{"id":967,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=967"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:38","slug":"23-the-purified-understanding-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\/23-the-purified-understanding-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-23_The Purified Understanding.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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


\nThe
\nPurified Understanding<\/span><\/b><\/font><\/span> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\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>T<\/font><\/span><\/b>HE<\/span><\/font> description
\nof the status of knowledge to which we aspire, determines the means of knowledge
\nwhich we shall use. That status of knowledge may be summed up as a supramental
\nrealisation which is prepared by mental representations through various mental
\nprinciples in us and once attained again reflects itself more perfectly in all
\nthe members of the being. It is a re-seeing and therefore a remoulding of our
\nwhole existence in the light of the Divine and One and Eternal free from
\nsubjection to the appearances of things and the externalities of our superficial
\nbeing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such a
\npassage from the human to the divine, from the divided and discordant to the
\nOne, from the phenomenon to the eternal Truth, such an entire rebirth or new
\nbirth of the soul must necessarily involve two stages, one of preparation in
\nwhich the soul and its instruments must become fit and another of actual
\nillumination and realisation in the prepared soul through its fit instruments.
\nThere is indeed no rigid line of demarcation in sequence of Time between these
\ntwo stages; rather they are necessary to each other and continue
\nsimultaneously. For in proportion as the soul becomes fit it increases in
\nillumination and rises to higher and higher, completer and completer
\nrealisations, and in proportion as these illuminations and these realisations
\nincrease, becomes fit and its instruments more adequate to their task: there
\nare soul-seasons of unillumined<\/span> preparation and
\nsoul-seasons of illumined growth and culminating soul-moments more or less
\nprolonged of illumined possession, moments that are transient like the flash of
\nthe lightning, yet change the whole spiritual future, moments also that extend
\nover many human hours, days, weeks in a constant light or blaze of the Sun of
\nTruth. And through all these the soul once turned Godwards grows towards the
\npermanence
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

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\n\u2013 294<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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

and perfection of its
\nnew birth and real existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first
\nnecessity of preparation is the purifying of all the members of our being;
\nespecially, for the path of knowledge, the purification of the understanding,
\nthe key that shall open the door of Truth; and a purified understanding is
\nhardly possible without the purification of the other members. An unpurified
\nheart, an unpurified sense, an unpurified life confuse the understanding,
\ndisturb its data, distort its conclusions, darken its seeing, misapply its
\nknowledge; an unpurified physical system clogs or chokes up its action. There
\nmust be an integral purity. Here also there is an interdependence; for the purification
\nof each member of our being profits by the clarifying of every other, the
\nprogressive tranquillisation of the emotional heart helping for instance the
\npurification of the understanding while equally a purified understanding
\nimposes calm and light on the turbid and darkened workings of the yet impure
\nemotions. It may even be said that while each member of our being has its own
\nproper principles of purification, yet it is the purified understanding that in
\nman is the most potent cleanser of his turbid and disordered being and most
\nsovereignly imposes their right working on his other members. Knowledge, says
\nthe Gita, is the sovereign purity; light is the source of all clearness and
\nharmony even as the darkness of ignorance is the cause of all our stumblings.
\nLove, for example, is the purifier of the heart and by reducing all our
\nemotions into terms of divine love the heart is perfected and fulfilled; yet
\nlove itself needs to be clarified by divine knowledge. The heart’s love of God
\nmay be blind, narrow and ignorant and lead to fanaticism and obscurantism; it
\nmay, even when otherwise pure, limit our perfection by refusing to see Him
\nexcept in a limited personality and by recoiling from the true and infinite
\nvision. The heart’s love of man may equally lead to distortions and
\nexaggerations in feeling, action and knowledge which have to be corrected and
\nprevented by the purification of the understanding.<\/span><\/p>\n

We must,
\nhowever, consider deeply and clearly what we mean by the understanding and by
\nits purification. We use the word as the nearest equivalent we can get in the
\nEnglish tongue to the Sanskrit philosophical term buddhi<\/i>; therefore we exclude <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 295<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

from it the action of
\nthe sense mind which merely consists of the recording of perceptions of all
\nkinds without distinction whether they be right or wrong, true or mere illusory
\nphenomena, penetrating or superficial. We exclude that mass of confused
\nconception which is merely a rendering of these perceptions and is equally void
\nof the higher principle of judgment and discrimination. Nor can we include that
\nconstant leaping current of habitual thought which does duty for understanding
\nin the mind of the average unthinking man, but is only a constant repetition of
\nhabitual associations, desires, prejudices, prejudgments, received or inherited
\npreferences, even though it may constantly enrich itself by a fresh stock of concepts
\nstreaming in from the environment and admitted without the challenge of the
\nsovereign discriminating reason. Undoubtedly this is a sort of understanding
\nwhich has been very useful in the development of man from the animal; but it is
\nonly one remove above the animal mind; it is a half-animal reason subservient
\nto habit, to desire and the senses and is of no avail in the search whether for
\nscientific or philosophical or spiritual knowledge. We have to go beyond it;
\nits purification can only be effected either by dismissing or silencing it
\naltogether or by transmuting it into the true understanding.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the
\nunderstanding we mean that which at once perceives, judges and discriminates,
\nthe true reason of the human being not subservient to the senses, to desire or
\nto the blind force of habit, but working in its own right for mastery, for knowledge.
\nCertainly, the reason of man as he is at present does not even at its best act
\nentirely in this free and sovereign fashion; but so far as it fails, it fails
\nbecause it is still mixed with the lower half-animal action, because it is
\nimpure and constantly hampered and pulled down from its characteristic action.
\nIn its purity it should not be involved in these lower movements, but stand
\nback from the object, and observe disinterestedly, put it in its right place in
\nthe whole by force of comparison, contrast, analogy, reason from its rightly
\nobserved data by deduction, induction, inference and holding all its gains in
\nmemory and supplementing them by a chastened and rightly-guided imagination
\nview all in the light of a trained and disciplined judgment. Such is the pure
\nintellectual understanding of which disinterested observation, judgment<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 296<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

and reasoning are the
\nlaw and characterising action.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the term buddhi<\/i> is also used in another and
\nprofounder sense. The intellectual understanding is only the lower buddh<\/i>i; there is another and a higher buddhi<\/i> which is not intelligence but
\nvision, is not understanding but rather an over-standing\u00b9 in knowledge, and
\ndoes not seek knowledge and attain it in subjection to the data it observes but
\npossesses already the truth and brings it out in the terms of a revelatory and intuitional
\nthought. The nearest the human mind usually gets to this truth-conscious
\nknowledge is that imperfect action of illumined finding which occurs when there
\nis a great stress of thought and the intellect electrified by constant
\ndischarges from behind the veil and yielding to a higher enthusiasm admits a considerable
\ninstreaming from the intuitive and inspired faculty of knowledge. For there is
\nan intuitive mind in man which serves as a recipient and channel for these
\ninstreamings from a supramental faculty. But the action of intuition and inspiration
\nin us is imperfect in kind as well as intermittent in action; ordinarily, it
\ncomes in response to a claim from the labouring and struggling heart or
\nintellect and, even before its givings<\/span> enter the
\nconscious mind, they are already affected by the thought or aspiration which
\nwent up to meet them, are no longer pure but altered to the needs of the heart
\nor intellect; and after they enter the conscious mind, they are immediately
\nseized upon by the intellectual understanding and dissipated or broken up so as
\nto fit in with our imperfect intellectual knowledge, or by the heart and
\nremoulded to suit our blind or half-blind emotional longings and preferences,
\nor even by the lower cravings and distorted to the vehement uses of our hungers
\nand passions.<\/span><\/p>\n

If this
\nhigher Buddhi could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it
\nwould give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced
\nby a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of
\nthe sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured
\ninspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations
\nand conclusion from reasoning to an <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>The
\nDivine Being is described as the adhyakşa, he who seated over all in the
\nsupreme ether over-sees things, views and controls them from above.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 297<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

intuition containing in
\nitself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a
\nthought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask
\nwhich it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while
\nmemory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek
\nthought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the
\nindividual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which
\nsecretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem
\npainfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which
\nincludes the future\u00b9 no less than the past. Certainly, we are intended to grow
\nin our receptivity to this higher faculty of truth-conscious knowledge, but its
\nfull and unveiled use is as yet the privilege of the gods and beyond our
\npresent human stature.<\/span><\/p>\n

We see then
\nwhat we mean precisely by the understanding and by that higher faculty which we
\nmay call for the sake of convenience the ideal faculty and which stands to the
\ndeveloped intellect much in the same relation as that intellect stands to the
\nhalf-animal reason of the undeveloped man. It becomes evident also what is the
\nnature of the purification which is necessary before the understanding can
\nfulfil rightly its part in the attainment of right knowledge. All impurity is a
\nconfusion of working, a departure from the dharma<\/i>,
\nthe just and inherently right action of things which in that right action are
\npure and helpful to our perfection and this departure is usually the result of
\nan ignorant confusion\u00b2 of Dharmas in which the function lends itself to the
\ndemand of other tendencies than those which are properly its own.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first
\ncause of impurity in the understanding is the intermiscence of desire in the
\nthinking functions, and desire itself is an impurity of the Will involved in
\nthe vital and emotional parts of our being. When the vital and emotional
\ndesires interfere with the pure will-to-know, the thought-function becomes
\nsubservient to them, pursues ends other than those proper to itself and its
\nperceptions are clogged and deranged. The understanding must lift itself beyond
\nthe siege of desire and emotion and, in <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 In
\nthis sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b2 samkara<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 298<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

order that it may have
\nperfect immunity, it must get the vital parts and the emotions themselves
\npurified. The will to enjoy is proper to the vital being but not the choice or
\nthe reaching after the enjoyment which must be determined and acquired by
\nhigher functions; therefore the vital being must be trained to accept whatever
\ngain or enjoyment comes to it in the right functioning of the life in obedience
\nto the working of the divine Will and to rid itself of craving and attachment.
\nSimilarly the heart must be freed from subjection to the cravings of the
\nlife-principle and the senses and thus rid itself of the false emotions of
\nfear, wrath, hatred, lust, etc. which constitute the chief impurity of the
\nheart. The will to love is proper to the heart, but here also the choice and
\nreaching after love have to be foregone or tranquillised and the heart taught to
\nlove with depth and intensity indeed, but with a calm depth and a settled and
\nequal, not a troubled and disordered intensity. The tranquillisation and
\nmastery\u00b9 of these members is a first condition for the immunity of the
\nunderstanding from error, ignorance and perversion. This purification spells an
\nentire equality of the nervous being and the heart; equality, therefore, even
\nas it was the first word of the path of works, so also is the first word of the
\npath of knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

The second
\ncause of impurity in the understanding is the illusion of the senses and the intermiscence
\nof the sense-mind in the thinking functions. No knowledge can be true knowledge
\nwhich subjects itself to the senses or uses them otherwise than as first
\nindices whose data have constantly to be corrected and over-passed. The beginning
\nof Science is the examination of the truths of the world-force that underlie
\nits apparent workings such as our senses represent them to be; the beginning of
\nphilosophy is the examination of the principles of things which the senses
\nmistranslate to us; the beginning of spiritual knowledge is the refusal to
\naccept the limitations of the sense-life or to take the visible and sensible as
\nanything more than phenomenon of the Reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Equally must
\nthe sense-mind be stilled and taught to leave the function of thought to the
\nmind that judges and understands. When the understanding in us stands back from
\nthe action of the <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>sama<\/span><\/span> and dama<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 299<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

sense-mind and repels
\nits intermiscence, the latter detaches itself from the understanding and can be
\nwatched in its separate action. It then reveals itself as a constantly swirling
\nand eddying undercurrent of habitual concepts, associations, perceptions,
\ndesires without any real sequence, order or principle of light. It is a
\nconstant repetition in a circle unintelligent and unfruitful. Ordinarily the
\nhuman understanding accepts this undercurrent and tries to reduce it to a
\npartial order and sequence; but by so doing it becomes itself subject to it and
\npartakes of that disorder, restlessness, unintelligent subjection to habit and
\nblind purposeless repetition which makes the ordinary human reason a
\nmisleading, limited and even frivolous and futile instrument. There is nothing
\nto be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get
\nrid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving
\na concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject
\nthis alien and confusing element. <\/span><\/p>\n

A third cause
\nof impurity has its source in the understanding itself and consists in an
\nimproper action of the will to know. That will is proper to the understanding,
\nbut here again choice and unequal reaching after knowledge clog and distort. They
\nlead to a partiality and attachment which makes the intellect cling to certain
\nideas and opinions with a more or less obstinate will to ignore the truth in
\nother ideas and opinions, cling to certain fragments of a truth and shy against
\nthe admission of other parts which are yet necessary to its fullness, cling to
\ncertain predilections of knowledge and repel all knowledge that does not agree
\nwith the personal temperament of thought which has been acquired by the past of
\nthe thinker. The remedy lies in a perfect equality of the mind, in the
\ncultivation of an entire intellectual rectitude and in the perfection of mental
\ndisinterestedness. The purified understanding as it will not lend itself to any
\ndesire or craving, so will not lend itself either to any predilection or
\ndistaste for any particular idea or truth, and will refuse to be attached even
\nto those ideas of which it is the most certain or to lay on them such an undue
\nstress as is likely to disturb the balance of truth and depreciate the values of
\nother elements of a complete and perfect knowledge.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 300<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

An
\nunderstanding thus purified would be a perfectly flexible, entire and faultless
\ninstrument of intellectual thought and being free from the inferior sources of
\nobstruction and distortion would be capable of as true and complete a
\nperception of the truths of the Self and the universe as the intellect can
\nattain. But for real knowledge something more is necessary, since real
\nknowledge is by our very definition of it supra-intellectual. In order that the
\nunderstanding may not interfere with our attainment to real knowledge, we have
\nto reach to that something more and cultivate a power exceedingly difficult for
\nthe active intellectual thinker and distasteful to his proclivities, the power
\nof intellectual passivity. The object served is double and therefore two
\ndifferent kinds of passivity have to be acquired. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the first
\nplace we have seen that intellectual thought is in itself inadequate and is not
\nthe highest thinking; the highest is that which comes through the intuitive
\nmind and from the supramental faculty. So long as we are dominated by the intellectual
\nhabit and by the lower workings, the intuitive mind can only send its messages
\nto us subconsciously and subject to a distortion more or less entire before it
\nreaches the conscious mind; or if it works consciously, then only with an inadequate
\nrarity and a great imperfection in its functioning. In order to strengthen the
\nhigher knowledge-faculty in us we have to effect the same separation between
\nthe intuitive and intellectual elements of our thought as we have already effected
\nbetween the understanding and the sense-mind; and this is no easy task, for not
\nonly do our intuitions come to us incrusted in the intellectual action, but
\nthere are a great number of mental workings which masquerade and ape the
\nappearances of the higher faculty. The remedy is to train first the intellect
\nto recognise the true intuition, to distinguish it from the false and then to
\naccustom it, when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to
\nattach no final value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the divine
\nprinciple and wait in as complete a silence as it can command for the light
\nfrom above. In this way it is possible to transmute a great part of our
\nintellectual thinking into the luminous truth-conscious vision, \u2013 the ideal would
\nbe a complete transition, \u2013 or at least to increase greatly the frequency,
\npurity and conscious force of the ideal knowledge
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 301<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

working behind the
\nintellect. The latter must learn to be subject and passive to the ideal faculty.<\/span><\/p>\n

But for the
\nknowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power of a complete
\nintellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the
\nmind to think not at all which the Gita in one passage enjoins. This is a hard
\nsaying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which
\nwill be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence
\nfor the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not
\nan incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant
\nstillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless
\nand level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul
\ntranscends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities
\nand becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which
\nall relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of
\nour being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace
\nonly is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and
\nthe Peace. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 302<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter III The Purified Understanding    \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 THE description of the status of knowledge to which we aspire, determines the means of knowledge which we…<\/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-967","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\/967","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=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}