{"id":949,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=949"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:31","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:31","slug":"31-the-modes-of-the-self-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20\/31-the-modes-of-the-self-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-31_The Modes of the Self.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nChapter XI<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span>The Modes of the Self<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nS<\/font><\/span><\/b>INCE<\/span><\/font> the Self
\nwhich we come to realise by the path of knowledge is not only the reality which
\nlies behind and supports the states and movements of our psychological being,
\nbut also that transcendent and universal Existence which has manifested itself
\nin all the movements of the universal, the knowledge of the Self includes also
\nthe knowledge of the principles of Being, its fundamental modes and its
\nrelations with the principles of the phenomenal universe. This was what was
\nmeant by the Upanishad when it spoke of the Brahman as that which being known
\nall is known.\u00b9 It has to be realised first as the pure principle of Existence,
\nafterwards, says the Upanishad, its essential modes become clear to the soul
\nwhich realises it. We may indeed, before realisation, try to analyse by the
\nmetaphysical reason and even understand intellectually what Being is and what
\nthe world is, but such metaphysical understanding is not the Knowledge.
\nMoreover, we may have the realisation in knowledge and vision, but this is
\nincomplete without realisation in the entire soul-experience and the unity of
\nall our being with that which we realise.\u00b2 It is the science of Yoga to know and
\nthe art of Yoga to be unified with the Highest so that we may live in the Self
\nand act from that supreme poise, becoming one not only in the conscious essence
\nbut in the conscious law of our being with the transcendent Divine whom all
\nthings and creatures, whether ignorantly or with partial knowledge and
\nexperience, seek to express through the lower law of their members. To know the
\nhighest Truth and to be in harmony with it is the condition of right being, to
\nexpress it in all that we are, experience and do is the condition of right
\nliving.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>yasmin<\/span><\/span> vij\u00f1āte<\/span> sarvam<\/span> idam<\/span> vij\u00f1ātam<\/span>.
\nShandilya<\/span> Upanishad.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b2<\/span> This
\nis the distinction made in the Gita between Sankhya and Yoga; both are
\nnecessary to an integral knowledge<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 358<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

But rightly
\nto know and express the Highest is not easy for man the mental being because
\nthe highest Truth and therefore the highest modes of existence are supramental.
\nThey repose on the essential unity of what seem to the intellect and mind and
\nare to our mental experience of the world opposite poles of existence and idea
\nand therefore irreconcilable opposites and contradictions, but to the
\nsupramental experience are complementary aspects of the same Truth. We have seen
\nthis already in the necessity of realising the Self as at once one and many;
\nfor we have to realise each thing and being as That; we have to realise the
\nunity of all as That, both in the unity of sum and in the oneness of essence;
\nand we have to realise That as the Transcendent who is beyond all this unity
\nand this multiplicity which we see everywhere as the two opposite, yet
\ncompanion poles of all existence. For every individual being is the Self, the
\nDivine in spite of the outward limitations of the mental and physical form
\nthrough which it presents itself at the actual moment, in the actual field of
\nspace, in the actual succession of circumstances that make up the web of inner
\nstate and outward action and event through which we know the individual. So,
\nequally, every collectivity small or great is each the Self, the Divine
\nsimilarly expressing itself in the conditions of this manifestation. We cannot
\nreally know any individual or any collectivity if we know it only as it appears
\ninwardly to itself or outwardly to us, but only if we know it as the Divine,
\nthe One, our own Self employing its various essential modes and its occasional
\ncircumstances of self-manifestation. Until we have transformed the habits of
\nour mentality so that it shall live entirely in this knowledge reconciling all
\ndifferences in the One, we do not live in the real Truth, because we do not
\nlive in the real Unity. The accomplished sense of Unity is not that in which
\nall are regarded as parts of one whole, waves of one sea, but that in which
\neach as well as the All is regarded wholly as the Divine, wholly as our Self in
\na supreme identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, so
\ncomplex is the Maya of the Infinite, there is a sense in which the view of all
\nas parts of the whole, waves of the sea or even as in a sense separate entities
\nbecomes a necessary part of the integral Truth and the integral Knowledge. For
\nif <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 359<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the Self is always one
\nin all, yet we see that for the purposes at least of the cyclic manifestation
\nit expresses itself in perpetual soul-forms which preside over the movements of
\nour personality through the worlds and the aeons. This persistent
\nsoul-existence is the real Individuality which stands behind the constant
\nmutations of the thing we call our personality. It is not a limited ego but a
\nthing in itself infinite; it is in truth the Infinite itself consenting from
\none plane of its being to reflect itself in a perpetual soul-experience. This
\nis the truth which underlies the Sankhya theory of many Purushas, many
\nessential, infinite, free and impersonal souls reflecting the movements of a
\nsingle cosmic energy. It stands also, in a different way, behind the very
\ndifferent philosophy of qualified Monism which arose as a protest against the
\nmetaphysical excesses of Buddhistic Nihilism and illusionist Adwaita. The old
\nsemi-Buddhistic, semi-Sankhya theory which saw only the Quiescent and nothing
\nelse in the world except a constant combination of the five elements and the
\nthree modes of inconscient Energy lighting up their false activity by the
\nconsciousness of the Quiescent in which it is reflected, is not the whole truth
\nof the Brahman. We are not a mere mass of changing mind-stuff, life-stuff, body-stuff
\ntaking different forms of mind and life and body from birth to birth, so that
\nat no time is there any real self or conscious reason of existence behind all
\nthe flux or none except that Quiescent who cares for none of these things.
\nThere is a real and stable power of our being behind the constant mutation of
\nour mental, vital and physical personality, and this we have to know and
\npreserve in order that the Infinite may manifest Himself through it according
\nto His will in whatever range and for whatever purpose of His eternal cosmic
\nactivity.<\/span><\/p>\n

And if we
\nregard existence from the standpoint of the possible eternal and infinite
\nrelations of this One from whom all things proceed, these Many of whom the One
\nis the essence and the origin and this Energy, Power, or Nature through which
\nthe relations of the One and the Many are maintained, we shall see a certain
\njustification even for the dualist philosophies and religions which seem to
\ndeny most energetically the unity of beings and to make an unbridgeable
\ndifferentiation between
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 360<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

the Lord and His
\ncreatures. If in their grosser forms these religions aim only at the ignorant
\njoys of the lower heavens, yet there is a far higher and profounder sense in
\nwhich we may appreciate the cry of the devotee poet when in a homely and
\nvigorous metaphor he claimed the right of the soul to enjoy for ever the
\necstasy of its embrace of the Supreme. \u201cI do not want to become sugar,\u201d he wrote,
\n\u201cI want to eat sugar.\u201d However strongly we may found ourselves on the essential
\nidentity of the one Self in all, we need not regard that cry as the mere
\naspiration of a certain kind of spiritual sensuousness or the rejection by an
\nattached and ignorant soul of the pure and high austerity of the supreme Truth.
\nOn the contrary, it aims in its positive part at a deep and mysterious truth of
\nBeing which no human language can utter, of which human reason can give no adequate
\naccount, to which the heart has the key and which no pride of the soul of
\nknowledge insisting on its own pure austerity can abolish. But that belongs
\nproperly to the summit of the path of Devotion and there we shall have again to
\nreturn to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sadhaka
\nof an integral Yoga will take an integral view of his goal and seek its
\nintegral realisation. The Divine has many essential modes of His eternal
\nself-manifestation, possesses and finds Himself on many planes and through many
\npoles of His being; to each mode its purpose, to each plane or pole its
\nfulfilment both in the apex and the supreme scope of the eternal Unity. It is
\nnecessarily through the individual Self that we must arrive at the One, for
\nthat is the basis of all our experience. By Knowledge we arrive at identity
\nwith the One; for there is, in spite of the Dualist, an essential identity by which
\nwe can plunge into our Source and free ourselves from all bondage to
\nindividuality and even from all bondage to universality. Nor is the experience
\nof that identity a gain for knowledge only or for the pure state of abstract
\nbeing. The height of all our action also, we have seen, is the immersion of
\nourselves in the Lord through unity with the divine Will or Conscious-Power by
\nthe way of works; the height of love is the rapturous immersion of ourselves in
\nunity of ecstatic delight with the object of our love and adoration. But again
\nfor divine works in the world the individual Self converts itself into a centre
\nof consciousness <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 361<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

through which the divine
\nWill, one with the divine Love and Light, pours itself out in the multiplicity
\nof the universe. We arrive in the same way at our unity with all our
\nfellow-beings through the identity of this self with the Supreme and with the
\nself in all others. At the same time in the action of Nature we preserve by it
\nas soul-form of the One a differentiation which enables us to preserve
\nrelations of difference in Oneness with other beings and with the Supreme
\nHimself. The relations will necessarily be very different in essence and spirit
\nfrom those which we had when we lived entirely in the Ignorance and Oneness was
\na mere name or a struggling aspiration of imperfect love, sympathy or yearning.
\nUnity will be the law, difference will be simply for the various enjoyment of
\nthat unity. Neither descending again into that plane of division which clings
\nto the separation of the ego-sense nor attached to an exclusive seeking for
\npure identity which cannot have to do with any play of difference, we shall
\nembrace and reconcile the two poles of being where they meet in the infinity of
\nthe Highest.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Self,
\neven the individual self, is different from our personality as it is different
\nfrom our mental ego-sense. Our personality is never the same; it is a constant
\nmutation and various combination. It is not a basic consciousness, but a development
\nof forms of consciousness, \u2013 not a power of being, but a various play of
\npartial powers of being, \u2013 not the enjoyer of the self-delight of our
\nexistence, but a seeking after various notes and tones of experience which
\nshall more or less render that delight in the mutability of relations. This
\nalso is Purusha and Brahman, but it is the mutable Purusha, the phenomenon of
\nthe Eternal, not its stable reality. The Gita makes a distinction between three
\nPurushas who constitute the whole state and action of the divine Being, the
\nMutable, the Immutable and the Highest which is beyond and embraces the other
\ntwo. That Highest is the Lord in whom we have to live, the supreme Self in us
\nand in all. The Immutable is the silent, actionless<\/span>,
\nequal, unchanging self which we reach when we draw back from activity to
\npassivity, from the play of consciousness and force and the seeking of delight to
\nthe pure and constant basis of consciousness and force and delight through
\nwhich the Highest,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 362<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

free, secure and unattached,
\npossesses and enjoys the play. The Mutable is the substance and immediate
\nmotive of that changing flux of personality through which the relations of our
\ncosmic life are made possible. The mental being fixed in the Mutable moves in its
\nflux and has not possession of an eternal peace and power and self-delight; the
\nsoul fixed in the Immutable holds all these in itself but cannot act in the
\nworld; but the soul that can live in the Highest enjoys the eternal peace and
\npower and delight and wideness of being, is not bound in its self-knowledge and
\nself-power by character and personality or by forms of its force and habits of
\nits consciousness and yet uses them all with a large freedom and power for the
\nself-expression of the Divine in the world. Here again the change is not any
\nalteration of the essential modes of the Self, but consists in our emergence
\ninto the freedom of the Highest and the right use of the divine law of our
\nbeing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Connected
\nwith this triple mode of the Self is that distinction which Indian philosophy
\nhas drawn between the Qualitied and the Qualitiless Brahman and European
\nthought has made between the Personal and the Impersonal God. The Upanishad
\nindicates clearly enough the relative nature of this opposition, when it speaks
\nof the Supreme as the \u201cQualitied who is without qualities\u201d.\u00b9 We have again two
\nessential modes, two fundamental aspects, two poles of eternal being, both of
\nthem exceeded in the transcendent divine Reality. They correspond practically
\nto the Silent and the Active Brahman. For the whole action of the universe may
\nbe regarded from a certain point of view as the expression and shaping out in
\nvarious ways of the numberless and infinite qualities of the Brahman. His being
\nassumes by conscious Will all kinds of properties, shapings of the stuff of conscious
\nbeing, habits as it were of cosmic character and power of dynamic self-consciousness,
\ngunas, into which all the cosmic action can be resolved. But by none of these
\nnor by all of them nor by their utmost infinite potentiality is He bound; He is
\nabove all His qualities and on a certain plane of being rests free from them.
\nThe Nirguna or Unqualitied is not incapable of qualities, rather it is this
\nvery Nirguna or No-Quality who
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>nirguņo<\/span><\/span> guņī<\/span>.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 363<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

manifests Himself as
\nSaguna, as Ananta-guna, infinite quality, since He contains all in His absolute
\ncapacity of boundlessly varied self-revelation. He is free from them in the sense
\nof exceeding them; and indeed if He were not free from them they could not be
\ninfinite; God would be subject to His qualities, bound by His nature, Prakriti
\nwould be supreme and Purusha its creation and plaything. The Eternal is bound neither
\nby quality nor absence of quality, neither by Personality nor by Impersonality;
\nHe is Himself, beyond all our positive and all our negative definitions.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if we
\ncannot define the Eternal, we can unify ourselves with it. It has been said
\nthat we can become the Impersonal, but not the personal God, but this is only
\ntrue in the sense that no one can become individually the Lord of all the universes;
\nwe can free ourselves into the existence of the active Brahman as well as that
\nof the Silence; we can live in both, go back to our being in both, but each in
\nits proper way, by becoming one with the Nirguna in our essence and one with
\nthe Saguna in the liberty of our active being, in our nature.\u00b9 The Supreme
\npours Himself out of an eternal peace, poise and silence into an eternal
\nactivity, free and infinite, freely fixing for itself its self-determinations,
\nusing infinite quality to shape out of it varied combination of quality. We
\nhave to go back to that peace, poise and silence and act out of it with the
\ndivine freedom from the bondage of qualities but still using qualities even the
\nmost opposite largely and flexibly for the divine work in the world. Only,
\nwhile the Lord acts out of the centre of all things, we have to act by
\ntransmission of His will and power and self-knowledge through the individual
\ncentre, the soul-form of Him which we are. The Lord is subject to nothing; the
\nindividual soul-form is subject to its own highest Self and the greater and
\nmore absolute is that subjection, the greater becomes its sense of absolute
\nforce and freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

The
\ndistinction between the Personal and the Impersonal is substantially the same
\nas the Indian distinction, but the associations of the English words carry
\nwithin them a certain limitation which is foreign to Indian thought. The
\npersonal
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>sādharmya<\/span><\/span>-mukti.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 364<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

God of the European
\nreligions is a Person in the human sense of the word, limited by His qualities
\nthough otherwise possessed of omnipotence and omniscience; it answers to the
\nIndian special conceptions of Shiva or Vishnu or Brahma or of the Divine Mother
\nof all, Durga or Kali. Each religion really erects a different personal Deity
\naccording to its own heart and thought to adore and serve. The fierce and
\ninexorable God of Calvin is a different being from the sweet and loving God of
\nSt. Francis, as the gracious Vishnu is different from the terrible though
\nalways loving and beneficent Kali who has pity even in her slaying and saves by
\nher destructions. Shiva, the God of ascetic renunciation who destroys all
\nthings seems to be a different being from Vishnu and Brahma, who act by grace,
\nlove, preservation of the creature or for life and creation. It is obvious that
\nsuch conceptions can be only in a very partial and relative sense true
\ndescriptions of the infinite and omnipresent Creator and Ruler of the universe.
\nNor does Indian religious thought affirm them as adequate descriptions. The
\nPersonal God is not limited by His qualities, He is Ananta-guna, capable of
\ninfinite qualities and beyond them and lord of them to use them as He will, and
\nHe manifests Himself in various names and forms of His infinite godhead to
\nsatisfy the desire and need of the individual soul according to its own nature
\nand personality. It is for this reason that the normal European mind finds it
\nso difficult to understand Indian religion as distinct from Vedantic or Sankhya
\nphilosophy, because it cannot easily conceive of a personal God with infinite
\nqualities, a personal God who is not a Person, but the sole real Person and the
\nsource of all personality. Yet that is the only valid and complete truth of the
\ndivine Personality.<\/span><\/p>\n

The place of
\nthe divine Personality in our synthesis will best be considered when we come to
\nspeak of the Yoga of devotion; it is enough here to indicate that it has its
\nplace and keeps it in the integral Yoga even when liberation has been attained.
\nThere are practically three grades of the approach to the personal Deity; the
\nfirst in which He is conceived with a particular form or particular qualities
\nas the name and form of the Godhead which our nature and personality prefers;\u00b9 a
\nsecond in which He is the one
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>işţa-devatā<\/span><\/span>.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 365<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

real Person, the
\nAll-Personality, the Ananta-guna; a third in which we get back to the ultimate
\nsource of all idea and fact of personality in that which the Upanishad
\nindicates by the single word He without fixing any attributes. It is there that
\nour realisations of the personal and the impersonal Divine meet and become one
\nin the utter Godhead. For the impersonal Divine is not ultimately an
\nabstraction or a mere principle or a mere state or power and degree of being
\nany more than we ourselves are really such abstractions. The intellect first
\napproaches it through such conceptions, but realisation ends by exceeding them.
\nThrough the realisation of higher and higher principles of being and states of conscious
\nexistence we arrive not at the annullation of all in a sort of positive zero or
\neven an inexpressible state of existence, but at the transcendent Existence
\nitself which is also the Existent who transcends all definition by personality
\nand yet is always that which is the essence of personality. <\/span><\/p>\n

When in That
\nwe live and have our being, we can possess it in both its modes, the Impersonal
\nin a supreme state of being and consciousness, in an infinite impersonality of
\nself-possessing power and bliss, the Personal by the divine nature acting
\nthrough the individual soul-form and by the relation between that and its
\ntranscendent and universal Self. We may keep even our relation with the
\npersonal Deity in His forms and names; if, for instance, our work is
\npredominantly a work of Love it is as the Lord of Love that we can seek to
\nserve and express Him, but we shall have at the same time an integral realisation
\nof Him in all His names and forms and qualities and not mistake the front of
\nHim which is prominent in our attitude to the world for all the infinite
\nGodhead. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 366<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XI   The Modes of the Self   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 SINCE the Self which we come to realise by the path of knowledge is not only…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","wpcat-20-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","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=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}