{"id":978,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=978"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:42","slug":"40-the-lower-triple-purusha-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\/40-the-lower-triple-purusha-vol-20-the-synthesis-of-yoga-volume-20","title":{"rendered":"-40_The Lower Triple Purusha.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


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

\n <\/font><\/span>The Lower
\nTriple Purusha<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nS<\/font><\/span><\/b>UCH<\/span><\/font> is the
\nconstituent principle of the various worlds of cosmic existence and the various
\nplanes of our being; they are as if a ladder plunging down into Matter and
\nperhaps below it, rising up into the heights of the Spirit, even perhaps to the
\npoint at which existence escapes out of cosmic being into ranges of a
\nsupra-cosmic Absolute, \u2013 so at least it is averred in the world-system of the
\nBuddhists. But to our ordinary materialised consciousness all this does not
\nexist because it is hidden from us by our preoccupation with our existence in a
\nlittle corner of the material universe and with the petty experiences of the
\nlittle hour of time which is represented by our life in a single body upon this
\nearth. To that consciousness the world is a mass of material things and forces
\nthrown into some kind of shape and harmonised into a system of regulated
\nmovements by a number of fixed self-existent laws which we have to obey, by
\nwhich we are governed and circumscribed and of which we have to get the best
\nknowledge we can so as to make the most of this one brief existence which begins
\nwith birth, ends with death and has no second recurrence. Our own being is a
\nsort of accident or at least a very small and minor circumstance in the
\nuniversal life of Matter or the eternal continuity of the workings of material
\nForce. Somehow or other a soul or mind has come to exist in a body and it
\nstumbles about among things and forces which it does not very well understand,
\nat first preoccupied with the difficulty of managing to live in a dangerous and
\nlargely hostile world and then with the effort to understand its laws and use
\nthem so as to make life as tolerable or as happy as possible so long as it
\nlasts. If we were really nothing more than such a minor movement of
\nindividualised mind in Matter, existence would have nothing more to offer us;
\nits best part would be at most this struggle of an ephemeral intellect and will
\nwith eternal
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 438<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

Matter and with the
\ndifficulties of Life supplemented and eased by a play of imagination and by the
\nconsoling fictions presented to us by religion and art and all the wonders
\ndreamed of by the brooding mind and restless fancy of man. <\/span><\/p>\n

But because
\nhe is a soul and not merely a living body, man can never for long remain
\nsatisfied that this first view of his existence, the sole view justified by the
\nexternal and objective facts of life, is the real truth or the whole knowledge:
\nhis subjective being is full of hints and inklings of realities beyond, it is
\nopen to the sense of infinity and immortality, it is easily convinced of other
\nworlds, higher possibilities of being, larger fields of experience for the
\nsoul. Science gives us the objective truth of existence and the superficial
\nknowledge of our physical and vital being; but we feel that there are truths beyond
\nwhich possibly through the cultivation of our subjective being and the
\nenlargement of its powers may come to lie more and more open to us. When the
\nknowledge of this world is ours, we are irresistibly impelled to seek for the
\nknowledge of other states of existence beyond, and that is the reason why an
\nage of strong materialism and scepticism is always followed by an age of
\noccultism, of mystical creeds, of new religions and profounder seekings<\/span> after the Infinite and the Divine. The knowledge
\nof our superficial mentality and the laws of our bodily life is not enough; it
\nbrings us always to all that mysterious and hidden depth of subjective
\nexistence below and behind of which our surface consciousness is only a fringe
\nor an outer court. We come to see that what is present to our physical senses
\nis only the material shell of cosmic existence and what is obvious in our
\nsuperficial mentality is only the margin of immense continents which lie behind
\nunexplored. To explore them must be the work of another knowledge than that of
\nphysical science or of a superficial psychology.<\/span><\/p>\n

Religion is
\nthe first attempt of man to get beyond himself and beyond the obvious and
\nmaterial facts of his existence. Its first essential work is to confirm and
\nmake real to him his subjective sense of an Infinite on which his material and
\nmental being depends and the aspiration of his soul to come into its presence
\nand live in contact with it. Its function is to assure him too of that
\npossibility of which he has always dreamed, but of which
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 439<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

his ordinary life gives
\nhim no assurance, the possibility of transcending himself and growing out of
\nbodily life and mortality into the joy of immortal life and spiritual existence.
\nIt also confirms in him the sense that there are worlds or planes of existence
\nother than that in which his lot is now cast, worlds in which this mortality
\nand this subjection to evil and suffering are not the natural state, but rather
\nbliss of immortality is the eternal condition. Incidentally, it gives him a
\nrule of mortal life by which he shall prepare himself for immortality. He is a
\nsoul and not a body and his earthly life is a means by which he determines the
\nfuture conditions of his spiritual being. So much is common to all religions;
\nbeyond this we get from them no assured certainty. Their voices vary; some tell
\nus that one life on earth is all we have in which to determine our future
\nexistence, deny the past immortality of the soul and assert only its future
\nimmortality, threaten it even with the incredible dogma of a future of eternal
\nsuffering for those who miss the right path, while others more large and
\nrational affirm successive existences by which the soul grows into the
\nknowledge of the Infinite with a complete assurance for all of ultimate arrival
\nand perfection. Some present the Infinite to us as a Being other than ourselves
\nwith whom we can have personal relations, others as an impersonal existence into
\nwhich our separate being has to merge; some therefore give us as our goal
\nworlds beyond in which we dwell in the presence of the Divine, others a
\ncessation of world-existence by immergence in the Infinite. Most invite us to
\nbear or to abandon earthly life as a trial or a temporary affliction or a
\nvanity and fix our hopes beyond; in some we find a vague hint of a future
\ntriumph of the Spirit, the Divine in the body, upon this earth, in the
\ncollective life of man, and so justify not only the separate hope and
\naspiration of the individual but the united and sympathetic hope and aspiration
\nof the race. Religion in fact is not knowledge, but a faith and aspiration; it
\nis justified indeed both by an imprecise intuitive knowledge of large spiritual
\ntruths and by the subjective experience of souls that have risen beyond the
\nordinary life, but in itself it only gives us the hope and faith by which we
\nmay be induced to aspire to the intimate possession of the hidden tracts and
\nlarger realities of the Spirit. That we turn always the <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 440<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

few distinct truths and
\nthe symbols or the particular discipline of a religion into hard and fast
\ndogmas, is a sign that as yet we are only infants in the spiritual knowledge
\nand are yet far from the science of the Infinite.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet behind
\nevery great religion, behind, that is to say, its exoteric side of faith, hope,
\nsymbols, scattered truths and limiting dogmas, there is an esoteric side of
\ninner spiritual training and illumination by which the hidden truths may be known,
\nworked out, possessed. Behind every exoteric religion there is an esoteric
\nYoga, an intuitive knowledge to which its faith is the first step,
\ninexpressible realities of which its symbols are the figured expression, a
\ndeeper sense for its scattered truths, mysteries of the higher planes of
\nexistence of which even its dogmas and superstitions are crude hints and
\nindications. What Science does for our knowledge of the material world,
\nreplacing first appearances and uses by the hidden truths and as yet occult
\npowers of its great natural forces and in our own minds beliefs and opinions by
\nverified experience and a profounder understanding, Yoga does for the higher
\nplanes and worlds and possibilities of our being which are aimed at by the
\nreligions. Therefore all this mass of graded experience existing behind closed
\ndoors to which the consciousness of man may find, if it wills, the key, falls
\nwithin the province of a comprehensive Yoga of knowledge, which need not be
\nconfined to the seeking after the Absolute alone or the knowledge of the Divine
\nin itself or of the Divine only in its isolated relations with the individual
\nhuman soul. It is true that the consciousness of the Absolute is the highest
\nreach of the Yoga of knowledge and that the possession of the Divine is its
\nfirst, greatest and most ardent object and that to neglect it for an inferior
\nknowledge is to afflict our Yoga with inferiority or even frivolity and to miss
\nor fall away from its characteristic object; but, the Divine in itself being
\nknown, the Yoga of knowledge may well embrace also the knowledge of the Divine
\nin its relations with ourselves and the world on the different planes of our
\nexistence. To rise to the pure Self being steadfastly held to as the summit of
\nour subjective self-uplifting, we may from that height possess our lower selves
\neven to the physical and the workings of Nature which belong to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 441<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

We may seek
\nthis knowledge on two sides separately, the side of Purusha, the side of
\nPrakriti; and we may combine the two for the perfect possession of the various
\nrelations of Purusha and Prakriti in the light of the Divine. There is, says the
\nUpanishad, a fivefold soul in man and the world, the microcosm and the
\nmacrocosm. The physical soul, self or being, \u2013 Purusha, Atman, \u2013 is that of
\nwhich we are all at first conscious, a self which seems to have hardly any
\nexistence apart from the body and no action vital or even mental independent of
\nit. This physical soul is present everywhere in material Nature; it pervades
\nthe body, actuates obscurely its movements and is the whole basis of its
\nexperiences; it informs all things even that are not mentally conscious. But in
\nman this physical being has become vitalised and mentalised<\/span>;
\nit has received something of the law and capacities of the vital and mental
\nbeing and nature. But its possession of them is derivative, superimposed, as it
\nwere, on its original nature and exercised under subjection to the law and
\naction of the physical existence and its instruments. It is this dominance of
\nour mental and vital parts by the body and the physical nature which seems at
\nfirst sight to justify the theory of the materialists that mind and life are
\nonly circumstances and results of physical force and all their operations explicable
\nby the activities of that force in the animal body. In fact entire subjection
\nof the mind and the life to the body is the characteristic of an undeveloped
\nhumanity, as it is in an even greater degree of the infra-human animal.
\nAccording to the theory of reincarnation those who do not get beyond this stage
\nin the earthly life, cannot rise after death to the mental or higher vital
\nworlds, but have to return from the confines of a series of physical planes to
\nincrease their development in the next earthly existence. For the undeveloped
\nphysical soul is entirely dominated by material nature and its impressions and
\nhas to work them out to a better advantage before it can rise in the scale of being.<\/span><\/p>\n

A more
\ndeveloped humanity allows us to make a better and freer use of all the
\ncapacities and experiences that we derive from the vital and mental planes of
\nbeing, to lean more for support upon these hidden planes, be less absorbed by
\nthe physical and to govern and modify the original nature of the physical being
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 442<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

by greater vital forces
\nand powers from the desire-world and greater and subtler mental forces and
\npowers from the psychical and intellectual planes. By this development we are
\nable to rise to higher altitudes of the intermediary existence between death
\nand rebirth and to make a better and more rapid use of rebirth itself for a yet
\nhigher mental and spiritual development. But even so, in the physical being
\nwhich still determines the greater part of our waking self, we act without definite
\nconsciousness of the worlds or planes which are the sources of our action. We
\nare aware indeed of the life-plane and mind-plane of the physical being, but
\nnot of the life-plane and mind-plane proper or of the superior and larger vital
\nand mental being which we are behind the veil of our ordinary consciousness. It
\nis only at a high stage of development that we become aware of them and even
\nthen, ordinarily, only at the back of the action of our mentalised<\/span>
\nphysical nature; we do not actually live on those planes, for if we did we
\ncould very soon arrive at the conscious control of the body by the life-power
\nand of both by the sovereign mind; we should then be able to determine our
\nphysical and mental life to a very large extent by our will and knowledge as
\nmasters of our being and with a direct action of the mind on the life and body.
\nBy Yoga this power of transcending the physical self and taking possession of
\nthe higher selves may to a greater or less degree be acquired through a
\nheightened and widened self-consciousness and self-mastery.<\/span><\/p>\n

This may be
\ndone, on the side of Purusha, by drawing back from the physical self and its
\npreoccupation with physical nature and through concentration of thought and
\nwill raising oneself into the vital and then into the mental self. By doing so we
\ncan become the vital being and draw up the physical self into that new
\nconsciousness so that we are only aware of the body, its nature and its actions
\nas secondary circumstances of the Life-soul which we now are, used by it for
\nits relations with the material world. A certain remoteness from physical being
\nand then a superiority to it; a vivid sense of the body being a mere instrument
\nor shell and easily detachable; an extraordinary effectivity of our desires on
\nour physical being and life-environment; a great sense of power and ease in
\nmanipulating and directing the vital energy
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 443<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

of which we now become vividly
\nconscious, for its action is felt by us concretely, subtly physical in relation
\nto the body, sensible in a sort of subtle density as an energy used by the
\nmind; an awareness of the life-plane in us above the physical and knowledge and
\ncontact with the beings of the desire-world; a coming into action of new
\npowers, \u2013 what are usually called occult powers or siddhis; a close sense of
\nand sympathy with the Life-soul in the world and a knowledge or sensation of
\nthe emotions, desires, vital impulses of others; these are some of the signs of
\nthis new consciousness gained by Yoga.<\/span><\/p>\n

But all this
\nbelongs to the inferior grades of spiritual experience and indeed is hardly
\nmore spiritual than the physical existence. We have in the same way to go yet
\nhigher and raise ourselves into the mental self. By doing so we can become the
\nmental self and draw up the physical and vital being into it, so that life and
\nbody and their operations become to us minor circumstances of our being used by
\nthe Mind-soul which we now are for the execution of its lower purposes that
\nbelong to the material existence. Here too we acquire at first a certain
\nremoteness from the life and the body and our real life seems to be on quite
\nanother plane than material man’s, in contact with a subtler existence, a
\ngreater light of knowledge than the terrestrial, a far rarer and yet more sovereign
\nenergy; we are in touch in fact with the mental plane, aware of the mental worlds,
\ncan be in communication with its beings and powers. From that plane we behold
\nthe desire-world and the material existence as if below us, things that we can
\ncast away from us if we will and in fact easily reject when we relinquish the body,
\nso as to dwell in the mental or psychical heavens. But we can also, instead of
\nbeing thus remote and detached, become rather superior to the life and body and
\nthe vital and material planes and act upon them with mastery from our new height
\nof being. Another sort of dynamis than physical or vital energy, something that
\nwe may call pure mind-power and soul-force, which the developed human being
\nuses indeed but derivatively and imperfectly, but which we can now use freely
\nand with knowledge, becomes the ordinary process of our action, while
\ndesire-force and physical action fall into a secondary place and are only used
\nwith this new energy behind them and as
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 444<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

its occasional channels.
\nWe are in touch and sympathy also with the Mind in cosmos, conscious of it,
\naware of the intentions, directions, thought-forces, struggle of subtle powers
\nbehind all happenings, which the ordinary man is ignorant of or can only
\nobscurely infer from the physical happening, but which we can now see and feel directly
\nbefore there is any physical sign or even vital intimation of their working. We
\nacquire too the knowledge and sense of the mind-action of other beings whether
\non the physical plane or on those above it; and the higher capacities of the mental
\nbeing, \u2013 occult powers or siddhis, but of a much rarer or subtler kind than those
\nproper to the vital plane, \u2013 naturally awake in our consciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

All these
\nhowever are circumstances of the lower triple world of our being, the trailokya<\/i><\/span> of the
\nancient sages. Living on these we are, whatever the enlargement of our powers
\nand our consciousness, still living within the limits of the cosmic gods and
\nsubject, though with a much subtler, easier and modified subjection, to the
\nreign of Prakriti over Purusha. To achieve real freedom and mastery we have to
\nascend to a yet higher level of the many-plateaued<\/span>
\nmountain of our being.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage
\n\u2013 445<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XX   The Lower Triple Purusha   SUCH is the constituent principle of the various worlds of cosmic existence and the various planes of our…<\/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-978","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\/978","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=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}