Indian
Philosphy
by
Brahmasrii
Dr K C Varadachari
However it is to be noted that whenever Sri Aurobindo
tries to expound the mystic or occult reality he utilises the
super-consciousness or his supramental consciousness, not the humanistic jargon
so famous and current to the modern intellectuals both within and without the
academies and universities. It is basically necessary to realize that Sri
Aurobindo uses that kind of knowledge that discerns by identity the real in its
integral and concrete status what the intellect would only understand by means
its knowledge by difference. His epistemological preparation is about the most
striking evidence of his being more true as a world philosopher than the
encyclopaedic intellectuality of even the most brilliant of the philosophers
who could best be described as brilliant mediocres (humanists).
Whether
the knowing by identity is possible to all mankind is problematical. But that
it has been one of the most concrete possessions of the Mystics and Indian
Seers of the original Darshanas is undoubted. Much of our failures to grasp the
intuitive axioms of the several Darshanas today lies in this lack of pramana,
the capacity to know by identity -- that which the Isavasyopanisad has
stated most luminously:
Sa paryagat
sukram akayam avranam asnaviram suddham apapaviddham Kavirmanisi paribhuh
svyambhur yathatathyato’rthan vyadadhat sasvatibhyah samabhyah ||8||
“It is he that has gone
abroad-That which is bright bodiless, without scar of imperfection, without
sinews pure, unpierced by evil. The Seer, the Thinker, the One who becomes
everywhere, the Self-existent has ordered objects perfectly according to their
nature from years sempiternal."
SRI
AUROBINDO
Wherein Lies His Greatness?
SRI AUROBINDO, the sage of Pondicherry was a poet,
professor, political worker, prophet and yogi. As a poet he had written much
and in his last days was working at an epic poem, Savitri. He had written on
the nature and scope of future poetry wherein he claimed that true poetry would
hereafter bring down the supramental rhythms and express them in words charged
with its force. As a political worker he had suffered and fought for Independence in the first
decade of this century and left the field for what he himself felt to be a
greater work for the world. His last will and testament to the nation on the
eve of his retirement from politics in 1910 bears witness to the prophetic
vision of the emergence of a new figure in the Indian political science who
would lead the country to Independence. It was not an accident, according to
Sri Aurobindo, that Indian Independence was achieved and
declared
on his birthday 15th August, 1947. In the world political scene he opposed
the dictatorship of Hitler and forecasted his collapse.
His
period of Yoga from 1910 to 1950 was most fruitful. From 1910 to 1921 he was
engaged in the most arduous task of realizing to the full the importance of the
religious and spiritual heritage. Though as early as 1906 he had glimpses of
the deep and abiding presence of the Divine Personality within himself yet the
period of preparation continued. His own fundamental realization on siddhi came
only on 24th
November 1926. But from 1914, on the eve of the first World War,
he presented to the world his system or Darsanam in the pages of his journal
ARYA. His magnificent contributions covered all branches of thought and
culture. The Life Divine, The Essays on the Gita, The Secret of the Veda,
Commentaries on the Upanishads Isa nad Kena, and translations of the Hymns of
the Veda, and the Synthesis of Yoga, are epoch-making in Oriental thought. In
the field of controversy he contributed a series of articles entitled the
Defence of Indian Culture. To political theory his contributions were the Ideal
of Human Unity and the Psychology of
Social Development (republished recently with the title
“Human Cycle”). Almost all these writings have been revised and published in
separate volumes except the Secret of the Veda, and the Kenopanishad. His poems
also have been published in two sumptuous volumes.
Briefly
his most important contribution to philosophic thought lies in his integral
philosophy. His integral philosophy aims at explaining the whole creative
process as the manifestation of the One Immortal Spirit or Brahman. Though one,
Brahman is eternally many, and as One or the principle of Oneness He upholds,
manifests, and establishes the Oneness of the many. The many are real, even as
the Oneness is real. The world is a real world, the souls are real souls but
they are a unity in the One, they are the multiplicity of the One. The world
process or Change is a creative change, not a phenomenal projection merely.
Divine evolutionism which Sri Aurobindo offers as the explanation is different
from the ordinary evolutionary theory of the biologists and the logical
evolutionary theory of the Idealists and the creative evolutionism of Bergson
and the emergent evolutionism of Lloyd Morgan. The process of evolution is not
merely an
ascent of the inner impulse (elan vital) from a
homogeneous undifferentiated matter or life to the complex heterogeneous
organisms, nor the ascent of the logical ideal by a process of dialectical
integration through opposition and abstraction; it is also a process of descent
of the Primal principle or spirit for the purpose of self-limiting and
self-dividing or multiplicity, and measuring itself out. By this process the
world of space and time, and the several levels or layers of Being and
consciousness are established. Involving itself in one part of its infinite
being, there is the integration, biological or physiological part of its
infinite being, there is the integration, biological or physiological and
organic of these several planes in the personality of the many souls (psyches).
Thus in the human evolution we have the integrated structures of the physical,
vital and mental consciousness. But the organism is yet ignorant of the higher
levels of the One Being which is organic to it. The primal spiritual principle
is bending towards the individual with a new basic spiritual form, the
supermind, which is a new universal-individualised form, dynamic and effective
for the organization of social unity, in a global manner.
The individual has to open himself to this descent of the
supermind, which would grant him peace and poise and harmony. The discovery of
the Supermind not as principle of explanation but as an actual presence,
different from its manifestations such as poetic vision, intuition and
overmental experiences which go by the name of occult or extrasensory
experiences is the next step in evolution, the goal to which whole creation is
moving. Man is not the highest term in existence. The Superman is the possible
and inevitable next step. Nietzsche and Fichte theoretically canvassed this
possibility, but it has been left to Sri Aurobindo to affirm its actuality.
Yoga
is the means to this end. It is an evolutionary principle or instrument nor
merely a transcending instrument or escapist method. Yoga is the integral
aspiration for the total universal existence or realization of the absolute
Existence-Consciousness-Bliss, Saccidananda. Jnanayoga, karmayoga and
bhaktiyoga are all necessary. So too hathayoga forms part of this purnayoga.
But more than all these yogas which are ego-centric and impelled by the
half-illumined consciousness and aspiration of the individual, it is
necessary to open out to the Divine Lord in all things
and creatures, and to His Power, to permit Him to work out the lines of Yoga
for the sake of becoming supermentalised. This opening out to God is called
Surrender, prapatti in all one’s parts. Jnanayoga would become an opening of
the mind to His divine transmutive action, karmayoga would become the opening
of the physical and vital to His power, and bhaktiyoga would become the process
of opening to the delightful surge of His consciousness which permits the
experience of His abiding love universal.
Sri
Aurobindo thus opened up a new chapter in Vedanta and Yoga. His greatness lies
in his having done so much pioneer work in this direction. The morass of
superstition and apathy in matters spiritual had to be cleared and a new path
almost forgotten opened up to man. Sri Aurobindo not merely cleared the old
path but extended it to territories beyond. Herein lies his greatness. The
world is poorer by his death.
PHILOSOPHY
MYSTICISM
– A CRITICAL STUDY
“The Aim of philosophy is to
maintain an active novelty of fundamental ideas illuminating the social system.
Philosophy is mystical, for mysticism is direct insight into depths as yet
unspoken. But the purpose of philosophy is to rationalize mysticism, not by
explaining it away to but by the introduction of novel verbal characterization
rationality coordinated”
A.N. Whitehead.
INTRODUCTION
Mysticism
is the theory regarding the way of life which furnishes a supreme transcendence
over all divided or disintegrated methods of living. It is a life lived
constantly in union with the bed-rock of reality, which is conceived to be one
and the only absolute Being or Existence. A mystic is one who lives entirely in
and by this awareness of that reality. Through no adequate description or
analysis can be given of this
awareness of the Integral1 or the Absolute, yet it is
possible to understand what it is and distinguish it from what it is not. The
descriptions and delineations of this experience however widely differ from
mystic to mystic.
Mysticism
can, however, be said to have three fundamental characteristics which are
common to all mystical experiences. First and foremost there is the quality of
transcendence over (or freedom from) the forms and patterns of thought and
perception with which man is normally acquainted. Secondly, there is the
quality of dissolution of the individual himself in a larger and universal
variety-a dissolution which has degrees and stages. Thirdly the mystic
awareness dissolves the multiplicity of the world in the Oneness of the
Absolute. Therefore transcendence dissolution and unification seem to be the
essential qualities of mystical experience. Because it has these three
characteristics, the mystical consciousness is said to involve supra-sensory
knowing process, quite unlike our normal
1 Integral means the unique totality which
satisfies and sustains every fact and facet of beings, individually or
collectively, and therefore the true concrete Universal
knowing (or cognitive) process. It involves a different
method of acting in the world, since all our actions centre round individual fragmental
portions of reality whether these be men or matter or even God’s multiple
personalities or powers. We seize upon one fact or portion of a fact in a large
area and concentrate our efforts on the same. Even so is this true of our
emotions and volitions.
Our
sensations are fragmentary snatches of sense, like colour, sound shape, taste
or touch, Kant’s2 explanations notwithstanding, in this togetherness of
senses in the perception of an apple for example, there is no given unity nor
is their any necessity which compels us to perceive them together. To infer
inner necessity or prove it is impossible. This Gautama, the Buddha, and Hume,
the British Philosopher, have shown once for all Mystic-sensory experience is
super sensation, since it grasps in a single moment without
2 Kant was a very great Philosopher in Germany. His
discussions on our experience or knowledge are contained in his three
critiques. Critique of pure Reason, Practical Reason and Judgement
the mediation of the diverse sense-organs the universal-particular
nature of the object. Thus the reality given in the mystic supersensory and
supra-rational experience is a true and integral reality requiring no further
assistance. Of course a distinction has to be made between this mystic sensation
and the non-sensory perception (or mental perception-manasa-pratyaksa).
This latter is the extrasensory perception of modern psychologists. But ESP is
not mystical, because it does not possess the three fundamental characteristics
of transcendence, dissolution and unification as applied to sense-knowledge.
Mystic
experience is of the universal reality as an existential imperative of Being of
which one feels oneself to be an integral or inseparable part. One experiences
even in this part of a feeling of fulfillment through the drive of an
interpenetrative perfecting power of the Spirit that is One and indivisible.
There happens an enlargement of one’s consciousness which almost reaches
co-existentiality with the entire spread of Reality. This is also described as
an experience of fusion of oneself with the Infinite. The experience is
such that the feeling of one’s erstwhile finiteness tends
to be replaced by the feeling of one’s new-born sense of infinite freedom. The
passage is from ignorance to knowledge, (a passage that illumines not merely
the forward but also the behind), from darkness to illumination, from mortality
to immortality, from conditioned-ness to unconditioned self-freedom. Mystics
know these in different levels and in different degrees of intensity, but the
complete mystic experience-purnabrahmanubhava is not satisfied with any one of
these but knows that all these are necessary for the integral experience of the
Divine Absolute Spirit.
It
is in this four fold movement that one becomes gradually compresent with God or
the Absolute and is fused in an ‘osmotic’ inter-passage and finally inseparable
union with Him. Such experience leads to the realization that all reality has a
peculiar fullness in each part and in all its collective being. It is
impossible for man to accept that what is true of the individual can also be
true of the collective, for the collective is a new fact which cancels
individual differences and evolves a new pattern. Mystic experience however
transcends
this collective and seizes the universal behind the
collective and the individual and states the axioms of mystic truth: that ‘what
is in the microcosm is in the macrocosm’, that ‘What is true of the microcosm
is true of the macrocosm, structurally, functionally and axiologically,’ and
that it can be accepted that ‘if one knows oneself one knows the All’. But this
self to be known is not the superficial physical, or the psychological or
rational being, but that self which is intuited by mystic experience. He is
God, immanent in oneself, and one discovers oneself with Him, of Him, dependent
on Him, existing for Him, freely luminously immortally moving with Him in all
His worlds, and beloved of Him. To know the One is to know all else.
Mystic
vision leads to a peculiar perception of the human world and helps to transcend
the human world. It would be wrong to say that it sublates the world. Certain
changes happen which are incidental to seeing suprarationally and
supersensorily, or from an integral spiritual view of the Self. At first or
almost the very first thing that happens is the reversal or inversion of the
percept or inference or comparison. Pratyaksa,
anumana, and upamana, these instruments of knowledge
undergo inversion.
a.
Not the object but the subjective state it is that becomes an object.
b.
The inductive is deduced from the deductive. Vyapti3 (invariable
concomitance Sahacaraniyama) is given first and everything is shown to
be a particular. Or even a particular is treated as a universal and universal
as a particular.
c.
The abstract appears to become concrete and the concrete tends to become
abstract and afar.
d.
In comparison that which is normally the upameya becomes the upamana.
The archetype and the unperceivable becomes the upamana, or the upamiti-karana,
which is used to explain the perceived, particular4.
3 Vyapti can be abstractly defined as a
relation which is invariable concomitance between any two events. This relation
is presented first and the relata later.
4 The integral view can be said to be the most
clear and complete perception of the entire reality from the spiritual inner
point, or as
God
Indra is said ‘to be like Sri Rama ordinarily, but in this consciousness Sri
Rama is said to be like Indra etc.
e.
The mystic experience is its own authentic self certifying experience not
dependent on any sruti. Sruti becomes helpful or subservient to this mystic
omni-pervading comprehensive reversed experience. Pravrtti or the external
activity becomes an expression of the reversed withdrawing experience and
activity. Reversed imagery is the quality of the mystic symbolism of
self-experience; and expression in poetry and art lays bare this reversed
(unnatural, unscientific, irrational) form.
Leibniz suggests from within-monadically
which is the clearest perception of the mirrored universe including the Divine
and all monads. Reversion is the clear perception of that which is known only
immediately through reason and sensation. Which we normally call direct or
immediate. Jaina doctrine called the inner knowing pratyaksa and not the
indriyartha Sannikarsa Jnanam.
The
mystic fusive comprehension of reality in its extra subjective or
trans-subjective form is best
communicated in the form of myth. But there is only one
form which is suitable, if the myth personalities constantly, invariably should
suggest and concretize their multiple reference in all the planes of experience
and help recognition of their different forms (or masks so to speak). The wrong
myth is ‘closed’ as Bergson put it, and expresses only the unconscious racial
or biological, sexual or power-perpetuative drives within, surging up and
creating more heat than light, more confusion than clarity, more bondage and
ill-health than freedom. Myth of the higher order, as Plato knew, and invented
is unhomeric, and is not the creation of lower forms in conflict with higher or
equally demonic forces. But Plato missed the sheer unity of the Supreme. Mystic
experience is, as already pointed out, more than the cognitive affective unity
of total being apprehended in an immediate integral vision. It is
supra-affective since it reveals that one’s own being is suffused with an
overpowering delight in an orgasm of unity. Each pore of one’s being suffused
with the higher power and being becomes a prism so to speak that synthesizes or
analyses the elements of super cognition and fusion. In
this multiple integration is seen the dynamic energy of
the myth-making function, where the myth becomes a real expression, and the
only means of expression.5
The
cognitive-affectivity of the Mystic consciousness is to be known as a dynamic
creative continuity or infinite prolongation of the recovered unity with the
whole. It is this intrinsic power of self-continuity without interruption or
diminution through the Absolute Being in its infinite nature that gives the
quality of immortality and peace. Mystic silence is the first sign of mystic
experience of inward strength, and of solid knowledge. Further it is an
experience of infinite bathing in the waters of light which flow into oneself
from overhead enveloping all round, illuminating, cleansing, and delighting,
opening out the interiors to the overhead consciousness leaving no darkness or
suffering, no crookedness any where. One who has had this
5 Integral Mysticism (of Sri Aurobindo) aims at
the experience of the Divine in all and all in the Divine. It is the Simultaneous
full experience of the Eternal oneness of the eternal Manyness, which
transcends all the states of mind, life and matter yet maintains them. It
reveals this occult secret of oneness-manyness in each and every plane of Existence-consciousness-Delight
and thus transfigures the so called levels of ignorance.
experience is a fearless forerunner, a quiet concentrated
pillar of light-power, a messenger from above to lead, to teach, to transform
and illumine the dark abyss within and show its possibility. Such a mystic is
‘an Open’ one. Such a mystic has real existence, not indeed is he a vegetative
animal or mental being closed up in customs which have lost their significance
or hugging differences which have lost their boundaries. Even the ancient
traditions and ways are restored to their eternal meaning. Thus is he restored
to universal eternal history. Smrti in this great and universal sense, the
smrti of one’s own eternal or long and beginning less past, and smrti of one’s
own fundamental nature are granted by mystic experience becoming slowly the
only experience displaying every other.
The
soul in its ineffable rapturous union with God realizes its eternal oneness
with Him. But wore than this oneness there is the sense of ‘return’ and
therefore reunion and rejoicing which does not forebode any further
‘separation’. Metaphysical it is difficult for the logical mind to grasp the
meaning of the departure of
fall
or the meaning and significance of ‘return’ while yet clinging to the
experience of ‘eternal belonging’ (aprathaksiddha sambandha) to the
Divine or in Sri Aurobindo’s terminology ‘eternal oneness in eternal manyness’
having the ascent and to the descent away from each other or fronting the one
or the other poise of the Eternal. The mystics have always felt that this
separation from God is due to a beginningless ignorance, karma or sin or fall
or Ignorance which is due to the power of the Divine (mama maya duratyaya).
Whether this is a delusive separation or otherwise there it is as a confronting
fact. This is an original and primordial mystery of creation and to get over
this mystery or maya it is necessary to have the grace of God. It is then that
the Divine knowledge bodies forth into the individual and makes him realize his
eternal oneness or unity with the Divine and grants the experience real
existence (being). It is the culmination of integral divinely bestowed
knowledge in vision and feeling (beauty)6.
6 A brief note may be added here to show the
difference which mark out the three kinds of mysticism: advaitic, dvaitic and
visistadvaitic.
Advaita mysticism
is the fusion and dissolution of the many in the One, a complete
nisprapancikarana of the world so that all that is just being or existence.
This can be called Existentialistic non-relativistic Experience of the One,
Identity.
Dvaita mysticism is the functional
identification though dependence with the Godhead, which prognosticates a state
of non-function through dependence with the Godhead, which prognosticates a
state of non-function and as such of separational existence. But since the
functional dependence is all through available it is the realization of
functional identity.
Visistadvaitic mysticism is organistic unity,
where the functional identity is as permanent as the existential for the
individual and nature is the body to the self, who is the divine, in knowledge,
works and delight. Thus it synthesizes the advaitic identity with functional
identity, a synthesis that abolishes the need for nisprapancikarana or
abolishes the world and the embodied state as such.
Aurobindonian Mysticism seeks the installation of the divine Mind in the
embodied terrestrial existence and thus transforms the human and all and
realizes the Divine organic transcendence which ensures the immanence of the
eternal oneness in the eternal manyness.
II
MATERIALASTIC MYSTICISM AND
MYSTIC MATERIALISM
Mysticism
is a supersensory suprarational or transcendent form of experience of Reality
or things comprising reality. Matter or Nature is one such element in our
ordinary experience. Matter is said to be an obscure substratum which is
subject to change at all
times. It is seething with activity evening its smallest atomic
particles. It is humming with activity. Mechanical activity forms as much a
part of it as the purposive activity characteristic of living creatures, cells
or corpuscles. Mental activity in addition to being purposive is correlational
conscious activity. There are several philosophical theories about matter and
motion and mind. One view holds that all motion and mind are material in
substance. We see matter, and what senses it are organs which are in ultimate
analysis matter or extended things. Mind itself is a product of the aggregation
of material parts. A mind is seen only in an organism made up of parts which
are most diverse in structure. And though it is argued that it is mind that
confers and upholds the unity of the organism, there are indeed cases when mind
itself is in a disintegrated condition in organisms. In such cases we are
either to accept a soul which is incapable of being proved or known or we have
to accept matter itself as the only principle which has the powers of keeping
unity, of exhibiting purpose and of breaking up unity. Thus mystical experience
or knowledge of matter or Nature
reveals matter in its real nature as the principle of
change which can work and is working under the inner impulse of an intelligence
or consciousness and for its enjoyment. The various forms of this Nature are
our own several organs of sense perception which gather information about the
outer world. They are the doors opening outside. And the mind which organizes
and integrates the diverse impressions is also of Nature. It is also seen that
the pseudo-soul or, ego which unconsciously gathers these sensa and preserves
them in memory and own them, and the reflective mind which discriminates these
and confers permanence to them in consciousness as images and things also are
recognized to belong to Nature. This is so far as the manner of knowing the
nature of Matter in regard to one’s own inner psychological structure goes.
The
second form of Nature is to intuit the nature of each fundamental quality of an
object. Things or qualities are sensed. There are five types of objects known
by the five senses. These are intuited as sound, touch, taste, form and smell.
A finer purity of these sensations is available which is almost always a mixed
experience. The experience of the atoms or the finest
sub-divisions or units of these elements is rendered possible. And in each case
our intellect grants a cause-effect account of them. Indeed it is even claimed
that a history of each atom is also delivered in the mystic perception. All the
same the recognition of atoms and the perception of the process of their
aggregation or disintegration are beyond the ordinary perceptive level. Even
modern science can only assure their existence and their constitution by the
effects on paths traversed or the lines of movement. The search for the
structure of the atom has proceeded with a definite faith in its
discoverability. So too, the search for the knowledge of the stellar cosmic
structure is governed by a similar faith. That every part of the universe is
reciprocally related to every other part and reacts to every change wherever
occurring however obscurely, is also the faith behind the astrologer’s
reckonings and postulations. The entire question is, as it always has been, how
far can human capacity go to the unravelling or calculation of the
possibilities of Nature. Nature seems to be inscrutable in its minuteness as
much as it is in its
vastness. But what gives a ray of hope and light is the
mystic faith and recognition that the structure of the atom is similar to,
corresponds with and reacts or is repeated in the cosmic structure. An identity
of structure pervades all nature. The atom, the embodied personality and the
cosmic prakrti are of one pattern. This is the mystic materialism which is
being gradually taken for granted. The organismic pattern seems to be repeated
both above and below: man is midway in size between the biggest and the
smallest as Max Born stated. He is important in respect of the lower and
smaller masses but insignificant in relation to the masses of stellar
magnitude. But in structure too there is correspondence, as the atomic
(Vaisesika mystics) said that the minutest atom should have six primary atoms7, the
psychologists (yogis) (declared that the
7 Nyaya Vaisesika conception of a visible or
experienceable anu is that it is composed of six primary anus. This is a
mystical correspondential theory. We shall have to remember that the six
Qualities of the Divine in triple dyads is a further focusing of attention on
this peculiar structural mysticism- Yatha pinde Tatha Brahmandah. The number of
heads of gods or titans has something to do with symbology. The four-headed
Brahma, the five-headed Rudra, the six-headed Kumara, the ten-headed Ravana are
symbolic of qualities. Even so, the elephant headedness or horse headedness
have symbolic reference to
human organism has six systems or charkas in organic
unity, and the theists affirmed that the Divine must have six attributes or
centre of radiating energy of Being for all existence to be.
qualities. The Gk, Satyr having human
head and horse’s body is the exact reverse of Hayagriva-both of them being
representatives of highest wisdom, Satyr in form however is identical with the
Indian Kinnara.
A
peculiar mystic meaning is given to numbers – two, three, four, five six,
seven, eight, nine and ten. We are of course not concerned with these symbols.
But the materialism of the mystic is a real recognition of the correspondence
of the planes-the reality of the planes being accepted, and the identification
of the supreme principle in and through Nature. Natural Mysticism in either of
its forms leads to the recognition of a supreme transcendent principle which is
actively associated with it, which in a sense exists for its control and
enjoyment and which can be recognized as helping its own transition from one
kind to other kinds of activity or changes. Nature thus is revealed as the
field and body of God. One supreme Nature diversified into
bodies of the soul in every one of its parts,
continuously exists as the body of God by the principle of being determined,
supported, controlled and enjoyed and helping its own fulfillment exclusively
by God in a transcendent manner. Nature is in an essential revelation fused
through and through in God and is indeed the first discovery of the cosmic
consciousness. The pantheisms of Giorduno Bruno, of Spinoza and Shelley, are
close parallels to the experience of Svabhava-vadins.
Mysticism
is realistic and recognizes that all aspects of reality or existence must be
granted real status not the inverted status that philosophy grants to them.
Nature has no absolute independent status as such. But every part of it in so
far as it is experienced is a real experience. Its existential status it gains
in and through the cosmic spirit but the experience of this cosmic spirit
underlying it does not sublate it. It is fused with it. Pantheism is true in
this sense, but pantheism emphasizes Nature and denies the transcending factor
of mystic experience and triumph over process which grants sublimity.
In the experience of Nature there is also another factor
that presents itself in the process. All process is rigidly determined by the
law of uniformity. Given the same conditions the same effects follow. This law
is the characteristic of natural process. Science aims at discovering the laws
of nature having faith in this axiom. Mystic vision finds law to be the prime
form of correspondential structure which must be felt and cognized in a
universal form. In one sense a running thread of identity pervades all branches
of knowledge, and both science and mysticism aim at the same goal, only
mysticism has a more integral purpose and vision of the substance of Unity
through law than science. The mastery over matter by science is a hope;
mysticism discovers mastery in the freedom of the soul to see not only what
Nature can show in it but something more, and thus gives a new direction to
Nature itself.
At
this point I would like to make a distinction between materialistic mysticism
which is acceptable and mystic materialism which is an aberration. All the
criticisms leveled against mysticism by science are due to this kind of
materialism. Indeed when materialism in
its naturalistic or animistic or vitalistic forms becomes
a ‘vague cognition without clear understanding’ (a type of monistic materialism
of the Heackelian variety) or becomes a type of omni-organic feeling, primitive
and atavistic sense of herd-cognition, then it is mere heat without light. It
is then best described as mystic materialism. Indistinguishability and
non-discrimination parade as direct apprehension or direct and unmediated
sensibility. A vegetative stupor however produced is not real experience of
being, which is eluded by this process. Men seek to practice all types of
sensibility through decoctions and drugs, secret and hidden practices of
postures and rites and fancies. Though these may be surely beginnings of
science, yet rarely have they led to the real mystic experience of freedom, sense
of existence and truth. They are more often escapes from
existence-consciousness.
There
are mystics who have seen in matter the absolute negation of being-which is the
polar opposite of spirit (atyanta-bhava). A deeper abyss than matter is
God. If darkness is matter, greater darkness is as it were God who makes
possible this darkness.
pantheistic identification is surpassed or transcended
when God is said to be the creative ground of non-existence. This means that in
an ultimate consideration, non-existence is an opposite outside existence but
inseparable from God in every way. But there are degrees or grades of
non-existence or existence. The passage of any ray of existence from
non-existence to existence is a passage in every way different in kind and free
from any relation to it. One thing is certain that this is different from
matter which is but existence inversed, an existence which is wrapt up or
inconscient as Sri Aurobindo puts it.
There
is great truth in materialistic mysticism but none whatsoever in mystic
materialism which is vague, indefinite and escapist and not different from a
superficial idealism.
III
PERSONALISTIC MYSTICISM
Materialistic
mysticism, as I have shown, tries to understand Nature (including its several
phases of the
mechanical, vital mental and intellectual forms and
patterns. The mystic principle or axiom of a transcendental immediate cognitive
form of experience revealed to us the fact of a Natural theology, and the
plausible justification of pantheism as an experience certifiable as mystic. We
however showed that a clear mystic unity is recognizable as between Nature and
Spirit and this unity-pattern is ‘organistic’, not merely in an outer
semblance, as Swedenberg would put it, but in a deeper functional sense of an
inner godhead on whom there is an intrinsic dependence in every regard. This is
further truly characteristic of any body (or entity) than the various forms and
organs.
One
of the flaws in any theory of Organisms is the search for organs or locations of
functions rather than the mystic unity and the features luminous in and
amenable to mystic vision. Organistic mysticism seizes upon this mystic
unity-factor rather than the physical or physiological structure that is
natural to our perception and inference.
The importance of this realization to the knowledge of
oneself is brought home to man in his most elevated moments. Preceded though by
a veritable dark night of the soul, the search for oneself, the eagerness and
earnestness to ‘see’ oneself as one is, has its finest moment in a glimpse, as
pure light (tejas, jyoti), in a supersensation. It is perceived
supersensorically not as a mere bundle or series of sensory impressions,
memories, imaginations and perceptions but as a sheer luminous self-existence.
It is indeed the vessel and ground of these series of impressions and memories,
but these are its forms in consciousness and not its central essence.
The
individual then realizes what he is not. Gradually he realizes that he is not
the body, nor the mind, not even the intellect. Assuredly this is a negative
inferential procedure, well-known from the earliest speculations of man. Man’s
consciousness of himself is at the beginning with the physical distinctness
from others and his ‘surround’. But with the perception of some identical
features which dominate his practical thinking (for identity helps uniformity
of response and
obliteration of distinctnesses) the difference refuses to
be abolished. He discovers his consciousness in all its ramifications to be a
central fact about himself, whether in his walking or dreaming or sleeping
condition. All these states are indeed transcended in his spiritual awareness
wherein he feels himself is what one finds oneself to be in this depth of
experience when the body-consciousness is rolled up and is seen to depend on
this central consciousness. But this consciousness no sooner than it is
attained by mystic vision reveals itself an insufficient in its private
character and displays itself as fused with a central cosmic consciousness or
self which is seen to be the self of all else perceived in the ordinary
consciousness. This insufficiency is not however an insufficiency in the sense
of lack of any characteristic truly valuable to being but in its impossibility
to remain alone in its personal privateness to which it was accustomed. The
mystic experience of oneself is one of unconditionedness from privacy and
existence in pure isolatedness which is possible in ordinary life. Truly the
realization gives an enjoyment of freedom from privateness, a privateness which
now
becomes more and more clearly a case of deprivation. Many
mystics have sought their self realization through God-realization, as that
made their own self realization permanent and not short lived. Man in himself
has no self-sufficiency and is a term in the Existence of God. God realization
is the experience in mystic life of fulfillment or self-sufficiency. The
experience of God entering within up to the finger tips, controlling every
sense organ and mind, illumining every single part of one’s organic being, is
an expressive experience of extraordinary meaning to oneself. It is this
process which is the ascent to cosmic consciousness, and a step towards
divinization, ‘brahmanisation’ of the atman. God as indwelling cosmic will,
cosmic reason and cosmic personality makes the individual’s consciousness
expand to the levels of transcendence over even the cosmic level, by making it
assume such proportions as to feel, to think and to experience in and through
God; and by God’s inward presence and penetration to gain for one’s
consciousness, the gift of cosmic expansion, if not absolute, transcendence
itself.
In this gradual absorption and expansion, one’s existence
becomes fused in God and rejoices in this unity of being, consciousness and
delight. It even arrives at deeper levels of experience when it finds itself to
be a living temple, a bhagavata, a saint and an amsa, a living portion of
Divine Being. Whilst men may not recognize their nature to be divine-and the
destiny of man is to realize this inward divinity as the Universal Self, the
mystic feels it to be not an ideal, something to be cogitated or thought hard
after, something in the womb of the future, but a fact, and an ever present
relationship. Man’s personality becomes more and more important as he pursues
the divine realization and worships or meditates on the Divine as ‘Tad Vanam’,
Garden of wonderful Excellences, or transcending auspicious infinite attributes
and modes of Being. A mystic who enjoys and meditates and loves and serves this
Divine in all his parts, becomes most attractive to all creatures, and they
seek him. A mystic becomes a presence of the Divine. And so closely realized is
this presence that one cannot distinguish which in him is the divine part and
presence. The indivisible Godhead
pervades all through and through and one perceives Him as
All: Sarvam Samapnosi tatosi sarvah.
Again
and again the centre of concentration shifts from one self to the central core
of one’s being which is either the heart or the crown of the head. It is this
experience, which is more central than oneself, that gives it the sense of
‘drinking’ the immortal nectar of being, of discovering the hidden treasure of
uniting with a ‘Perfect Person’ and ‘Male’. Such an indescribable union or
pairing with the Divine spirit yields a unitive or bridal ecstasy. It is
discerned in many wonderful and ever-new and novel unimaginable ways. By each
of these supra-conscious ways (or rather through these) the conscious existence
increase in depth and steady inwardness and silent rapture. Man more and more
withdraws himself in God. Alone he is for all practical purposes, but he is
alone8 with
an inner poise from
8 Much of mystical
thought has found its real poise in ‘loneliness’. Prof. A.N. Whitehead spoke of
Religion as ‘what one does with his solitude’. Obviously the experience of
solitude is a real fact of Religion. Ibsen in his ‘Doctor’ pleaded for
this standing alone ‘as a peak of courage and spirituality’. ‘Ekaki’ as the Nature
of Brahman, ‘Unenjoying na rameta’ is a mystical experience. I shall examine
this in another set of Meditations.
which he derives all benefit, sreyas. Death is
transfigured into silent inner union. Or Death is left behind, for death is
only of the physical body. The seeker discovers in a single experience of the
inner self, which is as swift as lightning, the radical difference between
himself and his body and perceives that the unity granted between them is a
result of a deeper activity and purpose which is not of the individual, or of
an indescribable beginningless activity and ignorance. Some mystics indeed have
had glimpsed this to be due to an original fall or due to an act of essential
freedom granted to the individual by the supreme Ground or Being or God.
Freedom is said to be the essential truth of both the individual and God. But
the difference lies in this that the Divine Freedom does not lead to bondage at
all, whereas the individual’s freedom or finite freedom so to speak can lead
either upwards to the unconditioned Divine Existence or to the absolute
negation of Freedom itself.
The
personality of man gets a new dimension. Man in this experience lives in an
utterly separated but sympathetic unity with his body in Nature. Nature in this
sense becomes a supple instrument of the supramental will
in all its parts and grants a rich integrative perception to the soul which
observes, approves and enjoys the process of a truly creative silence,
conferring peace rather than war, clarity rather than abstract abolition of
distinctions or discrimination.
For
man there is a purpose clear and inescapable: a destiny which is from the very
beginning of his career beckoning, an appetition dimly urging from within
towards the divination of godhead, or realization of fullness or perfection or
an attainment of real communion, ‘a losing oneself in the other’, or an
undimininshing undisturbed peace and unshakeable strength and faith. All these
and an omniscient consciousness or awareness or knowledge of all things in
their eternal nature, are possible indeed only through a total dedication and
complete or radical separation from Nature, so that a new approach to Nature
may be rendered possible and a new evolution start from a point where both can
be real to the Ultimate Being through a new relation between them.
There are several mystics who experience themselves as
losing themselves once and for all time, utterly in a vast Universal
Consciousness indistinguishably like rivers in an ocean, or like a light that
merges in an illumination million times brighter than itself. There is a sense
of dissolution of oneself in a Nihil or Supracosmic impersonal Being9, a
dissolution which thereafter compels the utter giving up of all distinctions
and differences between itself and others. Indeed it may be that he experiences
none of these and least of all himself. One ceases. He alone is. He is the ‘I’,
the only ‘I’ or the ‘I am or He or Thou or That’. Brahmanirvana is this losing
of oneself in Brahman. This may be what Buddha might himself have meant by
Nirvana, a total annihilation of the Nature that dragged itself inexorably with
the soul and the soul itself. All
9 Impersonalism claims a mystic status as an
experience beyond Subject-object relationship or Personal Existence. This
conception is of two kinds.
a. There is an experiential spiritual
idealism beyond subject-object and experience of a Bare subjectless
‘Objectivity or Reality, this remove the edge of the criticism of
conditionedness and realitivity.
b. A different impersonalism is the ethical
transcendence of doer and deed or the ought to be done.
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
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