{"id":3643,"date":"2013-07-13T01:50:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3643"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:50:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:50:09","slug":"22-beyond-the-modes-of-nature-vol-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn\/22-beyond-the-modes-of-nature-vol-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","title":{"rendered":"-22_Beyond the Modes of Nature.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nXX<\/font><\/b>II<\/font><\/b> <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\nBEYOND THE MODES OF NATURE <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nS<\/font>o FAR<\/font> then extends the determinism of Nature, and what it
\namounts to is this that the ego from which we act is itself an instrument of the action of Prakriti and cannot therefore be free from the
\ncontrol of Prakriti; the will of the ego is a will determined by Prakriti,
\nit is a part of the nature as it has been formed in us by the sum of its
\nown past action and self-modification, and by the nature in us so
\nformed and the will in it so formed our present action also is determined. It is said by some that the first initiating action is always free
\nto our choice however much all that follows may be determined by
\nthat, and in this power of initiation and its effect on our future lies
\nour responsibility. But where is that first action in Nature which has
\nno determining past behind it, where that present condition of out
\nnature which is not in sum and detail the result of the action of our
\npast nature? We have that impression of a tree initial act because we
\nare living at every moment from our present on towards our future
\nand we do not live back constantly from our present into our past,
\nso that what is strongly vivid to our minds is the present and its
\nconsequences while we have a much less vivid hold of our present as
\nentirely the consequence of our past; this latter we are apt to look on
\nas it were dead and done with. We speak and act as it we were
\nperfectly free in the pure and virgin moment to do what we will
\nwith ourselves using an absolute inward independence of choice. But
\nthere is no such absolute liberty, our choice has no such independence. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nCertainly the will in us has always to choose between a certain number of possibilities,
\nfor that is the way in which Nature always
\nacts; even our passivity, our refusal to will, is itself a choice, itself an
\nact of the will of Nature in us; even in the atom there is a will always
\nat its work. The whole difference is the extent to which we associate
\nour idea of self with the action of the will in Nature; when we so
\nassociate ourselves, we think of it as our will and say that it is a free <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-200<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nwill and that it is we who are acting. And error or not, illusion or not,
\nthis idea of our will, of our action is not a thing of no consequence,
\nof no utility; everything in Nature has a consequence and an utility,
\nIt is rather that process of our conscious being by which Nature in us
\nbecomes more and more aware of and responsive to the presence of
\nthe secret Purusha within her and opens by that increase of knowledge to a greater possibility of action; it is by the aid of the ego-idea
\nand the personal will that she raises herself to her own higher possibilities, rises out of the sheer or else the predominant passivity of the
\ntamasic nature into the passion and the struggle of the rajasic nature
\nand from the passion and the struggle of the rajasic nature to the
\ngreater light, happiness and purity of the sattwic nature. The relative
\nself-mastery gained by the natural man over himself is the dominion
\nachieved by the higher possibilities of his nature over its lower possibilities, and this is done in him when he associates his idea of self with
\nthe struggle of the higher guna to get the mastery, the predominance
\nover the lower guna. The sense of free will, illusion or not, is a necessary machinery of the action of Nature, necessary for man during his
\nprogress, and it would be disastrous for him to lose it before he is
\nready for a higher truth. If it be said, as it has been said, that Nature deludes man to fulfil her behests and that the idea of a free
\nindividual will is the most powerful of these delusions, then it must
\nalso be said that the delusion is for his good and without it he could
\nnot rise to his full possibilities. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut it is not a sheer delusion, it is only an error of standpoint and
\nan error of placement. The ego thinks that it is the real self and acts
\nas if it were the true centre of action and as if all existed for its sake,
\nand there it commits an error of standpoint and placement. It is not
\nwrong in thinking that there is something or someone within ourselves, within this action of our nature, who is the true centre of its
\naction and for whom all exists; but this is not the ego, it is the Lord
\nsecret within our hearts, the divine Purusha, and the Jiva, other than
\nego, who is a portion of his being. The self-assertion of ego-sense is
\nthe broken and distorted shadow in our minds of the truth that there
\nis a real Self within us which is the master of all and for whom and at
\nwhose behest Nature goes about her works. So too the ego’s idea of
\nfree will is a distorted and misplaced sense of the truth that there
\nis a free Self within us and that the will in Nature is only a modified
\nand partial reflection of its will, modified and partial because it lives <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-201<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nin the successive moments of Time and acts by a constant series o\u00a3
\nmodifications which forget much of their own precedents and are
\nonly imperfectly conscious of their own consequences and aims. But
\nthe Will within, exceeding the moments of Time, knows all these,
\nand the action of Nature in us is an attempt, we might say, to work
\nout under the difficult conditions of a natural and egoistic ignorance
\nwhat is foreseen in full supramental light by the inner Will and Knowledge. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut a time must come in our progress when we are ready to open our eyes to the real truth of our being, and then the error of our
\negoistic free-will must fall away from us. The rejection of the idea
\nof egoistic free-will does not imply a cessation of action, because
\nNature is the doer and carries out her action after this machinery
\n<\/b>is
\n<\/b>dispensed with even as she did before it came into usage in the process
\nof her evolution. In the man who has rejected it, it may even be
\npossible for her to develop a greater action; for his mind may be
\nmore aware of all that his nature is by the self-creation of the past,
\nmore aware of the powers that environ and are working upon it to
\nhelp or to hinder its growth, more aware too of the latent greater
\npossibilities which it contains by virtue of all in it that is unexpressed,
\nyet capable of expression; and this mind may be a freer channel for
\nthe sanction of the Purusha to the greater possibilities that it sees and
\na freer instrument for the response of Nature, for her resultant attempt at their development and realisation. But the rejection of freewill must not be a mere fatalism or idea of natural determinism in
\nthe understanding without any vision of the real Self in us; for then the ego still remains as our sole idea of Self and, as that is always the
\ninstrument of Prakriti, we still act by the ego and with our will as
\nher instrument, and the idea in us brings no real change, but only a
\nmodification of our intellectual attitude. We shall have accepted the
\nphenomenal truth of the determination of our egoistic being and
\naction by Nature, we shall have seen our subjection: but we shall not
\nhave seen the unborn Self within which is above the action of the gunas; we shall not have seen wherein lies our gate of freedom. Nature and ego are not all we are; there is the free soul, the Purusha. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut in what consists this freedom of the Purusha? The Purusha of
\nthe current Sankhya philosophy is free in the essence of his being,
\nbut because he is the non-doer, akartā;<\/i> and in so far as he permits
\nNature <\/b> to throw on the inactive Soul <\/b> her shadow of action, he be<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-202<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ncomes bound phenomenally by the actions of the gunas and cannot
\nrecover his freedom except by dissociation from her and by cessation of her activities. If then a man casts from him the idea of himself as
\nthe doer or of the works as his, if, as the Gita enjoins, he fixes himself in the view of himself as the inactive non-doer,
\nātmānam
\nakartāram,<\/i> and all action as not his own but Nature’s, as the play
\nof her gunas, will not a like result follow? The Sankhya Purusha is
\nthe giver of the sanction, but a passive sanction only, anumati,<\/i> the
\nwork is entirely Nature’s; essentially he is the witness and sustainer,
\nnot the governing and active consciousness of the universal Godhead.
\nHe is the Soul that sees and accepts, as a spectator accepts the representation of a play he is watching, not the Soul that both governs
\nand watches the play planned by himself and staged in his own being.
\nIf then he withdraws the sanction, if he refuses to acknowledge the
\nillusion of doing by which the play continues, he ceases also to be
\nthe sustainer and the action comes to a stop, since it is only for the
\npleasure of the witnessing conscious Soul that Nature performs it
\nand only by his support that she can maintain it. Therefore it is
\nevident that the Gita’s conception of the relations of the Purusha and
\nPrakriti are not the Sankhya’s, since the same movement leads to a
\nquite different result, in one case to cessation of works, in the other
\nto a great, a selfless and desireless, a divine action. In the Sankhya
\nSoul and Nature are two different entities, in the Gita they are two
\naspects, two powers of one self-existent being; the Soul is not only
\ngiver of the sanction, but lord of Nature, Ishwara, through her enjoying the play of the world, through her executing divine will and
\nknowledge in a scheme of things supported by his sanction and existing by his immanent presence, existing in his being, governed by
\nthe law of his being and by the conscious will within it. To know,
\nto respond to, to live in the divine being and nature of this Soul is
\nthe object of withdrawing from the ego and its action. One rises
\nthen above the lower nature of the gunas to the higher divine nature. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe movement by which this ascension is determined results from
\nthe complex poise of the Soul in its relations with Nature; it depends
\non the Gita’s idea of the triple Purusha. The Soul that immediately
\ninforms the action, the mutations, the successive becomings of Nature, is the Kshara, that which seems to change with her changes,
\nto move in her motion, the Person who follows in his idea of his
\nbeing the changes of his personality brought about by the continuous <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-203<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\naction of her Karma. Nature here is Kshara, a constant movement
\nand mutation in Time, a constant becoming. But this Nature is simply
\nthe executive power of the Soul itself; for only by what he is, can
\nshe become, only according to the possibilities of his becoming, can
\nshe act; she works out the becoming of his being. Her Karma is determined by Swabhava, the own-nature, the law of self-becoming of
\nthe soul, even though, because it is the agent and executive of the
\nbecoming, the action rather seems often to determine the nature.
\nAccording to what we are, we act, and by our action we develop, we
\nwork out what we are. Nature is the action, the mutation, the becoming, and it is the Power that executes all these; but the Soul is
\nthe conscious Being from which that Power proceeds, from whose
\nluminous stuff of consciousness she has drawn the variable will that
\nchanges and expresses its changes in her actions. And this Soul is
\nOne and Many; it is the one Life-being out of which all life is constituted and it is all these living beings; it is the cosmic Existent and
\nit is all this multitude of cosmic existences, sarvabhūutāni,<\/i> for all these
\nare One; all the many Purushas are in their original being the one
\nand only Purusha. But the mechanism of the ego-sense in Nature,
\nwhich is part of her action, induces the mind to identity the soul’s
\nconsciousness with the limited becoming of the moment, with the
\nsum of her active consciousness in a given field of space and time,
\nwith the result from moment to moment of the sum of her past
\nactions. It is possible to realise in a way the unity of all these beings
\neven in Nature herself and to become aware of a cosmic Soul which
\nis manifest in the whole action of cosmic Nature, Nature manifesting the Soul, the Soul constituting the Nature. But this is to become
\naware only of the great cosmic Becoming, which is not false or unreal, but the knowledge of which alone does not give us the true
\nknowledge of our Self; for our true Self <\/b> is always something more than this and something beyond it. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nFor, beyond the soul manifest in Nature and bound up with its
\naction, is another status of the Purusha, which is entirely a status and
\nnot at all an action; that is the silent, the immutable, the all-pervading,
\nself-existent, motionless Self, sarvagatam acalam,<\/i> immutable Being
\nand not Becoming, the Akshara. In the Kshara the Soul is involved
\nin the action of Nature, therefore it is concentrated, loses itself, as
\nit were, in the moments of Time, in the waves of the Becoming, not
\nreally, but only in appearance and by following the current; in the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-204<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nAkshara Nature falls to silence and rest <\/b> in the Soul, therefore it becomes aware of its immutable Being. The Kshara is the Sankhya’s
\nPurusha when it reflects the varied workings of the gunas of Nature,
\nand it knows itself as the Saguna, the Personal; the Akshara is the
\nSankhya’s Purusha when these gunas have fallen into a state of
\nequilibrium, and it knows itself as the Nirguna, the Impersonal.
\nTherefore while the Kshara, associating itself with the work of Prakriti, seems to be the doer of works, kartā,<\/i> the Akshara dissociated
\nfrom all the workings of the gunas is the inactive non-doer, akartā,
\n<\/i>and witness. The soul of man, when it takes the poise of the Kshara,
\nidentifies itself with the play of personality and readily clouds its
\nself-knowledge with the ego-sense in Nature, so that he thinks of
\nhimself as the ego-doer of works; when it takes its poise in the
\nAkshara, it identifies itself with the Impersonal and is aware of Nature as the doer and itself as the inactive witnessing Self, akartāram.
\n<\/i>The mind of man has to tend to one of these poises, it takes them
\nas alternatives; it is bound by Nature to action in the mutations of
\nquality and personality or it is free from her workings in immutable
\nimpersonality. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut these two, the status and immutability of the Soul and the
\naction of the Soul and its mutability in Nature, actually coexist.
\nAnd this would be an anomaly irreconcilable except by some such
\ntheory as that of Maya or else of a double and divided being, if there
\nwere not a supreme reality of the Soul’s existence of which these are
\nthe two contrary aspects, but which is limited by neither of them.
\nWe have seen that the Gita finds this in the Purushottama. The
\nsupreme Soul is the Ishwara, God, the Master of all being, sarvabhūta-maheśvara.<\/i> He puts forth his own active nature, his Prakriti,\u2014
\nsvām prakrtim,<\/i> says the Gita,\u2014manifest in the Jiva, worked out by the
\nsvabhāva,<\/i> "own-becoming," of each Jiva according to the law of the
\ndivine being in it, the great lines of which each Jiva must follow,
\nbut worked out too in the egoistic nature by the bewildering play of
\nthe three gunas upon each other, gunā gunesu vartante.<\/i> That is
\nthe traigunyamayī māyā,<\/i> the Maya hard for man to get beyond,
\nduratyayā,\u2014yet<\/i> can one get beyond it by transcending the three gunas.
\nFor while all this is done by the Ishwara through his Nature-Power
\nin the Kshara, in the Akshara he is untouched, indifferent, regarding
\nall equally, extended within all, yet above all. In all three he is the
\nLord, the supreme Ishwara in the highest, the presiding and all-pervading <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-205<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nImpersonality, prabhu<\/i> and vibhu<\/i>, in die Akshara, and the
\nimmanent Will and present active Lord in the Kshara. He is tree in
\nhis impersonality even while working out the play of his personality; he is not either merely impersonal or personal, but one and the same
\nbeing in two aspects; he is the impersonal-personal, nirguno gunī,<\/i> .of the Upanishad. By him all has been willed even before it is worked
\nout,\u2014as he says of the still living Dhartrarashtrians "already have they
\nbeen slain by Me" mayā nihatāh pūrvam eva,<\/i> and the working out
\nby Nature is only the result of his Will; yet by virtue of his impersonality behind he is not bound by his works, kartāram cikartāram.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut man as the individual self, owing to his ignorant self-identification with the work and the becoming, as if that were all his soul
\nand not a power of his soul, a power proceeding from it, is bewildered by the ego-sense. He thinks that it is he and others who are doing all; he does not see that Nature is doing all and that he is misrepresenting
\nand disfiguring her works to himself by ignorance and attachment.
\nHe is enslaved by the gunas, now hampered in the dull case of tamas,
\nnow blown by the strong winds of rajas, now limited by the partial
\nlights of sattwa, not distinguishing himself at all from the nature-mind which alone is thus modified by the gunas. He is therefore
\nmastered by pain and pleasure, happiness and grief, desire and passion, attachment and disgust: he has no freedom. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nHe must, to be free, get back from the Nature action to the status
\nof the Akshara; he will then be trigunātīta,<\/i> beyond the gunas. Knowing himself as the Akshara Brahman, the unchanging Purusha, he
\nwill know himself as an immutable impersonal self, the Atman,
\ntranquilly observing and impartially supporting the action, but himself calm, indifferent, untouched, motionless, pure, one with all,
\nbeings in their self, not one with Nature and her workings. This
\nself, though by its presence authorising the works of Nature, though
\nby its all-pervading existence supporting and consenting to them, prabhu vibhu,<\/i> does not itself create works or the state of the doer or
\nthe joining of the works to their fruit, na kartrtvam na karmāni
\nsrjati na karma-phalasamyogam,<\/i> but only watches nature in the.
\nKshara working out these things, svabhāvas tu pravartate;<\/i> it accepts.
\nneither the sin nor the virtue of the living creatures born into this: birth as its own, nādatte kasyacit
\npāpam na caiva sukrtam;<\/i> it preserves
\nits spiritual purity. It is the ego bewildered by ignorance which attributes these things to itself because it assumes the responsibility of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-206<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe doer and chooses to figure as that and not as the instrument of
\na greater power, which is all that it really is; aj\u00f1ānenāvrtam j\u00f1ānam
\ntena muhyanti  jantavah.<\/i> By going back into the impersonal self the
\nsoul gets back into a greater self-knowledge and is liberated from the
\nbondage of the works of Nature, untouched by her gunas, free from
\nher shows of good and evil, suffering and happiness. The natural
\nbeing, the mind, body, life, still remain. Nature still works; but the
\ninner being does not identify himself with these, nor while the gunas
\nplay in the natural being, does he rejoice or grieve. He is the calm
\nand free immutable Self observing all. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nIs this the last state, the utmost possibility, the highest secret? It
\ncannot be, since this is a mixed or divided, not a perfectly harmonised
\nstatus, a double, not a unified being, a freedom in the soul, an imperfection in the Nature. It can only be a stage. What then is there
\nbeyond it? One solution is that of the Sannyasin who rejects the
\nnature, the action altogether, so far at least as action can be rejected,
\nso that there may be an unmixed undivided freedom; but this solution,
\nthough admitted, is not preferred by the Gita. The Gita also insists
\non the giving up of actions, sarva-karmāni samnyasya,<\/i> but inwardly
\nto the Brahman. Brahman in the Kshara supports wholly the action
\nof Prakriti, Brahman in the Akshara, even while supporting, dissociates itself from the action, preserves its freedom; the individual
\nsoul, unified with the Brahman in the Akshara, is free and dissociated,
\nyet, unified with the Brahman in the Kshara, supports but is not
\naffected. This it can do best when it sees that both are aspects of the
\none Purushottama. The Purushottama, inhabiting all existences as
\nthe secret Ishwara, controls the Nature and by his will, now no
\nlonger distorted and disfigured by the ego-sense, the Nature works
\nout the actions by the swabhava; the individual soul makes the divinised natural being an instrument of the divine Will,
\nnimittamatram.<\/i> He remains even in action trigunātita,<\/i> beyond the gunas, free
\nfrom the gunas, nistraigunya,<\/i> he fulfils entirely at last the early injunction of the Gita, nistraigunyo
\nbhavārjuna.<\/i> He is indeed still the
\nenjoyer of the gunas, as is the Brahman, though not limited by them,
\nnirgunam gunabhoktr ca,<\/i> unattached, yet all-supporting, even as is
\nthat Brahman, aśaktam sarvabhrt:<\/i> but the action of the gunas within
\nhim is quite changed; it is lifted above their egoistic character and
\nreactions. For he has unified his whole being in the Purushottama,
\nhas assumed the divine being and the higher divine nature of be<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-207<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tcoming, madbhāva,<\/i>
\n\t\t\thas unified even his mind and natural consciousness with the Divine,
\n\t\t\tmanmanā maccittah.<\/i> This change is the final evolution of the
\n\t\t\tnature and the consummation of the divine birth, rahasyam
\n\t\t\tuttamam.<\/i> When it is accomplished, the soul is aware of itself as
\n\t\t\tthe master of its nature and, grown a light of the divine Light and
\n\t\t\twill of the divine Will, is able to change its natural workings into
\n\t\t\ta divine action. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-208<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

XXII   BEYOND THE MODES OF NATURE   So FAR then extends the determinism of Nature, and what it amounts to is this that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays-on-the-gita-1950-edn","wpcat-90-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643","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=3643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}