Spiritual Realisation Goes Beyond All Scriptures

We live in a dynamic, evolving universe, not one that is static and unchanging. All teachings of the past, therefore, have their limitations. In his Essays on the Gita, Sri Aurobindo reminds us that all scriptures have both a temporal element, specific to their time and their circumstances, and an eternal element which speaks to the principles or truths of existence and are not limited by immediate societal ideas or norms. Even the most universal of past teachings tends to have their limits insofar as they are a product of the evolutionary status and trend of the time of their creation, and cannot, thereby, fully incorporate and communicate the elements specific to the future evolution of consciousness and development of the universal manifestation. It would be relatively useless for them to focus on concepts and directions that have no obvious basis in the time and social development in which they arise.

It is therefore essential that the practitioner of the integral Yoga, with a goal that transcends the specific directed objectives of many other paths of spiritual growth, understand and be prepared to go beyond the scope and limits of the scriptures of the past, even as due cognizance is given to their aid along the way and their value as signposts in the long process of evolutionary growth and development. Spiritual realisation comes not from a book or a specific teaching, but from experience and a process of growth and maturation.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “For the Sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowing verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, — if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the written Truth, — sabdabrahmativartate — beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, — srotavyasya srutasya ca. For he is not the Sadhaka of a book or of many books, he is a Sadhaka of the Infinite.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter III Growth of Consciousness Basic Requisites, pp. 47-48