The future of the body

As long as there is death, things always come to a bad end — The Mother

As I wrote a while back, our very concepts of space, time, and matter are bound up with our present consciousness structure. This mental consciousness (so called by both Jean Gebser¹ and Sri Aurobindo) made it possible to integrate the outlook of a characteristically two-dimensional consciousness into an effectively subject-free world of three-dimensional objects. Matter as we know it was the result. It is not matter that has created consciousness; it is consciousness that has created matter, first by self-concealment or involution in an apparent multitude of formless particles, and again by evolving our present mental consciousness. Ahead lies the evolution of a consciousness — and thereby of a world — that transcends our time- and space-bound perspectives. And just as the mythological thinking of the previous consciousness structure could not foresee the technological explosion made possible by science, so science-based thinking cannot foresee the consequences of the birth of a new world, brought about, not by technological means, but by a further increase in the dimensionality of consciousness.

In this new world, will consciousness still depend on a brain? Will the human body (or whatever will take its place as “the crown of creation”) remain dependent on such familiar organic structures as the cardiovascular, respiratory, or digestive systems? One can envision a new perception in which our anatomical insides are replaced by the true insides that only an aperspectival consciousness can see (remember Feynman’s brick?), a new way of seeing in which our true nature — our svabhāva — is revealed. It appears a lot harder to grasp that the new way of seeing will at the same time be the new way of being, and that in this supramental way of being our anatomical insides will have disappeared, discarded like a scaffolding or the chrysalis of a butterfly. “In the supramental being,” Sri Aurobindo² writes, “it is the consciousness with the Real-Idea in it which will govern everything.”

This real-idea is a truth-perception which is self-effective; for it is the idea and will of the spirit in direct action and originates a movement of the substance of being which must inevitably effectuate itself in state and act of being.... It is this that will rule the existence with an entire knowledge and power and include in its rule the functioning and action of the body. The body will be turned by the power of the spiritual consciousness into a true and fit and perfectly responsive instrument of the Spirit. [LD 1021–1022]

In what follows I will largely confine myself to quoting from the writings of Sri Aurobindo.

If ... it is not merely a mental being who is hidden in the forms of the universe, but the infinite Being, Knowledge, Will which emerges out of Matter first as Life, then as Mind, with the rest of it still unrevealed, then the emergence of consciousness out of the apparently Inconscient must have another and completer term; the appearance of a supramental spiritual being who shall impose on his mental, vital, bodily workings a higher law ... is no longer impossible. On the contrary, it is the natural and inevitable conclusion of the nature of cosmic existence.

Such a supramental being would ... liberate the mind from the knot of its divided existence and use the individualisation of mind as merely a useful subordinate action of the all-embracing Supermind; and he would liberate the life also from the knot of its divided existence and use the individualisation of life as merely a useful subordinate action of the one Conscious-Force fulfilling its being and joy in a diversified unity. Is there any reason why he should not also liberate the bodily existence from the present law of death, division and mutual devouring and use individualisation of body as merely a useful subordinate term of the one divine Conscious-Existence made serviceable for the joy of the Infinite in the finite? or why this spirit should not be free in a sovereign occupation of form, consciously immortal even in the changing of his robe of Matter, possessed of his self-delight in a world subjected to the law of unity and love and beauty? And if man be the inhabitant of terrestrial existence through whom that transformation of the mental into the supramental can at last be operated, is it not possible that he may develop, as well as a divine mind and a divine life, also a divine body? [LD 264–265]

In the previous stages of the evolution Nature’s first care and effort had to be directed towards a change in the physical organisation, for only so could there be a change of consciousness; this was a necessity imposed by the insufficiency of the force of consciousness already in formation to effect a change in the body. But in man a reversal is possible, indeed inevitable; for it is through his consciousness, through its transmutation and no longer through a new bodily organism as a first instrumentation that the evolution can and must be effected. In the inner reality of things a change of consciousness was always the major fact, the evolution has always had a spiritual significance and the physical change was only instrumental; but this relation was concealed by the first abnormal balance of the two factors, the body of the external Inconscience outweighing and obscuring in importance the spiritual element, the conscious being. But once the balance has been righted, it is no longer the change of body that must precede the change of consciousness; the consciousness itself by its mutation will necessitate and operate whatever mutation is needed for the body. [LD 876]

Sri Aurobindo 1950

[I]n the gnostic way of being and living the will of the spirit must directly control and determine the movements and law of the body. For the law of the body arises from the subconscient or inconscient: but in the gnostic being the subconscient will have become conscious and subject to the supramental control, penetrated with its light and action; the basis of inconscience with its obscurity and ambiguity, its obstruction or tardy responses will have been transformed into a lower or supporting superconscience by the supramental emergence. [LD 1021]

In a series of essays published between February 1949 and November 1950 (less than a month before his passing), Sri Aurobindo³ asked: “what would be the internal or external form and structure and what the instrumentation of this divine body?” The following passages are taken from these essays.⁴

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 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 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. [SM 521–522]

But what would be the internal or external form and structure and what the instrumentation of this divine body?... A total transformation of the body would demand a sufficient change of the most material part of the organism, its constitution, its processes and its set-up of nature....

[It] might be urged that the organic structure of the body no less than its basic outer form would have to be retained as a necessary material foundation for the retention of the earth-nature, the connection of the divine life with the life of earth and a continuance of the evolutionary process so as to prevent a breaking upward out of and away from it into a state of being which would properly belong to a higher plane and not to a terrestrial divine fulfilment.... It is certain that a form of body making this connection and a bodily action containing the earth-dynamism and its fundamental activities must be there, but the connection should not be a bond or a confining limitation or a contradiction of the totality of the change.... A change is then necessary here too, a necessary part of the total bodily transformation, which would divinise the whole man, at least in the ultimate result, and not leave his evolution incomplete.... There would have to be a change in the operative processes of the material organs themselves and, it may well be, in their very constitution and their importance; they could not be allowed to impose their limitations imperatively on the new physical life....

This would be a first potent change, but not by any means all that is possible or desirable. For it may well be that the evolutionary urge would proceed to a change of the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centres in the subtle body, sūkṣma śarīra, of which one would become conscious and aware of all going on in it, would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material body; all the physical life and its necessary activities in this new existence could be maintained and operated by these higher agencies in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. This might go so far that these organs might cease to be indispensable and even be felt as too obstructive: the central force might use them less and less and finally throw aside their use altogether. If that happened they might waste by atrophy, be reduced to an insignificant minimum or even disappear. The central force might substitute for them subtle organs of a very different character or, if anything material was needed, instruments that would be forms of dynamism or plastic transmitters rather than what we know as organs.

This might well be part of a supreme total transformation of the body, though this too might not be final. To envisage such changes is to look far ahead and minds attached to the present form of things may be unable to give credence to their possibility. No such limits and no such impossibility of any necessary change can be imposed on the evolutionary urge. All has not to be fundamentally changed: on the contrary, all has to be preserved that is still needed in the totality, but all has to be perfected. Whatever is necessary for the evolutionary purpose for the increasing, enlarging, heightening of the consciousness, which seems to be its central will and aim here, or the progression of its enabling means and preserving environment, has to be kept and furthered; but what has to be overpassed, whatever has no longer a use or is degraded, what has become unhelpful or retarding, can be discarded and dropped on the way. [SM 549–555]

We have seen how the need for something like a brain arises. It is a consequence of the exclusive concentration of the One in the Many, which is a characteristic of the mental structure of consciousness. When the multiple concentration of the One in the Many becomes exclusive, direct knowledge is reduced to an indirect knowledge — a knowledge mediated by representations, such as the neural representations our brains produce. In the descent of consciousness from its original poise, this is the first step towards the eventual involution of consciousness and its inherent power of creation in an indeterminate substance. In the evolutionary ascent, the reversal of this step marks the end not only of the exclusive concentration of the One in the Many but also the end of the dependence of consciousness on such mediating representations as brains provide.

In a previous post I mentioned that evolution proceeds on two parallel tracks, like the construction of a bridge from both riverbanks. On the “outer” side we have the evolution of life and mind, and on the “inner” side we have the evolution of a “psychic being,” which “rests its formation, its dynamic self-building on the power of soul that has been actually and more or less successfully, against the resistance of the Ignorance and Inconscience, put forth in the evolution upon the surface.” [LD 928] There evolves a “soul dynamism” by which the One, directly or via the multiplicity of psychic beings, can modify the physical, vital, and mental determinisms evolved by Nature. The logical conclusion of evolution is a merging of these two processes, an integration of the two dynamisms: nature force becoming increasingly susceptible to modification by soul power until it ceases to exist as a separate dynamism.

The evolution of the psychic being is not interrupted by the dissolution of the body and the vital and mental parts of our nature. At a sufficiently advanced stage, these vital and mental elements of our being can come to be so integrated into the psychic personality that they partake of the latter’s immortality.

It could happen if our mental being came to be so powerfully individualised on the surface and so much one with the inner mind and inner mental Purusha and at the same time so open plastically to the progressive action of the Infinite that the soul no longer needed to dissolve the old form of mind and create a new one in order to progress. A similar individualisation, integration and openness of the vital being on the surface would alone make possible a similar survival of the life-part in us, the outer vital personality representative of the inner life-being, the vital Purusha. [LD 853–854]

Eventually, the same may happen to our physical being:

As a result of this new relation between the Spirit and the body, the gnostic evolution will effectuate the spiritualisation, perfection and fulfilment of the physical being; it will do for the body as for the mind and life. [LD 1023]

This raises the question of how the supramental or gnostic being will be related to the psychic being. On July 1, 1970,⁵ the Mother, Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual collaborator and peer, had the answer.

[Y]esterday or the day before (I forget), Rijuta was here, just in front of me, kneeling, and I saw her psychic being towering above by this much (gesture about eight inches), taller. It’s the first time. Her physical being was short, and the psychic being was tall, like this. And it was a sexless being: neither man nor woman. So I said to myself ... “But the psychic being is the one that will materialize and become the supramental being!” ... There were distinctive features, but not very pronounced, and it was clearly a being that was neither male nor female, that had features of both combined. And it was taller than her, it exceeded her on every side by about this much (gesture extending beyond the physical being by about eight inches)....

I found it very interesting, because that being seemed to tell me, “You’re wondering what the supramental being will be — here it is! Here it is, this is it.” And it was there. It was her psychic being. Then one understands. One understands: the psychic being will materialize […] and it gives a continuity to evolution.

This creation gives you a clear impression that nothing is arbitrary, that there is a sort of divine logic behind, which isn’t like our human logic, but highly superior to our logic (but it exists), and that logic was fully satisfied when I saw that.... So I understood: “Ah, that’s it, it’s this psychic being that is to become the supramental being.”

I had never bothered to know what it looked like. But when I saw that, I understood. And I see it, I still see it, I have kept the memory. Its hair almost looked red, strangely (it wasn’t like red hair, but it looked like it). And its expression! Such a fine expression, gently ironical […] oh, extraordinary, extraordinary! You understand, my eyes were open, it was an almost material vision. Then one understands! All at once, all questions vanished, it became very clear, very simple.

And the psychic is precisely what lives on. So if it materialized, it means doing away with death. But “doing away” […] what’s done away with is only what’s not according to the Truth, that’s what goes away — all that’s incapable of being transformed in the image of the psychic, of being part of the psychic.

1. J. Gebser. The Ever-Present Origin (Ohio University Press, 1986).

2. LD = Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 2005).

3. SM = The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, in: Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, pp. 515–592 (Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1998).

4. In a letter dated 7 December 1949, Sri Aurobindo made it clear that contemplating “the creation of a divine body in a future evolution of the whole being” as an end in itself (rather than as a means) “would be a serious error,” and that his “speculations about an extreme form of divinisation are something in a far distance and are no part of the preoccupations of the spiritual life in the near future.”

5. Mother’s Agenda, Vol. 11 (Institut de Recherches Evolutives). Ellipses in square brackets are in the original text. The subtitle of this post is from Vol. 4, November 13, 1963.