If one pursues the quest, one would locate it — the source of all creativity

The human aspiration and integral yoga Wednesday August 20 2008 10:37 IST HEALTH
Manoj Das

THE aspiration often finds expression through our activities in the fields of art, literature, sculpture, music, dance, etc. But that does not stop there. It seeks the very source from which inspiration for such activities comes. If one pursues the quest, one would locate it — the source of all creativity.

The problem, however, is, by the time one locates that sublime source, the normal activities, the external demands of our gross life, assume a certain unreality, appear unsubstantial. As a consequence one tends to break away from the mundane life, pronouncing upon it the judgment that it was either false or illusory.

In other words, for centuries past, the spiritual path has been looked upon as a path opposite to the so called worldly way.But a deeper reflection would tell us that this vast and complex life could not have been conceived and allowed to flourish only to be abandoned by the enlightened. It has a purpose, it has a destination. One realises that however engrossed we may be in ignorance, we are nevertheless looking for knowledge; however we may be overwhelmed by sorrow and suffering, we are looking for delight.

Are these aspirations for light and delight vain? Did some unfathomably mighty power create this world and then forgot all about it, for it to ever rotate in darkness? Sri Aurobindo asserts that despite all signs to the contrary, a dynamic consciousness is unfolding itself gradually with all its splendours. True, with the unfolding of the manifold capacity of mind and intelligence, man has misused it in various ways.

While he has enriched life with a million inventions scientific and technological, he has also devised the terrible destructives. With the growth of intelligence, he has proved greater efficiency in corruption and hypocrisy.But such contradictory developments do not cancel the truth of the mind's growth. They only show that something greater than mind must control the activities of mind. A moral or ethical principle is too weak to give any spontaneous direction to mind towards its right use.There has to be a transformation, a qualitative change. In Sri Aurobindo’s own words,

“It is indeed as a result of our evolution that we arrive at the possibility of this transformation.As Nature has evolved beyond Matter and manifested Life, beyond Life and manifested Mind, so she must evolve beyond Mind and manifest a consciousness and power of our existence free from the imperfection and limitation of our mental existence, a Supramental or Truth-Consciousness and able to develop the power and perfection of the spirit.”

His Yoga, the Integral Yoga, shows the way. Manoj Das The author is a Padma awardee, recipient of the Saraswati Samman, Hon. D.Litt. from several universities and the Sahitya Akademi's highest honour, the Fellowship.