SITE OF SRI AUROBINDO & THE MOTHER
      
Home Page | Works | Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Forth Series

Fragment ID: 21190

  Hide link-numbers of differed places

That brings us straight to the question raised by Professor Sorley, what is the relation of mystic or spiritual experience and is it true, as it is contended, that the mystic must, whether as to the validity of his experience itself or the validity of his expression of it, accept the intellect as the judge. It is very plain that in the experience itself the intellect cannot claim to put its limits or its law on an endeavour whose very aim, principle and matter is to go beyond the domain of the ordinary earth-ruled and sense-ruled mental intelligence. It is as if I were asked to climb a mountain with a rope around my feet attaching me to the terrestrial level or to fly only on condition that I keep my feet on the earth while I do it. It may be the safest thing to walk on earth and be on firm ground always and to ascend on wings or otherwise may be to risk a collapse and all sorts of accidents of error, illusion, extravagance, hallucination or what not – the usual charges of the positive earth-walking intellect against mystic experience; but I have to take the risk if I want to do it at all. The reasoning intellect bases itself on man’s normal experience and on the workings of a surface external perception and conception of things which is at its ease only when working on a mental basis formed by terrestrial experience and its accumulated data. The mystic goes beyond into a region where this mental basis falls away, where these data are exceeded, where there is another law and canon of perception and knowledge. His entire business is to break through these borders into another consciousness which looks at things in a different way and though this new consciousness may include the data of the ordinary external intelligence it cannot be limited by them or bind itself to see from the intellectual standpoint or in accordance with its way of conceiving, reasoning, established interpretation of experience. A mystic entering the domain of the occult or of the spirit with the intellect as his only or his supreme light or guide would risk seeing nothing or else arriving only at a mental realisation already laid down for him by the speculations of the intellectual thinker.

There is, no doubt, a strain of spiritual thought in India which compromises with the modern intellectual demand and admits Reason as a supreme judge, but they speak of a Reason which in its turn is prepared to compromise and accept the data of spiritual experience as valid per se. That, in a sense, is just what the Indian philosophers have always done; for they have tried to establish generalisations drawn from spiritual experience by the light of metaphysical reasoning, but on the basis of that experience and with the evidence of the spiritual seekers as a supreme proof ranking higher than intellectual speculation or experience. In that way the freedom of spiritual and mystic experience is preserved, the reasoning intellect comes in only on the second line as a judge of the generalised statements drawn from the experience. This is, I presume, something akin to Prof. Sorley’s positionhe concedes that the experience itself is of the domain of the Ineffable, but as soon as I begin to interpret it, to state it, I fall back into the domain of the thinking mind, I use its terms and ways of thought and expression and must accept the intellect as judge. If I do not, I knock away the ladder by which I have climbed – through mind to Beyond-Mind – and I am left in the air. It is not quite clear whether the truth of my experience itself is supposed to be invalidated by this unsustained position in the air, but it remains at any rate something aloof and incommunicable without support or any consequences for thought or life. There are three propositions, I suppose, which I can take as laid down or admitted here and joined together. First, the spiritual experience is itself of the Beyond-Mind, ineffable and, I presume, unthinkable. Next, in the expression, the interpretation of the experience, you are obliged to fall back into the domain of the consciousness you have left and must abide by its judgments, accept the terms and the canons of its law, submit to its verdict; you have abandoned the freedom of the Ineffable and are no longer your master. Last, spiritual truth may be true in itself, to its own self-experience, but any statement of it is liable to error and here the intellect is the sole judge.

I do not think I am prepared to accept any of these affirmations completely as they are. It is true that spiritual and mystic experience carries one first into domains of Other-Mind (and also Other-Life) and then into the Beyond-Mind; it is true also that the ultimate Truth is described as unthinkable, ineffable, unknowable – speech cannot reach there nor mind arrive to it; I may observe that it is so to human mind, but not to itself – for to itself it is described as self-conscient, in some direct supramental way knowable, known, eternally self-aware. And here the question is not of the ultimate realisation of the ultimate Ineffable which, according to many, can only be reached in a supreme trance, samādhi, withdrawn from all outer mental or other awareness, but of an experience in a luminous silence of the mind which looks up into the boundlessness of the last illimitable silence into which it is to pass and disappear, but before that unspeakable experience of the Ultimate or disappearance into it, there is possible a descent of at least some Power or Presence of the Reality into the substance of mind along with a modification of mind-substance, an illumination of it, and of this experience an expression of some kind, a rendering into thought ought to be possible. Or let us suppose the Ineffable and Unknowable may have aspects, presentations of it that are not utterly unthinkable and ineffable.

If it were not so, all account of spiritual truth and experience would be impossible. At most one could speculate about it, but that would be an activity very much in the air, even in a void, without support or data, a mere manipulation of all the possible ideas of what might be the Supreme and Ultimate. Apart from that there could be only a certain unaccountable transition by one way or another from consciousness to an incommunicable Supra-conscience. That is indeed what much mystical seeking actually reached both in Europe and India. The Christian mystics spoke of a total darkness, a darkness complete and untouched by any mental lights, through which one must pass into that luminous Ineffable. The Indian Sannyasis sought to shed mind altogether and pass into a thought-free trance from which if one returns, no communication or expression could be brought back of what was there except a remembrance of inexpressible existence and bliss. But still there were previous experiences of the supreme mystery, formulations of the Highest or the occult universal Existence which were held to be spiritual truth and on the basis of which the seers and mystics did not hesitate to formulate their experience and the thinkers to build on it numberless philosophies and books of exegesis. The only question that remains is what creates the possibility of this communication and expression, this transmission of the facts of a different order of consciousness to the mind and what determines the validity of the expression or, even, of the original experience. If no valid account were possible there could be no question of the judgment of the intellect – only the grotesque contradiction of sitting down to speak of the Ineffable, think of the Unthinkable, comprehend the Incommunicable and Unknowable.

 

1 CWSA, volume 28: I come now

Back

2 CWSA, volume 28: relation – or rather the position – of the intellect in regard to mystic

Back

3 CWSA, volume 28: Is

Back

4 CWSA, volume 28: often contended

Back

5 CWSA, volume 28: ought to be

Back

6 CWSA, volume 28: that in the search, the discovery, the getting of the experience

Back

7 CWSA, volume 28: first principle

Back

8 CWSA, volume 28: , constant method

Back

9 CWSA, volume 28: would be as if you were to ask me

Back

10 CWSA, volume 28: me

Back

11 CWSA, volume 28: or as if I were permitted to fly

Back

12 CWSA, volume 28: but only

Back

13 CWSA, volume 28: kept

Back

14 CWSA, volume 28: earth or near enough to the safety of the ground while

Back

15 CWSA, volume 28: indeed be

Back

16 CWSA, volume 28: securest

Back

17 CWSA, volume 28: to

Back

18 CWSA, volume 28: the firm

Back

19 CWSA, volume 28: of terrestrial reason always

Back

20 CWSA, volume 28: to

Back

21 CWSA, volume 28: attempt to ascend

Back

22 CWSA, volume 28: to the Beyond-Mind ether

Back

23 CWSA, volume 28: mental confusion and collapse

Back

24 CWSA, volume 28: possible

Back

25 CWSA, volume 28: consciousness

Back

26 CWSA, volume 28: it proceeds by the

Back

27 CWSA, volume 28: mental

Back

28 CWSA, volume 28: it

Back

29 CWSA, volume 28: founded on a logical

Back

30 CWSA, volume 28: the

Back

31 CWSA, volume 28: everyday mental

Back

32 CWSA, volume 28: the terrestrial data on which the reason founds itself

Back

33 CWSA, volume 28: there

Back

34 CWSA, volume 28: even another

Back

35 CWSA, volume 28: out or upward or widen into a new

Back

36 CWSA, volume 28: very different

Back

37 CWSA, volume 28: if

Back

38 CWSA, volume 28: include, though viewed with quite another vision, the data

Back

39 CWSA, volume 28: yet it

Back

40 CWSA, volume 28: cannot

Back

41 CWSA, volume 28: conform to its manner

Back

42 CWSA, volume 28: its established

Back

43 CWSA, volume 28: to see

Back

44 CWSA, volume 28: see according to his preconceived mental idea of things or else he would arrive

Back

45 CWSA, volume 28: subtly “positive” mental

Back

46 CWSA, volume 28: of perceptions already

Back

47 CWSA, volume 28: abstract speculations

Back

48 CWSA, volume 28: is a

Back

49 CWSA, volume 28: it must be

Back

50 CWSA, volume 28: That is

Back

51 CWSA, volume 28: to do

Back

52 CWSA, volume 28: by the light of metaphysical reasoning generalisations

Back

53 CWSA, volume 28: experience

Back

54 CWSA, volume 28: and it was always on the basis

Back

55 CWSA, volume 28: that they proceeded and

Back

56 CWSA, volume 28: inference

Back

57 CWSA, volume 28: they preserved the freedom

Back

58 CWSA, volume 28: experience

Back

59 CWSA, volume 28: and allowed the

Back

60 CWSA, volume 28: to come

Back

61 CWSA, volume 28: metaphysical statements

Back

62 CWSA, volume 28: experience, but not of the experience itself

Back

63 CWSA, volume 28: own position

Back

64 CWSA, volume 28: for he

Back

65 CWSA, volume 28: but he suggests that as soon

Back

66 CWSA, volume 28: inevitably into

Back

67 CWSA, volume 28: am using

Back

68 CWSA, volume 28: left unsupported in

Back

69 CWSA, volume 28: position

Back

70 CWSA, volume 28: but at any rate it remains

Back

71 CWSA, volume 28: in this contention

Back

72 CWSA, volume 28: it should be presumed

Back

73 CWSA, volume 28: so you must

Back

74 CWSA, volume 28: for you

Back

75 CWSA, volume 28: own master

Back

76 CWSA, volume 28: in

Back

77 CWSA, volume 28: possible arbiter

Back

78 CWSA, volume 28: just as

Back

79 CWSA, volume 28: Other-Mind or All-Mind

Back

80 CWSA, volume 28: Other-Life and All-Life and I would add Other-Substance and All-Substance

Back

81 CWSA, volume 28: emerges into

Back

82 CWSA, volume 28: has been

Back

83 CWSA, volume 28: mind

Back

84 CWSA, volume 28: cannot arrive

Back

85 CWSA, volume 28: But I

Back

86 CWSA, volume 28: itself, since it is not an abstraction, but a superconscious (not unconscious) Existence,– for

Back

87 CWSA, volume 28: as to itself self-evident and self-luminous

Back

88 CWSA, volume 28: therefore in

Back

89 CWSA, volume 28: or at least overmind way

Back

90 CWSA, volume 28: and known

Back

91 CWSA, volume 28: But

Back

92 CWSA, volume 28: an

Back

93 CWSA, volume 28: withdrawn

Back

94 CWSA, volume 28: we are speaking rather

Back

95 CWSA, volume 28: and any such experience presupposes that

Back

96 CWSA, volume 28: there is any last

Back

97 CWSA, volume 28: reflection or descent

Back

98 CWSA, volume 28: identical Reality

Back

99 CWSA, volume 28: mind-substance

Back

100 CWSA, volume 28: it there is a

Back

101 CWSA, volume 28: Moreover an immense mass of well-established spiritual experience would have been impossible unless we suppose that

Back

102 CWSA, volume 28: has truths of itself, aspects

Back

103 CWSA, volume 28: revealing presentations

Back

104 CWSA, volume 28: it to our consciousness

Back

105 CWSA, volume 28: which

Back

106 CWSA, volume 28: indeed, all

Back

107 CWSA, volume 28: indeed in the

Back

108 CWSA, volume 28: and even a movement in

Back

109 CWSA, volume 28: At best, there could be a mere

Back

110 CWSA, volume 28: conceivably might

Back

111 CWSA, volume 28: For we would have nothing before us to go upon other than the bare fact of

Back

112 CWSA, volume 28: translation

Back

113 CWSA, volume 28: held up as the one thing essential

Back

114 CWSA, volume 28: Many

Back

115 CWSA, volume 28: darkness through

Back

116 CWSA, volume 28: the Ineffable Light and Rapture, a falling away of all mental lights and all that belongs to the ordinary activity of the nature; they aimed not only at a silence but a darkness of the mind protecting an inexpressible illumination

Back

117 CWSA, volume 28: sought by silence, by concentration inwards, to shed

Back

118 CWSA, volume 28: ineffable

Back

119 CWSA, volume 28: still even here there

Back

120 CWSA, volume 28: glimpses or contacts and results of contact of That which is Beyond; there were contacts

Back

121 CWSA, volume 28: or of the

Back

122 CWSA, volume 28: truths

Back

123 CWSA, volume 28: theologies, books

Back

124 CWSA, volume 28: exegesis or of creed and dogma

Back

125 CWSA, volume 28: All then is not ineffable; there is a possibility of communication and expression, and the only question

Back

126 CWSA, volume 28: of the nature of this transmission of the facts of a different order of consciousness to the mind and whether it is feasible for the intellect or must be left for something else than intellect to determine

Back

127 CWSA, volume 28: violent

Back

128 CWSA, volume 28: mind sitting

Back

129 CWSA, volume 28: judge a Beyond-Mind of which it can know nothing, starting to speak

Back

130 CWSA, volume 28: Incommunicable

Back

Current publication:

Sri Aurobindo. Letters of Sri Aurobindo: In 4 Series.- Forth Series [On Yoga].- Bombay: Sri Aurobindo Sircle, 1951.- 652 p.

Other publications:

Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga // SABCL.- Volume 22. (≈ 28 vol. of CWSA).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971.- 502 p.

Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga. I // CWSA.- Volume 28. (≈ 22 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2012.- 590 p.

þ // Sri Aurobindo: Archives & Research: a biannual journal (1977-1994).- Volume 1, No1 (1977, April).- 91 p.