From: alok pandey (taijasalok@yahoo.co.in)
Date: July 12, 2005 3:33:38 AM PDT
To: rjon@vzavenue.net
Subject: Science, Yoga and Man
Reply-To: postaum2005@sriaurobindocenter-la.com


(Discussion List Post-AUM 2005): Replying to this email will send it to all members of the Post-AUM list.

Dear all,

just a little tit-bit snacks on the issue. Sorry if it is a large serving.

In that case just skip everything else and go right down to Sri Aurobindo's Savitri.
love
alok

Science, Yoga and Man:

The
lines below taken from Savitri, Bk 7, Canto 4, (The Triple Soul Forces)
are the voices that echo from the abysses of human nature, from the
titan in us that takes each energy and power and turns it for the
egoistic purposes of the race without concern for the necessary
preparation of the soul to receive these gifts. The result of such
effort is to state the obvious. Centuries have witnessed this approach
that invariably ends in the sudden swift or a slow decline of the group
that attempts to tear away the booties of nature in an unthinking way
without first deserving it by a steady purification of his nature and
an enlargement of his soul.

Sri Aurobindo was obviously very
well aware of this and it would be a great folly to assume that since
the world has changed after 1973, (and there is no one to tell us what
we should do under the present situation) therefore we have to
presumably act differently under the new conditions. The Yoga of Sri
Aurobindo stands for all ages to come, at least for the present cycle
which is still in its infant stirrings. The inner path does not change
with the changing outer appearances of the world. Besides what has
frankly changed so much except an odd book here and there.
Globalisation, yes but for what miserable purposes of expansion of
empires and increase of profit margins.

The lonely peasant
sitting in a remote village gazing at the stars and watching some lotus
pools is no less global even if he is cut off from all scientific
advancement and technological know-how. He is in touch with the
vastness that comes from watching the skies studded with stars in a
clear pollution free night. His vastness comes from observing the moods
of nature and the growth of the plants and the cycles of nature that we
no longer have an occasion to see and feel. His vastness is learnt in
the school of life that teaches us in s! o many ways, scientific and
unscientific. Finally, his vastness comes by having the time to look
into his soul and enter into his own depths, into the inner fields
where all is vast and luminous and free.

To reduce things to a
push button level is not necessarily advancement but may even be a
diminution, a narrowness, a confinement and a slavery to machinery. So
let us be a little careful in our hurrah that here the new world has
come with all its sophisticated gadgetry and inventions to wrap our
bodies in comfortable cocoons and lull our hearts and minds to sleep
and lure our souls to the by-lanes of the vital by creating a mimicry
of the higher worlds.

Of course, the new world is there and
there can be no doubt about its existence and growth. But who can be
its spokesmen. The scientist who dissects the wonder but kills the soul
underneath his scalpel? Or the child who is aware of the soul as
concretely and even more so as of his body even though he has not the
mathematical means to formulate it into words? Or the one who has both,
the developed inner instruments to see the soul as one sees the body as
well as the developed outer instruments that can express its wonder and
beauty in a myriad forms of science and arts and poetry and literature
and philosophy and health, no less than in works of love and polity and
administration and education and whatever else?

But first and
foremost the discovery of the soul. For otherwise it all becomes a
farcical religion where we talk and talk of God and talk and talk of
world but know a! bout neither. That discovery is the purpose of the
so-called and much abused withdrawl of the yogi. He is like the
scientist, if you like, withdrawing into his inner lab and its inner
chambers shutting himself to all other pleasures and diversions in his
single minded pursuit. That is sincerity. The true yogi is made of that
stuff of sincerity and his single-mindedness should not be confused
with a withdrawl. Whoever ever reached the inner or outer heights
without such a single-mindedness of purpose and will. Not the scientist
who discovers truths of outer perishable goods and surface nature. Not
the yogi who discovers truths of deeper and more lasting value.
Engaging with the world surely does not mean engaging in the old way of
our mental Ignorance.

It means, in our yoga, engaging with the
world on the true basis, the basis of a diviner knowledge received
within. It means engaging on the basis of a love that is not the
reflection of one’s ego in another person’s medium. It means engaging
on the basis of a will not impoverished or deficient or entrapped by
the outer instruments. Most of us are engaged with the world in some
way or the other. But this engagement need not be intellectual alone,
though there is certainly no embargo against that. But we must be sure
that we are seeing things right, that our drsiti (sight) is clear and
not muddled by avidya (ignorance).

The only way to ensure this
is to make Yoga a living experience not an intellectual pastime. Words
like psychic being, higher worlds, new consciousness, spiritual and
Divine must correspond in our consciousness to a living, real and
preferably intimate experience. That is what I suppose Sri Aurobindo
and the Mother would be happy to see in us, to grow into the likeness
of the Truth that they brought down for earth and men. Each sincere
effort towards that growth will be amply rewarded by a corresponding
pu! ll and attraction in the earth consciousness towards this new
height. This is the occult action or the silent revolution initiated by
the disciples of Sri Aurobindo. We should never underestimate it.
Because, if we do so, there is the likelihood of getting side-tracked
into some by-lanes in a mock struggle in the name of engagement, losing
even the little that we could genuinely offer or do for the world. This
is not selfishness for we do not concentrate on our inner development
with a view to disappear out of earth existence but with a view to lay
ourself at the Feet Divine for His service.

The sadhaka of
this yoga is called upon to be at the Divine service, call it at the
service of the Divine upon earth if we like, and not at the service of
the human Ignorance. It does not matter what opinion the learned or the
not so learned people hold. What matters for the yogin is the Will of
the Divine in him and in others and nothing else, for he knows that in
fulfilling this Will there lie! s the maximum good of the maximum.

So
if that be the calling within us and we feel that we have risen to the
heights wherein we can speak about the greater truths, we must engage.
But the answer will be different for each one and one has to answer it
very sincerely and cautiously. It should not be a mere push of the
vital restlessly wanting to do something seemingly great, or to win
acknowledgement or fame or any some such thing which would falsify the
very basic position of our premise. For above all things we hold that
this world is not meant for the personal expansion of the play of the
ego in its many disguises but for the Divine Manifestation. A race
without ego, a race consciously living for the Divine is the solution
offered by Sri Aurobindo to us. How many are the takers of such an
ideal! That is the real question. And short of that there is really no
true or lasting solution but only eye-washes and t! hat we have been
doing for centuries.

A word about outsiders and insiders. There
is no doubt a profound truth in the belief that wisdom can drop from
the lips of a child and the ever vigilant are ready to receive it. But
that does not mean that the child is necessarily conscious of that
wisdom, or that wisdom of a child is greater than that of a magi. That
would be an error of exaggeration. It simply means that wisdom exists
in the very nature of man and can find means of expression through even
the frailest of instruments. Nevertheless, an illegitimate extension of
this thought can be that any one can therefore speak about anything.
Let us not belittle yoga. It is a very specialized, perhaps one of the
most specialized efforts that man has ever undertaken. Not any one and
everyone has the adhikara (right) to speak about it. The man who has
spent all his life pursuing t! ruths of matter has the natural right to
speak about matter. But he cannot, for that reason derive unfair
inferences about spiritual truths. His qualification and outer degrees
or being hailed as a great mind in his own field does not necessarily
qualify him to speak about truths of which he has not the scantest
experience. The man who has studied brain structures can speak about
brain structures but for that reason he does not become an expert in
speaking about the psychic being. In fact, if anything his expertise is
his limitation. A psychologist can speak about mental processes and
mechanism but he needs to stop with humility when it comes to yoga and
admit that he has little true experience about it and only knows it
through some books. If he wishes to know about yoga he has to meet a
master of yoga and approach with the humility that bears the fruits of
wisdom. That is why I am not much enthused about the certain writers
who have forced entered themselves into unauthorized ter! ritory with a
false passport. There is a proper way to learn everything. Yoga is
learnt the yoga way and not by reading books on neural physiology,
though a yogi can develop the true sight to understand what transpires
in the neurons and see its place in the totality of earth’s accumulated
knowledge (or Ignorance!). No doubt the Divine uses each one for His
world purposes, but that is a different subject matter altogether. We
must understand that truths of the spirit are not truths of speculation
or philosophical derivations. They exist in their own right just as
truths of matter exist or the principle of biology and chemistry exist.
Imagine a scenario wherein a yoga master began speaking of chemicals to
a class fairly advanced in the detailed knowledge of organic chemistry!
Of course unless he has truly tried to dive deep into chemistry and
sought its understanding on a spiritual basis.

In other words
anyone is welcome to Sri Aurobindo, we are not a theology restricting
entry to the faithful few, but the condition is a willingness to grow
into the yoga and not start a new gospel based on one’s accumulated
past knowledge in another field. Such misguided secularism of thought
may well be a disaster for the group and add to the already enough
existing confusion. The wideness expected of man is not the wideness of
a waste paper basket where the poetry and the soap fiction lie together
arm in arm in an unholy wedlock awaiting Nature’s wisdom of deliverance
into the recycled pulp where in both loose their truth into a common
leveling ground. The wideness that we need to grow into is the wideness
of the sky that impassively watches the cycles of Time, even supports
it by its indifference, or better still the wideness of the sun that
not only upholds but also knows! the true place of each truth in the
cosmos and keeps each season and object in its true place by its
dynamic presence. Our engagement too must be luminous and forceful,
full of the conviction of the soul born of experience and a living
faith. Then it will have the power to change things and not otherwise.

There
are very beautiful examples of such an engagement with the world by Sri
Aurobindo’s children in the USA itself that we all know. Special among
these are the creation of beautiful and radiating centers of Sri
Aurobindo’s Vision, work with flowers and music, works of co-ordination
with Auroville and the world, works in the educational and journalistic
field, etc. More can and need to be undertaken and so will it be. As we
grow within so will the work and as we progress inwardly so will the
quality of the work that is done through us. And that’s what matters in
the end. It may take time but such patience is always rewarding in the
end. The inner work is primary, the outer work must flow out of it
naturally as the pure strea! ms flow down the snow clad mountain peaks
with the invigorating touch of the sun.

To summarise, what I wish to say regarding some of the issues raised is as follows:

1)
Science, like art, like religion, like polity, like music, like
everything else, is one of the lines that Nature has taken in man in
her vast upward evolutionary labour. Again like all our efforts in
Ignorance it has its flip side as well.

2) In this line of
evolution through Science, Nature is more concerned about revealing the
laws and processes that built this world of finite things rather than
about beauty, love, delight, will-in-the-world, etc. To know these
other truths man has to pursue other lines of evolution. There are
other parts in us that need their own fulfillment and Science can
hardly provide it to us if relied upon in isolation.

3) Or
else, man can bypass this slow and painful evolutionary labour. He can
first go straight to the One Truth from which all emerge and in which
all our dualities and mutually conflicting ideas are at once
reconciled, justified and yet each put in its own true place. This
second process of going straight to the bedrock of Existence is the
revolutionary path of yoga.

4) So far it has been an either-or
situation. The man who is into yoga cares little for the world and its
processes. Whereas the worldly man has little energy turned towards any
serious yogic endeavour. Understandably, since both are extremely
specialized tendencies, each requiring a lifetime of effort to reach
somewhere. Besides their methods and processes are so very different
that to reconcile them (in practice and not intellectually) is
difficult.

5) Thus science tries to see and understand and know
the higher on the basis of the lower; deeper and subtler on the basis
of the outer and grosser; the vast unknown on the basis of the little
known. The stance of yoga is the very opposite. It sees our lower
nature as a fall from a higher divine status of being; our body and
mind as limited and imperfect instruments put out by the soul; our
surface life with all its hullabaloo and hallelujahs a brief and
transient ripple surging from ocean depths of the infinite; the little
‘known’ known by our sense-mind and outwardly turned pragmatic
intelligence as indeed an unknown t! ill we know the ‘One’ thing
knowing which all else is known. In fact according to the stance of
Yoga one cannot know anything in its finality till one has known or
rather become one with ‘That’. Something will always elude, something
most crucial without which all our knowing remains an uncertainty.

6)
But for this missing crucial ‘Something’ or ‘Someone’ man must look
behind the sense-appearances and climb beyond reason. These two (going
behind the senses and climbing beyond the reason) can be respectively
considered as the objective and subjective side of the One Truth. It is
true that some scientific discoveries and a certain line of scientific
thought in the latter part of the last century has helped man look
behind the senses in a way that has stunned his thought. This is
especially and strangely true in the realm of physics, though in the
realm of biological, psychological and social sciences we are still
larg! ely on the surface, an odd effort here and there notwithstanding.

7)
Now this is precisely the crux of the problem. It is this, that while
man’s objective knowledge has increased tremendously in the physical
domain giving him unprecedented power, in his inner subjective self he
is still a ‘narcissus’, trapped by his own sense image. No wonder then
that man, the pygmy or barbarian, is using the immense power of
physical science to further polish his sensory world and demolish
another. He is painting appearances while the foundations shake and the
walls of his inner spaces crack from within. One wonders what worse
could lie in store if his obj! ective knowledge of the world of life
forms and mind forms were to increase!

8) Here we have to
understand the immense significance of our subjective
self-identification and the role of yoga towards it. Yoga teaches us,
as science does in the objective world, to disengage our subjective
self (which is not less real because it is subjective) from its
hypnotic identification with the ego and surface desire-soul and
discover our true identity in the Divine. This is not only as necessary
as our objective world-knowledge that physical and life sciences give
but even more urgent and pressing. In other words, the real danger is
not from science, just as the danger is not from the fire or the sword
in it! self, but from the user. If the gap between the two, our
objective knowledge and power vis-à-vis our subjective self-evolution,
widens a lot in favour of the objective then off the hook we go,
offline again, swallowed by our own structures, machinery and
equipments or crushed down under it as a weakling would if his weaker
head supports a heavy crown.

9) Of course, in the deepest sense
these two are one – the subject always extends and fulfils itself in
the object and the object finds itself in the subject. Also just as
objective knowledge influences our subjective idea of the world, so
also subjective knowledge gives us a greater objective control of life
around us. But we can leave that issue for the moment. Suffice it to
say that the more our outer knowledge expands, the more pressing the
need will be for an inner growth. As the Mother put it in very few
simple but compelling words – ‘…… if only man consents to be
spiritualise! d ………’

10) In other words, knowledge and power
over ‘outer’ things, over material energy (as of now) or over life,
mind and group energies (as in the near future) that Science provides,
must be commensurate with the inner knowledge and power that yoga
gives. Both Science and Yoga meet in the consciousness of man. If they
meet and mate in the dark night of ignorance on the shifting sands of
the surface desire-soul (as they have done so far in the past) then the
offspring is a self-destructive and world-destructive rage and fear.
But if they meet in a holy embrace in the Light of the Supramental
Truth Consciousness then the child born of them may be the luminous
twin - Progress and Divine Perfection.

The choice is therefore
not between a good science and a bad science or between science and
yoga. Both need to develop, each in its own way. Those called to
science will give themselves naturally to it. Depending upon their
opening to the New Consciousness they will be good or bad but
nevertheless instruments of the Supramental Truth. But also those
called to yoga must give themselves to yoga. Depending upon their
openness they would help man ascend to his inner heights and by doing
so save the earth, not so much from the dangers of science but from
ourselves. Each therefore must be faithful to his own calling. Not that
one cannot do both. There are beautiful examples of this synthesis in
each category. Yet there is a difference. The one called upon to Yoga,
pursues Science in the spirit of Yoga. His method is to first go behind
the iron curtain and pass beyond the world of infinite forms and then
(if he chooses to) come back with the realized knowledge and power and
do what the Divine or Truth of the Time-Spirit bids him to do. On the
other hand one called upon to sacrifice his life upon the altar of
Science stays this side in the field of the Ignorance and works
patiently to lift the veil one by one without finality and once again
place his knowledge and power at the service of the collective ego of
man garbed in nationality, humanity and god knows whatever else. It is
easy to see which is a better and a safer alternative. (Nevertheless
God surely would not mind if Science and Industry can make a better
world. And have not they tried enough. There is indeed a very beautiful
letter of Sri Aurobindo in this regard that I may send later.) Whether
the common man, the average scientist, the ordinary mystic, understands
or recognizes it or not concerns! little for one who is sincerely
devoted to his inner call. So we should not care much for the popular
voices or votes of the famous or the not so famous men.

Rather
abandoning fear and hope, ascending on the wings of faith and wisdom,
up-buoyed by the mysterious Power and Presence of Divine Love may we
climb towards the Supramental Victory.

- Alok

The titan masquerading as a god.

See the next post for a link to Alok's inspiring quotes from Savitri, titled:


Lines of Light from Savitri