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02. ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம் - லைப் டிவைன்

ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்தம்

லைப் டிவைன்

கர்மயோகி

XXIII. The Double Soul In Man

The universal movement desires to give birth to individuality. It results in a seed. But it is obscure and unformed. This seed of individuality is not light or knowledge but a will. This will is not a free one, but is possessed by the universal movement. This will is in the material or atomic existence. This is a force of some involved will. It is a dumb inconscient drive or urge. This is the first status of life and that will is its characteristic. The root of the second status is desire. It is eager to possess but is limited in capacity. The bud of the third is Love. Love seeks both to possess and be possessed, to receive and to give itself. What then is the fourth stage? The Supramental existence is founded on the divine unity of souls. The original will which is obscure and unformed must become pure and emerge fully. The desire of limited capacity must be fulfilled and illumined. Love that seeks to possess and be possessed must have the high and deep satisfaction of the conscious interchange of Love. This would be the fine flower of the fourth stage and its sign of perfection. The individual seeks delight. And the universal too seeks the delight of things. In the above we see the shapes of their seeking and their stages of seeking. The Delight in things is a dumb conception in Matter. There it has to express through opposites and has to pass through the vicissitudes. Here it is its luminous consummation in Spirit. The ascent of life is truly the ascent of divine Delight in things.

The world being what it is, it could not be otherwise. The world is a masked form of Sachchidananda. It is the nature of consciousness of Sachchidananda. And therefore the world is a place in which His force must always find the divine Bliss. It must achieve an omnipresent self-delight. Life is an energy of His conscious-force. Therefore the secret of all its movements must be a hidden delight. This delight must be inherent in all things. This delight is the cause, motive and object of all its activities. By reason of egoistic division, that delight must be missed. It is held back behind a veil. It is represented as its own opposite. We know being is masked in death; consciousness figures as inconscient. Force we see as ridiculous incapacity. This state of affairs cannot satisfy living things. Nor can they rest from the movement. It can fulfill the movement only by laying hold of the universal delight. It is at once the secret total delight of its own being. It is also the delight of the original Sachchidananda. Sachchidananda is transcendent and immanent. This delight is all-encompassing, all-informing, all-upholding. To seek delight is the fundamental impulse and sense of Life. To find and possess and fulfil it is Life's whole motive.

But where in us is this principle of Delight? Through what term of our being does it manifest and fulfil in the action of the cosmos? We know the principle of Conscious-Force manifests as Life. It uses Life for its cosmic term. The principle of Supermind manifests and uses Mind. There is fourfold principle of divine Being in creating the universe. These are Existence, Conscious-Force, Bliss and Supermind. Supermind is omnipresent in the material cosmos, but veiled. It is operative secretly behind the actual events. It occultly expresses itself there. The Supermind uses Mind, its own subordinate term, for effectuation. Similarly the divine Conscious-Force is omnipresent in the material cosmos, but veiled. It is operative secretly behind the actual phenomenon of things. It too expresses itself through its subordinate term, Life. We have not yet examined the principle of Matter separately. But it is evident that here too we find a similar phenomenon. The divine All-existence is also omnipresent in the material cosmos, but veiled. It is hidden behind the actual phenomenon of things. It manifests itself there initially through its own subordinate term. Substance, the Form of being, is the subordinate term here, Matter. If so, the principle of divine Bliss also must be omnipresent in the cosmos. It too will be veiled. It would possess itself behind the actual phenomenon of things. It will manifest through some subordinate principle of its own. Let us find it from its hidden recess. Thus it would be acting in the universe.

Such a term is there in us. Sometimes we call it a soul in a special sense. It is the psychic principle which is not mind or life. Surely it is not the body. But it holds in itself the opening and flowering of the essence of all these. They open to their peculiar delight of self, of light, to love and to joy. It seeks beauty and a refined purity of being. Every cosmic principle in us has a double status. So also, this too has a double soul or psychic term. We have two minds. One is the surface mind. It expresses our evolutionary ego. It is the superficial mentality. It is created in us by our emergence out of Matter. Another is the subliminal mind. It is not hampered by our surface mind and its limitation. It is something large, powerful, luminous. It is the true mental being behind our mental personality. We mistake that personality for ourselves. We have two lives. One is outer, involved in our body. It is bound by its past evolution of Matter. This physical body which lives now, was born and will die. The other is the subliminal force of life. It is not cabined between the narrow boundaries of physical birth and physical death. It is our true vital being. It is behind the form of living. We ignorantly take it for our real existence. Even in the matter of our being, there is this duality. Behind our body we have a subtler material substance. It is an existence which provides us the substance. It is a substance not only of the physical but of the vital, mental sheaths. It is our real substance. It supports this physical form. But we erroneously imagine it to be the whole body of our spirit. So too, we have a double psychic entity in us. One is the surface desire-soul. It works in our vital cravings, our emotions, and aesthetic faculty. It seeks mental power, a pure power of light, knowledge and happiness. Also there is a subliminal psychic entity. It is a pure power of light, love and joy. It seeks the refined essence of being. It is our true soul behind the outer form of psychic existence. We often call that by that name. Sometimes this larger, purer psychic entity comes to the surface. Then we say of a man that he has a soul. Often it is absent in his outward psychic life. We then say he has no soul. Our life consists of the external forms of being and the subliminal formations of our larger, truer individuality. The externals are the small egoistic formations. Our concealed part of our being contains our individuality. It is close to our universality. It touches the universality. Also it is in constant relation and commerce with it. The cosmic Mind has the universal knowledge. The subliminal mind in us is open to that knowledge. The subliminal life in us is open to the universal force of the cosmic Life. The subliminal physicality in us is open to the universal force-formation of cosmic Matter. There are thick walls that separate the subliminal from the surface. It is there between mind, life and body. Nature has the trouble to pierce through those walls. It can pierce only imperfectly. Its skill is very great, but the walls are so thick that even its great skill ends up clumsily in its effort. Sri Aurobindo calls it skillful-clumsy device. It is a rarefied medium of communication and separation. Both functions are done simultaneously. The cosmic soul takes delight in its own existence. It delights even in the existence of all the other souls. These many souls represent the cosmic soul. The subliminal soul in us is open to the universal delight. Nature lends herself to the play and development of mind, life and matter. Souls here, as everywhere, represent the parts of the being. The surface soul is shut off from the cosmic delight by egoistic walls. They are thick walls. There are gates in the walls allowing penetration. These walls do permit great penetration. Also they have a character of dwarfing the great cosmic Delight when approached through them. The Delight is distorted, masked and turned to its opposite.

So, there is no true life on the surface. True-life is soul-life. What we have is a psychic deformation of truth of things. The touch of things is wrongly received as their opposites. Man cannot find his real soul. It is his malady, or misfortune. He lives in his real soul inwardly. Outwardly his embrace of the world escapes the touch of the reality of his soul. That is the root cause of his misfortune. He seeks the essence of reality, but meets with surface touches and impressions. They are contradictory in nature. The essence of being, the essence of power, the essence of consciousness, the essence of delight are what man is after. There is one universal being, power, conscious existence and delight. To find that, man needs to find that essence. These millions of touches and impressions can have a unity and harmony of the Truth. All these contradictions would be reconciled in that unity. The self of the world and his own self are one. His true soul is a delegate of his self. He can find his true self through his true soul. This is possible when the unity and harmony of the Truth are reached. His egoistic ignorance of mind, thought, emotions, senses stands in the way. They do not respond to the embrace of the world wholeheartedly or courageously. They are cautious, shrink from the touch. Either they eagerly rush or are sullen and discontented. Their response is panic or anger. They recoil from a displeasing touch, are comforted at a pleasing embrace. Comfort or alarm, satisfaction or dissatisfaction are their responses. We know of pleasure, pain and indifference. These are the triple misinterpretation of the desire soul. Wrong reception of life interprets the rasa, the delight in things wrongly. Pure essential joy or being is so rendered by the egoistic life.

Earlier we have considered the Delight of Existence in its relation to the world. We found we have standards of pleasure and pain and indifference. Those standards, we saw were not valid. We could find no absoluteness in the standards. The standards were found to be subjective. It was the subjectivity of the receiving consciousness. That alone determines. We also saw the intensity of these sensations can be varied at will. They can be heightened or depressed or effaced. The great secret about pain and pleasure is, in their secret reality, both are the same. They can also be interchanged. It is our sensations that give a vibration the hue of pain or pleasure. Our emotions too do it. Indifference is the inattention of the surface desire-soul. The surface is of mind, emotions or sensations and cravings. They crave for the rasa of things. It can be because of the incapacity to receive or respond to it. Or it may refuse to respond. It may drive down the pleasure by the will into neutrality. The response becomes neutral as the surface refuses acceptance. Something does happen in all these things. It is positive refusal sometimes. Or it may be negative unreadiness or incapacity. What is not yet subliminally active, the surface is incapable of responding to.

By now we have psychological observation. There are some experiments too. They confirm the truth of the subliminal. The surface receives some touches and ignores others. Whereas the subliminal receives all those touches without exception. This is the truth of the subliminal. The subliminal has a soul. It responds to the rasa. Rasa is essential in experience of all those touches. The surface desire-soul rejects many out of distaste. It rejects, refuses or ignores. It can neutrally accept which it is ignoring. Unless we go behind the surface life, self-knowledge is not possible. Surface life is a selective life. It is merely an outer experience. Surface is an imperfect sounding board. It is a hasty, incompetent, fragmentary translation of a little. In fact, we are not little, we are much, rather very much. We have to go behind this surface. We must try the subconscient, reach the superconscient.

We must know their relations with our surface being. Our life moves between these three things. Its own totality is found in these three. In us there is the soul and its parent the self. What we call superconscient is one with these two. The superconscient is not governed by what happens to us on the surface. The surface is full of phenomenal diversity. The truth of things is in the superconscient. Even the delight of things is there. They are there in their plenitude. We then have the subconscient. We call its head subliminal. It is a luminous head. The subconscient is not like the superconscient. There is no instrument there to receive the experience. It is not one with the soul or self of the world. The subconscient comes to the soul of the world through world-experience. The subliminal has a soul. It is conscious inwardly of the rasa of things. It has an equal delight in all contacts.

The subliminal is also conscious of the values and standards of the surface soul. It does receive on its own surface corresponding touches. They are touches of pleasure, pain or indifference. The subliminal takes equal delight in all. On the surface we love some touches, abhor others. But our real soul below enjoys every touch without exception. It takes joy in all experiences, gathers from them strength, pleasure and knowledge. It grows by them in its store and its plenty. This is the real soul in us. The surface desire-mind may shrink from what is painful. But the real soul compels the surface to seek it. The surface may find pleasure in a touch. The real soul below compels it to reject what is pleasant. The real soul has the power to modify or even reverse the surface seekings. Sri Aurobindo calls them 'to equalize things in indifference'. Or 'equalize them in joy'. It is known as the joy of variety of existence. This is because of the universal urge. This is its way to develop by all kinds of experiences. This is Nature's way of growth. The plant and the stone are immobile. Their existence is routine. Their life is not superficially conscious. The secret soul there has no instrument yet to outgrow routine. They were born into the groove of the fixed, the narrow, the rigid. Living only on the surface, we would live like the plant or stone. The desire soul left to itself would circle in the same groove forever. It is the subliminal that breaks that dull routine.

In the old philosophies, pleasure and pain are inseparable. So also the intellectual truth and falsehood are inseparable. Power and incapacity, birth and death are such dualities. Therefore there is only one possible escape from pain. It is to be totally indifferent to either of them, pain or pleasure. The world-self excites man. He has to respond with blank indifference. But one can have a subtle psychological knowledge. It says that this is a view based on surface knowledge. The possibilities of the problem are far wider. This view is a narrow view. It is possible to bring the real soul to the surface. Standards of pleasure and pain are the standards of the ego. The real soul can replace the ego. It can embrace all vibrations. Its delight can be personal-impersonal. That is it can draw impersonal pleasure from a touch of personal pain. The lover of Nature does this. We find things mean, base, savage, terrible or repellent. He finds in them joy, beauty or love. He rejects none. He admits all vibrations and finds joy in them. The artist and poet do it. They seek the rasa from the universal form. To him it is aesthetic emotion. The artist discovers the pleasing physical line or form of beauty. It comes to him from an inner sense. It is a power. The ordinary man turns away from them. He is attached by a sense of pleasure to things. The seeker of knowledge does it. The lover of Beauty too does it. The God-lover finds his object of love everywhere. The spiritual man, the intellectual, the sensuous, the aesthetic all do this. Each does so in his own fashion. As they seek Beauty, Knowledge and Joy, they all must act as such because what they seek is Divinity. But our ego and desire-soul change the picture. The strength of ego or the weakness of the desire-soul lead to the opposite experience. They bring emotional and physical joy or suffering. They bring us pleasure and pain. The application of the divine principle is difficult here. It is impossible, monstrous or even repellent. The principle of impersonality is known to Science and Art. The ego is ignorant of it. Not only Science understands impersonality, certain imperfect spiritual living also admits impersonality. Sometimes our outward life is most interested in certain desires and values. Where they are not disturbed by the vibration of impersonality, impersonality is admitted. These are the freer and higher movements. It demands a limited equality, specially needed for them. For the rest, the egoistic basis of our life remains intact. The progress is made in a particular field of consciousness. In the lower movements the whole foundations of our life have to be changed. Our ego finds this impossible. The desire-soul does not entertain impersonality.

The true soul is a secret in us. We call it subliminal which is a misleading word. That soul is not situated just below the waking mind as described by the word subliminal. Behind the ignorant mind, life and body is a thick screen. The temple of the inmost heart is behind that screen. The true soul is there, not just below the mind. Truly it is not subliminal, but it is behind the veil. This is the veiled psychic entity. It is the flame of Godhead always alight within us. It is inextinguishable. The spiritual self in us is dense, unconscious. It obscures our outer nature. Even this obscurity and this unconsciousness cannot extinguish that psychic flame inside. It is a flame born out of the Divine. It is a luminous inhabitant of the ignorance. The flame grows inside ignorance till it is able to turn it into Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness, the control, the hidden Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light, the inner voice of the mystic. It endures from birth to birth. It is imperishable. It is untouched by death, decay or corruption. It is an indestructible spark of the Divine. It is not the unborn Self or Atman. The Self presides over the existence of the individual. Even while doing so, the Self is aware of its universality and transcendence. It is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature. It is the individual soul, Caitya purusha. It supports the mind, life and body. It stands behind the mental, vital, suble-physical being in us. It is watching and profiting by the development and experience. There are person-powers in man. There are beings of his being. Their true entity is also veiled. They put forward temporary personalities. They are of our outer individuality. Their superficial actions combine and give us an appearance of status. We mistake that for ourselves. This is an inmost entity. It takes form in us as the psychic Person. It puts forward a psychic personality. It changes, grows, develops from life to life. This is the traveller from birth to birth. It moves from death to birth. Our nature parts are only its outer dress. It is manifold and is changing. The psychic can only exercise a concealed, partial, indirect action through the mind, the life and the body. The psychic is trying to develop these parts as its instruments of self-expression. It is long confined by their evolution. The psychic is missioned to lead the man in Ignorance towards the light of Divine Consciousness. It takes the essence of all experiences in the Ignorance. Out of it it forms a nucleus of soul-growth in nature. The rest it turns into material for future growth of the instruments. The goal is the luminous instrumentation of the Divine. Till then the psychic uses these instruments. This is the secret psychic entity in us. This is the true original conscience in us deeper than what we know of as conscience. It is the constructed, conventional conscience of the moralist. This points towards the Truth, Right and Beauty, Love and Harmony. These are all the divine possibilities in our nature. The conscience persists till the basics become a persistent need in us. It is the psychic personality that flowers in us as the saint, seer, the poet, the sage. When it reaches its full strength, it turns towards the knowledge of Self and the Divine. It takes us towards the supreme Good, Truth, Beauty, Love and Bliss. There are divine heights and largenesses. They open in us the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality and oneness. On the contrary, the psychic personality may be poor in character or power. The mind may be forceful and brilliant. The heart and the vital emotions may be hard and strong and masterful. The life force may be dominant and successful. Or the bodily existence may be rich and fortunate and an apparent lord and victor. The outer desire-soul is the pseudo-psychic entity. This reigns in the above conditions. We mistake it for the true soul-stuff. To us it is the wealth of spiritual experience. We mistake its suggestion and aspiration for that of the true soul's aspiration. Similarly we mistake its ideals and ideas, desires and yearnings. Our aim is the ascent into the spiritual existence. We want our life to be cast into the true soul-image. The soul-images are what is right, true and beautiful. Thus, in the end, the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life. For this the secret psychic Person must come forward into the front. It must replace the desire-soul and govern overtly and entirely. It is not enough that it comes out partially and remains from behind the veil of outer nature of mind, life or body. That is the supreme victory.

We may hope that the emergence of the psychic is all and it would open the kingdom of heaven on earth. We must not only bring the psychic to the front but give it the lead and allow it to rule. It may not give all the fulfillment we expect. We may also think Supermind may no longer be necessary. We aim at divine status and divine perfection. We know the intervention of the superior Truth-Consciousness is needed for this. We also know the principle of Supermind is necessary to attain our goal. Now it looks as if the psychic can achieve it all by itself. Of course, the psychic transformation is one necessary condition of the total transformation of our existence. But it is not all that is needed for such a change. In the first place, the psychic is the individual soul in Nature. It can open to the divine ranges of our being. Thus it can receive and reflect their power and light and experience. But our total transformation requires us to be universal. Also it must be transcendent. Therefore another spiritual transformation is required. But, the psychic being can create a formation of truth. It might be content with that. That may be a formation of good and beauty too. The psychic is capable of resting there. It may move to a further stage. There it might subject itself to the world-self. This may be a passive subjection. That way, the psychic may reflect like a mirror the universal existence. It would reflect also the universal light, power, consciousness, delight. Even this is not to be a full participant or possessor of what it reflects. The psychic can be united to the cosmic consciousness. It would be thrilling. The union will be nearly complete. It unites in Knowledge, emotion and even appreciation through the senses. Still it might become purely recipient and passive. That is not enough for mastery and action in the world. Or it may become one with the static self behind the cosmos. Even here it would be separate inwardly from the world-movement. In that case it would lose its individuality to its source. It might return to that source. Its ultimate mission is to lead nature also towards divine realisation. The psychic being came into Nature from the Self, the Divine. It can turn back from Nature to the silent Divine. It can go back through the silence of the Self and a supreme spiritual immobility. The psychic is an eternal portion of the Divine. This is a part of the Divine. The Divine is governed by the law of the Infinite. It says the part is inseparable from the Divine whole. In fact this part is the Whole. It is not the Whole in its frontal experience. The frontal part is for a separative self-experience. It may awaken to that reality and plunge into it. It might appear to have dissolved losing its individual existence. The psychic is a small nucleus here in the mass of ignorant Nature. It is described in the Upanishads as no bigger than the thumb. It can enlarge itself by a spiritual influx. Thus it can embrace the whole world with the heart and mind in an intimate communion or oneness. Or, it can become aware of the eternal Companion. It may elect to live forever in His presence. It would be an imperishable union and oneness. It is the union of the eternal lover and the eternal Beloved. Of all the spiritual experiences, this is the most intense in beauty and rapture. All these are splendid achievements of our spiritual self-finding. But they are not necessarily the last end and entire consummation. More is possible.

The range of mental levels between us and the Supermind is called by Sri Aurobindo as the spiritual mental level. The above experiences belong to that spiritual mind. They are movements of mind when it goes out of its own bounds. As the mind is exceeded, joy wells forth. Still, they are on the planes of mind, though they are spiritualised mental ranges. They are splendours of the Spirit, but not supramental. Mind's nature is division. We know our own mind. Its highest reach is overmind. Even there, mind divides. It takes the aspects of the Eternal Being. It treats each aspect as if it were the Whole. It takes the aspects of the Eternal Being. It can find its fulfillment in one aspect. The mind takes two aspects of the Eternal and makes them the opposites. Not only that. It creates a whole range of opposites. So, the mind sets the Silence of the Divine against the divine Dynamics. It takes the immobile Brahman aloof from qualities and makes it the opposite of the active Brahman with qualities, the Lord of Existence. Another such pair is Being and Becoming. Divine Person is set against the impersonal pure Existence. Mind can cut itself from one and plunge itself into the other. Each such aspect is to it the sole abiding Truth of existence. It can regard the Person as the sole Reality or the Impersonal alone as true. It can regard the Lover as the only self-expression of eternal Love or Love as the only self-expression of the Lover. It can see beings as only personal powers of an impersonal Existence or impersonal existence as only a state of the one Being, the Infinite Person. In spiritual aims the road towards the supreme aim will follow these dividing lines. But beyond this movement of spiritual Mind is the higher experience of the Supermind Truth-Consciousness. There these opposites disappear. These partialities are relinquished. The eternal Being has the rich totality of a supreme and integral realisation. We have conceived this as the aim. It is the consummation of our existence here by an ascent to the Supramental Truth-Consciousness and its descent into our nature. The psychic transformation after rising into the spiritual change has then to be completed. It has to be integralised, exceeded and uplifted by a supramental transformation. That lifts it to the summit of the ascending endeavour.

The manifested Being has the other divided and opposed terms. So also, the supramental consciousness-energy could alone establish a perfect harmony between these two terms. They are apparently opposite only because of the Ignorance. These two terms are in our embodied existence spirit status and world dynamism. In the Ignorance Nature centres the order of her psychological movements around her ego-principle. She does not choose the secret spiritual self as her centre. Ego is her substitute. A certain ego-centrism is our basis. We live in the midst of complexities, contradictions, dualities, incoherences of the world. Around the ego, we bind together the experiences and relations with the world forces. This ego-centrism is our rock of safety. The ego defends itself against the cosmic and the infinite. But in our spiritual change we have to forego this defence. The ego has to vanish. The person finds himself dissolved into a vast impersonality. In this impersonality there is no ordered dynamism to action, nor do we know the key. A very usual result is one is divided into two parts of being. The one is spiritual within. The other is natural without. In one there is the divine realisation seated in a perfect inner freedom. Natural parts go on with the old action of Nature. The past energies have already transmitted to her the impulse. She continues them. All within may be luminous with the Self. The entire limited person may dissolve. Along with that the old ego-centric order too may dissolve. Still the outer nature may become one of apparent incoherence. Thus we become outwardly inert and inactive. We may be moved by circumstances or forces. But they will not be self-mobile. The consciousness within may be enlightened. We may be as a child with a plenary self-knowledge within. With utter calm and serenity inside we may be inconsequent in thought impulse. With purity and poise of the Spirit inside, we may be a wild and disordered soul without. There may be an ordered dynamism outside. It may be a continuation of superficial ego-action witness, but not accepted by the inner being. Or it may be a mental dynamism that cannot be perfectly expressive of the inner spiritual realisation. For, there is no equilibrium between the action of the mind and the status of the spirit. At best there would be an intuitive guidance of Light from within. Even then his outer actions will be informed by an imperfection of mind, life and body. It is analogous to a king with capable ministers or a knowledge expressed in the values of Ignorance. The harmony of the Spirit needs to be expressed in the outer existence as in the inner life. Only the descent of the Supermind will be capable of this. This is so because it has the perfect unity of Truth-Knowledge and Truth-will. For, only Supermind can turn the values of Ignorance into values of knowledge.

Our parts of being must be consummated. It is the fulfillment of the psychic being. It can be done by relating it to its divine source. It is there we have the correspondent truth in the Supreme Reality. It is indispensable for the change. As before, here too only by the power of the Supramental it can be done with integral completeness. Here is an intimacy that becomes an authentic identity. For, it is the Supermind which links the higher with the lower hemispheres of the One Existence. In the Supermind there is the integralising Light. The consummating Force is there. It gives the wide entry into Ananda. The psychic being came from the original Delight of being. Uplifted by the Light and Force, it can join its origin. Thus it can overcome the dualities of pain and pleasure. It can deliver man from all fear and shrinking in the mind, life and body. It can recast the contacts of existence in the world into terms of Divine Ananda.

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ஸ்ரீ அரவிந்த சுடர்
 
உள்ளே போய் உலகை அறிவது ஞானம்.
 

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book | by Dr. Radut