Gnostic Consciousness Transcends Rigid Mental Rules for Living

As long as we remain fixed in the mental framework, we tend to create judgments and rules for everything we do that are founded on the limited and fragmented understanding that the mental power possesses. The advent of a new wider, more expansive, more unifying and comprehensive consciousness obviously will overturn or at least dramatically alter these rules in virtually every sphere of living.

An example used by Sri Aurobindo relates to the principle and practice of spirituality itself. We have ingrained in us the idea that to focus on spiritual realisation it is necessary to avoid, limit or abandon the things of the world and the life of the world, and that “ascetic bareness” is the rule to be followed. Sri Aurobindo points out that while there may be times and stages where such a discipline may help the individual overcome the overpowering forces of desire and ego, this cannot be the ultimate solution.

“The one rule of the gnostic life would be the self-expression of the Spirit, the will of the Divine Being; that will, that self-expression could manifest through extreme simplicity or through extreme complexity and opulence or in their natural balance,–for beauty and plenitude, a hidden sweetness and laughter in things, a sunshine and gladness of life are also powers and expressions of the Spirit. In all directions the Spirit within determining the law of the nature would determine the frame of the life and its detail and circumstance. In all there would be the same plastic principle; a rigid standarisation, however necessary for the mind’s arrangement of things, could not be the law of the spiritual life. A great diversity and liberty of self-expression baed on an underlying unity might well become manifest; but everywhere there would be harmony and truth of order.”

Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 28, “The Divine Life”, pp. 1066-1067