\nexpressed in mental terms to those who still live in the mental intelligence. <\/p>\n

This, you will see, answers your point about the Western thinkers, Bradley and others, who have arrived through intellectual thinking at the idea of an “Other beyond Thought” or have even, like Bradley, tried to express their conclusions about it in
\nterms that recall some of the expressions in the Arya. <\/i>The idea in   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013 352<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

itself is not new; it is as old as the Vedas. It was repeated in other forms in Buddhism, Christian Gnosticism, Sufism. Originally, it
\nwas not discovered by intellectual speculation, but by the mystics following an inner spiritual discipline. When, somewhere
\nbetween the seventh and fifth centuries B.C., men began both in the East and West to intellectualise knowledge, this Truth
\nsurvived in the East; in the West, where the intellect began to be accepted as the sole or highest instrument for the discovery of
\nTruth, it began to fade. But still it has there too tried constantly to return; the Neo-Platonists brought it back, and now, it appears,
\nthe Neo-Hegelians and others (e.g., the Russian Ouspensky and one or two German thinkers, I believe) seem to be reaching after
\nit. But still there is a difference. <\/p>\n

In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers
\nhave tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they have not
\ngiven mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank
\nhas always been given to spiritual intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an intellectual conclusion that contradicts
\nthis supreme authority is held invalid. Secondly, each philosophy has armed itself with a practical way of reaching to the
\nsupreme state of consciousness, so that even when one begins with Thought, the aim is to arrive at a consciousness beyond
\nmental thinking. Each philosophical founder (as also those who continued his work or school) has been a metaphysical thinker
\ndoubled with a Yogi. Those who were only philosophic intellectuals were respected for their learning but never took rank as
\ntruth discoverers. And the philosophies that lacked a sufficiently powerful means of spiritual experience died out and became
\nthings of the past because they were not dynamic for spiritual discovery and realisation. <\/p>\n

In the West it was just the opposite that came to pass. Thought, intellect, the logical reason came to be regarded more
\nand more as the highest means and even the highest end; in philosophy, Thought is the be-all and the end-all. It is by intellectual
\nthinking and speculation that the truth is to be discovered; even   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013 353<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

spiritual experience has been summoned to pass the tests of the intellect, if it is to be held valid
\n\u2014just the reverse of the
\nIndian position. Even those who see that mental Thought must be overpassed and admit a supramental “Other”, do not seem to
\nescape from the feeling that it must be through mental Thought, sublimating and transmuting itself, that this other Truth must
\nbe reached and made to take the place of the mental limitation and ignorance. And again Western thought has ceased to be
\ndynamic; it has sought after a theory of things, not after realisation. It was still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but
\nfor moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became
\nintellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means for the attainment of the Truth by spiritual experiment,
\nspiritual discovery, a spiritual transformation. If there were not this difference, there would be no reason for seekers like yourself
\nto turn to the East for guidance; for in the purely intellectual field, the Western thinkers are as competent as any Eastern sage.
\nIt is the spiritual way, the road that leads beyond the intellectual levels, the passage from the outer being to the inmost Self, which
\nhas been lost by the over-intellectuality of the mind of Europe. <\/p>\n

In the extracts you have sent me from Bradley and Joachim,
\nit is still the intellect thinking about what is beyond itself and coming to an intellectual, a reasoned speculative conclusion
\nabout it. It is not dynamic for the change which it attempts to describe. If these writers were expressing in mental terms some
\nrealisation, even mental, some intuitive experience of this “Other than Thought”, then one ready for it might feel it through the
\nveil of the language they use and himself draw near to the same experience. Or if, having reached the intellectual conclusion,
\nthey had passed on to the spiritual realisation, finding the way or following one already found, then in pursuing their thought,
\none might be preparing oneself for the same transition. But there is nothing of the kind in all this strenuous thinking. It
\nremains in the domain of the intellect and in that domain it is no doubt admirable; but it does not become dynamic for spiritual
\nexperience.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013 354<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

It is not by “thinking out” the entire reality, but by a change of consciousness that one can pass from the ignorance to the
\nKnowledge \u2014the Knowledge by which we become what we know. To pass from the external to a direct and intimate inner
\nconsciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an inner will and aspiration
\nand opening to the Light till it passes in its ascent beyond Mind; to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through self
\ngiving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and body \u2014this is the
\nintegral <\/i>way to the Truth.1 It is this
\nthat we call the Truth here and aim at in our Yoga. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tWorld-Circumstances and the Divine
\n\t<\/a>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The whole world knows, spiritual thinker and materialist alike, that this world for the created or naturally evolved being in the
\nignorance or the inconscience of Nature is neither a bed of roses nor a path of joyous Light. It is a difficult journey, a battle and
\nstruggle, an often painful and chequered growth, a life besieged by obscurity, falsehood and suffering. It has its mental, vital,
\nphysical joys and pleasures, but these bring only a transient taste \u2014which yet the vital self is unwilling to forego
\n\u2014and they
\nend in distaste, fatigue or disillusionment. What then? To say the Divine does not exist is easy, but it leads nowhere
\n\u2014it leaves
\nyou where you are with no prospect or issue \u2014neither Russell nor any materialist can tell you where you are going or even
\nwhere you ought to go. The Divine does not manifest himself so as to be recognised in the external world-circumstances
\n\u2014
\nadmittedly so. These are not the works of an irresponsible autocrat somewhere \u2014they are the circumstances of a working out
\nof Forces according to a certain nature of being, one might say a certain proposition or problem of being into which we have
\nall really consented to enter and cooperate. The work is painful, <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    
\n\t1 I have said that the idea of the Supermind was already in existence from ancient
\ntimes. There was in India and elsewhere the attempt to reach it by rising to it; but what was missed was the way to make it integral for the life and to bring it down for
\ntransformation of the whole nature, even of the physical nature.  <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t355<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

dubious, its vicissitudes impossible to forecast? There are either of two possibilities then,
\n\u2014to get out of it into Nirvana by the
\nBuddhist or illusionist way or to get inside oneself and find the Divine there since he is not discoverable on the surface. For
\nthose who have made the attempt, and there were not a few but hundreds and thousands, have testified through the ages that he
\nis there and that is why there exists the Yoga. It takes long? The Divine is concealed behind a thick veil of his Maya and does
\nnot answer at once or at any early stage to our call? Or he gives only a glimpse uncertain and passing and then withdraws and
\nwaits for us to be ready? But if the Divine has any value, is it not worth some trouble, time and labour to follow after him and
\nmust we insist on having him without any training or sacrifice or suffering or trouble? It is surely irrational to make a demand of
\nsuch a nature. It is positive that we have to get inside, behind the veil, to find him,
\n\u2014it is only then that we can see him outside
\nand the intellect be not so much convinced as forced to admit his presence by experience
\n\u2014just as when a man sees what he
\nhas denied and can no longer deny it. But for that the means must be accepted and the persistence in the will and patience in
\nthe labour. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I cannot very well answer the strictures of Russell or Vivekananda (in one of his moods), for the conception of the Divine
\nas an external omnipotent Power who has created the world and governs it like an absolute and arbitrary monarch, the Christian
\nor Semitic conception, the popular religious notion, has never been mine; it contradicts too much my seeing and experience
\nduring thirty years of sadhana. When I speak of the Divine Will I mean something different,
\n\u2014something that has descended
\nhere into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading
\nthings presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent
\nof a greater Power of the Divine which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the Law of the world as
\n   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013 356<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

it is, but a full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are
\nthe Divine Nature. The Divine Grace is there, ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of
\nthe Ignorance into the Law of Light and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but
\nas a help in that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers. If we take the facts of the world as they are and the
\nfacts of spiritual experience as a whole, neither of which can be denied or neglected, then I do not see what other Divine there
\ncan be. This Divine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us and around us, but it is to the Light
\nhe is leading and not to anything else. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tIntellectual Expression of Spiritual Experience
\n\t<\/a>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In reference to what Prof. Sorley has written on The Riddle of<\/i> This World<\/i>,2 the book of course was not meant as a full or
\ndirect statement of my thought and, as it was written to sadhaks mostly, many things were taken for granted there. Most of the
\nmajor ideas \u2014e.g. Overmind \u2014were left without elucidation. To make the ideas implied clear to the intellect, they must be put
\nwith precision in an intellectual form \u2014so far as that is possible with supra-intellectual things. What is written in the book can
\nbe clear to those who have gone far enough in experience, but for most it can only be suggestive. <\/p>\n

I do not think, however, that the statement of supraintellectual things necessarily involves a making of distinctions
\nin the terms of the intellect. For, fundamentally, it is not an expression of ideas arrived at by speculative thinking. One
\nhas to arrive at spiritual knowledge through experience and a consciousness of things which arises directly out of that
\nexperience or else underlies or is involved in it. This kind of knowledge, then, is fundamentally a consciousness and not a <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t2 A small book of letters by Sri Aurobindo in which he discusses various questions of<\/i>
\nphilosophy and spiritual experience. It was first published in 1933. \u2014Ed.<\/i>
\n  
\n358<\/i> <\/font> <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013 357<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

thought or formulated idea. For instance, my first major experience
\n\u2014radical and overwhelming, though not, as it turned
\nout, final and exhaustive \u2014came after and by the exclusion and silencing of all thought
\n\u2014there was, first, what might be called
\na spiritually substantial or concrete consciousness of stillness and silence, then the awareness of some sole and supreme
\nReality in whose presence things existed only as forms, but forms not at all substantial or real or concrete; but this was all
\napparent to a spiritual perception and essential and impersonal sense and there was not the least concept or idea of reality
\nor unreality or any other notion, for all concept or idea was hushed or rather entirely absent in the absolute stillness. These
\nthings were known directly through the pure consciousness and not through the mind, so there was no need of concepts or
\nwords or names. At the same time this fundamental character of spiritual experience is not absolutely limitative; it can do
\nwithout thought, but it can do with thought also. Of course, the first idea of the mind would be that the resort to thought
\nbrings one back at once to the domain of the intellect \u2014and at first and for a long time it may be so; but it is not my experience
\nthat this is unavoidable. It happens so when one tries to make an intellectual statement of what one has experienced; but there
\nis another kind of thought that springs out as if it were a body or form of the experience or of the consciousness involved in it
\n\u2014or of a part of that consciousness \u2014and this does not seem to me to be intellectual in its character. It has another light,
\nanother power in it, a sense within the sense. It is very clearly so with those thoughts that come without the need of words to
\nembody them, thoughts that are of the nature of a direct seeing in the consciousness, even a kind of intimate sense or contact
\nformulating itself into a precise expression of its awareness (I hope this is not too mystic or unintelligible); but it might be
\nsaid that directly the thoughts turn into words they belong to the kingdom of intellect
\n\u2014for words are a coinage of the
\nintellect. But is it so really \u2014or inevitably? It has always seemed to me that words came originally from somewhere else than
\nthe thinking mind, although the thinking mind secured hold <\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013 358<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 of them, turned them to its use and coined them freely for its purposes. But even otherwise, is it not possible to use words for
\nthe expression of something that is not intellectual? Housman contends that poetry is perfectly poetical only when it is non
\nintellectual, when it is nonsense. That is too paradoxical, but I suppose what he means is that if it is put to the strict test of the
\nintellect it appears extravagant because it conveys something that expresses and is real to some other kind of seeing than that
\nwhich intellectual thought brings to us. Is it not possible that words may spring from, that language may be used to express
\n\u2014at least up to a certain point and in a certain way \u2014the supra-intellectual consciousness which is the essential power of
\nspiritual experience? This however is by the way \u2014when one tries to explain spiritual experience to the intellect itself, then it
\nis a different matter. <\/p>\n

The interpenetration of the planes is indeed for me a capital and fundamental part of spiritual experience without which Yoga as I practise it and its aim could not exist. For that aim is
\nto manifest, reach or embody a higher consciousness upon earth and not to get away from earth into a higher world or some
\nsupreme Absolute. The old Yogas (not quite all of them) tended the other way \u2014but that was, I think, because they found the
\nearth as it is a rather impossible place for any spiritual being and the resistance to change too obstinate to be borne; earth-nature
\nlooked to them in Vivekananda’s simile like the dog’s tail which every time you straighten it goes back to its original curl. But
\nthe fundamental proposition in this matter was proclaimed very definitely in the Upanishads which went so far as to say that
\nthe Earth is the foundation and all the worlds are on the earth and to imagine a clean-cut or irreconcilable difference between
\nthem is ignorance: here and not elsewhere, not by going to some other world, the divine realisation must come. This statement
\nwas used to justify a purely individual realisation, but it can equally be the basis of a wider endeavour. <\/p>\n

About polytheism, I certainly accept the truth of the many forms and personalities of the One which since the Vedic
\ntimes has been the spiritual essence of Indian polytheism \u2014 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013 359<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

a secondary aspect in the seeking for the one and only Divine. But the passage referred to by Professor Sorley3 is concerned
\nwith something else \u2014the little godlings and Titans spoken of there are supraphysical beings of other planes. It is not meant
\nto be suggested that they are real Godheads and entitled to worship \u2014on the contrary it is indicated that to accept their
\ninfluence is to move towards error and confusion or a deviation from the true spiritual way. No doubt they have some power to
\ncreate, they are makers of forms in their own way and in their limited domain, but so are men too creators of outward and of
\ninward things in their own domain and limits \u2014and even man’s creative powers can have a repercussion on the supraphysical
\nlevels. <\/p>\n

I agree that asceticism can be overdone. It has its place as
\none means \u2014not the only one \u2014of self-mastery; but asceticism that cuts away life is an exaggeration, though one that had
\nmany remarkable results which perhaps could hardly have come otherwise. The play of forces in this world is enigmatic, escaping
\nfrom any rigid rule of the reason, and even an exaggeration like that is often employed to bring about something needed for
\nthe full development of human achievement and knowledge and experience. But it was an exaggeration all the same and not, as
\nit claimed to be, the indispensable path to the true goal. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I find nothing either to add or to object to in Prof. Sorley’s comment on the still, bright and clear mind; it adequately indicates
\nthe process by which the mind makes itself ready for the reflection of the higher Truth in its undisturbed surface or substance.
\nBut one thing perhaps needs to be kept in view \u2014that this pure stillness of the mind is indeed always the required condition, the
\ndesideratum, but for bringing it about there are more ways than one. It is not, for instance, only by an effort of the mind itself
\nto get clear of all intrusive emotion or passion, to quiet its own<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

  
\n\t   3 “for these intermediate planes are full of little Gods or strong Daityas . . .”.
\n<\/i>The
\nRiddle of This World (1973), p. 38.<\/i>  <\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t360<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

characteristic vibrations, to resist the obscuring fumes of a physical inertia which brings about a sleep or a torpor of the mind
\ninstead of its wakeful silence, that the thing can be done. This is indeed an ordinary process of the Yogic path of knowledge; but
\nthe same end can be brought about or automatically happen by other processes \u2014for instance, by the descent from above of a
\ngreat spiritual stillness imposing silence on the mind and heart, on the life stimuli, on the physical reflexes. A sudden descent
\nof this kind or a series of descents accumulative in force and efficacy is a well-known phenomenon of spiritual experience.
\nOr again one may start a mental process of one kind or another for the purpose which would normally mean a long labour and
\nyet may pull down or be seized midway, or even at the outset, by an overmind influx, a rapid intervention or manifestation of the
\nhigher Silence, with an effect sudden, instantaneous, out of all proportion to the means used at the beginning. One commences
\nwith a method, but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, by a response from That to which one aspires or by an irruption
\nof the infinitudes of the Spirit. It was in this last way that I myself came by the mind’s absolute silence, unimaginable to me before
\nI had the actual experience. <\/p>\n

There is another question of some importance
\n\t\u2014what is the
\nexact nature of this brightness, clearness, stillness, of what is it constituted, more precisely, is it merely a psychological condition
\nor something more? Professor Sorley says these epithets are after all metaphors
\n\tand he wants to express and succeeds in expressing \u2014though not without the
\n\tuse of metaphor \u2014the same thing in a more abstract language. But I was not
\n\tconscious of using metaphors when I wrote the phrase though I am aware that
\n\tthe words could to others have that appearance. I think even that they would
\n\tseem to one who had gone through the same experience, not only a more vivid,
\n\tbut a more realistic and accurate description of this inner state than any
\n\tabstract language could give. It is true that metaphors, symbols, images are
\n\tconstant auxiliaries summoned by the mystic for the expression of his vision
\n\tor his experience. It is inevitable because he has to ex press in a language
\n\tmade or at least developed and manipulated  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t361<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

by the mind the phenomena of a consciousness other than the mental and at once more complex and more subtly concrete. It
\nis this subtly concrete, this supersensuously sensible reality of the phenomena of the spiritual
\n\u2014or the occult \u2014consciousness
\nto which the mystic arrives that justifies the use of metaphor and image as a more living and accurate transcription than the
\nabstract terms which intellectual reflection employs for its own characteristic process. If the images used are misleading or not
\ndescriptively accurate, it is because the writer has a paucity, looseness or vagueness of language inadequate to the intensity
\nof his experience. Apart from that, all new phenomenon, new discovery, new creation calls for the aid of metaphor and image.
\nThe scientist speaks of light waves or of sound waves and in doing so he uses a metaphor, but one which corresponds to the
\nphysical fact and is perfectly applicable \u2014for there is no reason why there should not be a wave, a limited flowing movement of
\nlight or of sound as well as of water. <\/p>\n

But still when I speak of the mind’s brightness, clearness,
\nstillness, I have no idea of calling metaphor to my aid; it is meant to be a description quite precise and positive
\n\t\u2014as precise,
\nas positive as if I were describing in the same way an expanse of air or a sheet of water. For the mystic’s experience of mind,
\nespecially when it falls still, is not that of an abstract condition or impalpable activity of the consciousness; it is rather
\nan experience of a substance \u2014an extended subtle substance in which there can be and are waves, currents, vibrations not
\nphysically material but still as definite, as perceptible, as tangible and controllable by an inner sense as any movement of material
\nenergy or substance by the physical senses. The stillness of the mind means, first, the falling to rest of the habitual thought
\nmovements, thought formations, thought currents which agitate this mind-substance. That repose, vacancy of movement, is for
\nmany a sufficient mental silence. But, even in this repose of all thought movements and all movements of feeling, one sees, when
\none looks more closely at it, that the mind-substance is still in a constant state of very subtle formless but potentially formative
\nvibration \u2014not at first easily observable, but afterwards quite   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t362<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

evident
\n\u2014and that state of constant vibration may be as harmful to the exact reflection or reception of the descending Truth
\nas any formed thought movement or emotional movement; for these vibrations are the source of a mentalisation which can
\ndiminish or distort the authenticity of the higher Truth or break it up into mental refractions. When I speak of a still mind, I
\nmean then one in which these subtler disturbances too are no longer there. As they fall quiet one can feel an increasing stillness
\nwhich is not the lesser quietude of repose and also a resultant clearness as palpable as the stillness and clearness of a physical
\natmosphere. <\/p>\n

This positiveness of experience is my justification for these
\nepithets “still, clear”; but the other epithet, “bright”, links itself to a still more sensible phenomenon of the subtly concrete. For
\nin the brightness I describe there is another additional element that is connected with the phenomenon of Light well known
\nand common to mystic experience. That inner Light of which the mystics speak is not a metaphor, as when Goethe called
\nfor more light in his last moments; it presents itself as a very positive illumination actually seen and felt by the inner sense.
\nThe brightness of the still and clear mind is a reflection of this Light that comes even before the Light itself manifests
\n\t\u2014and,
\neven without any actual manifestation of the Light, is sufficient for the mind’s openness to the greater consciousness beyond
\nmind \u2014just as we can see by the dawn-light before the sunrise; for it brings to the still mind, which might otherwise remain just
\nstill and at peace and nothing more, a capacity of penetrability to the Truth it has to receive and harbour. I have emphasised this
\npoint at a little length because it helps to bring out the difference between the abstract mental and the concrete mystic perception
\nof supraphysical things which is the source of much misunderstanding between the
\n\tspiritual seeker and the intellectual thinker. Even when they speak the same
\n\tlanguage it is a different order of perceptions to which the language
\n\trefers. The same word in their mouths may denote the products of two
\n\tdifferent grades of consciousness. This ambiguity in the expression is a
\n\tcause of much non-understanding and disagreement, while even a surface<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t363<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

agreement may be a thin bridge or crust over a gulf of difference. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I come now to the question raised by Professor Sorley, what is the relation
\n\u2014or rather the position \u2014of the intellect in regard
\nto mystic or spiritual experience. Is it true as it is often contended that the mystic must, whether as to the validity of his experience
\nitself or the validity of his expression of it, accept the intellect as the judge? It ought to be very plain that in the search, the
\ndiscovery, the getting of the experience itself the intellect cannot claim to put its limits or its law on an endeavour whose very
\naim, first principle, constant method is to go beyond the domain of the ordinary earth-ruled and sense-ruled mental intelligence.
\nIt would be as if you were to ask me to climb a mountain with a rope around me attaching me to the terrestrial level
\n\u2014or as
\nif I were permitted to fly but only on condition that I kept my feet on the earth or near enough to the safety of the ground
\nwhile I do it. It may indeed be the securest thing to walk on earth, to be on the firm ground of terrestrial reason always; to
\nattempt to ascend on wings to the Beyond-Mind ether may be to risk mental confusion and collapse and all possible accidents
\nof error, illusion, extravagance, hallucination or what not \u2014the usual charges of the positive earth-walking intellect against mystic experience; but I have to take the risk if I want to do it at all. The reasoning intellect bases itself on man’s normal conscious
\nness, it proceeds by the workings of a mental perception and conception of things; it is at its ease only when founded on a logical basis formed by terrestrial experience and its accumulated data. The mystic goes beyond into a region where the everyday
\nmental basis falls away; the terrestrial data on which the reason founds itself are exceeded, there is even another law and canon
\nof perception and knowledge. His entire business is to break out or upward or widen into a new consciousness which looks
\nat things in a very different way, and if this new consciousness may include, though viewed with quite another vision, the data
\nof the ordinary external intelligence, yet it cannot be limited by them, cannot bind itself to see from the intellectual standpoint or
\n   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t364<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

conform to its manner of conceiving, reasoning, its established interpretation of experience. A mystic entering the domain of the
\noccult or of the spirit with the intellect as his only or his supreme light or guide would risk to see nothing, or see according to his
\npreconceived mental idea of things or else he would arrive only at a subtly “positive” mental realisation of perceptions already
\nlaid down for him by the abstract speculations of the intellectual thinker. <\/p>\n

There is a strain of spiritual thought in India which compromises with the modern intellectual demand and admits Reason
\nas a supreme judge, \u2014but it must be a Reason which in its turn is prepared to compromise and accept the data of spiritual experience as valid per se<\/i>. That is to do what the Indian philosophers have always done; for they have tried to establish by the light
\nof metaphysical reasoning generalisations drawn from spiritual experience; and it was always on the basis of that experience that
\nthey proceeded and with the evidence of the spiritual seekers as a supreme proof ranking higher than intellectual speculation or
\ninference. In that way they preserved the freedom of spiritual and mystic experience and allowed the reasoning intellect to come in
\nonly on the second line as a judge of the generalised metaphysical statements drawn from the experience, but not of the experience
\nitself. This is, I presume, something akin to Professor Sorley’s own position \u2014for he concedes that the experience itself is of
\nthe domain of the ineffable, but he suggests that as soon as I begin to interpret it, to state it, I fall back inevitably into the
\ndomain of the thinking mind; I am using its terms and ways of thought and expression and must accept the intellect as judge.
\nIf I do not, I knock away the ladder by which I have climbed \u2014through mind to Beyond-Mind
\n\u2014and I am left unsupported in
\nthe air. It is not quite clear whether the truth of my experience itself is supposed to be invalidated by this unsustained
\nposition, but at any rate it remains something aloof and incommunicable without
\nsupport or any consequences for thought or life. There are three propositions, I
\nsuppose, which I can take as laid down or admitted in this contention and joined
\ntogether. First, the spiritual experience is itself of the Beyond-Mind,
\nineffable and,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t365<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

it should be presumed, unthinkable. Next,
\n\u2014in the expression, the interpretation of the experience, you are obliged to fall back
\ninto the domain of the consciousness you have left and so you must abide by its judgments, accept the terms and the canons of
\nits law, submit to its verdict; for you have abandoned the freedom of the Ineffable and are no longer your own master. Last,
\nspiritual truth may be true in itself, in its own self-experience, but any statement of it is liable to error and here the intellect is
\nthe sole possible arbiter. <\/p>\n

I do not think I am prepared to accept any of these affirmations completely just as they are. It is true that spiritual and mystic experience carries one first into domains of Other
\nMind or All-Mind (and also Other-Life and All-Life and I would add Other-Substance and All-Substance) and then emerges into
\nthe Beyond-Mind; it is true also that the ultimate Truth has been described as unthinkable, ineffable, unknowable
\n\t\u2014”speech can
\nnot reach there, mind cannot arrive to it.” But I may observe that it is so to human mind, but not to itself, since it is not an
\nabstraction, but a superconscious (not unconscious) Existence, \u2014for it is described as to itself self-evident and self-luminous,
\n\t\u2014
\ntherefore in some direct supramental or at least overmind way knowable and known, eternally self-aware. But here the question
\nis not of an ultimate realisation of the ultimate Ineffable which according to many can only be reached in a supreme trance with
\ndrawn from all outer mental or other awareness; we are speaking rather of an experience in a luminous silence of the mind and
\nany such experience presupposes that before there is any last unspeakable experience of the Ultimate or disappearance into it,
\nthere is possible a reflection or descent of at least some Power or Presence of the identical Reality into the mind-substance. Along
\nwith it there is a modification of mind-substance, an illumination of it, \u2014and of this experience an expression of some kind, a rendering into thought ought to be possible. Moreover an immense mass of well-established spiritual experience would have been
\nimpossible unless we suppose that the Ineffable and Unknowable has truths of itself, aspects, revealing presentations of it to our
\nconsciousness which are not utterly unthinkable and ineffable.<\/p>\n

   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t366<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

If it were not so, indeed, all account of spiritual truth and experience would be impossible. At most one could speculate
\nabout it, but that would be an activity very much indeed in the air and even a movement in a void, without support or data.
\nAt best, there could be a mere manipulation of all the possible ideas of what conceivably might be the Supreme and Ultimate.
\nFor we would have nothing before us to go upon other than the bare fact of a certain unaccountable translation by one way
\nor another from consciousness to an incommunicable Supraconscience. That is indeed what much mystical seeking actually held
\nup as the one thing essential both in Europe and India. Many Christian mystics spoke of a total darkness through which one
\nmust pass into the Ineffable Light and Rapture, a falling away of all mental lights and all that belongs to the ordinary activity
\nof the nature; they aimed not only at a silence but a darkness of the mind protecting an inexpressible illumination. The Indian Sannyasins sought by silence, by concentration inwards, to shed mind altogether and pass into a thought-free trance
\nfrom which, if one returns, no communication or expression could be brought back of what was there except a remembrance
\nof ineffable existence and bliss. But still even here there were previous glimpses or contacts and results of contact of That
\nwhich is Beyond; there were contacts of the Highest or of the occult universal Existence, which were held to be spiritual truths
\nand on the basis of which the seers and mystics did not hesitate to formulate their experience and the thinkers to build on it
\nnumberless philosophies, theologies, books of exegesis or of creed and dogma. All then is not ineffable; there is a possibility of communication and expression, and the only question is of the nature
\nof this transmission of the facts of a different order of consciousness to the
\nmind and whether it is feasible for the intellect or must be left for something
\nelse than intellect to determine the validity of the expression or, even, of the
\noriginal experience. If no valid account were possible there could be no
\nquestion of the judgment of the intellect \u2014only the violent contradiction of
\nmind sitting down to judge a Beyond-Mind of which it can know nothing, starting
\nto speak of the Ineffable,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t367<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

think of the Unthinkable, comprehend the Incommunicable. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tComments on Thoughts of J. M. E. McTaggart
\n\t<\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have heard of McTaggart as a philosopher but am totally unacquainted with his thought and his writings, so it is a little difficult for me to answer you with any certitude. Isolated thoughts or sentences may easily be misunderstood if they are
\nnot read against the background of the thinker’s way of looking at things taken as a whole. There is always, too, the difference of
\nstandpoint and approach between the spiritual seeker or mystic who (sometimes) philosophises and the intellectual thinker who
\n(sometimes or partly) mysticises. The one starts from a spiritual or mystic experience or at the least an intuitive realisation and
\ntries to express it and its connection with other spiritual or intuitive truth in the inadequate and too abstract language of
\nthe mind; he looks behind thought and expression for some spiritual or intuitive experience to which it may point and, if
\nhe finds none, he is apt to feel the thought, however intellectually fine, or the expression, however intellectually significant,
\nas something unsubstantial because without spiritual substance. The intellectual thinker starts from ideas and mentalised feelings
\nand other mental or external phenomena and tries to reach the essential truth in or behind them; generally, he stops short at
\na mental abstraction or only a derivative mental realisation of something that is in its own nature other than mental. But if
\nhe has the true mystic somewhere in him, he will sometimes get beyond to at least flashes and glimpses. Is it not the compulsion of this approach (I mean the inadequacy of the method of intellectual philosophy, its fixation to the word and idea, while
\nto the complete mystic word and idea are useful symbols only or significative flashlights) that kept McTaggart,
\n\tas it keeps many, from the unfolding of the mystic within him? If the
\n\treviewer is right, that would be why he is abstract and dry, while what is
\n\tbeautiful and moving in his thought might be some light that shines through
\n\tin spite of the inadequate means of expression to which philosophical
\n\tthinking condemns us. However, subject to <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t368<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

this rather lengthy caveat, I will try to deal with the extracted sentences or summarised thoughts you have placed before me in
\nyour letter. <\/p>\n

\n\t"Love the main occupation of the selves in absolute reality.” <\/i>This seems to me a little excessive. If instead of “the main occupation” it were said “an essential power”, that might
\npass. I would myself say that bliss and oneness are the essential condition of the absolute reality and love as the most characteristic dynamic power of bliss and oneness must support fundamentally and colour their activities; but the activities themselves
\nmay be not of one main kind but manifold in character. <\/p>\n

Benevolence and sympathy<\/i>. In mental experience benevolence and sympathy have to be distinguished from love; but it seems to me that beyond the dividing mind, where the true sense
\nof oneness begins, these become at a higher intensity of their movement characteristic values of love. Benevolence becomes an
\nintense compulsion imposed by love to seek always the good of the loved, sympathy becomes the feeling out of love to contain,
\nparticipate in and take as part of one’s own existence all the movements of the loved and all that concerns him.
\n<\/p>\n

“Love is authentic and justifies itself completely whether<\/i> its cause be great or trivial.”
\n<\/i>That is not often true in human
\npractice; for there the destiny of love and its justification depend very much as a rule (though not always) on the nature of the
\ncause or object. For if the object of love is trivial in the sense of his being an inadequate instrument for the dynamic realisation
\nof the sense of oneness which McTaggart says is the essence of love, then love is likely to be baulked of its fulfilment.
\n\tUnless, of course, it is satisfied with existing, with spending itself in
\n\tits own fundamental way on the loved without expecting any return for its
\n\tself-expenditure, any mutual unification. Still, of Love in its essence the
\n\tstatement may be true; but then it would point to the fact that Love at its
\n\torigin is a self-existent force, an absolute, a transcendent (as I have put
\n\tit), which does not depend upon the objects, \u2014it depends only on itself or
\n\tonly on the Divine, \u2014for it is a self-existent power of the Divine. If it
\n\twere not self-existent, it would hardly be independent of the nature or
\n\treaction of its<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t369<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

object. It is partly what I mean when I speak of transcendent Love
\n\u2014though this is only one aspect of its transcendence. That
\nself-existent transcendent Love spreading itself over all, turning everywhere to contain, embrace, unite, help, upraise towards
\nlove and bliss and oneness, becomes cosmic divine Love; intensely fixing itself on one or others to find itself, to achieve a
\ndynamic unification or to reach here towards the union of the soul with the Divine, it becomes the individual divine Love. But
\nthere are unhappily its diminutions in the human mind, human vital, human physical; there the divine essence of Love may easily
\nbecome mixed with counterfeits, dimmed, concealed or lost in the twisted movements born of division and ignorance.
\n<\/p>\n

Love and self-reverence<\/i>. It sounds very high, but also rather dry; this “emotion” in the lover does not seem to be very
\nemotional, it is a hill-top syllogising far above the flow of any emotional urges. Self-reverence in this sense or in a deeper sense
\ncan come from Love, but it can <\/i>come equally from a participation in Knowledge, in Power or anything else that one feels to
\nbe the highest good or else of the essence of the Highest. But the passion of love, the adoration of love, can bring in a quite
\ndifferent, even an opposite emotion. Especially in love for the Divine or for one whom one feels to be divine, the Bhakta feels an
\nintense reverence for the Loved, a sense of something of immense greatness, beauty or value and for himself a strong impression
\nof his own comparative unworthiness and a passionate desire to grow <\/i>into likeness with that which one adores. What does come
\nvery often with the inrush of Love is an exaltation, a feeling of a greatening within, of new powers and high or beautiful
\npossibilities in one’s nature or of an intensification of the nature; but that is not exactly self-reverence. There is a deeper self
\nreverence possible, a true emotion, a sense of the value and even the sacredness of the soul, even the mind, life, body as an offering
\nor itself the temple for the inner presence of the Beloved. <\/p>\n

These reactions are intimately connected with the fact that
\nLove, when it is worthy of the name, is always a seeking for union, for oneness, but also in its secret foundation it is a
\nseeking, if sometimes only a dim groping for the Divine. Love   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t370<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

in its depths is a contact of the Divine Possibility or Reality in oneself with the Divine Possibility or Reality in the loved.
\nIt is the inability to affirm or keep this character that makes human love either transient or baulked of its full significance
\nor condemned to sink into a less exalted movement diminished to the capacity of the human receptacle. But there McTaggart
\nbrings in his saving clause, “When I love, I see the other not as he is now (and therefore really is not), but as he really is
\n(that is, as he will be).” The rest of it, that “the other with all his faults is somehow infinitely good
\n\u2014at least for his friend”,
\nseems to me too mental to convey anything very definite from the standpoint of the spiritual inner values. But the formula
\nquoted also is not overclear. It means, I suppose, something like Vivekananda’s distinction between the apparent Man and the
\nreal Man; or it coincides up to a point with the saying of one of the early teachers of Vedanta, Yajnavalkya, “Not for the sake
\nof the wife is the wife dear” (or, the friend \u2014for the wife is only the first of a list), “but for the sake of the Self (the greater
\nSelf, the Spirit within) is she dear.” But Yajnavalkya, a seeker of the one (not the plural) Absolute, would not have accepted
\nthe implication in McTaggart’s phrase; he would have said that one must go beyond and eventually seek the Self not in the wife
\nor friend \u2014even though sought or glimpsed there for a time, but in its own self-existence. In any case there seems to be here
\nan avowal that it is not the human being (what he now is), but the Divine or a portion of the Divine within (call it God if you
\nwill or call it Absolute) that is the object of the love. But the mystic would not be satisfied like McTaggart with that “will
\nbe”, \u2014would not consent to remain in love with the finite for the sake of an unrealised Infinite. He would insist on pushing on
\ntowards full realisation, towards finding the Divine in Itself or the Divine Manifest; he would not rest satisfied with the Divine
\nunconscious of itself, unmanifested or only distantly in posse<\/i>. <\/p>\n

There is where the parallel with the Ishta Devata which
\nyou suggest would not hold; for the Ishta Devata on whom the seeker concentrates is a
\nconscious <\/i>Personality of the Divine
\nanswering to the needs of his own personality and showing to   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t371<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

him as in a representative image what the Divine is or at least pointing him through itself to the Absolute. On the other side,
\nwhen I spoke of the self-absorption of the Divine Force in its energising, I was trying to explain the possibility in a Divine
\nor cosmic manifestation of this apparently inconscient Matter. I said that in the frontal movement there was something of the
\nDivine that had thrown itself into material form with so much concentration that it became the motion and the form which the
\nmotion of Force creates and put all that was not that behind it, \u2014even, but in a greater degree and more permanently, as a
\nman can concentrate and forget his own existence in what he is doing, seeing or making. In man himself, who is not inconscient,
\nthis appears in a different way; his frontal being is unaware of what is behind the surface personality and action, like the part of
\nthe actor’s being which becomes the role and forgets entirely the other more enduring self behind the actor. But in either case there
\nis a larger self behind, “a Conscient in things inconscient”, which is aware both of itself and of the self-forgetting frontal form seen
\nas the creature. Does McTaggart recognise this conscious Divine within? He makes too little of this Absolute or Real Self which,
\nas he yet sees, is within the unreal or less real appearance. His denial of the Divine comes from the insistence of his mind and
\nvital temperament on the friend as he is, even though his higher mind may try to escape from that by the idea of what his friend
\nwill be; otherwise it is difficult to understand the stupendous exaggeration of his thesis that the love for friends is the
\nonly<\/i>
\nreal thing in life and his unwillingness to give God a chance, lest that should take away the friend and leave the Divine in his
\nplace. <\/p>\n

I do not quite seize what is his conception of the Absolute.
\nHow can it be said that a society (?) of distinct selves are collectively the Absolute? If it is meant that where there is a union of
\nconscious liberated selves there is the presence of the Divine and a certain manifestation is possible,
\n\t\u2014that is intelligible. Or if by
\nsociety is meant only that the sum or totality of all distinct selves is the Divine and these distinct individual selves are portions of
\nthe Divine, that would be an intelligible (pantheistic) solution.   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t372<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Only, it would be a Divine All or some kind of Cosmic Self or Spirit rather than the Absolute. For if there is an Absolute
\n\u2014which intellectually one is not bound to believe, except that something in the higher mind seems imperatively to ask for it
\nor feel that it is there, \u2014it must surely exist in its own absolute right, not constituted, not dependent for its being on a collectivity of distinct selves, but self-existent. To the intellect such an Absolute may seem an indefinable
\nx <\/i>which it cannot grasp;
\nbut mystic or spiritual experience pushed far enough ultimately leads to it, and whatever may be the gate of experience through
\nwhich one gets the first glimpse of it, it is there even though not fully grasped in that opening experience. <\/p>\n

Your own experience of it was, you say, that of an irruption of the Infinite into the finite
\n\u2014of a greater Power descending
\nupon you or uplifting you to itself. That indeed is what it is always to the spiritual experience
\n\u2014and that is why I speak of
\nit as the Transcendent. It reveals itself as such a descending and uplifting Power or a descending and uplifting Love
\n\u2014or Light,
\nPeace, Bliss, Consciousness, Presence; it is not limited by its manifestation in the finite,
\n\u2014one feels it, the Peace, the Power,
\nLove, Light or Bliss or the Presence in which all these are, to be a self-existent infinity, not something constituted by or limited
\nto our first sight of it here. McTaggart’s love of friends remained the only
\n<\/i>real thing for him; I must suppose that he had not this
\nglimpse. But once this irruption has taken place, this descent and uplifting, that is bound to become in the end the one thing
\nreal, for by that alone can the rest find its own lasting greater reality. It is the descent of the Divine Consciousness and the
\nascent or uplifting into it of which we speak in our Yoga. All else can only hold, make good, fulfil itself if it can lift itself to
\nbe a part of this divine realisation or of its manifestation, and, to do that, it must accept a great transformation and perfection.
\nBut the central realisation must be the one central aim, and it is that realisation
\nonly which will make other things, all that is intended to be made part of it,
\ndivinely possible.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t373<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n


\nComments on Terms Used by Henri Bergson4
\n<\/a>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I have not read him [Bergson<\/i>] sufficiently to pronounce. So far
\nas I know, he seems to have some perception of the dynamic creative intuition involved in Life, but none of the truly supra
\nrational intuition above. If so, his Intuition which he takes to be the sole secret of things is only a secondary manifestation
\nof something transcendent which is itself only the “rays of the Sun”. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Instinct and intuition as described by him [Bergson<\/i>] are vital,
\nbut it is possible to develop a corresponding mental intuition, and that is probably what he suggests
\n\t\u2014and which depends not
\non thought but a sort of mental direct contact with things. This is not exactly mysticism, though it is a first step towards it. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No, it [Bergson’s <\/i>elan vital] is not the Supramental. But Bergson’s “intuition” seems to be a Life Intuition which is of course the
\nSupramental fragmented and modified to act as a Knowledge in “Life-in-Matter”. I can’t say definitively yet, but that is the
\nimpression it gave me. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Bergson’s <\/i>elan vital:] Not Sachchidananda but Chit-shakti in
\nthe disguise of Pranashakti. Bergson is, I believe, a vitalist (as opposed to a materialist on one side and an idealist on the
\nother) with a strong perception of Time (in Upanishadic times they speculated whether Time was not the Brahman and some
\nschools held that idea). So for him Brahman = Consciousness-Force = Time-Force = Life-Force. But the last two he sees vividly,
\nwhile the first which is the real thing behind creation he sees very dimly. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t    
\n\t4 The six replies in this group were written to a correspondent who quoted sentences<\/i>
\nfrom Bergson’s writings, commented on them and then asked Sri Aurobindo for his<\/i>
\nviews. \u2014Ed.<\/i>
\n  
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t374<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 He [Bergson<\/i>] sees Consciousness (Chit) not in its essential truth but as a creative Force = a sort of transcendent Life-Energy
\ndescending into Matter and acting there. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

I suppose Bergson must already know what the “mystics” say about the matter and has put his own interpretation or value
\nupon it. So he would not at all be impressed by your suggestion.5 He would say, “I know all about that already.” <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\tMetaphysics, Science and Spiritual Experience
\n\t<\/a> <\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do not find it easy to answer the few brief and casual sentences
\nin X<\/i>‘s letter, \u2014precisely because they are so brief and casual.6 Not knowing him or the turns of his mind, I do not exactly seize
\nwhat is behind this passage in his letter. It would be easier to reply if I had some notion of the kind of thought or experience
\non which he takes his stand when he dismisses so cavalierly the statement of spiritual truth put forward in the
\nArya<\/i>. As it is, I
\nam obliged to answer to what may <\/i>be behind his sentences and, as there is much that possibly stands behind them, the reply
\nbecomes long and elaborate and is in danger of seeming long and discursive. I could of course answer easily myself by a few
\nbrief and trenchant sentences of the same calibre, but in that kind of discussion there is no profit. <\/p>\n

Let me say that he makes an initial mistake
\n\u2014quite natural for him, since he has not read the
\nArya<\/i>, \u2014when he describes
\nthe extract sent to him as a “theological fragment”. I must insist that there is no theology in the
\nArya<\/i>. Nothing there is written
\nto support or to develop any kind of religious belief or dogma or to confirm or enunciate the credo of any old or new religion.
\nNo less does he miss the mark when he describes as a scholastic distinction the substance of the passage. The teaching there is not <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t5 The correspondent asked whether he should write to Bergson in order to explain the<\/i>
\ntrue meaning of intuition and how to develop it. \u2014Ed.<\/i>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t6 The paragraphs that follow are from the draft of a letter that was not revised or sent<\/i>
\nin this form to the correspondent. \u2014Ed.<\/i>
\n <\/font>  <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t375<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

taken from books, nor, although put in philosophic language, is it based upon abstract thought or any formal logic. It expresses a
\nfundamental spiritual experience, dynamic for the growth of the being, confirmed and enlarged and filled with detail by almost
\nthirty years of continuous sadhana, and, as such, it cannot be seriously challenged or invalidated by mere intellectual question
\nor reasoning, but, if at all, then only by a greater and wider spiritual experience. Moreover, it coincides (not in expression,
\nit may be, but in substance) with the experience of hundreds of spiritual seekers in many paths and in all parts of the world since
\nthe days of the Upanishads \u2014and of Plotinus and the Gnostics and Sufis \u2014to the present time. It is hardly admissible then to
\nput it aside as the thought of a tyro or beginner in spiritual knowledge making his first clumsy potshots at a solution of the
\ncrossword enigma of the universe. That description seems to show that he has missed the point of the passage altogether and
\nthat also makes it difficult to reply; for where there is no meeting point of minds, discussion is likely to be sterile. <\/p>\n

I was a little surprised at first by this entire lack of understanding, shown still more in his cavil at the two Divines
\n\u2014for
\nI had somehow got the impression that X <\/i>was a Christian and the recognition of “two Divines”
\n\u2014the Divine Transcendent
\nand the Divine Immanent \u2014is, I have read, perfectly familiar to Christian ideas and to Christian experience. The words them
\nselves in fact \u2014transcendent and cosmic \u2014are taken from the West. I do not know that there is anything exactly corresponding
\nto them in the language of Indian spiritual thinking, although the experiences on which the distinction rests are quite familiar. On
\nanother side, Christianity insists not only on a double but a triple Divine. It even strikes me that this triple Godhead or Trinity
\nis not very far off at bottom from my trinity of the individual, cosmic and transcendent Divine
\n\u2014as far at least as one can judge
\nwho has not himself followed the Christian discipline. Christ, whether as the human Incarnation or the Christos in men or the
\nGodhead proceeding from the Father, seems to me to be quite my individual Divine. The Father has very much the appearance
\nof the One who overstands and is immanent in the cosmos. And   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t376<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

although this is more obscure, yet if one can be guided by the indications in the Scripture, the Holy Ghost looks very much
\nlike a rather mysterious and inexpressible Transcendence and its descent very much like what I would call the descent of Light,
\nPurity, Peace \u2014that passeth all understanding \u2014or Power of the supramental Spirit. In any case these Christian and Western
\nideas show surely that my affirmation of a double or a triple Divine is not anything new and ought not to be found startling
\nor upsetting and I do not see why it should be treated as (in itself) obscure and unintelligible. <\/p>\n

Again, are these or similar distinctions very positively made in the Christian, Sufi or other teachings mere theoretical abstractions, scholastic distinctions, theological cobwebs, or metaphysical puzzles? I had always supposed that they corresponded to
\nvery living, very dynamic, almost \u2014for the paths to which they relate \u2014indispensable experiences. No doubt, for those who
\nfollow other ways or no way at all or for those who have not yet had the illuminating and vivifying experience, they may seem
\nat first a little difficult or unseizable. But that is true of most spiritual truth
\n\u2014and not of spiritual truth alone. There are many
\nvery highly intelligent and cultured people to whom a scientific explanation of even so patent and common a fact as electricity
\nand electric light (this is a reminiscence of an article by Y. Y. in the New Statesman and Nation<\/i>) seems equally difficult to seize
\nby the mind or to fix either in the memory or the intelligence. And yet the distinction between positive and negative electricity, both necessary for the existence of the light, \u2014like that of the passive and active Brahman (another scholastic distinction?)
\nboth necessary for the existence of the universe, \u2014cannot be dismissed for that reason as something academic or scholastic,
\nbut is a very pertinent statement of things quite dynamic and real. No doubt the non-scientific man does not and perhaps
\nneed not trouble about these things and can be content to enjoy the electric light (when he is allowed to do so by the grace of
\nthe Pondicherry Municipality), without enquiring into the play of the forces
\nbehind it: but for the seeker after scientific truth or for the practical
\nelectrician it is a different matter. Now these <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t377<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n

distinctions in the spiritual field are a parallel case; they seem theoretical or abstract only so long as experience has not made
\nthem concrete, but once experienced they become living stuff of the consciousness and, after a certain stage, even the basis of
\naction and growth in the spiritual life. <\/p>\n

Here I am driven to a rather lengthy digression from the
\nmain theme \u2014for I am met by X<\/i>‘s rather baffling appeal to Whitham’s History of Science. What has Whitham or Science
\nto do with spiritual truth or spiritual experience? I can only suppose that he condemns all intrusion of anything like meta
\nphysical thought into the spiritual field \u2014a position excessive but not altogether untenable
\n\t\u2014and even perhaps proposes to
\nbring the scientific method and the scientific mentality into spiritual experience as the sole true way of arriving at or judging
\nthe truth of things. I should like to make my view clear as to that point, because here much confusion has been created about
\nit, and more is possible. And the first thing I would say is that if metaphysics has no right to intervene in spiritual experience,
\nneither has Science. There are here three different domains of knowledge and experience each with its own instrumentation,
\nits own way of approach and seeing, suited for its own task, but not to be imposed or substituted in these other fields of
\nknowledge, \u2014at least unless and until they meet by some kind of supreme reconciling transmutation in something that is at the
\nsource of all knowledge. For knowledge may be essentially one, but like the one Divine, it manifests differently in different fields
\nof its play and to abolish their distinctions is not the way to arrive at true understanding of experience. <\/p>\n

Science deals effectively with phenomena and process and the apparent play of forces which determine the process. It can
\nnot deal even intellectually in any adequate way with ultimate truths, that is the province of the higher, less external mind
\n\u2014
\nrepresented up till now by metaphysics, though metaphysics is not its only possible power. If Science tries to fix metaphysical
\ntruth by forcing on this domain its own generalisations in the physical field, as people have been doing for almost the last
\ncentury, it makes a mess of thought by illegitimately extended
\n <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t378<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

conclusions and has in the end to retire from this usurpation
\nas it is now beginning to retire. Its discoveries may be used by philosophy, but on the grounds proper to philosophy and not on
\nthe grounds proper to Science. The philosopher must judge the scientific conceptions of relativity or discontinuity or space-time,
\nfor instance, by his own processes and standards of evidence. So too, Science has no instrumentation or process of knowledge
\nwhich can enable it to discover spiritual truth or to judge or determine the results of spiritual experience. There is a field of
\nknowledge of process in the spiritual and the occult domain, in the discovery of a world of inner forces and their way of action
\nand even of their objective dynamisation in the mind and life and the functioning of the body. But the mathematical exactitudes
\nand rigid formulas of physical Science do not apply here and the mentality created by them would hamper spiritual experience.
\n   <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013
\n\t\t\t379<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Chapter Three   Philosophical Thought and Yoga   Metaphysical Thinkers, East and West   European metaphysical thought \u2014even in those thinkers who try to prove…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-28-letters-on-yoga-i","wpcat-53-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656","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=2656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}