Originally posted on sciy.org by Debashish Banerji on Tue 23 Jun 2009 09:13 PM PDT
A Matter of Mind
J. Kepler
At the core of much of the recent discussion and controversy in the Integral Yoga (IY) online community seems to lay the role of the mind and mental reasoning. Many statements from Sri Aurobindo and Mother could be quoted both praising the essential, enabling contributions of the mind, as well as criticizing the mind’s obstinate, obstructing features and liabilities. This dual nature of their commentary itself may point us in the right direction. It’s the particular use made of the mental faculty in a particular context that determines its helpful or harmful status.
Few should deny that reason at its best - dispassionate, critical, balanced, is a light in human life that helps expel dubious truth claims and offers a comparatively refined and accurate lens of inquiry thru which to view ourselves and the world. It’s an invaluable tool against obscurantism, superstition, credulity, provincialism, ethnocentrism, inflexibility, and other ills of human cognition that stand in the way of real knowledge.
Left to itself however, reason tends to end in an agnostic and self-referential inability to determine anything in a definitive manner. Those with a sufficiently developed faculty of rational argumentation will tend toward the positions to which they are temperamentally inclined, and mount in favor of those positions an endless debate that can never be definitively resolved. Sri Aurobindo explains this situation as a result of the evolutionary status of reason as a cognitive power; its action is by nature a difficult struggle from ignorance toward knowledge. Reason only understands by analyzing things into parts which it cannot fully make whole again, ever unable to firmly or finally arrive at integral knowledge because of its inherent limitations, method of operation, and roots in the mud of the Inconscient. According to Sri Aurobindo, the mind must be illumined by inner and higher ranges of consciousness that inherently possess some fundamental aspect of truth and proceed from that self-possessed status of knowledge toward its expression and manifestation. It’s ultimately in this expression and manifestation of knowledge, rather than in the discovery and construction of knowledge, that the mind assumes its proper role.
Access to these ranges of consciousness that surpass reason is a matter of spiritual experience and realization. That Sri Aurobindo and Mother consider this a matter of concrete experience should be indisputable if one reads their words. They of course expressed their experience and knowledge in mental language so that others could develop some conception of the experiential path to be followed. This framework of expression evolved over time. When the Life Divine and the Synthesis of Yoga were written in the Arya, Sri Aurobindo had not yet articulated ideas that became central later: the psychic being and the overmind. In later years after Sri Aurobindo's passing Mother articulated new ideas like the superman consciousness, and the mind of the cells. Looking at the attitude they themselves adopted toward the evolving mental expression of their own spiritual experiences should shed light on the ideal all those turned to them will want to emulate.
Many quotes could be furnished where Sri Aurobindo and Mother state definitively that their teaching is a living spiritual path and not a set of fixed doctrines or dogmas to be religiously recited and referenced. But especially in documents that pertain to their own practice, in Sri Aurobindo’s case his Record of Yoga, in Mother’s case l'Agenda de Mère, and in other miscellaneous talks and letters by both of them, they exhibit a characteristic attitude and approach to mental formulation.
This attitude is marked by a highly flexible and, one could even say, experimental approach to mental formulation of the vast spiritual experiences they passed through. In the Record of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo routinely considers the truth of the intimations he receives from higher sources to be provisional and tentative pending additional confirming experiences. He seems always open to new formulations and his method suggests a recognizably scientific approach to mastering the phenomena and powers of the higher consciousness. In l'Agenda de Mère, the extreme adaptability and flexibility of Mother’s language and conceptual structures when describing her sadhana of the body consciousness is impossible to miss. She seems ready to adopt new terminology and ways of looking at the phenomena and experiences (and leave old ones behind), on practically a daily basis as new experiences arrive and are assimilated.
Now one might counter that we are not Mother or Sri Aurobindo. No doubt few among us nowadays can claim possession of any of the fundamental realizations called for in IY, let alone blaze new trails at the farthest edges of human consciousness. But we do all possess reason and should be able to at least avoid any rigid dogmatizing of IY into a fixed set of doctrinal beliefs that can neither advance nor evolve. It’s natural that many turn toward Sri Aurobindo and Mother as the Divine and receive their spiritual help and protection in a straightforward way. Some of these are devotees who may not feel the need of a subtle and flexible understanding of their teaching. But any hardening of IY into doctrines that enforce conformity, or encourage harshness and cruelty toward others, obviously leads far away from the Light and Truth they have established and beckon us toward.
Considered in this light, the current Heehs controversy is perhaps best seen not as simply a flawed biography by a flawed ashramite who upset many devotees with his academic approach to evaluating Sri Aurobindo’s life. The controversy might also represent a stark and revealing light being cast upon the mental formations and constructions that have hardened among many associated with IY. All should be able to agree that the Mother’s approach is never a static one and she always seeks to propel us toward the future, breaking our comfortable habits of thinking and feeling as need be whenever our advance requires it. “her feet are rapid on the upward way.†- (The Mother by Sri Aurobindo)
Kepler
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