Part Three. Writings from the Arya (1914 – 1921 Part
Five, From the Bulletin of Physical Education (1949 – 1950)
Perfection of the Body
The perfection of the body, as great a perfection as we
can bring about by the means at our disposal, must be the ultimate aim of
physical culture. Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and
psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture
also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part
of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the
instrument which we have to use. Śarīraṃ khalu
dharmasādhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage,– the body is the means of
fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to
ourselves and the law of its working out and its action. A total perfection is
the ultimate aim which we set before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which
we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life
accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the
conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too
undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a
supreme capacity and the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made
possible.
I have already indicated in a previous message a
relative perfection of the physical consciousness in the body and of the mind,
the life, the character which it houses as, no less than an awakening and
development of the body’s own native capacities, a desirable outcome of the
exercises and practices of the physical culture to which we have commenced to
give in this Ashram a special attention and scope. A development of the physical
consciousness must always be a considerable part of our aim, but for that the
right development of the body itself is an essential element; health, strength,
fitness are the first needs, but the physical frame itself must be the best
possible. A divine life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the
two ends of existence, the spiritual summit and
the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter
ascends to the heights of the Spirit but does not cast away its base, it joins
the heights and the depths together. The Spirit descends into Matter and the
material world with all its lights and glories and powers and with them fills
and transforms life in the material world so that it becomes more and more
divine. The transformation is not a change into something purely subtle and
spiritual to which Matter is in its nature repugnant and by which it is felt as
an obstacle or as a shackle binding the Spirit; it takes up Matter as a form of
the Spirit though now a form which conceals and turns it into a revealing
instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its
methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates,
discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is
capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. The
mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards knowledge, has to rise
towards and into the supramental light and truth and bring it down so that it
shall suffuse our thinking and perception and insight and all our means of
knowing till they become radiant with the highest truth in their inmost and
outermost movements. Our life, still full of obscurity and confusion and
occupied with so many dull and lower aims, must feel all its urges and instincts
exalted and irradiated and become a glorious counterpart of the supramental
super-life above. The physical consciousness and physical being, the body itself
must reach a perfection in all that it is and does which now we can hardly
conceive. It may even in the end be suffused with a light and beauty and bliss
from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body divine.
But first the evolution of the nature must have reached
a point at which it can meet the Spirit direct, feel the aspiration towards the
spiritual change and open itself to the workings of the Power which shall
transform it. A supreme perfection, a total perfection is possible only by a
transformation of our lower or human nature, a transformation of the mind into a
thing of light, our life into a thing of power, an instrument of right action,
right use for all its forces, of a happy elevation of its being lifting it beyond its present comparatively narrow potentiality for a
self-fulfilling force of action and joy of life. There must be equally a
transforming change of the body by a conversion of its action, its functioning,
its capacities as an instrument beyond the limitations by which it is clogged
and hampered even in its greatest present human attainment. In the totality of
the change we have to achieve, human means and forces too have to be taken up,
not dropped but used and magnified to their utmost possibility as part of the
new life. Such a sublimation of our present human powers of mind and life into
elements of a divine life on earth can be conceived without much difficulty; but
in what figure shall we conceive the perfection of the body?
In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual
seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as
an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change. It
has been condemned as a grossness of Matter, as an insuperable impediment and
the limitations of the body as something unchangeable making transformation
impossible. This is because the human body even at its best seems only to be
driven by an energy of life which has its own limits and is debased in its
smaller physical activities by much that is petty or coarse or evil; the body in
itself is burdened with the inertia and inconscience of Matter, only partly
awake and, although quickened and animated by a nervous activity, subconscient
in the fundamental action of its constituent cells and tissues and their secret
workings. Even in its fullest strength and force and greatest glory of beauty,
it is still a flower of the material Inconscience; the inconscient is the soil
from which it has grown and at every point opposes a narrow boundary to the
extension of its powers and to any effort of radical self-exceeding. But if a
divine life is possible on earth, then this self-exceeding must also be
possible.
In the pursuit of perfection we can start at either end
of our range of being and we have then to use, initially at least, the means and
processes proper to our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic;
even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic turn and
raised to a higher motion than belongs properly
to the ordinary life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic
use of the breathing or the use of Asana. Ordinarily a previous preparation of
the mind and life and body is necessary to make them fit for the reception of
the spiritual energy and the organisation of psychic forces and methods, but
this too is given a special turn proper to the Yoga. On the other hand, if we
start in any field at the lower end we have to employ the means and processes
which Life and Matter offer to us and respect the conditions and what we may
call the technique imposed by the vital and the material energy. We may extend
the activity, the achievement, the perfection attained beyond the initial, even
beyond the normal possibilities but still we have to stand on the same base with
which we started and within the boundaries it gives to us. It is not that the
action from the two ends cannot meet and the higher take into itself and uplift
the lower perfection; but this can usually be done only by a transition from the
lower to a higher outlook, aspiration and motive: this we shall have to do if
our aim is to transform the human into the divine life. But here there comes in
the necessity of taking up the activities of human life and sublimating them by
the power of the spirit. Here the lower perfection will not disappear; it will
remain but will be enlarged and transformed by the higher perfection which only
the power of the spirit can give. This will be evident if we consider poetry and
art, philosophic thought, the perfection of the written word or the perfect
organisation of earthly life: these have to be taken up and the possibilities
already achieved or whatever perfection has already been attained included in a
new and greater perfection but with the larger vision and inspiration of a
spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with
the perfection of the body.
The taking up of life and Matter into what is
essentially a spiritual seeking, instead of the rejection and ultimate exclusion
of them which was the attitude of a spirituality that shunned or turned away
from life in the world, involves certain developments which a spiritual
institution of the older kind could regard as foreign to its purpose. A divine
life in the world or an institution having that
for its aim and purpose cannot be or cannot remain something outside or entirely
shut away from the life of ordinary men in the world or unconcerned with the
mundane existence; it has to do the work of the Divine in the world and not a
work outside or separate from it. The life of the ancient Rishis in their
Ashramas had such a connection; they were creators, educators, guides of men and
the life of the Indian people in ancient times was largely developed and
directed by their shaping influence. The life and activities involved in the new
endeavour are not identical but they too must be an action upon the world and a
new creation in it. It must have contacts and connections with it and activities
which take their place in the general life and whose initial or primary objects
may not seem to differ from those of the same activities in the outside world.
In our Ashram here we have found it necessary to establish a school for the
education of the children of the resident sadhaks, teaching upon familiar lines
though with certain modifications and taking as part and an important part of
their development an intensive physical training which has given form to the
sports and athletics practised by the Jeunesse Sportive of the Ashram and of
which this Bulletin is the expression. It has been questioned by some what place
sports can have in an Ashram created for spiritual seekers and what connection
there can be between spirituality and sports. The first answer lies in what I
have already written about the connections of an institution of this kind with
the activities of the general life of men and what I have indicated in the
previous number as to the utility such a training can have for the life of a
nation and its benefit for the international life. Another answer can occur to
us if we look beyond first objects and turn to the aspiration for a total
perfection including the perfection of the body.
In the admission of an activity such as sports and
physical exercises into the life of the Ashram it is evident that the methods
and the first objects to be attained must belong to what we have called the
lower end of the being. Originally they have been introduced for the physical
education and bodily development of the children of the Ashram School, and these
are too young for a strictly spiritual aim or
practice to enter into their activities and it is not certain that any great
number of them will enter the spiritual life when they are of an age to choose
what shall be the direction of their future. The object must be the training of
the body and the development of certain parts of mind and character so far as
this can be done by or in connection with this training, and I have already
indicated in a previous number how and in what directions this can be done. It
is a relative and human perfection that can be attained within these limits;
anything greater can be reached only by the intervention of higher powers,
psychic powers, the power of the spirit. Yet what can be attained within the
human boundaries can be something very considerable and sometimes immense: what
we call genius is part of the development of the human range of being, and its
achievements, especially in things of the mind and will, can carry us half-way
to the divine. Even what the mind and will can do with the body in the field
proper to the body and its life, in the way of physical achievement, bodily
endurance, feats of prowess of all kinds, a lasting activity refusing fatigue or
collapse and continuing beyond what seems at first to be possible, courage and
refusal to succumb under an endless and murderous physical suffering, these and
other victories of many kinds sometimes approaching or reaching the miraculous
are seen in the human field and must be reckoned as a part of our concept of a
total perfection. The unflinching and persistent reply that can be made by the
body as well as the mind of man and by his life-energy to whatever call can be
imposed on it in the most difficult and discouraging circumstances by the
necessities of war and travel and adventure is of the same kind, and their
endurance can reach astounding proportions and even the inconscient in the body
seems to be able to return a surprising response.
The body, we have said, is a creation of the
Inconscient and itself inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of itself
and much of its hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an
appearance, a dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a
Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe. Matter is the
field and the creation of the Inconscient and
the perfection of the operations of inconscient Matter, their perfect adaptation
of means to an aim and end, the wonders they perform and the marvels of beauty
they create, testify, in spite of all the ignorant denial we can oppose, to the
presence and power of consciousness of this Superconscience in every part and
movement of the material universe. It is there in the body, has made it and its
emergence in our consciousness is the secret aim of evolution and the key to the
mystery of our existence.
In the use of such activities as sports and physical
exercises for the education of the individual in childhood and first youth,
which should mean the bringing out of his actual and latent possibilities to
their fullest development, the means and methods we must use are limited by the
nature of the body and its aim must be such relative human perfection of the
body’s powers and capacities and the powers of mind, will, character, action of
which it is at once the residence and the instrument so far as these methods can
help to develop them. I have written sufficiently about the mental and moral
parts of perfection to which these pursuits can contribute and this I need not
repeat here. For the body itself the perfections that can be developed by these
means are those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the
training of its general fitness as an instrument for all the activities which
may be demanded from it by the mind and the will, by the life-energy or by the
dynamic perceptions, impulses and instincts of our subtle physical being which
is an unrecognised but very important element and agent in our nature. Health
and strength are the first conditions for the natural perfection of the body,
not only muscular strength and the solid strength of the limbs and physical
stamina, but the finer, alert and plastic and adaptable force which our nervous
and subtle physical parts can put into the activities of the frame. There is
also the still more dynamic force which a call upon the life-energies can bring
into the body and stir it to greater activities, even feats of the most
extraordinary character of which in its normal state it would not be capable.
There is also the strength which the mind and will by their demands and stimulus
and by their secret powers which we use or by
which we are used without knowing clearly the source of their action can impart
to the body or impose upon it as masters and inspirers.
Among the natural qualities and powers of the body
which can be thus awakened, stimulated and trained to a normal activity we must
reckon dexterity and stability in all kinds of physical action, such as
swiftness in the race, dexterity in combat, skill and endurance of the
mountaineer, the constant and often extraordinary response to all that can be
demanded from the body of the soldier, sailor, traveller or explorer to which I
have already made reference, or in adventure of all kinds and all the wide range
of physical attainment to which man has accustomed himself or to which he is
exceptionally pushed by his own will or by the compulsion of circumstance. It is
a general fitness of the body for all that can be asked from it which is the
common formula of all this action, a fitness attained by a few or by many, that
could be generalised by an extended and many-sided physical education and
discipline. Some of these activities can be included under the name of sports;
there are others for which sports and physical exercises can be an effective
preparation. In some of them a training for common action, combined movement,
discipline are needed and for that our physical exercises can make one ready; in
others a developed individual will, skill of mind and quick perception,
forcefulness of life-energy and subtle physical impulsion are more prominently
needed and may even be the one sufficient trainer. All must be included in our
conception of the natural powers of the body and its capacity and instrumental
fitness in the service of the human mind and will, and therefore in our concept
of the total perfection of the body.
There are two conditions for this perfection, an
awakening in as great an entirety as possible of the body consciousness and an
education, an evocation of its potentialities, also as entire and fully
developed and, it may be, as many-sided as possible. The form or body is, no
doubt, in its origin a creation of the Inconscient and limited by it on all
sides, but still of the Inconscient developing the secret consciousness
concealed within it and growing in light of
knowledge, power and Ananda. We have to take it at the point it has reached in
its human evolution in these things, make as full a use of them as may be and,
as much as we can, further this evolution to as high a degree as is permitted by
the force of the individual temperament and nature. In all forms in the world
there is a force at work, unconsciously active or oppressed by inertia in its
lower formulations, but in the human being conscious from the first, with its
potentialities partly awake, partly asleep or latent: what is awake in it we
have to make fully conscious; what is asleep we have to arouse and set to its
work; what is latent we have to evoke and educate. Here there are two aspects of
the body consciousness, one which seems to be a kind of automatism carrying on
its work in the physical plane without any intervention of the mind and in parts
even beyond any possibility of direct observation by the mind or, if conscious
or observable, still proceeding or capable of continuing, when once started, by
an apparently mechanical action not needing direction by the mind and continuing
so long as the mind does not intervene.
There are other movements taught and trained by the
mind which can yet go on operating automatically but faultlessly even when not
attended to by the thought or will; there are others which can operate in sleep
and produce results of value to the waking intelligence. But more important is
what may be described as a trained and developed automatism, a perfected skill
and capacity of eye and ear and the hands and all the members prompt to respond
to any call made on them, a developed spontaneous operation as an instrument, a
complete fitness for any demand that the mind and life-energy can make upon it.
This is ordinarily the best we can achieve at the lower end, when we start from
that end and limit ourselves to the means and methods which are proper to it.
For more we have to turn to the mind and life-energy themselves or to the energy
of the spirit and to what they can do for a greater perfection of the body. The
most we can do in the physical field by physical means is necessarily insecure
as well as bound by limits; even what seems a perfect health and strength of the
body is precarious and can be broken down at
any moment by fluctuations from within or by a strong attack or shock from
outside: only by the breaking of our limitations can a higher and more enduring
perfection come. One direction in which our consciousness must grow is an
increasing hold from within or from above on the body and its powers and its
more conscious response to the higher parts of our being. The mind pre-eminently
is man; he is a mental being and his human perfection grows the more he fulfils
the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader of the life
and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts and automatisms
of the life-energy and the subtle physical consciousness and the body, if it can
enter into them, consciously use and, as we may say, fully mentalise their
instinctive or spontaneous action, the perfection of these energies, their
action too become more conscious and more aware of themselves and more perfect.
But it is necessary for the mind too to grow in perfection and this it can do
best when it depends less on the fallible intellect of physical mind, when it is
not limited even by the more orderly and accurate working of the reason and can
grow in intuition and acquire a wider, deeper and closer seeing and the more
luminous drive of energy of a higher intuitive will. Even within the limits of
its present evolution it is difficult to measure the degree to which the mind is
able to extend its control or its use of the body’s powers and capacities and
when the mind rises to higher powers still and pushes back its human boundaries,
it becomes impossible to fix any limits: even, in certain realisations, an
intervention by the will in the automatic working of the bodily organs seems to
become possible.
Wherever limitations recede and in proportion as they
recede, the body becomes a more plastic and responsive and in that measure a
more fit and perfect instrument of the action of the spirit. In all effective
and expressive activities here in the material world the cooperation of the two
ends of our being is indispensable. If the body is unable whether by fatigue or
by natural incapacity or any other cause to second the thought or will or is in
any way irresponsive or insufficiently responsive, to that extent the action
fails or falls short or becomes in some degree
unsatisfying or incomplete. In what seems to be an exploit of the spirit so
purely mental as the outpouring of poetic inspiration, there must be a
responsive vibration of the brain and its openness as a channel for the power of
the thought and vision and the light of the word that is making or breaking its
way through or seeking for its perfect expression. If the brain is fatigued or
dulled by any clog, either the inspiration cannot come and nothing is written or
it fails and something inferior is all that can come out; or else a lower
inspiration takes the place of the more luminous formulation that was striving
to shape itself or the brain finds it more easy to lend itself to a less radiant
stimulus or else it labours and constructs or responds to poetic artifice. Even
in the most purely mental activities the fitness, readiness or perfect training
of the bodily instrument is a condition indispensable. That readiness, that
response too is part of the total perfection of the body.
The essential purpose and sign of the growing evolution
here is the emergence of consciousness in an apparently inconscient universe,
the growth of consciousness and with it growth of the light and power of the
being; the development of the form and its functioning or its fitness to
survive, although indispensable, is not the whole meaning or the central motive.
The greater and greater awakening of consciousness and its climb to a higher and
higher level and a wider extent of its vision and action is the condition of our
progress towards that supreme and total perfection which is the aim of our
existence. It is the condition also of the total perfection of the body. There
are higher levels of the mind than any we now conceive and to these we must one
day reach and rise beyond them to the heights of a greater, a spiritual
existence. As we rise we have to open to them our lower members and fill these
with those superior and supreme dynamisms of light and power; the body we have
to make a more and more and even entirely conscious frame and instrument, a
conscious sign and seal and power of the spirit. As it grows in this perfection,
the force and extent of its dynamic action and its response and service to the
spirit must increase; the control of the spirit over it also must grow and the
plasticity of its functioning both in its
developed and acquired parts of power and in its automatic responses down to
those that are now purely organic and seem to be the movements of a mechanic
inconscience. This cannot happen without a veritable transformation, and a
transformation of the mind and life and very body is indeed the change to which
our evolution is secretly moving and without this transformation the entire
fullness of a divine life on earth cannot emerge. In this transformation the
body itself can become an agent and a partner. It might indeed be possible for
the spirit to achieve a considerable manifestation with only a passive and
imperfectly conscious body as its last or bottommost means of material
functioning, but this could not be anything perfect or complete. A fully
conscious body might even discover and work out the right material method and
process of a material transformation. For this, no doubt, the spirit’s supreme
light and power and creative joy must have manifested on the summit of the
individual consciousness and sent down their fiat into the body, but still the
body may take in the working out its spontaneous part of self-discovery and
achievement. It would be thus a participator and agent in its own transformation
and the integral transformation of the whole being; this too would be a part and
a sign and evidence of the total perfection of the body.
If the emergence and growth of consciousness is the
central motive of the evolution and the key to its secret purpose, then by the
very nature of that evolution this growth must involve not only a wider and
wider extent of its capacities, but also an ascent to a higher and higher level
till it reaches the highest possible. For it starts from a nethermost level of
involution in the Inconscience which we see at work in Matter creating the
material universe; it proceeds by an Ignorance which is yet ever developing
knowledge and reaching out to an ever greater light and ever greater
organisation and efficacy of the will and harmonisation of all its own inherent
and emerging powers; it must at last reach a point where it develops or acquires
the complete fullness of its capacity, and that must be a state or action in
which there is no longer an ignorance seeking for knowledge but Knowledge
self-possessed, inherent in the being, master of
its own truths and working them out with a natural vision and force that is not
afflicted by limitation or error. Or if there is a limitation, it must be a
self-imposed veil behind which it would keep truth back from manifestation in
Time but draw it out at will and without any need of search or acquisition in
the order of a right perception of things or in the just succession of that
which has to be manifested in obedience to the call of Time.
This would mean an entry or approach into what might be
called a truth-consciousness self-existent in which the being would be aware of
its own realities and would have the inherent power to manifest them in a
Time-creation in which all would be Truth following out its own unerring steps
and combining its own harmonies; every thought and will and feeling and act
would be spontaneously right, inspired or intuitive, moving by the light of
Truth and therefore perfect. All would express inherent realities of the spirit;
some fullness of the power of the spirit would be there. One would have
overpassed the present limitations of mind: mind would become a seeing of the
light of Truth, will a force and power of the Truth, Life a progressive
fulfilment of the Truth, the body itself a conscious vessel of the Truth and
part of the means of its self-effectuation and a form of its self-aware
existence. It would be at least some initiation of this Truth-consciousness,
some first figure and action of it that must be reached and enter into a first
operation if there is to be a divine life or any full manifestation of a
spiritualised consciousness in the world of Matter. Or, at the very least, such
a Truth-consciousness must be in communication with our own mind and life and
body, descend into touch with it, control its seeing and action, impel its
motives, take hold of its forces and shape their direction and purpose. All
touched by it might not be able to embody it fully, but each would give some
form to it according to his spiritual temperament, inner capacity, the line of
his evolution in Nature: he would reach securely the perfection of which he was
immediately capable and he would be on the road to the full possession of the
truth of the Spirit and of the truth of Nature.
In the workings of such a Truth-consciousness there
would be a certain conscious seeing and willing
automatism of the steps of its truth which would replace the infallible
automatism of the inconscient or seemingly inconscient Force that has brought
out of an apparent Void the miracle of an ordered universe, and this could
create a new order of the manifestation of the Being in which a perfect
perfection would become possible; even a supreme and total perfection would
appear in the vistas of an ultimate possibility. If we could draw down this
power into the material world, our agelong dreams of human perfectibility,
individual perfection, the perfectibility of the race, of society, inner mastery
over self and a complete mastery, governance and utilisation of the forces of
Nature could see at long last a prospect of total achievement. This complete
human self-fulfilment might well pass beyond limitations and be transformed into
the character of a divine life. Matter after taking into itself and manifesting
the power of life and the light of mind would draw down into it the superior or
supreme power and light of the spirit and in an earthly body shed its parts of
inconscience and become a perfectly conscious frame of the spirit. A secure
completeness and stability of the health and strength of its physical tenement
could be maintained by the will and force of this inhabitant; all the natural
capacities of the physical frame, all powers of the physical consciousness would
reach their utmost extension and be there at command and sure of their flawless
action. As an instrument the body would acquire a fullness of capacity, a
totality of fitness for all uses which the inhabitant would demand of it far
beyond anything now possible. Even it could become a revealing vessel of a
supreme beauty and bliss,– casting the beauty of the light of the spirit
suffusing and radiating from it as a lamp reflects and diffuses the luminosity
of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its joy
of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of Matter
released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy.
This would be the total perfection of the spiritualised body.
All this might not come all at once, though such a
sudden illumination might be possible if a divine Power and Light and Ananda could take their stand on the summit of our being and send
down their force into the mind and life and body illumining and remoulding the
cells, awaking consciousness in all the frame. But the way would be open and the
consummation of all that is possible in the individual could progressively take
place. The physical also would have its share in that consummation of the whole.
There would always remain vistas beyond as the infinite
Spirit took up towards higher heights and larger breadths the evolving Nature,
in the movement of the liberated being towards the possession of the supreme
Reality, the supreme existence, consciousness, beatitude. But of this it would
be premature to speak: what has been written is perhaps as much as the human
mind as it is now constituted can venture to look forward to and the enlightened
thought understand in some measure. These consequences of the
Truth-consciousness descending and laying its hold upon Matter would be a
sufficient justification of the evolutionary labour. In this upward
all-uplifting sweep of the Spirit there could be a simultaneous or consecutive
downward sweep of the triumph of a spiritualised Nature all-including,
all-transmuting and in it there could occur a glorifying change of Matter and
the physical consciousness and physical form and functioning of which we could
speak as not only the total but the supreme perfection of the body.
of existence, the spiritual summit and
the material base. The soul with the basis of its life established in Matter
ascends to the heights of the Spirit but does not cast away its base, it joins
the heights and the depths together. The Spirit descends into Matter and the
material world with all its lights and glories and powers and with them fills
and transforms life in the material world so that it becomes more and more
divine. The transformation is not a change into something purely subtle and
spiritual to which Matter is in its nature repugnant and by which it is felt as
an obstacle or as a shackle binding the Spirit; it takes up Matter as a form of
the Spirit though now a form which conceals and turns it into a revealing
instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its capacities, its
methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts, sublimates,
discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject nothing that is
capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made utterly perfect. The
mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards knowledge, has to rise
towards and into the supramental light and truth and bring it down so that it
shall suffuse our thinking and perception and insight and all our means of
knowing till they become radiant with the highest truth in their inmost and
outermost movements. Our life, still full of obscurity and confusion and
occupied with so many dull and lower aims, must feel all its urges and instincts
exalted and irradiated and become a glorious counterpart of the supramental
super-life above. The physical consciousness and physical being, the body itself
must reach a perfection in all that it is and does which now we can hardly
conceive. It may even in the end be suffused with a light and beauty and bliss
from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body divine.
