{"id":976,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=976"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:42","slug":"22-the-status-of-knowledge-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\/22-the-status-of-knowledge-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-22_The Status of Knowledge.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

\n <\/font>The Status of
\nKnowledge<\/font><\/b><\/span> <\/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 <\/font> <\/span>T<\/font><\/span>HE<\/span><\/font> Self, the Divine, the
\nSupreme Reality, the All, the Transcendent, \u2013 the One in all these aspects is
\nthen the object of Yogic knowledge. Ordinary objects, the external appearances
\nof life and matter, the psychology of our thoughts and actions, the perception
\nof the forces of the apparent world can be part of this knowledge, but only in
\nso far as it is part of the manifestation of the One. It becomes at once evident
\nthat the knowledge for which Yoga strives must be different from what men
\nordinarily understand by the word. For we mean ordinarily by knowledge an
\nintellectual appreciation of the facts of life, mind and matter and the laws
\nthat govern them. This is a knowledge founded upon our sense-perception and upon
\nreasoning from our sense-perceptions and it is undertaken partly for the pure
\nsatisfaction of the intellect, partly for practical efficiency and the added
\npower which knowledge gives in managing our lives and the lives of others, in
\nutilising for human ends the overt or secret forces of Nature and in helping or
\nhurting, in saving and ennobling or in oppressing and destroying our fellow-men.
\nYoga, indeed, is commensurate with all life and can include all these subjects
\nand objects. There is even a Yoga\u00b9 which can be used for self-indulgence as well
\nas for self-conquest, for hurting others as well as for their salvation. But
\n\u201call life\u201d includes not only, not even mainly life as humanity now leads it. It
\nenvisages rather and regards as its one true object a higher truly conscious
\nexistence which our half-conscious humanity does not yet possess and can only
\narrive at by a self-exceeding spiritual ascension. It is this greater
\nconsciousness and higher existence which is the peculiar and appropriate object
\nof Yogic discipline.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 Yoga
\ndevelops power, it develops it even when we do not desire or consciously aim at
\nit; and power is always a double-edged weapon which can be used to hurt or
\ndestroy as well as to help and save. Be it also noted that all destruction is
\nnot evil. <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 286<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

       This greater
\nconsciousness, this higher existence are not an enlightened or illumined
\nmentality supported by a greater dynamic energy or supporting a purer moral
\nlife and character. Their superiority to the ordinary human consciousness is
\nnot in degree but in kind and essence. There is a change not merely of the
\nsurface or instrumental manner of our being but of its very foundation and
\ndynamic principle. Yogic knowledge seeks to enter into a secret consciousness
\nbeyond mind which is only occultly<\/span> here, concealed at
\nthe basis of all existence. For it is that consciousness alone that truly knows
\nand only by its possession can we possess God and rightly know the world and
\nits real nature and secret forces. All this world visible or sensible to us and
\nall too in it that is not visible is merely the phenomenal expression of
\nsomething beyond the mind and the senses. The knowledge which the senses and
\nintellectual reasoning from the data of the senses can bring us, is not true knowledge;
\nit is a science of appearances. And even appearances cannot be properly known
\nunless we know first the Reality of which they are images. This Reality is
\ntheir self and there is one self of all; when that is seized, all other things can
\nthen be known in their truth and no longer as now only in their appearance.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is evident
\nthat however much we may analyse the physical and sensible, we cannot by that
\nmeans arrive at the knowledge of the Self or of ourselves or of that which we
\ncall God. The telescope, the microscope, the scalpel, the retort and alembic
\ncannot go beyond the physical, although they may arrive at subtler and subtler
\ntruths about the physical. If then we confine ourselves to what the senses and
\ntheir physical aids reveal to us and refuse from the beginning to admit any other
\nreality or any other means of knowledge, we are obliged to conclude that
\nnothing is real except the physical and that there is no Self in us or in the
\nuniverse, no God within and without, no ourselves even except this aggregate of
\nbrain, nerves and body. But this we are only obliged to conclude because we
\nhave assumed it firmly from the beginning and therefore cannot but circle round
\nto our original assumption.<\/span><\/p>\n

If, then,
\nthere is a Self, a Reality not obvious to the senses, it must be by other means
\nthan those of physical Science that it is <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 287<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

to be sought and known.
\nThe intellect is not that means. Undoubtedly there are a number of
\nsuprasensuous truths at which the intellect is able to arrive in its own manner
\nand which it is able to perceive and state as intellectual conceptions. The
\nvery idea of Force for instance on which Science so much insists, is a
\nconception, a truth at which the intellect alone can arrive by going beyond its
\ndata; for we do not sense this universal force but only its results, and the
\nforce itself we infer as a necessary cause of these results. So also the
\nintellect by following a certain line of rigorous analysis can arrive at the intellectual
\nconception and the intellectual conviction of the Self and this conviction can
\nbe very real, very luminous, very potent as the beginning of other and greater
\nthings. Still, in itself intellectual analysis can only lead to an arrangement
\nof clear conceptions, perhaps to a right arrangement of true conceptions; but
\nthis is not the knowledge aimed at by Yoga. For it is not in itself an
\neffective knowledge. A man may be perfect in it and yet be precisely what he
\nwas before except in the mere fact of the greater intellectual illumination.
\nThe change of our being at which Yoga aims, may not at all take place.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is true
\nthat intellectual deliberation and right discrimination are an important part
\nof the Yoga of knowledge; but their object is rather to remove a difficulty
\nthan to arrive at the final and positive result of this path. Our ordinary
\nintellectual notions are a stumbling-block in the way of knowledge; for they
\nare governed by the error of the senses and they found themselves on the notion
\nthat matter and body are the reality, that life and force are the reality, that
\npassion and emotion, thought and sense are the reality; and with these things
\nwe identify ourselves, and because we identify ourselves with these things we
\ncannot get back to the real self. Therefore, it is necessary for the seeker of
\nknowledge to remove this stumbling-block and to get right notions about himself
\nand the world; for how shall we pursue by knowledge the real self if we have no
\nnotion of what it is and are on the contrary burdened with ideas quite opposite
\nto the truth? Therefore right thought is a necessary preliminary, and once the
\nhabit of right thought is established, free from sense-error and desire and old
\nassociation and intellectual prejudgment,
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 288<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

the understanding
\nbecomes purified and offers no serious obstacle to the farther process of
\nknowledge. Still, right thought only becomes effective when in the purified
\nunderstanding it is followed by other operations, by vision, by experience, by
\nrealisation.<\/span><\/p>\n

What are
\nthese operations? They are not mere psychological self-analysis and
\nself-observation. Such analysis, such observation are, like the process of
\nright thought, of immense value and practically indispensable. They may even,
\nif rightly pursued, lead to a right thought of considerable power and
\neffectivity. Like intellectual discrimination by the process of meditative
\nthought they will have an effect of purification; they will lead to
\nself-knowledge of a certain kind and to the setting right of the disorders of
\nthe soul and the heart and even of the disorders of the understanding.
\nSelf-knowledge of all kinds is on the straight path to the knowledge of the
\nreal Self. The Upanishad tells us that the Self-existent has so set the doors
\nof the soul that they turn outwards and most men look outward into the
\nappearances of things; only the rare soul that is ripe for a calm thought and
\nsteady wisdom turns its eye inward, sees the Self and attains to immortality.
\nTo this turning of the eye inward psychological self-observation and analysis
\nis a great and effective introduction. We can look into the inward of ourselves
\nmore easily than we can look into the inward of things external to us because
\nthere, in things outside us, we are in the first place embarrassed by the form
\nand secondly we have no natural previous experience of that in them which is other
\nthan their physical substance. A purified or tranquillised mind may reflect or
\na powerful concentration may discover God in the world, the Self in Nature even
\nbefore it is realised in ourselves, but this is rare and difficult.\u00b9 And it is
\nonly in ourselves that we can observe and know the process of the Self in its
\nbecoming and follow the process by which it draws back into self-being.
\nTherefore the ancient counsel, know thyself, will always stand as the first
\nword that directs us towards the knowledge. Still, psychological self-<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 In
\none respect, however, it is easier, because in external things we are not so
\nmuch hampered by the sense of the limited ego as in ourselves; one obstacle to
\nthe realisation of God is therefore removed.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 289<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

knowledge is only the
\nexperience of the modes of the Self, it is not the realisation of the Self in
\nits pure being.<\/span><\/p>\n

The status of
\nknowledge, then, which Yoga envisages is not merely an intellectual conception
\nor clear discrimination of the truth, nor is it an enlightened psychological
\nexperience of the modes of our being. It is a \u201crealisation\u201d, in the full sense
\nof the word; it is the making real to ourselves and in ourselves of the Self,
\nthe transcendent and universal Divine, and it is the subsequent impossibility
\nof viewing the modes of being except in the light of that Self and in their
\ntrue aspect as its flux of becoming under the psychical and physical conditions
\nof our world-existence. This realisation consists of three successive movements,
\ninternal vision, complete internal experience and identity.<\/span><\/p>\n

This internal
\nvision, dŗşţi, the power so highly valued by the ancient sages,
\nthe power which made a man a Rishi or Kavi and no longer a mere thinker, is a
\nsort of light in the soul by which things unseen become as evident and real to
\nit \u2013 to the soul and not merely to the intellect \u2013 as do things seen to the
\nphysical eye. In the physical world there are always two forms of knowledge,
\nthe direct and the indirect, pratyakşa, of that which is present to the
\neyes, and parokşa, of that which is remote from and beyond our vision.
\nWhen the object is beyond our vision, we are necessarily obliged to arrive at
\nan idea of it by inference, imagination, analogy, by hearing the descriptions
\nof others who have seen it or by studying pictorial or other representations of
\nit if these are available. By putting together all these aids we can indeed
\narrive at a more or less adequate idea or suggestive image of the object, but
\nwe do not realise the thing itself; it is not yet to us the grasped reality, but
\nonly our conceptual representation of a reality. But once we have seen it with
\nthe eyes, \u2013 for no other sense is adequate, \u2013 we possess, we realise; it is
\nthere secure in our satisfied being, part of ourselves in knowledge. Precisely
\nthe same rule holds good of psychical things and of the Self. We may hear clear
\nand luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from
\nancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other
\navailable means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may
\nhold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 290<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

exclusive
\nconcentration;\u00b9 but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is
\nonly when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of
\nthe mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the
\nawakened mentality, jyotirmaya<\/i> brahman<\/i>, and conception gives place to a
\nknowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical
\nobject to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen.
\nAfter that revelation, whatever fadings<\/span> of the light,
\nwhatever periods of darkness may afflict the soul, it can never irretrievably
\nlose what it has once held. The experience is inevitably renewed and must
\nbecome more frequent till it is constant; when and how soon depends on the devotion
\nand persistence with which we insist on the path and besiege by our will or our
\nlove the hidden Deity.<\/span><\/p>\n

This inner
\nvision is one form of psychological experience; but the inner experience is not
\nconfined to that seeing; vision only opens, it does not embrace. Just as the
\neye, though it is alone adequate to bring the first sense of realisation, has
\nto call in the aid of experience by the touch and other organs of sense before
\nthere is an embracing knowledge, so the vision of the self ought to be
\ncompleted by an experience of it in all our members. Our whole being ought to
\ndemand God and not only our illumined eye of knowledge. For since each
\nprinciple in us is only a manifestation of the Self, each can get back to its reality
\nand have the experience of it. We can have a mental experience of the Self and
\nseize as concrete realities all those apparently abstract things that to the
\nmind constitute existence \u2013 consciousness, force, delight and their manifold
\nforms and workings: thus the mind is satisfied of God. We can have an emotional
\nexperience of the Self through Love and through emotional delight, love and
\ndelight of the Self in us, of the Self in the universal and of the Self in all
\nwith whom we have relations: thus the heart is satisfied of God. We can have an
\naesthetic experience of the Self in beauty, a delight-perception and taste of
\nthe absolute reality all-beautiful in everything whether created by ourselves
\nor Nature in its appeal to the aesthetic mind and the senses; thus the sense <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00b9 <\/span>This
\nis the idea of the triple operation of Jnanayoga, śravaņa, manana,
\nnididhyāsana, hearing, thinking or mentalising and fixing in
\nconcentration.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 291<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

is satisfied of God. We
\ncan have even the vital, nervous experience and practically the physical sense
\nof the Self in all life and formation and in all workings of powers, forces,
\nenergies that operate through us or others or in the world: thus the life and
\nthe body are satisfied of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

All this
\nknowledge and experience are primary means of arriving at and of possessing
\nidentity. It is our self that we see and experience and therefore vision and
\nexperience are incomplete unless they culminate in identity, unless we are able
\nto live in all our being the supreme Vedantic knowledge, He am I. We must not
\nonly see God and embrace Him, but become that Reality. We must become one with
\nthe Self in its transcendence of all form and manifestation by the resolution, the
\nsublimation, the escape from itself of ego and all its belongings into That
\nfrom which they proceed, as well as become the Self in all its manifested
\nexistences and becomings, one with it in the infinite existence, consciousness,
\npeace, delight by which it reveals itself in us and one with it in the action,
\nformation, play of self-conception with which it garbs itself in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is difficult
\nfor the modern mind to understand how we can do more than conceive
\nintellectually of the Self or of God; but it may borrow some shadow of this
\nvision, experience and becoming from that inner awakening to Nature which a
\ngreat English poet has made a reality to the European imagination. If we read
\nthe poems in which Wordsworth expressed his realisation of Nature, we may
\nacquire some distant idea of what realisation is. For, first, we see that he
\nhad the vision of something in the world which is the very Self of all things
\nthat it contains, a conscious force and presence other than its forms, yet
\ncause of its forms and manifested in them. We perceive that he had not only the
\nvision of this and the joy and peace and universality which its presence
\nbrings, but the very sense of it, mental, aesthetic, vital, physical; not only
\nthis sense and vision of it in its own being but in the nearest flower and
\nsimplest man and the immobile rock; and, finally, that he even occasionally
\nattained to that unity, that becoming the object of his meditation, one phase
\nof which is powerfully and profoundly expressed in the poem \u201cA slumber did my
\nspirit seal,\u201d where he describes himself as be-<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 292<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

come one in his being
\nwith earth, \u201crolled round in its diurnal course with rocks and stones and
\ntrees.\u201d Exalt this realisation to a profounder Self than physical Nature and we
\nhave the elements of the Yogic knowledge. But all this experience is only the
\nvestibule to that suprasensuous, supramental realisation of the Transcendent
\nwho is beyond all His aspects, and the final summit of knowledge can only be
\nattained by entering into the superconscient and there merging all other
\nexperience into a supernal unity with the Ineffable. That is the culmination of
\nall divine knowing; that also is the source of all divine delight and divine
\nliving.<\/span><\/p>\n

That status
\nof knowledge is then the aim of this path and indeed of all paths when pursued
\nto their end, to which intellectual discrimination and conception and all
\nconcentration and psychological self-knowledge and all seeking by the heart through
\nlove and by the senses through beauty and by the will through power and works
\nand by the soul through peace and joy are only keys, avenues, first approaches
\nand beginnings of the ascent which we have to use and to follow till the wide and
\ninfinite levels are attained and the divine doors swing open into the infinite
\nLight.
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 293<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter II   The Status of Knowledge    \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 Self, the Divine, the Supreme Reality, the All, the Transcendent, \u2013 the One in all these…<\/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-976","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\/976","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=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}