The Central Truth ofIntegral Education

  The Central Truth of Integral Education

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            Concentration is defined as ‘the bringing to its full intensity and the mastered and self-directed employment of that energy of being in us for a definite end.’¹ To renounce all types of earthly enjoyments is the general cause of increase of concentration power, samyama. The purpose and necessity of Concentration is to trace the cycle of self-oblivion and self-discovery in Ignorance and Knowledge for the joy of Nature and Spirit. Exclusive concentration is the frontal pragmatic power of concentration in a limited superficial surface working of the all-inclusive Integral Concentration; it is much like that power of our human mentality which is absorbed in a particular object and in a particular work and seems to use so much part knowledge and partial ideas that are necessary for it by forgetting his totality or rest of himself. But it is all the time a part and portion of an indivisible concentration in us that has done all the work that has to be done and seen all thing that has to be seen. This ability of exclusive concentration is rightly held to be one of the greatest powers of the human mind and it is only a supreme self-possessing Knowledge which can thus be powerful to limit itself in the act and yet work out perfectly all its intentions through that apparent Ignorance.

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a)        Education through first Exclusive Concentration:

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“Then science and reason careless of the soul

Could iron out a tranquil uniform world,

Aeonic seekings glut with outward truths

And a single-patterned thinking force on mind,

Inflicting Matter’s logic on Spirit’s dreams

A reasonable animal make of man

And a symmetrical fabric of his life.” Savitri-255

“Ideals, systems, sciences, poems, crafts

Tirelessly there perished and again recurred,

Sought restlessly by some creative Power;

But all were dreams crossing an empty vast.” Savitri-642

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            “The mind is a thing that dwells in diffusion, in succession; it can only concentrate on one thing at a time and when not concentrated runs from one thing to another very much at random. Therefore it has to concentrate on a single idea, a single subject of meditation, a single object of contemplation, a single object of will in order to possess or master it, and this it must do to at least the temporary exclusion of all others.”³¹

Sri Aurobindo

             “The first step in concentration must be always to accustom the discursive mind to a settled unwavering pursuit of a single course of connected thought on a single subject and this it must do undistracted by all lures and alien calls on its attention. Such concentration is common enough in our ordinary life, but it becomes more difficult when we have to do it inwardly without any outward object or action on which to keep the mind; yet this inward concentration is what the seeker of knowledge must effect.”³²

Sri Aurobindo

            “Studies strengthen the mind and turn its concentration away from the impulses and desires of the vital. Concentrating on study is one of the most powerful ways of controlling the mind and the vital; that is why it is so important to study.”³³

The Mother

           The first immediate approach towards the realisation of the slow pace of Education in the active mind¹⁵ is the development of (first) exclusive concentration, one form of the self-gathering of the power of Tapas,¹⁸ which is defined as the complete absorption in the objective world by an entire separation¹² from the true Self; this practical self-oblivion without essential and binding self-ignorance is the nature of exclusive concentration; out of this concentration the secret of the material world is revealed, in recent times it has justified itself by the many immense and innumerable minute discoveries of Modern Science.²⁴ The limitation of this first exclusive concentration is that it erects a wall of exclusion limiting itself to a single field, domain or habitation in the movement so that it is aware only of that and unaware of all the rest. Thus, a principle of self-limiting knowledge has emerged which culminates in a positive and effective potential Education which manifests as the genius of an artist, Scientist, Sportsman, Administrator, Educationist. They are identified as the elite of the society. A seeker of Truth utilises the faculty of first exclusive concentration towards calling down the spaceless Infinity to the limited space of his surrounding world and self-expansion in the form of manifestation of objective Divine Work with the aid of three gunas.

 

b)        Education through Second Exclusive Concentration:

“Its solitude greatened her human hours” Savitri-14

“At last the traveller in the paths of Time

Arrives on the frontiers of eternity.” Savitri-23

“Absorbed no more in the moment-ridden flux

Where mind incessantly drifts as on a raft

Hurried from phenomenon to phenomenon,

He abode at rest in indivisible Time.

As if a story long written but acted now,

In his present he held his future and his past,

Felt in the seconds the uncounted years

And saw the hours like dots upon a page.” Savitri-33

“Inheritor of the brief animal mind,

Man, still a child in Nature’s mighty hands

In the succession of the moments lives;

To a changing present is his narrow right;

His memory stares back at phantom past,

The future flees before him as he moves;

He sees imagined garments, not a face.” Savitri-53

“It leaves two giant letters void of sense

While without sanction turns the middle sign

Carrying an enigmatic universe,

As if a present without future or past

Repeating the same revolution’s whirl

Turned on its axis in its own Inane.” Savitri-56

“It (Overmind) can immortalise a moment's work:” Savitri-85,

“Absorbed in the present act, the fleeting days,

None thought to look beyond the hour’s gains, 

Or dreamed to make this earth a fairer world,

Or felt some touch divine surprise his heart.” Savitri-145   

“It (Spiritual Being) sees the hurrying crowd of moments stream
Towards the still greatness of a distant hour." (Timeless state) Savitri-160   

“His little hour is spent in little things…

Time has he none to turn his eyes within

And look for his lost self and his dead soul.” Savitri-164-65

“She hopes by the creative act’s release

To o’erleap sometimes the gulf she cannot fill

To heal awhile the wound of severance,

Escape from the moment’s prison of littleness

And meet the Eternal’s wide sublimities

In the uncertain time-field portioned here.

Almost she nears what never can be attained;

She shuts eternity into an hour

And fills a little soul with the Infinite;

The Immobile leans to the magic of her call;

She stands on a shore in the Illimitable,

Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms

And feels around her infinity’s embrace.” Savitri-177

“She has lured the Eternal into arms of Time.” Savitri-178

“But now she turns to break the oblivious spell,

Awakes the sleeper on the sculptured couch;

She finds again the Presence in the form

And in the light that wakes with him recovers

A meaning in the hurry and trudge of Time,

And through this mind that once obscured the soul

Passes a glint of unseen deity.”  Savitri-182

“No silent peak is found where Time can rest.” Savitri-197

"A touch supreme surprised his hurrying heart," Savitri-237

“Labours for the hour and not for eternity

And trades its gains to meet the moment’s call:” Savitri-240

“Two firmaments of darkness and of light

Opposed their limits to the spirit’s walk;

It moved veiled in from Self’s infinity

In a world of beings and momentary events

Where all must die to live and live to die.” Savitri-287-288

“Attracting into time the timeless Light,

 Imprisoning eternity in the hours,

This they (bright gods of Thought) have planned, to snare the feet of Truth

 In an aureate net of concept and of phrase

And keep her captive for the thinker’s joy

In his little world built of immortal dreams:” Savitri-274

“The moments there were pregnant with all time.” Savitri-301

“The moment’s thought inspired the passing act.” Savitri-325,

“His day is a moment in perpetual Time;

He is the prey of the minutes and the hours.” Savitri-336

“Immortal movements touched the fleeting hours.” Savitri-352

“Each minute was a throb of beauty’s heart;

The hours were tuned to a sweet-toned content” Savitri-355

“That a diviner Force might enter life,

A breath of Godhead greaten human time.” Savitri-366

“A moment passed that was eternity’s ray, 

An hour began, the matrix of new Time.” Savitri-399

“In the immutable ideal world                        

One human moment was eternal made.” Savitri-411

“This now remained with her, her heart’s constant scene.” Savitri-412

“In his floating house upon the sea of Time

The regent sits at work and never rests:

He is a puppet of the dance of Time;

He is driven by the hours, the moment’s call 

Compels him with the thronging of life’s need

And the babel of the voices of the world.” Savitri-478

“The hurried servant senses answer apace

To every knock upon the outer doors,

Bring in time’s visitors, report each call,

Admit the thousand queries and the calls

And the messages of communicating minds

And the heavy business of unnumbered lives

And all the thousandfold commerce of the world.” Savitri-478-79

“A portion of us lives in present Time,

A secret mass in dim inconscience gropes;

Out of the inconscient and subliminal

Arisen, we live in mind’s uncertain light

And strive to know and master a dubious world

Whose purpose and meaning are hidden from our sight.” Savitri-484

(Savitri said) “All means are held good to catch a single beam,

Eternity sacrificed for a moment’s bliss:

Yet for joy and not for sorrow earth was made

And not as a dream in endless suffering Time.” Savitri-629

(Death said) “Hope not to call God down into his life.

How shalt thou (Savitri) bring the Everlasting here?

There is no house for him in hurrying Time” Savitri-644

“I (Savitri) claim from Time my will’s eternity,

God from his moments.” Savitri-652

“And love and joy overtake fleeing Time.” Savitri-664

 

             The second exclusive concentration¹⁹ is a contemplation on the present without past and future. Then there is development of second exclusive concentration, which is defined as to preoccupy and limit oneself with the mental knowledge of the present which is hurriedly changing from moment to moment in a helpless succession of events, forms, phenomena and actions, oblivious of the successive past and future happenings except that of memory that holds little and vague inference of future; through this concentration, the objective experience of the ever-changing present environment is realised through a superficial movement of consciousness; thus, the man is practically and dynamically the man of moments; future is withheld from his possession; identifies himself solely in the name and personality of the present narrow existence, lives only in his immediate and outward work and problem and ignorant of his limitation of past births and Spirit’s unending future or put aside the whole infinite course of Time and his rest of total Self and Nature. Yet all the time this existence in the present moment is not the real or the whole truth of his being, but only a practical or pragmatic mental construction for the purposes of the superficial movement of his life and within its limits and he recovers partially from this restriction by linking together the succession of moments, the succession of points of Space, the successions of forms and movements in Time and Space which are beyond his control and comprehension. The superficial or the apparent man can dissolve its partial concentration of living from moment to moment and go back from its present action at any time to the consciousness of the larger Self and he can only do it to some extent in exceptional conditions of his mentality or, more permanently and completely, as the fruit of a long and arduous self-training, self-deepening, self-heightening and self-expansion. His objective in life is to exist consciously in eternity, in the truth of the indivisibility of Time, in the indivisibility of Force and substance and not in the bondage of the hour and become patient trustee of the slow eternal Time. The real truth of his being is a time transcending eternity and living in the whole infinite course of triple Time, but not to a definite succession of moments and all the past, present and future are perfectly stored in every detail in the all-retaining integral Consciousness⁶ within him.

            Their Divine Will is to utilise time for preparation of Divine descent, both during success and failure, happiness and sorrow, opportunities and difficulties. A seeker of Truth utilises this second exclusive concentration towards calling down the Timeless Eternity to the slipping moments. The Synthesis of Yoga book proposes a Sadhaka to become ‘virginally creative at each moment.’³⁰

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c) Education through Third Exclusive Concentration:

“A heavenlier function with a finer mode

Lit with its grace man’s outward earthliness;

The soul’s experience of its deeper sheaths

No more slept drugged by Matter’s dominance.

…He lived in the mystic space where thought is born

And will is nursed by an ethereal Power

And fed on the white milk of the Eternal’s strengths

Till it grows into the likeness of a god.” Savitri-27-28

“He (Jijnasu) is a smallness trying to be great,

An animal with some instincts of a god, …

His hope a star above a cradle and grave.

And yet a greater destiny may be his,

For the eternal Spirit is his truth.” Savitri-78

“A pilgrim of the everlasting Truth,
Our measures cannot hold his measureless mind;
He has turned from the voices of the narrow realm
And left the little lane of human Time.” Savitri-80

“Where Space is a vast experiment of the soul,

In an immaterial substance linked to ours

In a deep oneness of all things that are,

The universe of the Unknown arose.” Savitri-95

“So must the dim being grow in light and force

And rise to his higher destiny at last,

Look up to God and round at the universe,

And learn by failure and progress by fall

And battle with environment and doom,

By suffering discover his deep soul

And by possession grow to his own vasts.” Savitri-146

“This is the little surface of man’s life.

He is this and he is all the universe;

He scales the Unseen, his depths dare the Abyss;

 A whole mysterious world is locked within.

Unknown to himself he lives a hidden king

Behind rich tapestries in great secret rooms;

An epicure of the spirit’s unseen joys,

He lives on the sweet honey of solitude:” Savitri-479

“A reasoning animal willed and planned and sought;

 He stood erect among his brute compeers,

He built life new, measured the universe,

Opposed his fate and wrestled with unseen Powers,

Conquered and used the laws that rule the world,

And hoped to ride the heavens and reach the stars,

A master of his huge environment.

Now through Mind’s windows stares the demigod

 Hidden behind the curtains of man’s soul: (Psychic being)

He has seen the Unknown, looked on Truth’s veilless face;

A ray has touched him from the eternal sun;

Motionless, voiceless in foreseeing depths,

He stands awake in Supernature’s light

And sees a glory of arisen wings

And sees the vast descending might of God.” Savitri-622

            “Thus arises the attraction and, it would seem, the necessity of the principle of exclusive concentration which plays so prominent a part in the specialised schools of Yoga; for by that concentration we can arrive through an uncompromising renunciation of the world at an entire self-consecration to the One on whom we concentrate.”⁴

Sri Aurobindo

           “The effective fullness of our concentration on the one thing needful to the exclusion of all else will be the measure of our self-consecration to the One who is alone desirable. But this exclusiveness will in the end exclude nothing except the falsehood of our way of seeing the world and our will’s ignorance.”³⁴

Sri Aurobindo

           “A quietude and stillness is imposed on the body, on the active life-soul of desire and ego, on the external mind, while the sattwic nature by stress of meditation, by an exclusive concentration of adoration, by a will turned inward to the Supreme, strives to merge itself in the spirit.”¹⁴

Sri Aurobindo

            This world is identified as the outer body or sheath or Kosha of the God. The Self that holds this outer body is known as universal or cosmic Self. Behind this outer sheath there exist multiple subtle sheaths, mystic inner Spaces whose influence can purify, transform and perfect the external world. And then, the third exclusive concentration8 or reverse movement of exclusive concentration,²² is defined as the complete absorption in the objective means or instruments of Education in finding the subjective Being or concentrates exclusively on the concealed inner being by quieting¹³ the frontal active prakriti and subjective experience of the ever-modified subtle mental states of its personality. Exclusive concentration on subliminal being might throw strong light on the large inner life and extend vastly the powers of human beings and it might lead towards an independent and radical spiritual realisation but it would not be by itself an integral valid solution of truth of individual existence or lead us successfully to the integral knowledge of Reality which is something beyond the One and the Many, containing both and aware of both. The third exclusive concentration can be utilised further for unfolding the part knowledge of the Brahman (1) either through concentration of the One in itself to the exclusion of the Many; one can plunge by a trance of exclusive concentration into a mystic sleep29 state by a subjective abolition of cosmic forces or pass abruptly in waking Mind into a state belonging to the supreme superconscience or (2) of the Many in their own action to the exclusion of the all-awareness of the One, (3) or of the individual being absorbed in his own self to the exclusion of both of the One and the rest of the Many who are then to him separated units not included in his direct awareness, (4) or again there may intervene all the above three separative active consciousness in a separative movement; but this takes place not in true self, but in the active Prakriti. This third exclusive concentration is utilised to find the true physical being, true vital being, true mental being and the Psychic being.

 

d) Education through Fourth Exclusive Concentration:

“Only the Immortals on their deathless heights

Dwelling beyond the walls of Time and Space,

Masters of living, free from the bonds of Thought,

Who are overseers of Fate and Chance and Will” Savitri-53-54

“A voyager upon uncharted routes

Fronting the viewless danger of the Unknown,

Adventuring across enormous realms,

He broke into another Space and Time.” Savitri-91

“All ocean lived within a wandering drop,

A time-made body housed the Illimitable.” Savitri-101

“A little joy and knowledge satisfied

This little being tied into a knot

And hung on a bulge of its environment,

A little curve cut off in measureless Space,

A little span of life in all vast Time.” Savitri-148-149

“Almost she nears what never can be attained;

She shuts eternity into an hour

And fills a little soul with the Infinite;

The Immobile leans to the magic of her call;

She stands on a shore in the Illimitable,

Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms

And feels around her infinity’s embrace.” Savitri-177

“Unending Space was beaten into a curve,

Indivisible Time into small minutes cut,

The infinitesimal massed to keep secure

The mystery of the Formless cast into form.” Savitri-266-67

“A timeless Spirit was made the slave of the hours;

The Unbound was cast into a prison of birth

To make a world that Mind could grasp and rule.” Savitri-268

“There consciousness was a close and single weft;

The far and near were one in spirit-space,

The moments there were pregnant with all time.” Savitri-301

“Self’s vast spiritual silence occupies Space;

Only the Inconceivable is left,

Only the Nameless without space and time:” Savitri-310

“The splendid youth of Time has passed and failed;

Heavy and long are the years our labour counts” Savitri-345

“Time, life and death were passing incidents

Obstructing with their transient view her sight,

Her sight that must break through and liberate the god

 Imprisoned in the visionless mortal man.

The inferior nature born into ignorance

Still took too large a place, it veiled her self

And must be pushed aside to find her soul.” Savitri-487

“She crossed through spaces of a secret self

And trod in passages of inner Time.” Savitri-490

“He is Eternity lured from hour to hour,

He is infinity in a little space:” Savitri-516

“Only when Eternity takes Time by the hand,

Only when infinity weds the finite’s thought,

Can man be free from himself and live with God.” Savitri-516

“In endless Time her soul reached a wide end,

The spaceless Vast became her spirit’s place.” Savitri-523

“The world is but a spark-burst from its light,

All moments flashes from its Timelessness,

All objects glimmerings of the Bodiless

That disappear from Mind when That is seen.” Savitri-548

“The infinite holds the finite in its arms,

Time travels towards revealed eternity.” Savitri-623

“A mute Delight regards Time’s countless works:

To house God’s joy in things Space gave wide room,

To house God’s joy in self our souls were born.” Savitri-630

“Time thrills to the sapphics of her amour-song

And Space fills with a white beatitude.” Savitri-632

“Is not the spirit immortal and absolved

Always, delivered from the grasp of Time?

Why came it down into the mortal’s Space?” Savitri-653

“He glimpses eternity, touches the infinite,

He meets the gods in great and sudden hours,

He feels the universe as his larger self,

Makes Space and Time his opportunity

To join the heights and depths of being in light,

In the heart’s cave speaks secretly with God.” Savitri-659

            “By concentration upon the Idea the mental existence which at present we are breaks open the barrier of our mentality and arrives at the state of consciousness, the state of being, the state of power of conscious-being and bliss of conscious-being to which the Idea corresponds and of which it is the symbol, movement and rhythm. Concentration by the Idea is, then, only a means, a key to open to us the superconscient planes of our existence; a certain self-gathered state of our whole existence lifted into that superconscient truth, unity and infinity of self-aware, self-blissful existence is the aim and culmination; and that is the meaning we shall give to the term Samadhi.”³⁵

Sri Aurobindo

            “For our concentration on the Eternal will be consummated by the mind when we see constantly the Divine in itself and the Divine in ourselves, but also the Divine in all things and beings and happenings. It will be consummated by the heart when all emotion is summed up in the love of the Divine, — of the Divine in itself and for itself, but love too of the Divine in all its beings and powers and personalities and forms in the Universe. It will be consummated by the will when we feel and receive always the divine impulsion and accept that alone as our sole motive force; but this will mean that, having slain to the last rebellious straggler the wandering impulses of the egoistic nature, we have universalised ourselves and can accept with a constant happy acceptance the one divine working in all things. This is the first fundamental siddhi of the integral Yoga.”³⁶

Sri Aurobindo

 

            This concentration is the outcome of the fusion of the above three¹⁷ exclusive concentrations. This is a concentration of separative active consciousness in a separative movement and this takes place not in true self, but in the untransformed active Prakriti. It does not prevent the full emergence and working of the whole conscious being behind the Ignorance, but a working in the conditions chosen and self-limited on nature for a special purpose. This power of self-limitation for a particular working, instead of being incompatible with the Integral Concentration, is precisely one of the powers we should expect to exist among the manifold energies of the Infinite. In this concentration, the present moment is utilised in linking the subjective Time with the objective Space or in this concentration self-concentration and self-expansion are reconciled. So, space and time are initially reconciled in the fourth exclusive concentration and finally in integral concentration.

 

e) Education through Essential Concentration:

“Absorbed no more in the moment-ridden flux
Where mind incessantly drifts as on a raft
Hurried from phenomenon to phenomenon,
He abode at rest in indivisible Time.
As if a story long written but acted now,
In his present he held his future and his past,
Felt in the seconds the uncounted years
And saw the hours like dots upon a page.” Savitri-33

“All we attempt in this imperfect world,
Looks forward or looks back beyond Time's gloss
To its pure idea and firm inviolate type
In an absolute creation's flawless skill.” Savitri-108

 “All that we seek for is prefigured there

And all we have not known nor ever sought

Which yet one day must be born in human hearts

That the Timeless may fulfil itself in things.” Savitri-176

“A fire to call eternity into Time,

Make body’s joy as vivid as the soul’s,

Earth she would lift to neighbourhood with heaven,

Labours life to equate with the Supreme

And reconcile the Eternal and the Abyss.” Savitri-196

“In its deep lotus home her being sat

As if on concentration’s marble seat,

Calling the mighty Mother of the worlds

To make this earthly tenement her house.” Savitri-528

            “Eliminate the falsity of the thought with its imperfect mental constructions, its arrogant assertions and denials, its limited and exclusive concentrations; a greater faculty of knowledge is behind that can open to the true Truth of God and the soul and Nature and the universe.”³⁷

Sri Aurobindo

           The second instrument of swift Psychic⁹ Education in Ignorance is the development of Essential Concentration, which is defined as the entire self-absorption in the essence of its own being through deeper self-oblivion of outward things. There are the dynamic function and pragmatic creative values of the Essential concentration; but what concerns us in our present inquiry is to learn from its way of action the exact character and nature of this deeper and larger cognition and how it is related to true knowledge of Self. Its main character is a knowledge by the direct contact of consciousness with its object or of consciousness with other consciousness; but in the end we discover that this concentration is an outcome of an Integral Concentration, a translation of it into a separative awareness of things. The superficial or apparent man with his active self-oblivion cannot go back at will to the real man within; he can do it to some extent during exceptional or abnormal or supernormal moments of his life. This essential concentration will carry one behind the surface physical nature and one will enter vast domain of subtle physical, subtle vital and subtle mental world and consciousness will undulate between Superconscient Silence and Inconscient torpor for purification and transformation action. In essential concentration, action need not bind or limit a liberated Soul, it binds or limits only the surface constructed personality. It is only by going back from surface physical mind to the Psychic or Spiritual Consciousness that vision, knowledge and cognition of triple time and transcendence of this attachment to present moment are wholly possible. He can get out of this moment-cognition of second exclusive concentration into a status of cognition of the eternal of essential concentration proper to the true consciousness by breaking the imprisonment in moment³ with its limitations of sensation, memory, inference and conjecture.

 

            If we go deeper within to discover the essential concentration, then we can see that it is not a particular part of us but the whole man who is doing the action and this action depends on our whole character, temperament, all our past, not the past of this life only, but in other lives and not only our past but past, present and predestined future of ourselves and the world are the determinants of work. This concentration gives one the capacity⁴⁰ to move consciousness from the nether Inconscient Sheath to the highest Bliss Sheath.

 

f) Education through Multiple Concentrations: 

“A flaming warrior from the eternal peaks

Empowered to force the door denied and closed

Smote from Death’s visage its dumb absolute

And burst the bounds of consciousness and Time.” Savitri-21

“Affiliated to cosmic Space and Time

And paying here God’s debt to earth and man

A greater sonship was his divine right.” Savitri-22

“All the deep cosmic murmur falling still,
He lives in the hush before the world was born,

His soul left naked to the timeless One.” Savitri-80

“Across the unfolding of the seas of self

Appeared the deathless countries of the One.

A many-miracled Consciousness unrolled

Vast aim and process and unfettered norms,

A larger Nature’s great familiar roads.” Savitri-91

“In this passage from a deaf unknowing Force
To struggling consciousness and transient breath
A mighty Supernature waits on Time.
The world is other than we now think and see,
Our lives a deeper mystery than we have dreamed;
Our minds are starters in the race to God,
Our souls deputed selves of the Supreme.” Savitri-169

“Almost she nears what never can be attained;

She shuts eternity into an hour

And fills a little soul with the Infinite;

The Immobile leans to the magic of her call;

She stands on a shore in the Illimitable,

Perceives the formless Dweller in all forms

And feels around her infinity’s embrace.” Savitri-177

“A gold supernal sun of timeless Truth

Poured down the mystery of the eternal Ray

Through a silence quivering with the word of Light

On an endless ocean of discovery.” Savitri-264

“At the beginning of each far-spread plane

Pervading with her power the cosmic suns

She (Divine Mother) reigns, inspirer of its multiple works

And thinker of the symbol of its scene.” Savitri-295

“Something thou (King Aswapati) cam’st to do from the Unknown,

But nothing is finished and the world goes on

Because only half God’s cosmic work is done.” Savitri-310

“The Spirit’s white neutrality became

A playground of miracles, a rendezvous

For the secret powers of a mystic Timelessness:

It (Spirit) made of Space a marvel house of God,

It poured through Time its works of ageless might,

Unveiled seen as a luring rapturous face

The wonder and beauty of its Love and Force.” Savitri-326-327

“Nameless the austere ascetics without home

Abandoning speech and motion and desire

Aloof from creatures sat absorbed, alone,

Immaculate in tranquil heights of self

On concentration’s luminous voiceless peaks,

World-naked hermits with their matted hair

Immobile as the passionless great hills

Around them grouped like thoughts of some vast mood

Awaiting the Infinite’s behest to end.” Savitri-382

“His soul must be wider than the universe

And feel eternity as its very stuff,

Rejecting the moment’s personality

Know itself older than the birth of Time,

Creation an incident in its consciousness,” Savitri-537

“Then stretches the boundless finite’s last expanse,

The cosmic empire of the Overmind,

Time’s buffer state bordering Eternity,

Too vast for the experience of man’s soul:” Savitri-660

“The Power that from her being’s summit reigned,

The Presence chambered in lotus secrecy,

Came down and held the centre in her brow

Where the mind’s Lord in his control-room sits;

There throned on concentration’s native seat

He opens that third mysterious eye in man,

The Unseen’s eye that looks at the unseen,

When Light with a golden ecstasy fills his brain

And the Eternal’s wisdom drives his choice

And eternal Will seizes the mortal’s will.

It stirred in the lotus of her throat of song,

And in her speech throbbed the immortal Word,

Her life sounded with the steps of the world-soul

Moving in harmony with the cosmic Thought.” Savitri-665

             “We may hear clear and luminous teachings about the Self from philosophers or teachers or from ancient writings; we may by thought, inference, imagination, analogy or by any other available means attempt to form a mental figure or conception of it; we may hold firmly that conception in our mind and fix it by an entire and exclusive concentration; but we have not yet realised it, we have not seen God. It is only when after long and persistent concentration or by other means the veil of the mind is rent or swept aside, only when a flood of light breaks over the awakened mentality, jyotirmaya brahman, and conception gives place to a knowledge-vision in which the Self is as present, real, concrete as a physical object to the physical eye, that we possess in knowledge; for we have seen.”³⁸

Sri Aurobindo

            “The Divine is centred in itself and when it throws out ideas and activities does not divide itself or imprison itself in them, but holds them and their movement in its infinity; undivided, its whole self is behind each Idea and each movement and at the same time behind all of them together. Held by it, each spontaneously works itself out, not through a separate act of will, but by the general force of consciousness behind it; if to us there seems to be a concentration of divine Will and Knowledge in each, it is a multiple and equal and not an exclusive concentration, and the reality of it is rather a free and spontaneous working in a self-gathered unity and infinity. The soul which has risen to the divine Samadhi participates in the measure of its attainment in this reversed condition of things, — the true condition, for that which is the reverse of our mentality is the truth. It is for this reason that, as is said in the ancient books, the man who has arrived at Self-possession attains spontaneously without the need of concentration in thought and effort the knowledge or the result which the Idea or the Will in him moves out to embrace.”³⁹

Sri Aurobindo

            “Brahman always reveals himself to us in three ways, within ourselves, above our plane, around us in the universe. Within us, there are two centres of the Purusha, the inner Soul through which he touches us to our awakening; there is the Purusha in the lotus of the heart which opens upward all our powers and the Purusha in the thousand-petalled lotus whence descend through the thought and will, opening the third eye in us, the lightnings of vision and the fire of the divine energy.”²¹

Sri Aurobindo

            The third instrument of swifter Spiritual Education in Knowledge is the development of Multiple11 Concentration, the method of the totalizing or global Overmental¹⁶ awareness, which is defined as a greater concentration or self-absorption in the universalised Self for greater world action. With the expansion of subtle physical, subtle vital and subtle mental sheath, the consciousness is universalised and one feels the whole universe is within him and enters the greater creation, action and ananda of universal proportion. This global consciousness includes coexistence of both static being of Purusha and dynamic action of Prakriti, the soul and its instruments, the Self and the dynamisms of the Self-Power, atmashakti: it can then embrace its manifestation with a larger Consciousness free from the previous Nature’s limitation and oblivion of the indwelling Spirit. This concentration reconciles all the planes of consciousness from nether Inconscient Sheath to the highest Bliss sheath. Through this opening of third mysterious eye, Arjuna of the Gita was able to see the Viswarupa, the universal vision of multiple concentration as described in the Gita, chapter-11.

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g) Education through All-inclusive Integral Concentration:

“The Maker shall recast us and impose

A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould

Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,

Touching the moment with eternity.” Savitri-67,

“In a moment shorter than death, longer than Time,

By a Power more ruthless than Love, happier than Heaven,

Taken sovereignly into eternal arms,

Haled and coerced by a stark absolute bliss,

In a whirlwind circuit of delight and force

Hurried into unimaginable depths,

Upborne into immeasurable heights,

It was torn out from its mortality

And underwent a new and bourneless change.” Savitri-81

“The moments stretched towards the eternal Now,

The hours discovered immortality,

But, satisfied with their sublime contents,

On peaks they ceased whose tops half-way to Heaven

Pointed to an apex they could never mount,

To a grandeur in whose air they could not live.” Savitri-238

“August and few the sovereign Kings of Thought

 Have made of Space their wide all-seeing gaze

 Surveying the enormous work of Time:

A breadth of all-containing Consciousness

Supported Being in a still embrace….

A great all-ruling Consciousness is there…” Savitri-271

“Its inexhaustible acts in a timeless Time,

A space that is its own infinity.” Savitri-298

“One moment fill with thy eternity,

Let thy infinity in one body live,

All-Knowledge wrap one mind in seas of light,

All-Love throb single in one human heart.” Savitri-345

“The Immortal bound to earth’s mortality

Appearing and perishing on the roads of Time

Creates God’s moment by eternity’s beats.”Savitri-447

“She passed beyond Time into eternity,

Slipped out of space and became the Infinite;”Savitri-555

“She was Time and the dreams of God in Time;

She was Space and the wideness of his days.

From this she rose where Time and Space were not;

The superconscient was her native air,

Infinity was her movement’s natural space;

Eternity looked out from her on Time.” Savitri-557

“The infinite holds the finite in its arms,

Time travels towards revealed eternity.” Savitri-623

“All means are held good to catch a single beam,

Eternity sacrificed for a moment’s bliss:” Savitri-629

“All Time is one body, Space a single look:

There is the Godhead’s universal gaze

And there the boundaries of immortal Mind:

The line that parts and joins the hemispheres

Closes in on the labour of the Gods

Fencing eternity from the toil of Time.” Savitri-660-61

“The Truth supreme, vast and impersonal

Fits faultlessly the hour and circumstance,

Its substance a pure gold ever the same

But shaped into vessels for the spirit’s use,

Its gold becomes the wine jar and the vase.” Savitri-662-63

“There Time dwelt with eternity as one;

Immense felicity joined rapt repose.” Savitri-678

“But when the phantom flame-edge fails undone,

Then never more can space or time divide

The lover from the loved; Space shall draw back

Her great translucent curtain, Time shall be

The quivering of the spirit’s endless bliss.” Savitri-684

          “An exclusive concentration, or even a succession of concentrations of that kind, can be in his complex work only a temporary convenience; it has to be abandoned as soon as its utility is over. An all-inclusive concentration is the difficult achievement towards which he (a Sadhaka of integral Yoga) must labour…Concentration is indeed the first condition of any Yoga, but it is an all-receiving concentration that is the very nature of the integral Yoga.”²                                     

Sri Aurobindo

            “What we can be aware of is, first, its original self-concentration which we endeavour to realise as the indivisible One; secondly, the diffusion and apparent disintegration of all that was concentrated in its unity which is the Mind’s conception of the universe; and thirdly, its firm self-extension in the Truth-consciousness which contains and upholds the diffusion and prevents it from being a real disintegration, maintains unity in utmost diversity and stability in utmost mutability, insists on harmony in the appearance of an all-pervading strife and collision, keeps eternal cosmos where Mind would arrive only at a chaos eternally attempting to form itself. This is the Supermind, the Truth-consciousness, the Real-Idea which knows itself and all that it becomes.”²⁵

Sri Aurobindo

 

            Integral Concentration is a Consciousness that rests on the One, the Divine and acts in all His creation. The last instrument of swiftest Supramental Education is the development of Integral Concentration, which is capable of an integral, comprehensive, multiple,²³ infinite self-concentration. It is further defined as entire absorption in the three poises7 of Self or a triune realisation; (1) that is Self is in all things which is the basis of our individuality in the universal, (2) all things are within the Self which is the basis of our oneness in difference and (3) all things are made up of the stuff of Self which is the basis of our oneness with all. An integral concentration is the basis of an entire harmonisation of life through the total transformation, unification, integration of the Being and Nature and there would be no further need of a slow evolution counting many millenniums for each step, the halting and difficult evolution operated by Nature in the past in the unconscious creatures of the Ignorance. This concentration5 purifies, transforms, and perfects all the multiple planes of ten Sheaths in a large scale.

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Recapitulation:

“Annulling an original nullity

The Timeless took its ground in emptiness

And drew the figure of a universe,

That the spirit might adventure into Time

And wrestle with adamant Necessity

And the soul pursue a cosmic pilgrimage.” Savitri-622

            “All our concentration is merely an image of the divine Tapas by which the Self dwells gathered in itself, by which it manifests within itself, by which it maintains and possesses its manifestation, by which it draws back from all manifestation into its supreme oneness.”²⁰

Sri Aurobindo

             “But you see, you see all the way I have come.... And I was born with a consciously prepared body – Sri Aurobindo was aware of that, he said it immediately the first time he saw me: I was born free. That is, from the spiritual standpoint: without any desire. Without any desire and attachment. And, mon petit, if there is the slightest desire and the slightest attachment, it's IMPOSSIBLE to do this work.

            A vital like a warrior, with an absolute self-control (the vital of this present incarnation was sexless – a warrior), an absolutely calm and imperturbable warrior – no desires, no attachments.... Since my earliest childhood, I have done things which, to the human consciousness, are "monstrous"; my mother went so far as to tell me that I was a real "monster," because I had neither attachments nor desires. If I was asked, "Would you like to do this?" I answered, "I don't care."

              If people were nasty to me, or if people died or went away, it left me absolutely calm – and so: "You're a monster, you have no feelings."

            And with that preparation ... It's eighty-six years since I came here, mon petit! For thirty years I worked with Sri Aurobindo consciously, without letup, night and day. We shouldn't be in a hurry.”²⁸

The Mother

            The supreme integrality of the Brahman holds all these seven states or powers of its concentration together as a single indivisible Being looking at all itself in manifestation with a simultaneous triple self-vision. Thus, radical transformation through Nature’s method of triple movement of (1) ascent of Consciousness to realise the Being, (2) widening of the field and base through the descent of Consciousness and (3) integration of Being and Becoming are realised. The integral emergence of total Consciousness is the ultimate goal of the evolving Nature. The old inconscient foundation of our body is made subtle, plastic, pure and conscious by the inflow of light and awareness from above and its depths annexed to the heights of the Spirit through rapid development of the Truth-consciousness. There must be achieved a new Spiritual height, wideness, depth, subtlety, intensity of our consciousness, of its substance, its force, its sensibility, an elevation, expansion, integral capacity of our being, and an assumption of mind and all that is below mind into that larger existence.

 

                                                                                                                         OM TAT SAT

References:

1: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-530,

2: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-78,

3: “The true consciousness within is not unaware of its past; it holds it there, not necessarily in memory but in being, still active, living, ready with its fruits, and sends it up from time to time in memory or more concretely in result of past action or past causes to the superficial conscious being, —that is indeed the true rationale of what is called Karma. It is or can be aware too of the future, for there is somewhere in the inner being a field of cognition open to future knowledge, a prospective as well as a retrospective Time-sense, Time-vision, Time-perception; something in it lives indivisibly in the three times and contains all their apparent divisions, holds the future ready for manifestation within it. Here, then, in this habit of living in the present, we have a second absorption, a second exclusive concentration which complicates and farther limits the being, but simplifies the apparent course of the action by relating it not to the whole infinite course of Time, but to a definite succession of moments.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-606,

4: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-73,

5: “Sometimes, all of a sudden, I see myself as a FORMIDABLE concentration of power, pushing, pushing, pushing in an inner concentration to pass through. It happens to me anywhere, any time, at any moment – I see a whole mass of consciousness gathered into a formidable power pushing, pushing, pushing to pass to the other side. When we have passed to the other side, all will be well.” The Mother’s Agenda/27th June, 1961,

6: “An integral consciousness with a multiform dynamic experience is essential for the complete transformation of our nature.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-114,

7: “If the defect of our mentality, if its need of exclusive concentration compels it to dwell on any one of these aspects of self-knowledge to the exclusion of the others, if a realisation imperfect as well as exclusive moves us always to bring in a human element of error into the very Truth itself and of conflict and mutual negation into the all-comprehending unity, yet to a divine supramental being, by the essential character of the supermind which is a comprehending oneness and infinite totality, they must present themselves as a triple and indeed a triune realisation.” CWSA/21/The Life Divine-166,

8: “To be alone with oneself or alone with the Divine, to walk apart with God and his devotees, to entrench oneself in the single self-ward endeavour of the mind or Godward passion of the heart is the trend of these Yogas. The problem is solved by the excision of all but the one central difficulty which pursues the one chosen motive-force; into the midst of the dividing calls of our nature the principle of an exclusive concentration comes sovereignly to our rescue.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-77, “In our view the Spirit, the Self is the fundamental reality of existence; but an exclusive concentration on this fundamental reality to the exclusion of all reality of Mind, Life or Matter except as an imposition on the Self or unsubstantial shadows cast by the Spirit might help to an independent and radical spiritual realisation but not to an integral and valid solution of the truth of cosmic and individual existence.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-679-80

9: “His being is not shut into the succession of the moments, but has the full power of the past and ranges seemingly through the future: not shot in the limiting ego and personal mind, but lives in the freedom of the universal, in God and in all beings and things; not in the dull density of the physical mind, but in the light of the self and the infinity of the spirit.” CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-839,

10: CWSA-22/The Life Divine-744,

11: “Held by it, each spontaneously works itself out, not through a separate act of will, but by the general force of consciousness behind it; if to us there seems to be a concentration of divine Will and Knowledge in each, it is a multiple and equal and not an exclusive concentration, and the reality of it is rather a free and spontaneous working in a self-gathered unity and infinity. The soul which has risen to the divine Samadhi participates in the measure of its attainment in this reversed condition of things, — the true condition, for that which is the reverse of our mentality is the truth. It is for this reason that, as is said in the ancient books, the man who has arrived at Self-possession attains spontaneously without the need of concentration in thought and effort the knowledge or the result which the Idea or the Will in him moves out to embrace.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-322,

12: “In other words, the mental being has put away from himself by exclusive concentration the dynamic aspect of consciousness, has taken refuge in the static and built a wall of non-communication between the two; between the passive and the active Brahman a gulf has been created and they stand on either side of it, the one visible to the other but with no contact, no touch of sympathy, no sense of unity between them.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-402,

13: “The difficulty is created by the exclusive concentration of the mental being on its plane of pure existence in which consciousness is at rest in passivity and delight of existence at rest in peace of existence.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-406,

14: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-688,

15: “If it is not there in all its sides, we have the imperfections or perversions of the type, a mere intellectuality or curiosity for ideas without ethical or other elevation, a narrow concentration on some kind of intellectual activity without the greater needed openness of mind, soul and spirit, or the arrogance and exclusiveness of the intellectual shut up in his intellectuality, or an ineffective idealism without any hold on life, or any other of the characteristic incompletenesses and limitations of the intellectual, religious, scientific or philosophic mind. These are stoppings short on the way or temporary exclusive concentrations, but a fullness of the divine soul and power of truth and knowledge in man is the perfection of this Dharma or Swabhava, the accomplished Brahminhood of the complete Brahmana.” CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-744,

16: “Overmind in its descent reaches a line which divides the cosmic Truth from the cosmic Ignorance; it is the line at which it becomes possible for Consciousness-Force, emphasising the separateness of each independent movement created by Overmind and hiding or darkening their unity, to divide Mind by an exclusive concentration from the overmental source.” CWSA/21/The Life Divine-300

17: “Or again there may be or there may intervene at a certain point some general rule of exclusive concentration, operative in all these three directions, a concentration of separative active consciousness in a separative movement; but this takes place not in the true self, but in the force of active being, in Prakriti.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-602,

18: “An exclusive concentration on or in a single subject or object or domain of being or movement is not a denial or departure from the Spirit’s awareness, it is one form of the self-gathering of the power of Tapas. But when the concentration is exclusive, it brings about a holding back behind it of the rest of self-knowledge.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-604,

19: “Here, then, in this habit of living in the present, we have a second absorption, a second exclusive concentration which complicates and farther limits the being, but simplifies the apparent course of the action by relating it not to the whole infinite course of Time, but to a definite succession of moments.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine- 606, “There is a minor pragmatic use of exclusive concentration on the surface which may also give us an indication in spite of its temporary character. The superficial man living from moment to moment plays, as it were, several parts in his present life and, while he is busy with each part, he is capable of an exclusive concentration, an absorption in it, by which he forgets the rest of himself, puts it behind him for the moment, is to that extent self-oblivious. The man is for the moment the actor, the poet, the soldier or whatever else he may have been constituted and formed into by some peculiar and characteristic action of his force of being, his Tapas, his past conscious energy and by the action which develops from it.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-607,  “This power of exclusive concentration is not confined to absorption in a particular character or type of working of one’s larger self, but extends to a complete self-forgetfulness in the particular action in which we happen at the moment to be engaged.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-609,

20: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-320,

21: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-596,

22: “It is to be noted also that in order to remove the veil of the Ignorance the conscious Force of being in us uses a reverse action of its power of exclusive concentration; it quiets the frontal movement of Prakriti in the individual consciousness and concentrates exclusively on the concealed inner being, — on the Self or on the true inner, psychic or mental or vital being, the Purusha, — to disclose it. But when it has done so, it need not remain in this opposite exclusiveness; it can resume its integral consciousness or a global consciousness which includes both being of Purusha and action of Prakriti, the soul and its instruments, the Self and the dynamisms of the Self- Power, atmasakti: it can then embrace its manifestation with a larger consciousness free from the previous limitation, free from the results of Nature’s forgetfulness of the indwelling Spirit.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine- 615,

23: “This Ignorance is, as we have seen, really a power of the Knowledge to limit itself, to concentrate itself on the work in hand, an exclusive concentration in practice which does not prevent the full existence and working of the whole conscious being behind, but a working in the conditions chosen and self-imposed on the nature. All conscious self-limitation is a power for its special purpose, not a weakness; all concentration is a force of conscious being, not a disability. It is true that while the Supermind is capable of an integral, comprehensive, multiple, infinite self-concentration, this is dividing and limited; it is true also that it creates perverse as well as partial and, in so far, false or only half- true values of things: but we have seen the object of the limitation and of this partiality of knowledge; and the object being admitted, the power to fulfil it must be admitted also in the absolute force of the absolute Being.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-616,

24: “The material interpretation of existence was the result of an exclusive concentration, a preoccupation with one movement of Existence, and such an exclusive concentration has its utility and is therefore permissible; in recent times it has justified itself by the many immense and the innumerable minute discoveries of physical Science. But a solution of the whole problem of existence cannot be based on an exclusive one-sided knowledge; we must know not only what Matter is and what are its processes, but what mind and life are and what are their processes, and one must know also spirit and soul and all that is behind the material surface: only then can we have a knowledge sufficiently integral for a solution of the problem… Such a preoccupation of exclusive concentration may lead to a fruitful scrutiny which sheds much light on Mind and Life, but cannot result in a total solution of the problem.” CWSA-21/The Life Divine-679,

25: CWSA-21/The Life Divine-136-137

26: TMCW (second edition)-10/p-15,

27: CWSA/24/The Synthesis of Yoga-631,

28: The Mother’s Agenda, March 28 1964,

29: “This is the first step only. Afterwards, the ordinary activities of the mind and sense must be entirely quieted in order that the soul may be free to ascend to higher states of consciousness and acquire the foundation for a perfect freedom and self-mastery. But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the  Hathayogic  system  its  devices  of asana and pranayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology  by  the  kundalinı,  the  coiled  and  sleeping  serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.” CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-36, “But if we plunge by a trance of exclusive concentration into a mystic sleep state or pass abruptly in waking Mind into a state belonging to the Superconscient, then the mind can be seized in the passage by a sense of the unreality of the cosmic Force and its creations; it passes by a subjective abolition of them into the supreme superconscience.” CWSA/21/The Life Divine-469,

30: CWSA-24/The Synthesis of Yoga-636-37,

31: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-322,

32: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-323,

33: TMCW-12/On Education-133,

34: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-85,

35: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-321,

36: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-85,

37: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-292,

38: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-305,

39: CWSA-23/The Synthesis of Yoga-322,

40: “Our souls can climb into the shining planes,

The breadths from which they came can be our home.

His privilege regained of shadowless sight

The Thinker entered the immortals’ air

And drank again his pure and mighty source.” Savitri-263

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