We have in the Gita a significant term brahma-nirvāņa which, as Sri Aurobindo
explains in the Essays, is the
extinction in the Brahman, the Vedantic loss of a partial in a perfect being.
This state is different from that of supreme peace, of a calm self-extinction, śāntim nirvāņa-paramām, which is not the
Buddhist's Nirvana in a blissful negation of being. Generally, in these
connotations, Nirvana is taken in the sense of total non-attachment and
extinction of the ego. It is a state of inner deeper happiness, of peace, the
peace of an absolute inactive cessation. “Sages win Nirvana in the Brahman,”
says the Scripture; everything is blown out in it, everything transient and
sorrowful. It further says: Brahman-knower is he who has risen into the
Brahman-consciousness, brahmavid brahmaņi
sthitāh. One who has the deeper inner happiness and the deeper inner ease
and repose and the intense inner light, that Yogin becomes the Brahman and
reaches self-extinction in the Brahman, brahma-nirvāņam.
The experience of Aswapati in The Pursuit
of the Unknowable (Savitri, pp.
305-09) is altogether of a different order of Nirvana, a singular, an
exceptional experience of the positive kind. It is from it that can ensue new
possibilities. But let us see what Nirvana is. We may just read the following
from Sri Aurobindo: (Letters on Yoga,
pp. 46-7)
In orthodox Buddhism it does mean a disintegration, not
of the soul—for that does not exist—but of a mental compound or stream of
associations or samskāras which we mistake for our self. In illusionist Vedanta
it means, not a disintegration but a disappearance of a false and unreal
individual self into the one real Self or Brahman; it is the idea and
experience of individuality that so disappears and ceases,—we may say a false
light that is extinguished (nirvāņa)
in the true Light. In spiritual experience it is sometimes the loss of all
sense of individuality in a boundless cosmic consciousness; what was the
individual remains only as a centre or a channel for the flow of a cosmic
consciousness and a cosmic force and action. Or it may be the experience of the
loss of individuality in a transcendent being and consciousness in which the
sense of cosmos as well as the individual disappears. Or again, it may be in a
transcendence which is aware of and supports the cosmic action. But what do we
mean by the individual? What we usually call by that name is a natural ego, a
device of Nature which holds together her action in the mind and body. This ego
has to be extinguished, otherwise there is no complete liberation possible; but
the individual self or soul is not this ego. The individual soul is the
spiritual being which is sometimes described as an eternal portion of the
Divine, but can also be described as the Divine himself supporting his
manifestation as the Many. This is the true spiritual individual which appears
in its complete truth when we get rid of the ego and our false separative sense
of individuality, realise our oneness with the transcendent and cosmic Divine
and with all beings. It is this which makes possible the Divine Life. Nirvana
is a step towards it; the disappearance of the false separative individuality
is a necessary condition for our realising and living in our true eternal
being, living divinely in the Divine.
In About Himself, Sri Aurobindo
writes: (pp. 49-50)
Now to reach Nirvana was the first radical result of my
own yoga. It threw me suddenly into a condition above and without thought,
unstained by any mental or vital movement; there was no ego, no real world—only
when one looked through the immobile senses, something perceived or bore upon
its sheer silence a world of empty forms, materialised shadows without true
substance. There was no One or many even, only just absolutely That,
featureless, relationless, sheer, indescribable, unthinkable, absolute, yet
supremely real and solely real. This was no mental realisation nor something
glimpsed somewhere above,—no abstraction,—it was positive, the only positive
reality,—although not a spatial physical world, pervading, occupying or rather
flooding and drowning this semblance of a physical world, leaving no room or
space for any reality but itself, allowing nothing else to seem at all actual,
positive or substantial. I cannot say there was anything exhilarating or
rapturous in the experience, as it then came to me,—(the ineffable Ananda I had
years afterwards),—but what it brought was an inexpressible Peace, a stupendous
silence, an infinity of release and freedom. I lived in that Nirvana day and
night before it began to admit other things into itself or modify itself at
all, and the inner heart of experience, a constant memory of it and its power
to return remained until in the end it began to disappear into a greater
Superconsciousness from above. But meanwhile realisation added itself to
realisation and fused itself with this original experience. At an early stage
the aspect of an illusionary world gave place to one in which illusion
(footnote: In fact it is not an illusion in the sense of an imposition of
something baseless and unreal on the consciousness, but a misinterpretation by
the conscious mind and sense and a falsifying misuse of manifested existence)
is only a small surface phenomenon with an immense Divine Reality behind it and
a supreme Divine Reality above it and an intense Divine Reality in the heart of
everything that had seemed at first only a cinematic shape or shadow. And this
was no reimprisonment in the senses, no diminution or fall from supreme
experience, it came rather as a constant heightening and widening of the Truth;
it was the spirit that saw objects, not the senses, and the Peace, the Silence,
the freedom in Infinity remained always, with the world or all worlds only as a
continuous incident in the timeless eternity of the Divine.
This is something beyond the Buddhist Nirvana or the Adwaitin's Moksha which
are, actually, the same thing. “It corresponds to a realisation in which one
does not feel oneself any longer as an individual with such a name or such a form,
but an infinite eternal Self spaceless (even when in space), timeless (even
when in time).” (p. 62)
Shankara wanted to dismiss the world as an illusion and attain Moksha,
Liberation. Buddha would have stepped into Nirvana but, as Amitabha, he refused
to do so, Amitabha who is without bound, who is infinite, is full of light and
splendour. Through his effort, he created the
What does he assure us? It assures us Nirvana, cessation from the cycles of
birth and death, from this Samsāra full of pain and suffering, duhkha. But escape brings not the victory
and the crown.
Sakyamuni, the Buddha of the present Age, tells us that in the past Dharmakar
accepted misery and suffering of the living creature and, by the power of his vast
compassion, established the Pure and
But there is something more than that dwelling, something absolutely
marvellous. In the evening on 20 December 1916, after her meditation at 5.30,
the Mother receives a communication from Sakyamuni:
As thou art contemplating me, I shall speak to thee
this evening. I see in thy heart a diamond surrounded by a golden light. It is
at once pure and warm, something which may manifest impersonal love; but why
dost thou keep this treasure enclosed in that dark casket lined with deep
purple? The outermost covering is of a deep lustreless blue, a real mantle of
darkness. It would seem that thou art afraid of showing thy splendour. Learn to
radiate and do not fear the storm: the wind carries us far from the shore but
shows us over the world. Wouldst thou be thrifty of thy tenderness? But the
source of love is infinite. Dost thou fear to be misunderstood? But where hast
thou seen man capable of understanding the Divine? And if the eternal truth
finds in thee a means of manifesting itself, what dost thou care for all the
rest? Thou art like a pilgrim coming out of the sanctuary; standing on the
threshold in front of the crowd, he hesitates before revealing his precious
secret, that of his supreme discovery. Listen, I too hesitated for days, for I
could foresee both my preaching and its results: the imperfection of expression
and the still greater imperfection of understanding. And yet I turned to the
earth and men and brought them my message. Turn to the earth and men—isn’t this
the command thou always hearest in thy heart?—in thy heart, for it is that
which carries a blessed message for those who are athirst for compassion.
Henceforth nothing can attack the diamond. It is unassailable in its perfect
constitution and the soft radiance that flashes from it can change many things
in the hearts of men. Thou doubtest thy power and fearest thy ignorance? It is
precisely this that wraps up thy strength in that dark mantle of starless
night. Thou hesitatest and tremblest as on the threshold of a mystery, for now
the mystery of the manifestation seems to thee more terrible and unfathomable
than that of the Eternal Cause. But thou must take courage again and obey the
injunction from the depths. It is I who am telling thee this, for I know thee
and love thee as thou didst know and love me once. I have appeared clearly
before thy sight so that thou mayst in no way doubt my word. And also to thy
eyes I have shown thy heart so that thou canst thus see what the supreme Truth
has willed for it, so that thou mayst discover in it the law of thy being. The
thing still seems to thee quite difficult: a day will come when thou wilt
wonder how for so long it could have been otherwise.
How wonderful, the source of love is infinite! “If the eternal truth finds in
thee a means of manifesting itself, what dost thou care for all the rest?” The
Eternal as the divine Incarnate has willed it here in this creation and it must
be executed here in this creation. “The mystery of the manifestation seems to
thee more terrible and unfathomable than that of the Eternal Cause.” Aswapati
goes to the Eternal Cause and unravels the Mystery of the Manifestation. Drawing
on that Eternal Cause he has established the New Creation in the Transcendent.
What could we see in these realizations and revelations? The following are the
possible alternatives: In spiritual experience it could be the loss of all
sense of individuality in a cosmic consciousness, or the experience of the loss
of individuality in a transcendent being and consciousness, or it could be a
transcendence which is aware of and supports the cosmic action. In the process
the possibility of the Divine Life, towards which Nirvana is a step, could open
out. There is only the positive reality and that is all that matters. That
positive reality has been brought out from the Eternal Cause.
The greatness of Aswapati’s pursuing the utter Unknowable is to go beyond all
cosmic manifestation, go beyond even the transcendental manifestation, the
Manifestation of the Spirit from which in the endless and enormous cosmic
deployment could arise its own opposites, opposites that too are like itself
infinite and powerful; his quest is to go beyond Sachchidananda, the originator
of this vast manifestation. It is thus alone, going beyond Sachchidananda,
could the grim opposites be disburdened, removed, dissolved. When that is done,
from the knowledge of the Eternal Cause, and in it, is formed the Seed of
Light, sowed the crimson seed of possibility of the New Creation. That is
Aswapati’s Siddhi, his supreme and consummate realisation.
http://www.savitrithelightofthesupreme.org/blog/_archives/2010/2/22/4461863.html
