Supernature, then, is in every way our aim in Yoga; being still natural to the world, to transcend Nature internally so that both internally and externally we may possess and enjoy her as free and lord, swarat and samrat; being still the symbol in a world of symbol-beings, to reach through it to that which is symbolised, to realise the symbol; being still a figure of humanity, a man among men, a living body among living bodies, manus, mental beings housed in that living matter among other embodied mental beings; being and remaining in our outward parts all this that we are apparently, yet to exceed it and become in the body what we are really in the secret self, – God, spirit, supreme and infinite being, pure Bliss of divine joy, pure Force of divine action, pure Light of divine knowledge. Our whole apparent life has only a symbolic value and is good and necessary as a becoming; but all becoming has being for its goal and fulfilment and God is the only being. To become divine in the nature of the world and in the symbol of humanity is the perfection for which we were created.
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Chapter 4
The Fullness of Yoga – In Condition
We are to exceed our human stature and become divine; but if we are to do this, we must first get God; for the human ego is the lower imperfect term of our being, God is the higher perfect term. He is the possessor of our supernature and without His permission there can be no effectual rising. The finite cannot become infinite unless it perceives its own secret infinity and is drawn by it or towards it; nor can the symbol-being, unless it glimpses, loves and pursues the Real-being in itself, overcome by its own strength the limits of its apparent nature. It is a particular becoming and is fixed in the nature of the symbol that it has become; only the touch of that which is all becomings and exceeds all becomings, can liberate it from the bondage to its own limited Nature. God is That which is the All and which exceeds the All. It is therefore only the knowledge, love and possession of God that can make us free. He who is transcendent, can alone enable us to transcend ourselves; He who is universal can alone enlarge us from our limited particular existence.
In this necessity is the justification of that great and imperishable force of Nature, which Rationalism has unjustly and irrationally despised, Religion. I speak of religion, – not of a creed, church or theology, for all these things are rather forms of religiosity than essence or even always action of religion, – but of that personal and intimate religion, a thing of temper and spirit and life, not of views and formal actions, which draws a man passionately and absorbingly to his own vision of the Supreme or his own idea of something higher than himself which he must follow or become. Without a fervent worship of the Supreme in the heart, a strong aspiration upwards to It in the will or a vehement thirst for it in the temperament, we cannot have the impulse to be other than ourselves or the force to do anything so difficult as the transcending of our own ingrained and possessing human nature. The prophets have spoken and the Avatars have descended always for the one purpose, to call us to God, to inspire us to this great call on our upward straining energies or else to prepare something in the world which will help to bring humanity nearer to the goal of its difficult ascending journey.
It may seem at first sight that there is no need for these religious terms or this religious spirit. If the aim is to become something superior to man, to evolve a superman out of ourselves, as man has been evolved out of the ape, – if that statement of the progression be indeed the truth, – the ape out of inferior animal forms, they again out of mollusc and protoplasm, jellyfish or vegetable animals, and so to the end of the series, then what need is there of anything but the training, preferably the most intelligent and scientific training of our mental, moral and physical energies till they reach a point when they are transmuted by the psychical chemistry of Nature into the coming superior type? But the problem is not so simple, in reality. There are three errors hidden at the basis of this sceptical question. We mistake the nature of the operation to be effected, we mistake the nature of the power and process that works it out, we mistake the nature of the thing that uses the power and works out the process.
Nature does not propose to man to work out a higher mental, moral and physical variation-type in the mould of the present human being, – the symbol we are; it proposes to break that general type altogether in order to advance to a new symbol-being which shall be supernatural to present man as present man is to the animal below him. It is doubtful whether in the pure human mould Nature can go much farther than she has gone at present; that she can for instance produce a higher mental type than Newton, Shakespeare, Caesar or Napoleon, a higher moral type than Buddha, Christ or St Francis, a higher physical type than the Greek athlete or to give modern examples, a Sandow or a Ramamurti. She may seek to bring about a better combination of mental and moral, or of moral, mental and physical energies; but is she likely to produce anything much above the level of Confucius or Socrates? It is more probable and seems to be true that Nature seeks in this field to generalise a higher level and a better combination. Neither need we believe that, even here, her object is to bring all men to the same level; for that can only be done by levelling downwards. Nothing in Nature is free from inequalities except the forms that are the lowest and least developed. The higher the effort accomplished, the more richly endowed the organism of the species, the greater the chances of inequality. In so high and developed a natural movement as Man, equality of individual opportunity is conceivable, equality of natural powers and accomplishment is a chimera. Nor will the generalisation of powers or the increase of material make any difference to the level of natural attainment. All the accumulated discoveries and varied information of the modern scientist will not make him mentally the superior of Aristotle or Socrates; he is neither an acuter mind nor a greater mental force. All the varied activities of modern philanthropy will not produce a greater moral type than Buddha or St Francis. The invention of the motor car will not make up for the lost swiftness and endurance nor gymnastics restore the physical capacity of the Negro or the American Indian. We see therefore the limits of Nature‘s possibilities in the human symbol, fixed by the character of the symbol itself and recognised by her in her strivings.
It is still a question whether in these limits the chief preoccupation of Nature is the exhaustion of the possibilities of the human symbol. That is rather man‘s preoccupation and therefore the direction she takes when human intellect interferes with her normal progression. Left to herself and even utilising human interferences, she seems bent rather on breaking the mould, than on perfecting it, – only indeed in her more advanced individuals and more daring movements and with due regard to the safety of the general human type, but this is always her method when she wishes to advance to a fresh symbol without destroying the anterior species. The more civilised man becomes, the more she plagues him with moral abnormalities, excesses of vice and virtue and confusions of the very type of vice and virtue; the more he intellectualises, the more he insists on rationality as his utmost bourne, the more she becomes dissatisfied and clamours to him to develop rather his instincts and his intuitions; the more he strives after health and hygiene, the more she multiplies diseases and insanities of mind and body. He has triumphed over supernaturalism, he has chained her down to the material, human and rational; immediately she breaks out fiercely into unthought-of revivals and gigantic supernaturalisms. Whatever work she is intent on, she will not be baulked in that work by the limited human reason. Through all her vast being she feels the pulsation of a supernatural power, the workings and strivings of a knowledge superior to material reason. She breaks out, therefore, she compels, she insists. Everywhere we see her striving to break the mental, moral and physical type she has created and to get beyond it to some new processes as yet not clearly discerned. She attacks deliberately the sound healthfulness and equilibrium of our normal type of intellectuality, morality and physical being. She is stricken also with a mania of colossalism; colossal structures, colossal combinations, colossal heights and speeds, colossal dreams and ambitions outline themselves everywhere more or less clearly, more or less dimly. Unable as yet to do her will in the individual, she works with masses; unable in the mind, with material forms and inventions; unable in actualities, with hopes and dreams; unable to reproduce or produce Napoleons and super-Napoleons, she generalises a greater reach of human capacity from which they may hereafter emerge more easily, and meanwhile she creates instead Dreadnoughts