Many stages in the evolution of the spiritual man
13 February 1962
My vision of things—the SAME things—has become very, very different. Very different.
At that time, I had the sense of a “higher way of living”: I used to make a distinction between different ways of life. Now this so-called higher way of living seems so miserable to me—so petty, mean, narrow—that I very often find myself in the same position as those who ask, “But is there really something to it?” And I understand them.
It takes such an effort to bring Light into this poverty, to bring a Force, a Reality, a Power, something, good Lord, something TRUE! Through constant effort and will, constant tension, suddenly, ah! I get two or three seconds… and then it all ebbs away again.
I understand very well that this present state is necessary for getting out of it. For as long as something seems normal, natural, acceptable, there’s no escaping it. You have one life on the side and then “this” [the life in the body], that’s the way people with a spiritual life always lived: they had their spiritual life and let “this” continue on automatically, without attaching any importance to it—it’s very easy.
But what a relief to live the Truth at each instant!…
So the tendency is always to step back and go within. But that’s not the way! It’s a natural movement, but I clearly see that it’s false.
Both were there this morning.
Obviously a great, great deal of stability and inner calm is required…. There was a keen sense of the absolute pettiness, stupidity and dullness of all outer circumstances, of this whole bodily life in its external form, and AT THE SAME TIME a great symphony of divine joy. And both states were together like pulsations.
Strange. This morning it was strange, for both were there: the feeling of physical weakness—almost a physical decomposition—and AT THE SAME TIME, SIMULTANEOUSLY (not even one behind the other, but both together), a glory of divine splendor. Both together.
It was odd this morning because on one side I felt (“one side”—it’s not even a side; I don’t know how to explain, they are both together) the body was unwell, most unharmonious (someone in an ordinary consciousness would have said the body was ill, or at any rate very weak, very… not at all in good condition), and simultaneously, in the SAME PHYSICAL SENSATION: a glory! A marvellous glory of blissfulness, joy, splendour!… But how could the two be together?
Really, you must stay perfectly, perfectly calm inside; externally, you do things, brush your teeth and so forth, but within you must keep very calm if you don’t want to fall over.
It’s not a joining. It’s not a joining: one is to replace the other. But the other….
You see, it’s like trying to alter the functioning of the organs. What is the process? Already the two are beginning to exist simultaneously…. What does it take for one to disappear and the other to remain on its own, changed?… Changed, because as it is now it wouldn’t be enough to make the body function; the body wouldn’t perform all the things it must perform, it would stay in a blissful state, delighting in its condition, but not for long—it still has a lot of needs! That’s the trouble. It will be very easy for those who come in one or two hundred years; they will only have to choose: not to belong to the old system any more or else to belong to the new.2 But now…. A stomach has got to digest, after all! Well, that will mean a new way of adapting to the forces of Nature, a new functioning.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s not sheer folly to attempt it…. Shouldn’t this body simply be left to dissolve and let others, better fit for the new functioning, be prepared? I don’t know.
I don’t know. No one has ever done this before, so there’s no one to tell me.
I feel a very strong need for someone who knows. That’s what I was expecting from Sri Aurobindo. But he himself was searching. Had he continued, he probably would have found it…. But obviously it wasn’t possible. For he never said he didn’t know. He never said he didn’t know. He always told me, “Each thing in its own time.” But he doesn’t want me to note it down. It’s not simply that I don’t have the time, he doesn’t want me to.
Sometimes a particular image lingers, as a key to the atmosphere.
It was so lovely last night!… We had come upon a region all mantled in snow, pure white, and all the arctic animals were there. He wore a white robe. I walked by his side, and he began to repeat my mantra, saying, “See how it is….” Glorious!
For despite all the growing difficulties, there is also a growing knowledge, a constant progress. So from that standpoint, I CANNOT be mistaken; it is impossible. This Presence is becoming so concrete and so (what shall I say?)… so helpful, so concrete in its help. But it obviously takes a long time.
+++
5 November 1958
“Spiritual truth is a truth of the spirit, not a truth of the intellect, not a mathematical theorem or a logical formula. It is a truth of the Infinite, one in an infinite diversity, and it can assume an infinite variety of aspects and formations: in the spiritual evolution it is inevitable that there should be a many-sided passage and reaching to the one Truth, a many-sided seizing of it; this many-sidedness is the sign of the approach of the soul to a living reality, not to an abstraction or a constructed figure of things that can be petrified into a dead or stony formula. The hard logical and intellectual notion of truth as a single idea which all must accept, one idea or system of ideas defeating all other ideas or systems, or a single limited fact or single formula of facts which all must recognise, is an illegitimate transference from the limited truth of the physical field to the much more complex and plastic field of life and mind and spirit….
“In the evolution of the spiritual man there must necessarily be many stages and in each stage a great variety of individual formations of the being, the consciousness, the life, the temperament, the ideas, the character. The nature of instrumental mind and the necessity of dealing with the life must of itself create an infinite variety according to the stage of development and the individuality of the seeker. But, apart from that, even the domain of pure spiritual self-realisation and self-expression need not be a single white monotone, here can be a great diversity in the fundamental unity; the supreme Self is one, but the souls of the Self are many and, as is the soul’s formation of nature, so will be its spiritual self-expression. A diversity in oneness is the law of the manifestation; the supramental unification and integration must harmonise these diversities, but to abolish them is not the intention of the Spirit in Nature.” [The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 886-88]
From the point of view of individual development and for those who are still at the beginning of the path, to know how to remain silent before what one does not understand is one of the things which would help most in the progress—to know how to remain silent, not only externally, without uttering a word, but also to know how to be silent within, so that the mind does not assert its ignorance with its usual presumptuousness, does not try to understand with an instrument that is incapable of understanding, that it may know its own weakness and open simply, quietly, waiting until the time has come for it to receive the light, because only the Light, the true Light, can give it understanding. It is not all that it has learnt nor all that it has observed nor all its so-called experience of life, it is something else which is completely beyond it. And until this something else—which is the expression of the Grace—manifests within it, if, very quietly, very modestly the mind remains silent and does not try to understand and, above all, to judge, things would go much faster. In this way the path would be considerably shortened.
Leave a Reply