Moderate Spirituality

 

The Agenda of Moderate Spirituality

 

            “Nevertheless it is possible to make the material man and his life moderately progressive by imprinting on the material mind (physical mind) the custom of progress, the habit of conscious change, the fixed idea of progression as a law of life… It is possible to give the material man and his life a moderate spirituality by accustoming him to regard in a religious spirit all the institutions of life and its customary activities.”⁹

Sri Aurobindo

 

            “Nor can the ideal of human life be simply the animal repeated on a higher scale of mentality. Otherwise, a moderate mental satisfaction would have stayed our advance.”¹⁰

Sri Aurobindo

            “When we attain this perfection (master of the physical), then action and inaction become immaterial, since neither interferes with the freedom of the soul or draws it away from its urge towards the Self or its poise in the Self. But this state of perfection arrives later in the Yoga and till then the law of moderation laid down by the Gita is the best for us; too much mental and physical action then is not good since excess draws away too much energy and reacts unfavourably upon the spiritual condition; too little also is not good since defect leads to a habit of inaction and even to an incapacity which has afterwards to be surmounted with difficulty.”¹¹ (This line indicates that till one discovers Psychic being and Spiritual being, the law of moderation is good; but after that discovery, one should pursue rigorous self-control, ceaseless consecrated action, hard sacrifice.)

Sri Aurobindo

 

            If one is comfortable and satisfied with one part of his being and Nature having contact with the Divine, excluding the rest of his being and nature, then he is identified as a Moderate.

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            The moderate philosophy considers man as above the brute and below God and he is given the calm reason as his guide. He chooses a middle path of reason’s vigilant light which is neither that of Gods with their superhuman thought and power nor that of Titans with their furious march to conquer the kingdom of heaven and dash their life against the eternal Law and fall and break by their own violent mass, nor is he driven by an unthinking will of the bird and beast, nor is he moved senselessly by the stark necessity of Inconscient things. The Moderate Spirituality begins when there is an instreaming of exceptional light of experience into the great mass of normal unenlightened human mind, vitality and physicality which forms the outer self and engrosses the natural preoccupation of a moderate seeker. 

 

            Integral Yoga recognises man’s hunger for immediate solutions of all his practical problems and does not rest content with unsolved discord, unillumined compromise, patched with failure but sets out in its mission to resolve all problems of existence through integral Evolution or existence fully aware of itself. It accepts all life as Yoga of the Mother-nature, evolving through the concentration of the individual or the secret will of Sachchidanada appearing as the individual in a world. It uses all the means of Religion, Science, Occult knowledge and Spiritual thought as a starting point and the evolutionary endeavour of Nature has experimented on all lines in order to find her true way and her whole way. It accepts the developmental urge of all Religion as ‘a sort of unconscious Yoga of devotion’, and Science as ‘a sort of unconscious Yoga of intellect’; it is the first approach of mind to the Spirit and Nature’s means of slow evolution and are relevant for the beginners. Integral Yoga accepts all Religion as part of the eternal Religion, Sanatana Dharma, and adoration of personal God of all Religion as passage of partial realisation of the Divine helping one towards the realisation of the Divine in its entirety. All Science is accepted as part and portion of Supreme Science and the rationalistic Materialism can safely enter the vast field of evidence and experience when the intellect has been severely trained to clear austerity. It served humanity greatly through a clean sweep at once of truth of liberated intelligence, a new departure and a surer advance of perfect experience and liberates humanity from the dualities of the sensational partial conceptions. 

 

Who is a moderate?:

“So must the dim being grow in light and force

And rise to his higher destiny at last,

Look up to God and round at the universe,

And learn by failure and progress by fall

And battle with environment and doom,

By suffering discover his deep soul

And by possession grow to his own vasts.” Savitri-146 (by possession of Psychic being)

“He is satisfied with his common average kind;

Tomorrow’s hopes and his old rounds of thought,

His old familiar interests and desires

He has made into a thick and narrowing hedge

Defending his small life from the Invisible;

His being’s kinship to infinity

He has shut away from him into inmost self,

Fenced off the greatness of hidden God.” Savitri-165-66

“Man’s eyes could look into the inner realms;

His scrutiny discovered number’s law

And organised the motions of the stars,

Mapped out the visible fashioning of the world,

Questioned the process of his thoughts or made

A theorised diagram of mind and life.” Savitri-361

            A moderate’s width of life is all that he can think and act and to enjoy and to breathe is the height of his mortal hope. He meets a strange portion of his self that seeks for fragments and lives satisfied in the fragments. He lives in himself and for himself alone and with the rest joins only fleeting ties. His passion over short-lived surface joy and grief is his Shudra identity and his high thought cannot prevent him from the trap of inferior lower Nature which is ‘lower than the lowest reptile’s crawl’⁴⁵ and thus, he is unable to discover the Eternal in his secret house. He pursues the Divine Mother with life’s blind desire and claims all of Her as his lonely own and hastens to engross Her sweetness meant for all and hopes to bind Her with his longing cords. He finds Her Divine touch too strong to bear; intolerant of a Force he could not house and shrank into himself as from too bright a Sun. His mind’s light hides from him the Eternal’s thought; his heart’s hope conceals from him the Eternal’s will and earthly joy shuts from him the Eternal’s Bliss.

 

The Spirit of a Moderate:

“For swift and easy is the downward path,” Savitri-211

“Inviting to their high and exquisite sphere,

To their secure and fine extremities

This creature who hugs his limits to feel safe,

These heights declined a greater adventure’s call.

A glory and sweetness of satisfied desire

Tied up the spirit to golden posts of bliss.

It could not house the wideness of a soul

Which needed all infinity for its home.” Savitri-238

“Man turns aside or chooses easier paths;” Savitri-449 (turns aside difficult adventure)

“Only in limits can man’s strength be safe,

Yet is infinity thy spirit’s goal,

Its bliss is there behind the world’s face of tears.” Savitri-453

“Yet is he (intellect of man) visited by intuitive light

And inspiration comes from the Unknown;

But only reason and sense he feels as sure,

They only are his trusted witnesses.” Savitri-517

“Our mortal vision peers with ignorant eyes;

It has no gaze on the deep heart of things.” Savitri-626

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            Moderate Spirituality is the first preliminary form of seeking with certain kind of religiosity which is not a pure Spiritual temperament but is of the nature of mind or life finding in itself a Spiritual support. In this stage, man is mostly preoccupied with the utilisation of such contacts as he can construct with what is beyond him to help or serve his mental ideas or moral ideals or his vital and physical interests and true turn to some Spiritual change has not yet come.

 

            Through small joys and grief, he moves towards God. His consciousness forgets to be Divine and cannot bear the Divine’s tremendous touch and cannot experience radical transformation of Nature. He experiences God with His cruel indifferent bitter law and pitiless gaze, meets love with his own agony and short-lived passion and an unknown face of Fate visits with ominous terror and shadowy doom. Now he walks in Nature’s doubtful ray. If his will could be made one with the Divine will and if his thought could echo the thoughts of God, then he might be all-knowing and omnipotent. If his mind can receive God’s light and his force be driven by God’s force then he is a miracle doing miracles.

 

            Effort has been made to accommodate the moderate seekers in the main streams of integral Yoga regardless of their past trend, fixed belief and exclusive methods. They will be conversant with its many fold Spiritual practices from the very beginning of their sadhana life and make their life opulent with the fresh inflow of Spiritual experiences. Their natural recoil from the difficult road, high truth, concentrated writings, great adventure within and without and practice of large-scale Spiritual disciplines are corrected, enlarged and transcended through the practice of inner adoration, sacrifice and consecrated action.  An awareness comes of an inner light, of guidance or a communion, a greater control than the mind and will to which something in him obeys but all is not yet recast in the mould of that experience. The final aim of the evolutionary Nature in mental man is Spiritual change by the influence of the inner being and higher Spiritual mind but this by itself can lead to an illumined mental idealism to the growth of a religious mind, a religious temperament and some devotion in the heart and piety in the conduct. It is a first approach of Mind to the Spirit but it cannot enter the radical transformation of life and nature. Thus, a moderate Devotee has more responsibility to live deeper within, to exceed his present consciousness and raise the Spiritual aspiration of the heart, its self-offering and its inner seeking. His faith in the Divine is indispensable; for without it he cannot pursue his path through the Unknown and this need not be imposed on him but must come as free perception and imperative direction, adesh, from the inner Spirit.

 

The Limitation of Moderate Spirituality:

"He is a smallness trying to be great, 

An animal with some instincts of a god,

His life a story too common to be told, 

His deeds a number summing up to nought,

His consciousness a torch lit to be quenched,

His hope a star above a cradle and grave." Savitri-78

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“A slowly changing order binds our will.

This is our doom until our souls are free.” Savitri-154

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“As long as the human animal is lord

And a dense nether nature screens the soul,

As long as intellect’s outward-gazing sight

Serves earthy interest and creature joys,

An incurable littleness pursues his days.” Savitri-163-164

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“A little bliss is lent thee from above,

A touch divine upon thy human days.

Make of thy daily way a pilgrimage,

For through small joys and griefs thou mov’st towards God.” Savitri-451

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“He sees his little self as very God.

His little ‘I’ has swallowed the whole world,

His ego has stretched into infinity.” Savitri-453

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Narad said: “Because thy strength is a part not God’s whole,

Because afflicted by the little self

Thy consciousness forgets to be divine

As it (consciousness) walks in the vague penumbra of the flesh

And cannot bear the world’s tremendous touch,

Thou criest out and sayst that there is pain.” Saviti-454

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“Imprisoned in his body and his brain

The mortal cannot see God’s mighty whole,

Or share in his vast and deep identity

Who (Divine) stands unguessed within our ignorant hearts

And knows all things because he (Divine) is one with all.” Savitri-517

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            “The doctrine “No belief without proof” applies to physical science, it would be disastrous in the field of spirituality — or for that matter in the field of human action. The saints or bhaktas have the faith in God long before they get the experience of God — the man of action has the faith in his cause long before his cause is crowned with success — otherwise they would not have been able to struggle persistently towards their end in spite of defeat, failure and deadly peril.”³⁸

Sri Aurobindo

            Since moderate Spirituality is Nature’s unconscious Yoga through slow evolution, so it cannot transform the impending doom or fixed destiny into a higher Spiritual destiny. A moderate gains the hard-won quietude, silence, partial Divine realisation and falls into mortal grief and Nature’s Law during transitional or critical moments of life. During the period of extreme adversity, he does not lean on the pure and tranquil Spirit for all the necessary aid and help, rather he opens himself towards murmurs of inhuman solitudes and prefers to find a gate of escape⁴⁶ from all real problems. All Religions and all Sciences have their own countless stories of doing harm and evil to mankind and the world. 

 

The Law of Moderation-1:

Or Practice of Moderate Spirituality through Science:

 

            “(Scientific) Genius is one attempt of the universal Energy to so quicken and intensify our intellectual powers that they shall be prepared for those more puissant, direct and rapid faculties which constitute the play of the supra-intellectual or divine mind. It is not, then, a freak, an inexplicable phenomenon, but a perfectly natural next step in the right line of her (Nature’s) evolution.”¹⁵

Sri Aurobindo

            “It is the Godhead who manifests himself in the great thinker, the hero, the leader of men, the great teacher, sage, prophet, religious founder, saint, lover of man, the great poet, the great artist, the great scientist, the ascetic self-tamer, the tamer of things and events and forces.”¹⁶

Sri Aurobindo

“Our human knowledge is a candle burnt

On a dim altar to a sun-vast Truth;” Savitri-280

“And Science tears out Nature’s occult powers,” Savitri-627

“And sciences omnipotent in vain

By which men learn of what the suns are made,

Transform all forms to serve their outward needs,

Ride through the sky and sail beneath the sea,

But learn not what they are or why they came….” Savitri-644

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            Science begins its journey from an obscure and ignorant perception of the hidden realities of Nature and proceeds towards more luminous and more potential vision of the Truth. It is the outcome of the development of man’s faculty of exclusive concentration and vast extension of practical physical mind. Integral Evolution considers Science as a part of occultism as it brings to light the Nature’s hidden formulas and uses its knowledge to set free the operation of her energies and place all its inventions and discoveries at the service of mankind. Science represents a vast system of physical magic through utilisation of secret truths of being and secret power and processes of Nature and it cannot rest content with the barriers of sense knowledge. Integral Evolution further provides this input that success and completion of physical knowledge of Science can be arrived at in its range of inquiry by discovery of what lies beyond, the Supraphysical knowledge because behind the process of physical Nature there is a vast inner kingdom of Supraphysical fact which can be accessed through Subliminal and Spiritual vision and entry into the Occult movement of the Force. 

 

            Science dreams of physical conquest of death, discovers the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, has insatiable thirst for power and knowledge to capture God’s Omnipotence and Omniscience, contracting Space and Time to vanishing point and it strives in a thousand ways to make man the master of the circumstance and it is arriving at the border where material is divided from the immaterial and the highest achievement of utilitarian Science has even reduced the dependency on external aid of machinery to a vanishing point. In the wireless telegraphy and telephonic communication, the sensible physical means for the intermediate transmission of the physical force is removed and it is preserved only at the point of transmission and reception. The development of Supraphysical science ensures that dependency even on these machineries will disappear and direct communication can be established between mind and mind without the aid of the physical organs and limitation they impose on our surface consciousness. If we can recognise this fact then an enormous vistas to the future will wide open through Supraphysical Science.  

 

            Since the very Soul of scientific enquiry is the search for knowledge, so it cannot cry a halt at sense dominated knowledge and reasoning from sense knowledge and shall strive to go beyond the limitation and error of sense²¹ by revealing the facts and realities not seizable by corporeal organs. Science confirms the Vedic and the Upanishadic idea ‘of the one essence with its many becomings’. The dualist appearance of Matter and Energy are reconciled in Science as matter is energy or E= mc² and are reconciled in Vedanta as the Matter is Brahman Energy, annam brahma. It is evident that essential Matter is a thing non-existent to senses and is only a conceptual form of substance and a point is reached where the arbitrary distinction in thought divides the form of substance from the form of energy.

                                                                         

           With the increase of scientific knowledge man becomes capable of regulating and indefinitely prolonging life, though not capable of an entire conquest of death. Science is capable of envisaging only external or secondary causes of removing death and disease to a distance and is not capable of the root knowledge of eliminating it; it knows the process of things but not the essence, thus, it arrives at more powerful manipulation of circumstance without experiencing the essential control. But if we could go behind the surface nature and grasp the essential subtle nature and cause of error, suffering and death, we might hope to arrive at a mastery over them which should be not relative but entire. We can even hope to eliminate them altogether and justify the dominant instinct of our nature by the conquest of that absolute good, bliss, knowledge and immortality which our intuitions perceive as the true and ultimate condition of the human being. So the solution of the whole problem of existence cannot be realised by exclusive one-sided knowledge and process of the Science but we must know the process of mind, life, Soul and Spirit and all that are behind the material surface, and then only we have sufficiently integral knowledge for the total solution of the problem.

                                                                    

           Science is keen to take minute care, intelligent approach and one pointed concentration on smallest and largest of its works. This mighty energy is an equal and impartial mother and its intensity and force of movement is the same in the formation and upholding of a system of suns and the organisation of the life of an ant-hill. We have already seen how greatly and scrupulously Science has served the ends of the Divine and we must preserve all the truths of material Science and its real utilities in the final harmony, even if many or even if all of its existing forms have to be broken or left aside.

 

            Reason corrects the error and limitation of the sense mind and is therefore one of the most powerful faculties developed by Science and that is the chief cause of his superiority among the terrestrial beings. The reason of the enormous success of physical Science is that it works best and with a firm confidence, the truth and potentiality already contained in Nature, when it is given a substance to work or handle the cosmic force through acquired knowledge, deals objectivised actualities with sure steps of verification by positive reason and objective evidence, erects formulas and standards based on the objective and phenomenal reality and proceeds from them for new invention and new discovery and it accepts the actual, physical and objective fact as self-evident truth beyond question.  Physical Science enlarged the discoveries and released the huge secret material energy into action and for it physical actuality alone is real and Mind and Life are only the departmental activities of Matter and material instrumentation and it ignores the Spiritual, considering it as one form and fragment of Mind and it accepts all other subjective beings and things on the same condition in so far as they can become objects of our external evidence or acceptable to that part of the reason which builds upon the data supplied by them that relies upon as one solid basis of objective knowledge. Certain scientific discoveries are misused and clumsily used by humanity who are mentally and morally unready and unfit to handle powers great and perilous; for it would be an artificial control without any true knowledge of the secret energy that underlie and sustain our creation.

 

            The ancient Indian Physicists had identified the hierarchies through which the pure Energy has condensed as pure Matter and the elementary state of material Force is a condition of pure material extension in space. The Material force first modified its ethereal status, akasha, and from this vibration the sense of sound is born and it further modified into a second state which is called in the old language the aerial, vayu, of which a special property of contact between force and force has emerged and from this vibration of force the sense of touch is born. The third self-modification of the primitive force is the principle of light, electricity, fire and heat. Agni, which is again manifested in earth’s atmosphere as sight. A fourth state is characterized by diffusion, is termed as water or the liquid state, jala, accompanied by the birth of fourth element of sense, the taste and the final modification is termed as earth of the solid state, bhumi, accompanying with it the faculty of sense, the smell. This is the attitude of ordinary consciousness towards Matter that in proportion as Matter is more subtle, less densely resistant and enduringly seizable by the sense, it appears to us less material. Thus, the ancient thinking satisfied the query of the ordinary human mind, about how these forms which are so real, durable and solid to the sense can be in truth only temporary phenomena and things like pure energy are nonexistent, intangible and incredible to sense organs.

 

            The integral Vedantic affirmation of universe confirms that the delight of its existence is at (1) first self-gathered, absorbed, sub-conscious in the basis of the physical universe giving birth to the five states of Matter, akasha, vayu, agni, jala and bhumi ; (2) then evolves the five subtle sense of life that of sabda, sparsa, dristi, rasa and gandha; this Life is Force and Force is Power and Power is Will and Will is the working of the master Consciousness; (3) then the life of sensation further emerges as growth of mind and ego in the triple vibration of pain, pleasure and indifference which is the limitation of the force of consciousness in the form and from its exposure to shocks of the universal Force which it finds alien to it and out of harmony with its own measure and standard; (4) finally, the distortion of original consciousness emerges as the full Sachchidananda consciousness in its creations by movement of ascending and descending Consciousness whose pace is regulated (a) by universality, (b) by equality, (c) by self-possession and (d) by conquest of Nature. This is the normal course, evolution and movement of the world.

 

            To realise its own power and to master and to know its world is therefore the increasing impulse of all individual life and that impulse is identified as the essential aspect of growing self-manifestation of Sachchidananda in cosmic existence or universalisation of the individual Being and Nature. His limited mental consciousness has to widen to the superconscient unity in which each embraces all; his narrow heart has to learn the infinite embrace and replace its lusts and discords by universal love; his restricted vital being has to become equal to the whole shock of the universe upon it and capable of universal delight; his recalcitrant physical being has to know itself as no separate entity but as one with and sustaining in itself the whole flow of the indivisible Force that is all things. The Divine Life is born out of the deeper and wider truth of our being which is extended as life of unity, mutuality and harmony, which will again replace the imperfect mental consciousness of artificially arranged and mechanized unity of material life into the oneness-in-all of the supreme Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

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            Reason and Science bind man within the limitations of Space and Time. The Space is defined as a stable extension measured out by divisibility of substance and mind places itself at certain point in that divisible extension and regards the disposition of substance around it. Time is defined as a mobile extension measured out by succession of the past, present and future in which mind places itself at a certain point from which it can look back and ahead. This experience of space and time in our waking state is what we call as a surface mental consciousness, and is only a small selection from our entire conscious Being. Behind this surface consciousness, there is much vaster Subliminal and Subconscient mind, which is the greater part of our identity and contains height, depth and profundities to which no man can measure or fathom. This knowledge gives us the starting point of the true Science and also starting point of true Spirituality. This knowledge will deliver us from the circumscription by the material and illusion of the obvious.

   

            Modern thought is unaware of invisible forces other than those revealed or constructed by Science; it does not believe that Nature is capable of creating any physical, vital and mental beings other than those around us in the physical world, men, beasts, birds, reptiles, fish, insects, germs and animalculae. These cosmic forces whose subtler substance is invisible to us, form conscious beings or use persons to embody them in physical forms and in a physical world and can act upon Matter and through Matter. As there are Powers of Knowledge or Forces of Light and Truth, so there are Powers of Ignorance, tenebrous Forces of the Darkness, Falsehood and Evil whose work is to prolong the reign of Ignorance and Suffering. The transformation of these universal forces attached to present unstable creation is beyond the scope and control of Physical Science. Science is oblivious and unaware of the Being, the Self and it experiences the separateness in the multiplicity and a dwelling or circling in the ill-understood maze of becomings but this limitation can be cured by the Soul in the Becoming growing into knowledge, into the awareness of the Being which in the multiplicity holds all these existences and their truth is already there in the Being’s timeless existence. The Divine Being is capable of becoming innumerable forms, though He is beyond all form, He does not lose His Divinity in these multitude of forms but pours out in them the delight of His Being and glories of His Godhead; this Earth-power, principle of all this figured material existence, does not lose her immutable divinity because she forms into habitable worlds, throws herself out in the hills  and hollows and allows herself to be shaped into utensils or the hearth and the household or as hard metal into weapon, engine, electrical and electronic appliances. The material substance, either subtle like air, ether, heat, electricity and light or rather denser in water, soil, rock and hard metal, are form and body of the Spirit and would never have been created if it could not be made a basis for the self-expression of the Spirit.

   

            Science itself is a mental construction, a multitude of pragmatically correct formulas and devices, masterful in the creation of apt machinery, automatically infallible in its own field, but is entirely ignorant of the foundations of our being and of world-being and it does not throw any light on the major question of original cosmic process of how these determinates were created out of the original Indeterminate Existence. It cannot transform and perfect our nature and therefore cannot perfect our life. Rather it transforms all forms  to serve their outward need. We do not gain essentially anything most needful by utmost widening of a physical objective knowledge like embracing the most distant solar systems, ride through the sky, explore the deepest layers of earth, sail beneath the sea and tracing the most subtle powers of material energy. That is why in spite of dazzling triumphs of physical science with all its achievements of making life of humanity materially one, proves itself always in the end a vain and helpless creed by fixing everything into an artificially arranged and mechanised unity of material life and can never achieve happiness and fullness of being for the humanity. Our true happiness and completeness lies in true growth of our whole being and transcendence of our existing Nature. So first we must grow into our full mental being which is the first transitional movement towards human perfection, mastery and freedom; it does not actually liberate the Soul from increased servitude but prepares loosening of the hold of material and vital absorption.

  

            The Integral Yogi’s distinction from other mental men is that he lives and acts in a greater vision and vaster Spiritual Consciousness that he has to express or rather that presses to express itself through him and moulds his works. After realisation of the Integral Divine, the static highest Oneness and the Dynamic greatest Power, an Integral Yogi returns to intermediate worlds for multiple perfection, siddhis, and again returns to earth and its multitude of problems, bears the burden of the world, enjoys Divinely its Self and Universe by renouncing the egoistic sense of desire and possession, tyaktena bhunjithah and transforms humanity. For his Spiritual Consciousness, existence appears as a world of Spirit, mayi vartate,¹⁷ not a world of Matter but a God manifested in the form, not a world of life but a God manifested in the force, not a world of mind but a God manifested in the thought. His entry in Occultism is not confined to a subordinate action of astonishingly effective use of mind power and life power by mechanisation of latent forces but mind and life forces are made plastic, subtle, variable in their action and have not the material rigidity and they have developed a subtle and plastic Intuition in the knowledge for the interpretation of all their action, process and application of established formulas. He enters Arts with the aim of a more glorious and beautiful manifestation; there the delight of the Spirit is ever new, the forms of beauty are innumerable, the godhead adored is ever young and taste of the delight is eternal and inexhaustible and attains to something of this true capacity for variable but universal delight in the aesthetic reception of things. His aim in utilitarian Science is to enter the ways and processes of the Divine, to know the material and means of work to utilise that knowledge for the conscious and faultless expression of the Spirit’s mystery, joy and self-fulfilment. His aim in Science is to discover, understand and execute the working of the Divine Consciousness-Puissance in men, creatures and in Nature’s myriad manifestations. His aim in medical Science is to discover integral healing through intervention of the Divine Grace or Nature’s all-powerful suprarational remedy which can be subordinated by the support of medicines and doctors.

 

            Science discovers the fundamental truth of existence that the Matter resolves itself into form of Energy and studies opaque Force and Matter. This force is fundamentally the Chit-Tapas or Chit-Shakti, Consciousness-force of the Vedanta which builds up and constitutes the Matter. Traditional Spirituality discovers the greater and completer fundamental truth that the Matter exists as a substantial appearance of Consciousness and the only reality is a pure Spirit or the Conscious Being. Integral Spirituality finds a link principle of Consciousness which is veiled as subconscious form in Matter and revealed as superconscious form in Spirit. Since to Science, Matter is the beginning and end of all knowledge so it shows reluctance to accept Consciousness as the mother of intelligence and material Energy or blind Nature-Force is now ordinarily accepted as the sole cause and mode of things and the sole instrumentation of the World-Force. Science has worked marvels by organising the instrumentation of material forces and created an unlimited prospect of our existence and it does not accept the instrumentation of the powers of Consciousness and Spiritual and Occult forces exceeding and overpassing the limitation of existing Nature. When Science will be able to mend its earlier stand of recognising a subconscious mind or intelligence as creator of material universe but accepts an involved Truth Consciousness behind all material existence, then it will be able trace the hierarchies of higher Consciousness and gives way to the higher Spiritual appetite of integral Yoga and its unconscious wandering within Matter ends and it will recognise life, mind and Supermind as evolution of veiled Truth Consciousness in Matter or different grades of same energy, different organisations of the one conscious force of Existence. Purified Intelligence is an intermediate consciousness and it can trace the passage of Spiritualised Intelligence and Intuition of higher Consciousness. Science can find its full sense and justification by illuminating itself with the Light and Truth preserved in the ancient Vedantic Scripture. Thus, we cease to reason and go deep into ourselves by stilling the mind. Knowledge of luminous vastness with illimitable self-vision awaits and is seated beyond mind and intellectual reasoning. Thus, we can hope that a great progression of Science starting from the rudimentary beginnings of an awakening of the material forces, continuing with this mutual self-discovery and self-illumination by fusion of old Eastern and modern Western wisdom, might lead to another immense development and departure.

 

The Law of Moderation-2:

Or Practice of Moderate Spirituality through Religion:

            “Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nanyad astıti vadinah (those who are devoted to the Veda whose creed is that there is nothing else.13). This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul.”¹⁴            

Sri Aurobindo

“All powers of Life towards their godhead tend

In the wideness and the daring of that air,

Each builds its temple and expands its cult,

And Sin too there is a divinity.” Savitri-185

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            The objective of all Religion is to generalise the highest available Spiritual Truth for the largest benefit of humanity and its greatest utility is to act as an intermediary between the perfect Spirit and imperfect Nature. The objective of all Spirituality is to trace the endless unfolding of the opulence of the Spirit and preserve its highest discovered truth in some casketed secret symbolic formulas and given only to a few fit initiated Souls living within the secret Schools of Spiritual Fortress for the present and future benefit of humanity. In integral Yoga, both objectives are reconciled. 

  

            But in our separative consciousness each Religion takes on the appearance of opposing forces; each exists as opposites through rituals, ceremony and sacraments; each claims to be the Truth and superior and taxes the others with error and inferior Truth-expressions; each feels impelled to destroy, clash or refuse the others in order that it alone may survive, fulfill itself and spread the message of the Truth. The religious emotions are often invaded by turmoil, obscurity, self-assertive narrowness, challenging egoism and are either crude or narrow or fanatical or mixed with movements that are not signs of the Spirit’s freedom and draws back Religion of its higher Spiritual aim and character. The necessity of mutually destructive schools of philosophy arises when human mentality lays an exclusive emphasis on one side of the Spiritual experience, affirms that as the sole eternal Truth of existence and states it in terms of all dividing mental logic. Again if we give support on this play of difference then we assert that the Supreme and the human Soul are eternally different and reject the validity of a Spiritual experience which transcends their difference. Integral Yoga proceeds towards all inclusive Knowledge, not by setting one truth against other truth to see which will survive and flourish but complements one exclusive truth by another exclusive truth in the light of the vision that each are special aspect of one all-inclusive Truth. All truth idea, truth vision, truth perception and truth discernment have this character of large integrating knowledge, a whole working out of the process of self-awareness in a self-executing harmony of truth-being.   

           

            The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature, thus, the primitive form of Religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship and deification of the natural forces, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us Inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious Spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. This obscurity, inferior stage and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value of the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, and it must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden Realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth and sheer contact of the Spiritual Reality which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance.

 

            In India, the age of Intuitive knowledge, Intuitive seeing and Intuitive expression was represented by fathomless thought and profound language of early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads; the Intuition was unable to give us direct knowledge because the surface nature was not trained and well organised to fully assimilate its messages. In order to organise the surface being the age of Intuitive knowledge had to give place to the age of rational knowledge, inspired Scriptures, intellectual account which made room for metaphysical philosophy and logical justification of what has been found by inner realisation as represented in The Gita and afterwards metaphysical philosophy gave birth to systematized method for realisation and experience through experimental psycho-physical Science of Hathayoga, experimental occult science of Tantra and experimental Psychic Science of Rajayoga. In the West, this synthetic and illumined tendency of consciousness was replaced by the separative and analytic, Spiritual urge parted company from intellectual reason, philosophy took the form of purely intellectual and ratiocinative explanation for things. The dynamic thought and conduct developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being through systems like the Pythagorean, Stoic and Epicurean; this reached a higher Spiritual plane of knowledge through the later Christian and Neo-pagan thought structures where the Eastern and Western experiences were reconciled.      

 

            In the age of rationalistic speculation, the Indian philosophers were respectful of a double attitude, that of (1) inspired revelation through Intuition, an authority superior to reason and (2) testing the result of Intuition through Reason. In this way they avoided the metaphysical sin and the tendency to battle in the cloud. Their speculations proceeded towards the highest Spiritual experience by united consent of two great authorities, the Intuition and the Reason. Subsequently, in the passage of time the trend of the reason to assert its own supremacy prevailed in effect over the theory of its subordination. So the old catholicity and unity of intuitive Knowledge which sees things in the whole, suffered through the intervention of reason’s analysis and division and natural tendency of the reason to affirm some and negate others which conflict with its own chosen conclusion and hence each schools of thought founded on Vedic or Vedantic theory use its texts as weapons of opposition against others. In the West the later Religion was not supported by philosophy but by credal theology. There Spiritual philosophy emerged by the sheer force of the individual genius and it was observed that the critical control of the intellect over Spiritual experience was hampered and was unreliable due to an inferior light of reason turned upon a field of higher Spiritual illumination.

 

            The real business of Religion is to prepare man’s mind, life and bodily existence for a Spiritual evolution and gives each one a mould of Spiritual discipline, a way of intense aspiration, a discernment and possession of Truth and has to lead him to that point where the inner Spiritual light begins to fully  emerge. The Religions in India accepted vast number of difficult formulations and all the elements that have grown in the course of evolution of Religion and refused to ban or excise any. It developed occult Science to its utmost limit, accepted Spiritual philosophies of all kinds, every possible line of highest, deepest and largest Spiritual realisation, Spiritual experience and Spiritual self-discipline; follows all ways of communication between  man and the Supreme Divine and every possible way of advance to the goal. Thus, a larger psychic and emotional relation, more deep and plastic in its essence and all embracing relation with God became imperative. It is by such plasticity and catholicity that wider aim of the evolution of Religion can work with an unexampled multitudinous richness, impregnable durability, generality, universality, height, subtlety and all possible fullness.

 

            All the post Buddhistic era lived in the shadow of the great Refusal and the final end of life for all is the garb of the ascetic. It disturbed two thousand years of old Vedic Aryan balance between Matter and Spirit and has increasingly dominated Indian minds of the ascetics and the religionists for many centuries with the idea that (1) renunciation and condemnation of earthly life is the sole path of knowledge, (2) acceptance of life as the act of ignorant Maya, (3) the cessation of birth and withdrawal to happier worlds is the right use of human birth, the call of the Spirit to recoil from Matter.

 

            It was in the integral Yoga, the three great formulas of negations of interim solution, (1) the chain of karma, (2) escape from wheel of rebirth and (3) cosmic illusion, Maya, which had permeated and predominated the general conception of the mind of the race through most of the Religious and Spiritual disciplines of India, were transcended and it was felt necessary to find a true solution and to look afresh at the Idea or Truth behind the Hindu negation of this cosmic existence. In the new orientation, in its ultimate objective the limitations of Universal Illusionism behind these theories were traced and they were transformed to their full significance of a universal Realism, a real universe reposing on a Reality at once Universal, Transcendent and Absolute.

                                                                    

            The law or the chain of karma is Divine Will acting through the limitation of mind producing mechanised living and bondage. Each being reaps what he sows. Karma is further projected as outcome of past good or evil thoughts, feelings and actions which determine and construct his fixed physical fate. They are the chief or the most forceful determinants of his being and his future. This idea of Karma is a construction of the narrow but practical human physical mind and vital mind concerned with its petty rules of life and its desires and joys and sorrows and erecting their puny standards into the law and aim of the cosmos. These ignorant notions cannot be acceptable to the human intellect and still less to the law of Divine living.

                                                                    

            The true liberating karma as proposed in integral Yoga is the action of direct Divine will received through the Psychic or Spiritual being whose outcome is intense creative joy of Spirit, the harmony of the eternal musician and the play of the Divine. The higher law of karma is ultimately the law of Spiritual evolution and with the emergence of our Soul, the primary plan of fixed destiny is partly modified by the intervention of the mind and wholly changed to Psychic and Spiritual destiny and the binding law of karma is replaced with the Spiritual freedom or the law of the Self. The past mechanized action of man gives birth to the present man of fixed fate and the present mental action of man gives birth to a future Spiritual man with an unimaginable Spiritual destiny.

                                                                    

            Those who are bound to the chain of karma are bound to the principle of rebirth and in all traditional schools, the freedom from rebirth is projected as the highest and ultimate objective. The methods by which they can escape into the Purushottama State and rest there permanently, for that they must satisfy three conditions; firstly, they must mould themselves towards this ideal their whole inner life in their earthly living; secondly, they must have the capacity to go to the highest state of Purushottama either in trance or waking state while continuing in this earthly body and thirdly, they must be faithful to this aspiration during the hour of departure of the earthly body. In integral Yoga, rebirth is not considered as the Soul’s circling in the net of desire, but an opportunity of Spiritual evolution and through it the mind, life and body repeat the lesson of manifesting their involved Divinity till the recovery of their complete and undivided Divine life. It is for ever-increasing upward experience of the individual being from life to life, the growth of the Soul is a growth out of darkness into Light, out of falsehood into Truth, out of suffering into its own supreme and universal Ananda. It is through joy and grief, pain and suffering, fortune and misfortune that the Soul enters into rebirth.

                                                                    

            The theory of Maya, the Illusionist theory, as proposed by Shankara is the sense of illusion or unreality of cosmic existence as formulated by mind; it really cuts the knot of the world problem; it is an escape, a separation from Nature. This sense of unreality powerfully seizes the consciousness of a Spiritual seeker with great force when the mind withdraws from its constructions, one passes into pure Selfhood void of all sense of individuality and Consciousness is plunged into a trance of pure Superconscient existence. Buddha took one step farther to declare the unreality of the Self and God; for they too are constructions of the mind. Any error, division and confusion of mind between the activities of Saguna Brahman and quiescence of Nirguna Brahman would not be a creative cosmic Illusion, Maya, but only a wrong understanding of realities of Existence and a wrong relation created by Ignorance. A real solution of existence and world-existence can only stand upon the truth that accounts for their validity, integralises, harmonises and gathers together all their experience in the supreme all-reconciling Oneness. Still there are other decisive Spiritual experiences that of greater Divine union with the double Spiritual experience of Cosmic Consciousness and Nirvana of world-consciousness which can undo the whole theory of (mental) Maya, which can remove Ignorance and Falsehood from material life and this world is experienced as real as Brahman. The illusionist word Maya, of the later Vedantist, which means cunning, fraud and illusion has declined from its original meaning of knowledge, skill and intelligence of Ancient Vedantist. Integral Yoga retains the ancient original Vedantic sense of Maya, which is all-comprehending, all-containing and all-embracing Consciousness of the Supreme, that affirms and includes the truth of all Spiritual experience, integralises all Knowledge, and experiences That which being known all is known. (Supramental) Maya is the supreme and universal Consciousness and Force of the Eternal and Infinite and it is at once transcendental, universal and individual and it can put forth many states of Consciousness at a time. The world appears to be an Illusion, (mental) Maya by virtue of the presence of lower Nature and apparent denial of Ignorance which seeks to become affirmation and this Illusion-Power which creates appearances can be removed by ascending into the higher Consciousness and Matter can be the solid ground for manifestation of the highest Divine.

 

            The shadow of the great Refusal or principle of negation prevailing over principle of affirmation of post Buddhistic era of the East was reincarnated in the West as Christian negation⁴¹ which was born out of fear of hell and long subconscient memory of suppression, anguish, oppression, aggression, intolerance, use of violence, atrocity, paid the price of blood and suffering and death of Christian martyrs in thousands of its religious history. The accumulated Soul forces12 of these martyrs conquered against the empire-force so that the oppression of Christianity prevailed but not the compassionate Christ. The victorious religion becomes militant and dominant Church and the Christianity organise themselves into mutual strife and they battled together fiercely to live, grow and possess the world as much possible to their utmost capacity. They limit the Infinite as one and only Incarnation.40 This monotheistic doctrine was again further aggravated as religious obscurantism of opposing the enquiry and extension of endless scientific discovery. The later limitation was overcome with the advent of modern Science and the former can be transcended by the advent of Spiritual Science and the entry of a caravan of Light into the body of an individual Spiritual seeker and his greatest difficulty is that he still seeks happiness and fulfilment in Heaven beyond and not on earth. In order to overcome this exclusive Spirituality where this creation is identified as reprehensible;³⁹ he will have to fight strongly in order to establish himself here in the external life the Supreme Bliss from which all creation is born. He will weld strongly the central truth, central dynamic principle, central secret of his Religion with the all truth of Eternal Religion, Sanatana Dharma, from which all religions have evolved. He will realise the gospel of Divine love, service, benevolence and action that dominates his outer Christian living which has its Transcendent source in Sachchidananda, the triple Divine principle of Existence, Consciousness and Bliss and he will further realise that elevating himself to the Transcendent Source of all is a more important and relevant issue than the minor factor of serving the individual or the race. The division of Catholic and Protestant Christianity is identified in integral Yoga as the former is the original plasticity in nature with many-sided catholicity extended towards the growth of whole Nature of human being and the latter is disruptive of this wide-reaching tendency and insists on pure dependency on belief, monotheistic adoration of God, who lives as Immanent Being within and simplified law of good so as to make quick appeal to common intellect, heart and ethical will. The specialty of Catholicism is that they worship virgin Mother, Para-prakriti, and have the occult knowledge of Subliminal plane and Protestants have something of the inner Divine Presence.

 

.            Integral Yoga accepts and adores the compassionate Christ as Divine Incarnation. The Cross²² which symbolises purification and suffering, is transformed in integral Yoga¹⁹ into symbol of strong and perfect union between the Soul and Nature and all that purified humanity is culminated by its fulfillment. The Mother force in virgin Mary is extended in integral Yoga as virgin Savitri, the descent of Supreme nature, Para-prakriti into human form, who promises that Earth life can be made an equal and peer of Heaven and Heaven’s joy can native grow on mortal soil if Earth can be made pure and virgin. Savitri further promises to transform the seven-fold sorrows of the Subconscient world (this can be linked with Mother Mary’s seven sorrows) into seven-fold Bliss and ‘Misery shall pass abolished from the earth.’²⁰

 

            Integral Yoga accepts Shankar’s theory of ‘Brahman is Real and World is an Illusion’ as the initial Spiritual experience and rejects it in the final journey with the realisation of World is as real as Brahman and Brahman Force can penetrate into material life and Divinise it. It accepts the Buddhistic doctrine of Nirvana as the initial Spiritual realisation and rejects its negation that the world, the Self and the Divine are the construction of Mind and hence are unreal. It accepts the Gita’s self-discipline of Karma, Jnana and Bhakti Yoga and rejects its objective of escape into Supreme abode of Param Dham. It accepts the inner renunciation of desire and ego of ascetic living and rejects saintly inactivity and renunciation of outer life. It accepts the exclusive Spiritual quests of later Vedantists as the starting point of Yoga and rejects their dependency on Psycho-physical means of self-discipline. It accepts Christ as the Divine Incarnation, its gospel of universal Love, brotherhood, equality and charity and rejects Christian doctrine of limiting the infinite to one and only Divine Incarnation, solution of all problems of existence in the Heaven beyond, long Subconscient memory of oppression, miseries and acceptance of creation as the error of God.

 

            The above Eastern and Western negations are further fragmented through the apparent negations and divisions between mind, life and body. The three negations of mind are identified as limitation of Consciousness (which gave birth to Pleasure, Pain and Indifference), Ignorance and Dualities transformed in integral Yoga into Infinite Consciousness, integral Knowledge and Oneness; of life are identified as Death, Desire or Hunger and Incapacity transformed in integral Yoga into Immortality, satisfied Delight and Omnipotence and of physical are Ignorance, Inertia and Division transformed in integral Yoga into Omniscience, Divine peace and tranquility and Unity. Conscious unity and perfect harmony of mind, life and body can be arrived at by discovering the triple Soul of Manomaya, Pranamaya and Annamaya Purusha, and further pushing to discover the Psychic Being in the heart and Spiritual and Supramental Being above the head.

 

            Spiritual experience born out of World Negation as developed by Buddha and later further extended by the Indian Saint Shankara is the Nirvana and Brahma Nirvana respectively. For the Buddha, the world, Self and God are construction of mind and by withdrawing from such construction, one arrives at the ineffable Delight of the Nirvana. If this experience is further extended one realises the featureless, immutable, silent and absolute state of One and indivisible Brahma Nirvana. And the Ananda becomes so intense and pure that to the mind this phenomenal world seems to be an illusion. The Spiritual experience born out of Positive Affirmation of World or considering world as the body of the Divine, Vasudev Sarvamiti, is the Cosmic Consciousness which is possible by raising and widening the mind to the state of Truth Thought, Truth Vision, Truth Hearing, Truth Discernment and Truth Touch or developing the faculty of Higher Mind, illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind and finally Mind is universalized to experience Overmind state of Consciousness. In this cosmic Consciousness of Overmind the Matter is real to the Spirit and the Spirit is real to the Matter and their reconciliation is practicable. In this Cosmic consciousness Mind, Life and Body are no longer considered as agents of separation and formenters of an artificial quarrel but as conscious Intermediary and Instruments of evolving Consciousness, where Mind is self fulfilled when it becomes a pure mirror of the Truth of Being; Life is self fulfilled when it consciously lends its energies to the perfect self-figuration of the Divine in ever-new forms and activities of the universal existence and body is self fulfilled when its substance is plastic and malleable enough to the pure Divine touch and its Light. In integral Yoga, the negative Spiritual experience of Nirvana and the positive or affirmative Spiritual experience of Cosmic Consciousness are accepted as expressions of Self and are reconciled and transcended, where the former asks the pacification of the mind and the latter asks the activation and illumination of Mind. These two Spiritual experiences are the basis of static and dynamic Brahman, beyond which the greater Divine union and integral Divine realisation stands.