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Archival Notes THE RECORD, THE SYNTHESIS OF YOGA, AND SAPTA CHATUSTHAYA
This article is an expansion of one section of the instalment of Archival Notes published in April 1986.1 Its purpose is to show, more clearly than was possible in the space available then, the relationship between Sri Aurobindo's own sadhana as "recorded" in Record of Yoga and "The Yoga of Self-Perfection" as described in The Synthesis of Yoga. In fact the two are the same. The account in the Synthesis is an elaboration in discursive prose of the experiences noted in brief in the Record. The common factor in the two texts is "Sapta Chatusthaya" — the system of seven (sapta) tetrads (catustaya) comprising the twenty-eight main elements of this yoga. In what follows I assume that the reader is familiar with at least the basic framework of this system.2 A book of some length would be required to set forth the full relationship between the Record and "The Yoga of Self-Perfection"; for to do this with any completeness one would have to gather all relevant data from both texts and coordinate them in terms of the system of the seven chatusthayas. Here all that can be done is to indicate the broad lines that such a structural presentation would take. The structure, it should be noted, is implicit both in the Record and in the Synthesis. It is not being imposed on them from without, but allowed to disclose itself from within. The most convenient way to trace the outline of this implicit structure will be to go through "The Yoga of Self-Perfection" chapter by chapter, showing how it follows the system of the seven chatusthayas. Such a presentation cannot afford very lively reading. The writer assumes that the reader will use this outline as a means for heightening his appreciation of the texts discussed, turning to them during or after the reading for clarification and amplification, as well as for the never-failing inspiration that they provide. Chapter I is a general introduction to the yoga of self-perfection. Several topics of interest are presented, none of which need to be examined here. In Chapters II to IX Sri Aurobindo sets forth "the essential elements that constitute man's total perfection" (SY 590). These, according to an enumeration in Chapter IV (SY 613), which corresponds exactly to the seventh or Siddhi Chatusthaya,3 comprise Shuddhi, Mukti, Bhukti and Siddhi.4 Chapters II to IV present preliminary material necessary for an understanding of "perfection" as conceived by Sri
1 Archives and Research 10(1986): 109-10. 2 Sri Aurobindo's principal account of "Sapta Chatusthaya" is published in the Supplement to the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (27: 356-75). Other accounts may be found in Archives and Research 2 (1978): 188-91 and 10 (1986): 3, 4-18. The material presented in the April 1986 instalment of Archival Notes may also prove helpful to readers. 3 It is the seventh chatusthaya according to the usual enumeration in the Record; however in "Yoganga" (Archives and Research 10 (1986): 3). as in the Synthesis, this "general chatusthaya". which is "the means, sum and completion of the rest", comes first. 4 Note that "Siddhi" names and describes both the chatusthaya in general, and also one of its powers. In this paragraph we are speaking of siddhi or perfection in the general sense. Later, when we come to Chapter X. we will discuss the specific power. Aurobindo. In Chapter II the distinction between divine and human perfection is brought out. In Chapter III the crucial terms soul (purusa) and nature (prakrti) are defined and examined. The discussion on pages 602-4 concerning the purusa established on the seven planes of existence is probably Sri Aurobindo's fullest presentation of a topic referred to passim in the Record: the seven purushas. In Chapter IV Sri Aurobindo takes a closer look at the mental purusha, since "man is characteristically a mental being" and "mentality is his highest present status" (SY 609). Having completed his preparatory remarks on perfection, Sri Aurobindo turns in Chapters V, VI and VII to the first member of the tetrad of perfection, viz. purification or suddhi. Chapter V deals with purification in general, and with the purification of "the three powers of our lower nature", mind, life and body (SY 619). Here, as in the scribal version of "Sapta Chatusthaya",5 he gives most attention to the "inner instrument" or mind, divided into citta, manas and buddhi (the fourth power, ahankara, is not treated explicitly in this chapter of the Synthesis). In Chapters VI and VII Sri Aurobindo returns to this mental purification, dealing first with "the lower mentality", especially as influenced by the prana, and then with the "intelligence and will" (buddhi). "Suddhi is the condition for mukti," writes Sri Aurobindo in the first paragraph of Chapter VIII. "All purification is a release, a delivery. . . . But all this is an instrumental liberation" (SY 647). He goes on to treat mukti or liberation properly speaking, the next member of the Siddhi Chatusthaya or general tetrad of perfection. The balance of Chapter VIII is devoted to "the liberation of the spirit", Chapter IX to "the liberation of the nature". Bhukti, the third member of the chatusthaya, is not treated at length anywhere in the Synthesis." Its three elements, rasagrahana, bhoga, and ananda,7 are dealt with in Chapter XII as part of the description of samata (SY 689), since these three terms are also used to describe positive samata.8 The same terms occur often in the Record, notably ananda on its different levels." In fact all the members and sub-members of the seventh chatusthaya are found passim in the Record. Chapter X is the pivotal chapter of "The Yoga of Self-Perfection". In the course of describing siddhi in general, the fourth member of the seventh chatusthaya, Sri Aurobindo turns from the basis of the structure to the details of its architecture. He turns, that is, from siddhi in general to the specific elements of siddhi in the yoga of self-perfection. First he sums up: "Purification [suddhi] and freedom [mukti] are the indispensable antecedents of perfection [siddhi]" (SY 664). The Integral Yoga, he goes on to say, does not exclude any of the great terms of existence: spirit, nature and the world. "The approach to perfection must be therefore a large and complex movement and its results and workings will have an
5 Archives and Research 10 (1986): 15-16. 6 It is however mentioned. In Chapter I Sri Aurobindo writes that bhukti and mukti are both included as objects of the yoga of the Tantra. Immediately afterwards, he says that his own yoga "starts from the method of Vedanta to arrive at the aim of the Tantra". It therefore can be assumed that both mukti and bhukti are included as objects of Sri Aurobindo's yoga (SY 587-88). 7 See scribal version of "Sapta Chatusthaya", Archives and Research 10 (1986): 18. 8 Ibid. 4. 9 Ibid. 18. infinite and varied scope" (SY 664-65). There follows the passage that was quoted in the instalment of Archival Notes referred to in note 1. It is important enough to quote again: We must fix in order to find a clue and method on certain essential and fundamental elements and requisites of perfection, siddhi; for if these are secured, all the rest will be found to be only their natural development or particular working. We may cast these elements into six divisions, interdependent on each other to a great extent but still in a certain way naturally successive in their order of attainment. The movement will start from a basic equality of the soul and mount to an ideal action of the Divine through our perfected being in the largeness of the Brahmic unity. This clearly is an introduction to the first to sixth chatusthayas. The six paragraphs that follow are each devoted to one of these chatusthayas in order. The nature of the explanation varies from chatusthaya to chatusthaya. The first or Samata Chatusthaya is dealt with in fairly general terms. Only its two "sides", active and passive, are named. The members of the second or Shakti Chatusthaya are treated more explicitly; the paragraph closes with an enumeration of all four. For the third and fourth chatusthayas, Sri Aurobindo returns to a more general mode of description. In contrast, the fifth and sixth chatusthayas are discussed in some detail — happily so. since these two chatusthayas are hardly touched on in any of the versions of "Sapta Chatusthaya", and it is chiefly through these paragraphs that we can arrive at some understanding of what Sri Aurobindo meant in the Record by Krishna, Kali, Karma, Kama, and by Sarvam, Anantam, Jnanam, Anandam Brahma. These terms, and all the others mentioned in this chapter, occur frequently in the Record. Having given, in Chapter X, a preliminary summary of the six chatusthayas of which siddhi in his yoga of self-perfection is composed, Sri Aurobindo goes on, in Chapters XI to XXIV. to provide a detailed description of the elements of two of these chatusthayas and part of the third. The first or Samata Chatusthaya is treated in Chapters XI to XIII. Samata, an exceedingly important element of his yoga, which is mentioned with the greatest frequency in the Record, the Synthesis, and many other works, is introduced in general terms in Chapter XI. In Chapter XII the two basic types of samata — "passive" and "active"10 — are gone into. These two terms occur in every presentation of "Sapta Chatusthaya", and are found also in the Record. The same is true of three other terms found in this chapter: endurance (titiksa), indifference (udasinata), and submission (nati). These three are also treated in other works by Sri Aurobindo, notably Essays on the Gita. In Chapter XIII Sri Aurobindo goes beyond a simple outlining of the structure of samata, and gives a well-elaborated and elegant account of "the action of equality" that in many ways, particularly in the stress given to "surrender", anticipates the sadhana familiar to readers of Letters on Yoga. The next tetrad, the second or Shakti Chatusthaya, is the subject of the next
10 These terms are identical in sense to the positive and negative "sides" of samata mentioned in Chapter X. four chapters. XIV to XVII. In the two main versions of "Sapta Chatusthaya". the first two members of the second chatusthaya are virya and sakti in that order. In the Synthesis this order is reversed. Sakti, "the power of the instruments", is treated in great detail in Chapter XIV. All the terms of each of the four elements of this member of the chatusthaya are referred to explicitly (SY 704n, 707n, 707-8, 710). The next member of the chatusthaya, virya, is given a more discursive treatment in Chapter XV. The terms of the elements of this member (abhaya, sahasa, etc.) are mentioned only occasionally. These terms occur fairly commonly throughout the Record. The treatment of the third member of the chatusthaya, originally called Candibhava and later daivi prakrti, begins in Chapter XVI and spills over into Chapter XVII, which also deals with the fourth member, sraddha. In a footnote to the handwritten version of "Sapta Chatusthaya", Sri Aurobindo wrote: "The detailed description of this power [Candibhava] is deferred."11 His treatment of it in the scribal version shows that the four Shaktis of which this power is composed are the same as those he later referred to as the four Powers of the Mother. These are described in brief in Chapter XVII (SY 752-53), but of course they are given their fullest and most beautiful treatment in the last chapter of The Mother. The relationship of these four Powers to Sri Aurobindo's own personality and sadhana is one of the most fascinating revelations of the Record. With Chapter XIX Sri Aurobindo begins his treatment of the third or Vijnana Chatusthaya. In this chapter and the five that follow he roams freely over the little-explored terrain of vijnana or supermind, the characteristic element both of his yoga and of his philosophy. The amount of background information that he has to provide is so great, and the relationship between the various terms is so complex, that it would not have been possible for him to deal adequately with this chatusthaya by following strictly the order of the elements and sub-elements of "Sapta Chatusthaya". He begins Chapter XIX by emphasizing the fundamental importance of vijnana. Then, after summarizing the main stages of sadhana thus far treated — purification (suddhi), liberation (mukti), equality (samata), and perfection of the instruments (sakti) — he asks: "through what medium is the divine Shakti to act in the human being?" (SY 755). He answers that this power cannot be mind; rather, "the divine Will and Wisdom organising the action of the infinite consciousness and determining all things according to the truth of the spirit or the law of its manifestation is not mental but supramental" (SY 756). He spends the rest of Chapter XIX sketching "the nature of the supermind". In Chapter XX he turns to a power intermediate between mind and supermind, which he refers to as the "intuitive mind". It is made clear by the Record that Sri Aurobindo arrived at his knowledge of the workings of this power by means of intimate daily experience over a number of years. Ultimately he rose entirely above intuitive mind and, looking down on it, was able to subsume it in superior levels of supermind proper. This process of ascent into and then above a power of consciousness, followed by a looking back and "integration" of it,12 is characteristic of Sri Aurobindo's entire
11 Sri Aurobindo, Supplement 365n. 12 Sri Aurobindo deals with this process — in terms of the general evolution of nature and not individual sadhana — in The Evolutionary Process — Ascent and Integration ". Chapter XVIII of Book Two of The Life Divine. sadhana as chronicled in the Record. This process, which went on through the entire period of the writing of the Synthesis, made it impossible for Sri Aurobindo to select a single fixed vantage point from which to describe the supermind. As a result the description in the Synthesis is exceedingly complex, though this complexity is as nothing compared to the intricate network of levels upon levels of supermind that the Record of 1914 to 1920 is largely devoted to elucidating. In Chapter XXI of "The Yoga of Self-Perfection" many of these levels or "gradations" are alluded to. To give one example, "critical gnosis", referred to in the Record as "hermeneusis" or some variant of that term, is mentioned on page 786 of the Synthesis. Many other terms that occur frequently in the Record are spoken of in this and later chapters, for instance "actualities", "potentialities" ("possibilities"), and "knowledge by identity" or "essence" (in the Record generally referred to as "imperatives") (SY 793, 807-8). The first two members of the third chatusthaya are jnana or divine (or su-pramental) thought, and trikaladrsti or "the knowledge of the three times". These two are mentioned explicitly in Chapter XXII (SY 809), and treated discursively in that chapter and the four that follow. Jnana is the general subject of Chapters XXII to XXIV. the supramental sense (Chapter XXIV) falling roughly in this category. Trikaladrsti is introduced in Chapter XXV, the last chapter published during Sri Aurobindo's lifetime. In Chapter XXVI, found among his unpublished manuscripts, and not printed until 1984,13 he begins the detailed treatment of this power. After writing this unfinished chapter early in 1921, Sri Aurobindo ceased publishing the Arya, the journal in which the Synthesis had been appearing. "The Yoga of Self-Perfection" was therefore never completed. Statements in the text of the Synthesis make it clear that Sri Aurobindo intended to continue his treatment of the various chatusthayas.14 Once he had completed this survey of "the conditions and means of the Yoga of self-perfection" (SY 589). he intended to show how the three lines of yoga treated elsewhere in the Synthesis could be synthesized in terms of supramental perfection: "This integral Yoga of knowledge, love and works has to be extended into a Yoga of spiritual and gnostic self-perfection" (SY 588). Fortunately for those interested in the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo, the parts of the yoga of self-perfection that he did not have the opportunity of treating in the Synthesis, namely the last two members of the third chatusthaya and all of the fourth to sixth chatusthayas, were touched on in sufficient detail in "Sapta Chatusthaya" and in the Record to allow one to form a fairly good conception of them. Even if the Synthesis had been finished, the Record could be said to complete it in another, more fundamental sense. When we try to comprehend a complex evolutionary system, it is generally necessary for us to look at it in two different ways: structurally and developmentally. To borrow terms from linguistics, our study must be both synchronic ("same time") or descriptive, and diachronic ("through time") or historical. Considered in this way, the Synthesis and the Record may be viewed as complementary texts: the first is a structural presentation
13 Archives and Research 8 (1984): 125-29. 14 See for example SY 793: "when we come to speak of the Brahmic consciousness and vision", i.e. the fifth chatusthaya. (its structure being erected on the foundation laid in "Sapta Chatusthaya"). the second an evolutionary document. Structural presentations are necessarily schematic; the author simplifies in order to let the broad lines stand out. Reality elaborated over time is always richer and more complex than any abstract schema can express. But an acquaintance with both aspects is necessary for a full understanding. The structural presentation permits us to grasp what otherwise might be too intricate to take hold of; but if we look only at the structure, we will miss the fullness and unexpectedness of its contents. The yoga of self-perfection is of course not the whole yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Indeed, all four parts of the Synthesis — Works, Knowledge. Love and Perfection — do not fully describe it. Between 1921. when the last issue of the Arya was published, and the mid-1930s, when Sri Aurobindo revised the Synthesis, certain aspects of sadhana that till then had been given a subordinate role took on primary importance. Chief among these is the psychic being, a term that does not occur (in its developed sense) in the Arya, but which is given considerable stress in many letters written after the Mother settled in Pondicherry in 1920. In the Arya version of the Synthesis. Sri Aurobindo spoke, as we have seen, of the mental being as man's "highest present status", and as the instrument by which the yoga is done. When he revised the first part of the Synthesis he devalued the role played by the mental being and brought out the fundamental importance of the psychic. Another central term in the integral yoga as it took shape after the coming of the Mother is "surrender". This is by no means neglected in the Synthesis. In Chapter I of "The Yoga of Self-Perfection", Sri Aurobindo states: "The principle in view is a self-surrender, a giving up of the human being into the being, consciousness, power, delight of the Divine" (AT 586-7; cf. 593. 695). In the Record surrender is referred to as dasya, a term of sudra-sakti, which is an element of the first member of the second chatusthaya. But only in Letters on Yoga, and in The Mother, does surrender emerge as the fundamental principle it is. All of Sri Aurobindo's published formulations of his yoga, whether in books like the Synthesis, or in the Letters, lack the immediacy of experience that is present in Record of Yoga. During the period of the Record (1912-20), Sri Aurobindo practised all six specific chatusthayas simultaneously. His actual course can never be duplicated, and so by itself the Record would be of limited help to aspirants. But when it is read together with the Synthesis, the Record confirms in stunning detail that the actual "approach to perfection" was indeed "a large and complex movement" whose "results and workings . . . have an infinite and varied scope" (SY 664-65). P.H. |