Living Within
I am sharing the following for my more serious-minded young friends who have recently joined me. This is about some fundamental perplexities of life which must have intrigued you during the course of your growing up. I hope you would find it interesting, if not explaining some of the baffling questions that were never answered about this enigmatic existence.
One main reason for man’s present discontentment despite stupendous material development and considerable intellectual attainment is the obvious lack of perfection in his both individual and collective life. For, there is a native urge for perfection, an innate adoration for the beauty of perfection in the depth of every human being in the form of an aspiration for a supreme truth, beauty, and harmony, which keep haunting man relentlessly and man can never be contented, never be happy until this aspiration for perfection is fully realized in every aspect of human life.
While for the majority of man, it remains a mere subconscious process, the search for perfection becomes a more conscious phenomenon in the life of the cultured and progressive man. All endeavor of the awakened man is towards this direction. Science, art, philosophy, and religion are all his ways of seeking this perfection. But despite the dazzling success of science and the grand promises of several social theories and religious tenets, man’s quest for a perfect life still remains an unfulfilled dream. It is this search for perfection that reaches its consummation in the writings of Sri Aurobindo, the modern Indian mystic and yogi, which show the way toward the ultimate perfection, the divine perfection of life on earth.
Sri Aurobindo held that man is not the final product of terrestrial evolution; he is too imperfect to be the last species of the evolving Nature’s seeking for perfection. Although the most advanced and apparently a marvelous product of biological evolution, he still is full of animal habits and tendencies. He is more of an intelligent and “thinking animal”. To concede such an incomplete species as the final outcome of an endeavor over millions of years will be a great contradiction to Nature’s process, if not a complete failure of its evolutionary purpose.
According to Sri Aurobindo, a race of spiritual beings—termed by him as the “Supramental” beings—is destined to evolve out of Man in the course of still ongoing evolution. As the man himself at some stage had evolved out of his animal ancestors, he too in the course of time will exceed his present limitations as a mental being and be transformed as a “Supramental” being. This transition from the Man to the Superman will bring about such great perfection in life on Earth that it might well be called a divine life on Earth.
Sri Aurobindo showed the way towards this divine life through his Integral Yoga, a new system of self-discipline that can be practiced by anyone without any prerequisite. The principle of Integral Yoga is a constant “self-surrender” to the secret evolutionary force of Nature that, from a spiritual perspective, is actually the creative and transforming force of the Divine, and hence defined as the force of the Supreme Mother. As a result of this self-surrender the consciousness, power, and delight of the Divine shall descend into the human being, gradually perfecting his nature and eventually transforming his life, mind, and body.
This transition is possible, indeed inevitable, because of the fact that man is a conscious being, conscious of his thousand limitations, which he constantly aspires to overcome. It is therefore conceivable and also feasible that man, through a methodized effort towards self-perfection defined as Yoga, can take part in his own evolution, change all the imperfections of his nature, and can also consciously hasten up the process of his self-evolution. Finally, man will be transformed into the “Supramental” being or the “Superman” which, according to Sri Aurobindo, will be Nature’s next species to appear on earth after man. This transformation from man to Superman will lead to the ultimate perfection in life on Earth.
Even if we do not practice actual self-discipline and aim for the ultimate perfection, by following the law of ‘living within’, we can uncover the secret splendor of our inner life and can establish in ourselves a spiritual calm, quietude, and strength. Following the guidance from our inner light, we gradually learn about the workings of the occult or secret forces of life and how to rise above our petty self-interest. Living and acting always from ‘within’ eventually take us beyond the ignorance and arrogance of our’ ego’ and with it past our endless sources of suffering, discontentment, and unhappiness which have become so much a part of our harassed life in this chaotic world.