Chapter
V
The
Development of the Spiritual Man
Spirituality is something else than intellectuality; its appearance
is the sign that a Power greater than mind is striving to emerge
in its turn.
It is quite true that to a surface view life seems only an operation
of Matter, mind an activity of life, and it might seem to follow
that what we call the soul or spirit is only a power of mentality,
soul a fine form of mind, spirituality a high activity of the
embodied mental being. But this is a superficial view of things
due to the thought's concentrating on the appearance and process
and not looking at what lies behind the process. One might as
well on the same lines have concluded that electricity is only
a product or operation of water and cloud matter, because it
is in such a field that lightning emerges; but a deeper inquiry
has shown that both cloud and water have, on the contrary, the
energy of electricity as their foundation, their constituent
power or energy-substance: that which seems to be a result is--in
reality, though not in its form--the origin; the effect is in
the essence pre-existent to the apparent cause, the principle
of the emergent activity precedent to its present field of action.
So it is throughout evolutionary Nature; Matter could not have
become animate if the principle of life had not been there constituting
Matter and emerging as a phenomenon of life-in-matter; life-in-matter
could not have begun to feel, perceive, think, reason, if the
principle of mind had not been there behind life and substance,
constituting it as its field of operation and emergent in the
phenomenon of a thinking life and body: so too spirituality emerging
in mind is the sign of a power which itself has founded and constituted
life, mind and body and is now emerging as a spiritual being
in a living and thinking body. How far this emergence will go,
whether it will become dominant and transform its instrument,
is a subsequent question; but what is necessary first to posit
is the existence of spirit as something else than mind and greater
than mind, spirituality as something other than mentality and
the spiritual being therefore as something distinct from the
mental being: spirit is a final evolutionary emergence because
it is the original involutionary element and factor. Evolution
is an inverse action of the involution3: what is an ultimate
and last derivation in the involution is the first to appear
in the evolution; what was original and primal in the involution
is in the evolution the last and supreme emergence.
Spirituality is a progressive awakening to the inner reality
of our being, to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our
mind, life and body. It is an inner aspiration to know, to enter
into contact and union with the greater Reality beyond, which
also pervades the universe and dwells in us, and, as a result
of that aspiration, that contact and that union, a turning, a
conversion, a birth into a new being.
In the animal mind is not quite distinct from its own life-matrix
and life-matter; its movements are so involved in the life movements
that it cannot detach itself from them, cannot stand separate
and observe them; but in man mind has become separate, he can
become aware of his mental operations as distinct from his life
operations, his thought and will can disengage themselves from
his sensations and impulses, desires and emotional reactions,
can become detached from them, observe and control them, sanction
or cancel their functioning: he does not as yet know the secrets
of his being well enough to be aware of himself decisively and
with certitude as a mental being in a life and body, but he has
that impression and can take inwardly that position. So too at
first soul in man does not appear as something quite distinct
from mind and from mentalised life; its movements are involved
in the mind movements, its operations seem to be mental and emotional
activities; the mental human being is not aware of a soul in
him standing back from the mind and life and body, detaching
itself, seeing and controlling and moulding their action and
formation: but, as the inner evolution proceeds, this is precisely
what can, must and does happen,--it is the long-delayed but inevitable
next step in our evolutionary destiny. There can be a decisive
emergence in which the being separates itself from thought and
sees itself in an inner silence as the spirit in mind, or separates
itself from the life movements, desires, sensations, kinetic
impulses and is aware of itself as the spirit supporting life,
or separates itself from the body sense and knows itself as a
spirit ensouling Matter: this is the discovery of ourselves as
the Purusha, a mental being or a life-soul or a subtle self supporting
the body. This is taken by many as a sufficient discovery of
the true self and in a certain sense they are right; for it is
the self or spirit that so represents itself in regard to the
activities of Nature, and this revelation of its presence is
enough to disengage the spiritual element: but self-discovery
can go farther, it can even put aside all relation to form or
action of Nature. For it is seen that these selves are representations
of a divine Entity to which mind, life and body are only forms
and instruments: we are then the Soul looking at Nature, knowing
all her dynamisms in us, not by mental perception and observation,
but by an intrinsic consciousness and its direct sense of things
and its intimate exact vision, able therefore by its emergence
to put a close control on our nature and change it. When there
is a complete silence in the being, either a stillness of the
whole being or a stillness behind unaffected by surface movements,
then we can become aware of a Self, a spiritual substance of
our being, an existence exceeding even the soul individuality,
spreading itself into universality, surpassing all dependence
on any natural form or action, extending itself upward into a
transcendence of which the limits are not visible. It is these
liberations of the spiritual part in us which are the decisive
steps of the spiritual evolution in Nature.
When there is the decisive emergence, one sign of it is the
status or action in us of an inherent, intrinsic, self-existent
consciousness which knows itself by the mere fact of being, knows
all that is in itself in the same way, by identity with it, begins
even to see all that to our mind seems external in the same manner,
by a movement of identity or by an intrinsic direct consciousness
which envelops, penetrates, enters into its object, discovers
itself in the object, is aware in it of something that is not
mind or life or body. There is, then, evidently a spiritual consciousness
which is other than the mental, and it testifies to the existence
of a spiritual being in us which is other than our surface mental
personality. But at first this consciousness may confine itself
to a status of being separate from the action of our ignorant
surface nature, observing it, limiting itself to knowledge, to
a seeing of things with a spiritual sense and vision of existence.
For action it may still depend upon the mental, vital, bodily
instruments, or it may allow them to act according to their own
nature and itself remain satisfied with self-experience and self-knowledge,
with an inner liberation, an eventual freedom: but it may also
and usually does exercise a certain authority, governance, influence
on thought, life movement, physical action, a purifying uplifting
control compelling them to move in a higher and purer truth of
themselves, to obey or be an instrumentation of an influx of
some diviner Power or a luminous direction which is not mental
but spiritual and can be recognized as having a certain divine
character, - the inspiration of a greater Self or the command
of the Ruler of all being, the Ishwara. Or the nature may obey
the psychic4 entity's intimations, move in an inner light, follow
an inner guidance. This is already a considerable evolution and
amounts to a beginning at least of a psychic and spiritual transformation.
But it is possible to go farther; for the spiritual being, once
inwardly liberated, can develop in mind the higher states of
being that are its own natural atmosphere and bring down a supramental
energy and action which are proper to the Truth-consciousness;
the ordinary mental instrumentation, life-instrumentation, physical
instrumentation even, could then be entirely transformed and
become parts no longer of an ignorance however much illumined,
but of a supramental creation which would be the true action
of a spiritual truth-consciousness and knowledge.
It must therefore be emphasized that spirituality is not a high
intellectuality, not idealism, not an ethical turn of mind or
moral purity and austerity, not religiosity or an ardent and
exalted emotional fervour, not even a compound of all these excellent
things; a mental belief, creed or faith, an emotional aspiration,
a regulation of conduct according to a religious or ethical formula
are not spiritual achievement and experience. These things are
of considerable value to mind and life; they are of value to
the spiritual evolution itself as preparatory movements disciplining,
purifying or giving a suitable form to the nature; but they still
belong to the mental evolution, - the beginning of a spiritual
realization, experience, change is not yet there. Spirituality
is in its essence an awakening to the inner reality of our being,
to a spirit, self, soul which is other than our mind, life and
body, an inner aspiration to know, to feel, to be that, to enter
into contact with the greater Reality beyond and pervading the
universe which inhabits also our own being, to be in communion
with It and union with It, and a turning, a conversion, a transformation
of our whole being as a result of the aspiration, the contact,
the union, a growth or waking into a new becoming or new being,
a new self, a new nature.
In
her attempt to open up the inner being, Nature has followed
four main lines-religion, occultism, spiritual thought and an
inner spiritual realization and experience.
There are four main lines which Nature has followed in her attempt
to open up the inner being, - religion, occultism, spiritual
thought and an inner spiritual realization and experience: the
three first are approaches, the last is the decisive avenue of
entry. All these four powers have worked by a simultaneous action,
more or less connected, sometimes in a variable collaboration,
sometimes in dispute with each other, sometimes in a separate
independence. Religion has admitted an occult element in its
ritual, ceremony, sacrements; it has leaned upon spiritual thinking,
deriving from it sometimes a creed or theology, sometimes its
supporting spiritual philosophy, - the former, ordinarily, is
the occidental method, the latter the oriental: but spiritual
experience is the final aim and achievement of religion, its
sky and summit.
Each of these means or approaches corresponds to something in
our total being and therefore to something necessary to the total
aim of her evolution. There are four necessities of man's self-expansion
if he is not to remain this being of the surface ignorance seeking
obscurely after the truth of things and collecting and systematizing
fragments and sections of knowledge, the small limited and half-competent
creature of the cosmic Force which he now is in his phenomenal
nature. He must know himself and the world completely he must
go behind his own and its exterior, he must dive deep below his
own mental surface and the physical surface of Nature. This he
can only do by knowing his inner mental, vital, physical and
psychic being6 and its powers and movements and the universal
laws and processes of the occult Mind and Life which stand behind
the material front of the universe: that is the field of occultism,
if we take the word in its widest significance. He must know
also the hidden Power or Powers that control the world: if there
is a Cosmic Self or Spirit or a Creator, he must be able to enter
into relation with It or Him and be able to remain in whatever
contact or communion is possible, get into some kind of tune
with the master Beings of the universe or with the universal
Being and its universal will or a supreme Being and His supreme
will, follow the law It gives him and the assigned or revealed
aim of his life and conduct, raise himself towards the highest
height that It demands of him in his life now or in his existence
hereafter; if there is no such universal or supreme Spirit or
Being, he must know what there is and how to lift himself to
it out of his present imperfection and impotence. This approach
is the aim of religion: its purpose is to link the human with
the Divine and in so doing sublimate the thought and life and
flesh so that they may admit the rule of the soul and spirit.
But this knowledge must be something more than a creed or a mystic
revelation; his thinking mind must be able to accept it, to correlate
it with the principle of things and the observed truth of the
universe: this is the work of philosophy, and in the field of
the truth of the spirit it can only be done by a spiritual philosophy,
whether intellectual in its method or intuitive. But all knowledge
and endeavour can reach its fruition only if it is turned into
experience and has become a part of the consciousness and its
established operations; in the spiritual field of all this religious,
occult or philosophical knowledge and endeavour must, to bear
fruition, end in an opening up of the spiritual consciousness,
in experiences that found and continually heighten, expand and
enrich that consciousness with the truth of the spirit: this
is the work of spiritual realization and experience.
Only spiritual realization and experience can achieve the change
of the mental being into a spiritual being.
But
none of these [first] three lines of approach can by themselves
entirely fulfil
the greater and ulterior intention of Nature; they cannot create
in mental man the spiritual being, unless and until they open
the door to spiritual experience. It is only by an inner realization
of what these approaches are seeking after, by an overwhelming
experience or by many experiences building up an inner change,
by a transmutation of the consciousness, by a liberation of
the spirit from its present veil of mind, life and body that
there
can emerge the spiritual being. That is the final line of the
soul's progress towards which the others are pointing and,
when it is ready to disengage itself from the preliminary approaches,
then the real work has begun and the turning-point of the change
is no longer distant. Till then all that the human mental being
has reached is a familiarity with the idea of things beyond
him,
with the possibility of an other-worldly movement, with the
ideal of some ethical perfection; he may have made too some
contact
with greater Powers or Realities which help his mind or heart
or life. A change there may be, but not the transmutationof
the mental into the spiritual being. Religion and its thought
and
ethics and occult mysticism in ancient times produced the priest
and the mage, the man of piety, the just man, the man of wisdom,
many high points of mental manhood; but it is only after spiritual
experience through the heart and mind began that we see arise
the saint, the prophet, the Rishi,13 the Yogi, the seer, the
spiritual sage and the mystic, and it is the religions in which
these types of spiritual manhood came into being that have
endured, covered the globe and given mankind all its spiritual
aspiration
and culture.
The last or highest emergence is the liberated man who has realized
the Self and Spirit within him, entered into the cosmic consciousness,
passed into union with the Eternal and, so far as he still accepts
life and action, acts by the light and energy of the Power within
him working through his human instruments of Nature. The largest
formulation of this spiritual change and achievement is a total
liberation of soul, mind, heart and action, a casting of them
all into the sense of the cosmic Self and the Divine Reality.
The spiritual evolution of the individual has then found its
way and thrown up its range of Himalayan eminence and its peaks
of highest nature. Beyond this height and largeness there opens
only the supramental ascent or the incommunicable Transcendence.
Mysticism
and spirituality have been criticized from two points of view.
These criticisms should be examined before proceeding further:
(1) The mystic turns away from life.
The mystic in this view is the man who turns aside into the unreal,
into occult regions of a self-constructed land of chimeras and
loses his way there . . . The mystic either detaches himself
from life as the other-worldly ascetic or the aloof visionary
and therefore cannot help life, or else he brings no better solution
or result than the practical man or the man of intellect and
reason.
To this kind of criticism one can reply that the true task of
spirituality is not to solve human problems on the past or present
mental basis, but to create a new foundation of our being and
our life and knowledge. The ascetic or other-worldly tendency
of the mystic is an extreme affirmation of his refusal to accept
the limitations imposed by material Nature: for his very reason
of being is to go beyond her; if he cannot transform her, he
must leave her. At the same time the spiritual man has not stood
back altogether from the life of humanity; for the sense of unity
with all beings, the stress of a universal love and compassion,
the will to spend the energies for the good of all creatures,*
are central to the dynamic outflowering of the spirit: he has
turned therefore to help, he has guided as did the ancient Rishis
or the prophets, or stooped to create and, where he has done
so with something of the direct power of the Spirit, the results
have been prodigious. But the solution of the problem which spirituality
offers is not a solution by external means, though these also
have to be used, but by an inner change, a transformation of
the consciousness and nature.
If no decisive but only a contributory result, an accretion
of some new finer elements to the sum of the consciousness, has
been the general consequence and there has been no life-transformation,
it is because man in the mass has always deflected the spiritual
impulsion, recanted from the spiritual ideal or held it only
as a form and rejected the inward change.
* Bhagavad-Gita. The Buddhist elevation of universal compassion,
karuna, and sympathy (vasudhaiva kutumbakam, 'the whole earth
is my family'), to be the highest principle of action, the Christian
emphasis on love indicate this dynamic side of the spiritual
being.
Spirituality cannot be called upon to deal with life by a non-spiritual
method or attempt to cure its ills by the panaceas, the political,
social or other mechanical remedies which the mind is constantly
attempting and which have always failed and will continue to
fail to solve anything. The most drastic changes made by these
means change nothing; for the old ills exist in a new form: the
aspect of the outward environment is altered, but man remains
what he was; he is still an ignorant mental being misusing or
not effectively using his knowledge, moved by ego and governed
by vital desires and passions and the needs of the body, unspiritual
and superficial in his outlook, ignorant of his own self and
the forces that drive and use him. His life constructions have
a value as expressions of his individual and collective being
in the stage to which they have reached or as a machinery for
the convenience and welfare of his vital and physical parts and
a field and medium for his mental growth, but they cannot take
him beyond his present self or serve as a machinery to transform
him; his and their perfection can only come by his farther evolution.
Only a spiritual change, an evolution of his being from the superficial
mental towards the deeper spiritual consciousness, can make a
real and effective difference. To discover the spiritual being
in himself is the main business of the spiritual man and to help
others towards the same evolution is his real service to the
race; till that is done, an outward help can succour and alleviate,
but nothing or very little more is possible.
It is true that the spiritual tendency has been to look more
beyond life than towards life. It is true also that the spiritual
change has been individual and not collective; its result has
been successful in the man, but unsuccessful or only indirectly
operative in the human mass. The spiritual evolution of Nature
is still in process and incomplete,--one might almost say, still
only beginning,--and its main preoccupation has been to affirm
and develop a basis of spiritual consciousness and knowledge
and to create more and more a foundation or formation for the
vision of that which is eternal in the truth of the spirit.
(2) Mystical knowledge is purely subjective.
Another objection to the mystic and his knowledge is urged, not
against its effect upon life but against his method of the discovery
of Truth and against the Truth that he discovers . . . But it
is urged that the actual result of this method is not one truth
common to all, there are great differences; the conclusion suggested
is that this knowledge is not truth at all but a subjective mental
formation. But this objection is based on a mis-understanding
of the nature of spiritual knowledge. Spiritual truth is a truth
of the spirit, not a truth of the intellect, not a mathematical
theorem or a logical formula. It is a truth of the Infinite,
one in an infinite diversity, and it can assume an infinite variety
of aspects and formations: in the spiritual evolution it is inevitable
that there should be a many-sided passage and reaching to the
one Truth, many-sided seizing of it; this many-sidededness is
the sign of the approach of the soul to a living reality, not
to an abstraction or a constructed figure of things that can
be petrified into a dead or stony formula. The hard logical and
intellectual notion of truth as a single idea which all must
accept, one idea or system of ideas defeating all other ideas
or systems, or a single limited fact or single formula of facts
which all must recognize, is an illegitimate transference from
the limited truth of the physical field to the much more complex
and plastic field of life and mind and spirit.
This transference has been responsible for much harm; it brings
into thought narrowness, limitation, an intolerance of the necessary
variation and multiplicity of view-points without which there
can be no totality of truth-finding, and by the narrowness and
limitation much obstinacy in error. It reduces philosophy to
an endless maze of sterile disputes; religion has been invaded
by this misprision and infected with credal dogmatism, bigotry
and intolerance. The truth of the spirit is a truth of being
and consciousness and not a truth of thought: mental ideas can
only represent or formulate some facet, some mind-translated
principle or power of it or enumerate its aspects, but to know
it one has to grow into it and be it; without that growing and
being there can be no true spiritual knowledge. The fundamental
truth of spiritual experience is one, its consciousness is one,
everywhere it follows the same general lines and tendencies of
awakening and growth into spiritual being; for these are the
imperatives of the spiritual consciousness. But also there are,
based on those imperatives, numberless possibilities of variation
of experience and expression: the centralization and harmonization
of these possibilities, but also the intensive sole following
out of any line of experience are both of them necessary movements
of the emerging spiritual Consciousness-Force within us. Moreover,
the accomodation of mind and life to the spiritual truth, its
expression in them, must vary with the mentality of the seeker
so long as he has not risen above all need of such accomodation
or such limiting expression. It is this mental and vital element
which has created the oppositions that still divide spiritual
seekers or enter into their differing affirmations of the truth
that they experience. This difference and variation is needed
for the freedom of spiritual search and spiritual growth: to
overpass differences is quite possible, but that is most easily
done in pure experience; in mental formulation the difference
must remain until one can exceed mind altogether and in a highest
consciousness integralize, unify and harmonize the many-sided
truth of the Spirit.
The supreme Self is one, but the souls of the Self are many
and as is the soul's formation of nature, so will be its spiritual
self-expression. A diversity in oneness is the law of the manifestation;
the supramental unification and integration must harmonize these
diversities, but to abolish them is not the intention of the
Spirit in Nature.
Chapter
6
