Five, and none of them ever finished
The Mother, in “The Science of Living” (Bulletin, November 1950), written for the educators and students of the Ashram. She is writing of the education of children; her last words are why it is given here to a grown man:
Education to be complete must have five principal aspects corresponding to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually, these phases of education follow chronologically the growth of the individual; this, however, does not mean that one of them should replace another, but that all must continue, completing one another until the end of his life.On Education, CWM 12, p. 9
The depths of one sitting
Every journey in this wing passes through all of these going in, and through all of them again coming back. Here they are as Nādamaya walks them; the other senses walk them the same way.
the senses
the nearest sound, heard exactly
Sri Aurobindo, in A System of National Education (1910), written for the Karmayogin about the teacher and the child:
The two things that are needed of the senses are accuracy and sensitiveness.
Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 397
refined
its grain, its edges, what is mixed in it
The Mother, in “Vital Education” (Bulletin, August 1951):
The sense organs, if properly cultivated, can attain a precision and power of functioning far exceeding what is normally expected of them.
On Education, CWM 12, p. 20
mental: attention
one sound held, then the next farther one
The Mother, in “Mental Education” (Bulletin, November 1951): the first of the five phases she gives a true mental education:
Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
On Education, CWM 12, p. 24
mental: widening
farther, farther, the farthest
The second:
Development of the capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
On Education, CWM 12, p. 24
mental: silence
past the farthest, silence
And the fifth. Phases one, two and five are the outward journey in her own order:
Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.
On Education, CWM 12, p. 25
psychic: the heart
inward: breath, throat, heart, beat, the gap, a feeling
Sri Aurobindo, in a letter to someone who had asked how a mental seeking becomes a living spiritual experience. This is where, inward, the beat of the heart gives way to a feeling:
Of this true consciousness other than the superficial there are two main centres, one in the heart (not the physical heart, but the cardiac centre in the middle of the chest), one in the head. The concentration in the heart opens within and by following this inward opening and going deep one becomes aware of the soul or psychic being, the divine element in the individual.
Letters on Yoga II, CWSA 29, p. 6
spiritual: beyond form
the feeling becomes silence
The Mother, in “Psychic Education and Spiritual Education” (Bulletin, 1952), setting the spiritual consciousness beside the psychic:
The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live the infinite and the eternal, to be projected beyond all creation, beyond time and space.
On Education, CWM 12, p. 35
This is the spiritual consciousness itself. A sitting does not claim it; the silence at the turn only faces that way.
and back
every station again, in reverse, to here
The Mother, in the same chapter, on those who seek only to merge into the formless and leave the world:
But a liberation that leaves the world as it is and in no way affects the conditions of life from which others suffer, cannot satisfy those who refuse to enjoy a boon which they are the only ones, or almost the only ones, to possess, those who dream of a world more worthy of the splendours that lie hidden behind its apparent disorder and wide-spread misery.
On Education, CWM 12, p. 37
This is why every journey here comes back. Not to escape, and not to rest in the silence: to return to the same place in a new light.
The senses are not damaged
Sri Aurobindo is plain that the eye, the ear, the tongue, the skin and the nose do their work perfectly. What errs lies between the organ and the mind, and nothing in the man has to be repaired: what is in the way is cleared.
He names what is in the way, in his order: the nerve channels, fear and alarm, emotion and desire warping the impression, and old associations in the passive memory.
Sri Aurobindo, in A System of National Education (1910), on why the senses err. The fault, he says, is never in the organ:
In themselves the organs do their work perfectly. The eye gives the right form, the ear the correct sound, the palate the right taste, the skin the right touch, the nose the right smell.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 397
Sri Aurobindo, on what stands between the organ and the mind, and its remedy:
The obstructions can be removed and the sensitiveness remedied by the purification of the nerve system. The remedy is a simple one which is now becoming more and more popular in Europe for different reasons and objects, the regulation of the breathing.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 398
Sri Aurobindo, on how fear and alarm change what the senses report, as the startled man takes a rope for a snake:
All distortions due to actions in the nervous system can be traced to some kind of emotional disturbance acting in the nerve channels. The only remedy for them is the habit of calm, the habitual steadiness of the nerves.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, p. 398
Sri Aurobindo, on old associations in the passive memory:
We have a habitual way of looking at things and the conservative inertia in our nature disposes us to give every new experience the shape and semblance of those to which we are accustomed.Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1, pp. 399 to 400
Read beside dependence, the last is how a place, an hour or a smell can carry the old shape before anything is chosen. That reading is ours: he wrote of the teacher and the child.
Not a withdrawal from the senses
Every practice in this wing begins in full sensation. Nothing is shut out, and no sense is starved: the Mother sets that remedy aside.
The Mother, in “The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations”, on the austerity of the sensations. She has just set aside the usual remedy, to starve the vital of all sensation:
Thus, if we do not wish to starve our vital, sensations must not be rejected or diminished in number and intensity. Neither should we avoid them; rather we must make use of them with wisdom and discernment.On Education, CWM 12, pp. 55 to 56
And a few lines on:
It is by enlightening, strengthening and purifying the vital, and not by weakening it, that one can contribute to the true progress of the being. To deprive oneself of sensations is therefore as harmful as depriving oneself of food.On Education, CWM 12, p. 56
The widening, and the fear of it
Going out, the edges of “me hearing it” can go. For someone afraid of that moment, Sri Aurobindo's answer is short.
Sri Aurobindo, in a letter, telling opening from widening:
widening is when it is no longer limited to the body but widens to meet the cosmic consciousness.Letters on Yoga III, CWSA 30, p. 273
Sri Aurobindo, to someone afraid of the emptiness that came in concentration:
Consciousness is not dissolved; it is the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved.Letters on Yoga III, CWSA 30, p. 276
Silence, and sleep
For a man who does not sleep, this sentence matters. It is hers, about the mind. It is not a promise about sleep.
The Mother, in “Mental Education”, on how the mind rests:
Changing one’s mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep.On Education, CWM 12, p. 29
Spiritual, never religious
The wing names the heart and what is beyond form. It asks for no belief.
The Mother, on the psychic discovery, which is usually tied to a religious life:
But it need not necessarily be so: the mystic notion of God may be replaced by the more philosophical notion of truth and still the discovery will remain essentially the same, but the road leading to it may be taken even by the most intransigent positivist.On Education, CWM 12, p. 31
The body first
For the Mother, physical education comes before the senses, and the senses are the first half of vital education. On this site the āsana groups and the prāṇāyāma are that physical education already.
The Mother, in “Physical Education”, in the same book:
All education of the body should begin at birth and continue throughout life. It is never too soon to begin nor too late to continue.On Education, CWM 12, p. 12
These are the directions the Mother and Sri Aurobindo describe. Twenty minutes on a mat points a man down that road. We do not claim he has reached what they name. Nothing is locked: he may go as deep as he goes, and the shallowest depth is complete on its own.