{"id":961,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=961"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:35","slug":"38-the-soul-and-its-liberation-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\/38-the-soul-and-its-liberation-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-38_The Soul and Its Liberation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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


\nThe Soul and Its Liberation<\/span><\/font><\/b> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\nW<\/font><\/span><\/b>E
\nHAVE<\/span><\/font> now to pause and consider to what this
\nacceptance of the relations of Purusha and Prakriti commits us; for it means
\nthat the Yoga which we are pursuing has for end none of the ordinary aims of humanity.
\nIt neither accepts our earthly existence as it is, nor can be satisfied with
\nsome kind of moral perfection or religious ecstasy, with a heaven beyond or
\nwith some dissolution of our being by which we get satisfactorily done with the
\ntrouble of existence. Our aim becomes quite other; it is to live in the Divine,
\nthe Infinite, in God and not in any mere egoism and temporality, but at the
\nsame time not apart from Nature, from our fellow-beings, from earth and the
\nmundane existence, any more than the Divine lives aloof from us and the world.
\nHe exists also in relation to the world and Nature and all these beings, but
\nwith an absolute and inalienable power, freedom and self-knowledge. Our
\nliberation and perfection is to transcend ignorance, bondage and weakness and
\nlive in Him in relation to the world and Nature with the divine power, freedom
\nand self-knowledge. For the highest relation of the Soul to existence is the
\nPurusha’s possession of Prakriti, when he is no longer ignorant and subject to his
\nnature, but knows, transcends, enjoys and controls his manifested being and
\ndetermines largely and freely what shall be his self-expression.<\/span><\/p>\n

A oneness
\nfinding itself out in the variations of its own duality is the whole play of
\nthe soul with Nature in its cosmic birth and becoming. One Sachchidananda
\neverywhere, self-existent, illimitable, a unity indestructible by the utmost
\ninfinity of its own variations, is the original truth of being for which our
\nknowledge seeks and to that our subjective existence eventually arrives. From
\nthat all other truths arise, upon that they are based, by that they are at
\nevery moment made possible and in <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 417<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

that they in the end can
\nknow themselves and each other, are reconciled, harmonised and justified. All relations
\nin the world, even to its greatest and most shocking apparent discords, are
\nrelations of something eternal to itself in its own universal existence; they
\nare not anywhere or at any time collisions of disconnected beings who meet
\nfortuitously or by some mechanical necessity of cosmic existence. Therefore to
\nget back to this eternal fact of oneness is our essential act of
\nself-knowledge; to live in it must be the effective principle of our inner
\npossession of our being and of our right and ideal relations with the world.
\nThat is why we have had to insist first and foremost on oneness as the aim and
\nin a way the whole aim of our Yoga of knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this
\nunity works itself out everywhere and on every plane by an executive or
\npractical truth of duality. The Eternal is the one infinite conscious
\nExistence, Purusha, and not something inconscient and mechanical; it exists
\neternally in its delight of the force of its own conscious being founded in an
\nequilibrium of unity; but it exists also in the no less eternal delight of its
\nforce of conscious being at play with various creative self-experience in the
\nuniverse. Just as we ourselves are or can become aware of being always
\nsomething timeless, nameless, perpetual which we call our self and which constitutes
\nthe unity of all that we are, and yet simultaneously we have the various
\nexperience of what we do, think, will, create, become, such too is the
\nself-awareness of this Purusha in the world. Only we, being at present limited
\nand ego-bound mental individuals, have usually this experience in the ignorance
\nand do not live in the self, but only look back at it or draw back to it from
\ntime to time, while the Eternal has it in His infinite self-knowledge, is
\neternally this self and looks from the fullness of self-being at all this
\nself-experience. He does not like us, bound prisoners of the mind, conceive of
\nHis being as either a sort of indefinite result and sum or else a high
\ncontradiction of self-experience. The old philosophical quarrel between Being
\nand Becoming is not possible to the eternal self-knowledge. <\/span><\/p>\n

An active
\nforce of conscious-being which realises itself in its powers of
\nself-experience, its powers of knowledge, will, self-delight, self-formulation
\nwith all their marvellous variations, inversions, conservations and conversions
\nof energy, even perver<\/span>–<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 418<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

sions<\/span><\/span>, is what we
\ncall Prakriti or Nature, in ourselves as in the cosmos. But behind this force
\nof variation is the eternal equilibrium of the same force in an equal unity which
\nsupports impartially, governs even as it has originated the variations and
\ndirects them to whatever aim of its self-delight the Being, the Purusha, has
\nconceived in its consciousness and determined by its will or power of
\nconsciousness. That is the divine Nature into unity with which we have to get
\nback by our Yoga of self-knowledge. We have to become the Purusha,
\nSachchidananda, delighting in a divine individual possession of its Prakriti
\nand no longer mental beings subject to our egoistic nature. For that is the
\nreal man, the supreme and integral self of the individual, and the ego is only
\na lower and partial manifestation of ourselves through which a certain limited
\nand preparatory experience becomes possible and is for a time indulged. But this
\nindulgence of the lower being is not our whole possibility; it is not the sole
\nor crowning experience for which we exist as human beings even in this material
\nworld. <\/span><\/p>\n

This
\nindividual being of ours is that by which ignorance is possible to
\nself-conscious mind, but it is also that by which liberation into the spiritual
\nbeing is possible and the enjoyment of divine immortality. It is not the
\nEternal in His transcendence or in His cosmic being who arrives at this
\nimmortality; it is the individual who rises into self-knowledge, in him it is
\npossessed and by him it is made effective. All life, spiritual, mental or
\nmaterial, is the play of the soul with the possibilities of its nature; for
\nwithout this play there can be no self-expression and no relative self-experience.
\nEven, then, in our realisation of all as our larger self and in our oneness
\nwith God and other beings, this play can and must persist, unless we desire to
\ncease from all self-expression and all but a tranced<\/span>
\nand absorbed self-experience. But then it is in the individual being that this
\ntrance or this liberated play is realised; the trance is this mental being’s
\nimmersion in the sole experience of unity, the liberated play is the taking up
\nof his mind into the spiritual being for the free realisation and delight of
\noneness. For the nature of the divine existence is to possess always its unity,
\nbut to possess it also in an infinite experience, from many standpoints, on
\nmany planes, through many <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 419<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

conscious powers or
\nselves of itself, individualities \u2013 in our limited intellectual language \u2013 of
\nthe one conscious being. Each one of us is one of these individualities. To
\nstand away from God in limited ego, limited mind is to stand away from
\nourselves, to be unpossessed<\/span> of our true individuality,
\nto be the apparent and not the real individual; it is our power of ignorance.
\nTo be taken up into the divine Being and be aware of our spiritual, infinite
\nand universal consciousness as that in which we now live, is to possess our
\nsupreme and integral self, our true individuality; it is our power of
\nself-knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

By knowing
\nthe eternal unity of these three powers of the eternal manifestation, God,
\nNature and the individual self, and their intimate necessity to each other, we
\ncome to understand existence itself and all that in the appearances of the
\nworld now puzzles our ignorance. Our self-knowledge abolishes none of these
\nthings, it abolishes only our ignorance and those circumstances proper to the
\nignorance which made us bound and subject to the egoistic determinations of our
\nnature. When we get back to our true being, the ego falls away from us; its
\nplace is taken by our supreme and integral self, the true individuality. As
\nthis supreme self it makes itself one with all beings and sees all world and
\nNature in its own infinity. What we mean by this is simply that our sense of
\nseparate existence disappears into a consciousness of illimitable, undivided, infinite
\nbeing in which we no longer feel bound to the name and form and the particular
\nmental and physical determinations of our present birth and becoming and are no
\nlonger separate from anything or anyone in the universe. This was what the ancient
\nthinkers called the Non-birth or the destruction of birth or Nirvana. At the
\nsame time we continue to live and act through our individual birth and
\nbecoming, but with a different knowledge and quite another kind of experience;
\nthe world also continues, but we see it in our own being and not as something
\nexternal to it and other than ourselves. To be able to live permanently in this
\nnew consciousness of our real, our integral being is to attain liberation and
\nenjoy immortality. <\/span><\/p>\n

Here there
\ncomes in the complication of the idea that immortality is only possible after
\ndeath in other worlds, upon <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 420<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

higher planes of
\nexistence or that liberation must destroy all possibility of mental or bodily
\nliving and annihilate the individual existence for ever in an impersonal
\ninfinity. These ideas derive their strength from a certain justification in
\nexperience and a sort of necessity or upward attraction felt by the soul when
\nit shakes off the compelling ties of mind and matter. It is felt that these
\nties are inseparable from all earthly living or from all mental existence.
\nDeath is the king of the material world, for life seems to exist here only by
\nsubmission to death, by a constant dying; immortality has to be conquered here
\nwith difficulty and seems to be in its nature a rejection of all death and
\ntherefore of all birth into the material world. The field of immortality must
\nbe in some immaterial plane, in some heavens where either the body does not
\nexist or else is different and only a form of the soul or a secondary
\ncircumstance. On the other hand, it is felt by those who would go beyond
\nimmortality even, that all planes and heavens are circumstances of the finite
\nexistence and the infinite self is void of all these things. They are dominated
\nby a necessity to disappear into the impersonal and infinite and an inability
\nto equate in any way the bliss of impersonal being with the soul’s delight in
\nits becoming. Philosophies have been invented which justify to the intellect
\nthis need of immersion and disappearance; but what is really important and
\ndecisive is the call of the Beyond, the need of the soul, its delight \u2013 in this
\ncase \u2013 in a sort of impersonal existence or non-existence. For what decides is
\nthe determining delight of the Purusha, the relation which it wills to
\nestablish with its Prakriti, the experience at which it arrives as the result of
\nthe line it has followed in the development of its individual self-experience
\namong all the various possibilities of its nature. Our intellectual
\njustifications are only the account of that experience which we give to the
\nreason and the devices by which we help the mind to assent to the direction in
\nwhich the soul is moving.<\/span><\/p>\n

The cause of
\nour world-existence is not, as our present experience induces us to believe,
\nthe ego; for the ego is only a result and a circumstance of our mode of
\nworld-existence. It is a relation which the many-souled<\/span>
\nPurusha has set up between individualised minds and bodies, a relation of
\nself-defence and <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 421<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

mutual exclusion and
\naggression in order to have among all the dependences of things in the world
\nupon each other a possibility of independent mental and physical experience.
\nBut there can be no absolute independence upon these planes; impersonality
\nwhich rejects all mental and physical becoming is therefore the only possible
\nculmination of this exclusive movement: so only can an absolutely independent
\nself-experience be achieved. The soul then seems to exist absolutely,
\nindependently in itself; it is free in the sense of the Indian word, svādhīna<\/i><\/span>,
\ndependent only on itself, not dependent upon God and other beings. Therefore in
\nthis experience God, personal self and other beings are all denied, cast away
\nas distinctions of the ignorance. It is the ego recognising its own
\ninsufficiency and abolishing both itself and its contraries that its own essential
\ninstinct of independent self-experience may be accomplished; for it finds that
\nits effort to achieve it by relations with God and others is afflicted throughout
\nwith a sentence of illusion, vanity and nullity. It ceases to admit them
\nbecause by admitting them it becomes dependent on them; it ceases to admit its
\nown persistence, because the persistence of ego means the admission of that which
\nit tries to exclude as not-self, of the cosmos and other beings. The
\nself-annihilation of the Buddhist is in its nature absolute exclusion of all
\nthat the mental being perceives; the self-immersion of the Adwaitin in his
\nabsolute being is the self-same aim differently conceived: both are a supreme
\nself-assertion of the soul of its exclusive independence of Prakriti.<\/span><\/p>\n

The
\nexperience which we first arrive at by the sort of short-cut to liberation
\nwhich we have described as the movement of withdrawal, assists this tendency.
\nFor it is a breaking of the ego and a rejection of the habits of the mentality
\nwe now possess; for that is subject to matter and the physical senses and
\nconceives of things only as forms, objects, external phenomena and as names
\nwhich we attach to those forms. We are not aware directly of the subjective
\nlife of other beings except by analogy from our own and by inference or
\nderivative perception based upon their external signs of speech, action, etc.,
\nwhich our minds translate into the terms of our own subjectivity. When we break
\nout from ego and physical mind into the infinity of the spirit, we still see <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 422<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

the world and others as
\nthe mind has accustomed us to see them, as names and forms; only in our new experience
\nof the direct and superior reality of spirit, they lose that direct objective
\nreality and that indirect subjective reality of their own which they had to the
\nmind. They seem to be quite the opposite of the truer reality we now
\nexperience; our mentality, stilled and indifferent, no longer strives to know
\nand make real to itself those intermediate terms which exist in them as in us
\nand the knowledge of which has for its utility to bridge over the gulf between
\nthe spiritual self and the objective phenomena of the world. We are satisfied
\nwith the blissful infinite impersonality of a pure spiritual existence; nothing
\nelse and nobody else any longer matters to us. What the physical senses show to
\nus and what the mind perceives and conceives about them and so imperfectly and
\ntransiently delights in, seems now unreal and worthless; we are not and do not
\ncare to be in possession of the intermediate truths of being through which these
\nthings are enjoyed by the One and possess for Him that value of His being and
\ndelight which makes, as we might say, cosmic existence a thing beautiful to Him
\nand worth manifesting. We can no longer share in God’s delight in the world; on
\nthe contrary it looks to us as if the Eternal had degraded itself by admitting
\ninto the purity of its being the gross nature of Matter or had falsified the
\ntruth of its being by imagining vain names and unreal forms. Or else if we
\nperceive at all that delight, it is with a far-off detachment which prevents us
\nfrom participating in it with any sense of intimate possession, or it is with
\nan attraction to the superior delight of an absorbed and exclusive self-experience
\nwhich does not allow us to stay any longer in these lower terms than we are
\ncompelled to stay by the continuance of our physical life and body. <\/span><\/p>\n

But if either
\nin the course of our Yoga or as the result of a free return of our realised
\nSelf upon the world and a free repossession of its Prakriti by the Purusha in
\nus, we become conscious not only of the bodies and outward self-expression of
\nothers, but intimately of their inner being, their minds, their souls and that
\nin them of which their own surface minds are not aware, then we see the real
\nBeing in them also and we see them as selves of our Self and not as mere names
\nand forms. They become to us
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 423<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

realities of the
\nEternal. Our minds are no longer subject to the delusion of trivial
\nunworthiness or the illusion of unreality. The material life loses indeed for
\nus its old absorbing value, but finds the greater value which it has for the
\ndivine Purusha; regarded no longer as the sole term of our becoming, but as
\nmerely having a subordinate value in relation to the higher terms of mind and
\nspirit, it increases by that diminution instead of losing in value. We see that
\nour material being, life, nature are only one poise of the Purusha in relation to
\nits Prakriti and that their true purpose and importance can only be appreciated
\nwhen they are seen not as a thing in itself, but as dependent on higher poises
\nby which they are supported; from those superior relations they derive their
\nmeaning and, therefore, by conscious union with them they can fulfil all their
\nvalid tendencies and aims. Life then becomes justified to us and no longer
\nstultified by the possession of liberated self-knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

This larger
\nintegral knowledge and freedom liberates in the end and fulfils our whole
\nexistence. When we possess it, we see why our existence moves between these
\nthree terms of God, ourselves and the world; we no longer see them or any of them
\nin opposition to each other, inconsistent, incompatible, nor do we on the other
\nhand regard them as terms of our ignorance which all disappear at last into a
\npure impersonal unity. We perceive their necessity as terms rather of our self-fulfilment
\nwhich preserve their value after liberation or rather find then only their real
\nvalue. We have no longer the experience of our existence as exclusive of the
\nother existences which make up by our relations with them our experience of the
\nworld; in this new consciousness they are all contained in ourselves and we in
\nthem. They and we are no longer so many mutually exclusive egos each seeking
\nits own independent fulfilment or self-transcendence and ultimately aiming at nothing
\nelse; they are all the Eternal and the self in each secretly embraces all in
\nitself and seeks in various ways to make that higher truth of its unity
\napparent and effective in its terrestrial being. Not mutual exclusiveness, but
\nmutual inclusiveness is the divine truth of our individuality, love the higher law
\nand not an independent self-fulfilment.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Purusha
\nwho is our real being is always independent
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 424<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

and master of Prakriti
\nand at this independence we are rightly seeking to arrive; that is the utility
\nof the egoistic movement and its self-transcendence, but its right fulfilment
\nis not in making absolute the ego’s principle of independent existence, but in
\narriving at this other highest poise of the Purusha with regard to its
\nPrakriti. There there<\/span> is transcendence of Nature, but
\nalso possession of Nature, perfect fulfilment of our individuality, but also
\nperfect fulfilment of our relations with the world and with others. Therefore
\nan individual salvation in heavens beyond careless of the earth is not our
\nhighest objective; the liberation and self-fulfilment of others is as much our own
\nconcern, \u2013 we might almost say, our divine self-interest, \u2013 as our own
\nliberation. Otherwise our unity with others would have no effective meaning. To
\nconquer the lures of egoistic existence in this world is our first victory over
\nourselves; to conquer the lure of individual happiness in heavens beyond is our
\nsecond victory; to conquer the highest lure of escape from life and a
\nself-absorbed bliss in the impersonal infinity is the last and greatest
\nvictory. Then are we rid of all individual exclusiveness and possessed of our
\nentire spiritual freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

The state of
\nthe liberated soul is that of the Purusha who is for ever free. Its
\nconsciousness is a transcendence and an all-comprehending unity. Its
\nself-knowledge does not get rid of all the terms of self-knowledge, but unifies
\nand harmonises all things in God and in the divine nature. The intense
\nreligious ecstasy which knows only God and ourselves and shuts out all else, is
\nonly to it an intimate experience which prepares it for sharing in the embrace
\nof the divine Love and Delight around all creatures. A heavenly bliss which
\nunites God and ourselves and the blest, but enables us to look with a remote indifference
\non the unblest<\/span> and their sufferings is not possible
\nto the perfect soul; for these also are its selves; free individually from
\nsuffering and ignorance, it must naturally turn to draw them also towards its
\nfreedom. On the other hand any absorption in the relations between self and
\nothers and the world to the exclusion of God and the Beyond is still more
\nimpossible, and therefore it cannot be limited by the earth or even by the highest
\nand most altruistic relations of man with man. Its activity or its culmination
\nis not <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 425<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

to efface and utterly
\ndeny itself for the sake of others, but to fulfil itself in God-possession, freedom
\nand divine bliss that in and by its fulfilment others too may be fulfilled. For
\nit is in God alone, by the possession of the Divine only that all the discords
\nof life can be resolved, and therefore the raising of men towards the Divine is
\nin the end the one effective way of helping mankind. All the other activities
\nand realisations of our self-experience have their use and power, but in the
\nend these crowded side-tracks or these lonely paths must circle round to
\nconverge into the wideness of the integral way by which the liberated soul
\ntranscends all, embraces all and becomes the promise and the power of the
\nfulfilment of all in their manifested being of the Divine. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 426<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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