Chapter XXIII
The Conditions of Attainment to the
Gnosis
KNOWLEDGE is the first principle of the
Vijnana, but knowledge is not its only power. The Truth-consciousness, like
every other plane, founds itself upon that particular principle which is
naturally the key of all its motions; but it is not limited by it, it contains
all the other powers of existence. Only the character and working of these
other powers is modified and moulded into conformity with its own original and
dominant law; intelligence, life, body, will, consciousness, bliss are all
luminous, awake, instinct with divine knowledge. This is indeed the process of
Purusha-Prakriti everywhere; it is the key-movement of all the hierarchy and
graded harmonies of manifested existence.
In the mental
being mind-sense or intelligence is the original and dominant principle. The
mental being in the mind-world where he is native is in his central and
determining nature intelligence; he is a centre of intelligence, a massed
movement of intelligence, a receptive and radiating action of intelligence. He
has the intelligent sense of his own existence, the intelligent sense of other
existence than his own, the intelligent sense of his own nature and activities
and the activities of others, the intelligent sense of the nature of things and
persons and their relations with himself and each other. That makes up his experience
of existence. He has no other knowledge of existence, no knowledge of life and
matter except as they make themselves sensible to him and capable of being
seized by his mental intelligence; what he does not sense and conceive, is to him
practically non-existent, or at least alien to his world and his nature.
Man is in his
principle a mental being, but not one living in a mind world, but in a
dominantly physical existence; his is a mind cased in Matter and conditioned by
Matter. Therefore
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he has to start
with the action of the physical senses which are all channels of material
contact; he does not start with the mind-sense. But even so he does not and
cannot make free use of anything conveyed by these physical organs until and
unless they are taken hold of by the mind-sense and turned into stuff and value
of his intelligent being. What is in the lower subhuman submental
world a pranic, a nervous, a dynamic action and
reaction that proceeds very well without any need of translation into
mind-terms or government by mind, has in him to be raised and offered to some
kind of intelligence. In order to be characteristically human it has to become
first a sense of force, sense of desire, sense of will, sense of intelligent
will-action or mentally conscious sense of force-action. His lower delight of
being translates itself into a sense of mental or mentalised vital or physical
pleasure and its perversion pain, or into a mental or mentalised
feeling-sensation of liking and disliking, or into an intelligence of delight
and failure of delight, – all phenomena of the intelligent mind-sense. So too
that which is above him and that which is around him and in which he lives, – God,
the universal being, the cosmic Forces, – are non-existent and unreal to him
until his mind awakes to them and gets, not yet their true truth, but some
idea, observation, inference, imagination of things supersensuous,
some mental sense of the Infinite, some intelligent interpreting consciousness
of the forces of the superself above and around him.
All changes
when we pass from mind to gnosis; for there a direct inherent knowledge is the
central principle. The gnostic (vijñānamaya)
being is in its character a truth-consciousness, a centre and circumference of
the truth-vision of things, a massed movement or subtle body of gnosis. Its
action is a self-fulfilling and radiating action of the truth-power of things
according to the inner law of their deepest truest self and nature. This truth
of things at which we must arrive before we can enter into the gnosis, – for in
that all exists and from that all originates on the gnostic plane, – is, first
of all, a truth of unity, of oneness, but of unity originating diversity, unity
in multiplicity and still unity always, an indefeasible oneness. State of
gnosis, the condition of vijñānamaya
being, is impossible without an ample and close self-
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identification of ourselves
with all existence and with all existences, a universal pervasiveness, a
universal comprehension or containing, a certain all-in-allness.
The gnostic Purusha has normally the consciousness of itself as infinite, normally
too the consciousness of containing the world in itself and exceeding it; it is
not like the divided mental being normally bound to a consciousness that feels
itself contained in the world and a part of it. It follows that a deliverance
from the limiting and imprisoning ego is the first elementary step towards the
being of the gnosis; for so long as we live in the ego, it is idle to hope for
this higher reality, this vast self-consciousness, this true self-knowledge.
The least reversion to ego-thought, ego-action, ego-will brings back the
consciousness tumbling out of such gnostic Truth as it has attained into the falsehoods
of the divided mind-nature. A secure universality of being is the very basis of
this luminous higher consciousness. Abandoning all rigid separateness (but
getting instead a certain transcendent overlook or independence) we have to
feel ourselves one with all things and beings, to identify ourselves with them,
to become aware of them as ourselves, to feel their being as our own, to admit
their consciousness as part of ours, to contact their energy as intimate to our
energy, to learn how to be one self with all. That oneness is not indeed all
that is needed, but it is a first condition and without it there is no gnosis.
This
universality is impossible to achieve in its completeness so long as we
continue to feel ourselves, as we now feel, a consciousness lodged in an
individual mind, life and body. There has to be a certain elevation of the
Purusha out of the physical and even out of the mental into the vijñānamaya body. No longer can the
brain nor its corresponding mental “lotus” remain the
centre of our thinking, no longer the heart nor its corresponding “lotus” the
originating centre of our emotional and sensational being. The conscious centre
of our being, our thought, our will and action, even the original force of our
sensations and emotions rise out of the body and mind and take a free station
above them. No longer have we the sensation of living in the body, but are
above it as its lord, possessor or Ishwara and at the same time encompass it
with a wider consciousness than that of the impri-
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soned physical
sense. Now we come to realise with a very living force of reality, normal and
continuous, what the sages meant when they spoke of the soul carrying the body
or when they said that the soul is not in the body, but the body in the soul.
It is from above the body and not from the brain that we shall ideate and will;
the brain-action will become only a response and movement of the physical
machinery to the shock of the thought-force and will-force from above. All will
be originated from above; from above, all that corresponds in gnosis to our
present mental activity takes place. Many, if not all, of these conditions of
the gnostic change can and indeed have to be attained long before we reach the
gnosis, – but imperfectly at first as if by a reflection, – in higher mind
itself, and more completely in what we may call an overmind
consciousness between mentality and gnosis.
But this
centre and this action are free, not bound, not dependent on the physical
machine, not clamped to a narrow ego-sense. It is not involved in body; it is
not shut up in a separated individuality feeling out for clumsy contacts with
the world outside or groping inward for its own deeper spirit. For in this
great transformation we begin to have a consciousness not shut up in a
generating box, but diffused freely and extending self-existently
everywhere; there is or may be a centre, but it is a convenience for individual
action, not rigid, not constitutive or separative. The very nature of our
conscious activities is henceforth universal; one with those of the universal
being, it proceeds from universality to a supple and variable individualisation.
It has become the awareness of an infinite being who acts always universally
though with emphasis on an individual formation of its energies. But this
emphasis is differential rather than separative, and this formation is no longer
what we now understand by individuality; there is no longer a petty limited
constructed person shut up in the formula of his own mechanism. This state of
consciousness is so abnormal to our present mode of being that to the rational
man who does not possess it it may seem impossible or
even a state of alienation; but once possessed it vindicates itself even to the
mental intelligence by its greater calm, freedom, light, power, effectivity of
will, verifiable truth of
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ideation and feeling.
For this condition begins already on the higher levels of liberated mind, and
can therefore be partly sensed and understood by mind-intelligence, but it
rises to perfect self-possession only when it leaves behind the mental levels,
only in the supramental gnosis.
In this state
of consciousness the infinite becomes to us the primal, the actual reality, the one thing immediately and sensibly true. It becomes
impossible for us to think of or realise the finite apart from our fundamental
sense of the infinite, in which alone the finite can live, can form itself, can have any reality or duration. So long as this finite
mind and body are to our consciousness the first fact of our existence and the
foundation of all our thinking, feeling and willing and so long as things
finite are the normal reality from which we can rise occasionally, or even
frequently, to an idea and sense of the infinite, we are still very far away
from the gnosis. In the plane of the gnosis the infinite is at once our normal
consciousness of being, its first fact, our sensible
substance. It is very concretely to us there the foundation from which
everything finite forms itself and its boundless incalculable forces are the
origination of all our thought, will and delight. But this infinite is not only
an infinite of pervasion or of extension in which everything forms and happens.
Behind that immeasurable extension the gnostic consciousness is always aware of
a spaceless inner infinite. It is through this double
infinite that we shall arrive at the essential being of Sachchidananda, the
highest self of our own being and the totality of our cosmic existence. There
is opened to us an illimitable existence which we feel as if it were an infinity above us to which we attempt to rise and an infinity
around us into which we strive to dissolve our separate existence. Afterwards
we widen into it and rise into it; we break out of the ego into its largeness
and are that for ever. If this liberation is achieved, its power can take, if
so we will, increasing possession of our lower being also until even our lowest
and perversest activities are refashioned into the
truth of the Vijnana.
This is the
basis, this sense of the infinite and possession by the infinite, and only when
it is achieved, can we progress towards some normality of the supramental
ideation, perception,
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sense, identity,
awareness. For even this sense of the infinite is only a first foundation and
much more has to be done before the consciousness can become dynamically
gnostic. The supramental knowledge is the play of a supreme light; there are
many other lights, other levels of knowledge higher than human mind which can
open in us and receive or reflect something of that effulgence even before we
rise into the gnosis. But to command or wholly possess it we must first enter
into and become the being of the supreme light, our consciousness must be
transformed into that consciousness, its principle and power of self-awareness
and all-awareness by identity must be the very stuff of our existence. For our
means and ways of knowledge and action must necessarily be according to the
nature of our consciousness and it is the consciousness that must radically
change if we are to command and not only be occasionally visited by that higher
power of knowledge. But it is not confined to a higher thought or the action of
a sort of divine reason. It takes up all our present means of knowledge
immensely extended, active and effective where they are now debarred, blind, infructuous, and turns them into a high and intense
perceptive activity of the Vijnana. Thus it takes up our sense action and
illumines it even in its ordinary field so that we get a true sense of things.
But also it enables the mind-sense to have a direct perception of the inner as
well as the outer phenomenon, to feel and receive or perceive, for instance,
the thoughts, feelings, sensations, the nervous reactions of the object on
which it is turned.¹ It uses the subtle senses as well as the physical and
saves them from their errors. It gives us the knowledge, the experience of
planes of existence other than the material to which our ordinary mentality is
ignorantly attached and it enlarges the world for us. It transforms similarly
the sensations and gives them their full intensity as well as their full
holding-power; for in our normal mentality the full intensity is impossible
because the power to hold and sustain vibrations beyond a certain point is
denied to it, mind and body would both break under the shock or the pro-
¹ This power,
says Patanjali, comes by “samyama” on an object. That is for the mentality, in the
gnosis there is no need of samyama. For this kind of perception is the natural action
of the Vijnana.
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longed strain. It
takes up too the element of knowledge in our feelings and emotions, – for our
feelings too contain a power of knowledge and a power of effectuation which we
do not recognise and do not properly develop, – and delivers them at the same
time from their limitations and from their errors and perversions. For in all
things the gnosis is the Truth, the Right, the highest Law, devānām adabdhāni vratāni.
Knowledge and
Force or Will – for all conscious force is will – are
the twin sides of the action of consciousness. In our mentality they are
divided. The idea comes first, the will comes stumbling after it or rebels
against it or is used as its imperfect tool with imperfect results; or else the
will starts up first with a blind or half-seeing idea in it and works out something
in confusion of which we get the right understanding afterwards. There is no
oneness, no full understanding between these powers in us; or else there is no
perfect correspondence of initiation with effectuation. Nor is the individual will
in harmony with the universal; it tries to reach beyond it or falls short of it
or deviates from and strives against it. It knows not the times and seasons of
the Truth, nor its degrees and measures. The Vijnana takes up the will and puts
it first into harmony and then into oneness with the truth of the supramental
knowledge. In this knowledge the idea in the individual is one with the idea in
the universal, because both are brought back to the truth of the supreme
Knowledge and the transcendent Will. The gnosis takes up not only our
intelligent will, but our wishes, desires, even what we call the lower desires,
the instincts, the impulses, the reachings out of sense and sensation and it
transforms them. They cease to be wishes and desires, because they cease first
to be personal and then cease to be that struggling after the ungrasped which we mean by craving and desire. No longer
blind or half-blind reachings out of the instinctive or intelligent mentality,
they are transformed into a various action of the Truth-will; and that will
acts with an inherent knowledge of the right measures of its decreed action and
therefore with an effectivity unknown to our mental willing. Therefore too in
the action of the vijñānamaya
will there is no place for sin; for all sin is an error of the will, a desire
and act of the Ignorance.
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When desire
ceases entirely, grief and all inner suffering also cease. The Vijnana takes up
not only our parts of knowledge and will, but our parts of affection and
delight and changes them into action of the divine Ananda. For if knowledge and
force are the twin sides or powers of the action of consciousness, delight,
Ananda – which is something higher than what we call pleasure – is the very
stuff of consciousness and the natural result of the interaction of knowledge and
will, force and self-awareness. Both pleasure and pain, both joy and grief are
deformations caused by the disturbance of harmony between our consciousness and
the force it applies, between our knowledge and will, a breaking up of their oneness
by a descent to a lower plane in which they are limited, divided in themselves,
restrained from their full and proper action, at odds with other-force,
other-consciousness, other-knowledge, other-will. The Vijnana sets this to
rights by the power of its truth and a wholesale restoration to oneness and
harmony, to the Right and the highest Law. It takes up all our emotions and
turns them into various forms of love and delight,
even our hatreds, repulsions, causes of suffering. It finds out or reveals the
meaning they missed and by missing it became the perversions they are; it
restores our whole nature to the eternal Good. It deals similarly with our
perceptions and sensations and reveals all the delight that they seek, but in
its truth, not in any perversion and wrong seeking and wrong reception; it
teaches even our lower impulses to lay hold on the Divine and Infinite in the appearances after which they run. All this
is done not in the values of the lower being, but by a lifting up of the
mental, vital, material into the inalienable purity, the natural intensity, the
continual ecstasy, one yet manifold, of the divine Ananda.
Thus the
being of Vijnana is in all its activities a play of perfected knowledge-power,
will-power, delight-power, raised to a higher than the mental, vital and bodily
level. All-pervasive, universalised, freed from egoistic personality and
individuality, it is the play of a higher Self, a higher consciousness and
therefore a higher force and higher delight of being. All that acts in the
Vijnana in the purity, in the right, in the truth of the superior or divine
Prakriti. Its powers may often seem to be what are
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called in ordinary
Yogic parlance siddhis, by the Europeans occult powers, shunned and dreaded by
devotees and by many Yogins as snares, stumbling-blocks, diversions from the
true seeking after the Divine. But they have that character and are dangerous
here because they are sought in the lower being, abnormally, by the ego for an
egoistic satisfaction. In the Vijnana they are neither occult nor siddhis, but
the open, unforced and normal play of its nature. The Vijnana is the
Truth-power and Truth-action of the divine Being in
its divine identities, and, when this acts through the individual lifted to the
gnostic plane, it fulfils itself unperverted, without
fault or egoistic reaction, without diversion from the possession of the
Divine. There the individual is no longer the ego, but the free Jiva domiciled
in the higher divine nature of which he is a portion, parā prakŗtir jīvabhūtā, the nature of the
supreme and universal Self seen indeed in the play of multiple individuality
but without the veil of ignorance, with self-knowledge, in its multiple
oneness, in the truth of its divine Shakti.
In the
Vijnana the right relation and action of Purusha and Prakriti are found,
because there they become unified and the Divine is no longer veiled in Maya.
All is his action. The Jiva no longer says “I think, I act, I desire, I feel”;
he does not even say like the sadhaka striving after unity but before he has
reached it, “As appointed by Thee seated in my heart, I act.” For the heart,
the centre of the mental consciousness is no longer the centre of origination
but only a blissful channel. He is rather aware of the Divine seated above,
lord of all, adhişţhita, as
well as acting within him. And seated himself in that higher being, parārdhe, paramasyām parāvati, he can say truly and boldly, “God
himself by his Prakriti knows, acts, loves, takes delight through my
individuality and its figures and fulfils there in its higher and divine
measures the multiple līlā which the Infinite for ever plays in
the universality which is himself for ever.”
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