{"id":952,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=952"},"modified":"2013-12-01T16:48:17","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T00:48:17","slug":"32-the-realisation-of-sachchidananda-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\/32-the-realisation-of-sachchidananda-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-32_The Realisation of Sachchidananda\u00a0.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

\n <\/font><\/span>The Realisation of Sachchidananda<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n


\nT<\/font><\/span><\/b>HE <\/span>
\n<\/font>modes of the Self which we have dealt with
\nin our last Chapter may seem at first to be of a highly metaphysical character,
\nto be intellectual conceptions more fit for philosophical analysis than for
\npractical realisation. But this is a false distinction made by the division of
\nour faculties. It is at least a fundamental principle of the ancient wisdom, the
\nwisdom of the East on which we are founding ourselves, that philosophy ought not
\nto be merely a lofty intellectual pastime or a play of dialectical subtlety or
\neven a pursuit of metaphysical truth for its own sake, but a discovery by all
\nright means of the basic truths of all-existence which ought then to become the
\nguiding principles of our own existence. Sankhya, the
\nabstract and analytical realisation of truth, is one side of Knowledge. Yoga,
\nthe concrete and synthetic realisation of it in our experience, inner state,
\nouter life is the other. Both are means by which man can escape out of falsehood
\nand ignorance and live in and by the truth. And since it is always the highest
\nhe can know or be capable of that must be the aim of the thinking man, it is the
\nhighest truth which the soul must seek out by thought and by life accomplish.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here lies the
\nwhole importance of the part of the Yoga of Knowledge which we are now
\nconsidering, the knowledge\u00b9 of those essential principles of Being, those
\nessential modes of self-existence on which the absolute Divine has based its self-manifestation.
\nIf the truth of our being is an infinite unity in which alone there is perfect
\nwideness, light, knowledge, power, bliss, and if all our subjection to
\ndarkness, ignorance, weakness, sorrow, limitation comes of our viewing existence
\nas a clash of infinitely multiple separate existences, then obviously it is the
\nmost practical and concrete and utilitarian as well as the most lofty and
\nphilosophical wisdom to find a means by which we can
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>tattvaj\u00f1āna<\/span><\/span>.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 367<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

get away from the error
\nand learn to live in the truth. So also, if that One is in its nature a freedom
\nfrom bondage to this play of qualities which constitute our psychology and if
\nfrom subjection to that play are born the struggle and discord in which we
\nlive, floundering eternally between the two poles of good and evil, virtue and
\nsin, satisfaction and failure, joy and grief, pleasure and pain, then to get
\nbeyond the qualities and take our foundation in the settled peace of that which
\nis always beyond them is the only practical wisdom. If attachment to mutable
\npersonality is the cause of our self-ignorance, of our discord and quarrel with
\nourself<\/span> and with life and with others, and if there
\nis an impersonal One in which no such discord and ignorance and vain and noisy
\neffort exist because it is in eternal identity and harmony with itself, then to
\narrive in our souls at that impersonality and untroubled oneness of being is
\nthe one line and object of human effort to which our reason can consent to give
\nthe name of practicality.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is such
\na unity, impersonality, freedom from the play of qualities which lifts us above
\nthe strife and surge of Nature in her eternal seeking through mind and body for
\nthe true key and secret of all her relations. And it is the ancient highest
\nexperience of mankind that only by arriving there, only by making oneself
\nimpersonal, one, still, self-gathered, superior to the mental and vital
\nexistence in that which is eternally superior to it, can a settled, because
\nself-existent peace and internal freedom be acquired. Therefore this is the
\nfirst, in a sense the characteristic and essential object of the Yoga of Knowledge.
\nBut, as we have insisted, this, if first, is not all; if the essential, it is
\nnot the complete object. Knowledge is not complete if it merely shows us how to
\nget away from relations to that which is beyond relations, from personality to impersonality,
\nfrom multiplicity to featureless unity. It must give us also that key, that
\nsecret of the whole play of relations, the whole variation of multiplicity, the
\nwhole clash and interaction of personalities for which cosmic existence is
\nseeking. And knowledge is still incomplete if it gives us only an idea and
\ncannot verify it in experience; we seek the key, the secret in order that we
\nmay govern the phenomenon by the reality it represents, heal its discords by
\nthe hidden principle of concord
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 368<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

and unification behind
\nthem and arrive from the converging and diverging effort of the world to the
\nharmony of its fulfilment. Not merely peace, but fulfilment is what the heart
\nof the world is seeking and what a perfect and effective self-knowledge must
\ngive to it; peace can only be the eternal support, the infinite condition, the
\nnatural atmosphere of self-fulfilment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, the
\nknowledge that finds the true secret of multiplicity, personality, quality,
\nplay of relations, must show us some real oneness in essence of being and
\nintimate unity in power of being between the impersonal and the source of personality,
\nthe qualitiless<\/span> and that which expresses itself in
\nqualities, the unity of existence and its many-featured multiplicity. The
\nknowledge that leaves a yawning gulf between the two, can be no ultimate
\nknowledge, however logical it may seem to the analytical intellect or however satisfactory
\nto a self-dividing experience. True knowledge must arrive at a oneness which
\nembraces even though it exceeds the totality of things, not at a oneness which
\nis incapable of it and rejects it. For there can be no such original
\nunbridgeable chasm of duality either in the All-existence itself or between any
\ntranscendent Oneness and the All-existent. And as in knowledge, so in
\nexperience and self-fulfilment. The experience which finds at the summit of
\nthings such an original unbridgeable chasm between two contrary principles and
\ncan at most succeed in overleaping it so that it has to live in one or the
\nother, but cannot embrace and unify, is not the ultimate experience. Whether we
\nseek to know by thought or by the vision of knowledge which surpasses thought
\nor by that perfect self-experience in our own being which is the crown and
\nfulfilment of realisation by knowledge, we must be able to think out, see,
\nexperience and live the all-satisfying unity. This is what we find in the
\nconception, vision and experience of the One whose oneness does not cease or
\ndisappear from view by self-expression in the Many, who is free from bondage to
\nqualities but is yet infinite quality, who contains and combines all relations,
\nyet is ever absolute, who is no one person and yet all persons because He is
\nall being and the one conscious Being. For the individual centre we call
\nourselves, to enter by its consciousness into this Divine and reproduce its
\nnature in itself is the high and marvellous, yet per- <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 369<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

fectly<\/span><\/span> rational and
\nmost supremely pragmatic and utilitarian goal before us. It is the fulfilment
\nof our self-existence and at the same time the fulfilment of our cosmic
\nexistence, of the individual in himself and of the individual in his relation
\nto the cosmic Many. Between these two terms there is no irreconcilable
\nopposition: rather, our own self and the self of the cosmos having been
\ndiscovered to be one, there must be between them an intimate unity.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact all
\nthese opposite terms are merely general conditions for the manifestation of
\nconscious being in that Transcendent who is always one not only behind, but
\nwithin all conditions however apparently opposite. And the original unifying
\nspirit-stuff of them all and the one substantial mode of them all is that which
\nhas been described for the convenience of our thought as the trinity of
\nSachchidananda. Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, these are everywhere the three
\ninseparable divine terms. None of them is really separate, though our mind and
\nour mental experience can make not only the distinction, but the separation.
\nMind can say and think \u201cI was, but unconscious\u201d \u2013 for no being can say \u201cI am,
\nbut unconscious\u201d \u2013 and it can think and feel \u201cI am, but miserable and without
\nany pleasure in existence.\u201d In reality this is impossible. The existence we
\nreally are, the eternal \u201cI am\u201d, of which it can never be true to say \u201cIt was\u201d,
\nis nowhere and at no time unconscious. What we call unconsciousness is simply
\nother-consciousness; it is the going in of this surface wave of our mental
\nawareness of outer objects into our subliminal self-awareness and into our
\nawareness too of other planes of existence. We are really no more unconscious
\nwhen we are asleep or stunned or drugged or \u201cdead\u201d or in any other state, than
\nwhen we are plunged in inner thought oblivious of our physical selves and our
\nsurroundings. For anyone who has advanced even a little way in Yoga, this is a
\nmost elementary proposition and one which offers no difficulty whatever to the thought
\nbecause it is proved at every point by experience. It is more difficult to
\nrealise that existence and undelight<\/span> of existence
\ncannot go together. What we call misery, grief, pain, absence of delight is
\nagain merely a surface wave of the delight of existence which takes on to our
\nmental experience these apparently opposite tints because <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 370<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

of a certain trick of
\nfalse reception in our divided being \u2013 which is not our existence at all but
\nonly a fragmentary formulation or discoloured spray of conscious-force tossed
\nup by the infinite sea of our self-existence. In order to realise this we have
\nto get away from our absorption in these surface habits, these petty tricks of
\nour mental being, \u2013 and when we do get behind and away from them it is
\nsurprising how superficial they are, what ridiculously weak and
\nlittle-penetrating pin-pricks they prove to be, \u2013 and we have to realise true existence,
\nand true consciousness, and true experience of existence and consciousness,
\nSat, Chit and Ananda. <\/span><\/p>\n

Chit, the
\ndivine Consciousness, is not our mental self-awareness; that we shall find to
\nbe only a form, a lower and limited mode or movement. As we progress and awaken
\nto the soul in us and things, we shall realise that there is a consciousness
\nalso in the plant, in the metal, in the atom, in electricity, in everything
\nthat belongs to physical nature; we shall find even that it is not really in
\nall respects a lower or more limited mode than the mental, on the contrary it
\nis in many \u201cinanimate\u201d forms more intense, rapid, poignant, though less evolved
\ntowards the surface. But this also, this consciousness of vital and physical
\nNature is, compared with Chit, a lower and therefore a limited form, mode and
\nmovement. These lower modes of consciousness are the conscious-stuff of
\ninferior planes in one indivisible existence. In ourselves also there is in our
\nsubconscious being an action which is precisely that of the \u201cinanimate\u201d
\nphysical Nature whence has been constituted the basis of our physical being,
\nanother which is that of plant-life, and another which is that of the lower
\nanimal creation around us. All these are so much dominated and conditioned by
\nthe thinking and reasoning conscious-being in us that we have no real awareness
\nof these lower planes; we are unable to perceive in their own terms what these
\nparts of us are doing, and receive it very imperfectly in the terms and values
\nof the thinking and reasoning mind. Still we know well enough that there is an
\nanimal in us as well as that which is characteristically human, \u2013 something
\nwhich is a creature of conscious instinct and impulse, not reflective or
\nrational, as well as that which turns back in thought and will on its
\nexperience, meets
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 371<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

it from above with the
\nlight and force of a higher plane and to some degree controls, uses and
\nmodifies it. But the animal in man is only the head of our subhuman being;
\nbelow it there is much that is also sub-animal and merely vital, much that acts
\nby an instinct and impulse of which the constituting consciousness is withdrawn
\nbehind the surface. Below this sub-animal being, there is at a further depth
\nthe subvital<\/span>. When we advance in that ultra-normal
\nself-knowledge and experience which Yoga brings with it, we become aware that
\nthe body too has a consciousness of its own; it has habits, impulses,
\ninstincts, an inert yet effective will which differs from that of the rest of
\nour being and can resist it and condition its effectiveness. Much of the
\nstruggle in our being is due to this composite existence and the interaction of
\nthese varied and heterogeneous planes on each other. For man here is the result
\nof an evolution and contains in himself the whole of that evolution up from the
\nmerely physical and subvital<\/span> conscious being to the mental
\ncreature which at the top he is.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this
\nevolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal
\nselves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being
\nsupernormal and superhuman planes. There Chit as the universal conscious-stuff
\nof existence takes other poises, moves out in other modes, on other principles
\nand by other faculties of action. There is above the mind, as the old Vedic
\nsages discovered, a Truth-plane, a plane of self-luminous, self-effective Idea,
\nwhich can be turned in light and force upon our mind, reason, sentiments,
\nimpulses, sensations and use and control them in the sense of the real Truth of
\nthings just as we turn our mental reason and will upon our sense-experience and
\nanimal nature to use and control them in the sense of our rational and moral
\nperceptions. There there<\/span> is no seeking, but rather
\nnatural possession; no conflict or separation between will and reason, instinct
\nand impulse, desire and experience, idea and reality, but all are in harmony,
\nconcomitant, mutually effective, unified in their origin, in their development
\nand in their effectuation. But beyond this plane and attainable through it are
\nothers in which the very Chit itself becomes revealed, Chit the elemental
\norigin and primal completeness of all this varied
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 372<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

consciousness which is
\nhere used for various formation and experience. There will and knowledge and
\nsensation and all the rest of our faculties, powers, modes of experience are
\nnot merely harmonious, concomitant, unified, but are one being of consciousness
\nand power of consciousness. It is this Chit which modifies itself so as to
\nbecome on the Truth-plane the supermind<\/span>, on the
\nmental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes
\nthe vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in
\nsuperficially conscious possession of itself. All is Chit because all is Sat;
\nall is various movement of the original Consciousness because all is various
\nmovement of the original Being.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we find,
\nsee or know Chit, we find also that its essence is Ananda or delight of
\nself-existence. To possess self is to possess self-bliss; not to possess self
\nis to be in more or less obscure search of the delight of existence. Chit
\neternally possesses its self-bliss; and since Chit is the universal
\nconscious-stuff of being, conscious universal being is also in possession of
\nconscious self-bliss, master of the universal delight of existence. The Divine
\nwhether it manifests itself in All-Quality or in No-Quality, in Personality or
\nImpersonality, in the One absorbing the Many or in the One manifesting its essential
\nmultiplicity, is always in possession of self-bliss and all-bliss because it is
\nalways Sachchidananda. For us also to know and possess our true Self in the
\nessential and the universal is to discover the essential and the universal
\ndelight of existence, self-bliss and all-bliss. For the universal is only the
\npouring out of the essential existence, consciousness and delight; and wherever
\nand in whatever form that manifests as existence, there the essential
\nconsciousness must be and therefore there must be an essential delight. <\/span><\/p>\n

The
\nindividual soul does not possess this true nature of itself or realise this
\ntrue nature of its experience, because it separates itself both from the
\nessential and the universal and identifies itself with the separate accidents,
\nwith the unessential form and mode and with the separate aspect and vehicle.
\nThus it takes its mind, body, life-stream for its essential self. It tries to
\nassert these for their own sake against the universal, against that of which
\nthe universal is the manifestation. It is right in trying to assert
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 373<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

and fulfil itself in the
\nuniversal for the sake of something greater and beyond, but wrong in attempting
\nto do so against the universal and in obedience to a fragmentary aspect of the
\nuniversal. This fragmentary aspect or rather collection of fragmentary
\nexperiences it combines around an artificial centre of mental experience, the
\nmental ego, and calls that itself and it serves this ego and lives for its sake
\ninstead of living for the sake of that something greater and beyond of which
\nall aspects, even the widest and most general are partial manifestations. This
\nis the living in the false and not the true self; this is living for the sake
\nof and in obedience to the ego and not for the sake of and in obedience to the
\nDivine. The question how this fall has come about and for what purpose it has
\nbeen done, belongs to the domain of Sankhya rather than of Yoga. We have to
\nseize on the practical fact that to such self-division is due the
\nself-limitation by which we have become unable to possess the true nature of
\nbeing and experience and are therefore in our mind, life and body subject to
\nignorance, incapacity and suffering. Non-possession of unity is the root cause;
\nto recover unity is the sovereign means, unity with the universal and with that
\nwhich the universal is here to express. We have to realise the true self of
\nourselves and of all; and to realise the true self is to realise
\nSachchidananda. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 374<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XII   The Realisation of Sachchidananda    THE modes of the Self which we have dealt with in our last Chapter may seem at first…<\/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-952","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\/952","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=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9725,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions\/9725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}