Originally posted on sciy.org by Ron Anastasia on Thu 04 Aug 2005 08:40 AM PDT
113 d&j. Yoga and Research: Sri Aurobindo on science and yoga
From: "Jan Maslow" <jmaslow@jps.net
To: scienceandspirit@sriaurobindocenter-la.com
Subject: Yoga and Research: Sri Aurobindo on science and yoga
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 08:40:23 -0400
Message - 113/149
Hi Rich:
I have 2 more letters on this topic - I want to send a description of
how I got involved in phenomenological research - speciï¬cally, how I
thought it was what I was looking for in terms of a method integrating
science and yoga, and how I grew disenchanted with it; the last letter
will be on "Insight Dialogue", an integration of mindfulness meditation
with Bohm dialogue that is now being practiced in Auroville among many
other places. I think it can be used in a way consistent with what Sri
Aurobindo writes below.
I've pasted here a quote from the cover page of the ï¬rst edition of the
Arya, which appeared on Sri Aurobindo's birthday, 15 August 1914. (This
was just sent by Ron).
Below that are two quotes from the Synthesis of Yoga which for me
describe very well the method Jan and I are attempting to use in
writing our book. (operative word - "attempting"!!:))
Finally, a brief quote from "The Human Cycle"
(The aim of the Arya):
"1) The systematic study of the highest problems of existence.
"2) The formation of a vast synthesis of knowledge, harmonising the
diverse religious traditions of humanity, occidental as well as
oriental.
"Its method will be that of realism, at once rational and
transcendental, a realism consisting in the uniï¬cation of intellectual
and scientiï¬c disciplines with those of intuitive experience."
(The Synthesis of Yoga), Page: 315
In the ï¬rst place we have seen that intellectual thought is in
itself inadequate and is not the highest thinking; the highest is that
which comes through the intuitive mind and from the supramental
faculty. So long as we are dominated by the intellectual habit and by
the lower workings, the intuitive mind can only send its messages to us
subconsciously and subject to a distortion more or less entire before
it reaches the conscious mind; or if it works consciously, then only
with an inadequate rarity and a great imperfection in its functioning.
In order to strengthen the higher knowledge-faculty in us we have to
effect the same separation between the intuitive and intellectual
elements of our thought as we have already effected between the
understanding and the sense-mind; and this is no easy task, for not
only do our intuitions come to us incrusted in the intellectual action,
but there are a great number of mental workings which masquerade and
ape the appearances of the higher faculty.
*****The remedy is to train ï¬rst the intellect to recognise the true
intuition, to distinguish it from the false and then to accustom it,
when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to attach
no ï¬nal value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the divine
principle and wait in as complete a silence as it can command for the
light from above. In this way it is possible to transmute a great part
of our intellectual thinking into the luminous truth-conscious
vision,-the ideal would be a complete transition,-or at least to
increase greatly the frequency, purity and conscious force of the ideal
knowledge working behind the intellect. The latter must learn to be
subject and passive to the ideal faculty.
(The Synthesis of Yoga), Page: 802
..either we must silence altogether the intellect and the
intellectual will and the other inferior activities and leave room only
for the intuitive action or
****we must lay hold on and transform the lower action by the constant pressure of the intuition.
Or else there must be an alternation and combination of the two methods
if that be the most natural way or at all possible. The actual process
and experience of Yoga manifests the possibility of several methods or
movements none of which by itself produces the entire result in
practice, however it may seem at ï¬rst sight that logically each should
or might be adequate. And when we learn to insist on no particular
method as exclusively the right one and leave the whole movement to a
greater guidance, we ï¬nd that the divine Lord of the Yoga commissions
his Shakti to use one or the other at different times and all in
combination according to the need and turn of the being and the nature.
At ï¬rst it might seem the straight and right way to silence the mind
altogether, to silence the intellect, the mental and personal will, the
desire mind and the mind of emotion and sensation, and to allow in that
perfect silence the Self, the Spirit, the Divine to disclose himself
and leave him to illuminate the being by the supramental light and
power and Ananda. And this is indeed a great and powerful discipline.
It is the calm and still mind much more readily and with a much greater
purity than the mind in agitation and action that opens to the Inï¬nite,
reflects the Spirit, becomes full of the Self and awaits like a
consecrated and puriï¬ed temple the unveiling of the Lord of all our
being and nature. It is true also that the freedom of this silence
gives a possibility of a larger play of the intuitive being and admits
with less obstruction and turmoil of mental groping and seizing the
great intuitions, inspirations, revelations which emerge from within or
descend from above. It is therefore an immense gain if we can acquire
the capacity of always being able at will to command an absolute
tranquillity and silence of the mind free from any necessity of mental
thought or movement and disturbance and, based in that silence, allow
thought and will and feeling to happen in us only when the Shakti wills
it and when it is needful for the divine purpose. It becomes easier
then to change the manner and character of the thought and will and
feeling.
Nevertheless it is not the fact that by this method the supramental
light will immediately replace the lower mind and reflective reason.
When the inner action proceeds after the silence, even if it be then a
more predominatingly intuitive thought and movement, the old powers
will yet interfere, if not from within, then by a hundred suggestions
from without, and an inferior mentality will mix in, will question or
obstruct or will try to lay hold on the greater movement and to lower
or darken or distort or minimise it in the process.
*****Therefore the necessity of a process of elimination or
transformation of the inferior mentality remains always imperative,-or
perhaps both at once, an elimination of all that is native to the lower
being, its disï¬guring accidents, its depreciations of value, its
distortions of substance and all else that the greater truth cannot
harbour, and a transformation of the essential things our mind derives
from the supermind and spirit but represents in the manner of the
mental ignorance.
(The Human Cycle), Page: 248
There will be new unexpected departures of science or at least of
research,-since to such a turn in its most fruitful seekings the
orthodox still deny the name of science. Discoveries will be made that
thin the walls between soul and matter; attempts there will be to
extend exact knowledge into the psychological and psychic realms with a
realisation of the truth that these have laws of their own which are
other than the physical, but not the less laws because they escape the
external senses and are inï¬nitely plastic and subtle..
Attachment: