{"id":969,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=969"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:39","slug":"43-the-conditions-of-attainment-to-the-gnosis-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\/43-the-conditions-of-attainment-to-the-gnosis-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-43_The Conditions of Attainment to the Gnosis.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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


\nThe Conditions of Attainment to the
\nGnosis<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nK<\/font><\/span><\/b>NOWLEDGE<\/font><\/span> is the first principle of the
\nVijnana, but knowledge is not its only power. The Truth-consciousness, like
\nevery other plane, founds itself upon that particular principle which is
\nnaturally the key of all its motions; but it is not limited by it, it contains
\nall the other powers of existence. Only the character and working of these
\nother powers is modified and moulded into conformity with its own original and
\ndominant law; intelligence, life, body, will, consciousness, bliss are all
\nluminous, awake, instinct with divine knowledge. This is indeed the process of
\nPurusha-Prakriti everywhere; it is the key-movement of all the hierarchy and
\ngraded harmonies of manifested existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the mental
\nbeing mind-sense or intelligence is the original and dominant principle. The
\nmental being in the mind-world where he is native is in his central and
\ndetermining nature intelligence; he is a centre of intelligence, a massed
\nmovement of intelligence, a receptive and radiating action of intelligence. He
\nhas the intelligent sense of his own existence, the intelligent sense of other
\nexistence than his own, the intelligent sense of his own nature and activities
\nand the activities of others, the intelligent sense of the nature of things and
\npersons and their relations with himself and each other. That makes up his experience
\nof existence. He has no other knowledge of existence, no knowledge of life and
\nmatter except as they make themselves sensible to him and capable of being
\nseized by his mental intelligence; what he does not sense and conceive, is to him
\npractically non-existent, or at least alien to his world and his nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

Man is in his
\nprinciple a mental being, but not one living in a mind world, but in a
\ndominantly physical existence; his is a mind cased in Matter and conditioned by
\nMatter. Therefore
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 468<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

he<\/span><\/span> has to start
\nwith the action of the physical senses which are all channels of material
\ncontact; he does not start with the mind-sense. But even so he does not and
\ncannot make free use of anything conveyed by these physical organs until and
\nunless they are taken hold of by the mind-sense and turned into stuff and value
\nof his intelligent being. What is in the lower subhuman submental<\/span>
\nworld a pranic<\/span>, a nervous, a dynamic action and
\nreaction that proceeds very well without any need of translation into
\nmind-terms or government by mind, has in him to be raised and offered to some
\nkind of intelligence. In order to be characteristically human it has to become
\nfirst a sense of force, sense of desire, sense of will, sense of intelligent
\nwill-action or mentally conscious sense of force-action. His lower delight of
\nbeing translates itself into a sense of mental or mentalised vital or physical
\npleasure and its perversion pain, or into a mental or mentalised
\nfeeling-sensation of liking and disliking, or into an intelligence of delight
\nand failure of delight, \u2013 all phenomena of the intelligent mind-sense. So too
\nthat which is above him and that which is around him and in which he lives, \u2013 God,
\nthe universal being, the cosmic Forces, \u2013 are non-existent and unreal to him
\nuntil his mind awakes to them and gets, not yet their true truth, but some
\nidea, observation, inference, imagination of things supersensuous<\/span>,
\nsome mental sense of the Infinite, some intelligent interpreting consciousness
\nof the forces of the superself<\/span> above and around him. <\/span><\/p>\n

All changes
\nwhen we pass from mind to gnosis; for there a direct inherent knowledge is the
\ncentral principle. The gnostic (vij\u00f1ānamaya<\/i>)
\nbeing is in its character a truth-consciousness, a centre and circumference of
\nthe truth-vision of things, a massed movement or subtle body of gnosis. Its
\naction is a self-fulfilling and radiating action of the truth-power of things
\naccording to the inner law of their deepest truest self and nature. This truth
\nof things at which we must arrive before we can enter into the gnosis, \u2013 for in
\nthat all exists and from that all originates on the gnostic plane, \u2013 is, first
\nof all, a truth of unity, of oneness, but of unity originating diversity, unity
\nin multiplicity and still unity always, an indefeasible oneness. State of
\ngnosis, the condition of vij\u00f1ānamaya<\/i>
\nbeing, is impossible without an ample and close self-<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 469<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

identification<\/span><\/span> of ourselves
\nwith all existence and with all existences, a universal pervasiveness, a
\nuniversal comprehension or containing, a certain all-in-allness<\/span>.
\nThe gnostic Purusha has normally the consciousness of itself as infinite, normally
\ntoo the consciousness of containing the world in itself and exceeding it; it is
\nnot like the divided mental being normally bound to a consciousness that feels
\nitself contained in the world and a part of it. It follows that a deliverance
\nfrom the limiting and imprisoning ego is the first elementary step towards the
\nbeing of the gnosis; for so long as we live in the ego, it is idle to hope for
\nthis higher reality, this vast self-consciousness, this true self-knowledge.
\nThe least reversion to ego-thought, ego-action, ego-will brings back the
\nconsciousness tumbling out of such gnostic Truth as it has attained into the falsehoods
\nof the divided mind-nature. A secure universality of being is the very basis of
\nthis luminous higher consciousness. Abandoning all rigid separateness (but
\ngetting instead a certain transcendent overlook or independence) we have to
\nfeel ourselves one with all things and beings, to identify ourselves with them,
\nto become aware of them as ourselves, to feel their being as our own, to admit
\ntheir consciousness as part of ours, to contact their energy as intimate to our
\nenergy, to learn how to be one self with all. That oneness is not indeed all
\nthat is needed, but it is a first condition and without it there is no gnosis.<\/span><\/p>\n

This
\nuniversality is impossible to achieve in its completeness so long as we
\ncontinue to feel ourselves, as we now feel, a consciousness lodged in an
\nindividual mind, life and body. There has to be a certain elevation of the
\nPurusha out of the physical and even out of the mental into the vij\u00f1ānamaya<\/i> body. No longer can the
\nbrain nor<\/span> its corresponding mental \u201clotus\u201d remain the
\ncentre of our thinking, no longer the heart nor its corresponding \u201clotus\u201d the
\noriginating centre of our emotional and sensational being. The conscious centre
\nof our being, our thought, our will and action, even the original force of our
\nsensations and emotions rise out of the body and mind and take a free station
\nabove them. No longer have we the sensation of living in the body, but are
\nabove it as its lord, possessor or Ishwara and at the same time encompass it
\nwith a wider consciousness than that of the impri<\/span>–<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 470<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

soned<\/span><\/span><\/span> physical
\nsense. Now we come to realise with a very living force of reality, normal and
\ncontinuous, what the sages meant when they spoke of the soul carrying the body
\nor when they said that the soul is not in the body, but the body in the soul.
\nIt is from above the body and not from the brain that we shall ideate and will;
\nthe brain-action will become only a response and movement of the physical
\nmachinery to the shock of the thought-force and will-force from above. All will
\nbe originated from above; from above, all that corresponds in gnosis to our
\npresent mental activity takes place. Many, if not all, of these conditions of
\nthe gnostic change can and indeed have to be attained long before we reach the
\ngnosis, \u2013 but imperfectly at first as if by a reflection, \u2013 in higher mind
\nitself, and more completely in what we may call an overmind<\/span>
\nconsciousness between mentality and gnosis.<\/span><\/p>\n

But this
\ncentre and this action are free, not bound, not dependent on the physical
\nmachine, not clamped to a narrow ego-sense. It is not involved in body; it is
\nnot shut up in a separated individuality feeling out for clumsy contacts with
\nthe world outside or groping inward for its own deeper spirit. For in this
\ngreat transformation we begin to have a consciousness not shut up in a
\ngenerating box, but diffused freely and extending self-existently<\/span>
\neverywhere; there is or may be a centre, but it is a convenience for individual
\naction, not rigid, not constitutive or separative. The very nature of our
\nconscious activities is henceforth universal; one with those of the universal
\nbeing, it proceeds from universality to a supple and variable individualisation.
\nIt has become the awareness of an infinite being who acts always universally
\nthough with emphasis on an individual formation of its energies. But this
\nemphasis is differential rather than separative, and this formation is no longer
\nwhat we now understand by individuality; there is no longer a petty limited
\nconstructed person shut up in the formula of his own mechanism. This state of
\nconsciousness is so abnormal to our present mode of being that to the rational
\nman who does not possess it it<\/span> may seem impossible or
\neven a state of alienation; but once possessed it vindicates itself even to the
\nmental intelligence by its greater calm, freedom, light, power, effectivity of
\nwill, verifiable truth of
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 471<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

ideation<\/span><\/span> and feeling.
\nFor this condition begins already on the higher levels of liberated mind, and
\ncan therefore be partly sensed and understood by mind-intelligence, but it
\nrises to perfect self-possession only when it leaves behind the mental levels,
\nonly in the supramental gnosis.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this state
\nof consciousness the infinite becomes to us the primal, the actual reality, the<\/span> one thing immediately and sensibly true. It becomes
\nimpossible for us to think of or realise the finite apart from our fundamental
\nsense of the infinite, in which alone the finite can live, can form itself, can<\/span> have any reality or duration. So long as this finite
\nmind and body are to our consciousness the first fact of our existence and the
\nfoundation of all our thinking, feeling and willing and so long as things
\nfinite are the normal reality from which we can rise occasionally, or even
\nfrequently, to an idea and sense of the infinite, we are still very far away
\nfrom the gnosis. In the plane of the gnosis the infinite is at once our normal
\nconsciousness of being, its first fact, our<\/span> sensible
\nsubstance. It is very concretely to us there the foundation from which
\neverything finite forms itself and its boundless incalculable forces are the
\norigination of all our thought, will and delight. But this infinite is not only
\nan infinite of pervasion or of extension in which everything forms and happens.
\nBehind that immeasurable extension the gnostic consciousness is always aware of
\na spaceless<\/span> inner infinite. It is through this double
\ninfinite that we shall arrive at the essential being of Sachchidananda, the
\nhighest self of our own being and the totality of our cosmic existence. There
\nis opened to us an illimitable existence which we feel as if it were an infinity<\/span> above us to which we attempt to rise and an infinity
\naround us into which we strive to dissolve our separate existence. Afterwards
\nwe widen into it and rise into it; we break out of the ego into its largeness
\nand are that for ever. If this liberation is achieved, its power can take, if
\nso we will, increasing possession of our lower being also until even our lowest
\nand perversest<\/span> activities are refashioned into the
\ntruth of the Vijnana. <\/span><\/p>\n

This is the
\nbasis, this sense of the infinite and possession by the infinite, and only when
\nit is achieved, can we progress towards some normality of the supramental
\nideation, perception,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 472<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

sense<\/span><\/span>, identity,
\nawareness. For even this sense of the infinite is only a first foundation and
\nmuch more has to be done before the consciousness can become dynamically
\ngnostic. The supramental knowledge is the play of a supreme light; there are
\nmany other lights, other levels of knowledge higher than human mind which can
\nopen in us and receive or reflect something of that effulgence even before we
\nrise into the gnosis. But to command or wholly possess it we must first enter
\ninto and become the being of the supreme light, our consciousness must be
\ntransformed into that consciousness, its principle and power of self-awareness
\nand all-awareness by identity must be the very stuff of our existence. For our
\nmeans and ways of knowledge and action must necessarily be according to the
\nnature of our consciousness and it is the consciousness that must radically
\nchange if we are to command and not only be occasionally visited by that higher
\npower of knowledge. But it is not confined to a higher thought or the action of
\na sort of divine reason. It takes up all our present means of knowledge
\nimmensely extended, active and effective where they are now debarred, blind, infructuous<\/span>, and turns them into a high and intense
\nperceptive activity of the Vijnana. Thus it takes up our sense action and
\nillumines it even in its ordinary field so that we get a true sense of things.
\nBut also it enables the mind-sense to have a direct perception of the inner as
\nwell as the outer phenomenon, to feel and receive or perceive, for instance,
\nthe thoughts, feelings, sensations, the nervous reactions of the object on
\nwhich it is turned.\u00b9 It uses the subtle senses as well as the physical and
\nsaves them from their errors. It gives us the knowledge, the experience of
\nplanes of existence other than the material to which our ordinary mentality is
\nignorantly attached and it enlarges the world for us. It transforms similarly
\nthe sensations and gives them their full intensity as well as their full
\nholding-power; for in our normal mentality the full intensity is impossible
\nbecause the power to hold and sustain vibrations beyond a certain point is
\ndenied to it, mind and body would both break under the shock or the pro-<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00b9 This power,
\nsays Patanjali, comes by \u201csamyama<\/i><\/span>\u201d on an object. That is for the mentality, in the
\ngnosis there is no need of samyama<\/i><\/span>. For this kind of perception is the natural action
\nof the Vijnana.<\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 473<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

longed<\/span><\/span> strain. It
\ntakes up too the element of knowledge in our feelings and emotions, \u2013 for our
\nfeelings too contain a power of knowledge and a power of effectuation which we
\ndo not recognise and do not properly develop, \u2013 and delivers them at the same
\ntime from their limitations and from their errors and perversions. For in all
\nthings the gnosis is the Truth, the Right, the highest Law, devānām adabdhāni vratāni.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Knowledge and
\nForce or Will \u2013 for all conscious force is will \u2013 are<\/span>
\nthe twin sides of the action of consciousness. In our mentality they are
\ndivided. The idea comes first, the will comes stumbling after it or rebels
\nagainst it or is used as its imperfect tool with imperfect results; or else the
\nwill starts up first with a blind or half-seeing idea in it and works out something
\nin confusion of which we get the right understanding afterwards. There is no
\noneness, no full understanding between these powers in us; or else there is no
\nperfect correspondence of initiation with effectuation. Nor is the individual will
\nin harmony with the universal; it tries to reach beyond it or falls short of it
\nor deviates from and strives against it. It knows not the times and seasons of
\nthe Truth, nor its degrees and measures. The Vijnana takes up the will and puts
\nit first into harmony and then into oneness with the truth of the supramental
\nknowledge. In this knowledge the idea in the individual is one with the idea in
\nthe universal, because both are brought back to the truth of the supreme
\nKnowledge and the transcendent Will. The gnosis takes up not only our
\nintelligent will, but our wishes, desires, even what we call the lower desires,
\nthe instincts, the impulses, the reachings out of sense and sensation and it
\ntransforms them. They cease to be wishes and desires, because they cease first
\nto be personal and then cease to be that struggling after the ungrasped<\/span> which we mean by craving and desire. No longer
\nblind or half-blind reachings out of the instinctive or intelligent mentality,
\nthey are transformed into a various action of the Truth-will; and that will
\nacts with an inherent knowledge of the right measures of its decreed action and
\ntherefore with an effectivity unknown to our mental willing. Therefore too in
\nthe action of the vij\u00f1ānamaya<\/i>
\nwill there is no place for sin; for all sin is an error of the will, a desire
\nand act of the Ignorance. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 474<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

When desire
\nceases entirely, grief and all inner suffering also cease. The Vijnana takes up
\nnot only our parts of knowledge and will, but our parts of affection and
\ndelight and changes them into action of the divine Ananda. For if knowledge and
\nforce are the twin sides or powers of the action of consciousness, delight,
\nAnanda \u2013 which is something higher than what we call pleasure \u2013 is the very
\nstuff of consciousness and the natural result of the interaction of knowledge and
\nwill, force and self-awareness. Both pleasure and pain, both joy and grief are
\ndeformations caused by the disturbance of harmony between our consciousness and
\nthe force it applies, between our knowledge and will, a breaking up of their oneness
\nby a descent to a lower plane in which they are limited, divided in themselves,
\nrestrained from their full and proper action, at odds with other-force,
\nother-consciousness, other-knowledge, other-will. The Vijnana sets this to
\nrights by the power of its truth and a wholesale restoration to oneness and
\nharmony, to the Right and the highest Law. It takes up all our emotions and
\nturns them into various forms of love and delight<\/span>,
\neven our hatreds, repulsions, causes of suffering. It finds out or reveals the
\nmeaning they missed and by missing it became the perversions they are; it
\nrestores our whole nature to the eternal Good. It deals similarly with our
\nperceptions and sensations and reveals all the delight that they seek, but in
\nits truth, not in any perversion and wrong seeking and wrong reception; it
\nteaches even our lower impulses to lay hold on the Divine and Infinite<\/span> in the appearances after which they run. All this
\nis done not in the values of the lower being, but by a lifting up of the
\nmental, vital, material into the inalienable purity, the natural intensity, the
\ncontinual ecstasy, one yet manifold, of the divine Ananda.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus the
\nbeing of Vijnana is in all its activities a play of perfected knowledge-power,
\nwill-power, delight-power, raised to a higher than the mental, vital and bodily
\nlevel. All-pervasive, universalised, freed from egoistic personality and
\nindividuality, it is the play of a higher Self, a higher consciousness and
\ntherefore a higher force and higher delight of being. All that acts in the
\nVijnana in the purity, in the right, in the truth of the superior or divine
\nPrakriti. Its powers may often seem to be what are
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 475<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

called<\/span><\/span> in ordinary
\nYogic parlance siddhis, by the Europeans occult powers, shunned and dreaded by
\ndevotees and by many Yogins as snares, stumbling-blocks, diversions from the
\ntrue seeking after the Divine. But they have that character and are dangerous
\nhere because they are sought in the lower being, abnormally, by the ego for an
\negoistic satisfaction. In the Vijnana they are neither occult nor siddhis, but
\nthe open, unforced and normal play of its nature. The Vijnana is the
\nTruth-power and Truth-action of the divine Being<\/span> in
\nits divine identities, and, when this acts through the individual lifted to the
\ngnostic plane, it fulfils itself unperverted<\/span>, without
\nfault or egoistic reaction, without diversion from the possession of the
\nDivine. There the individual is no longer the ego, but the free Jiva domiciled
\nin the higher divine nature of which he is a portion, parā prakŗtir jīvabhūtā<\/i>, the nature of the
\nsupreme and universal Self seen indeed in the play of multiple individuality
\nbut without the veil of ignorance, with self-knowledge, in its multiple
\noneness, in the truth of its divine Shakti.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the
\nVijnana the right relation and action of Purusha and Prakriti are found,
\nbecause there they become unified and the Divine is no longer veiled in Maya.
\nAll is his action. The Jiva no longer says \u201cI think, I act, I desire, I feel\u201d;
\nhe does not even say like the sadhaka striving after unity but before he has
\nreached it, \u201cAs appointed by Thee seated in my heart, I act.\u201d For the heart,
\nthe centre of the mental consciousness is no longer the centre of origination
\nbut only a blissful channel. He is rather aware of the Divine seated above,
\nlord of all, adhişţhita<\/i>, as
\nwell as acting within him. And seated himself in that higher being, parārdhe<\/i>, paramasyām parāvati<\/i>, he can say truly and boldly, \u201cGod
\nhimself by his Prakriti knows, acts, loves, takes delight through my
\nindividuality and its figures and fulfils there in its higher and divine
\nmeasures the multiple līlā<\/i><\/span><\/span> which the Infinite for ever plays in
\nthe universality which is himself for ever.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 476<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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