Theme of Savitri (Cont.)

(ii) Transformation of Consciousness

     “Savitri is a Mantra for the transformation of the world.”

—     The Mother

     This chapter takes up the second thematic design of Savitri. Sri Aurobindo is a poet with certain definite mission and towards attaining that he directs the power and movement of his Integral Yoga. He puts a high responsibility on poetry of the future, that of remoulding this world of ignorance, falsehood and mortality, ‘to hew the ways of immortality’ by transformation of the consciousness. It is veritably building a new world on earth.  This forms the core of Sri Aurobindo’s poetic Agenda in general and in Savitri in particular. How meticulously and painstakingly this divine builder makes new  worlds or transforms the existing ones! One has to enter into the spirit of Savitri to believe it. Poetry to be meaningful and helpful towards achieving the divine fulfilment upon earth must turn towards expressing the new creation which the yogic vision of the poet sees and which can be created by transformation. But the situation today is

In vain is the unending line of seers,

The sages ponder in unsubstantial light,

The poets lend their voice to outward dreams,

A homeless fire inspires the prophet tongues.

Heaven’s flaming lights descend and back return,

The luminous Eye approaches and retires;

Eternity speaks, none understands its word;

Fate is unwilling and the Abyss denies;

The Inconscient’s mindless waters block all done.

Only a little lifted is Mind’s screen.

—    Savitri : 371

    

Not to carry man ‘a little beyond’ is the aim of this seer poet, rather to establish a gnostic life, a life divine upon this death – bound earth is his high mission. A new method which can reveal to man his divine potentialities has to be given. Not to explore life that has exhibited but to liberate the hidden and eternal truth in the inmost being, ‘the indispensable fire’, ‘the burning witness’ and thereby carry evolution to its summit so as to build a new  world upon the earth is the high poetic aim of Savitri. But so long as human consciousness is in ignorance this aim cannot be achieved. Only when man’s consciousness changes to the spiritual and the supramental that the new creation is possible,

     To make of life a cosmic harmony,

     An empire of the immanent Divine

—    Savitri : 318

But this could not be unless the poet himself has attained realisation and experience of the highest plane of consciousness. With his seeing-soul the poet in an unmoved joy then chants of his vision beatific. The epic not only upholds the poet’s spiritual experiences but also it attempts at remoulding and transforming the very mind, life and body of man. “Savitri is the record of a seeing, of an experience which is not of the common kind and is often very far from what the general human mind sees and experiences.. there must be a new extension of consciousness and aesthesis to appreciate a new kind of mystic poetry.”¹

Savitri is the poetry Transformation. To attain this seemingly impossible task Sri Aurobindo gives to the world his magnificent yoga of Transformation. Pain, misery, suffering, falsehood and death stalk this earth-nature, and there is no way out of this, at least not so far found. There is no way to get rid of these dark universal Powers. These can only be transformed into their higher divine counterparts. This work, says Sri Aurobindo, can be achieved by the power of the highest Truth-Consciousness which he calls the Supermind and which he has realised and experienced. The transformation of the terrestrial life forms the second major theme of the poem

To free the self is but one radiant pace;

Hereto fulfil himself was God’s desire.

—    Savitri : 312

These are the two thematic threads of the poem. The first is achieved by evolution and the second by transformation.

Transformation : meaning and its need:

The meaning of Transformation may better be given in Sri Aurobindo’s own words: “By transformation I do not mean some change of nature — I do not mean, for instance, sainthood or ethical perfection or yogic siddhis (like the Tantrik’s) or a trancendental (cinmaya) body. I use transformation in a special sense, a change of consciousness radical and complete and of a certain specific kind which is so conceived as to bring about a strong and assured step forward in the spiritual evolution of the being of a greater and higher kind and of a larger sweep and completeness than what took place when a mentalised being first appeared in a vital and material animal world. If anything short of that takes place or at least if a real beginning is not made on that basis, a fundamental progress towards this fulfilment, then my object is not accomplished. A partial realisation, something mixed and inconclusive, does not meet the demand I make on life and Yoga.”²

It is true that spiritual realisation in itself does not bring transformation of the being as a whole, ‘it may bring only an opening or heightening or widening of the consciousness at the top so as to realise something in the Purusha part without any radical change in the parts of Prakriti.’ “One may have some light of realisation at the spiritual summit of the consciousness but the parts below remain what they were... There must be a descent of the light not merely into the mind or part of it but into all the being down to the physical and below before a real transformation can take place”.²  Only when a strong descent of the Divine Consciousness with its Peace, Light, Power etc comes into the parts of man’s being and nature that the process of transformation begins—

     A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame,

     A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,

     A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire,

     Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs

     And penetrated nerve and heart and brain

     That thrilled and fainted with the epiphany:

     His nature shuddered in the Unknown’s grasp

—    Savitri : 81

A descent like this can transform the being and his nature. A light in the mind may spiritualise or otherwise change it or part of it; a light in the vital may purify and enlarge its movements, ‘but leave the body and the physical consciousness as it was’. It must be the descent of the whole higher consciousness, its Peace, Power, Knowledge, Love, Ananda as the above lines of Savitri describe. Again the descent may bring a great change in the inner being, ‘while the outer remains an imperfect instrument.’ Transformation cannot be integral and complete ‘unless it is a supramentalisation of the being.’

Regarding the need of transformation : Man does not and cannot remain constantly in the higher consciousness; if that could be possible it is good and if there is no risk of his falling back to the lower. Sri Aurobindo states, “If one remains always in the higher consciousness, so much the better. But why does not one remain there? Because the lower is still part of the nature and it pulls you down towards itself”.³

        Only a while at first these heavenlier states,

     These large wide-poised upliftings could endure.

        The high and luminous tension breaks too soon.....

     As a child who learns to walk can walk not long.

—    Savitri : 34

Also,

     An old pull of subconscious cords renews;

     It draws the unwilling spirit from the heights

     Or a dull gravitation drags us down

     To the blind driven inertia of our base.

—    Ibid

Hence there is an imperative need of transformation. If on the other hand the lower is transformed, it becomes of one kind with the higher and there is nothing lower to pull the consciousness downward.

“Transformation means that the higher consciousness or nature is brought down into the mind, vital and body and takes the place of the lower. There is a higher consciousness of the true self, which is spiritual, but it is above, if one rises above into it, then one is free as long as one remains there, but if one comes down into or uses mind, vital or body and if one keeps any connection with life, one has to do so, either to come down and act from the ordinary consciousness or else to be in the  self but use mind, life and body, then the imperfections of these instruments have to be faced and mended – they can only be mended by transformation”³ This is the rationale of the need and necessity for transformation.

     To mould humanity into God’s own shape

     And lead this great blind struggling world to light 

     Or a new world discover or create.

     Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven

     Or Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state.

—    Savitri : 486

Transformation : its fundamentals:

Sri Aurobindo insists that transformation must be preceded by highest and deepest spiritual realisations. The fundamental realisations in the Yoga of Transformation are:

“I, The psychic change so that a complete devotion can be the main motive of the heart and the ruler of thought, life and action in constant union with the Mother and in her Presence”. The discovery of the psychic and psychicisation of the being, according to Sri Aurobindo, is of paramount significance and the first inevitable step in the Yoga of Transformation: “Hid deep in man celestial powers can dwell” (Savitri) and once the psychic is found and it comes to the front, then ‘strange powers and influences’ from the soul space would change life, thought, action through our love and devotion for the Divine Mother. The importance of  finding the psychic finds expression in the following verse.

     Always we bear in us a magic key

     Concealed in life’s hermetic envelope,

     A burning Witness in the sanctuary

     Regards through Time and  the blind walls of Form;...

He sees the secret things no words can speak

And knows the goal of the unconscious world...           

—    Savitri : 49

“2. The descent of Peace, Power, Light, etc. of the Higher Consciousness through the head and heart into the whole being, occupying the very cells of the body”. “Our body’s cells must hold the Immortal’s flame”. (Savitri : 35)

“3. The perception of the One and Divine infinitely everywhere, the Mother everywhere and living in that infinite consciousness.”⁴

     A living Oneness widened at its core

     And joined him to unnumbered multitudes,

     A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love

     Caught all into a sole immense embrace;

     Existence found its truth on Oneness’ breast.

—    Savitri : 322-3

Besides, there are realisations of the triple divinity:

“(1) the realisation of the psychic being and consciousness as the divine element in the evolution; (2) the realisation of the cosmic Self which is one in all; (3) the realisation of the Supreme Divine from which both individual and cosmos have come and of the individual being (Jivatma) as an eternal portion of the Divine”.⁵ These realisations alone lead to psychic and spiritual transformation. But the ultimate and total transformation of the being and its nature can only be attained by supramental realisation or supramentalisation.

Transformation : its operative movements:

The basic sketch of the path that the Yoga of Transformation follows has been outlined by Sri Aurobindo: “There are in fact two systems simultaneously active in the organisation of the being and its parts: one is concentric, a series of rings or sheaths with the psychic at the centre: another is vertical, an ascension and descent, like a flight of steps, a series of superimposed planes with the supermind – overmind as the crucial nodus of the transition beyond the human into the Divine. For this transition, if it is to be at the same time a transformation, there is only one way, one path. First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front, disclosing at the same time the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of the nature. Next, there must be an ascension, a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts. When one has made the inward conversion, one psychicises the whole lower nature so as to make it ready for the divine change. Going upwards, one passes beyond the human mind and at each stage of the ascent, there is a conversion into a new consciousness and an infusion of this new consciousness into the whole of the nature Thus rising beyond intellect through illuminated higher mind to the intuitive consciousness, we begin to look at everything not from the intellect range or through intellect as an instrument, but from a greater intuitive height and through an intuitvised will, feeling, emotion, sensation and physical contact. So, proceeding  from intuition to a greater overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact. But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there – once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and conversion of consciousness is no longer needed, though a farther divine progression, even an infinite development is still possible.”⁶

1.  The concentric movement:

It is an inward conversion, the consciousness going inward to find the psychic. A series of concentric rings or sheaths — mind, vital, body and inner mind, inner vital, inner physical parts of nature — are the teguments that cover the inmost psychic at the centre. Piercing through all these teguments the consciousness has to find the psychic and bring it to the front so as to psychicise the nature: “Thus could he bear the touch immaculate”. (Savitri: )

This movement is ‘conversion inwards’ and is a major step in the process of transformation, and it makes the passage of the other movements of transformation easier, more rapid and less difficult. Savitri describes the change that comes with the finding of the psychic—

     His soul was all in front like a great sea

     Flooding the mind and body with its waves;

     His being, spread to embrace the universe,

     United the within and the without

     To make of life a cosmic harmony,

     An empire of the immanent Divine

—    Savitri : 318

The psychic that lies hidden in our depth can guide the ignorant nature to the supreme goal—

     The unfelt Self within who is the guide,

     The unknown Self above who is the goal.

—    Savitri : 168

2.  The vertical movement:

It is an ascension of consciousness rung after higher rung, as if along a ladder, the World-Stair. Rising upwards, one passes beyond the human mind to new and higher plane of consciousness, even to the highest. Such an ascension leads to one’s individual “salvation’ as have been the aim and practice of traditional systems of yoga. But Sri Aurobindo’s aim is not individual salvation; his mission is to build a new world with new beings of Truth – Consciousness and that is possible only by transforming earth-nature and human being and its nature. There must be  ascension to higher planes of consciousness but that is only the first step if going upwards is ‘to be at the same time a transformation’, there must be a descent, to bring down into the lower parts the power of higher consciousness gained by ascension. This implies a double movement, ascent and descent of the consciousness. Again, in ascent and descent of the consciousness each is a two-stage movement: In the first stage ascent begins from above the human mind and journeying through the principal spiritual planes (Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overmind) of the lower hemisphere aparaprakriti — “A scale and series in the Ignorance” (Savitri : 484) the ascending consciousness is thus readied for the second stage of the ascent into the higher hemisphere of paraprakriti;  this is the entry of the consciousness into the Divine Truth-Consciousness, the Supermind. The second movement of this part of Yoga is the descent of the consciousness that has arisen to higher spiritual planes, even to the highest supramental plane, and bringing their powers down into mind, life and body of man to transform them. The descent, like its counterpart ascent, has two stages: first, descent from the spiritual planes of consciousness, and secondly, from the supramental plane. Transformation achieved by the descending powers of consciousness from spiritual planes has been termed by Sri Aurobindo as Spiritual Transformation, while transformation brought by the descending Truth – Consciousness is the Supramental Transformation. Thus both the movements of Ascent and Descent carry out the work of transformation. The entire process of transformation includes

     Psychic Transformation,

     Spiritual Transformation and

     Supramental Transformation.

This is Sri Aurobindo’s famous Triple Transformation. This finds a beautiful expression in the following verse:—

     But first the spirit’s ascent we must achieve

     Out of the chasm from which our nature rose.

     The soul must soar sovereign above the form

     And climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep;

     Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength,

     Surprise the animal with the occult god.

     Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,

     Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,

     We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state,

     Make the abysm a road for Heaven’s descent,

     Acquaint our depths with supernal Ray

     And cleave the darkness with the mystic Fire.

—    Savitri : 171-2

Transformation, basic conditions:

A certain preliminary or some sort of initial purification, self-perfecting of the nature and its instruments is necessary so that ‘they may respond to higher forces and admit them and to a certain extent a change or at least a greater plasticity in the processes’  may be attained. Integral Yoga implies integral transformation both in the inner and outer being and its nature. The basic conditions however do not directly go to achieve this transformation. They only go to make a certain preparatory ground-work so as to facilitate the work of transformation. These conditions are—

1.  Equality

“The very first necessity for spiritual perfection is a perfect equality.”⁷ Again, “A perfect equality of our spirit and nature is a means by which we can move back from the troubled and ignorant outer consciousness into this inner kingdom of heaven and possess the spirit’s eternal kingdoms.... of greatness, joy and peace”.⁸ The epic sings of this perfect equality of mind — “In the world which sprang from it, it took no part”

     It gave no heed to the paeans of victory,

     It was indifferent to its own defeats,

     It heard the cry of grief and made no sign;

     Impartial fell its gaze on evil and good.

     It saw destruction come and did not move.

     An equal Cause of things, a lonely Seer....

     It acted not but bore all thoughts and deeds,

     The witness Lord of Nature’s myriad acts

—    Savitri : 283

This ‘witness hush is the Thinker’s secret base’. And when this ‘vast quietism’ is reflected in the mind, then the seeker is firmly stationed in the Equality of his mind and spirit and then

     The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him

—    Savitri : 26

Not only equality reveals to the seeker the true source of knowledge, but it brings too the ‘yogic poise’ so necessary in yoga; with its attainment half the battle is won—

     At last was won a firm spiritual poise,

     A constant lodging in the Eternal’s realm,

     A safety in the Silence and the Ray,

     A settlement in the Immutable.

—    Savitri : 36

2.  To be egoless:

“The formation of a mental and vital ego tied to the body-sense was the first great labour of the cosmic Life in its progressive evolution; for this was the means it found for creating out of matter a conscious individual. The dissolution of this limiting ego is the one condition, the necessary means for this very cosmic Life to arrive at its divine fruition: for only so can the conscious individual find either his transcendent self or his true Person”.⁹ It is in this sense the true meaning of Sri Aurobindo’s famous aphorism ‘Ego was the helper, ego is the bar’ stands illumined. “The ego is by its nature a smallness of being; it brings contraction of the consciousness and with the contraction limitation of knowledge, disabling ignorance, — confinement and a diminution of power and by that diminution incapacity and weakness — scission of oneness and by that scission disharmony and failure of sympathy and love and understanding,...”¹⁰ The ego forms a shadow of the self, once this shadow disappears, it will reveal  the spirit’s unclouded substance’, man’s central being.

For the seeker on the path of Integral Yoga, ‘the self of the man must be made one with the Self of all. And this cannot be done without an uncompromising abolition of the ego sense at its very basis and source. Man’s self discriminating egoism is given him as a means for the primary purpose of his ‘perfect disengagement from the lower subconscient in which the individual is overpowered by the mass-consciousness of the world and entirely subject to the mechanical workings of Nature.’ “Man must first affirm himself in the ignorance and then only he can perfect himself in the knowledge by abolishing the ego.” When

     The landmarks of the little person fell,

     The island ego joined its continent:

     Overpassed was this world of rigid limiting forms:

     Life’s barriers opened into the Unknown.

—    Savitri : 25

then is

     Annulled the soul’s treaty with Nature’s nescience” (Ibid) and

     Truth unpartitioned found immense sky-room;

     An empyrean vision saw and knew;

     The bounded mind became a boundless light,

     The finite self mated with Infinity.

—    Savitri : 25

Here is a perfect egoless state of Savitri described by the poet

     A vacant consciousness watched from within,

     Empty of all but bare Reality.

     There was no will behind the word and act,

     No thought formed in her brain to guide the speech:

     An impersonal emptiness walked and spoke in her.

—    Savitri : 551-2

In this state one is guided by ‘the original Mystery’ and

     It used her speech and acted in her acts,

     It was beauty in her limbs, life in her breath;

     The original Mystery wore her human face.

     Thus was she lost within to separate self;

     Her mortal ego perished in God’s night.

     Only a body was left, the ego’s shell

     Afloat mid drift and foam of the world – sea....

—    Ibid 552

The Mother too in her talk emphasises on the abolition of the ego : “.... but now that the birth of superhumanity is being prepared, the ego has to disappear and give way to the psychic being”.¹¹ A similar expression is found in her Prayers and Meditation : “Never hast thou been able to die integrally... learn how to disappear, break the last dam which separates thee from me.”¹² This last dam is the ego. The epic chants,—

     Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time’s work,

     Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.

     Annul thyself that only God may be.

—    Savitri : 538

In another talk we have Mother’s exhortation and assurance too: “We want a race that has no ego, that has in place of the ego the Divine Consciousness. It is that which will allow the race to develop itself and the supramental being to take birth”.¹³

According to Sri Aurobindo, widening or expansion of the consciousness is an effective method of abolition of the ego. He writes, “The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and self-perfecting”.¹⁴ Then the contraction and smallness of the ego can be got rid of. In the Mother’s words, “For, to tell the truth, everbody is small, small, small, so small that there is not enough room to put any supramental in. It is so small that it is already quite filled up with all ordinary little human movements. There must be great widening to make room for the movements of the Supermind”.¹⁵ The poem describes beautifully the widening of the consciousness:

     His soul was all in front like a great sea

     Flooding the mind and body with its waves

—    Savitri : 538

Release from ego brings in the realisation of cosmic consciousness, ‘a casting of oneself into the universal’.

3.  To be desireless:

Once the yogic poise has been attained by equality, once the being has ‘a constant lodging in the Eternal’s realm’ and ‘a settlement in the Immutable’, it becomes easier for the seeker to get rid of desires. People are mostly driven by the forces of Nature; “whatever desires come, they fulfil them, whatever emotions come, they allow them to play, whatever physical wants they have, they try to satisfy”.¹⁶ But instincts and desires have no place in yoga. “Yoga demands mastery over the nature, not subjection to the nature”.¹⁷ Surmounting desires is a great achievement as it helps the seeker to delink himself from his lower vital.

“The root of desire is the vital craving to seize upon that which we feel we have not, it is the limited life’s instinct for possession and satisfaction. It creates the sense of want”¹⁸ It brings ‘the unquiet thirst of sensation’; ‘the lust of control, domination, success’; ‘the desire for the satisfaction of liking and disliking, love and hate, grief and joy’. It is the sense of limitation and impulse towards self-engagement that create all these, “The rejection of desire is essentially the rejection of the element of craving, putting that out from the consciousness itself as a foreign element not belonging to the true self and the inner nature. But refusal to indulge the suggestions of desire is also a part of the rejection; to abstain from the action suggested, if it is not the right action, must be included in the yogic discipline.”¹⁸ Sri Aurobindo explains, “The desires come from outside, enter the subconscious vital and rise to the surface. It is only when they rise to the surface and the mind becomes aware of them, that we become conscious of the desire. It seems to us to be our own because we feel it thus rising from the vital into the mind and do not know that it came from outside”.¹⁸ The difficulty of rejection comes because we feel desire as part of our constituent. To that is added ‘the habit of responding to the waves of the currents of suggestion’. To see with the true consciousness is the way out—

     Then looking to know whence the intruders came

     She saw a spiritual immensity

     Pervading and encompassing the world-space

     As ether our transparent tangible air,

     And through it sailing tranquilly a thought

     As smoothly glides a ship nearing its port...

—    Savitri : 544

Once conscious of the desire approaching from outside, meet it with ‘a barring will, a blow of Force’. ‘Ignorant of embargo and blockade’ the desire comes ‘sailing tranquilly’—

     Confident of entrance and the visa’s seal,

     It came to the silent city of the brain

     Towards its accustomed and expectant quay,

     But met a barring will, a blow of Force

     And sank vanishing in the immensity.

—    Ibid

Demand and so-called necessities of life are the aspects of the same desire; “for there are only a very few things that are real necessities in life. The rest are either utilities or things decorative to life or luxuries.”¹⁹ In fact desire is ‘a psychological movement’ and it has the knack to attach itself to ‘things that are not true needs’.

Behind desire ‘stands a cosmic might’,

     From the great mystic Flame that rings the worlds

     And with its dire edge eats at being’s heart

     Thence sprang the burning vision of Desire,

     A thousand shapes it wore, took numberless names:....

     It burns all breasts with an ambiguous fire.

     A radiance gleaming on a murky stream,

     It flamed towards heaven, then sank, engulfed, towards hell;

     It climbed to drag down Truth into the mire

     And used for muddy ends its brilliant Force

—    Savitri : 247

And in human breast it grows into a ‘new aesthesis of Inferno’s art’—

     A charm and sweetness sudden and formidable,

     Faces that raised alluring lips and eyes

     Approached him armed with beauty like a snare,

     But hid a fatal meaning in each line

—    Savitri : 205-6

Here life is ‘without hope, obscured, deformed by some dire Gorgon spell.’ and “Turned lust into a decorative art:” (Ibid : 212)

     All that denies must be torn out and slain

     And crushed the many longings for whose sake

     We lose the One for whom our lives were made.

—    Savitri : 316

To be desireless all the dim crypts and corners of our nature must be searched with the soul-fire

     Where refugee instincts and unshaped revolts

     Could shelter find in darkness’ sanctuary

     Against the white purity of heaven’s cleansing flame.

—    Savitri : 318

‘Yet some minutest dissident might escape’ and ‘lest a human cry should spoil the Truth’—

     He tore desire up from its bleeding roots

     And offered to the gods the vacant place.

—    Ibid

Thus could one be desireless and

    

     Thus could he bear the touch immaculate

     A last and mightiest transformation came.

—    Ibid

4.  Cosmic Consciousness

     Our consciousness is cosmic and immense.

     But only when we break through Matter’s wall

     In that spiritual vastness can we stand.

—    Savitri : 542-3

Attaining cosmic consciousness is another important condition and a very significant preparatory stage in the Yoga of Transformation. it is that peak from where one may dare to look up and hope for the touch of the supramental. It is the release from the ego that brings in ‘a sudden sense of cosmic consciousness, a casting of oneself into the universal’. According to Sri Aurobindo, a secure universality of being is the very basis of this new consciousness. Abandoning all rigid separateness one feels one with all things and beings, admit their consciousness as part of his. The poet describes its realisation,—

     Then suddenly there came a downward look,

     As if a sea exploring its own depths,

     A living Oneness widened at its core

     And joined him to unnumbered multitudes.

     A Bliss, a Light, a Power, a flame-white Love

     Caught all into a sole immense embrace;

—    Savitri : 322-3

Release from ‘the little ego’s ring,’ once ‘the landmarks of the little person fell,’ the ‘imperishable Inhabitant’ within finds its release from ignorance. Thence is attained the spirit’s freedom and greatness and it could breathe ‘a superhuman air’ in the cosmic consciousness:

     The imprisoned deity rent its magic fence.

     As with a sound of thunder and of seas,

     Vast barriers crashed around the huge escape,

     Immutably coeval with the world,

—    Savitri : 82

and the consciousness becomes cosmic, ‘coeval with the world.’ Listen to the poet’s description,—

     The cosmos flowered in her, she was its bed,

     She was Time and the dreams of God in Time;

     She was Space and the wideness of his days.

     From this she rose where Time and Space were not;

     The superconscient was her native air,

     Infinity was her movement’s natural space;

     Eternity looked out from her on Time.

—    Savitri : 557

The description of this state continues in an overwhelming manner:

     She was no more herself but all the world,

     Out of the infinitudes all came to her,

     Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,

     Infinity was her own natural home.

     Nowhere she dwelt, her spirit was everywhere,

     The distant constellations wheeled round her;

     Earth saw her born, all worlds were her colonies,...

—    Ibid, 556-7

Once stationed in this consciousness, entry into the highest supramental Consciousness becomes possible. Realisation of the cosmic consciousness is the final reversal of consciousness in the lower hemisphere, the last rung of the World-Stair.

5.  Resistance of the Nature:

There is no ‘royal road or short cut to the Divine’, and “it is a mistake to think that any path of Yoga is facile....” says Sri Aurobindo. “One cannot have the crown of spiritual victory without the struggle or reach the heights without ascent and its labour. Of all it can be said, “Difficult is that road, hard to tread like the edge of a razor”.²⁰ Regarding the difficulties of the Path, Sri Aurobindo explains, “All who enter the spiritual path have to face the difficulties and ordeals of the path, those which rise from their own nature and those which come in from outside. The difficulties in the nature always rise again and again till you overcome them, they must be faced with both strength and patience.”²¹ As the soul approaches the Divine, there is a resistance in the mind in the form of denial, doubt and fear of the Unknown:

     Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change;

     Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch:

     It fears the pure divine intolerance

     Of that assault of ether and of fire;

     It murmurs at its sorrowless happiness,

     Almost with hate repels the light it brings;

     It trembles at its naked power of Truth

—    Savitri : 7

And ‘inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law’,

     Its thorns of fallen nature are the defence

     It turns against the saviour hands of Grace

—    Ibid.

In all the parts of the being there are tremendous resistances. Mind is ‘a house haunted by the slain past’, its ideas ‘ghosts of old truths’ and it makes of ‘God’s spontaneities’ a ‘grave of great lost opportunities’. And the ‘sun-thoughts’ from the ‘glory of lightnings’ fade, ‘darkened by ignorant minds’ that

     Denied the Truth that transient truths might live

     And hid the Deity in creed and guess

—    Savitri : 244

“There may again be a resistance in the vital nature whose principal character is desire and the attachment to the objects of desire, and if in this field there is conflict between the soul and the vital nature, between the Divine Attraction and the pull of the Ignorance”,²¹ then there will be great difficulties:

     In the texture of our bound humanity

     He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb

—    Savitri : 317

and its tentacles stretch endlessly. The only way out is to uproot the resistance that comes from desire. “The physical consciousness also may offer a resistance which is usually that of a fundamental inertia, an obscurity in the very stuff of the physical, an incomprehension, an inability to respond to the higher consciousness, a habit of helplessly responding to the lower mechanically.....”²²

There is a fundamental resistance in man. “Human nature and the character of the individual are a formation that has arisen in and out of the inconscience of the material world and can never get entirely free from the pressure of that Inconscience”.²³

     He felt the stark resistance huge and dumb

     Of our inconscient and unseeing base,

     The stubborn mute rejection in Life’s depths,

     The ignorant No in the origin of things,

     A veiled collaboration with the Night...

     Its kinship with the Inconscient whence it came.

—    Savitri : 317

‘A shadowy unity with a vanished past’ still continues with human nature, and this is the fundamental resistance in man:

     Nothing is wholly dead that once had lived;

     In dim tunnels of the world’s being and in ours

     The old rejected nature still survives;

—    Savitri : 483

Or, again –

     Our dead past round our future’s ankles clings

     And drags back the new nature’s glorious stride,

     Or from its buried corpse old ghosts arise.

—    Ibid

“The spiritual change which yoga demands from human nature and individual character is, therefore, full of difficulties, one may almost say that it is the most difficult of all human aspirations and efforts,”²³  Listen to its description-

     An old self lurks in the new self we are;

     Hardly we escape from what we once had been:

     In the dim gleam of habit’s passages,

     In the subconscient’s darkling corridors

     All things are carried by the porter nerves   

—    Ibid

The resistance however strong and violent cannot withstand ‘a divine intervention’ that ‘thrones above’ : “A Godhead stands behind the brute machine”. (Savitri : 21)

The Divine is there, but he does not ignore the conditions, the laws, the circumstances of Nature; it is under these conditions that He does all His work, His work in the world and in man and consequently in the sadhak, the aspirant, even in the God-knower and God-lover,...”²⁴ assures Sri Aurobindo. All are limited by their nature. “A complete liberation and a complete perfection or the complete possession of the Divine and possession by the Divine is possible, but it does not  usually happen by an easy miracle or a series of miracles. The miracle can and does happen but only when there is the full call and complete self-giving of the soul and the entire widest opening of the nature.”²⁴

     A prayer, a master act, a king idea

     Can link man’s strength to a transcendent Force.

     Then miracle is made the common rule,

     One mighty deed can change the course of things;

—    Savitri : 20

Sri Aurobindo speaks of another resistance: “There is, moreover, the resistance of the Universal Nature which does not want the being to escape from the Ignorance into the Light. This may take the form of a vehement insistence in the continuation of the old movements, waves of them thrown on the mind and vital and body so that old ideas, impulses, desires, feelings, responses continue even after they are thrown out and rejected, and can return like an invading army from outside, until the whole nature, given to the Divine, refuses to admit them”²² This statement of Sri Aurobindo finds a wonderful poetic expression in another sustained imagery in Book Seven, canto six of Savitri . All rejected old ideas, impulses, feelings, thoughts return like an invading army from outside. These are

     Mind’s unexpected visitors from the unseen

     Like far – off sails upon a lonely sea.

—    Savitri : 544

‘Then looking to know whence the intruders came’

     She saw a spiritual immensity

     Pervading and encompassing the world-space

     As ether our transparent tangible air,

     And through it sailing tranquilly a thought.

—    Ibid

They came as though they had ‘a natural privileged right to the high royal entries of the soul’. Then comes the epic simile through which the poet continues the imagery-

     As smoothly glides a ship nearing its port,

     Ignorant of embargo and blockade,

     Confident of entrance and the visa’s seal,

     It came to the silent city of the brain

     Towards its accustomed and expectant quay

—    Ibid

Thus comes the resistance of the universal Nature. But the mind’s unexpected visitors from the unseen’ meet the unexpected ‘embargo and blockade’ from Savitri, they

     ...met a barring will, a blow of Force

     And sank vanishing in the immensity.

—    Ibid.

The solution provided by the poem besides ‘a barring will, a blow of Force’, is to remain exclusively in ‘eternity’s hush’, the repose of the Absolute’, in ‘the ocean silence of Infinity’.

Transformation of the nature and parts of being:

“The difficulty of the yoga is not in getting experiences or a subjective realisation of the Truth; it is in objectivising the Truth, that is in making  the outer consciousness down to the material an expression of the inner Truth. So long as that is not done the attacks of the lower Nature can always intervene”.²⁵ By fulfilling the conditions for transformation as discussed in the previous section, a certain preparatory base is attained: “In him that high transition laid its base”.

     Through which his Glory shines for whom we were made

     And we break into the infinity of God.

—    Savitri : 24

This is the ‘high transition’ that lays its base in the seeker, and

     Across our nature’s border line we escape

     Into supernature’s arc of living light

—    Ibid

One is thus prepared to undergo transformation of his nature and parts of being

Regarding transformation of the nature, Sri Aurobindo writes, “Merely to have experiences of the higher consciousness will not change the nature”²⁵ He speaks of four ways by which change of nature can be brought about. They are

1.  the higher consciousness has to make a dynamic descent into the whole being and change it; or

2.  it must establish itself in the inner being down to the inner physical so that the latter feels itself separate from the outer and is able to act freely upon it; or

3.  the psychic must come forward and change the nature; or

4.  the inner will must awake and force the nature to change.

But any of the above to be effective there is need of “an increasingly stable quietude and silence of the mind’,

     He stood in a realm of boundless silences

     Awaiting the Voice that spoke and built the worlds.

—    Savitri : 297

Or, listen to the following verse:

     This Light comes not by struggle or by thought;

     In the mind’s silence the Transcendent acts

     And the hushed heart hears the unuttered Word.

—    Savitri : 315

The ‘dynamic descent into the whole being’ which ‘must awake and force the nature to change’ is the ultimate method—

     A Power that lives upon the heights must act,

     Bring into life’s closed room the Immortal’s air

     And fill the finite with the Infinite.

—    Ibid

Then is it possible

     To break earth’s seal of ignorance and death

—    Savitri : 315

Transformation of the nature to be integral must extend to fourfold aspects

1.  Transformation of the mind;

2.  Transformation of the vital;

3.  Transformation of the physical; and

4.  Transformation of the Subconscient and the Inconscient.

Transformation of the mind:

(a)         The thinking mind:

“To have a developed intellect is always helpful if one can enlighten it from above and turn it to a divine use”, writes Sri Aurobindo. “The intellect of most men is extremely imperfect, ill-trained, half-developed... At the same time the intellect is usually arrogant and presumptuous, confidently asserting its imperfect conclusions as the truth and setting down as mistaken, stupid or foolish those who differ from them. In the course of the sadhana intellect has to be transformed into the higher mind which is itself a passage towards the true knowledge”.²⁶ Armed with her lens and measuring and probe’.

     She strove to reduce to rules the mystic world.

     Nothing she knew but all things hoped to know.

—    Savitri : 250

Intellect merely ‘throws a glittering robe on ignorance’ and ‘drags huge knowledge-bales through Matter’s dust to reach utility’s immense bazaar’. ‘The husks she keeps, the kernel throws aside’, and finally ‘Time cancels all her verdicts in appeal’.

But Sri Aurobindo says that it should not be a bar ‘to receive through the thinking mind’. If the thinking mind  does not receive the higher consciousness, it could not be transformed. It is the ordinary and unenlightened activity of the intellect that is an obstacle to spiritual experience:

     For not by Reason was creation made

     And not by Reason can the Truth be seen

     Which through the veils of thought, the screens of sense

     Hardly the spirit’s vision can descry

     Dimmed by the imperfection of its means:

—    Savitri : 256-7

The only way to liberation from the turmoil of mental activity is that “the thinking mind has to learn how to be entirely silent. It is only then that true knowledge can come.... cessation of thought and other vibrations is the climax of the inner silence”.²⁷ True knowledge comes from the higher planes of consciousness which are veiled to reason –

     Reason cannot tear off that glimmering mask.

     Her efforts only make it glimmer more;

—    Savitri : 257

But “To save the world from ignorance she came” (Savitri: 250) A pure Thought-Mind, ‘archangel of a white transcending realm’, ‘luminous in a remote and empty air’ can break the limits of the labouring Power, the mind, for ‘Thought transcends the circles of mortal mind and “It is greater than its earthly instrument”. To that higher consciousness human mind must climb or bring down its dynamic power into itself:

     A fire shall come out of the infinitudes,

     A greater Gnosis shall regard the world

     Crossing out of some far omniscience

     On lustrous seas from the still rapt Alone

     To illumine the deep heart of self and things.

     A timeless knowledge it shall bring to Mind.

—    Savitri : 258

Thus alone transformation of the thinking mind is possible.

(b)         The vital mind:

“The thinking mind does not lead men, does not influence them the most – it is the vital propensities and the vital mind that predominate. The thinking mind with most men is, in matters of life, only an instrument of the vital”.²⁸ explains Sri Aurobindo, “the function of this mind (vital mind) is not to think and reason, to perceive, consider and find out or value things, for that is the function of the thinking mind proper, — but to plan or dream or imagine what can be done. It makes formations for the future which the will can try to carry out if opportunity and circumstances become favourable or even it can work to make them favourable... it is exceedingly important not to allow this power to do what it likes with you, for it then creates false experiences according to its nature....”²⁹  This is ‘a fiery spirit’, — it is ‘a hunchback rider of the red Wild-Ass’, ‘a rash Intelligence’ that ‘with its dire edge eats at being’s heart’. It is the fire of ambition that consumes man.–

     It burns all breasts with an ambiguous fire.

     A radiance gleaning on a murky stream,

     It flamed towards heaven, then sank, engulfed, towards hell;

     It climbed to drag down Truth into the mire

     And used for muddy ends its brilliant Force;

—    Savitri : 247

Ultimately it leads one to disappointment and failure. By nature the vital mind is—

     Ardent to find, incapable to retain,

     A brilliant instability was its mark,

     To err its inborn trend, its native cue.

—    Savitri : 248

This mind is a misleading force often used by powers of Falsehood and leads to man’s downfall, political and spiritual. ‘It cherished golden nothings born of wish’ and ‘thought all true that flattered its own hope’. Listen to the
following —

     An eager spring to seize and to possess

     Unguided by reason or the seeing soul

     Was its first natural motion and its last,

     It squandered life’s force to achieve the impossible:

     It scorned the straight road and ran on wandering curves

—    Ibid

The vital mind too has the need to be transformed. From a high station there looks down on this world scene.

     A power to uplift the laggard world,

     Imperious rode a huge high-winged Life-Thought...

     It saw afar the unreached Immortal’s home

     And heard afar the voices of the Gods

—    Savitri : 258

‘Archangel of a white trancending realm’, a pure ‘Thought-Mind’ surveys the cosmic act. This Thought-Mind ‘transcends the circles of mortal mind’ and is ‘greater than its earthly instrument’. To that high consciousness human mind must rise or bring down its power into itself. Then is its transformation possible.

(c)         The physical mind:

     It could not house the wideness of a soul

     Which needed all infinity for its home.

—    Savitri : 238-9

“The physical mind is that which is fixed on physical objects and happenings, sees and understands these only, and deals with them according to their own nature, but can with difficulty  respond to the higher forces. Left to itself, it is sceptical of the existence of supraphysical things, of which it has no direct experience and to which it can find no clue; even when it has spiritual experiences, it forgets them easily, loses the impression and result and finds it difficult to believe. To enlighten the physical mind by the consciousness of the higher spiritual and supramental planes is one object of this yoga, just as to enlighten it by the power of the higher vital and higher mental elements of the being is the greatest part of human self-development, civilisation and culture.”³⁰

The poet describes the range and limitations of this physical mind as,

     Here are devised the forms of an ignorant life

     That sees the empiric fact as settled law,

     Labours for the hour and not for eternity

     And trades its gains to meet the moment’s call;

—    Savitri : 239-40

This mind is

     A specialist of logic’s hard machine

     Imposed its rigid artifice on the soul;

     An aide of the inventor intellect,

     It cut Truth into manageable bits

     That each might have his ration of thought-food,

     Then new-built Truth’s slain body by his art.

—    Savitri : 242

“It is the nature of the physical mind not to believe or accept anything that is supraphysical unless it is enlightened and compelled by the light to do it”, says Sri Aurobindo.

It is-

     A robot exact and serviceable and false

     Displaced the spirit’s finer view of things:

     A polished engine did the work of a god.

—    Ibid

Of course most men live in their physical mind, and it is the smallest of the trinity of mind:

     A low-brow with a square and heavy jowl,

     A pigmy Thought needing to live in bounds

     For ever stooped to hammer fact and form,

     Absorbed and cabined in external sight,

     It takes its stand on Nature’s solid base.

—    Savitri : 245

‘A prisoner of the moulds in which it works’, the physical mind is ‘the instrument of understanding and ordered action on physical things’

     A slave of a fixed mass of absolute rules,

     It sees as Law the habits of the world,

     It sees as Truth the habits of the mind.

—    Ibid

It lives content with ‘the common and the known’, ‘repeating old familiar acts’, “It loves the old ground that was its dwelling place”. This mind is ‘a prudent treasurer of its ignorance’ and habits.

     It shrinks from adventure, blinks at glorious hope,

     Preferring a safe foothold upon things

     To the dangerous joy of wideness and of height

—    Savitri : 246

The nature of physical mind is not to believe or accept anything new or supraphysical:

     It dozes on a little courtyard’s stones

     And barks at every unfamiliar light

     As at a foe who would break up its home.

     A watch – dog of the spirit’s sense – railed house

     Against intruders from the Invisible,

     Nourished on scraps of life and Matter’s bones

     In its kennel of objective certitude.

—    Savitri : 246-7

‘And yet behind it stands a cosmic might’ which could be its if it were enlightened by the light of some higher consciousness.

Transformation of the vital:

     The Might that came upon the earth to bless

     Has stayed on earth to suffer and aspire.

—    Savitri : 133

To begin sadhana with the vital is a hazardous affair; “the difficulties there are more numerous and more violent than on the mental plane and the pitfalls are innumerable. The access to the soul, the psychic being is less easy because it is covered up with a thick veil of ego, passion and desire. One is apt to be swallowed up in maze of vital experiences, not always relaibe, the temptation of small siddhis, the appeal of the powers of darkness to the ego”.³¹

        It has jointed its hunger to the hunger of  earth,

     It has given the law of craving to our lives,

     It has made our spirit’s need a fathomless gulf.

—    Savitri : 132

‘Teeming with instincts from the mindless gulfs’ in the ‘jail-delivery of the imprisoned soul’, “one has to struggle through these densities to the psychic being behind and bring it forward; then only can the sadhana on the vital plane be safe”.³¹ But

     A jerk, a leap, a start in Nature’s dream,

     And rude unchastened impulses jostling ran

     Heedless of every motion but their own

     And, darkling, clashed with darker than themselves,

     Free in a world of settled anarchy.

—    Savitri : 137

The vital is always pressing on the mind and heart and the body, thereby ‘disturbing and endangering the sadhana.’ The ego and desires of the vital are ‘a working of habit or a sense of law, a steady repetition in the flux’—

     Inflicting still its habit on the cells

     The phantom of a dark and evil start

     Ghostlike pursues all that we dream and do

—    Savitri : 140

For any change in or transformation of the vital, there is the need of an uncomprising abolition of ego and its desires. Side by side the ‘working of habit’ in all the planes of the being including the very cells of the body has to be overcome. But life as it is has no aim save Nature’s joy, it craves no more than body’s wants and delight of outer things.

     Content to breathe, to feel, to sense, to act,

     Life had for them no aim save Nature’s joy

     And the stimulus and delight of outer things;

     Identified with the spirit’s outward shell;

—    Savitri : 143

It ‘pondered not on the magic of her laws, it thirsted not for the secret wells of Truth’; it only ‘strung sensations on a vivid thread’: “To enjoy and to survive was all their care”. This life ‘never dreamed to conquer and be free’, and

     None thought to look beyond the hour’s gains,

     Or dreamed to make this earth a fairer world,

     Or felt some touch divine surprise his heart

—    Savitri : 145

This woeful state of life is made more woeful when it gets impressed by ‘a mould of body’s early mind’ and thus

     Prohibiting the adventure of the Unseen

     And the soul’s tread through unknown infinities.

—    Savitri : 148

These ignorant vital movements, according to Sri Aurobindo, originate from outside in the ignorant universal Nature’ and man’s superficial parts of being — mental, vital, physical — form ‘a habit of certain responses to these waves from outside. These responses bring in ‘a grandiose gust of the Breath of Life’ and

     Its torrent carried the world’s hopes and fears,

     All life’s, all Nature’s dissatisfied hungry cry,

     And the longing all eternity cannot fill.

—    Savitri : 492

These longing responses (anger, desire, sex) man takes as his own character and thinks he cannot be otherwise. But that is not so, says Sri Aurobindo, he can change, for “Nothing is all our own that we create”. For deeper within man lies another consciousness, his true inner being which is his real self, but is covered by integuments of the superficial nature

“The vital is an indispensable instrument — no creation or strong action is possible without it”.³² But “Disturbance in the vital will always come so long as the full peace has not descended there. The vital energy by itself leads nowhere, runs in chequered, often painful and ruinous circles, takes even to the precipice.”³³

        Those galloping hooves in their enthusiast speed

     Could bear to a dangerous intermediate zone

     Where Death walks wearing a robe of deathless Life.

—    Savitri : 494

and ‘souls trapped in that region never can escape’ In this nether realm

     A spate, a torrent of the speed of Life

     Broke like a wind – lashed driven mob of waves

     Racing on a pale floor of summer sand;

     It drowned its banks, a mountain of climbing waves.

—    Savitri : 491

Or,

     Hastening, a dragon with a million feet,

     Its foam and cry a drunken giant’s din,

     Tossing a mane of Darkness into God’s sky,

—    Savitri : 494

Here souls ‘serve Life’s desires toiling for ever in the snare of Time’.

“There is only one way of escape from this siege of the lower vital nature”, recommends Sri Aurobindo. “It is the entire rejection of all egoistic vital demand, claim and desire and the replacement of the dissatisfied vital urge by the purity of psychic aspiration. Not the satisfaction of these vital clamours nor, either, an ascetic retirement is the true solution, but the surrender of the vital being to the Divine....”.³⁴

In a simple and unphilosophical language Sri Aurobindo writes, “What has been put into the vital recepacle by life can be got out by reversing it, turning it towards the Divine and not towards yourself. You will then find that the vital is as excellent an instrument as it is a bad master.”³⁵ The conversion of the vital becomes all the more easy if it is ‘connected with the dynamic power of the higher consciousness and with the Divine Force’. “There are two movements necessary for this connection to be established. One is upward, the vital rises to join with the higher consciousness and steeps itself in the light and in the impulsion of a higher force: the other is downward; the vital remains silent, tranquillised, pure, empty of the ordinary movements, waiting till the dynamic power from above descends into it, changes it to its true self and informs its movements with knowledge as well as power”.³⁶ What Sri Aurobindo says in this passage finds its poetical expression in Savitri. The steps suggested above may be put as follows.

1.  ‘entire rejection of all vital demand, claim and desire’ and replacement of the vital urge by psychic aspiration—

     All that denies must be torn out and slain

     And crushed the many longings for whose sake

     We lose the One for whom our lives were made.

     Now other claims had hushed in him their cry:

     Only he longed to draw her presence

     Into his heart and mind and breathing frame

—    Savitri : 316

Or,

     He tore desire up from its bleeding roots

     And offered to the gods the vacant place.

—    Savitri : 318

2.  Nor, either, an ascetic retirement is the true solution, turn the vital ‘towards the Divine and not towards yourself’ is the poet’s suggestion.

     It needed not to curb its passionate beats;

     Thrilled by the clasp of the warm satisfied sense

     And the swift wonder – rush and flame and cry

     Of the life- impulse’s red magnificent race,

     It lived in a jewel – rhythm of the laughter of God

     And lay on the breast of universal love.

—    Savitri : 233

3.  There are two movements in vital’s transformation

(a)         ‘One is upward; the vital rises to join with the higher consciousness...’

     The shining Edens of the vital gods

     Received him in their deathless harmonies.

     All things were perfect there that flower in Time;

     Beauty was there creation’s native mould....

     There Love fulfilled her gold and roseate dreams...

     Desire climbed up, a swift omnipotent flame,

     And Pleasure had the stature of the gods.

—    Ibid 234-5

The vital thus rises to the higher consciousness to get transformed.

(b)         ‘the other is downward; the vital remains silent, tranquillised, pure, empty of the ordinary movements, waiting till the dynamic power from above descends into it’ to change it and

     Bring the high saving touch, the ethereal flame,

     Call back to its dire need the divine Force.

—    Savitri : 35

These are the two ways  the vital can be changed. Then

     A giant drop of the Bliss unknowable

     Overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became

     A fiery ocean of felicity:

     He foundered drowned in sweet and burning vasts:

—    Savitri : 237

This is the great and ultimate stage of transformation of the vital when “Immortality captured Time and carried Life”. (Savitri : 237)

Transformation of the Physical:

When sadhana of the Yoga of Trnasformation turns from the vital to the physical nature, the vital clamours often fall away and ‘the obscure obstructive physical and gross material consciousness appears in its unrelieved inertia’. The characteristics of the unregenerated physical nature are inertia, stupidity, narrowness and limitation, an inability to progress, doubt and disbelief, dullness, a constant forgetfulness of the spiritual experiences received thus far. The way out is to recognise that there is here an element of the universal Nature reflected in us, which has to be eliminated by bringing into it divine peace, light, power and presence from the higher consciousness above the mind. The dynamic consciousness from the beyond can alone eliminate our servitude to physical nature.

     And cast away the yoke of Matter’s law,

     The body’s rules bound not the spirit’s powers

—    Savitri : 74

“This is the only way towards transformation and fulfilment of the physical nature”. says Sri Aurobindo.

“But when from the mental and vital stage of the yoga one comes down into the physical, this condition which is native to the physical consciousness fully manifests and is persistent for long periods”.³⁷ Many are the shortcomings of the physical consciousness. Its nature is slow, inert and unwilling to change. “This negation is the very nature of the physical resistance and the physical resistance is the whole base of the denial of the Divine in the world.”³⁸

        Hard is it to persuade earth-nature’s change;

     Mortality bears ill the eternal’s touch:

     If fears the pure divine intolerance

     Of that assault of ether and fire;...

—    Savitri : 7

The physical nature always protests against the ‘sorrowless happiness’ of the higher realms and constantly ‘trembles at its naked power of Truth’, and thus

     Inflicting on the heights the abysm’s law,

     It sullies with its mire heaven’s messengers:

—    Savitri : 7

“The earth – consciousness does not want to change, so it rejects what comes down to it from above... It is only if those who have taken this yoga open themselves and are willing to change their lower nature that this unwillingness can disappear”.³⁹ The physical nature ‘finds it more comfortable to go on its own way repeating always the same old movements’—

     Repeating for ever the unconscious act,

     Prolonging for ever the unseeing will,

—    Savitri : 1

Or, again the poet expresses the physical nature as, —

     The unremembering hours repeat the old acts,

     Our dead past round our future’s ankles clings

     And drags back the new nature’s glorious stride,

     Or from its buried corpse old ghosts arise....

—    Savitri : 483

The physical nature is slow and inert, dense and heavy, full of tamas, and hence there is always a downward pull, preventing one’s upward march,—

     .... a dull gravitation drags us down

     To the blind driven inertia of our base.

—    Savitri : 34

“The inertia of the physical consciousness is always a difficult thing to eliminate — it is that, more even than any vital resistance, which keeps all the movements of the ignorance recurring even when the Knowledge is there and the will to change”.⁴⁰ The ‘tamasic  persistence’ of the physical nature is the most difficult to change, for —

     Nothing is wholly dead that once had lived;

—    Savitri : 483

Or,

     The old rejected nature still survives;

—    Ibid

Therefore, to proceed in the difficult path of physical transformation Sri Aurobindo suggests, “The first thing is to have the right inner attitude; — the rest is the will to transform oneself and the vigilance to perceive and reject all that belongs to the ego and the tamasic persistence of the lower nature”.³⁹ The physical’s tendency to inertia which dulls the action of the higher consciousness in the physical can be much mitigated by the following attitude of  the seeker.

(1)         Not to get upset when it (inertia) comes or when it stays:

(2)         To detach yourself, not only yourself above but yourself below and not identify with that,

(3)         To reject everything that is raised by the inertia and not regard it as your own or accept it at all.

These will go a long way to reducing the severity of the inertia, and help in the transformation of the physical. But meanwhile

     All now seems Nature’s massed machinery;

     An endless servitude to material rule

     And long determination’s rigid chain,

     Her firm and changeless habits aping Law,

     Her empire of unconscious deft device

     Annul the claim of man’s free human will     

—    Savitri : 20

‘Thus is the throne of the Inconscient safe; Man ‘too is a machine amid machines’ and ‘browses in the sacred fence’ “And the gold Hawk can cross the skies no more”. (Savitri : 18)

Transformation of the Subconscient:

The subconscient originates from the Inconscient:

     Then something in the inscrutable darkness stirred;

     A nameless movement, an unthought Idea

     Insistent, dissatisfied, without an aim,

     Something that wished but knew not how to be,

     Teased the Inconscient to wake Ignorance.

—    Savitri : 1-2

This ‘Something’ is the aspiration of the ‘fallen boundless self’ to be released from its prison house of the Inconscience. This aspiration rises in the form of

     A throe that came and left a quivering trace,

     Gave room for an old tired want unfilled,

     At peace in its subconscient moonless cave

     To raise its head and look for absent light....

—    Savitri : 2

About the importance of its transformation and its necessity in the Integral Yoga, Sri Aurobindo writes, “So long as there is not the supramental change down to the subconscient, complete and full, the lower nature has always a hold on some part of the being. The subconscient difficulty is the difficulty now — because the whole struggle in the general sadhana is now there. It is in the subconscient, no longer in vital or conscious physical that the resistance is all massed together.

“The inner being does not depend on the subconscient, but the outer has depended on it for thousands of lives — that is why the outer being and physical consciousness’s habit of response to the subconscient can be a formidable obstacle to the progress of the sadhana and is so with most. It keeps up the repetition of the old movements, is always pulling down the consciousness and opposing the continuity of the ascent and bringing old nature or else the tamas (non-illumiantion and no-activity) across the descent”.⁴¹ Savitri speaks of this state,—

     This world is in love with its own ignorance,

     Its darkness turns away from the saviour light,

     It gives the cross in payment for the crown.

—    Savitri : 448

“The subconscient is a dark and ignorant region so that it is natural that the obscurer movements of the Nature should have more power there.”⁴¹ It is from this ‘subconscient moonless cave’ that

     Inferno surges into the human air

     And touches all with a perverting breath.

     Grey forces like a thin miasma creep,

     Stealing through chinks in his closed mansion’s doors,

     Discolouring the walls of upper mind

     In which he lives his fair and specious life,

     And leave behind a stench of sin and death:

—    Savitri : 480

‘Not only rise in him perverse drifts of thought and formidable formless influences’ but ‘occult Shadows’ and ‘tenebrous Powers’ too invade ‘his living rooms’. Thus man harbours dangerous forces in his house. ‘Insurgent sometimes raises its huge head’ and

     The dreadful powers held down within his depths

     Become his masters or his ministers;

     Enormous they invade his bodily house.

—    Ibid

But once ‘aroused from sleep, they can be bound no more’ and

    

     The stark gloom’s grisly dire inhabitants

     Mounting into God’s light all light perturb.

—    Savitri : 481

The inner being however does not depend on the subconscient. It is the outer that depends and has depended on it for thousands of lives, that is why the outer being and physical consciousness’ habit of response to the subconscient is ‘a formidable obstacle’. It keeps up ‘the repetition of the old movements to pull down our outer being—

     Old thoughts, old longings, dead passions live again,

     Recur in sleep or move the waking man

     To words that force the barrier of the lips,

     To deeds that suddenly start and overleap

     His head of reason and his guardian will.

     An old self lurks in the new self we are;

     Hardly we escape from what we once had been:

—    Savitri : 483

Nevertheless ‘the creative eye of Eternity’ has dug wells of light in darkness’ core, —

     In the deep subconscient glowed her jewel-lamp;

     Lifted, it showed the riches of the Cave

     Where, by the miser traffickers of sense

     Unused, guarded beneath Night’s dragon paws,

     In folds of velvet darkness draped they sleep

     Whose priceless value could have saved the world.

—    Savitri : 41-2

Explaining the subconscient state Sri Aurobindo says, “As there is a superconscient (something above our present consciousness) above the head from which the higher consciousness comes down into the body, so there is also a subconscient (something below our consciousness) below the feet. Matter is under the control of this power, because it is that out of which it has been created — that is why matter seems to us to be quite unconscious... For the subconscient receives impressions of all we do or experience in our lives and keeps these impressions in it, sending up often fragments of them in sleep. It is a very important part of the being, but we can do nothing much with it by the conscious will”.⁴² Transformation of the subconscient can be done by the following:-

1.  “It is the higher Force working in us that in its natural course will open the subconscient to itself and bring down into it its control and light.”⁴²

2.  By intense aspiration man ‘calls the Godhead into his mortal life’ to ‘liberate the god imprisoned in the visionless mortal man’.

3.  By a conscious effort man must not respond to the subconscient surges—

     The inferior nature born into ignorance

     Still took too large a place, it veiled her self

     And must be pushed aside to find her soul.

—    Savitri : 487

Two are the ways to achieve this transformation, and there is no third way—

     Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven

     Or Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state.

—    Savitri : 486

(4)         Besides calling God’s golden light down into the subconscient depth of the being, the other most powerful means for its transformation is the supreme discovery, finding of one’s soul:

     But for such vast spiritual change to be,

     Out of the mystic cavern in man’s heart

     The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil

     And step into common nature’s crowded rooms

     And stand uncovered in that nature’s front

     And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life.

—    Savitri : 486-7

Only then the difficult task of transformation of the subconscient is possible : “All can be done if the God-touch is there”. (Savitri : 3)

Signs of change in the subconscient

1.  The subconscient begins to show more easily what is in it.

2.  Things rising from there come to the awareness of the mind before they can touch or affect the consciousness.

3.  The subconscient becomes less the refuge of the ignorant and obscure movements and more an automatic response of the material to the higher consciousness.

4.  It gives less covert and less passage to the suggestions of the hostile forces.

5.  It is more easy to be conscious in sleep and to have higher forms of dream experience.

6.  A waking will put on the dream state before sleeping becomes more and more effective”.⁴³

These are the signs of a change in the subconscient

Transformation of the Inconscient:

     A mind absolved from life, made calm to know,

     A heart divorced from the blindness and the pang,

     The seal of tears, the bond of ignorance,

     He turned to find that wide world-failure’s cause.

—    Savitri : 202

Sending ‘his gaze into the viewless vast, the formidable unknown Infinity’, the Traveller along the path of Yoga sees that ‘the worlds are built by its unconscious Breath’.

“There is another cause of the general inability to change which at present afflicts the sadhak, it is because the sadhana, as a general fact, has now for a long time past come down to the Inconscient; the pressure, the call is to change in that part of the nature which depends directly on the Inconscient, the fixed habits, the automatic movements, the mechanical repetitions of the nature, the involuntary reactions to life, all that seems to belong to the fixed character of man”.⁴⁴ Spiritual experiences are all right, but “they do not seem to change the nature, they only enrich the consciousness — even the realisation, on the mind level, of the Brahman seems to leave the nature almost where it was, except for a few”.⁴⁴ That is why the Integral Yoga insists ‘on the psychic transformation as the first necessity — for that does change the nature’: “As if he was born into a bright new world” (Savitri : 30) and “underwent a new and bourneless change” (Savitri : 81)

The gloomy condition, dull and despondent state of our humanity is the inertia of the Inconscient that gets a hold of man. “In their inner life the tamas from the Inconscient has created a block or a bottle – neck and they do not find any way out”.⁴⁵ Right condition and attitude, a strong interest in work or a strong interest in sadhana can be a great help in mitigating the hold of the Inconscient. It is
‘the bed-rock of Inconscience’ which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the individual and in the world to the victory of the Spirit and the Divine Work that is leading toward that victory. The onslaught of the Inconscient at the present juncture is only ‘the darkness before the dawn’. Cautioning the followers of the path, Sri Aurobindo says, “But they must remember too that the new world whose coming we envisage is not to be made of the same texture as the old and different only in pattern, and that it must come by other means — from within and not from without; so the best way is not to be too much preoccupied with the lamentable things that are happening outside, but themselves to grow within; so that they may be ready for the new world, whatever the form it may take”.⁴⁶ Incessant work towards that end only should be our aim,

     And never can the mighty Traveller rest

     And never can the mystic voyage cease

     Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man’s soul

     And the morns of God have overtaken his night.

—    Savitri : 72

And while

     ... Nature hews her way through adamant

     A divine intervention thrones above.

—    Savitri : 58

The ‘spiritual secret aid’, the ‘divine intervention’, comes in the form of the great Descent of the Truth – Consciousness which shall dig a well of the Light in the Inconscient to transform it:

     With the Truth – Light strike earth’s massive roots of trance,

     Wake a dumb self in the inconscient depths

     And raise a lost Power from its python  sleep

     That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time

     And the world manifest the unveiled Divine.

—    Savitri : 72-3

Thus is “The inconscient seal is lifted from our eyes”. (Savitri)

Transformation – its stages : The Triple Transformation:

By transformation Sri Aurobindo means “a change of consciousness radical and complete and of a certain specific kind which is so conceived as to bring about a strong and assured step forward in the spiritual evolution of the being of a greater and higher kind and of a larger sweep and completeness than what took place when a mentalised being first appeared in a vital and material animal world”.² Sri Aurobindo demarcates three steps of transformation along which this yoga has to proceed. These are—

1.  Psychic Transformation or Psychicisation,

2.  Spiritual Transformation and

3.  Supramental Transformation

These together form the Triple Transformation of the Integral Yoga. To Sri Aurobindo, “Psychicisation is not enough, it is only a beginning; spiritualisation and the descent of the higher consciousness is not enough, it is only a middle term; the ultimate achievement needs the action of the supramental Consciousness and Force. Something less than that may very well be considered enough by the individual, but it is not enough for the earth-consciousness...”⁴⁷

1.  The Psychic Transformation

Sri Aurobindo says that the psychic is the first of the transformations necessary for it facilitates immensely the other, ‘the transformation of the ordinary human into the higher spiritual consciousness’. The being of man is composed of many elements or realms. These are the inner mental, vital and physical, and the outer external nature of mind, life and body, and supporting these from behind is the inmost psychic. “But above all is the central being which uses them all for its manifestation, it is a portion of the divine Self and is hidden from the external man who replaces it by the mental and vital ego”.⁴⁸ The central being again “has two forms — above, it is Jivatman, our true being, of which we become aware when the higher self-knowledge comes, below, it is the psychic being which stands behind mind, body and life. The Jivatman is above the manifestation in life and presides over it; the psychic being stands behind the manifestation in life and supports it.”⁴⁹

        A being stood immortal in transience,

     Deathless dallying with momentary things,

     In whose wide eyes of tranquil happiness

     Which pity and sorrow could not abrogate

     Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes;

     Observer of the silent steps of the hours,

     Eternity upheld the minute’s acts

     And the passing scenes of the Everlasting’s play,...

                                        — Savitri : 526

The central being, is above the manifestation in life and presides over it;.

     The Spirit’s conscious representative,

     God’s delegate in our humanity,

     Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent’s ray,...

                                   — Ibid

Equal to ‘earth’s bliss and grief’, the central being came here

     To play at ball with Time and Circumstance.

     A joy in the world her master movement here,

     The passion of the game lighted her eyes;...

     All things she saw as a masquerade of Truth

     Disguised in the costumes of Ignorance,

     Crossing the years to immortality:

— Ibid

Yet knowing and pitying the toil of mind and life,

     As a mother feels and shares her children’s lives,

     She puts forth a small portion of herself,

     A being no bigger than the thumb of man

     Into a hidden region of the heart

     To face the pang and to forget the bliss,

     To share the suffering and endure earth’s wounds

     And labour mid the labour of the stars.

                              — Ibid

This is the soul of man, the psychic, a portion of the central being that has descended into the manifestation to support its evolution and share life’s sufferings, and ‘takes on itself their anguish and defeat’. The psychic is ‘the greatness of the soul in Time and through world’s joys and sufferings it moves tardily to its ‘parent Sun’:

     This in us laughs and weeps, suffers the stroke,

     Exults in victory, struggles for the crown;

     Identified with the mind and body and life,

     It takes on itself their anguish and defeat,

     Bleeds with Fate’s whips and hangs upon the cross,

     Yet is the unwoundered and immortal self

      Supporting the actor in the human scene.

—    Savitri : 526-7

Let none say that man alone suffers here in life; creation is a holocaust of the Supreme.

‘The psychic part of us is something that comes direct from the Divine and is in touch with the Divine. In its origin it is the nucleus pregnant with divine possibilities that supports this lower triple manifestation of mind, life and body’. However, it is not in direct touch with the supramental plane but ‘gives to it the readiest response’. Hence Sri Aurobindo insists so much on the realisation of the psychic, its opening and its coming to the front so as to govern mind, life and body and psychicise man’s nature. Then only the other two transformations can be attained; so, first.

     Find out thy soul, recover thy hid self,

     In silence seek God’s meaning in thy depths,

     Then mortal nature change to the divine.

—    Savitri : 476

To requote the Mother : “It is indispensable that each one finds his psychic and unites with it definitively. It is through the psychic that the supramental will manifest itself”.

For the awareness of one’s psychic being the steps suggested by Integral Yoga are an inward movement, entry into the inner countries, concentration in the heart centre and an offering of all one is and has to the Divine. First the inward movement:

     Then Savitri surged out of her body’s wall

     And stood a little span outside herself

     And looked into her subtle being’s depths

     And in its heart as in a lotus-bud

     Divined her secret and mysterious soul.

—    Savitri : 488-9

This is the preparation for the great and difficult entry into the inner worlds. ‘To find the inner self concealed in sense, Savitri forces ‘her way through body to the soul’. As she enters, she is challenged by all sorts of hostile forces, powers of darkness,—

     A dreadful murmur rose like a dim sea;

     The Seprent of the threshold hissing rose,

     A fatal guardian hood with monstrous coils,

     The hounds of darkness growled with jaws agape,....

     And wild beast roarings thrilled the blood with fear

     And menace muttered in a dangerous tongue.

—    Savitri :  489

‘In a simple purity of emptiness’ and with ‘the prostrate yearning of her surrendered heart’ one has to pass onward into the inner worlds. The piercing of the veil between the outer consciousness and the inner being is one of the crucial movements in yoga. By this inward movement one crosses the border within, ‘into a dense of subtle Matter packed’—

     A cavity filled with a blind mass of power,

     An opposition of misleading gleams,

     A heavy barrier of unseeing sight

     She forced her way through body to the soul.

—    Ibid

As the crust of the outer nature cracks, as the walls of inner separation break down, the inner light gets through, the inner fire burns in the heart; the soul begins to unveil itself. When the psychic personality reaches its full stature, it manifests itself as the central being...:

     In this human portion of divinity

     She seats the greatness of the Soul of Time

     To uplift from light to light, from power to power

     Till on a heavenly peak it stands, a king.

—    Savitri : 527

The finding of the soul has been given a magnificent and fiery description in the following verse—

     Then through a tunnel dug in the last rock

     She came out where there shone a deathless sun.

     A house was there all made of flame and light

     And crossing a wall of doorless living fire

     There suddenly she met her secret soul.

—    Savitri : 525-6

This ‘wall of doorless living fire’ is the psychic fire which one must pass through to have realisation of the psychic. Another expression is found in the following verse—

     Follow the world’s winding highway to its source.

     There in the silence few have ever reached,

     Thou shalt see the Fire burning on the bare stone

     And the deep cavern of thy secret soul.

—    Savitri : 501

The psychic realisation, according to Sri Aurobindo, is of the highest importance in the Yoga of Transformation. For it is the psychic realisation alone that leads to realisation of the central being. In the house of flame and light, in this sanctum sanctorium of the psychic, the two (‘human portion of divinity’ the psychic and ‘the Soul of Time’ the Jivatman) merge into each other—

     Here in this chamber of flame and light they met;

     They looked upon each other, knew themselves,

     The secret deity and its human part,

     The calm immortal and the struggling soul.

     Then with a magic transformation’s speed

     They rushed into each other and grew one.

—    Savitri : 527

The two forms of the central being thus now stand merged and ‘grew one’.

In this new status as the ‘human portion of divinity’ the psychic and the ‘Soul of Time’ the Jivatma are merged they grow into an abler and more powerful central being and now could call

     ...the mighty Mother of the worlds

     To make this earthly tenement her house.

—    Savitri : 528

With the psychic realisation and its union with the central being there comes a much sought after experience,—

     As in a flash from a supernal light,

     A living image of the original Power,

     A face, a form came down into her heart

     And made of it its temple and pure abode.

—    Ibid

Realisation of the psychic brings several changes in the being. First, it brings the soul’s release from Ignorance: “His soul stood free, a witness and a king”. (Savitri : 33)  Secondly, by uniting with the central being there comes the spirit’s freedom and greatness:

     His being towered into pathless heights,

     Naked of its vesture of humanity.

—    Savitri : 80

The first is a psycho-spiritual transformation while the second is a greater spiritual change.

One may realise the psychic consciousness by a concentration in the heart centre. “To become consciousness of the psychic being, one must want do so, make one’s mind as silent as possible, and enter deep into the heart of one’s being, beyond sensations and thoughts. One must form the habit of silent concentration and descend into the depths of one’s being”,⁵¹ Sri Aurobindo  says, “The psychic opening through the heart puts us primarily into connection with the individual Divine, the Divine in his inner relation with us”.⁵² In the psychic transformation there are three main elements: “(1) the opening of the occult inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, so that one becomes aware of all that lies behind the surface mind, life and body”, the occult inner region where ‘Mind screened no more the shoreless infinite’:

     There came not form or any mounting voice;

     There only were Silence and the Absolute.

     Out of that stillness mind new-born arose

     And woke to truths once inexpressible,

     And forms appeared,  dumbly significant,

     A seeing thought, a self-revealing voice,

—    Savitri : 34

And,

     The superconscient realms of motionless Peace

     Where judgment ceases and the word is mute

     And the Unconceived lies pathless and alone.

—    Savitri : 33-4

Or,

     And flame-wrapt outbursts of the immortal Word

     And flashes of an occult revealing Light

     Approached him from the unreachable Secrecy.

—    Savitri : 37

“(2) the opening of the psychic being or soul by which it comes forward and governs the mind, life and body turning all to the Divine”—

     Out of the mystic cavern in man’s heart

     The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil

     And step into common nature’s crowded rooms

     And stand uncovered in that nature’s front

     And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life

—    Savitri : 486-7

“(3) the opening of the whole lower being to the spiritual truth — this last may be called the psycho – spiritual part of the change. It is quite possible for the psychic transformation to take one beyond the individual into the cosmic... But all that is a result of the opening to the spiritual above....”⁵³  In the psychic transformation one does not live in the summit consciousness of the spiritual because psychicisation is ‘the change that comes from within by the psychic dominating the mind, vital and physical’. However, some spiritual opening takes place ‘by an infiltration or reflection of the spiritual light and truth in mind, life and body’.

The changes that psychicisation or psychic transformation brings in one’s beings and nature are : one grows conscious of one’s self, no longer confuses it with the mind or the vital; it gives true bhakti for the Divine, which is not a mental or vital love, making its demand; the psychic has true love for the Divine, it makes no demand, has no reservation. It compels the mental and the vital to change and turns them Godward. It brings in the katharsis of all the dross from the emotional being and thereby purifies it. The psychic conversion keeps the consciousness always turned towards the light and ‘makes the right attitude spontaneous and natural and abiding’. A very important change this transformation brings is ‘an ineffable plasticity within’ expressed by ‘a feeling of velvety softness’. Sri Aurobindo explains this feeling, “It means a modification of the substance of the consciousness especially in the vital-emotional part, and such a modification prolonged or repeated till it became permanent would mean a great step in what I call the psychic transformation of the being. It is just these modifications in the inner substance that make transformation possible”.⁵⁴ This plasticity within is a ‘free openness to the divine working from above’.

But for this to happen there is need of ‘the equal unwavering fire of aspiration’ to be lit deep within. This fire is the psychic fire. Sri Aurobindo says that the psychic fire is the fire of ‘aspiration, purification and Tapasya’ which comes from the psychic being. ‘The psychic fire is not the being, it is something proper to it’. The central fire in the psychic is the great fire of purification and concentration, the psychic fire which all must pass through so as to reach the Mother permanently and completely’.  Listen to the poetical description of the same.

     Then through a tunnel dug in the last rock

     She came out where there shone a deathless sun.

     A house was there all made of flame and light

     And crossing a wall of doorless living fire

     There suddenly she met her secret soul.

—    Savitri : 525-6

The ‘wall of doorless living fire’, the psychic fire has to be crossed to find one’s psychic; then our soul acts from its ‘mysterious chamber’ and

     Its influence pressing on our heart and mind

     Pushes them to exceed their mortal selves.

     It seeks for Good and Beauty and for God;

     We see beyond self’s walls our limitless self,

     We gaze through our world’s glass at half-seen vasts,

     We hunt for the Truth behind apparent things.

     Our inner Mind dwells in a larger light,

     Its brightness looks at us through hidden doors;

     Our members luminous grow and Wisdom’s face

     Appears in the doorway of the mystic ward:

—    Savitri : 485

Such are the changes psychic realisation brings and this could graft ‘two puissant wings’ upon our crawling life and man standing ‘on a high roof of things’ “saw the light of a spiritual sun”.

II Spiritual Transformation:

With the psychic realisation and the psychic coming to the front, there begins psychicisation of nature and parts of the being. The main elements or signs of the psychic transformation in man are dominance of mind, life and body by the psychic – “Humanity framed his movements less and less” (Savitri : 26), thereby turning all the parts of nature towards the Divine; bringing true love for the Divine; bringing right attitude and a spontaneous psychic vision; bringing plasticity of consciousness; ‘ego-centricity’ is replaced by the psychic consciousness; etc. Then

     The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him;

     They were his life’s pattern and his privilege.

—    Ibid

In fact the psychic is ‘the change that comes from within by the psychic dominating the mind, vital and physical’, while ‘the spiritual is the change that descends from above’.

Even in the psychic transformation one can rise above by a sort of going above of the mental, vital, physical being and a return, but one does not yet live above in the summit consciousness. This is possible only by the spiritual transformation.

Spiritual transformation is a two-way process. “The practice of this yoga is double — one side is of an ascent of the consciousness to the higher planes, the other is that of a descent of the power of the higher planes into the earth-consciousness so as to drive out the Power of darkness and ignorance and transform the nature”.⁵⁵ All the consciousness of mind, life and body “has to rise so as to meet the higher consciousness; the higher consciousness has also to descend into mind, into life, into Matter. In that way the barriers will be removed and the higher consciousness will be able to take up the whole lower nature and transform it by the power of the supermind”.⁵⁵ The field of operation of the spiritual transformation is again double. The first is its operative field from above the mind to Overmind; all the ranges of consciousness between mind and Overmind form the first operational field of spiritual transformation. The second field of its operation and working is in the higher hemisphere of Truth,  Consciousness and Ananda. The entire operation and working of the spiritual transformation may, therefore, be viewed as, first, the transformation in the world of ignorance, and second, the transformation in the world of Truth. The former Sri Aurobindo calls spiritual transformation while the latter Supramental transformation that alone can achieve the integral transformation of the being and its nature.

The whole mechanism and working of spiritual transformation finds expression in the following words of Sri Aurobindo: “There are two movements one an ascension of the lower consciousness to meet the higher, the other the descent of the higher consciousness into the lower... When the higher consciousness descends or is intensely felt, there is usually an opening of the limited personal being into the cosmic consciousness – one feels a wide and infinite being which alone exists, the identification with the body and even the sense of the body disappears, the limited personal consciousness is lost in the Cosmic Existence”.⁵⁶

        While there, one can be wider than the world;

     While there, one is one’s own infinity

     His centre was no more in earthly mind;

—    Savitri : 32

‘Absorbed no more in the moment-ridden flux’, the seeker

     ... saw all things and creatures as itself

     And knew all thoughts and word as its own voice...

     There all the truths unite in a single Truth,

     And all ideas rejoin Reality

—    Savitri : 31-2

Thus is attained ‘a firm spiritual poise’. “It is the aim of sadhana that the consciousness should rise out of the body and take its stand above, — spreading in the wideness everywhere, not limited to the body...”⁵⁷ that is the liberation of the imprisoned consciousness from the body-formula. Listen to the poet now,—

     Once sepulchered alive in brain and flesh

     She had risen up from body, mind and life;

     She was no more a Person in a world,

     She had escaped into infinity.

—    Savitri : 548

Or again-

     Out of the mind she rose to escape its law

     That it might sleep in some deep shadow of self

     Or fall silent in the silence of the Unseen,

     High she attained and stood from Nature free.

—    Savitri : 543

Once in that high ‘spiritual poise’.

     Lightnings of glory after glory burned,

     Experience was a tale of blaze and fire,

     Air rippled round the argosies of the Gods,

     Strange riches sailed to him from the Unseen,

—    Savitri : 37

The great secret of this Yoga is that without  the psychic coming to the front, ‘ascent to viewless heights’ of consciousness or ‘spiritual mastery’ and transformation can never be achieved. This cardinal truth finds a beautiful poetic expression in the following verse,—

     The soul must soar sovereign above the form

     And climb to summits beyond mind’s half-sleep;

     Our hearts we must inform with heavenly strength,

     Surprise the animal with the occult god.

     Then kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice,

     Calling the powers of a bright hemisphere,

     We shall shed the discredit of our mortal state...

—    Savitri : 171-2

All the salient features of Sri Aurobindo’s concept of integral transformation lie compacted in this single verse. The various operations of the process of transformation have been described here; these are — first, the upward movement of the psychic consciousness to overhead planes beyond mind’s ignorant and limited consciousness – this is the ascent part of the yoga. Then ‘kindling the gold tongue of sacrifice’, the powers from higher realms of consciousness are to be brought down into our ‘animal’ earth-consciousness. Finally the magic transformation of our nature and ‘we shall shed the discredit of our mortal state’.

Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga of Transformation has two aspects, first ascent to various planes of consciousness to the highest and then descent of the Truth, Light and Force from the highest plane into the earth-consciousness so as to transform the latter. Sri Aurobindo lays the greatest importance to the descent movement for without that transformation is not possible. With every ascent of the consciousness there can be a corresponding descent of the same. This descending consciousness not only gives an uplifting push to the lower but also puts on it a transforming influence. Sri Aurobindo says, the descent is that of the powers of the higher consciousness which is above the head, “all that belongs to the higher consciousness comes by a descent from above, not only the spiritual peace and silence, but the Light, the Power, the Knowledge, the higher seeing and thought, the Ananda come from above”.⁵⁸ These two movements find poetical expressions in the following two verses:-

1.  Ascent:-

     An arrow leaping through eternity

     Suddenly shot from the tense bow of Time,

     A ray returning to its parent sun.

     Opponent of that glory of escape,

     The black Inconscient swung its dragon tail

     Lashing a slumberous Infinite by its force

     Into the deep obscurities of form...

     One – pointed to the immaculate Delight,

     Questing for God as for a splendid prey,

     He mounted burning like a cone of fire.

—    Savitri : 79-80

2.  Descent

     As thus it rose, to meet him bare and pure

     A strong Descent leaped down. A Might, a Flame

     A Beauty half-visible with deathless eyes,

     A violent Ecstasy, a Sweetness dire,

     Enveloped him with its stupendous limbs

     And penetrated nerve and heart and brain

     That thrilled and fainted with the epiphany:

—    Savitri : 81

This yoga always insists on an ‘opening’, an opening inwards of the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical to the psychic, and an opening upward to what is above the mind. “The opening of the heart centre releases the psychic being which proceeds to make us aware of the Divine within us and of the higher Truth above us. For the highest spiritual Self is not even behind our personality and bodily existence but is above it and altogether exceeds it. The highest of the inner centres is in the head, just as the deepest is in the heart; but the centre which opens directly to the Self is above the head, altogether outside the physical body, in what is called the subtle body”.⁵⁹ The Self has two aspects. ‘One is static, a condition of wide peace, freedom, silence; it is the silent Self unaffected by any action or experience; it stands back detached’,

     Indifferent to the sorrow and delight,

     Untempted by the marvel and the call,

     Immobile it beheld the flux of things,

     Calm and apart supported all that is

—    Savitri : 36

The second aspect of this Self is dynamic which originates and contains the whole cosmic action. ‘Once one gets into the universal Self, one is liberated from ego; ‘that is the extinction or nirvana of the ego’. This is the first spiritual change,

     In the brief stade between a death and birth

     A first perfection’s stage is reached at last;

     Out of the wood and stone of our nature’s stuff

     A temple is shaped where the high gods could live.

—    Savitri : 531

Ego is displaced and ‘a firm ground was made for Heaven’s descending might’  and

     The original Mystery wore her human face.

     Thus was she lost within to separate self;

     Her mortal ego perished in God’s night.

     Only a body was left, the ego’s shell

     Afloat mid drift and foam of the world-sea.

—    Savitri : 552

The egoless state is described —

     There was no will behind the word and act,

     No thought formed in her brain to guide the speech:

     An impersonal emptiness walked and spoke in her

—    Savitri : 551 - 2

Thus the opening upward does not lead to peace, silence and Nirvana only’. There is another side too. Here the sadhak becomes aware not only of an infinite peace, silence, wideness above, but also he can become aware of a vast Force, a vast Light, a vast Ananda and all this can descend into us. “All these things together make what we call the higher spiritual or Divine Consciousness... This upward opening puts us into direct relation with the whole Divine and can create in us the divine consciousness and a new birth or births of the spirit”.⁶⁰ This is the dynamic aspect of the Self. Nirvana or the silent Self alone does not lead to transformation—

     Content abide not with one conquered realm;

     Adventure all to make the whole world thine,

     To break into greater kingdoms turn thy force.

—    Savitri : 536

Sri Aurobindo clearly points out the two paths which the opening upward to spiritualisation lays before the sadhak. One is the way to Nirvana, extinction from world-existence; the other is the path of Transformation, the world-fulfilment. One has to make a choice between the two, to choose the way of Nirvana or to move beyond for the divine fulfilment of existence—

     She might be nought or new-become the All,

     Or if the omnipotent Nihil took a shape

     Emerge as someone and redeem the world.

—    Savitri : 549

Not an extinction in the Nihil but emerging from there as ‘someone’ is the way to transformation,

     A memory of being still was there

     And kept her separate from nothingness:

—    Ibid

Thus could she emerge from the Nihil for the work of transformation:

     This shadow of herself so close to nought

     Could be again self’s point d’appui to live,

     Return out of the Inconceivable

     And be what some mysterious vast might choose.

—    Ibid

“Even, she might learn what the mystic cipher held’ and with that knowledge and power might ‘redeem the world’.

Sri Aurobindo, however, gives a word of caution regarding the sadhana of the spiritual transformation. He says, “In this process of the descent from above and the working it is most important not to rely entirely on oneself.... If indeed there is the assent of the sadhak to the Divine working alone and the submission or surrender to that guidance, then all go smoothly. This assent and a rejection of all egoistic force or forces that appeal to the ego are the safeguard throughout the sadhana... This is the reason why in this yoga we insist so much on what we call Samarpana... If the heart centre is fully opened and the psychic is always in control, then there is no question; all is safe...”⁶¹

The spine is the main channel of the ascent and descent of the consciousness and the Force. One must concentrate in the head and later above the head; ‘it brings about silence of the surface mind, opens up an inner, larger, deeper  mind within which is more capable of receiving spiritual experience and spiritual knowledge. Then one has to open the silent mental consciousness upwards to all  the planes and ranges of consciousness above the mind. With every rising one enters into a new consciousness and brings the reversal of consciousness. Reversal of consciousness is a must in this sadhana, and that is the evidence of the progress. Thus begins the ‘epic climb of human soul’, the cosmic pilgrimage.

Spiritual ranges of Consciousness :—

1.  The Higher Mind:

The first stage of the ascent of ‘our normal mentality’ is into a higher Mind. This is a mind no longer of mingled light and obscurity. It is a ‘luminous thought-mind’, not limited by self-critical ratiocination or step by step logical  motion towards a conclusion. There is no mechanism of implied deductions and inferences. ‘Its most characteristic movement is a mass ideation, a system or totality of truth-seeing at a single view’. Sri Aurobindo gives two examples of its working : ‘the potent thought and will of health replaces its faith in illness and its consent to illness, or the idea of strength calls in... power, motion, vibration of strength...’ In this way the Higher Mind ‘charges the whole being with a new and superior consciousness, lays a foundation of change, prepares it for a superior truth of existence’.

2.  The Illumined Mind:

This is a Mind no longer of higher thought but of spiritual light; ‘a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace’. There is ‘a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge’, unlike the ‘comparatively slow and deliberate process of the higher Mind’. The Illumined Mind does not work primarily by thought, but by vision:

     There are vasts of vision and eternal suns,

     Oceans of an immortal luminousness,

     Flame-hills assaulting heaven with their peaks,

     There dwelling all becomes a blaze of sight;

     A burning head of vision leads the mind,

     Thought trails behind it its long comet tail;

     The heart glows, an illuminate and seer,

     And sense is kindled into identity.

—    Savitri : 659-60

The consciousness of the seer, the perceptual power of the inner sight, is greater than the consciousness of thinker, the perceptual power of thought.

3.  The Intuitive Mind:

It is from this Mind that the higher and the illumined Mind derive the knowledge which they turn into thought and sight and bring down to us for the mind’s transmutation. Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity. It is a blaze of lightnings ‘breaking into a  great mass of ignorance or through a veil of nescience’; it is a sea or mass of ‘stable-lightnings’. When intuition begins to descend in response to the ascending consciousness, it comes as a play of lightning-flashes, and the judgment of reason becomes inapplicable:

     A highest flight climbs to a deepest view:

     In a wide opening of its native sky

     Intuition’s lightnings range in a bright pack

     Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,

     Its fiery edge of seeing absolute

     Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self,

     Rummages the sky-recesses of the brain,

     Lights up the occult chambers of the heart;

     Its spear-point ictus of discovery

     Pressed on the cover of name, the screen of form,

     Strips bare the secret soul of all that is.

—    Savitri : 660

It makes of Thought ‘revelation’s sun-bright eyes’; then

     The Word, a mighty and inspiringVoice,

     Enters Truth’s inmost cabin of privacy

     And tears away the veil from God and life.

—    Ibid

Intuition’s four-fold power stands revealed from the above verses. The powers of Institution are — (1) a power of revelatory truth-seeing, ‘hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs’; (2) a power of inspiration, or truth-hearing, ‘the Word, a mighty and inspiring Voice’; (3) a power of truth-touch, ‘pressed on the cover of name, the screen of form’; (4) a power of true and automatic discrimination, ‘strips bare the secret soul of all that is’ and ‘tears away the veil from God and life’. These are the four potencies of Intuition as Sri Aurobindo would say.

4.  The Overmind:

The next step of the ascent of consciousness takes one to the Overmind. This is a power of the cosmic consciousness, ‘a principle of global knowledge which carries in it a delegated light from the supramental Gnosis’. It is, therefore, by an opening into the cosmic consciousness that the overmind ascent and descent can be made wholly possible. ‘A vast horizontal expansion of the consciousness into some totality of the spirit’ has also to be attained. When the Overmind descends, ‘the centralising ego-sense is entirely subordinated, lost in largeness of being and finally abolished; a wide cosmic perception and feeling of boundless universal self and movement replaces it’. Listen to the poet’s description of this plane:-

     Then stretches the boundless finite’s last expanse,

     The cosmic empire of the Overmind,

     Time’s buffer state bordering Eternity,

     Too vast for the experience of man’s soul:

     All here gathers beneath one golden sky;

     The Powers that build the cosmos station take

     In its house of infinite possibility;

—    Ibid

In the Overmind consciousness

     Thought crowds in masses seized by one regard;

     All Time is one body, Space a single look

     There is the Godhead’s universal gaze;

     And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:

—    Ibid

“The overmind change is the final consummating movement of the dynamic spiritual transformation; it is the highest possible status-dynamic of the Spirit in the spiritual-mind plane. It takes up all that is in the three steps below it (the Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind) and raises their characteristic workings to their highest and largest power, adding to them a universal wideness of consciousness and force, a harmonious concert of knowledge, a more manifold delight of being. But there are certain reasons arising from its own characteristic status and power that prevent it from being the final possibility of the spiritual evolution. It is a power, though the highest power, of the lower hemisphere; although its basis is a cosmic unity, its action is an action of division and interaction, an action taking its stand on the play of the multiplicity. Its play is like that of all Mind, a play of possibilities...”⁶²

The entire process of spiritual transformation as poeticised in Savitri may be summed up as: “First, there must be a conversion inwards, a going within to find the inmost psychic being and bring it out to the front.... Next there must be an ascension a series of conversions upwards and a turning down to convert the lower parts... Going upwards, one passes beyond the human  mind and at each stage of  the ascent, there is a conversion into a new consciousness and an infusion of this new consciousness into the whole of nature. Thus rising beyond intellect through illumined higher mind to the intuitive consciousness, we begin to look at everything not from the intellect range or through intellect as an instrument, but from a greater intuitive height and through an intuitivised will, feeling, emotion, sensation and physical contact. So, proceeding from Intuition to a greater overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact. But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there—once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and conversion of consciousness is no longer needed, though a farther divine progression, even an infinite development is still possible.”⁶³ The first part of this statement is narrated by the epic in Book I (cantos 3 to 5) part of Book III and Book II, and VII and in Book X. The last part of the statement is described intercurrently with the second part and interspersed throughout the poem and in detail in Book XI.

III. Supramental Transformation:

“Yoga is the art of conscious self – finding”. During his unique exploration Sri Aurobindo discovers another world not found on ‘any map’, ‘a new dimension of our kingdom’, which he calls the Supermind and which he wants to bring down on to the earth:

     There is a being beyond the being of mind,

     An Immeasurable cast into many forms,

     A miracle of the multitudinous One.

     There is a consciousness mind cannot touch,   

     Its speech cannot utter nor its thought reveal.  

     It has no home on earth, no centre in man,

     Yet is the source of all things thought and done,

     The fount of the creation and its works.

—    Savitri : 705

Sri Aurobindo tells us that Supermind alone can bring a decisive change in the evolution of the earth-consciousness. It”will have the power to transform our material world and to transform it as thoroughly and as lastingly, and for the better, as the mind did when it appeared for the first time in Matter.”⁶⁵

He, however, cautions that one cannot overleap any of the intermediate stages to reach the supramental. All the planes of consciousness have to be attained. Certainly, the overmind descent is necessary for those who want the supramental change. Unless the overmind opens, there can be no direct supramental opening of the consciousness. For Overmind is ‘the boundless finite’s last expanse,’ and it is ‘the cosmic empire of the Overmind’ that fences ‘eternity from the toil of Time’:

     There is the Godhead’s universal gaze

     And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:

     The line that parts and joins the hemispheres

     Closes in on the labour of the Gods

     Fencing eternity from the toil of Time

—    Savitri : 660-1

As Overmind is the zone that joins the two hemispheres, as the Overmind ‘closes in on the labour of the Gods’ in Time, that zone must be reached to have entry into the

                   ....glorious kingdom of eternal light

     And ruler, ruled by none, the Truth supreme,

     Omnipotent, omniscient and alone,...

—    Ibid : 661

This the ‘golden country’ of the Supermind – ‘the sun for which all darkness waits’, ‘the imperishable harmony’ wherein all the world’s contradictions meet, ‘the Truth of which the world’s truths are shreds’, ‘the light of which the world’s ignorance is the shade’, ‘the Bliss for which the world’s derelict sorrows yearn’:

     There the perfection born from eternity

     Calls to it the perfection born in Time

—    Ibid

These are ‘the realms of the immortal Supermind’.

Towards Supramentalisation:—

The poem raises the most fundamental and cardinal difficulty staring us in the face—

     How shall earth-nature and man’s nature rise

     To the celestial levels, yet earth abide?

     Heaven and earth towards each other gaze

     Across a gulf that few can cross, none touch

—    Savitri : 688

To approach, realise and attain the supramental, man must first consent to be spiritual i.e. must have a true attitude, —  psychic, unegoistic, open only to the Divine, and then change all the nature, keeping it turned to the Divine till the whole being can live in the Divine. Then ‘open up to the Intuition and the Overmind, so that these may make the whole being and the whole nature ready for the supramental change’. But ‘few can climb to an unperishing sun, and channel to earth-mind the wizard ray’. “The heroes and the demi-gods are few” and human nature grounded to inconscient base is unwilling to change—

     Heaven’s call is rare, rarer the heart that heeds;

     The doors of light are sealed to common mind

     And earth’s needs nail to earth the human mass,

—    Ibid : 689

Even when ‘some strong hand’ offers to raise men ‘to breathe heaven-air’,

     They slide back to the mud from which they climbed;

     In the mud of which they are made, whose law they know.

—    Ibid

Human nature, as it is, forms the bed-rock of resistance that impedes the transforming action. For

     To be the common man they think the best,

     To live as others live is their delight. 

     For most are built on Nature’s earthly plan

     And owe small debt to a superior plane;

     The human average is their level pitch,

     A thinking animal’s material range.

—    Ibid

Yet in the ‘ever-mounting hierarchy’ of the evolution, ‘in the stark economy of cosmic life’, human state is necessary:

     If men were not and all were brilliant gods,

     The mediating stair would then be lost

     By which the spirit awake in Matter winds

     Accepting the circuits of the Middle Way,

     By heavy toil and slow aeonic steps

     Reaching the bright miraculous fringe of God

     Into the glory of the Oversoul.

—    Ibid : 690

Therefore, Sir Aurobindo has said many times that one should not be under the illusion that all shall be raised to the supramental level, for then

                                         ... it would break

     The settled balance of created things;

     The perpetual order of the universe

     Would tremble, and a gap yawn in woven Fate.

—    Ibid : 689-90

As man is’barred out from his own inner depths’,

     He cannot look on the face of the Unknown.

     How shall he see with the Omniscient’s eyes,

     How shall he will with the Omnipotent’s force?

—    Ibid : 690

To achieve this end one must

     Arise upon a ladder of greater worlds

     To the infinity where no world can be.

—    Ibid : 694

and then they shall be ‘the high forerunners, the heads of Time’,

     The great deliverers of earth-bound mind,

     The high transfigures of human clay,

     The first-born of a new supernal race

—    Ibid : 705

The working of the Supermind would be only the establishment of  a new principle of consciousness and a new order of conscious beings and this new principle would evolve its own forms and powers in the terrestrial order. “The whole of humanity cannot be changed at once. What has to be done is to bring the Higher Consciousness down into the earth – consciousness and establish it there as a constant realised force. Just as mind and life have been established and embodied in Matter, so to establish and embody the supramental Force,”⁶⁶ is the evolutionary goal. To requote Sri Aurobindo, “The supramental world has to be formed or created in us by the Divine Will as the result of a constant expansion and self - perfecting.”¹⁴

     Then in the process of evolving Time

     All shall be drawn into a single plan,

     A divine harmony shall be earth’s law...

—    Ibid : 707

“All can be done if the god-touch is there.” (Savitri: 3)

Finally comes the high prophecy, role of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo as the builders of this new supramental world:

     The incarnate dual Power shall open God’s door,

     Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.

     The superman shall wake in mortal man 

     And manifest the hidden demi-god

     Or grow into the God-Light and God-Force

     Revealing the secret deity in the cave.

     Then shall the earth be touched by the Supreme

—    Ibid : 705

‘Thus shall the earth open to divinity’ and

     The Spirit shall take up the human play,

     This earthly life become the life divine.

—    Ibid : 711

Main conditions of preparation for the Supramental Change:

1.  Get the psychic being in front and keep it there, putting its power on mind, vital and body...

2.  Eliminate egoism in all its forms — let the ego-centric outlook disappear in wideness, impersonality, the sense of the cosmic divine, the perception of universal forces...

3.  Find in place of ego the true being — a portion of the Divine, issued from the World – Mother...

4.  This sense of being a portion of the Divine and an instrument should be free from all pride, sense or claim of ego or assertion of superiority, demand or desire.

5.  Open up to the Intuition and the Overmind to make the whole being and the whole nature ready for the supramental change.

6.  Allow the consciousness quietly to develop and widen...

7.  Calm, discrimination, detchment (not indifference) are all very important. Intensity of aspiration should be there. No hurry, nor inertia.

8.  Let the power of the Mother work in the being and aspire especially for the elimination of all obscurity and unconsciousness in the nature.