Moving Beyond the Mundane Ideal of Self-Perfection - Sri Aurobindo

20/01/2017.

There is a second stage to the process of the integral Yoga of self-perfection. Simply developing and upgrading the powers of mind, life and body is insufficient and only really addresses the external or mundane ideals without addressing the underlying truths that stand behind the religious and spiritual ideals of perfection. Sri Aurobindo notes: “The second stage of this Yoga will therefore be a persistent giving up of all the action of the nature into the hands of this greater Power, a substitution of its influence, possession and working for the personal effort, until the Divine to whom we aspire becomes the direct master of the Yoga and effects the entire spiritual and ideal conversion of the being.”

Without such an intervention from outside, we remain bound within the limits of the outer nature. Sri Aurobindo explains: “The mundane ideal regards man always as a mental, vital and physical being and it aims at a human perfection well within these limits, a perfection of mind, life and body, an expansion and refinement of the intellect and knowledge, of the will and power, of ethical character, aim and conduct, of aesthetic sensibility and creativeness, of emotional balanced poise and enjoyment, of vital and physical soundness, regulated action and just efficiency.

It is a wide and full aim, but yet not sufficiently full and wide, because it ignores that other greater element of our being which the mind vaguely conceives as the spiritual element and leaves it either undeveloped or insufficiently satisfied as merely some high occasional or added derivatory experience, the result of the action of mind in its exceptional aspects or dependent upon mind for its presence and persistence.

It can become a high aim when it seeks to develop the loftier and larger reaches of our mentality, but yet not sufficiently high, because it does not aspire beyond mind to that of which our purest reason, our brightest mental intuition, our deepest mental sense and feeling, strongest mental will and power or ideal aim and purpose are only pale radiations. Its aim besides is limited to a terrestrial perfection of the normal human life.”