{"id":959,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=959"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:35","slug":"28-the-release-from-the-heart-and-the-mind-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\/28-the-release-from-the-heart-and-the-mind-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-28_The Release from the Heart and the Mind.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

\n <\/font><\/span>The Release from the Heart and the
\nMind<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span>B<\/font><\/span><\/b>UT<\/font><\/span> the
\nascending soul has to separate itself not only from the life in the body but
\nfrom the action of the life-energy in the mind; it has to make the mind say as
\nthe representative of the Purusha \u201cI am not the Life; the Life is not the self
\nof the Purusha, it is only a working and only one working of Prakriti.\u201d The
\ncharacteristics of Life are action and movement, a reaching out to absorb and
\nassimilate what is external to the individual and a principle of satisfaction
\nor dissatisfaction in what it seizes upon or what comes to it, which is
\nassociated with the all-pervading phenomenon of attraction and repulsion. These
\nthree things are everywhere in Nature because Life is everywhere in Nature. But
\nin us mental beings they are all given a mental value according to the mind
\nwhich perceives and accepts them. They take the form of action, of desire and of
\nliking and disliking, pleasure and pain. The Prana is everywhere in us
\nsupporting not only the action of our body, but of our sense-mind, our
\nemotional mind, our thought-mind; and bringing its own law or dharma into all
\nthese, it confuses, it limits, it throws into discord their right action and
\ncreates that impurity of misplacement and that tangled confusion which is the whole
\nevil of our psychological existence. In that confusion one law seems to reign,
\nthe law of desire. As the universal Divine Being, all-embracing and
\nall-possessing, acts, moves, enjoys purely for the satisfaction of divine
\nDelight, so the individual life acts, moves, enjoys and suffers predominantly
\nfor the satisfaction of desire. Therefore the psychic life-energy presents
\nitself to our experience as a sort of desire-mind, which we have to conquer if
\nwe mean to get back to our true self. <\/span><\/p>\n

Desire is at
\nonce the motive of our actions, our lever of accomplishment and the bane of our
\nexistence. If our sense- <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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mind, emotional mind,
\nthought-mind could act free from the intrusions and importations of the
\nlife-energy, if that energy could be made to obey their right action instead of
\nimposing its own yoke on our existence, all human problems would move
\nharmoniously to their right solution. The proper function of the life-energy is
\nto do what it is bidden by the divine principle in us, to reach to and enjoy
\nwhat is given to it by that indwelling Divine and not to desire at all. The
\nproper function of the sense-mind is to lie open passively, luminously to the
\ncontacts of Life and transmit their sensations and the rasa or right taste and
\nprinciple of delight in them to the higher function; but interfered with by the
\nattractions and repulsions, the acceptances and refusals, the satisfactions and
\ndissatisfactions, the capacities and incapacities of the life-energy in the
\nbody it is, to begin with, limited in its scope and, secondly, forced in these limits
\nto associate itself with all these discords of the life in Matter. It becomes
\nan instrument for pleasure and pain instead of for delight of existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly the
\nemotional mind compelled to take note of all these discords and subject itself
\nto their emotional reactions becomes a hurtling field of joy and grief, love
\nand hatred, wrath, fear, struggle, aspiration, disgust, likes, dislikes, indifferences,
\ncontent, discontent, hopes, disappointments, gratitude, revenge and all the
\nstupendous play of passion which is the drama of life in the world. This chaos
\nwe call our soul. But the real soul, the real psychic entity which for the most
\npart we see little of and only a small minority in mankind has developed, is an
\ninstrument of pure love, joy and the luminous reaching out to fusion and unity
\nwith God and our fellow-creatures. This psychic entity is covered up by the
\nplay of the mentalised<\/span> Prana or desire-mind which we
\nmistake for the soul; the emotional mind is unable to mirror the real soul in
\nus, the Divine in our hearts, and is obliged instead to mirror the desire-mind.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

So too the
\nproper function of the thought-mind is to observe, understand, judge with a dispassionate
\ndelight in knowledge and open itself to messages and illuminations playing upon
\nall that it observes and upon all that is yet hidden from it but must progressively
\nbe revealed, messages and illuminations that <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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

secretly flash down to
\nus from the divine Oracle concealed in light above our mentality whether they
\nseem to descend through the intuitive mind or arise from the seeing heart. But
\nthis it cannot do rightly because it is pinned to the limitations of the
\nlife-energy in the senses, to the discords of sensation and emotion, and to its
\nown limitations of intellectual preference, inertia, straining, self-will which
\nare the form taken in it by the interference of this desire-mind, this psychic
\nPrana. As is said in the Upanishads, our whole mind-consciousness is shot through
\nwith the threads and currents of this Prana, this Life-energy that strives and
\nlimits, grasps and misses, desires and suffers, and only by its purification
\ncan we know and possess our real and eternal self.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is true
\nthat the root of all this evil is the ego-sense and that the seat of the
\nconscious ego-sense is the mind itself; but in reality the conscious mind only
\nreflects an ego already created in the subconscious mind in things, the dumb
\nsoul in the stone and the plant which is present in all body and life and only
\nfinally delivered into voicefulness and wakefulness but not originally created
\nby the conscious mind. And in this upward procession it is the life-energy
\nwhich has become the obstinate knot of the ego, it is the desire-mind which
\nrefuses to relax the knot even when the intellect and the heart have discovered
\nthe cause of their ills and would be glad enough to remove it; for the Prana in
\nthem is the Animal who revolts and who obscures and deceives their knowledge
\nand coerces their will by his refusal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore the
\nmental Purusha has to separate himself from association and self-identification
\nwith this desire-mind. He has to say \u201cI am not this thing that struggles and
\nsuffers, grieves and rejoices, loves and hates, hopes and is baffled, is angry and
\nafraid and cheerful and depressed, a thing of vital moods and emotional
\npassions. All these are merely workings and habits of Prakriti in the
\nsensational and emotional mind.\u201d The mind then draws back from its emotions and
\nbecomes with these, as with the bodily movements and experiences, the observer
\nor witness. There is again an inner cleavage. There is this emotional mind in
\nwhich these moods and passions continue to occur according to the habit of the
\nmodes of Nature and there is
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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the observing mind which
\nsees them, studies and understands but is detached from them. It observes them
\nas if in a sort of action and play on a mental stage of personages other than
\nitself, at first with interest and a habit of relapse into identification, then
\nwith entire calm and detachment, and, finally, attaining not only to calm but
\nto the pure delight of its own silent existence, with a smile at their
\nunreality as at the imaginary joys and sorrows of a child who is playing and
\nloses himself in the play. Secondly, it becomes aware of itself as master of
\nthe sanction who by his withdrawal of sanction can make this play to cease.
\nWhen the sanction is withdrawn, another significant phenomenon takes place; the
\nemotional mind becomes normally calm and pure and free from these reactions,
\nand even when they come, they no longer rise from within but seem to fall on it
\nas impressions from outside to which its fibres are still able to respond; but this
\nhabit of response dies away and the emotional mind is in time entirely
\nliberated from the passions which it has renounced. Hope and fear, joy and
\ngrief, liking and disliking, attraction and repulsion, content and discontent,
\ngladness and depression, horror and wrath and fear and disgust and shame and
\nthe passions of love and hatred fall away from the liberated psychic being.<\/span><\/p>\n

What takes
\ntheir place? It may be, if we will, an entire calm, silence and indifference.
\nBut although this is a stage through which the soul has usually to pass, it is
\nnot the final aim we have placed before us. Therefore the Purusha becomes also
\nthe master who wills and whose will it is to replace wrong by right enjoyment
\nof the psychic existence. What he wills, Nature executes. What was fabric-stuff
\nof desire and passion, is turned into reality of pure, equal and calmly intense
\nlove and joy and oneness. The real soul emerges and takes the place left vacant
\nby the desire-mind. The cleansed and emptied cup is filled with the wine of
\ndivine love and delight and no longer with the sweet and bitter poison of
\npassion. The passions, even the passion for good, misrepresent the divine
\nnature. The passion of pity with its impure elements of physical repulsion and
\nemotional inability to bear the suffering of others has to be rejected and
\nreplaced by the higher divine compassion which sees, understands, accepts the
\nburden of others and is strong to help and heal, not with self- <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 338<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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

will and revolt against
\nthe suffering in the world and with ignorant accusation of the law of things
\nand their source, but with light and knowledge and as an instrument of the
\nDivine in its emergence. So too the love that desires and grasps and is troubled
\nwith joy and shaken with grief must be rejected for the equal, all-embracing
\nlove that is free from these things and has no dependence upon circumstances
\nand is not modified by response or absence of response. So we shall deal with
\nall the movements of the soul; but of these things we shall speak farther when
\nwe consider the Yoga of self-perfection.<\/span><\/p>\n

As with
\naction and inaction, so it is with this dual possibility of indifference and
\ncalm on the one side and active joy and love on the other. Equality, not
\nindifference is the basis. Equal endurance, impartial indifference, calm
\nsubmission to the causes of joy and grief without any reaction of either grief
\nor joy are the preparation and negative basis of equality; but equality is not
\nfulfilled till it takes its positive form of love and delight. The sense-mind
\nmust find the equal rasa<\/i> of the All-Beautiful,
\nthe heart the equal love and Ananda for all, the psychic Prana the enjoyment of
\nthis rasa, love and Ananda. This, however, is the positive perfection that
\ncomes by liberation; our first object on the path of knowledge is rather the liberation
\nthat comes by detachment from the desire-mind and by the renunciation of its
\npassions.<\/span><\/p>\n

The
\ndesire-mind must also be rejected from the instrument of thought and this is
\nbest done by the detachment of the Purusha from thought and opinion itself. Of
\nthis we have already had occasion to speak when we considered in what consists
\nthe integral purification of the being. For all this movement of knowledge
\nwhich we are describing is a method of purification and liberation whereby
\nentire and final self-knowledge becomes possible, a progressive self-knowledge
\nbeing itself the instrument of the purification and liberation. The method with
\nthe thought-mind will be the same as with all the rest of the being. The Purusha,
\nhaving used the thought-mind for release from identification with the life and
\nbody and with the mind of desire and sensations and emotions, will turn round
\nupon the thought-mind itself and will say \u201cThis too I am not; I am not the
\nthought <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 339<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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or the thinker; all
\nthese ideas, opinions, speculations, strivings of the intellect, its
\npredilections, preferences, dogmas, doubts, self-corrections are not myself;
\nall this is only a working of Prakriti which takes place in the thought-mind.\u201d
\nThus a division is created between the mind that thinks and wills and the mind
\nthat observes and the Purusha becomes the witness only; he sees, he understands
\nthe process and laws of his thought, but detaches himself from it. Then as the
\nmaster of the sanction he withdraws his past sanction from the tangle of the
\nmental undercurrent and the reasoning intellect and causes both to cease from
\ntheir importunities. He becomes liberated from subjection to the thinking mind
\nand capable of the utter silence. <\/span><\/p>\n

For perfection
\nthere is necessary also the resumption by the Purusha of his position as the
\nlord of his Nature and the will to replace the mere mental undercurrent and
\nintellect by the truth-conscious thought that lightens from above. But the silence
\nis necessary; in the silence and not in the thought we shall find the Self, we
\nshall become aware of it, not merely conceive it, and we shall withdraw out of
\nthe mental Purusha into that which is the source of the mind. But for this withdrawal
\na final liberation is needed, the release from the ego-sense in the mind.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 340<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter VIII   The Release from the Heart and the Mind    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 BUT the ascending soul has to separate itself not only from the life…<\/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-959","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\/959","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=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}