The Seven Quartets of Becoming
This book breaks serious new ground in Sri Aurobindo studies. The Record of Yoga is kind of like the Finnegan’s Wake of 20th Century spiritual writing. That is “the Wake” is a tremendous achievement and one of the most important literary works of the 20th century but there is no way to understand it without an interpretive key. The same holds true for the Record of Yoga which is one of the most important spiritual diaries written in the past century.
Not only has the author done an enormous service by providing keys to decode the Record of Yoga that detail Sri Aurobindo’s yogic practice that he defines in his diaries known as the Record of Yoga but, he does this by making it accessible by referencing Sri Aurobindo’s other major works such as The Synthesis of Yoga and The Life Divine. For example:
” Comparing the scheme outlined in the Record of Yoga with The Synthesis of Yoga we find that first three and the last of the quartets of the Record (samata, sakti, vijana, siddhi) are elaborated in the section of the Yoga of Self Perfection in The Synthesis of Yoga.”
Perhaps more importantly the author does not write to simply address followers of Sri Aurobindo but has done an even greater service by attempting to make the Record available to a wider audience by drawing comparisons with the work of several of the most renown philosophers of the late 20th Century including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and especially Gilles Deleuze who figures most prominently in his analysis of the Record of Yoga.
Contemporary philosophy or theory is now in a post-metaphysical stage given the myriad of problems associated with ideologies that have been spun from worn out metaphysical creeds throughout the 20th century. It is a stroke of genius to analyze Sri Aurobindo’s yoga by employing the language of Gilles Deleuze because of its relevance to contemporary thought. Given the fact that The Record of Yoga and Sri Aurobindo’s many other important texts were written close to 1o0 years ago and thus are cloaked in the language of metaphysical idealism, that although appropriate for the times, now represent a discourse largely removed from the necessities of our Post-Metaphysical Age, Banerji has performed an invaluable service for contemporary scholars, theologians as well as followers of integral yoga. Because of the seemingly incommensurable discursive gap between Aurobindo and Deleuze one would never gleam the similarities if someone as skilled as Banerji has not attempted his comparison.
Although Gilles Deleuze was a materialist philosopher his materialist outlook reconciles well with an immanent metaphysics that has many parallels in the yoga of Sri Aurobindo, especially given Aurobindo’s insistence on the transformation of the material world rather than the transcendence of it.
In fact the work will be useful for Deleuze scholars who may uncover a non-reductive praxis for clearing new lines of flight that consciousness may follow toward the unlimited finitude of the Plane of Immanence
The book is dedicated to Richard Hartz who completed the Herculean task of making the diaries of Sri Aurobindo available for the first time and who served as an important guide to the text for Banerji. It is Banerji’s genius however, to have offered an interpretation of the text that both renews Sri Aurobindo’s relevance for 21st century intellectual culture and also provides the follower of Aurobindo’s yoga with an exegesis of the Record of Yoga that enables them to comprehend this extremely important text.
From the Book:
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Groomed in a modern academic tradition and post-Enlightenment ideals of creative freedom and social critique, Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) turned his attention to yoga and the limits of consciousness in its ability to relate to and transform nature. In the process, he documented scrupulously his experiments and experiences based on a synergistic existential framework of practice. Debashish Banerji correlates the approach to yoga Sri Aurobindo took in his diaries with his later writings, to derive a description of human subjectivity and its powers. Banerji constellates Sri Aurobindo’s approach with transpersonal psychology and contemporary lineages of phenomenology and ontology, to develop a transformative yoga psychology redefining the boundaries and possibilities of the human and opening up lines of self-practice towards a wholeness of being and becoming. – From the `Foreword’ of Prof. Christopher Key Chapple Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, (USA) |
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| Book Contents | |
An Incalculabe Yoga — The Seven Quartets — Revolutionary Impulse — Psychology and its Alter-disciplines — Yoga Psychology and the Integral Movement — Experimental Psychologies — Post-metaphysical Philosophies — Postmodernism — The Deleuzian Century — Interlocutors — Objectives1. Integral Yoga Psychology and the Quartet of PerfectionContemporary Social Relevance — The Divine Life: Integral Being and Becoming — The Seven Quartets — The Quartet of Perfection or of Yoga — The Two Traditions — Shuddhi, the Starting Point — Yoga Philosophy: Vedanta — Samkhya — The Instrument and the Cause, Karana and Karana — Shuddhi or Purification — Purification of the Life energy (Prana-shuddhi) — The Mental Instrument — Mukti or Liberation — Bhukti or Enjoyment2. The Quartet of Peace The Progression of Equality — Equality and the Purusha — The Passive Disciplines of Equality — Titiksha — Udasinata: Being Seated Above — Nati — Active Disciplines of Equality — Rasa — Bhoga — Transforming Pain to Bliss — Priti — Ananda — Shanti — Sukham — Hasya3. The Quartet of Power A Different Relation between Soul and Nature — Gendered Considerations — Relationship with the Divine Mother — Rooted Traditions — The Siddhis of the Shakti Catushtaya — Viryam: Soul Force and the Fourfold — Personality — The Soul Force of Knowledge — The Soul Force of Power — The Soul Force of Harmonious Interchange — The Soul Force of Loving Service — Shakti or Divine Power — Embodying the Divine Shakti — Faith and the Divine Shakti 4. The Quartet of Knowledge Three Forms of Knowledge: Adhibhautika, Adhidaivika, Adhyatmika — Four Forms of Knowledge in Supermind: Vijnana, Prajnana, Samjnana, Ajnana — The Intuitive Mind — The Goals of the Quartet of Knowledge — Cognitive Knowledge: Jnana of Thought — Cognition: The Lower Doublet — Drishti and Shruti: The Higher — Doublet of Cognition — Knowledge of Time — Bridging Time and Eternity — Purification of the Sense Mind – Other Means Towards Trikaladrishti — Siddhis: Justification, Dangers and Use — The Eight Occult — Powers (Ashta-siddhi) — The Powers of Knowledge — The Powers of Will — The Mother’s Yoga of the Cells — Powers of Being — Ontological Identity with the States of Brahman 5. The Quartet of the Body Body and Spirit — Freedom from Disease — Awakened Body Consciousness — Stages to Arogya — Physical Immortality — Supermind and the Mind of the Cells — The Mystic Body and Physical Transformation — Freedom from Laws of Matter — The Physical Pranas — Stages of Utthapana — Beauty — Bliss 6. The Quartet of Being Non-Dual Seeing and the Vision of Reality — Mind and The Problem of Duality — An Evolutionary Being-in-Becoming — The One and the Infinite — The Passive Brahman — The Active Brahman — Extending the Oneness — Knowledge — Correspondences — Bliss, Impersonal and Personal — Transcendental Empiricism 7. The Quartet of Action Personal Gods and an Integral Karma-Yoga — Krishna — Kali — Purusha and Prakriti — Krishna-Kali and the Delight of Becoming — Work — Choice of Work — Stages Towards True Choice — Surrender to the Divine Shakti — Kama — Identity in Difference 8. Attitudes of Self-Discipline Attitudes of Self-Discipline — Resolution and Sincerity — Aspiration — Constant Remembrance — Equality — Purification — Replacements — Faith — Quiet Mind and the Discipline of Speech — Surrender — The Triple Dasyam 9. The Conditions of Being and Knowledge Intuition and Identity — Purusha — Integral Realisation of Brahman — Plurality of Life — Bliss as Origin: Impersonal and Personal — The Divine Master — Evidence of the Senses — The Intuitive Faculties — Purification of the Mental Instrument 10. Power and Enjoyment The Goals of Magic — Karma and the Law of Oneness — Delight of Action — The Four Cosmic Powers — Personal Law of Becoming — Adesha and Karma for Sri Aurobindo — Karma and the Four Shaktis — Capacities of Remote Knowledge and Power — Empiricism of the Records — Bliss — Krishna-Darshana — Samata |
Debashish,
Your ultimate answer may be “read the book to find out”, but I have a question about the underlying premise of your newly published book. The quote from the forward says “Both scholar and Yogi, Aurobindo (1872-1950) carefully documented the unfolding of spiritual consciousness starting shortly after his deep revelatory experiences while in prison in 1908. His observations were recently published in a two volume set, The Record of Yoga. Debashish Banerji has analyzed this work and offers a detailed, clear, systematic and inspirational interpretation of how the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo may be understood and practiced.”
The first reaction that leaps to my mind is that of surprise to see the Record of Yoga presented as if it were a careful self-documentation of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga throughout his entire yogic life (1908 – 1950), when it fact it primarily covers only 1912-1920, with nothing at all after 1927. Who if anyone he ever intended to read these notes is an open question.
The second reaction is surprise to see the Record of Yoga seemingly singled out as a recommended source for learning “how the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo may be understood and practiced”. It does seem like a valid source for attempting (however vainly) to understand Sri Aurobindo’s yoga when “Sri Auorbindo’s yoga” is defined as the particular yogic experiences and practices Sri Aurobindo was himself personally undergoing during that particular period of his sadhana. But one would normally interpret “the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo” in a context like the quote above as the distinctive yogic path Sri Aurobindo articulated for others to understand and practice. The later is no doubt related to the former, but certainly not necessarily identical.
One can obviously see the plan of parts of the Sapta Chatusthaya reflected in the last Part (Yoga of Self-Perfection) of the Syntheses of Yoga, which however he did not revise after 1921 nor allow to be re-published in book form during his lifetime. However the Arya texts that he did revise in later decades (e.g. Part 1 of the Synthesis, much of The Life Divine), along with many letters and various other texts written much later, no longer seem to employ much of the Sapta Chatusthaya terminology, and instead heavily emphasize new terminology and concepts that he did not employ in the Record, e.g. the psychic being, the ascending overhead planes, Overmind, etc.
So if one assumes Sri Aurobindo’s yoga continued to progress in the final 30 years of his life, it seems natural to look more to his latest formulations for the understanding and practice he intended for others. Pavitra quoted Sri Aurobindo as telling him in 1926: “In my spiritual life, since I was forty [1912] I have three or four times completely discarded and broken the system I had arrived at.” (Conversations with Sri Aurobindo, January 11, 1926)
Also, given that the Mother must be considered at least an equal contributor to the understanding and practice of Integral Yoga, her recorded conversations and writings up through 1973 seem to show little obvious connection to the specific presentation of the Sapta Chatusthaya or the terminology used in the Record in general.
All of this seems to me to require some hermeneutical justification for focusing on the Record as a key text conveying “how the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo may be understood and practiced”. One might just as well expect it to be a key source of confusion for those trying to understand and practice Integral Yoga; a diversion from key texts Sri Aurobindo wrote much later and much more obviously with the intent of presenting Integral yoga to a general audience. But you must have some rationale in mind – if it’s clearly laid out in your book then I don’t expect you to repeat it all on SCIY, but in case you’d like to sketch here the background of your thinking, I’d be interested to read it (and perhaps others would also).
Regards,
Kepler
Hi Kepler,
In short, yes, there are changes of terminology and emphasis in his later works, but it isn’t as if these are absent in the Record. Nor is it true that the Sapta Chatusthaya maps only to the Yoga of Self-Perfection. Brahma Chatusthaya and Karma Chatusthaya map substantially to parts I and II of the Synthesis and Shakti Chatusthaya maps to the book The Mother. Apart from this you’re right about the finer distinctions regarding the “overhead planes” but this does not change the dynamics of the yoga except at a very advanced stage. This is what I’ve argued and I’ve tried to show the linkages and modifications/adjustments in the later work while dealing with the Sapta Chatusthaya. After delving in this work, what I realized is that The Synthesis was written as an introduction to the general public, but that the practice of the yoga introduced in the Synthesis was made much more concrete and detailed through the terminology, distinctions and dynamics given in the Seven Quartets. The centrality of the Mother and the coming to the front of the psychic being with its call for surrender and its action of faith is given in the Shakti Chatusthaya if one knows how to make the connections. Moreover, the Sharira Chatusthaya has no correspondence in Sri Aurobindo’s later writings but connects with his last writings, The Supramental Manifestation and Other Writings and with the Mother’s yoga of the physical. Finally, the siddhis and anandas spoken of in the Record are not addressed anywhere else but can clearly be seen in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s own functioning. If one reads the Record after coming across the later work of Sri Aurobindo, one sees how the latter can be enhanced by the former, not taking them in isolation, and this is how I have tried to approach it.
DB
Debashish,
Thanks for the elaboration. I concur that coming from knowledge of Sri Aurobindo’s later works, studying the Sapta Chatusthaya can be fascinating and illuminating in various ways – I suppose this touches on who the intended audience for your book is.
Also, despite connections that can be drawn between the Sapta Chatusthaya and his later formulations of the yoga (triple transformation, etc.), one wonders why he seems to have modified if not largely abandoned this early formulation, and what implications can/should be drawn from that abandonment for those seeking to understand and practice Integral yoga today.
In any event, there are arguably no universally right and wrong ways to approach Sri Aurobindo’s vast corpus of writings – I was just sharing my own reaction to the described subject matter of your book. And it seems natural to attempt to include when Sri Auobindo wrote a text and who he intended to read it as context for its interpretation. But I should not comment further on your book without having first read it (although after that I’ll feel free
Kepler
K: Also, despite connections that can be drawn between the Sapta Chatusthaya and his later formulations of the yoga (triple transformation, etc.), one wonders why he seems to have modified if not largely abandoned this early formulation, and what implications can/should be drawn from that abandonment for those seeking to understand and practice Integral yoga today.
DB: How does one know what he has abandoned? SA used different terminologies and different formulations in different texts, this doesn’t necessarily mean he abandoned one for the other. Only a few of the terms of the Sapta C turn up in Part IV of the Synthesis, though it is clear he is discussing the same material. The personal gods Krishna and Kali don’t turn up at all in the Synthesis or any of his later public writings, the book The Mother is the only place outside of the Record where he mentions the 4 Mahashaktis but says nothing of their Ishwaras, and certain things related to the sharira chatusthaya of the Record are not discussed by him anywhere before his last writings (The Supramental Manifestation). In the LD or the Synthesis, he says nothing about the avatar and in the LD there is no mention of the guru. In Savitri he mentions Overmind only once and Supermind and psychic being never. In the commentary on the Kena Upanishads and in Part IV of the Synthesis, he mentions the 4 forms of Knowledge – vijnana, prajnana, samjnana and aajnana, but nowhere else. The point I’m making is that none of this is a proof that he discarded or abandoned something.
I mean “abandoned” just in the sense of not figuring prominently in the language he used to describe Integral Yoga in post-Arya letters and various other post-Arya texts written for publication. I’m thinking of things like the corpus of Letters on Yoga from the 30’s, or new chapters he wrote for the 1940 edition of the Life Divine (e.g. The Triple Transformation, The Ascent towards Supermind), or the fully revised Part 1 of the Synthesis (e.g. Chapter V – The Psychic Being).
The schema I abstract from these texts seems focused on the opening inward to the psychic being, the opening upward to the higher consciousness above ordinary mind, and the characteristic experiences and results of those openings. For example he seems to have written in the 30’s letter after letter about the psychic being to those attempting to practice his yoga, but not so much about the Brahma Chatusthaya, etc.
Hence although this isn’t “a proof that he discarded or abandoned something”, it seems to me reasonable to wonder if he modified his terminology and manner of articulation of the Yoga (in potentially important ways) between the 1910’s and the 1930’s for reasons related to the ongoing development of his ever increasing yogic knowledge and experience (also the Mother’s permanent arrival in Pondicherry), and whether this should be a consideration when interpreting and emphasizing texts from the respective periods.
Again, I’m not disparaging your overall project of exegetical or practical engagement with the Record (I ordered your book in fact), just sharing that if someone asks me what is the nature of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, it seems to me much more natural to talk about triple transformation than about the seven quartets of the Sapta Chatusthaya.
Kepler
Compliments for the book.
Remarkable research which is the hallmark of the author.
The information about the publisher is missing from the well-written review.
Following from Keplar reminds me what I read recently in the Agenda.
“Also, given that the Mother must be considered at least an equal contributor to the understanding and practice of Integral Yoga, her recorded conversations and writings up through 1973 seem to show little obvious connection to the specific presentation of the Sapta Chatusthaya or the terminology used in the Record in general.”
“Mother’s Agenda
October 17, 1970
Mother: I have a letter from Dr. V, he asks a question about something Sri Aurobindo said.
(Satprem reads)
“In The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo writes about the perfection of the lower mind, the psychic prana …”
Mother: What’s that?
Saprem: I think it’s the vital substance Sri Aurobindo calls like that.
“… and its tyrannical demands that represent the chief natural obstacle invading the whole action of the being. “Where does this psychic prana come from? Is it part of the psychic as the word is understood in India’s psychological language?…
Satprem: Yes, at that time Sri Aurobindo used the phrase “psychic prana,” but it’s not at all the psychic, the soul; I think it’s the primary vital substance. … He asks also:
“… Is there some relationship between this psychic prana and the constitution of the Psyche of Western psychologists?”
Mother: All those things, I don’t know. It’s philosophy … in English, I would say wordy. Those are psychological words that I don’t know at all.
Satprem: Yes, of course! In any case, it has no relationship with the psychic, the soul as we understand it.
Mother: There’s no use in people asking me this sort of things, I am not at all interested.
Of course! Sri Aurobindo used a whole lot of terminologies, and only in the end did he adopt the one I brought, then we could understand each other. Before, at the beginning, when I came he used to speak of all kinds of things of this sort.
And on top of it (laughing) it doesn’t interest me!”
K: Hence although this isn’t “a proof that he discarded or abandoned something”, it seems to me reasonable to wonder if he modified his terminology and manner of articulation of the Yoga (in potentially important ways) between the 1910’s and the 1930’s for reasons related to the ongoing development of his ever increasing yogic knowledge and experience (also the Mother’s permanent arrival in Pondicherry), and whether this should be a consideration when interpreting and emphasizing texts from the respective periods.
A: …Yes, at that time Sri Aurobindo used the phrase “psychic prana,” but it’s not at all the psychic, the soul; I think it’s the primary vital substance. … He asks also: “… Is there some relationship between this psychic prana and the constitution of the Psyche of Western psychologists?”
DB: First, on the “psychic” – SA doesn’t use the term at all in the Record. In Synthesis, Part IV, which deals with 4 of the quartets of the Record, he uses the term “psychic prana” in one chapter dealing with . Here he seems to have adapted Vivekananda’s use of the phrase from the latter’s book “Raja Yoga.” But this does not mean that he is unaware of the psychic being or that it does not occupy a key position in the yoga of the Record. The primary psychic properties of surrender (atmasaparpan, nati) and faith (sraddha) are its central pillars, while its creative and expressive soul powers are invoked in the Shakti chatusthaya and its powers of intuition are sought in the Vijnana chatusthaya. In the Synthesis chapter on purification (shuddhi) and liberation (mukti) where he writes of the “psychic prana,” he writes also about the result of the purification by equality of the prana. He says: “The real soul emerges and takes the place left vacant by the desire-mind” [SoY, CWSA 353]. Again, in the chapter “The Instruments of the Spirit” dealing with the Siddhi Chatusthaya, he distinguishes between the psychic prana and “the true psyche.” This also bears comparison with the chapter in the LD on The Double Soul in Man:
“This nature of the emotive mind as a reaction of chitta with a certain close dependence upon the nervous life sensations and the responses of the psychic prana is so characteristic that in some languages it is called chitta and prana, the heart, the life soul; it is indeed the most directly agitating and powerfully insistent action of the desire-soul which the immixture of vital desire and responsive consciousness has created in us. And yet the true emotive soul, the real psyche in us, is not a desire-soul, but a soul of pure love and delight; but that, like the rest of our true being, can only emerge when the deformation created by the life of desire is removed from the surface and is no longer the characteristic action of our being. To get that done is a necessary part of our purification, liberation, perfection.”
For this and other reasons, I do not believe that what he called “the psychic being” was not a key part of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga of the Record. Why then did he not emphasize it as much as he does in his letters? Personally, I don’t think this is because he learnt about it later but due to the practicalities of the sadhana that arose when the Mother became physically the center of the sadhana of the ashram.
In fact, it is a yoga very similar to that of the Record that we find SA teaching to Pavitra in his conversations. In the chapter on The Intuitive Mind in the Synthesis, Sri Aurobindo indicates four ways to arrive at an intuitive mentality. One of these is through the opening up of the psychic being. But he deprivileges this method in favor of opening to sources above the mind, on the grounds that the psychic is hidden behind impure and ignorant parts of the personality and is more likely to suffer distortion than if one tries to arrive through the quiet or silent mind at the intuition.
But after the Mother came, some things changed. The Mother’s presence and power acted strongly to bring forward the psychic being and her action effected the purification. Sri Aurobindo wrote that the Mother by her look put one in contact with the soul and by her touch connected the psychic to the surface consciousness. The yoga that developed under these circumstances pivileged the emergence of the pychic being through surrender to the Mother. Yet, if one looks at specific cases, there are practices related to several of the chatusthayas which are also being taught in the letters. Today, the physical power of the Mother’s action is no longer present to have the same effect on the emergence of the psychic being. I do not wish to sound dogmatic here and if some person or people claim that her physical absence has made no difference to her action for the emergence of the psychic, I will accept this as their experience, but by and large, I feel the yoga of the Seven Quartets opens up all the various paths of the Integral Yoga, including that of the psychic emergence, the silence of the mind leading to the overmind and supermind realizations and the preparation and transformation of the mental-vital-physical instrument through the descending action of the Shakti.
I may add that in my opinion, in the physical absence of the Mother, the danger of distortion by the vital emotional being that Sri Aurobindo wrote about in the chapter on the Intuitive Mind is very much increased, so that the demand for the shuddhi of the prana and the importance of the emergence of the mental pursha as a purifying agent, is greater today. Without these, we are seeing the repeated and insistent mouthing of the need for psychic emergence accompanied by fanatical narrowness and disturbed emotionalism.
Thanks for your feedback, Debashish. It is intellectually stimulating and enriching to read your comment.
By the way, on reading your line to Kepler “In Savitri he mentions Overmind only once and Supermind and psychic being never.” I did a quick e-search and found six references to Supermind and three to Ovemind. Though there is none mentioning psychic being per se there is a reference to “flame-child” and three to Golden Child which might be considered as references to psychic. Just for your information I quote them below. No need to write back unless you have a point to clarify.
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“At her will the inscrutable Supermind leans down
To guide her force that feels but cannot know,
Book Two, Canto III,
The Glory and Fall of Life
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None truly knew himself or knew the world
Or the Reality living there enshrined:
Only they knew what Mind could take and build
Out of the secret Supermind’s huge store.
Book Two Canto VI
The Kingdoms and the Godheads of the Greater Life
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There in a world of everlasting Light,
In the realms of the immortal Supermind
Truth who hides here her head in mystery,
Book X, Canto IV
The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Road
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Eternal supermind touch earthly Time.
Book XI – The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation
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The supermind shall be his nature’s fount,
BOOK XI: The Book of Everlasting Day – The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation
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The supermind shall claim the world for Light
BOOK XI: The Book of Everlasting Day – The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation
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The radiant world of the everlasting Truth
Glimmered like a faint star bordering the night
Above the golden Overmind’s shimmering ridge.
BOOK I: The Book of Beginnings
CANTO III: The Yoga of the Soul’s Release
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He scanned the secrets of the Overmind,
He bore the rapture of the Oversoul.
BOOK II: The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
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Then stretches the boundless finite’s last expanse,
The cosmic empire of the Overmind,
Time’s buffer state bordering Eternity,
Too vast for the experience of man’s soul:
BOOK X: The Book of the Double Twilight
CANTO IV: The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real
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Life its gestation of the Golden Child.
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To feel beauty’s touch and know the world and self:
The Golden Child began to think and see.
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In him shadows his form the Golden Child
Who in the Sun-capped Vast cradles his birth:
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O Mind, grow full of the eternal peace;
O Word, cry out the immortal litany:
Built is the golden tower, the flame-child born.
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I rarely visit this site due to work on hand but really appreciate the efforts of synthesis between multiple sources of inquiry and research attempted here.
Aryadeep, thanks for the research on Savitri. I stand corrected in the details. But the general point remains that these terms do not predominate in Savitri, but that does not mean the realities are not dealt with in Savitri, particularly as in the case with the psychic.
Thanks DB for sharing something of your motivation behind wanting to emphasize the Sapta C. If it’s true (which seems plausible) that Sri Aurobindo modified his articulation of the yoga to be psychic-centric as a result of the yogic impact of the physical presence of the Mother, one might indeed speculate whether he would modify it again in some ways now that she’s physically absent. However it’s not so clear why we should think he would change it back (in some sense) to what it was before the Mother arrived.
But I think the right description of his post-Arya articulation is not simply the stress on the psychic being, but rather the stress on the formula of a triple transformation. In that formula, along with the psychic opening (first transformation), he puts equal emphasis on the need for a spiritual opening of the mind to its own higher ranges (second transformation), and along with that he develops a whole vocabulary around the movement of descent of the higher consciousness with its effects of peace, equality, wideness, light, etc., along with the movement of ascent into the higher consciousness, realizing the Atman there, etc. He states clearly that both transformations are prerequisites for the supramental (third transformation).
Further, in the context of the dual directions of psychic and spiritual development, he makes clear that it depends on the specific nature of each individual which opening develops first – both are ultimately required. But he does often privilege the psychic opening as the preferred first opening (when possible), for he says it renders the second easier and safer – due precisely to the psychic’s dramatic purifying impact. I.e. it makes just those developments of the spiritual opening (which arguably trace more directly to his earlier articulations of the yoga), safer and easier. In various places he give accounts of sadhaks going wrong precisely due to their premature opening to powers of the higher nature without having first achieved the inner purification of ego and desire which he explicitly privileges the psychic being as being especially able to effect.
Thus I’d be personally hesitant about concluding that there are currently such ominous communitarian dangers associated with stressing the psychic opening that a return to Sri Aurobindo’s earlier (in fact earliest) formulations of the sadhana is indicated. If we are indeed seeing “repeated and insistent mouthing of the need for psychic emergence accompanied by fanatical narrowness and disturbed emotionalism”, it seems to me not to follow that the need for psychic emergence is invalid, but rather that anyone falling under that description has themselves just such a need for psychic emergence with its characteristic results of profound delight, oneness, benevolence and charity towards all. Surely fanatical narrowness and disturbed emotion is no characteristic of psychic emergence as ever articulated by Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. Rather they are characteristics of an undeveloped and ego-dominated vital-emotional nature sorely in need of just such psychic purification.
Perhaps a balancing stress on the equal need for the wideness of the higher spiritual consciousness as described by Sri Aurobindo is indicated, but any de-emphasizing of the entire concept of the psychic emergence after so much obvious importance was given to it by Sri Aurobindo and Mother, would seem a bit rash if not eccentric to me.
Kepler
Kep: Surely fanatical narrowness and disturbed emotion is no characteristic of psychic emergence as ever articulated by Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. Rather they are characteristics of an undeveloped and ego-dominated vital-emotional nature sorely in need of just such psychic purification.<
It also signals a wrong turn on the path of Bhakti Yoga- the dangers of which both SA/M warned about when taken to fanatical extremes – and Bhakti Yoga is often mapped on to the path of the psychic being. Therefore, I can see why SA was cautious about psychic in the Synthesis and privileged opening to sources above the mind.
Deb: The Mother’s presence and power acted strongly to bring forward the psychic being and her action effected the purification. Sri Aurobindo wrote that the Mother by her look put one in contact with the soul and by her touch connected the psychic to the surface consciousness.<
Whatever the truth of the above statement, I would also argue it is the insertion of Bhakti Yoga in relationship to the physical presence of the Mother that helped cultivate an atmosphere that over time has facilitated the development of fanatical extremism in certain followers.
K: Perhaps a balancing stress on the equal need for the wideness of the higher spiritual consciousness as described by Sri Aurobindo is indicated, but any de-emphasizing of the entire concept of the psychic emergence after so much obvious importance was given to it by Sri Aurobindo and Mother, would seem a bit rash if not eccentric to me.
DB: I did not imply that the emergence of the psychic was not a necessity in the Integral Yoga. What I’m saying is that the psychic is not as easy to access as it is made out to be and that its influence is easily distorted by the emotional vital parts. It was easier due to the physical presence of the Mother but now the work of purification of the lower natrure and emergence of the mental purusha to aid in the access to and emegrence of the psychic being and other aspects of the yoga (things detailed in the Seven Quartets of the Record) become important.
K: If it’s true (which seems plausible) that Sri Aurobindo modified his articulation of the yoga to be psychic-centric as a result of the yogic impact of the physical presence of the Mother, one might indeed speculate whether he would modify it again in some ways now that she’s physically absent. However it’s not so clear why we should think he would change it back (in some sense) to what it was before the Mother arrived.
DB: Again, you seem to be making a clear cut between the yoga before the Mother came and the one after the Mother came. I can’t agree with this. I can see that there was a different formulation and some different emphases, but the yoga remained largely the same. Regarding triple transformation, again, this is a formulation, seeing the yoga according to a certain dynamic. There are other dynamics according to which the whole of the yoga may be formulated – eg. dynamics of power (shakti), of ananda (bhukti), of oneness (brahman) and others. In the Record, one clearly sees that Sri Aurobindo has achieved an integral surrender, the hallmark of the emegence of the psychic and the psychic transformation of the nature; one also sees that he is in the process of complete identification in consciousness and expression with the cosmic ishwaras and mahashaktis (devi bhava, krishnakali), the hallmark of the Overmind realization and process of transformation. He is also very clear about the supermind. Some people have contended that he did not make the distinction between the overmind and the supermind at this stage, but I will contest that also. He may have differentiated these to a finer resolution later due to the needs of the stage at which he was, but that doesn’t change things too much for us. In the Record, he refers to the supermind as vijnana and sees overmind as jnana. Again, he sometimes uses vidya for supermind and vidya-avidya for overmind.
R: Whatever the truth of the above statement, I would also argue it is the insertion of Bhakti Yoga in relationship to the physical presence of the Mother that helped cultivate an atmosphere that over time has facilitated the development of fanatical extremism in certain followers.
DB: I agree. Of course, this is the guru tradition of India and it was undoubtedly a tremendous advantage to have the physical presence and action of the Mother, but I think it was reduced to a formula by the devotees and reified into a habitus, that “helped cultivate an atmosphere that over time has facilitated the development of fanatical extremism in certain followers.”
DB: “Again, you seem to be making a clear cut between the yoga before the Mother came and the one after the Mother came. I can’t agree with this.”
K: I was referring to the clear cut I thought you had proposed (re role of the psychic). My distinction is the more broadly temporal one between his writings from the 1910’s and those from the 1930’s (and after). You seem to feel there’s no reason to prefer a formulation Sri Aurobindo gave to his yoga in 1940 over one he gave in 1914. Fair enough, but that surprises me somewhat.
DB: “Regarding triple transformation, again, this is a formulation, seeing the yoga according to a certain dynamic. There are other dynamics according to which the whole of the yoga may be formulated…”
K: Right, but this particular formulation just happens to be the one Sri Aurobindo himself gave in the final decades of his life, notably when addressing those trying to practice his Yoga; I suppose that’s why I’m partial to it.
Kep, it’s fine to be partial to the formulation SA gave in the final decades of his life. In fact, I too take my guidance largely from the same formulation, but that doesn’t mean there are no other formulations or that the IY cannot be viewed along other lines or that he didn’t view the IY simultaneously along several lines himself (not only before 1930 but after it). What he taught to disciples after 1930 seems to me to be a fomulation which he found most suitable to its practice for those disciples given the prevailing conditions of the ashram, not necessarily a formulation he privileged over others which he saw or practised himself. In the Synthesis itself, he introduces a number of formulations which don’t feature in the Record – eg. modifications of the traditional triple yoga (Works, Knowledge, Devotion) of the Gita – but are more commonly understood by the general Indian reader. According to Sri Aurobindo, terminology and structire are never absolute, they are devised to follow process. Changes of emphasis in practice would demand a change in terminology and structure. Practices, on their part, would change depending on milieu and circumstance, not necessarily due to new understandings. (I am willing to admit that there were new understandings as well, but it is not necessary to presume these to be of the nature of a rupture, rather relating more to very advanced stages of the yoga).
What happends with the Mother’s settlement in the ashram is not the sudden discovery of the psychic being, but the enhanced access to the psychic being. This is how I understand what Sri Aurobindo has to say about the role of the Mother in extending the possibilities of the yoga; his saying that if it were left to him, he could give the yoga to only a handful of people, but the Mother’s coming made it a world possibility. The yoga he could give to a handful of people is the yoga of the Record; it is no less the Integral Yoga for that, but one has to do a multi-pronged work. The yoga the Mother made available arose from the direct access to the psychic being which her physical presence and occult action made possible. However, even this needed the sadhak to distinguish between an active and a passive surrender and open to the detailed work (which I believe is what is given in the Record) whose possibilities the Mother’s action would open up. The Record equally relies on the Mother’s (the Divine Shakti) and the Ishwara’s power and presence, only here the
physical component of the shakti avatar is missing.
Deb: Ah, I found one direct reference to psychic being in Savitri but it is spelled as “Psyche” and not Psychic. I suppose Sri Aurobindo must have had his reason for it.
“Earth must transform herself and equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth’s mortal state.
But for such vast spiritual change to be,
Out of the mystic cavern in man’s heart
The heavenly Psyche must put off her veil
And step into common nature’s crowded rooms
And stand uncovered in that nature’s front
And rule its thoughts and fill the body and life.”
BOOK VII: The Book of Yoga
CANTO II: The Parable of the Search for the Soul
———————————————-
Following in context of Kep’s comment:
“Everything is dangerous in the sadhana except the psychic change” – Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Yoga, Volume 3. Part Four
http://www.sri-aurobindo.info/workings/sa/24/0001_e.htm
——————————————–
By the way, I came across the Greek roots of the Psychic
“Psychic is ordinarily used in the sense of anything relating to the inner movements of consciousness or anything phenomenal in psychology; in this case, I have made a special use of it, relating it to the Greek work psychic meaning soul; but ordinarily people make no distinction between the soul and mental-vital consciousness; for them all the same.”
Sri Aurobindo
A correction:
The exact quote from SA in the above comment reads:
“Everything is dangerous in the sadhana or can be, except the psychic change.” –
Sri Aurobindo.
Undoubtedly, but one must recognize the difficulties of the psychic change and not mistake some distortion of the vital for it. This is the danger on the way to the psychic change, which is why purification of the nature and the clarity of the discrimination working through a quiet or silent mind is necessary. Writing about access to the psychic, Sri Aurobindo says:
to listen for the voice, wait for the impulsion or the command, the ¯ade´sa, obey only the idea and will and power of the Lord within them, the divine Self and Purusha in the heart of the creature, ¯ı´svarah. sarvabh ¯ ut ¯an¯a ˙ m hr.
dde´se. This is a movement which must tend more and more to intuitivise the whole nature, for the ideas, the will, the impulsions, the feelings which come from the secret Purusha in the heart are of the direct intuitive character.
But he indicates clearly the difficulties:
….. the heart is not the highest centre of our being, is not supramental nor directly moved from the supramental sources. An intuitive thought and action directed from it may be very luminous and intense but is likely to be limited, even narrow in its intensity, mixed with a lower emotional action and at the best excited and troubled, rendered unbalanced or exaggerated by a miraculous or abnormal character in its action or at least in many of its accompaniments which is injurious to the harmonised perfection of the being. [Synthesis, CWSA 804-05]
DB, that a pre-established quietude and capacity of discrimination in the nature is a big help for the psychic opening (and everything else in the sadhana) is without doubt correct. However in the quote you describe as “Sri Aurobindo writing about access to the psychic”:
“…the heart is not the highest centre of our being, is not supramental nor directly moved from the supramental sources. An intuitive thought and action directed from it may be very luminous and intense but is likely to be limited, even narrow in its intensity, mixed with a lower emotional action and at the best excited and troubled, rendered unbalanced or exaggerated by a miraculous or abnormal character in its action or at least in many of its accompaniments which is injurious to the harmonised perfection of the being.”- Sri Aurobindo [Synthesis, CWSA 804-05]
I don’t read “the heart” or “An intuitive thought and action directed from it” as referring to the psychic. In later texts written after he had actually introduced the term psychic, he clearly distinguishes it from this “heart” or emotional being and locates the psychic “behind” it. This proximity accounts for a certain connection between the emotional center and the psychic, but identifying them is a clear mistake. And where has he ever described the psychic action as “at the best excited and troubled”? In this paragraph he is referring instead, as he says at the beginning of it, to “the way of Bhakti”, or the traditional sadhana centered around the emotional being. This does not equate to the psychic transformation. To me this shows the hazards of assuming one can ignore fine terminological distinctions Sri Aurobindo articulated at a later time and assume they map unproblematically onto different (or missing) terminology he employed decades earlier.
If there are characteristic hazards on the way to the true psychic opening related to narrow and exaggerated emotion, aren’t there also characteristic hazards on the way to the true spiritual opening of the mind, e.g. self-delusion and arrogance, ego-aggrandizement, mistaking of mental formations for spiritual realities, etc.? I recall an agenda passage where Mother describes how some seekers following jnana-oriented paths build powerful mental formations that they mistake for spiritual truth, and it’s very hard to get them out of it.
It seems to me these possibilities of failure in the direction of spiritualization don’t mean we should downplay the importance of the true spiritual opening; similarly the fact that some people with narrow and unillumined emotional natures mistakenly think they are being psychic, is no reason to downplay the importance of psychicization.
Kepler
I have pointed out earlier places in Part IV of the Synthesis where the distinction between the emotional being and the “real soul” has been made. “The heart” is not the psychic being, or the seat of the Antaryamin or Antaratma. But the heart “stands in front of” the psychic being and what Sri Aurobindo is pointing out here is that this can introduce narrowness and distortion to the messages of the psychic. Moreover, being of a “personal” nature and belonging to the vital being, whose purusha is much more difficult to disentangle from the prakriti than the mental purusha, “the heart” is prone to much greater error, unless these nature parts are brought under the power of a perfect equality. He is also saying that there are limitations and exaggerations to the “inner” sources, which can only be overcome through the sense of oneness and harmony belonging to the supramental.
This also does not mean there are no difficulties to the spiritual opening of the mind, but Sri Aurobindo privileges the purification of the buddhi and the emergence of the mental purusha in the Synthesis (not only in Part IV), calling man primarily “a mental being” and saying that the evolution of nature has prepared in man an intelligence (buddhi) which is an impartial seeker of the truth and saying that it is easier to build a quiet mind (silence in the inner mind) or even to still the mind for the emergence of the mental purusha and rise to the planes above the mind. For this reason also, he calls for the Shakti to be invoked from above the mind, to descend and purify the lower parts of the being. A quiet mind or silent mind also facilitates this descent of the Shakti. With the Mother’s presence in the ashram, this necessity is replaced by the Mother’s physical action (though this also aids in the descent of Shakti from above).
Again, I’m not deprivileging the psychic opening and transformation, and believe Sri Aurobindo also saw it as a central pillar in his own yoga, but I do think he felt the psychic change to be difficult before the Mother came. The Indian tradition has developed schools of bhakti yoga to aid in the purification of the emotional being and Sri Aurobindo gives us his own integral version of this in the Yoga of Divine Love; but the kind of access to the psychic being provided by these traditional schools are generally partial at best. All I’m saying is that the access to the psychic being was made much easier by the physical presence of the Mother; in her physical absence, one can still open to her occult influence, but the yoga of the Record shows other sources and practices of purification and transformation which can prepare the way for the quietude of the “desire soul” and the emergence of the “true soul.”
DB
By the way, I do not make a case for the importance of the emergence of the mental purusha or the purified buddhi over the emergence of the psychic being in my book (or some even greater reduction of “mind” over “heart”). The case I am making here is that access to the psychic being is not that easy. The rigorous and multi-pronged approach to purification and the opening up of the higher mental capacities discussed in the Seven Quartets and followed by Sri Aurobindo in the Record, leads to the higher openings and the emergence of the psychic being and its surrender of all the parts to the Ishwara and Shakti.
In Chapter V of the Yoga of Works, where the term “psychic being” is explicitly used and the importance of the psychic being is poetized, he has this to say in preface: “At a certain stage in the Yoga when the mind is sufficiently
quieted and no longer supports itself at every step on the sufficiency of its mental certitudes, when the vital has been steadied and subdued and is no longer constantly insistent on its own rash will, demand and desire, when the physical has been sufficiently altered not to bury altogether the inner flame under the mass of its outwardness, obscurity or inertia, an inmost being, long hidden within and felt only in its rare influences, is able to come forward and illumine the rest and take up the lead of the Sadhana.”
It is clear here that the Yoga must have progressed quite a bit before the psychic can emerge. The yoga of the Record, particularly the parts relating to its most central quartet, the Yoga Chatusthaya, deal in a detailed fashion with the purifications which that progress implies.
DB
Right, that the true psychic opening is not at all easy to attain and preliminary purification is important – no disagreement there.
But if I’m following you, you are also claiming that prior to the Mother’s physical arrival, Sri Aurobindo felt that the psychic opening was more difficult and dangerous than the upward spiritual opening of the mind – and that’s why he didn’t write much about it. However once the Mother arrived, he found her physical presence inverted that relationship, and he chose a new term “psychic being” for this Soul behind the heart and began putting primary emphasis on it. Now that Mother is no longer physically present, the previous situation is restored in that the psychic opening is again more difficult and it may be best to lay stress on Sri Aurobindo’s earlier writings before he began talking so much about the psychic being. Is this about right?
Assuming so, I’m not saying you are definitively wrong, but this seems a very bold claim and I’m not sure how to evaluate it. Do you know of any text from Sri Aurobindo or Mother referring specifically to such a change in the difficulty/danger of the psychic opening before and after her coming to Pondy? Baring that, it would seem at least as plausible to me that the meeting of the oceans of spiritual consciousness that were Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the flesh resulted in some genuinely new yogic possibilities and orientations, and some of the terminology subsequently developed (e.g. psychic being) reflected that. In this view the reason he didn’t use the same language and give the same stress to the psychic earlier was not that he thought it was too difficult and dangerous, but that it wasn’t as fully known or experienced (or experienceable) in quite the same way earlier. There are a number of places where Sri Aurobindo refers to earlier stages of his sadhana and the writings corresponding to those periods, as having been superseded in various ways by later developments in his sadhana. (Given that sadhana is all about ever-increasing consciousness and experience, this doesn’t really seem surprising.)
Nothing wrong with making a bold claim, but if the primary support of yours is that some of the people violently upset by PH’s book also talk a lot about the psychic being, thus the pursuit of the psychic opening must have become dangerous, I guess I’m still looking for some additional justification.
Kepler, I think the claim that Sri Aurobindo did not know about the psychic being until 1930 (or even 1920, when the Mother came finally to stay) is much bolder and more implausible than the one I am making – i.e. he developed a different formulation of the yoga more geared towards the action of the Mother and the opening of the disciple to her physical and occult action. The power of the psychic being in his own yoga is undeniable to me; his knowledge of its primary characteristics (aspiration, faith, surrender), the necessity of its transforming the dynamic nature, as well as its being the true (re)-incarnating person, representing a temporal eternity. But it is also clear from what he has to say about the evolution of nature and the access to the spirit, and the degrees of human bondage (pashas of the pashu), that he felt this true soul was not so easy to get at in general without the aid of other aspects of the sadhana, and that its actions and intimations were compromised before that. At one place, he writes about the development of the “yogic consciousness” as a prerequisite to the emergence of the true soul. The yogic consciousness is the purified inner being under the control of the mental purusha. This comes in the last chapter of the Yoga of Works, Soermind and the Yoga of Works: “One must first acquire an inner Yogic consciousness and replace by it our ordinary view of things, natural movements, motives of life; one must revolutionise the whole present build of our being. Next, we have to go still deeper, discover our veiled psychic entity and in its light and under its government psychicise our inner and outer parts, turn mind-nature, life-nature, body-nature and all our mental, vital, physical action and states and movements into a conscious instrumentation of the soul. Afterwards or concurrently we have to spiritualise the being in its entirety by a descent of a divine Light, Force, Purity, Knowledge, freedom and wideness. It is necessary to break down the limits of the personal mind, life and physicality, dissolve the ego, enter into the
cosmic consciousness, realise the self, acquire a spiritualised and universalised mind and heart, life-force, physical consciousness. Then only the passage into supramental consciousness begins to become possible, and even then there is a difficult ascent to make each stage of which is a separate arduous achievement….” [Synthesis, CWSA: 281-82]
In this light, one may think of four transformations, not three. A part of the Record could be thought of as relating to the development of a yogic consciousness.
I didn’t claim “Sri Aurobindo did not know about the psychic being” until 1920, I said there was something new about it . If one thinks there is anything at all new about Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, there must have been a time before and after those new things appeared (not suddenly out of nothing, but in a form and with an objective that had something genuinely new about them). I think his sadhana and its expression advanced (in some important sense of the word) over his yogic life; he seemed to say that himself and it only makes sense that it would. That’s why I don’t think you can take texts from very different periods and assume his is talking about exactly all the same things and only choosing a different word here and there. Thus there’s reason to give more importance to his later expressions over much earlier ones.
But in your latest comment you return to an emphasis on the difficulty of a true and established psychic opening – I couldn’t agree more with that. And people do seem to throw the word around very lightly as if some ordinary feelings of devotion (perhaps in some cases even narrow and fanatical feelings) for the Mother mean one is living in the psychic consciousness.
Kepler
A short note on the language issues that have been brought up in this discussion.
Psychicization or Supramental Manifestation, Antaryamin or Antaratma how I do love these words for the quaint images of liberation they evoke. The etymology of these words can be faithfully traced, the former pair traceable to a specific period in early/mid 20th century modernist mysticism and the later two words to an ancient Vedantic tradition.
Reading them today I can not help to smile because language – as we know from Future Poetry – charts the leading edge of our evolutionary turn. So for example to read these words in the 21st century well after the intuitive poetic vision that inspired their first utterance has passed, I can only wonder what the signifier psychicization differs and defers to?
If one takes SA seriously about the infinite expressive potentialities of the Divine then one would be real surprised if this did not also correspond to an equally expressive ever-evolving language.
Therefore it seems to me rather unlikely that what Sri Aurobindo may have first gleamed in language from an intuitive vision over 75 years ago would in fact be the very same language he would cloak his “guru english” in today. Over time sublime experience becomes reified in language, inspirational poetry quickly becomes stale ideology. While one can memorize his system and learn to parrot Sri Aurobindo’s words mapping his experience onto the countless differences that shape the experiences and inner topography of each one of us is a whole other enchilada.
So while the jnana/bhakti debate has raged on in India for millennia it seems to me far fetched to think privileging a vocabulary based on any language of liberation be it in the tradition of the heart or mind is going to be statistically meaningful in measuring spiritual progress across sadhak & sadhika populations today.
What I personally find useful in Debashish’s book is that while one must indeed wade trough this sea of mystical signifiers is that he has taken the trouble not only to elucidate the meaning of these terms derived from Sanskrit and Guru English but has done so by translating them in terms that are philosophically and culturally relevant today.
I believe both the last 2 comments (by K and R) make important points – K to the evolution of consciousness in SA and R to the evolution of language. I agree essentially in both cases. The Seven Quartets of the Record, SA’s later understandings and languaging, and the philosophical and cultural languaging of the present relating to the concerns of self-exceeding and superman-making are discontinuous in terms of consciousness and language. Yet there are translations between them that are creative to praxis. Moreover, I do believe, from a considered synchronic and diachronic study of SA’s texts, that he held and languaged simultaneous descriptions of the IY belonging to different textual discourses. To arrive at an “authentic” understanding of these differences is always a guessing game. For example, I find it difficult to believe that SA learnt new things about “the psychic being” after 1920, but that he found new relations and dynamics between the “overhead planes” and “supermind” is more probable. I also agree with R that these terms are descriptions relating not only to a moment of personal consciousness but a moment in history, that all psychology is also cultural psychology. Still an epoch of languaging also exceeds its hour, Nietzsche’s “superman” continues to haunt us, the more so as the human becomes increasingly unstable. My book is not a hermeneutical exercise in decoding SA’s “authentic” intention. All it proposes is “a transformative yoga psychology based on Sri Aurobindo’s diaries.” It represents my own traversal of this language terrain and yoga practice from the retrospective world of my own practice of the integral yoga and a contemporary world of deleuzian nomadology opening onto the unfinished horizon of the superman. I believe it can be useful to others but whether or not depends on what use they make of it as a toolbox of attention and the practices of consciousness.
D: I find it difficult to believe that SA learnt new things about “the psychic being” after 1920, but that he found new relations and dynamics between the “overhead planes” and “supermind” is more probable<
R: I would probably agree with something like this especially given that the psychic being is not unique to integral yoga. In fact the idea of the psychic being was there in ancient Greece even if it was only the philosophical initiate who properly understood it. In the following passages from the Life Divine Sri Aurobindo makes the connection between the Psychic Being “caitya purusha” and Socrates’s Daemon explicit.
If there was a new formulation of the daemon and its evolutionary significance it was probably due to a newly uncovered relationship to what Sri Aurobindo calls Supermind.
“The true soul secret in us—subliminal, we have said, but
the word is misleading, for this presence is not situated below
the threshold of waking mind, but rather burns in the temple of
the inmost heart behind the thick screen of an ignorant mind,
life and body, not subliminal but behind the veil,—this veiled
psychic entity is the flame of the Godhead always alight within
us, inextinguishable even by that dense unconsciousness of any
spiritual self within which obscures our outward nature. It is
a flame born out of the Divine and, luminous inhabitant of
the Ignorance, grows in it till it is able to turn it towards the
Knowledge. It is the concealed Witness and Control, the hidden
Guide, the Daemon of Socrates, the inner light or inner voice
of the mystic. It is that which endures and is imperishable in us
from birth to birth, untouched by death, decay or corruption,
an indestructible spark of the Divine. Not the unborn Self or
Atman, for the Self even in presiding over the existence of the
individual is aware always of its universality and transcendence,
it is yet its deputy in the forms of Nature, the individual soul,
caitya purusa, supporting mind, life and body, standing behind
the mental, the vital, the subtle-physical being in us and watching
and profiting by their development and experience. ”
‘But in man the psychic part of the personality is able to develop
with a much greater rapidity than in the inferior creation,
and a time can arrive when the soul
entity is close to the point at which it will emerge from behind the
veil into the open and become the master of its instrumentation
in Nature. But this will mean that the secret indwelling spirit,
the Daemon, the Godhead within is on the point of emergence;
and, when it emerges, it can hardly be doubted that its demand
will be, as indeed it already is in the mind itself when it undergoes
the inner psychic influence, for a diviner, a more spiritual
existence. In the nature of the earth life where the mind is an
instrument of the Ignorance, this can only be effected by a change
of consciousness, a transition from a foundation in Ignorance to
a foundation in Knowledge, from the mental to a supramental
consciousness, a supramental instrumentation of Nature”
What we know for certain re “the psychic being” is that he started using the term psychic in a new way after about 1920, and he began describing the psychic’s status, nature, and central role in integral yoga in various distinctive ways that were noticeably new compared to his earlier writings. He continued to write about the psychic in this new way consistently for the remaining 30 years of his life, after which time the Mother continued doing so for the remaining 23 years of her life.
Why he didn’t use the term, or the same constellation of descriptions and properties, in his earlier writings is not known and it can only be, to use DB’s term, “a guessing game” as to the explanation. That it had something to do with the Mother’s permanent arrival in Pondy seems plausible – but beyond that it’s just speculation.
One can find Sri Aurobindo writing things such as this reference in 1934 to The Yoga and its Objects (a text he wrote in 1912): “But the book represents an early stage of Sri Aurobindo’s sadhana and only a part of it is applicable to the Yoga as it has at present taken form after a lapse of more than twenty years.” [Letters on Himself and the Ashram, CWSA, p82]
Thus I’d suggest there’s some reason for a seeker to prefer his later formulations, e.g. the psychic being, over formulations from much earlier texts. But if anyone gets sound yogic results from studying and applying his early texts there can hardly be any objection. The only objection would be to a generalized claim that there’s some reason to avoid his later formulations in preference for the earliest – that would seem quite odd to me.
Kepler
No reason to avoid the later formulations. In fact I don’t find any reason to avoid anything unless there is an explicit disavowal. The yoga unfolds primarily from within; the texts (shastras) are aids and pointers, a help in the Ignorance to the guidance within. The touchstone of yoga is its self-evidence. Take whatever helps, drop whatever does not help :
“One often even hears the objection urged against a new practice, a new Yogic teaching, the adoption of a new formula, “It is not according to the Shastra.” But neither in fact nor in the actual practice of the Yogins is there really any such entire rigidity of an iron door shut against new truth, fresh revelation, widened experience. The written or traditional teaching expresses the knowledge and experiences of many centuries systematised, organised, made attainable to the beginner. Its importance and utility are therefore immense. But a great freedom of variation and development is always practicable. Even so highly scientific a system as Rajayoga can be practised on other lines than the organised method of Patanjali.
Each of the three paths of the trim¯arga1 breaks into many bypaths which meet again at the goal. The general knowledge on which the Yoga depends is fixed, but the order, the succession, the devices, the forms must be allowed to vary; for the needs and particular impulsions of the individual nature have to be satisfied even while the general truths remain firm and constant…..
“Meanwhile certain general lines have to be formed which may help to guide the thought and practice of the sadhaka. But these must take as much as possible the form of general truths, general statements of principle, the most powerful broad
directions of effort and development rather than a fixed system which has to be followed as a routine. All Shastra is the outcome of past experience and a help to future experience. It is an aid and a partial guide. It puts up signposts, gives the names of the main roads and the already explored directions, so that the
traveller may know whither and by what paths he is proceeding. The rest depends on personal effort and experience and upon the power of the Guide.” [Synthesis, The Four Aids, CWSA: 56-58].