behind the life to the universal force that builds these outward shapes and movements, — behind matter to the eternal Existence that puts on the robe of the body.
Sri Aurobindo
Essays Divine and Human
Writings from Manuscripts. 1910 – 1950
139
To create the union of his soul with the Divine Presence and Power through a perfect surrender of the will in all his activities, is the high aspiration of the seeker on the Way of Works.
To put off like a worn-out disguise the ignorant consciousness and stumbling will that are ours in our present mind and life-force and to put on the light and knowledge, the purity and power, the tranquillity and ecstasy of the divine Essence, the spiritual Nature that awaits us when we climb beyond mind, is the victory after which he reaches.
To make mind and heart and life and body conscious, changed and luminous moulds of this supramental Spirit, instruments of its light and power and works, vessels of its bliss and radiance, is the glory he assigns to his transfigured human members.
On one side a darkened mind and life, ignorant, suffering, spinning like a top whipped by Nature always in the same obscure and miserable rounds, on the other a soul touched by a ray from the hidden Truth, illumined, conscious, concentrated in a single unceasing effort towards its own and the world's Highest, — this is the difference between man's ordinary life and the way of the divine Yoga[.]
*
It is not a mental or moral ideal to which is turned the seeker of the Way, but a truth of the spirit, the experience of a hidden Reality living and concrete, a Light, a Power, a Joy that surpasses the mental understanding and is beyond any merely mental experience.
The ideals created by the mind are constructions in the air that have no sufficient foundation in our vital and physical nature; therefore they can change a side of our mind and colour a part of our actions, but they cannot transform our lives, cannot find here their physical body. Ideals touch and pass, mankind remains the same; after religions, ideals, moralities without end we keep always the same ignorant and imperfect human nature.
Moral rules and ideals are a harness for the ignorant soul, bridle and bit for the passions, reins that compel it to an assigned road, yoke and poles and traces that bind it to be faithful to the burden it carries. Morality checks and controls but does not purify or change the vital nature.
In ethics there is an artificial shaping of the mind's surfaces, but no spiritual freedom, no satisfying perfection of the whole dynamic nature.
The mind's ideals like the life's seekings are at once absolute each in its own demand and in conflict with one another; neither mind nor life knows the means either of their complete or their harmonised fulfilment. The mind labours through the centuries but human nature remains faithful to its imperfections and man's life amid its changes always the same.
Beyond mind on spiritual and supramental levels dwells the Presence, the Truth, the Power, the Bliss that can alone deliver us from these illusions, display the Light of which our ideals are tarnished disguises and impose the harmony that shall at once transfigure and reconcile all the parts of our nature.
*
The first secret of Yoga is to get back behind the mind to the spirit, behind the surface emotional movements to the soul, — behind the life to the universal force that builds these outward shapes and movements, — behind matter to the eternal Existence that puts on the robe of the body.
The second secret of Yoga is to open these discovered powers to their own supreme Truth above matter, above life, above the mind. This Truth, secret in the Superconscient, has four gradations or movements of its power, infinite supermind or Gnosis, infinite Bliss, Ananda, infinite Consciousness and Power, Chit-Tapas, infinite Being — Sat-Chid-Ananda.
The third secret of Yoga is, once arisen beyond mind, to bring down the power [sentence not completed]
Circa 1926/27
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