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SECTION THREE
INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE AND
SPIRITUAL TRUTH
Intellect, Mind and Truth
INTELLECT is part of Mind and an instrument
of half-truth like the rest of the Mind.
22-8-1932
Intellect and the Truth
WHAT you have said is perfectly right. To see the
Truth does not depend on a big intellect or a small
intellect. It depends on being in contact with the
Truth and the mind silent and quiet to receive it.
The biggest intellects can make errors of the worst
kind and confuse Truth and Falsehood, if they
have not the contact with the Truth or the direct
experience.
1-8-1932
Page-79
Need of Controlling the Intellect
THE point is that people take no trouble to see whether their intellect is giving them right
thoughts,
right conclusions, right views on things and persons,
right indications about their conduct or course of
action. They have their idea and accept it as truth
or follow it simply because it is their idea. Even when
they recognise that they have made mistakes of the
mind, they do not consider it of any importance nor
do they try to be more careful mentally than before.
In the vital field people know that they must not
follow their desires or impulses without check or
control, they know that they ought to have a conscience
or a moral sense which discriminates what
they can or should do and what they cannot or
should not do; in the field of intellect no such care
is taken. Men are supposed to follow their intellect,
to have and assert their own ideas right or wrong
without any control; the intellect, it is said, is man’s
highest instrument and he must think and act
according to its ideas. But this is not true; the
intellect needs an inner light to guide, check and
control it quite as much as the vital. There is something
above the intellect which one has to discover
and the intellect should be only an intermediary
for the action of that source of true Knowledge.
23-3-1937
Page-80
Spirit, Life and Intellect
IN the sphere of the Spirit are only the eternal
truths—all is eternally itself there, there is no development,
nothing unrealised or striving to be fulfilled.
There are no such things as possibilities therefore.
In life, on the other hand, all is a play of possibilities
—nothing is realised, all is seeking to be
realised—or if not yet seeking, then waiting behind
the veil for that. Nothing is realised in its highest
form, in its truth or completeness, but all is possible.
All these possibilities are derived from the truths
above, e.g., the possibility of knowledge, the possibility
of love, the possibility of joy, etc.
Intellect, will, etc. are intermediaries which
try to catch something of the hidden higher truths
and bring them into life or else raise life to them
so that the possibilities of life here may become the
complete realities that are already there above.
16-3-1936
Page-81
The Supreme Knowledge and the Lower Ignorance
THE mind in its higher part is aware of being one with the Divine, in all ways, in all things—having
that supreme knowledge, it is not disturbed by its
own ignorance and impotence in its lower instrumental
parts; it looks on all that with a smile and
remains happy and luminous with the light of the
supreme knowledge.
The consciousness of union with the Divine is for
the spiritual seeker the supreme knowledge.
Utility of Mental Knowledge
MENTAL knowledge is of little use except sometimes
as an introduction pointing towards the real knowledge
which comes from direct consciousness of
things.
25-6-1936
Greater Perfection in Knowledge
IT (greater perfection in knowledge) can come only
by further development and the activity of another
kind of knowledge communicating itself to the physical and taking up gradually the functions of the
mind in all its parts.
13-5-1936
Page-82
Spiritual Knowledge and Worldly Ignorance
IT does not help for spiritual knowledge to be
ignorant of things of this world.
Mental Knowledge and Psychic Perception
IT is not a mental knowledge that is necessary but a
psychic perception or a direct perception in the
consciousness. A mental knowledge can always be
blinded by the tricks of the vital.
26-6-1936
Page-83
Mental Perception, Mental Realisation
and Spiritual Experience
You have to know by experience. The mental perception and mental realisation are different from
each other—the first is only an idea, in the second
the mind in its very substance reflects or reproduces
the truth. The spiritual experience is more than
the mental—it is in the very substance of the being
that the experience takes place.
11-6-1933
Utility of Mental Realisation
MENTAL realisation is useful at the beginning and
prepares spiritual experience.
It can help too at the beginning—but also it can
hinder. It depends on the sadhaka.
Touch of Realisation and Higher Knowledge
YES, it happens like that. A touch of realisation
is enough to set the higher mind knowledge or the
illumined mind knowledge flowing.
25-5-1936.
Page-84
Half-light of Idea and Complete Truth
THE idea is not enough. It gives only a half-light
—you must get to all the Truth that lies behind the
idea and the object together. Being, consciousness,
force—that is the triple secret.
19-3-1933
Idea—Force—Consciousness
THERE is a power in the idea—a force of which the
idea is a shape. Again, behind the idea and force
and word there is what is called the spirit,—a
consciousness which generates the force.
Knowledge and Divine Consciousness
ALL consciousness comes from the one Consciousness
—Knowledge is one aspect of the Divine Consciousness.
21-8-1933
Page-85
Mind, Vital and the One Consciousness
MIND and vital are two different processes of one
consciousness.
24-4-1935
The Intellectual and the Emotional Man
IF the intellectual will always have a greater
wideness
and vastness, how can we be sure that he will
have an equal fervour, depth and sweetness with
the emotional man?
It may be that homo intellectualis will remain
wider and homo psychicus will remain deeper in
heart (even when the latter’s inner mind opens up).
Do not confuse the higher knowledge and the
mental knowledge. The intellectual man will be
able to give a more wide and more orderly expression
to what higher knowledge he gets than
the homo psychicus; but it does not follow he will
have more of it. He will have that only if he rises
to an equal width and plasticity and comprehensiveness
of the higher knowledge planes. In
that case he will replace his mental by his
above-mental capacity. But for many intellectuals,
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so called, their intellectuality may be a stumbling
block as they bind themselves with mental conceptions
or stifle their psychic fire under the heavy
weight of rational thought. On the other hand,
I have seen comparatively uneducated people
expressing higher knowledge with an astonishing
fullness and depth and accuracy which the stumbling
movements of their brain could never have allowed
one to suppose possible. Therefore, why fix beforehand
by the mind what will or will not be possible
when the above-mind reigns? What the mind
conceives as "must be" need not be the measure
of the "will be". Such and such homo intellectualis
may turn out to be a more fervent God-lover than
the effervescent emotional man; such and such
an emotionalist may receive and express a wider
knowledge than his intellect or even the intellect
of the intellectual man could have harboured or
organised. Let us not bind the phenomena of the
higher consciousness by the possibilities and probabilities
of a lower plane.
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Doubts and Arguments in Yoga
As to doubts and argumentative answers to them,
I have long given up the practice as I found it
perfectly useless. Yoga is not a field for intellectual
argument or dissertation. It is not by the exercise
of the logical or the debating mind that one can
arrive at a true understanding of Yoga or follow it.
A doubting spirit, "honest doubt" and the claim
that the intellect shall be satisfied and be made
the judge on every point is all very well in the
field of mental action outside. But Yoga is not a
mental field, the consciousness which has to be
established is not a mental, logical or debating
consciousness—it is even laid down by Yoga that
unless and until the mind is stilled, including the
intellectual or logical mind, and opens itself in
quietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness,
vision and knowledge, sadhana cannot
reach its goal. For the same reason an unquestioning
openness to the Guru is demanded in the Indian
spiritual tradition; as for blame, criticism and
attack on the Guru, it was considered reprehensible
and the surest possible obstacle to sadhana.
If the spirit of doubt could be overcome by
meeting it with arguments, there might be something
in the demand for its removal by satisfaction
through logic. But the spirit of doubt doubts for
its own sake, for the sake of doubt; it simply uses
the mind as its instrument for its particular dharma,
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and this not the least when that mind thinks it is
seeking sincerely for a solution of its honest and
irrepressible doubts. Mental positions always differ,
moreover, and it is well-known that people can
argue for ever without one convincing the other.
To go on perpetually answering persistent and
always recurring doubts such as for long have
filled this Ashram and obstructed the sadhana, is
merely to frustrate the aim of the Yoga and go
against its central principle with no spiritual or
other gain whatever. If anybody gets over his
fundamental doubts, it is by the growth of the
psychic in him or by an enlargement of his consciousness,
not otherwise. Questions which arise
from the spirit of enquiry, not aggressive or self-assertive, but as a part of a hunger for knowledge
can be answered, but the "spirit of doubt" is
insatiable and unappeasable.
Value of Mental Questions in Yoga
OUT of one thousand mental questions and answers
there are only one or two here and there that are
really of any dynamic assistance—while a single
inner response or a little growth of consciousness will
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do what those thousand questions and answers could
not do. The Yoga does not proceed by upadesh but
by inner influence. To state your condition, experiences,
etc. and open to the help is far more important
than question-asking.
4-6-1936
Mental Understanding and Inner Help
WHAT I write usually helps only the mind and that
too very little, for people do not really understand
what I write—they put their own constructions on
it. The inner help is quite different and there can be
no confusion with it, for it reaches the substance
of the consciousness, not the mind only.
Right Way of Understanding the Workings
of Consciousness
IN the things of the subtle kind having to do with
the working of consciousness in the sadhana, one
has to learn to feel and observe and see with the
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inner consciousness and to decide by the intuition
with a plastic look on things which does not make
set definitions and rules as one has to do in outward
life.
7-4-1936
Mental Constructions and the Truth
PEOPLE do not understand what I write because the
mind by itself cannot understand things that are
beyond it. It constructs its own idea out of something
that it catches or that it has caught and puts
that idea as the whole meaning of what has been
written. Each mind puts its own ideas in place of the Truth.
6-6-1936
Page-91
Action by Higher Force in the Still Mind
WHEN the personal mind is still, whatever mental
action is needed is taken up and done by the Force itself which does all the necessary thinking and
progressively transforms it by bringing down into it a
higher and higher plane of perception and knowledge.
18-12-1936
Action in Emptiness
(1)
WHAT you describe is not at all a drawing away
of life-energy; it is simply the effect of voidness and
stillness caused in the lower parts by the consciousness
being located above. It is quite consistent
with action, only one must get accustomed to the idea
of the possibility of action under these conditions.
In a greater state of emptiness I carried on a daily
newspaper and made a dozen speeches in the course
of three or four days—but I did not manage that in
any way; it happened. The force made the body do
the work without any inner activity. The drawing
away of the life-energy leaves the body lifeless,
helpless, empty and impotent, but it is attended
by no experience except a great suffering.
13-5-1936
Page-92
(2)
Not necessary at all. It is perfectly possible to do
work in an entire emptiness without any interference or activity of the lower parts of the consciousness.
16-5-1936
Action in Silent Mind
IT is in the silence of the mind that the strongest
and freest action can come, e.g., the writing of a
book, poetry, inspired speech, etc. When the mind
is active it interferes with the inspiration, puts in
its own small ideas which get mixed up with the
inspiration or starts something from a lower level
or simply stops the inspiration altogether by bubbling
up with all sorts of mere mental suggestions. So
also intuitions or action, etc. can come more easily
when the ordinary inferior movement of the mind
is not there. It is also in the silence of the mind that
it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, from the psychic or
from the higher consciousness.
9-9-1936
Page-93
Observations on Prof. Sorley’s Comments on
Spiritual
Experience and Intellectual Judgment
I FIND nothing to object to in Prof. Sorley’s
comment on the still, bright and clear mind, for it adequately
indicates the process by which the mind makes itself
ready for the reflection of the higher Truth in its undisturbed surface or
substance. One thing perhaps needs to be kept in view—this pure stillness
of the mind is always the required condition, the
desideratum, but to bring it about there are more
ways than one. It is not, for instance, only by an
effort of the mind itself to get clear of all intrusive
emotion or passion or of its own characteristic vibrations or of the obscuring fumes of a physical
inertia which brings about the sleep or torpor of the mind
instead of its wakeful silence that the thing can be
done—for this is only the ordinary process of the Yogic path of knowledge. It
can happen also by
a descent from above of a great spiritual stillness
imposing silence on the mind and heart and the
life stimuli and the physical reflexes. A sudden
descent of this kind or a series of descents accumulative in force and efficacy is a well-known
phenomenon
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of spiritual experience. Or again one may start
process of one kind or another for the purpose which would normally mean a long labour and be seized,
even at the outset, by a rapid intervention or manifestation of the Silence with an effect out of all
proportion to the means used at the beginning.
One commences with a method, but the work is
taken up by a Grace from above, from That to
which one aspires or an irruption of the infinitudes
of the Spirit. It was in this last way that I myself
came by the mind’s absolute silence, unimaginable
to me before I had its actual experience.
There is another point of some importance—
the exact nature of this brightness, clearness, stillness,
—of what it is constituted, whether it is merely a psychological condition or
something more. Professor Sorley says these words are after all metaphors
and he wants to express and succeeds in expressing
the same thing in a more abstract language. But
I was not conscious of using metaphors when I wrote
the phrase, though I am aware that the words could
to others have that appearance. I think even that
they would seem to one who had half the same
experience not only a more vivid but a more
accurate description of this inner state than any more
abstract language could give. It is true that metaphors, symbols, images are constant auxiliaries
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summoned by the mystic for the expression of his
experiences: that is inevitable because he has to
express, in a language made or at least developed
and manipulated by the mind, the phenomena of
a consciousness other than the mental and at once
more complex and more subtly concrete. It is this
subtle concrete, supersensuously sensible reality of the phenomena of that
consciousness to which the
mystic arrives, that justifies the use of metaphor
and image as a more living and accurate transcription than the abstract terms which
intellectual
reflection employs for its own characteristic process.
If the images used are misleading or not descriptively accurate, it is because
the writer has a force
of expression inadequate to the intensity of his experience. The scientist
speaks of light-waves or
of sound-waves and in doing so he uses a metaphor,
but one which corresponds to the physical fact and
is perfectly applicable—for there is no reason why
there should not be a wave, a constant flowing
movement of light or of sound as well as of water.
But when I speak of the mind’s brightness, clearness,
stillness, I have no idea of calling metaphor to my
aid. It was meant to be a description as precise
and positive as if I were describing in the same way an expanse of air or a
sheet of water. For the mystic’s experience of mind—especially when it
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falls still is not that of an abstract condition or a
falling off or of some unseizable element of the consciousness, it is an experience of an extended
subtle substance in which there can be and are waves, currents, vibrations not material but still
as definite, perceptible, controllable by an inner sense as any movement of material energy or
substance by the physical senses. The stillness of
the mind means first the falling to rest of the habitual thought movements,
thought formations,
thought currents which agitate the mind-substance,
and that for many is a sufficient mental silence.
But even in this repose of all thought movements
or movements of feelings, when one looks more closely at it, one sees that this
mind-substance is
in a constant state of very subtle vibration, not at
first easily observable, but afterwards quite evident —and that state of
constant vibration may be as
harmful to the exact reflection or reception of the
descending Truth as any more formed thought
movement—for it is the source of a mentalisation
which can diminish or distort the authenticity of
the higher Truth or break it up into mental refractions. When I speak of a still mind, I mean one
in which these disturbances are no longer there.
As they fall quiet one can feel the increasing stillness and a resultant
clearness as palpable as one can
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perceive the stillness and clearness of a physical
atmosphere. What I describe as the brightness–
there is another element—is resolved into a phenomenon of Light common in mystic
experience.
That Light is not a metaphor—as when Goethe
called for more light in his last moments—it presents
itself as a very positive illumination actually seen
and felt by the inner sense. The brightness of the
still and clear mind is also a positive reflection of
this Light before the Light itself manifests—and this reflection of the Light is
a very necessary condition for a growing capacity of penetrability by the
Truth one has to receive and harbour. I have
emphasised this part of the subject at a little length
because it helps to bring out the difference between the abstract mental and the
concrete mystic perception of supraphysical things which is the source
of much misunderstanding between the spiritual
seeker and the intellectual thinker. Even when they
speak the same language it is a different order of
perceptions to which the language refers the products of two different grades of consciousness and
even in their agreement there is often a certain gulf
of difference.
Page-98
(2)
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
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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
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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
position—he 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
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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,
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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
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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.
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