THE DIVINE SHAKTI
1.
THE
RELATION between the Purusha and Prakriti which emerges as one advance in the
Yoga of self-perfection is the next thing that we have to understand carefully
in this part of the Yoga.
2.
In the
spiritual truth of our being the power which we call Nature is the power of
being, consciousness and will and therefore the power of self-expression and
self-creation of the self, soul or Purusha.
3.
But to our
ordinary mind in the ignorance and to its experience of things the force of
Prakriti
has a different appearance.
4.
When we
look at it in its universal action outside ourselves, we see it first as a
mechanical energy
in the cosmos which acts upon matter or in its own
created forms of matter.
5.
In matter,
it evolves powers and processes of life
and in living matter powers and processes of mind. Throughout its
operations, it acts by fixed laws and in each kind of created thing displays
varying properties of energy and laws of process which give its character to
the genus or species and again in the individual develops without infringing
the law of the kind minor characteristics and variations of a considerable consequence.
6.
(View
of Science) It is this
mechanical appearance of Prakriti which has preoccupied the modern scientific
mind and made for it its whole view of Nature, and so much so that science
still hopes and labours with a very small amount of success to explain all phenomena
of life by laws of matter and all phenomena of mind by laws of living matter.
Here soul or spirit has no place and nature cannot be regarded as power of
spirit. Since the whole of our existence is mechanical, physical and bounded by
the biological phenomenon of a brief living consciousness and man is a creature
and instrument of material energy, the spiritual self-evolution of Yoga can be
only a delusion, hallucination, abnormal state of mind or self-hypnosis. In any
case it cannot be what it represents itself to be, a discovery of the eternal
truth of our being and a passing above the limited truth of the mental, vital
and physical to the full truth of our spiritual nature.
7.
But when
we look, not at external mechanical Nature to the exclusion of our personality,
but at the inner subjective experience of man the mental being, our nature
takes to us a quite different appearance.
8.
There
seems to be a dual being in us; Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, seem to
be half in agreement, half at odds, Nature laying its mechanical control on the
soul, the soul attempting to change and master nature. And the question is what
is the fundamental character of this duality and what the issue.
9.
The
Sankhya explanation is that our present existence is governed by a dual
principle. Prakriti is inert without the contact of Purusha, acts only by a
junction with it and then too by the fixed mechanism of her instruments and
qualities; Purusha, passive and free apart from Prakriti, becomes by contact
with her and sanction to her works subject to this mechanism, lives in her
limitation of ego-sense and must get free by withdrawing the sanction and
returning to its own proper principle. Another explanation that tallies with a
certain part of our experience is that there is a dual being in us, the animal
and material, or more widely the lower nature-bound, and the soul or spiritual being
entangled by mind in the material existence or in world nature, and freedom
comes by escape from the entanglement, the soul returning to its native planes
or the self or spirit to its pure existence. The perfection of the soul then is
to be found not at all in, but beyond Nature.
10. But in a higher than our present mental consciousness we find that this duality is only a phenomenal appearance. The highest and real truth of existence is the one Spirit, the supreme Soul, Purushottama, and it is the power of being of this Spirit which manifests itself in all that we experience as universe. This universal Nature is not a lifeless, inert or unconscious mechanism, but informed in all its movements by the universal Spirit. The mechanism of its process is only an outward appearance and the reality is the Spirit creating or manifesting its own being by its own power of being in all that is in Nature.
11. Soul and Nature in us too are only a dual appearance
of the one existence. The universal energy acts in us, but the soul limits
itself by the ego sense, lives in a partial and separate experience of her
workings, uses only a modicum and a fixed action of her energy for its self-expression.
It seems rather to be mastered and used by this energy than to use it, because
it identifies itself with the egosense which is part of the natural
instrumentation and lives in the ego experience. The ego is in fact driven by
the mechanism of Nature of which it is a part and the ego-will is not and
cannot be a free will. To arrive at freedom, mastery and perfection we have to
get back to the real self and soul within and arrive too thereby at our true
relations with our own and with universal nature.
12. In our active being this translates itself into a
replacement of our egoistic, our personal, our separatively individual will and
energy by a universal and a divine will and energy which determines our action
in harmony with the universal action and reveals itself as the direct will and
the all-guiding power of the Purushottama. We replace the inferior action of
the limited, ignorant and imperfect personal will and energy in us by the action
of the divine Shakti.
13. To open ourselves to the universal energy is always
possible to us, because that is all around us and
always flowing into us, it is that which supports and
supplies all our inner and outer action and in fact we have no power of our own
in any separately individual sense, but only a personal formulation of the one
Shakti. And on the other hand this universal Shakti is within ourselves,
concentrated in us, for the whole power of it is present in each individual as
in the universe, and there are means and processes by which we can awaken its greater
and potentially infinite force and liberate it to its larger workings.
14. We can become aware of the existence and presence of
the universal Shakti in the various forms of her power.
15. At present we are conscious only of the power as
formulated in our physical mind, nervous being and corporeal case sustaining
our various activities.
16. But if we can once get beyond this first formation by
some liberation of the hidden, recondite, subliminal parts of our existence by
Yoga, we become aware of a greater life force, a pranic Shakti, which supports
and fills the body and supplies all the physical and vital activities,—for the
physical energy is only a modified form of this force,—and supplies and
sustains too from below all our mental action.
17. This force we feel in ourselves also, but we can feel
it too around us and above, one with the same energy in us, and can draw it in
and down to aggrandise our normal action or call upon and get it to pour into
us. It is an illimitable ocean of Shakti and will pour as much of itself as we
can hold into our being. This pranic force we can use for any of the activities
of life, body or mind with a far greater and effective power than any that we
command in our present operations, limited as they are by the physical formula.
The use of this pranic power liberates us from that limitation to the extent of
our ability to use it in place of the body-bound energy.
18. It can be used so to direct the prana as to manage
more powerfully or to rectify any bodily state or action, as to heal illness or
to get rid of fatigue, and to liberate an enormous amount of mental exertion
and play of will or knowledge.
19. The exercises of Pranayama are the familiar mechanical
means of freeing and getting control of the pranic energy.
20. They heighten too and set free the psychic, mental and
spiritual energies which ordinarily depend for their opportunity of action on
the pranic force.
21. But the same thing can be done by mental will and
practice or by an increasing opening of ourselves to a higher spiritual power
of the Shakti.
22. The pranic Shakti can be directed not only upon ourselves, but effectively towards others or on things or happenings for whatever purposes the will dictates. Its effectivity is immense, in itself illimitable, and limited only by defect of the power, purity and universality of the spiritual or other will which is brought to bear upon it;
23. But still, however great and powerful, it is a lower
formulation, a link between the mind and body, an instrumental force. There is
a consciousness in it, a presence of the spirit, of which we are aware, but it
is encased, involved in and preoccupied with the urge to action. It is not to
this action of the Shakti that we can leave the whole burden of our activities;
we have either to use its lendings by our own enlightened personal will or else
call in a higher guidance; for of itself it will act with greater force, but still
according to our imperfect nature and mainly by the drive and direction of the
life-power in us and not according to the law of the highest spiritual
existence.
24. The ordinary power by which we govern the pranic energy
is that of the embodied mind. But when we get clear above the physical mind, we
can get too above the pranic force to the consciousness of a pure mental energy
which is a higher formulation of the Shakti. There we are aware of a universal mind
consciousness closely associated with this energy in, around and above
us,—above, that is to say, the level of our ordinary mind status,—giving all
the substance and shaping all the forms of our will and knowledge and of the
psychic element in our impulses and emotions. This mind force can be made to act
upon the pranic energy and can impose upon it the influence, colour, shape,
character, direction of our ideas, our knowledge, our more enlightened volition
and thus more effectively bring our life and vital being into harmony with our
higher powers of being, ideals and spiritual aspirations.
25. In our ordinary state these two, the mental and the
pranic being and energies, are very much mixed up and run into each other, and
we are not able clearly to distinguish them or get a full hold of the one on
the other and so control effectively the lower by the higher and more understanding
principle.
26. But when we take our station above the Physical mind,
we are able then to separate clearly the two forms of energy, the two levels of
our being, disentangle their action and act with a clearer and more potent
self-knowledge and an enlightened and a purer will-power.
27. Nevertheless the control is not complete, spontaneous,
sovereign so long as we work with the mind as our chief guiding and controlling
force. The mental energy we find to be itself derivative, a lower and limiting
power of the conscious spirit which acts only by isolated and combined seeings,
imperfect and incomplete half-lights which we take for full and adequate light,
and with a disparity between the idea and knowledge and the effective
will-power.
28. And we are aware soon of a far higher power of the
Spirit and its Shakti concealed or above, super-conscient to mind or partially
acting through the mind, of which all this is an inferior derivation.
29. The Purusha and Prakriti are on the mental level as in
the rest of our being closely joined and much involved in each other and we are
not able to distinguish clearly soul and nature.
30. But in the purer substance of mind we can more easily
discern the dual strain.
31. The mental Purusha is naturally able in its own native
principle of mind to detach itself, as we have seen, from the workings of its Prakriti
and there is then a division of our being between a consciousness that observes
and can reserve its willpower and an energy full of the substance of
consciousness that takes the forms of knowledge, will and feeling.
32. This detachment gives at its highest a certain freedom from the compulsion of the soul by its mental nature. For ordinarily we are driven and carried along in the stream of our own and the universal active energy partly floundering in its waves, partly maintaining and seeming to guide or at least propel ourselves by a collected thought and an effort of the mental will muscle; but now there is a part of ourselves, nearest to the pure essence of self, which is free from the stream, can quietly observe and to a certain extent decide its immediate movement and course and to a greater extent its ultimate direction. The Purusha can at last act upon the Prakriti from half apart, from behind or from above her as a presiding person or presence, adhyaks.a, by the power of sanction and control inherent in the spirit
33. What we shall do with this relative freedom depends on
our aspiration, our idea of the relation we must have with our highest self,
with God and Nature.
34. It is possible for the Purusha to use it on the mental
plane itself for a constant self-observation, self-development, self-modification, to sanction, reject, alter,
bring out new formulations of the nature and establish a calm and disinterested
action, a high and pure sattwic balance and rhythm of its energy, a personality
perfected in the sattwic principle.
35. This may amount only to a highly mentalised perfection
of our present intelligence and the ethical and the psychic being or else,
aware of the greater self in us, it may impersonalise, universalise,
spiritualise its self-conscious existence and the action of its nature and
arrive either at a large quietude or a large perfection of the spiritualised
mental energy of its being.
36. It is possible again for the Purusha to stand back
entirely and by a refusal of sanction allow the whole normal action of the mind
to exhaust itself, run down, spend its remaining impetus of habitual action and
fall into silence. Or else this silence may be imposed on the mental energy by
rejection of its action and a constant command to quietude.
37. The soul may through the confirmation of this quietude
and mental silence pass into some ineffable
tranquillity of the spirit and vast cessation of the
activities of Nature.
38. But it is also possible to make this silence of the
mind and ability to suspend the habits of the lower nature a first step towards
the discovery of a superior formulation, a higher grade of the status and
energy of our being and pass by an ascent and transformation into the
supramental power of the spirit.
39. And this may even, though with more difficulty, be
done without resorting to the complete state of quietude of the normal mind by
a persistent and progressive transformation of all the mentain to their greater
corresponding supramental powers and activities.
40. For everything in the mind derives from and is a
limited, inferior, groping, partial or perverse translation into mentality of something
in the supermind. But neither of these movements can be successfully executed
by the sole individual unaided power of the mental Purusha in us, but needs the
help, intervention and guidance of the divine Self, the Ishwara, the
Purushottama. For the supermind is the divine mind and it is on the supramental
plane that the individual arrives at his right, integral, luminous and perfect
relation with the supreme and universal Purusha and the supreme and universal
Para Prakriti.
41. As the mind progresses in purity, capacity of
stillness or freedom from absorption in its own limited action, it becomes aware
of and is able to reflect, bring into itself or enter into the conscious
presence of the Self, the supreme and universal Spirit, and it becomes aware
too of grades and powers of the spirit higher than its own highest ranges.
42. It becomes aware of an infinite of the consciousness
of being, an infinite ocean of all the power and energy of illimitable
consciousness, an infinite ocean of Ananda, of the self-moved delight of
existence.
43. It may be aware of one or other only of these things,
for the mind can separate and feel exclusively as distinct original principles
what in a higher experience are inseparable powers of the One, or it
may feel them in a trinity or fusion which reveals or
arrives at their oneness.
44. It may become aware of it on the side of Purusha or on
the side of Prakriti.
45. On the side of Purusha it reveals itself as Self or
Spirit, as Being or as the one sole existent Being, the divine Purushottama,
and the individual Jiva soul can enter into entire oneness with it in its
timeless self or in its universality, or enjoy nearness, immanence, difference
without any gulf of separation and enjoy too inseparably and at one and the
same time oneness of being and delight-giving difference of relation in active
experiencing nature.
46. On the side of Prakriti the power and Ananda of the
Spirit come into the front to manifest this Infinite in the beings and
personalities and ideas and forms and forces of the universe and there is then
present to us the divine Mahashakti, original Power, supreme Nature, holding in
herself
infinite existence and creating the wonders of the cosmos.
47. The mind grows conscious of this illimitable ocean of
Shakti or else of her presence high above the mind and pouring something of herself
into us to constitute all that we are and think and will and do and feel and
experience, or it is conscious of her all around us and our personality a wave
of the ocean of power of spirit, or of her presence in us and of her action
there based on our present form of natural existence but originated from above
and raising us towards the higher spiritual status.
48. The mind too can rise towards and touch her infinity
or merge itself in it in trance of samadhi or can lose itself in her
universality, and then our individuality disappears, our centre of action is then
no longer in us, but either outside our bodied selves or nowhere; our mental
activities are then no longer our own, but come into this frame of mind, life
and body from the universal, work themselves out and pass leaving no impression
on us, and this frame of ourselves too is only an insignificant circumstance in
her cosmic vastness.
49. But the perfection sought in the integral Yoga is not
only to be one with her in her highest spiritual power and one with her in her
universal action, but to realise and possess the fullness of this Shakti in our
individual being and nature.
50. For the supreme Spirit is one as Purusha or as
Prakriti, conscious being or power of conscious being, and as the Jiva in essence
of self and spirit is one with the supreme Purusha, so on the side of Nature,
in power of self and spirit it is one with Shakti, par¯a prakr. tir jı¯vabhu¯
ta¯ . To realise this double oneness is the condition of the integral
self-perfection. The Jiva is then the meeting-place of the play of oneness of
the supreme Soul and Nature.
51. To reach this perfection we have to become aware of
the divine Shakti, draw her to us and call her in to fill the whole system and
take up the charge of all our activities. There will then be no separate
personal will or individual energy trying to conduct our actions, no sense of a
little personal self as the doer, nor will it be the lower energy of the three
gunas, the mental, vital and physical nature. The divine Shakti will fill us
and preside over and take up all our inner activities, our outer life, our
Yoga. She will take up the mental energy, her own lower formation, and raise it
to its highest and purest and fullest powers of intelligence and will and
psychic action. She will change the mechanical energies of the mind, life and
body which now govern us into delight-filled manifestations of her own living
and conscious power and presence. She will manifest in us and relate to each
other all the various spiritual experiences of which the mind is capable. And
as the crown of this process she will bring down the supramental light into the
mental levels, change the stuff of mind into the stuff of supermind, transform all
the lower energies into energies of her supramental nature and raise us into
our being of gnosis. The Shakti will reveal herself as the power of the
Purushottama, and it is the Ishwara who will manifest himself in his force of
supermind and spirit and be the master of our being, action, life and Yoga.