Mystery and Excellence on The Human Body - Perfection Of The Body

Part IX

Perfection of the Body

Painting: Veronique Nicolet, Auroville

Perfection of the Body

The perfection of the body, as great a perfection as we can bring  about by the means at our disposal, must be the ultimate aim of  physical culture. Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the  spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of  our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of  the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is  the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use.  Sariram khalu dharmasadhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage, — the  body is the means of fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every  ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working  out and its action. A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set  before us, for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here,  the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material  universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation, unless its action and functioning attain to a supreme capacity and  the perfection which is possible to it or which can be made possible.

(...) A development of the physical consciousness must always be a  considerable part of our aim, but for that the right development of the  body itself is an essential element; health, strength, fitness are the first  needs, but the physical frame itself must be the best possible. A divine  life in a material world implies necessarily a union of the two ends of  existence, the spiritual summit and the material base. The soul with the  basis of its life established in Matter ascends to the heights of the Spirit  but does not cast away its base, it joins the heights and the depths  together. The Spirit descends into Matter and the material world with  all its lights and glories and powers and with them fills and transforms  life in the material world so that it becomes more and more divine. The  transformation is not a change into something purely subtle and spiritual to which Matter is in its nature repugnant and by which it is felt as

an obstacle or as a shackle binding the Spirit; it takes up Matter as a  form of the Spirit though now a form which conceals and turns it into a  revealing instrument, it does not cast away the energies of Matter, its  capacities, its methods; it brings out their hidden possibilities, uplifts,  sublimates, discloses their innate divinity. The divine life will reject  nothing that is capable of divinisation; all is to be seized, exalted, made  utterly perfect. The mind now still ignorant, though struggling towards  knowledge, has to rise towards and into the supramental light and truth  and bring it down so that it shall suffuse our thinking and perception  and insight and all our means of knowing till they become radiant with  the highest truth in their inmost and outermost movements. Our life,  still full of obscurity and confusion and occupied with so many dull  and lower aims, must feel all its urges and instincts exalted and irradiated and become a glorious counterpart of the supramental super-life  above. The physical consciousness and physical being, the body itself  must reach a perfection in all that it is and does which now we can  hardly conceive. It may even in the end be suffused with a light and  beauty and bliss from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body  divine.

But first the evolution of the nature must have reached a point at  which it can meet the Spirit direct, feel the aspiration towards the spiritual change and open itself to the workings of the Power which shall  transform it. A supreme perfection is possible only by a transformation  of our lower or human nature, a transformation of the mind into a thing  of light, our life into a thing of power, an instrument of right action,  right use for all its forces, of a happy elevation of its being lifting it  beyond its present comparatively narrow potentiality for a self-fulfilling  force of action and joy of life. There must be equally a transforming  change of the body by a conversion of its action, its functioning, its  capacities as an instrument beyond the limitations by which it is clogged  and hampered even in its greatest present human attainment. In the  totality of the change we have to achieve, human means and forces too  have to be taken up, not dropped but used and magnified to their utmost  possibility as part of the new life. Such a sublimation of our present  human powers of mind and life into elements of a divine life on earth  can be conceived without much difficulty; but in what figure shall we  conceive the perfection of the body?

In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as

an obstacle, as something to be overcome and discarded than as an  instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change. It  has been condemned as a grossness of Matter, as an insuperable impediment and the limitations of the body as something unchangeable making transformation impossible. This is because the human body even at  its best seems only to be driven by an energy of life which has its own  limits and is debased in its smaller physical activities by much that is  petty or coarse or evil, the body in itself is burdened with the inertia and  inconscience of Matter, only partly awake and, although quickened and  animated by a nervous activity, subconscient in the fundamental action  of its constituent cells and tissues and their secret workings. Even in its  fullest strength and force and greatest glory of beauty, it is still a flower  of the material Inconscience; the inconscient is the soil from which it  has grown and at every point opposes a narrow boundary to the extension of its powers and to any effort of radical self-exceeding. But if a  divine life is possible on earth, then this self-exceeding must also be possible.

In the pursuit of perfection we can start at either end of our range of  being and we have then to use, initially at least, the means and processes proper to our choice. In Yoga the process is spiritual and psychic; even its vital and physical processes are given a spiritual or psychic  turn and raised to a higher motion than belongs properly to the ordinary  life and Matter, as for instance in the Hathayogic and Rajayogic use of  the breathing or the use of Asana. Ordinarily a previous preparation of  the mind and life and body is necessary to make them fit for the reception of the spiritual energy and the organization of psychic forces and  methods, but this too is given a special turn proper to the Yoga. On the  other hand, if we start in any field at the lower end we have to employ  the means and processes which Life and Matter offer to us and respect  the conditions and what we may call the technique imposed by the vital  and the material energy. We may extend the activity, the achievement,  the perfection attained beyond the initial, even beyond the normal possibilities but still we have to stand on the same base with which we  started and within the boundaries it gives to us. It is not that the action  from the two ends cannot meet and the higher take into itself and uplift  the lower perfection; but this can usually be done only by a transition  from the lower to a higher outlook, aspiration and motive: this we shall  have to do if our aim is to transform the human into the divine life. But

here there comes in the necessity of taking up the activities of human  life and sublimating them by the power of the spirit. Here the lower  perfection will not disappear; it will remain but will be enlarged and  transformed by the higher perfection which only the power of the spirit  can give. This will be evident if we consider poetry and art, philosophic thought, the perfection of the written word or the perfect organisation of earthly life: these have to be taken up and the possibilities '  already achieved or whatever perfection has already been attained  included-in a new and greater perfection but with the larger vision and  inspiration of a spiritual consciousness and with new forms and powers. It must be the same with the perfection of the body.

The taking up of life and Matter into what is essentially a spiritual  seeking, instead of the rejection and ultimate exclusion of them which  was the attitude of a spirituality that shunned or turned away from life  in the world, involves certain developments which a spiritual institution of the older kind could regard as foreign to its purpose. A divine  life in the world or an institution having that for its aim and purpose  cannot be or cannot remain something outside or entirely shut away  from the life of ordinary men in the world or unconcerned with the  mundane existence; it has to do the work of the Divine in the world and  not a work outside or separate from it. The life of the ancient Rishis in  their Ashramas had such a connection; they were creators, educators,  guides of men and the life of the Indian people in ancient times was  largely developed and directed by their shaping influence. The life and  activities involved in the new endeavour are not identical but they too  must be an action upon the world and a new creation in it. It must have  contacts and connections with it and activities which take their place in  the general life and whose initial or primary objects may not seem to  differ from those of the same activities in the outside world. ...

(...)The object must be the training of the body and the development  of certain parts of mind and character so far as this can be done by or in  connection with this training .... It is a relative and human perfection  that can be attained within these limits; anything greater can be reached  only by the intervention of higher powers, psychic powers, the power  of the spirit. Yet what can be attained within the human boundaries can  be something very considerable and sometimes immense: what we call  genius is part of the development of the human range of being and its  achievements, especially in things of the mind and will, can carry us 

halfway to the divine. Even what the mind and will can do with the  body in the field proper to the body and its life, in the way of physical  achievement, bodily endurance, feats of prowess of all kinds, a lasting  activity refusing fatigue or collapse and continuing beyond what seems  at first to be possible, courage and refusal to succumb under an endless  and murderous physical suffering, these and other victories of many  kinds sometimes approaching or reaching the miraculous are seen in  the human field and must be reckoned as a part of our concept of a  total perfection. The unflinching and persistent reply that can be made  by the body as well as the mind of man and by his life-energy to what ever call can be imposed on it in the most difficult and discouraging  circumstances by the necessities of war and travel and adventure is of  the same kind and their endurance can reach astounding proportions  and even the inconscient in the body seems to be able to return a surprising response.

The body, we have said, is a creation of the Inconscient and itself  inconscient or at least subconscient in parts of its self and much of its  hidden action; but what we call the Inconscient is an appearance, a  dwelling place, an instrument of a secret Consciousness or a Superconscient which has created the miracle we call the universe. Matter is  the field and the creation of the Inconscient and the perfection of the  operations of inconscient Matter, their perfect adaptation of means to  an aim and end, the wonders they perform and the marvels of beauty  they create, testify, in spite of all the ignorant denial we can oppose, to  the presence and power of consciousness of this Superconscience in  every part and movement of the material universe. It is there in the  body, has made it and its emergence in our consciousness is the secret  aim of evolution and the key to the mystery of our existence.

In the use of such activities as sports and physical exercises for the  education of the individual in childhood and first youth, which should  mean the bringing out of his actual and latent possibilities to their  fullest development, the means and methods we must use are limited  by the nature of the body and its aim must be such relative human perfection of the body's powers, and capacities and those of the powers of  mind, will, character, action of which it is at once the residence and the  instrument so far as these methods can help to develop them. I have  written sufficiently about the mental and moral parts of perfection to  which these pursuits can contribute and this I need not repeat here. For

the body itself the perfections that can be developed by these means are  those of its natural qualities and capacities and, secondly, the training  of its general fitness, as an instrument for all the activities which may  be demanded from it by the mind and the will, by the life-energy or by  the dynamic perceptions, impulses and instincts of our subtle physical  being which is an unrecognized but very important element and agent  in our nature. Health and strength are the first conditions for the natural perfection of the body, not only muscular strength and the solid  strength of the limbs and physical stamina, but the finer, alert and plastic and adaptable force which our nervous and subtle physical parts can  put into the activities of the frame. There is also the still more dynamic  force which a call upon the life-energies can bring into the body and  . stir it to greater activities, even feats of the most extraordinary character of which in its normal state it would not be capable. There is also  the strength which the mind and will by their demands and stimulus  and by their secret powers which we use or by which we are used with out knowing clearly the source of their action can impart to the body or  impose upon it as masters and inspirers. Among the natural qualities  and powers of the body which can be thus awakened, stimulated and  trained to a normal activity we must reckon dexterity and stability in all  kinds of physical action such as swiftness in the race, dexterity in com bat, skill and endurance of the mountaineer, the constant and often  extraordinary response to all that can be demanded from the body of  the soldier, sailor, traveller or explorer to which I have already made  reference or in adventure of all kinds and all the wide range of physical  attainment to which man has accustomed himself or to which he is  exceptionally pushed by his own will or .by the compulsion of circum stance. It is a general fitness of the body for all that can be asked from  it which is the common formula of all this action, a fitness attained by  a few or by many, that could be generalized by an extended and many sided physical education and discipline. Some of these activities can be  included under the name of sports; there are others for which sport and  physical exercises can be an effective preparation. In some of them a  training for common action, combined movement, discipline are need ed and for that our physical exercises can make one ready; in others a  developed individual, will, skill of mind and quick perception, force fullness of life-energy and subtle physical impulsion are more prominently needed and may even be the one sufficient trainer. All must be

included in our conception of the natural powers of the body and its  capacity and instrumental fitness in the service of the human mind and  will and therefore in our concept of the total perfection of the body.

There are two conditions for this perfection, an awakening in as  great an entirety as possible of the body consciousness and an education, an evocation of its potentialities, also as entire and fully developed and, it may be, as many-sided as possible. The form or body is,  no doubt, in its origin a creation of the Inconscient and limited by it on  all sides, but still of the Inconscient developing the secret conscious ness concealed within it and growing in light of knowledge, power and  Ananda. We have to take it at the point it has reached in its human evolution in these things, make as full a use of them as may be and, as  much as we can, further this evolution to as high a degree as is permitted by the force of the individual temperament and nature. In all forms  in the world there is a force at work, unconsciously active or oppressed  by inertia in its lower formulations, but in the human being conscious  from the first, with its potentialities partly awake, partly asleep or latent: what is awake in it we have to make fully conscious; what is asleep we  have to arouse and set to its work; what is latent we have to evoke and  educate. Here there are two aspects of the body consciousness, one  which seems to be a kind of automatism carrying on its work in the  physical plane without any intervention of the mind and in parts even  beyond any possibility of direct observation by the mind or, if conscious or observable, still proceeding or capable of continuing, when  once started, by an apparently mechanical action not needing direction  by the mind and continuing so long as the mind does not intervene.

There are other movements taught and trained by the mind which  can yet go on operating automatically but faultlessly even when not  attended to by the thought or will; there are others which can operate in  sleep and produce results of value to the waking intelligence. But more  important is what may be described as a trained and developed automatism, a perfected skill and capacity of eye and ear and the hands and all  the members prompt to respond to any call made" on them, a developed  spontaneous operation as an instrument, a complete fitness for any  demand that the mind and life-energy can make upon it. This is ordinarily the best we can achieve at the lower end, when we start from that  end and limit ourselves to the means and methods which are proper to  it. For more we have to turn to the mind and life-energy themselves or

to the energy of the spirit and to what they can do for a greater perfection of the body. The most we can do in the physical field by physical  means is necessarily insecure as well as bound by limits; even what  seems a perfect health and strength of the body is precarious and can be  broken down at any moment by fluctuations from within or by a strong  attack or shock from outside: only by the breaking of our limitations  can a higher and more enduring perfection come. One direction in  which our consciousness must grow is an increasing hold from within  or from above on the body and its powers and its more conscious  response to the higher parts of our being. The mind pre-eminently is  man; he is a mental being and his human perfection grows the more he  fulfils the description of the Upanishad, a mental being, Purusha, leader  of the life and the body. If the mind can take up and control the instincts  and automatisms of the life-energy and the subtle physical conscious ness and the body, if it can enter into them, consciously use and, as we  may say, fully mentalise their instinctive or spontaneous action, the perfection of these energies, their action too becomes more conscious and  more aware of itself and more perfect. But it is necessary for the mind  too to grow in perfection and this it can do best when it depends less on  the fallible intellect of physical mind, when it is not limited even by the  more orderly and accurate working of the reason and can grow in intuition and acquire a wider, deeper and closer seeing and the more luminous drive of energy of a higher intuitive will. Even within the limits of  its present evolution it is difficult to measure the degree to which the  mind is able to extend its control or its use of the body's powers and  capacities and when the mind rises to higher powers still and pushes  back its human boundaries, it becomes impossible to fix any limits: even, in certain realisations, an intervention by the will in the automatic working of the bodily organs seems to become possible. Wherever  limitations recede and in proportion as they recede, the body becomes a  more plastic and responsive and in that measure a more fit and perfect  instrument of the action of the spirit. In all effective and expressive  activities here in the material world the cooperation of the two ends of  our being is indispensable. If the body is unable whether by fatigue or  by natural incapacity or any other cause to second the thought or will  or is in any way irresponsive or insufficiently responsive, to that extent  the action fails or falls short or becomes in some degree unsatisfying or  incomplete. In what seems to be an exploit of the spirit so purely mental

as the outpouring of poetic inspiration, there must be a responsive  vibration of the brain and its openness as a channel for the power of the  thought and vision and the light of the word that is making or breaking  its way through or seeking for its perfect expression. If the brain is  fatigued or dulled by any clog, either the inspiration cannot come and  nothing is written or it fails and something inferior is all that can come  out; or else a lower inspiration takes the place of the more luminous  formulation that was striving to shape itself or the brain finds it more  easy to lend itself to a less radiant stimulus or else it labours and constructs or responds to poetic artifice. Even in the most purely mental  activities the fitness, readiness or perfect training of the bodily instrument is a condition indispensable. That readiness, that response too is  part of the total perfection of the body.

The essential purpose and sign of the growing evolution here is the  emergence of consciousness in an apparently inconscient universe, the  growth of the consciousness and with it growth of the light and power  of the being; the development of the form and its functioning or its fit ness to survive, although indispensable, is not the whole meaning or  the central motive. The greater and greater awakening of consciousness  and its climb to a higher and higher level and a wider extent of its  vision and action is the condition of our progress towards that supreme  and total perfection which is the aim of our existence. It is the condition also of the total perfection of the body. There are higher levels of  the mind than any we now conceive and to these we must one day  reach and rise beyond them to the heights of a greater, a spiritual existence. As we rise we have to open to them our lower members and fill  these with those superior and supreme dynamisms of light and power; the body we have to make a more and more and even entirely conscious frame and instrument, a conscious sign and seal and power  of the spirit. As it grows in this perfection, the force and extent of its  dynamic action and its response and service to the spirit must increase,  the control of the spirit over it also must grow and the plasticity of its  functioning both in its developed and acquired parts of power and in its  automatic responses down to those that are now purely organic and  seem to be the movements of a mechanic inconscience. This cannot  happen without a veritable transformation and a transformation of the  mind and life and very body is indeed the change to which our evolution is secretly moving and without this transformation the entire fullness

of a divine life on earth cannot emerge. In this transformation the  body itself can become an agent and a partner. It might indeed be possible for the spirit to achieve a considerable manifestation with only  a passive and imperfectly conscious body as its last or bottommost  means of material functioning, but this could not be anything perfect or  complete. A fully conscious body might even discover and work out  the right material method and process of a material transformation. For  this, no doubt, the spirit's supreme light and power and creative joy  must have manifested on the summit of the individual consciousness  and sent down their fiat into the body, but still the body may take in the  working out its spontaneous part of self-discovery and achievement. It  would be thus a participator and agent in its own transformation and  the integral transformation of the whole being; this too would be a part  and a sign and evidence of the total perfection of the body.

If the emergence and growth of consciousness is the central motive  of the evolution and the key to its secret purpose, then by the very  nature of that evolution this growth must involve not only a wider and  wider extent of its capacities but also an ascent to a' higher and higher  level till it reaches the highest possible. For it starts from a nethermost  level of involution in the Inconscience which we see at work in Matter  creating the material universe; it proceeds by an Ignorance which is yet  ever developing knowledge and reaching out to an ever greater light  and ever greater organisation and efficacy of the will and harmonisation of all its own inherent and emerging powers; it must at last reach a  point where it develops or acquires the complete fullness of its capacity  and that must be a state or action in which there is no longer an ignorance seeking for knowledge but Knowledge self-possessed, inherent  in the being, master of its own truths and working them out with a natural vision and force that is not afflicted by limitation or error. Or if  there is a limitation, it must be a self-imposed veil behind which it  would keep truth back for a manifestation in Time but draw it out at  will and without any need of search or acquisition in the order of a  right perception of things or in the just succession of that which has to  be manifested in obedience to the call of Time. This would mean an  entry or approach into what might be called a truth-consciousness self existent in which the being would be aware of its own realities and  would have the inherent power to manifest them in a Time-creation in  which all would be Truth following out its own unerring steps and

combining its own harmonies; every thought and will and feeling and  act would be spontaneously right, inspired or intuitive, moving by the  light of Truth and therefore perfect. All would express inherent realities of the spirit; some fullness of the power of the spirit would be  there. One would have overpassed the present limitations of mind: mind would become a seeing of the light of Truth, will a force and  power of the Truth, Life a progressive fulfilment of the Truth, the  body itself a conscious vessel of the Truth and part of the means of its  self-effectuation and a form of its self-aware existence. It would be at  least some initiation of this Truth-Consciousness, some first figure and  action of it that must be reached and enter into a first operation if there  is to be a divine life or any full manifestation of a spiritualised consciousness in the world of Matter. Or, at the very least, such a Truth Consciousness must be in communication with our own mind and life  and body, descend into touch with it, control its seeing and action,  impel its motives, take hold of its forces and shape their direction and  purpose. All touched by it might not be able to embody it fully, but  each would give some form to it according to his spiritual temperament, inner capacity, the line of his evolution in Nature: he would  reach securely the perfection of which he was immediately capable and  he would be on the road to the full possession of the truth of the Spirit  and of the truth of Nature.

In the workings of such a Truth-Consciousness there would be a  certain conscious seeing and willing automatism of the steps of its truth  which would replace the infallible automatism of the inconscient or  seemingly inconscient Force that has brought out of an apparent Void  the miracle of an ordered universe and this could create a new order of  the manifestation of the being in which a perfect perfection would  become possible, even a supreme and total perfection would appear in  the vistas of an ultimate possibility. If we could draw down its power  into the material world, our age long dreams of human perfectibility,  individual perfection, the perfectibility of the race, of society, inner  mastery over self and a complete mastery," governance and utilization of the forces of Nature could see at long last a prospect of total  achievement. This complete human self-fulfilment might well pass  beyond limitations and be transformed into the character of a divine  life. Matter after taking into itself and manifesting the power of life and  the light of mind would draw down into it the superior or supreme

power and light of the spirit and in an earthly body shed its parts of  inconscience and become a perfectly conscious frame of the spirit. A  secure completeness and stability of the health and strength of its physical tenement could be maintained by the will and force of this inhabitant; all the natural capacities of the physical frame, all powers of the  physical consciousness would reach their utmost extension and be  there at command and sure of their flawless action. As an instrument  the body would acquire a fullness of capacity, a totality of fitness for  all use's which the inhabitant would demand of it far beyond anything  now possible. Even it could become a revealing vessel of a supreme  beauty and bliss, — casting the beauty of the light of the spirit suffusing and radiating from it as a lamp reflects and diffuses the luminosity  of its indwelling flame, carrying in itself the beatitude of the spirit, its  joy of the seeing mind, its joy of life and spiritual happiness, the joy of  Matter released into a spiritual consciousness and thrilled with a constant ecstasy. This would be the total perfection of the spiritualized  body.

All this might not come all at once, though such a sudden illumination might be possible if a divine Power and Light and Ananda could  take their stand on the summit of our being and send down their force  into the mind and life and body illumining and remoulding the cells,  awaking consciousness in all the frame. But the way would be open  and the consummation of all that is possible in the individual could  progressively take place. The physical also would have its share in that  consummation of the whole.

There would always remain vistas beyond as the infinite Spirit took  up towards higher heights and larger breadths the evolving Nature, in  the movement of the liberated being towards the possession of the  supreme Reality, the supreme existence, consciousness, beatitude. But  of this it would be premature to speak: what has been written is per haps as much as the human mind as it is now constituted can venture to  look forward to and the enlightened thought understand in some measure. These consequences of the Truth-Consciousness descending and   laying its hold upon Matter would be a sufficient justification of the  evolutionary labour. In this upward all-uplifting sweep of the Spirit  there could be a simultaneous or consecutive downward step of the  triumph of a spiritualized Nature all-including, all-transmuting and in  it there could occur a glorifying change of Matter and the physical

consciousness and physical form and functioning of which we could  speak as not only the total but the supreme perfection of the body.

Sri Aurobindo 

Bulletin of Physical Education 

1949